By Staff Writer –

It’s not really a treasure hunt. Geocashing is a hunt site, which lets you navigate the land with your GPS device. Even if you don’t find anything, it’s still a good excuse to get out there and explore.

Geocatching is one of 12,000-plus developers using CloudMade’s API for mapping and navigation. CloudMade just raised $12.3 million from Greylock Partners.

Watch the following videos to see how people actually use Geocatching.

Photo via Geocaching blog

Geocaching: The treasure hunt movement is a post from: TechStartups.com

I think it is still too early in the rise of Facebook for it have a rival or great competitor that comes from nothing.

Social networking startup would have a very hard time duplicating Facebook’s rapid success and string of good fortune.

Over at Sparxoo, Ethan Lyon wrote a post titled, “Can Another Social Network Rival Facebook?” And that is our jump-off point.

Lyon wrote that to become a rival of Facebook a company would have to be authentic, leverage facebook and target Asia. I think there is a bit more that would need to happen and some big things at that.

Be the next iteration of social networks

In their current state, networks haven’t innovated very much in the last two to three years. They still rely heavily on Twitter style type messaging and friending people you already have on other networks. There have to be some new ways of interacting online that can be built into these networks. Whether it is new IA, UI or UX it needs to be innovative and unique that network . . . until Facebook ‘borrows’ it.

Have an open API

Just like Twitter whatever goes in comes right back out with ease – and then some. Adding content to Twitter from anywhere is easy and getting it back out the same with additional statistics added to it. The entire network is portable and 95% of it replicatable except for their server farm. They are essentially a phone company handling network traffic. Facebook, not so good at this. Oh, yeah, and no kooky special markup languages like FBML.

Leverage Facebook

Lyons nailed this one. Use every bit of data and information that can be gotten out of Facebook. That means memes, interaction styles and how functions operate.

Multilingual out of the box

The point about going strong at Asia is good but I would rather see a startup go multilingual out of the box through its API. Build the network to easily transition between languages and translate the most popular ones in real-time. That would be a great innovation. Use the API to find international partners and allow them to leverage your network structure.

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• Faces of Facebook come to SA! (handsoncommunications.wordpress.com)

How to Build the Network to Challenge Facebook is a post from: TechStartups.com

Storytlr began its life online like many startups – some folks got together and created a lifestreaming solution for their own needs and then they worked to turn it into a business.

And like many startups before them, Storytlr decided to close their service down about 9 weeks ago. They notified their customers and took the initiative to find the best solution they could.

In this case, it was to open source their platform and give it away for free before they cease operations. Now users can get their own personal install on.

There are plenty of lifestreaming sites that are available already and many more are set to exist as data normalization and API’s comingle architecture. Not many of them are self-hosted but Storytlr’s solution is a good one for more advanced users that would like to continue on a similar path.

This story is all too common with startups today that garner a following of a few thousand users and cannot continue to support them due to various circumstances. The most common being that the endeavor isn’t revenue generating and won’t be in time to keep those working on it in the black.

It is unfortunate that the team behind Storytlr couldn’t find a partner or someone to take over the service for them. However, it is fortunate for those in the public that the platform and their hard work will now become public. The value of their intellectual property becomes community knowledge that others can now begin to build upon.

You can download your copy of Storytlr on Google Code and help this coral reef of open lifestreaming continue on.

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Storytlr Story – Lifestreaming Startup is a post from: TechStartups.com

I signed up for Tumblr yesterday. The appeal was obvious. It was easier to post pictures and add text to, compared to my experience with other blogging sites.

As it turns out, Tumblr has been undergoing some changes recently. The blogging site announced that it’s going to adapt the Twitter API into its site. This means everything you do in Twitter, you can now do in Tumblr. For instance, retweeting takes the form of reblogging. And instead of favorites, there’s liking. More significantly, this opens up the micro-blogging applications to the blogging world. Anyone with an iPhone, who uses Tweetie 2 and Twitterrific 2 apps, can now post and read blogs through Twitter API if they use Tumblr or Wordpress.com.

