Today I came across a site that made me incredibly happy. It’s called Songs to Wear Pants To.

Andrew, a writer and composer, creates full songs based on ideas users submit on his site. He rummages through the requests and picks ideas he wants to turn into songs. Of course, for a fee, you can make sure your idea gets lyrics and a melody. He then sells his original works for 99 cents each. You can buy entire CDs for $10. The albums are appropriately named GREEN PANTS, BLUE PANTS, and PINK PANTS.

Here are just a few examples of user requests:

• Can you write a really Bass guitar filler song about being a fish that is learning everything about the world around him from his tank?
• i think you should make a song about see-through grumpy unicorns.
• Write a song about why Finland is super-cool, with a little guitar solo!
• Compose a jingle to a product, real or imaginary, that should NEVER have been invented, but somehow has gotten popular. It would probably be like 10 seconds or so.
• How ’bout a rap song in which none of the lyrics contain the letter “e” ? (You can check the lyrics).

So dream up something cool and make your request as specific or open-ended as you like. And as Andrew says, “Get your own song!”

Last week I attended the Web 3.0 conference in NYC put on by MediaBistro.  It is my job to keep my finger on the pulse of new technology and trends and this event gave me an interesting perspective on the status of Web 3.0.

What is Web 3.0?

In the Web 1.0 phase of the web people mostly publish read only websites with very little interaction.

Web 2.0 opened up the doors for us to creating read and write content, where publishers could publish data and users could interact with the data by commenting with text, voice, or video (Blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook)

Web 3.0 is about creating a more “intelligent” Web.  It is a way for us to tell computers  how to take the enormous amount of data that already exists and each of us generate on a daily basis and deliver it to us in a more meaningful and usable way.  Web 3.0 promises to take away the repetitive tasks that machines can do at a fraction of the speed, and enable people to do what is uniquely human… to simplify and humanize our online experience.

Web 3.0 is a collection of technologies that consist of the semantic web, linked data, natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence, mashups, & APIs.  Regardless of the specific technology the core idea behind Web 3.0 is that when your information is organized you can extract much more meaningful and actionable insight from that information.

Real World Uses for Web 3.0

• Finding relevant information fast – When you look for anything, 90% of your search is wasted on looking through the wrong info. Wolfram|Alpha is attempting to solve the search problem.  It is not a search engine but a “computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.”
• Serving Contextual Ads – Peer39 uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to look at the structure of a sentence and interpret word meaning.  It’s semantic text analysis relies on synonyms and relationships between concepts, rather than just keyword search.
• Connect better with friends – Glue, developed by Adaptive Blue, enables you to connect with your friends on the web around the things you visit online. Glue is powered by semantic recognition technology that automatically identifies books, music, movies, wines, stocks, movie stars, recording artists, and more. Glue works hard to make it easy for you to find out what your friends think about things you’re visiting online.
• Share knowledge and information – Twine is built on the semantic web technologies and it’s aim is to connect people with each other “for a purpose”…it’s sole purpose is to share and organize information you’re interested in.
• Simplify tasks at hand – Ubiquity is an extension for Firefox, that empowers users to control the web browser with language-based instructions and allow everyone (not just Web developers) to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.  Watch the great demo video on how it works.
• There are many more companies that are at the forefront of leveraging the Web 3.0 technologies.

The challenges of Web 3.0

• Creating structuring data – unfortunately, the first step in making Web 3.0 a reality is in the web developer hands. Web developers have to start using RDFa and Microformats to “mark up human-readable data with machine-readable indicators for browsers and other programs to interpret” (get more info about the differences between RDFa and microformats ). During his presentation at the conference, Aza Raskin, head of User experience of Mozilla Labs, stated that “we have the chicken and the egg problem”…we know RDFa & microformats are good but no one uses them because there are very few use cases right now for the general public to widely adapt the practice and use cases can’t be created until the public starts to mark up their data.
• Sharing Data across the Web – Another challenge that we are facing is convincing organizations to share their data so it can be re-used in a more functional way.  In the Web 3.0 world, content developers have to get over the notion that users have to come to their website to get the information they need.
• User Interfaces – Deciding the best way to display the massive amounts of data in a usable and meaningful way will be challenge for all of us and we will all have to experiment with what works best.  One of the ways to solve this problem is to open your application code to users via an API and let the users decide how they want to consume your data by developing their own interfaces for the devices of their choice.
• Indexing and Scaling all the data – The semantic web will not happen any time in the near future because of scale…the technology is just not there and right now it’s impossible to index all of the content from all of the people creating content in the world.

Web 3.0 is still in it’s infancy and we still have a lot of challenges that need to be solved.  According to Peter Sweeney, Founder & CTO of Primal fusion, in order to push Web 3.0 through we have to have another “industrial revolution”….”In 1996 Web 1.0 was just about getting us online. Web 2.0 was revolutionary. Getting consumers involved in content was absurd until companies started doing it”.

You probably know someone with a Flip, the pocket-size camera that lets people shoot a video with the push of a button. It’s small enough to carry with you at all times, and it has a USB plug built in that lets you quickly upload content to the web. I’ve heard people refer to it as the “YouTube Camera” because this small device enables any average joe to easily get content published for the world to see.

I recently discovered a wonderful new use for the Flip: user testing. The small device allows user experience professionals to effortlessly capture user tests while allowing them to go to the participant. Until now, I’ve found it cumbersome and expensive to record any sort of usability session. But now, for around $200, you can have a portable video recorder to bring with you—in your pocket. This lets you go to the user and observe them in their natural environment—something that has previously been challenging.

