Silicon Valley Musings

I have been playing with Yahoo 360. Here are a couple of my suggestions for 360 enhancements.

Dictating Mobile Phone Weblog Entries

Yahoo 360 users can email photos from their camera phones to their Weblogs (though I had trouble with this because pictures sent from my phone come from a Sprint provided email address).

I have always wanted a toll free number I could call to dictate a Weblog entry. The system would prompt for the entry title, optional category tags, and text of the entry. It could also ask if I wanted to associate this entry with the most recent uploaded photo.

The system would create a new Weblog entry by using speech to text and attach the original dictation as a MP3 file.

The system could be built on TellMe’s Voice Application Network or IBM Websphere Voice Server along with the Nuance speech-to-text engine.

The similar system could be used to send Yahoo Mail from mobile phones.

This feature would eliminate the need to compose lengthy messages using the mobile phone’s keypad.

Stimulating Weblog Entries

I have noticed that it is difficult to consistently contribute to my Weblog. To stimulate posting, Yahoo 360 could leverage Yahoo News and occasionally prompt users to comment on current events.

For example, user’s interested in spirituality or religion could have recently been prompted by the 360 with the topic, “How did Pope John Paul II affect your life?”

360 could create a Weblog entry template including optional links to Reuters photos and suggestions for paragraph topics. After the user makes a few selections, 360 would create a draft entry including the selected pictures and resulting outline. The user could complete the entry immediately, or save the draft for later.

I think Bloggers interested in sports, entertainment, or politics could be routinely prompted for entries. 360 could leverage Yahoo Shopping activity and prompt users to rate recent purchases.

Creative Commons Search Integration

I noticed the announcement of Yahoo Creative Commons Search. I think this is great. I would suggest providing an option to publish a 360 Weblog under a Creative Commons license. See MovableType’s Creative Commons License option under preferences as an example.

I would also suggest this option for Yahoo Photo albums as well.

I would love to see the Creative Commons Search provide an option to restrict the results to images and mp3 files. This would make it easier for teachers and non-profit organizations to create instructional materials and other content that avoid copyright infringement issues.

A Yahooligans 360

I have been working with a fifth grade class a local public school. The social network surrounding school kids fascinates me: their classmates, their teachers, and their parents. I think integrating 360 and Yahooligans would be very exciting.

School administrators and teachers need an easy way to communicate to parents. Teachers need a place to share their experiences, best practices, and lesson plans with each other. Kids would love a place to share their creative endeavors.

I am not an expert, but I am sure there are many issues in making Web-based services CIPA compliant. Yahooligan 360 Weblog could provide restricted viewing to 360 friends/contacts, or only other 360 members. 360 could be extended to provide an audit log for parents that would provide details of all entries, comments, and viewings of their children’s Weblogs.

Yahooligan 360 could encourage postings by prompting teachers and children to write about the subjects they are currently studying. Yahooligan search results could highlight or feature 360 Weblog entries from teachers and students. For example, the results for a search of “magnetism” could include a teacher’s Weblog entry for building a compass using a bowl of water and a needle.

Yahooligan could also create a directory of teachers that are actively contributing 360 Weblogs. Yahooligan could provide a 360 Weblog “pen pals” service that would introduce teachers and students with similar interests to International Yahooligan users in Japan, Korea, and Spain.

Yahoo Weblog Directory

Sites like Technorati provide Weblog searches. Yahoo could provide a similar service leveraging its sophisticated sorting algorithm. I would find Weblog keyword search results based on rank instead of just timeliness very useful.

For example, I would like to see all the authoritative Weblog entries on ?stem cell research?, not just the most recent entries.

Yahoo Tags

Sites like Flickr, Buzznet.com, and Technorati are providing ad hoc tags for categorizing Weblog entries and photos.

While tags are useful, there are some limitations to ad hoc tagging. New phenomenon, ideas, or innovations tend to get labeled with existing tags. For example, early news articles about AIDS were categorized under pneumonia. Many of these original articles were not retagged AIDS when term became available.

Tags go in and out of vogue. The Internet is an important subject as it was in the late 1990’s, but today, few people would categorize their Internet-related entries/photos with the tag “Cyberspace.”

There is also a tension between writers who categorize their entries/photos with as many tags a possible to reach a large audience, and consumers who want only the most relevant results when searching with a given tag.

Yahoo has a long tradition of providing a categorization for the Web. Yahoo could provide standard tags for 360 Weblogs, their entries, and for contributed Photos as well.