If more sites begin to adopt Twitter API, it could soon become a standard way to send out open communication messages. Will Twitter API become the next form of RSS, FTP, or HTTP? Regardless, this integration could have more immediate effects on Tumblr’s reach. It could help it gain more users and shed its “underdog” reputation. Besides being user friendly, Tumblr is positioning itself to become the middleman of the social media world:

Essentially, Tumblr is a mashup of popular social networking sites – users can bookmark favorite blogs and entries (think Digg), easily share photos (think Flickr), reblog new finds to share with others (think Twitter), and connect with networks of friends (think Facebook). The Tumblr team has worked hard to make their platform into a supportive community, where the talents of others are highlighted by their peers, and embraced by all – something that is not available on more individual-focused platforms like WordPress and Blogger.

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• Twitter API: a new standard? (tonyscott.org.uk)

Will Twitter API Become Standard? is a post from: TechStartups.com

For the last five years I have developed web services on top API’s. For the most part I find it really enjoyable as a chance to tinker with data that I wouldn’t otherwise have access to. It’s also an opportunity to improve the original product.

We’ve written at length on this blog about API businesses and how they are able to grow. Well, they don’t always grow.

Let’s look at a couple reasons they do and don’t.

In alternating fashion as not to persuade or dissuade in any way.

Con: It’s not your data.

The core of your business is about to be built on someone elses information. You are beholden to a distributor that may or may not have issues in delivering the central product that your customers count on.

Pro: It’s not your data.

I won’t continue this tit for tat on pros and cons but it is important to realize that the plus of using an API to launch a startup is that it isn’t your data. If you can find a provider that you trust implicitly and get on record with as being a partner, do it. Strive to make this a real business relationship as opposed to simply using their API.

Con: Terms of service

Man, o-man, read these terms of service diligently. If you are going to create this startup get these terms to your counsel for review. Make sure they mesh with your business plan and that you will be inline with the desires of the API provider.

Pro: Infrastructure

Beyond this being the API provider’s data it is zipping to you via their hardware. Brilliant! This is a cost to them that will be passed along to you in the aggregate and lower your own overhead. Think Amazon S3 for an example of this.

Con: API changes

Put in the time to ensure that you will be kept abreast of any changes to the API so that one day your product doesn’t just stop working. This is different than the spigot being turned to the off position. It is about code changes that impact the way that your service integrates API data.

Pro: Time to market

Using API’s from providers can speed your time to market in quite a few ways. One of them being the ability to bypass additional requirements from a data center. Another being the cash upfront needed to bring new technical folks.

Pros or cons, I believe in API development. Startups that want to make it out of the basement need to understand that they are becoming a business. And by becoming a business, the I’s must get dotted and the T’s crossed.

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Pros and Cons for an API Based Startup is a post from: TechStartups.com

This weekend I took this on as a perspective question – what if books looked like the web? The next question was – why don’t they look like the web? I should have been thinking about turkey.

It is a simple answer to the second question – user experience. It doesn’t look like the web because if you had placed in front of you Herman Melville’s Moby Dick with contextual ads for free and a version in the classic book format for $14.99, I can guarantee that you would buy the classic format.

In print or on the web Moby Dick with contextual ads is not the same experience. A true fail whale. See for yourself after the jump.

Click for full size.

I’m sure the ad supported model of books has been tried and it failed. I fit hadn’t everything for sale today would be ad laden. What won out is the classic format without ads in the copy. Advertisements are an unwanted distraction from the experience that is the book. Whether it is delivered as an e-book, print or on the web – ads will ruin the experience.

The third question is this line of logic is that if the book publisher model is to charge to an ad free experience so they can stay in business – will web users pay for classic book experience? I think they will. Maybe it should be offered as a premium edition of a product. Not being distracted by advertisements has value.

Value is the key to addressing pay walls. The recent discussions about pay walls and how they suck or won’t work has become ridiculous. Books are a pay wall. Televisions are a pay wall. Your car is a pay wall. Riding in a taxi is a pay wall (thanks for the ads to distract me from the driver). Starbucks is a pay wall. In all of these cases we pay for value and experience. It is time that the web follow this model.

Pay wall naysayers are the equivalent to the codgers that said the internet was a fad. Get over yourselves, the long tail and trying to have the biggest audience on the planet. The concern should be about creating content of value that people will pay for. Continuing to give away content for free or ad support it perpetuates a continued failure to see the economic reality that the long tail means going out of business.

Not all publishers will need this model but the indies sure do. They need technology to allow for micropayments and publishing with syndication for partners and accounting metrics. Waiting on Google or pointing to models like YouTube running ads over video are a waste of time. They are appropriate when you have a nearly unrestricted ability to scale.

