I haven’t really been “in” the Web 2.0 echochamber for all that long, so I’m not really as “hip” to all the different sites that have launched in the past few years.  Therefore I may stumble upon something (believe it or not, without even having to use a service to find new things on the Internet) that others’ll say “been there, done that” or even “i came, i clicked, i registered, i validated, i made my profile, i never came back.”

I found Kaneva today, and while browsing the site, I realized they have implemented every single Web 2.0 “technology” that I’ve ever seen.  At last, all in one place.  With Kaneva, no other Web sites are needed anymore. None.

Check this out:

• To start, the whole site uses Ajax for all the configuration and controls. 
• Editing your profile uses a Wiki-like system, wherein new pages and such can easily be created and modified. 
• The site is entirely a huge social network (okay, ~15,000 users doesn’t count as huge, but saying small social network just doesn’t sound good).  Here’s my profile.
• Online photo sharing is there, along with sharing my music and videos in a very YouTube-like way (by which I mean all the interesting content is copyrighted material).  Vlogging and podcasting are of course possibilities.
• I can blog (but I won’t).  Or create my own content channels (hello, long-tail)
• There is a virtual world (in THREE-DEE!) with avatars and … chat?
• It has multiplayer gaming, which isn’t Web 2.0 at all, but the games all require plugins.
• Virtually no revenue model visibly in place, other than the requisite Google AdSense.  Someone better fund them quick!
• The site is in beta.

Here’s the weird part: there is SO much you can do with the site, it’s totally paralyzing.  Their interface is SO powerful, it takes a dozen clicks and links to get a photo in your profile.  I don’t think I even scratched the surface of all the features in the darn thing.  Too much, TOO much.  You can even customize your ‘theme’ down to every last color on the page!  15-year-olds are way too impatient to get their profiles configured.

Regarding the company, here are some fun site excerpts (anything in italics is a quote from their site):

Site description: Kaneva is the online “canvas” where anyone can showcase and share their passions, interests and talents with the world (presuming they have 23 hours to get their canvas configured).

Site mantra: Do what you can imagine (because if you don’t have a business model, a mantra is a good substitution).

Site leadership: They have a Chief Gaming Officer, but nobody in Sales or Marketing.

Site core values: Team-based, Quality and Excellence, Execution, and Fun Place (I agree that ‘Fun Place’ should be a value over pesky things like revenue)

Wait, it’s missing RSS!  Noooooo!  There’s no RSS anywhere in the site.  Damn, I was so close.  So close!  Alas, my quest begins anew.

Just nod if you can hear me.

Is there anyone home?

Well, it looks like yet another VOIP service launched this week.  It’s called “hullo” and half of their logo is on the right (that’s what you get for not making your logo easily linkable boys).  Alec’s review is nice and thorough (Om adds, well, no comment, Phone Boy might have liked it but got too caught up in reminding 97% of the world that he only has a Mac, and Michael basically uses 554 words to agree with Alec), and here’s his summary of the business opportunity:

With a little luck, viral adoption, and good marketing, hullo could easily surpass Skype and Gizmo in North American usage.  Call quality is better, you can use any handset you like, there are no restrictions on free usage, and you get a bunch of very appealing new features. 

Well that’s a wee bit rosy, don’t you think, Alec?  I’m going to, well, hack this apart. 

Alec says: With a little luck
Skeptic says: With a tremendous amount of luck

Alec says: viral adoption
Skeptic says: You want them to build a business based on a fluke?  Go take the guys from MySpace, Facebook, and even Skype in a room somewhere.  Promise them “off-the-record” status.  Get em a little high and/or drunk, and ask them if they knew beforehand that their viral adoption rates would end up so successful.  Planning on viral success is a recipe for disaster.  I say remove this comment, file it back in the “we need to get extremely lucky, kinda like the lead singer for the Cars, you know, that freaky lookin dude who scored that model” category.

Alec says: and good marketing
Skeptic says: you mean like having a launch party in Ottawa (that’s Canada right?  the worldwide hub for VOIP calling) featuring uh, some bands?  That’s good marketing?  Granted the TechCrunch link today didn’t hurt any, but that’s not quite good marketing yet.

Alec says: hullo could easily surpass Skype and Gizmo in North American usage
Skeptic says: sure, they could.  I mean, they do already have almost a dozen topics in their online discussion forums (at the time of writing), so they must be close.  Back in February, Skype only had 50 million users worldwide, so catching up and beating them couldn’t be all that hard, right?

