CityBlogz Design Studio / Blog

Well.. here’s my public FriendFeed that you can use to follow everything that I do online.

Spooky, eh? If there’s only one RSS feed that you want to keep track of my online world, this is it.  Looks like a very promising web service. It allows you to make and keep track of comments for all your online feeds that you subscribe to. All your feeds and conversations in one place. Interesting…

Looks like I am approved to get started on redesigning the Rochester International Association website. It’s been about 4 years since it’s last redesign. This is how the website looked like before 2004.

I have some interesting ideas for it:

• Instead of the blog as the front page, redesign front page to simplify navigation and accessibility.
• Split up into 6 themes according to what are the most requested information: World Festival, Your Country, About RIA, Blog, Events Calendar, Memberships.
• Shiny new logo
• About RIA – Allow people to easily find photos, and other promotional materials. Without exposing personal information, add a directory of current board members and a way for people to contact them.
• Your Country – Enable people to easily find resources and news based on a specific country.
• Memberships – Add ability to renew or join membership online. Add a way to accept credit card donations online via PayPal or Google Checkout.
• Link to Facebook group page for RIA

I found an interesting website called TwitterLocal that will notify you of people that are using Twitter in your city or town. I’ve already used it to follow up on some local Rochester, Minnesota Twitterers.

Here’s some press about the Blue Business Platform (a project that I was involved with for the past year and a half). To summarize:

IBM said the marketplace will offer pre-integrated products and services from IBM and independent software developers. Customers will be able to use the software they buy on premises or in the cloud.

IBM is working with Google to build a worldwide network of connected servers, an architecture sometimes referred to as a computing cloud, from which it plans to deliver software and services.

The online store will be organized geographically and also by industry. Customers will be able to purchase software or services in just four clicks, IBM said. The company plans to pilot the marketplace throughout 2008

Read more about this from various sources online:

• IBM To Launch Web-Based Application Market – InformationWeek
• Google, IBM Join Forces To Dominate Cloud Computing – InformationWeek
• IBM to Build Apps Marketplace for SMBs – PCWorld
• IBM launching a platform for SMB opportunity – IT Business

Let’s make an assumption that your smartphone has built-in Wi-Fi. I’ll be bold enough to claim that in a couple of years, Wi-Fi will become standard in smartphones. Wouldn’t it be nice that the smartphone knew that upon connecting to an open Wi-Fi hotspot, that it would automatically use the the Wi-Fi connection as the preferred data network, and in turn allow long distance or local calls to be routed using Skype, Gizmo, or some other VOIP provider?

This type of location network awareness could be applied to many other applications. For instance, upon connecting to your Wi-Fi router at home, it could signal an action of some kind. For instance, if your smartphone sensed that your PC or Mac was online in your home network, it could synchronize your smartphone’s contacts, calendars, and music automatically over Wi-Fi. On the smartphone, there should be the ability to discover open hotspots, store those hotspots to location profiles, and take actions based on those location and network profiles.