For publishers not to be charging, in my mind, stifles innovation and artistic creation. If ones sole focus is on creating value for your core audience and isn’t spent worrying about the fringes a better product is produced. When all of the publisher’s time is spent on trying to pitch the value of their content to advertisers and ad networks there is an inherent diminished engagement with the audience. Simply because the value of the content isn’t presented for the advertiser, the value of the audience is presented for sale.

Book publishers stay in business because they charge for content. Book publishers keep Amazon in business. Supporting web publishers by paying for content can help to ensure that the next Moby Dick could come from the web.

Why don’t books look like web pages? Because they would suck.

Will web user pay for a classic book experience? Maybe. If no one tries to buck the prevailing meme that pay walls won’t work online the answer is, No. If publisher step up and provide value and a better experience the answer is, Yes.

About this example: You can download PDF’s of the versions Classic Book Format and Ad Supported Format (imagine this version on an ebook reader) of this first page of Melville’s Moby dick. You can also see the ad supported version online as a web page. It was created using Google Adsense and custom Amazon and eBay ads through their API’s. The keywords used to generate the ads were selected after I ran an auto-tagging script against the entire copy of this page. Enjoy.

Here’s a close up of the two versions.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

What if Books Looked Like Web Pages? is a post from: TechStartups.com

Twitter founder Biz Stone has indicated that the company would likely make some acquisitions in the near future. Since that statement was made, people everywhere have been speculating who or what type of company it might be.

Here are some facts to consider:

• Twitter will offer premium commercial accounts by the end of this year
• Twitter’s advertising strategy will roll-out soon and “will be fascinating and completely non-traditional, and people will love it.”
• Twitter is a major indicator of Trends
• Deals with major search properties are already providing Twitter with revenue that is “well above” their projections for this year
• An IPO is a likely exit for founders and investors

I’ve been ruminating since this morning, trying to put myself in the position of Twitter management. With that in mind, here are some acquisitions to consider.

Commercial account holders will expect some level of added value, beyond just a verified account.  Some of that value may include a greater limit on their API calls and perhaps more granular access to the overall set of API’s. These account holders may also want access to trend data over time so they can positively react to trends before they peak. Reacting to these trends may require additional manpower (tweetpower? personpower?) making multi-user tools a necessity.

Advertisers that partake in Twitter’s “fascinating and completely non-traditional” approach will need to understand how their investment delivers returns – whether that be positive word or mouth, reach, distribution, click-throughs or sales.

With that in mind, I think Twitter may acquire companies that offer:

• Analytics
• URL Shortening
• Multi-User Access and Integration

Analytics

Twitter itself needs analytics and behavior tracking to run the business but more importantly, their key commercial constituents noted above will demand it.

Bit.ly and Chartbeat would be obvious candidates.

Most people know bit.ly as a URL shortener but the company is so much more than that. Click and retweet analytics is where bit.ly’s real value lies. Similarly, Chartbeat is a hosted analytics tool built around the concept of real-time. Visitor actions are tracked while keyword, sentiment and distribution data is collected and presented in a useful dashboard.

The three companies share investors and board members and bit.ly has already received some level of integration on the Twitter.com. Couple this with the fact that bit.ly has become the defacto standard within a number of native Twitter clients and I’d say the likelihood is high.

URL Shortener

See bit.ly, above.

Multi-User Access and Integration

The acquisition target is less apparent in this category. The competition is fierce and the services continue to bring new features and improvements to market.

The more mature offerings include CoTweet and HootSuite. Both services have support for multiple users and multiple twitter accounts but they differ a bit in terms of UI and a few other minor features. Either company would be a worthy acquisition.

What say you, readers? Who or what will be on Twitter’s shopping spree?

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Acquisitions Likely in Twitter’s Future – Stone is a post from: TechStartups.com

Linking words together online is an hobby. Creating context from those words is an art. Making them work in harmony is a gift. The team at Thomson Reuters have done this for some time with their Calais project and the first consumer product from it OpenCalais.

OpenCalais is a monster database filled with linked data that can be accessed by anyone via a special API. Currently it works on an individual application level and as plugins with other popular CMS and blogging platforms. In tandem they create a more powerful experience for the publishers of new content by allowing the integration of linked data for linking, tagging and finding optional third-party resources for inspiration.