Alec says: Call quality is better
Skeptic says: So? I’ll tell you what - I will profess to the fact that I don’t know all that much about VOIP.  I have a cell phone and don’t make too many calls to Nigeria to bail out jailed princes, so I generally don’t seem to need it that much.  But I know enough to say, with confidence, that call quality is not an important enough factor to get users to switch technology/services.  They’d have to be so much better that users move over  in droves, otherwise they get stuck in the trap of having all their friends/groups in one service, not the other.  Something tells me that the marginal gain in quality isn’t going to be the motivator here.

Alec says: you can use any handset you like
Skeptic says: uh huh, COOL.  Moving right along.

Alec says: there are no restrictions on free usage
Skeptic says: Maybe they should go read up on a little Bertrand before chasing down paths like these.  Sure they can probably grab some users this way, but then what?  All they are really doing is diminishing the value of phone calls even further.

Alec says: and you get a bunch of very appealing new features
Skeptic says: Features here only barely matter.  Don’t believe me?  Go survey some Skype or Gizmo users, and ask them to rank the service based on a variety of criteria, including cost, features, network/friends, quality, etc.  I can’t imagine feature set hits the top of anyone’s list (other than the truly excessively geeky).

Just in case anyone had anything valuable to add on top of the above recommendations, I went searching for other blog posts today.  Some highlights:

• The Productdose web site is excited about the impact of Hullo since, and I quote: “the demise of the pager.”
• The Loosewire blog has apparently never heard of conference calls (it sounds like “kawn-fer-ens koll”)
• I give actual, sarcasm-free props to the Download Squad for their very easy-to-follow explanation of the benefits of using Hullo
• And for some true value-added commentary, the RSS Blog adds the following… actually, no, I can’t ruin the surprise.  Go ahead, read on.  Can’t imagine why nobody’s commenting on that one yet…

By the way, this guy wins today’s Donna Bogatin Award for “least original content in a blog post.”

(thanks to David and Roger for the excellent lyrics)

ps - for those who think this post is about Hullo, it’s not.  Please go back to the top and re-read it.  I didn’t try it (and probably won’t, I leave that to the likes of this guy), and don’t really have an opinion as to whether it’s better, worse, or the same as Skype, Jajah, or Jarjar.

Saw today on Richard MacManus’ blog that Windows Live Gadgets Beta launched.  That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?  Weird thing for me is this, when I think of gadgets, I go to sites like engadget.  And the funny part here?  I’m not alone.  Google search for gadgets shows links mostly to “real world” gadgets.  The only two entries related to “desktop gadgets” belong to Microsoft and Google.  Surprise surprise surprise.  In fact, doing the search again with a -”microsoft gadgets” removes a million links… of 192 million beforehand. 

Like always, I digress.  I just don’t like the dual-use of a techie term like this, as I think it really leads ‘the general public’ astray. 

“Hey, Bob, see the latest gadget I just got”?

“Gee, Frank, what is it?”

“Come now, Bob, take a guess!”

“Hmm.. is it an MP3 player?”

“No, try again.”

“Ok, a new remote control?”

“Not even close.”

“I dunno, Frank, a laser pointer?”

“No, Bob, you retard.  It’s a Mortgage Rate Clock for my desktop!  God you are so dumb sometimes, you think a gadget is a physical device.  Don’t you even keep up with the absolute latest trends, you unbelievable buffoon?  I swear, sometimes you blur the line between ape and man.”

At this point, Bob punches Frank in the face.  Then crushes his iPod.

Back to the topic at hand.  The “Web 2.0 visionaries” up in Redmond are showing off their latest technology with a mashup demo.  In the demo, you can see all of your buddies on a map.  Yup.  Your buddies right there on a map.  Yes.  That’s the whole story.  Oh, well, it does use Ajax.  Hot tip guys: I know where my buddies live!

I think my favorite part is reading this paragraph from one of the Microsoft blogs.  In a section called “What’s the benefit for end users?” the entry contained:

Convenience and confidence. If you’re shopping for flowers for Grandma online, it’s much easier to tell the contacts gadget to give Grandma’s postal address to the florist site than to type in her address each time you visit the site. 240 million Hotmail and Messenger users have already amassed some 14 billion contact records. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could use your contacts for things beyond just Hotmail and Messenger?

Well I am confident that this is NOT about to make Web surfing more convenient (if you’re shopping for flowers for Grandma online, you’re probably going to end up at 1800flowers.com anyway).  How about making some useful services?  Here’s one: give me a simple tool to view my contacts’ schedules in real-time so I can try to make an appointment faster, easier, and better.

While this has impressed a blogger or two, we’ll see how Microsoft’s stock reacts on Monday.