When I was at IBM’s Silicon Valley Lab about four years ago, we had a usability lab with a not-so-inconspicuous “tree cam” that supposedly made people less conscious of the fact that we were filming them. Like participants didn’t notice a big fake potted plant with a 10-inch camcorder and wires hanging down! (I’m sure they’ve upgraded since then.)

I’ve also been on teams where we’ve rented out usability labs with sophisticated equipment that recorded both the participant and the screen itself. That nifty set up is great for us researches, but I’ve heard users say that it makes them uncomfortable because so many large device are pointing at them and recording their faces.

Last week while we were observing shoppers on Barnes & Noble.com, all we had to do was sit the phone-sized camera on the desk and aim it at the computer screen. The most AV set up we ever needed to do was to prop the camera up on a book if we needed to raise it an inch to better capture the screen.

You just push that big red button to start recording, and then you push it again to stop. Only the participant’s voice, not face, was captured.

I was skeptical about the quality of the video. One warning is that you’ve got to remember to speak up and keep reminding your participant to speak up. The mic isn’t the best. But the screen was clear to see. And we also were able to capture when people pointed at areas of the screen, (something I’ve lost in the past when the screen is recorded by software).  Here’s a screen cap from what we recorded during testing:

This small and relatively inexpensive device has removed most barriers that have inhibited us from doing more user testing in the past.

After the latest Twitter worm,  I have been pondering the consequences of loosing my twitter posts and followers and it almost left me breathless!  I scoured the internet for tools that would allow me to export all of my posts so I can restore from backup in case something happened.

I found two great tools, backed up all of my twitter posts and followers and now I’m happy as a lark

Tweetake is a very easy to use tool that lets you backup your followers, friends, favorites, direct messages and tweets in a single click.  The software exports your selected data into a CSV file, which can be opened with Excel or any text editor.  To get started, just enter your Twitter username and password

Tweetbackup is also a very easy to use tool.  Right now you can only export your twitter posts and according to Tweetbackup you would be able to export your friends in the very near future.  Although this tool is more limited than Tweetake in the export options, I do like that you can export your posts into different formats…RSS, HTML, and TEXT.  Another neat feature of this tool is the Restore feature, which allows you to restore your posts to Twitter from an existing backup.  You can also backup multiple profiles and do not need to enter passwords to do the backup(s).

Do you use other tools?  Share them with us in the comments section.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending Astia’s Doing it Right program in NYC.  It was a three day event to help women entrepreneurs gain important skills & insight into developing an effective fund raising strategy, negotiating savvy term sheets, navigating the due diligence process, and leading a successful company.

Here are some takeaways:

• First impressions are important
  When you present your idea you have to WOW the VC.  Dress appropriately and know your pitch in and out.  The first impression that a VC gets of you will tell him how you run your business.
• Network a LOT
  Who introduces you into the conversation, is a big deal.  VCs get tons of business plans on a daily basis.  If your business plan comes with a recommendation from someone that a VC knows, it is guaranteed to be looked at before the other plans. Also, it was recommended to build a relationship with a venture capitalist before you start working with their firm.  A venture capitalist that “gets” you and your idea will help you sell your idea to their firm.
• Do your homework
  Always do as much homework as you can.  With all of the information available online, market research is almost FREE.  You can get a lot of insights from read blogs and blog comments.  Also, who you are, who knows you, and your experience will allow the VCs to “forgive” or overlook the things that you’ve missed.  Here are some DOs & DONTs to ensure you have a great meeting with a VC:
  • Tell us what your product or service does in really simple terms (2-3 mins).  If people can’t repeat your pitch,  then your pitch is not good.
  • Tell us what problem you’re solving.
  •  Keep your power point pretty short.  Don’t talk and drive (have someone else change slides)
  • Highlight what you’ve already done with the company.  Don’t just focus on what you WILL do. Traction, customers, what you’ve already built
  • Have a couple of financing alternative … this puts you in a stronger position to negotiate and get the deal that you will be happy with.
  • Know your market & potential partners
  • Don’t put your valuation expectations on the PowerPoint.
  • Don’t say you have no competition
  • Don’t put your EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) on your PowerPoint.
  • Don’t ask a VC to sign an NDA unless you have a hard science product
  • Have a sales strategy, sources of revenue & marketing plan with a timeline.
  • Specify the use of funds
  • Lay out the exit strategy
  • Know the answer to: what are your capital needs over time?
    Correct Answer: I’m raising 5M now and in one year we can both figure out how much more we need to move forward
  • Know the answer to: What is your thinking about running the company.
    Correct Answer: I have the fire in the belly…we will find the right scaling CEO (The role of the CEO is to have the knowledge power & experience to scale the business…VCs invest in the CEO)
• Bring a Man with you
  It is harder for women to raise money because most of VC money is in the hands of men and it’s harder for men to identify with a woman and understand what she’s doing.  Advice: When you show up to do your pitch, bring a man with you…an adviser or someone who is a part of your team.

The venture capital market in 2009 is pretty slow but I was pleasantly surprised to hear a lot of the venture capitalists say that a great idea with a great management team will get funding in ANY economy.

I was very impressed with the event and all of the panelists that were speaking and presenting.  Are you an entrepreneur in a high growth market looking to raise capital?   Apply to Astia to access the fund raising program that it provides for women-led companies.