Word on the street and from a trusted source is that the Calais team has something new on the horizon – their own CMS. A release of a CMS that has semantic technologies built right into is a powerful addition to the marketplace. Many blogging platforms and CMS products available today have stagnated under the weight of their own popularity.

It is hard to innovate when you are leading the pack or trying to figure out how to make money from your product that is free. Time and resources become devoted to maintaining the status quo, patching holes and community relations and support. Not to mention that many of these tools have crept out from the minds of developers and not publishers.

The same can’t be said for Thomson Reuters Calais Initiative. With a business model built in from the inception of the project they have the ability to create value from the wealth of content that is entering their system. It is treated to some natural language processing, machine learning and prepared to link with other content. As the initiative currently exists it is the side car to better publishing as there is no status quo or hole patching. They realized this.

Throwing a CMS on top of this type of foundation is a logical move for OpenCalais to extend development and create publisher relations. There has been so little innovation in core CMS offerings that most rely on third-party developers to create additional functionality or implement API’s like OpenCalais, Zemanta and other discovery products.

An OpenCalais CMS, blogging platform or whatever comes from this group is going to be a welcome addition to the choices that publishers have available today. The closest opportunity today to creating a true semantic experience in a publishing platform that is readily available would be to install the Zemanta plugin in WordPress. It transforms the writing experience. An offering from Calais could transform the writing and CMS experience.

Update: Krista Thomas (@kristathomas) from OpenCalais got in touch to say that there is a fully integrated CMS based on Drupal called OpenPublish available now.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

CMS Innovations from Thomson Reuters? is a post from: TechStartups.com

Clear you schedules for tomorrow November 19, 2009 at 1 p.m. EST or 10 a.m. PST if you’re on the West coast to learn how to make Facebook Apps with Jesse Stay. O’Reilly is offering up the author of FBML Essentials to the public in a free webcast.

I’m not a fan of in-house hooks like FBML (Facebook Markup Language) to create developer lockin. However, this post is about getting you into a seat for this even if you are interested in learning how to program an app from the ground up for Facebook. And if you have to play the game this way for now, so be it. There’s traffic gold in the Facebooks.

O’Reilly describes the event as:

“During this 90-minute webcast Jesse Stay will build a Facebook application from scratch focusing on FBML and very basic Facebook API calls. You’ll see first-hand how you can use Facebook Markup Language (FBML) and other easy-to-use tools in the site’s framework to start building your own applications.”

With such an opportunity to get the straight talk and demonstration from the author of a book dedicated to this idiosyncratic language and a desire to build an app in Facebook, you should seize this opportunity. As a sometimes developer I prize events like this to help get me up to speed quicker in a technology rather than hacking my way through it.

If you are looking for a reason to tell your boss that you need to set aside this time for some professional development and they ask you why. Just tell them that you are working on an idea to implement a social network on your intranet that can be populated with employee data from Facebook.

Tell them that building out such a project entails your firm understanding of this FBML, the book is a business expense in these hard economic times, it’s free and if you collect the Facebook user data and combine it with your own intranet internet usage metric you can effectively measure employee productivity. As they will be scared witless to touch Facebook during the work day. It is a win, win, win.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

How To Make Facebook Apps – Webinar is a post from: TechStartups.com

If you’re looking for inspiration, try this:

1. Find an online application that you admire, one that you feel confident has a great product and is experiencing growth
2. See if they have an open API
3. Build an app for the X platform

There are plenty of app developers building businesses off the effort of others by leveraging the latter company’s API.

A great example of this is 37Signals, an application software company based in Chicago. The smart folks at 37Signals have built API’s for all their applications turning them into platforms for outside developers.

Let’s look at their Basecamp application, an online tool for collaborating on projects.

Basecamp uses lots of AJAX in the UI so a simple mobile web implementation isn’t as useful (or attractive) as the original browser version. However, 37Signals has created a robust API that others can leverage to connect Basecamp to other web applications or to provide access to Basecamp on other platforms, like the iPhone. Search for Basecamp in the iTunes App Store and you’ll find nine applications that support the service, plus a few more that are limited to supporting Basecamp’s time tracking features.

The cost of these iPhone apps range from free to $12.99. While the free apps are good for the casual user, advanced users will definitely want one of the paid apps. Taken a step further, some of these companies also offer Basecamp apps for the BlackBerry, Symbian and Android platforms. They may be betting on Basecamp as an application worth supporting, but they’re not going to bet on only one handset platform.

