Born On The Web

• Google LatLong: My Our Maps
  I felt this was coming … great feature.
  (tags: googlemaps maps collaborative google)
• A Company is the Sum of its People | ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon
  A Company is the Sum of its People, as always a nice write-up of Tara.
  (tags: socialcapital hr community)

I have to get this of my chest, I wanted to do a BarCamp presentation about it, but I can’t wait … So here is my small rant!

In Belgium we have a public transportation company, NMBS(trains). The NMBS has a pretty good website, so it’s relatively easy to find the correct times of trains and since I’m an avid train traveler. It’s really necessary being able to quickly check what time your train leaves or at what time you’re going to arrive somewhere.

But mobility is strangled into our daily lives, strangled into our professional and private life. So why isn’t it possible to integrate the mobility data of the trains in more life-managing-applications like Outlook, Google Calendar, … But also more specific needs for example school lesson schedules, contact information of companies, … So integration of relevant travel info with time data would be incredibly useful.

If you have a good database (which I hope nmbs.be has), it shouldn’t be to difficult to build a web service on top of it. Or am I wrong? The data is already public, so you don’t really have security issues.

These are the first 3 methods I would love to play with: 

GetStationInfo

Parameters: Stationname & Time

Returns: all the trains on a certain time, different directions with all the stations which are reachable. Maybe station location info.

GetTravelRoute

Parameters: Start station name & Destination station name

Returns: route & possible times of departure.

GetStationList

Parameters: State

Returns: List of stations in a certain state.

Of course this is really basic, just to give you an idea how cool this could be.

I think it would really be an added value for a lot of applications. I’m just going to list a few example mashup/applications I’m thinking about: Decent mobile interface (do they currently have on?), iPhone interface, google maps mashup, integration on the contact information of company websites, school websites (integration in lesson schedule), integration on the website of Brussels airport, … I really think the possibilities are endless.

So my message to the NMBS web staff, please guys … open up your database, give us a nice web service to play with. The mashups will be stunning!

What would you make with the NMBS web service?

• Bart Becks’ blog – www.bebart.be – Entrepreneurs.
  Nice post from Bart … To remember !
  (tags: entrepreneurs project jump)

• European Union Internet Usage Stats and Population Statistics
  Internet statistics of countries in the european union. Mmm … around 50% of internet penetration, well it’s not bad, but there’s still a large group of people not using the internet and probably not really interested in using it.
  (tags: internet statistics europe stats)
• Interesting Snippets – a photoset on Flickr
  Beautiful quotes with nice images , ideal for your presentations… CC licensed
  (tags: flickr quotes web2.0 digital slides trends media advertising presentation)

• B.V.L.G.: Overlap tussen social networking sites
  (tags: socialnetworks socialsoftware numbers overlap)

I’m not against advertising in feeds, it’s a good medium if you use it on a relevant way. But this one is really starting to bother me.

Too big, almost all A-list blogs have it… not really relevant…. Feeds are for content, not for banners.

• Mahalo Daily
  funny trailer of a new show coming, Mahalo Dailey
  (tags: fun videos vlog veronica mahalo podcasts video blogs podcast technology)