I used to like to read slashdot.org for technology news. Later I found digg.com/technology has cover new tech news faster, I switched to digg.com for tech news.

However, I am pretty dissatisfy with what I got from digg.com. I did not get the same experience with digg.com for the tech news. I found less and less interesting with the tech news posted on digg.com/technology. I thought the more people use digg.com means the more relevant technology news I would get. I guess it was not the case, or I have different flavor than the technology crowd that use digg.com

Anyway, I found that http://news.ycombinator.com/ is a rising choice for me.

List of Medical Practice Management Software – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am a developer who supports open source/free software. I look at the list from Wikipedia and found there were not many open source software for clinical. I think the main problem is that billing in clinical accounting is regional. Different states might have different way to bill their insurance company or government support.

Would a MPMS with flexible plugin to do accounting be a good project?

Google Server bundled with EMail, Spreadsheet, Word processing, Search.

All the programs run on the corproate server.

The clients only need a browser.

Why not? We can pretty much do those office task through browser using Google’s service. The only difference is the data are located on the Google server. If Google sell a server box for company to run within its own server, no more site licensing.

One license: Server.

We are trained to have things move naturally, I would say web pages we have now does not move naturally. When I click on a link, no matter how fast my Internet connection nor my computer speed is, I see a short second of blank. Even though it’s so short that it does not bother me, but it is unnatual. When was the last time you were reaching to pick up a pen and the pen gone blank for a second and then the next thing you know it is in front of you?

With XMLHttpRequest(), it sort of make things look more natural. Take an example of digg.com , when a user click “digg it”, it won’t bring you another page or go blank for a second. It simply changes the link name from “digg it” to “digged” as well as how many users has “digg”-ed the story. It is more intuitive and natural to our real world.

Take another example, if you are an ebay user, in my.ebay.com page you will see how unnatural it is when you are customizing your my.ebay.com appearance.

This will conclude my series of Web 2.x and beyond. Web 2.x style will be the trend and there are many tools to make such sites much easier. Make your site like a web 2.x style and make the World Web Web easier to navigate.

API works perfectly. It makes more traffic to a website. I thought API would not work because at first I thought if information is available without the need to access to the website, how can a website generate profit through, for example, ad?

Sites like amazon.com and ebay.com completely benefit from API. It might sounds weird when you hear about a company allow anyone to obain inventory information from their database. Company spends million of dollars to orgainze this kind of information. In amazon.com and ebay.com’s case, the more people uses their database, the more customers they can get. Their profit are not generated by ad showing in their website, rather, it is the service they provide. If they are able get you find the product through their catalog, the more likely you will purchase from them.

How about the case for facebook.com who recently provide API access? They are not selling anything. How do they generate profit? facebook.com type of site might need to rely on advertising to generate income, so they need a large group of user access to their site. The more application using their service, the more people will register with them. The more register users on their site, the more traffic they generate. They not only can boast about the number of users they have to advertisers, but also a higher chance to attract customers.

It used to be TV ads that made a lot of profit. When you think about it, it kinds of working the same way.

The easy way for me to get update is subscribing a feed from the website and use the live bookmark feature in Firefox. When I see something interesting, I will select to read about the article.

When you have a site that will update frequently and you do not want to send email all the time to the users, letting user to subscribe to a feed will be a good idea. Also, a feed allows other site to link to you as well, it will let more site that are related to yours to be linked together.

The World Wide Web is not for english only anymore. More people who speak other than English has access to the Internet the same way other people access to the Internet. So why not build a website that support more than one languages?

The previous approach of the multiple language was to develop a site with one language. When it is finished, copy the entire content and put it under another folder best fit with the language itself and then translate the content word by word to the targeted language.

One problem quickly surface: The pain of update.

While we have more powerful computers and database driven website, to implement multiple languages website become much easier.

How much more visitors will there be when a website can serve more than one languages? It surely will be more.

It is what drives site lik Wikipedia and YouTube so successful. The content was checked frequently in Wikipedia by many to make sure each entry is truthful and unbias. YouTube was able to protect itself away from offensive material by users themselves to make sure the video were not offensive. The information were so much that it is hard to keep track of by just a few people, or even a hundred of them. It is better to maintain by the people who view or create the material. Similiar to open source software, the more eyeballs on the source code, the easier to point out security risk.

Of course, it comes a cost.

Wikipedia has recently suffer from inaccurate reports. Changes in those report were made so frequent that Wikipedia has to limit who can change the content.

YouTube has million of copyrighted material like TV shows hosted on the site. When the users _think_ it is OK to share those video, then it is up to the copyright agency to control it. Again, the copyright agency has just so many employee to control what material should available on YouTube.

After all, why does this community oriented site become a trend? I personally think that was related to more people receive education. Back then, only a priviledge fews receive education. There are only a small group of people in their little circle exchanging information or able to teach. Corrupted few would even prevent teaching others in order to keep their “superior status”. However, as education become more accessible to more people, many learn that sharing information was the key to improve themselves and the society. Internet becomes a tunnel to access to obtain or provide infomation as a website becomes a marketplace to anyone who wants to know about anything.

It is a win-win situation when information are available to view by many and update by many.

1. Community oriented.
2. Multiple languages design.
3. RSS feed included.
4. API access.
5. Instant response. (XMLHttp).