For those of you who took the time to read this entire post, here’s a bonus idea for you: BatchBlue, makers of the very cool and useful BatchBook application, offers an API but to date no one has come forth to create an iPhone app for it.

The only thing holding me back from using BatchBook is the fact that it doesn’t have an iPhone app. Someone create one, please? I’ll be your first customer.

What other companies have an API that you can leverage?

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Opportunity in Others: How to Build a Business Using Open API’s is a post from: TechStartups.com

While I’m riding this photo wave I thought I would throw out a post for the coders in the house. I am an unabashed supporter two things – RSS and Flickr. When they are both put together they make a magnificent pair.

To demonstrate why they are such a great pair together I put together a bit of code that can make working with Flickr photos a breeze. It is the same code that I wrote that made its way into the self-hosted life streaming software SweetCron.

It is written in PHP but those that do real coding for a living can take a look at it and get the concept pretty quick. With that being said, I will make even easier by pointing out that due to a good naming convention that Flickr uses to organize photos by size it is possible to access all of them quickly without using the full tokenized API. Which, btw, requires more pings to get the same data the feeds offer.

We’ll use the PHP function simplexml_load_file to get access to the photo goodness that is resting in the feed. The RSS feeds from Flickr are in a standard format so the code below will work with any of them. However, it won’t work for the Atom feeds. I’m sure you could get crazy and figure out an Atom hack if you wanted. Good luck.

Here’s how it can be done with PHP and a Flickr user feed:

$feed = simplexml_load_file("URL_to_Flickr_Feed");

// Check to see if the response was loaded, else print an error
if ($feed) {
$results = '';

// If the response was loaded, parse it and build links
foreach($feed->channel->item as $item) {
$media = $item->children('http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/');

// Photo Thumbnail
$sPhoto = $media->thumbnail->attributes();
$url = (string) $sPhoto['url'];
$width = (string) $sPhoto['width'];
$height = (string) $sPhoto['height'];
//

// Photo Medium (500 px wide standard)
$mphoto = substr($sPhoto, 0, -5);
$mphoto = $mphoto . "m.jpg";

// Photo Large (original size)
$lPhoto = $media->content->attributes();
$lurl = (string) $lPhoto['url'];
$lwidth = (string) $lPhoto['width'];
$lheight = (string) $lPhoto['height'];
$lphoto = substr($lPhoto, 0, -5);
$lphoto = $lphoto . "o.jpg";
//

echo $sPhoto; // thumbnail url
echo $mphoto; // medium size url
echo $lphoto; // large size url

}
} else {
echo "Broken Feed";
}

Hopefully this will give someone a jump start in how to transfer large images quickly, say between a photo journalist and an editor half a world away without having to make any other tools than a special XML feed from the Flickr feed. Literally for the $24.95 yearly fee to use Flickr Pro it could be used as a global syndication system.

In the right hands this way of working with Flickr feeds could yield great hacks for devices like the Chumby. Take it one step further for use in digital picture frames as playlists that can be embedded or run from memory cards. I’m just saying these are possibilities.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

PHP simplexml_load_file for Photos is a post from: TechStartups.com

Can’t make it to SoHo anytime soon or in this lifetime? Then you should head over to StyleCaster to get a sense of what ambitious, smart fashion is walking the streets of NYC South of Houston. New York is teeming with this apparel and footwear clacking away to catch a cab.

StyleCaster is most definitely a Big Apple property, which is only to its benefit as they grow their site. The city is a fashion and media capital.

With the new boom of startup activity on the East Coast they find themselves in a great position to gain users, make partnerships (both tech savvy and with traditional media) and to be in the epicenter of the next fashion trends. Think what Portfolio.com used to be, but for fashion.

Fashion sites often suffer from a lack of depth, see content, or lack of tech to make them accessible. They often rely heavily on motion graphics in Flash and a business model based on revenue from affiliate sales. Not StyleCaster. They have mixed all the ingredients and a some other special sauce to create a complete user experience.

It would be hard to write this review if I didn’t break their site down from the beginning. StyleCaster is three distinct properties that have been plied together with one smaller cousin: Fashion Recommendations, Social Network, News/Blog and Shopping (the smaller cousin).

Fashion Recommendations

This is the core value proposition for StyleCaster. They deliver a tailored interface for weather and season with 360 degree model views.

Earlier this summer they took this concept and created an iPhone app that was just as robust as their site. The experience that they are able to deliver with their Daily Looks section should make retailers jealous. They have merged seamless cross-selling with the common sense that your friend might recommend and item to you.

Social Network

Everyone wants on this bandwagon for many reasons and the number one being to get funded. I’m not sure if this is what got StyleCaster $4 million but this is how it is done right, in case you were wondering.

They first look to a larger network, in this case Facebook, and integrate with their API through Connect. Second, they take this data and create an onsite profile each registrant. Third, and final in this process of hooking user into their community, they make it drop dead simple to engage with other users based on contributor types, cities, at random and a 15 minutes of fame section. A simple horizontal navigation that tracks users onsite fashionista moves.

News/Blog

Fashion Recommendations might be the awesome wow factor that you need to attract the fashion forward and a Social Network to get users connected and spending time on your site but the most impressive feature of this site isn’t really a feature. The Newsroom and Blog sections of StyleCaster are destinations for an insiders perspective on fashion. This is where the magic of this site is made.

This is content that matches the ambition and smarts of the fashion they follow . . . delivers and then some. My only gripe is that the IA and taxonomy is lacking lacking and it can be difficult to find much of the great content that is buried in the site.

StyleCaster’s headlines can be seen on other fashion/celeb sites around the net but smart money would probably say that there are more partnerships in the works to deliver full content. I’m not smart money, so I can’t say for sure.

Shopping

Well, what would a fashion site be without shopping? I called this the ‘one smaller cousin’  and I mean it. Simply put, the focus of this site is obviously to build a company and a brand based on high quality content, technology and a great user experience. It wasn’t built with shopping at its core. And that is awesome! There is a solid enough foundation in place that if StyleCaster went down this road they would find success but not as much as they will find by having all of other components in place.

I’ve gushed quite a bit here over what is just another startup. They are just another startup that needs to prove itself in the marketplace. I believe they will. And even if they don’t, this business, with any one of the three aforementioned sections would make any entrepreneur very happy with the traffic they could bring. Kudos to the team that are making this happen. They’re getting done the right way.

It wouldn’t be right to do a post about a fashion startup without some snark, now would it?

If you have ever wanted to release that inner hater, head to The Daily Looks section and spin them tall skinny models round and round until your petty little heart is content. Not that I did or would want to do this.

Tip if you do: Play house music to make it a party. Remember, you can’t do this in SoHo!

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

StyleCaster Is Your SoHo Connection is a post from: TechStartups.com

I’ve had quite a learning focus today, eh? Well, it’s gonna roll on as I write about the Radio Lingua Network.

As the name implies, it’s audio based and something to do with a network of tongues. The Radio Lingua Network delivers lessons in many languages with a focus on portability of those lessons. The content is platform agnostic as it is delivered as MP3’s and popular video formats that translate between pc’s, media players and mobiles devices without translation (sorry, couldn’t help it) transcoding.

Radio Lingua has a rich history that I can identify with as a long time podcaster. It was started by Mark Pentleton in 2005 as a separate project called Verbcast. Verbcast had a focus on French verbs and relaxation techniques. But from this one show Pentleton was able to build an entire network dedicated to teaching language skills.

Eventually, the network grew to house other digital products and new brands like Coffee Break series and an innovative new hook with Twitter. They call this package the TwitterLearn series and have broken down their other products into, “micro language lessons.” It is both a brilliant use of Twitter to deliver education but also of Twitter’s API to deliver direct messages that aren’t seen on the public timeline. This ability to remain private allows Radio Lingua to deliver paid content through pre-existing channel. This is how you run lean people!

Radio Lingua is a great model to follow for startups looking to bridge the gap between the free and premium. We’ve been lead to believe for years, thanks to the push of Chris Anderson, that Free would somehow set us free as entrepreneurs and bring revenue in droves when combined with the longtail. I say it ain’t so. Entrepreneurs like Mark Pentleton are an example of those that have used free to test a market and then build a pay service on top of it.

Radio Lingua Network Making Your Tongue Work is a post from: TechStartups.com

The semantic web is well on its way and one of the startups that has taken an early lead is Zemanta. They have taken a unique approach to linked data and the science that powers their ability to create structured content from it. They aimed their service at publishers, not the IT crowd.

Typically, semantic technology companies rely heavily on their colleagues with computer science degrees not the actual publisher. They will deliver products as API’s or server side solutions with a hefty price tag. Zemanta has created the right relationships with CMS and blogging platform owners to integrate their tools within administration sections.

They offer AJAX’ed out components in these platforms that reads from the main content box as a publisher types a post and updates linked content like photos, links and tags that are appropriate for the post. By doing this it allows the publisher to focus on their post and actual release content faster.

The core of their service is to intelligently eliminate the need for the publisher to start research from ground zero. They offer points of direction inside the administration interface to guide the publisher to resources quickly. I am most impressed with the way that Zemanta handles tags and the relationships between them.

Zemanta does offer an API, I have used it in the past. The API returns data quickly and an even more robust set than the plugin style for CMS’s. A sample request returns maps, categories, links, excerpts and more. The only problem that I encountered was one that all semantic companies have right now, context and sentiment for breaking news.

Semantic services rely on hefty algorithms that need sample data to create the links between data and develop sentiment. As a result of this issue, it makes it very hard to implement solutions that work with real-time data and syndication of that content. Most times, once something has hit a feed or been released to a partner site it cannot be updated with linked data. I’ve been told it is something that the Zemanta team is working on.

Zemanta makes it easy to Zemify your content in WordPress, Drupal, Movable Type among others and possibly Blogger in the future.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Zemify Your Content With Zemanta is a post from: TechStartups.com

You ever go into Best Buy and buy a computer or a Flat Panel TV, thinking that you have everything you need to do what you want to do. But that never really happens does it? You are always missing that one piece of software or that USB or HD cable that you didn’t know you needed. Believe me I’ve been there many times.

Well with the new API that Best Buy launched called Best Buy Remix, they today announced a three phase contest called The Remix Challenge! The first challenge that launches today is the Idea Challenge. Phase two will have a UI design contest, then lastly phase three is building the app.

The challenge is to find a way to utilize the API accessing Best Buy’s catalog to help customers make sure they get exactly what they need accessory wise. Say for instance you need to buy a computer and you need a printer, but the printer doesn’t come with cables or ink. Well the Remix Challenge wants you to come up with a cool way to tell customers, “Hey look, we see you bought a computer and printer, but do you have cables? Ink? Here’s what we have in our catalog, check it out.”

According to TopCoder, the company partnering with Best Buy Remix for the challenge: “We’ll be looking for your ideas for the perfect small application to address these challenges in the form of a web app for BestBuy.com, or a widget, a Facebook or mobile app, or whatever else you can come up with.”

Even cooler, normally a company as huge as Best Buy won’t allow employees to be a part of the contest, but for these challenges they are open to all Best Buy employees across all 1400 Best Buy Stores in the US and 1800 total Best Buy Stores worldwide. I think this is awesome because what better way to try to come up with the best app for customers than it’s employees! They know what customers need, they understand the heart of the company, why not open it up for the employees!

For more details head to http://topcoder.com/remix

Also make sure you check out http://remix.bestbuy.com as well as http://remixblog.info for all the updates in regards to Remix and the challenges!

TopCoder and Best Buy Remix launches the Remix Challenge! is a post from: TechStartups.com

One of the coolest things to come out of Best Buy recently is it’s Best Buy Remix where the Remix team developed an API to interact with Best Buy’s catalog. Similar to Amazon, but this way you can interact on a local level. Say you want to know if Best Buy has a Sony HD Camcorder in your local zip code. Best Buy Remix developed the idea that by utilizing it’s API Developers can make that easy for you to locate and give you more information than you could dream of.

Well to help with developing for the API, Keith Burtis, the Community Manager of Best Buy Remix is conducting a Twitter Virtual Developers Conference tomorrow April 21st at 3:30pm EST. According to Keith,

“The purpose and scope of this virtual conference goes well beyond letting folks know about the Best Buy API and is truly an exercise of bringing together community and creating conversations about what you the Developers and organizations are doing to help bring forth innovation.”

If you would like to get involved if you are a developer or a curious tech geek, all you need to have is a Twitter account and a way to monitor the conversation. Any and all comments will be tagged with the hash-tag #DevConf. Generally the easiest way to follow along with that is to go to http://search.twitter.com and search for #DevConf and you can follow along that way.

If you would like more details, Keith has a blog post up at http://remixblog.info.

Best Buy Remix’s first Virtual Developers Conference on Twitter on April 21st 2009 – #DevConf is a post from: TechStartups.com