A couple of years back, I started to play with Marc Andreessen‘s Ning.com. At that time it provided a very interesting hosted service for creating a wide range of mash-up sites. Ning provided developers with a set of templated PHP web sites that could be customized for different markets and users. I did a little development, but didn’t have time to really do much more than experiment.

At the end of February Ning transformed itself, and began to focus on becoming a hosted “turn-key” social network provider. They are still allowing developers to get into the code and create custom modifications and additions, but now even the average user can create an account at Ning, and very quickly create their own custom social network.

I was reminded of all of this last week, when a friend of mine showed me the site he put together in no time … WakeUtah … a site for Utah Wakeboarders. When I saw that, I decided to spend an hour or two this weekend and get back up to date with Ning. I have to admit that although it’s a little thin in places, they have done an incredible job. I still had my old Ning account – which still worked – and I logged in and within an hour had learned what I needed and created UtahNetwork … the Utah Entrepreneur Network.

I have found a few things that I think are weak with the default features of Ning … but I’m sure that they are going to continue to evolve and enhance the platform. Some of the immediate features that I found lacking are:

• Events – there is no event calendar that I could find
• Blog Aggregator – I couldn’t find a component that would pull from numerous RSS feeds
• Google Maps – they used to have some great tools for doing Google Maps mash-ups … this seems to have faded

Overall, I am very impressed … you are welcome to go and check out my site. I hope that you do check it out for multiple reasons. First, I’d like some feedback on thoughts about the Ning platform. Secondly, I’d like to see if there is some value that we could create in forming a Utah Entrepreneur Network where we can communicate and exchange information about entrepreneurial activities going on in the state. Take a look, create an account, and try it out!

I have to admit that I have long been a fan of Microsoft’s Local.Live.Com for mapping.  There are just some features that I like a lot more than Google Maps.  One of the major features (of Local.Live) is the ability to easily add my own pins to the maps – just by right clicking and adding text – and then being able to send the marked up map to a friend using the URL.

Tonight, I read this great blog post from Google LatLong and I have to admit that I am impressed.  There is now the ability to create “drag and drop” routes on Google Maps … and to easily send them as URLs to other people.  For example, it took me only a few minutes to create this map of my motorcycle ride in the Utah mountains last weekend.

There are still some real limitations in my opinion … but it’s getting better.  Here are a few UI features that still bug me:

• I placed the start and end near each other, and then began to “drag” the route as described … but the map did not scroll as I got near the edges.  So I had to keep stopping – and Google would add an interim destination pin – and then manually scroll the map.  I later had to go back and delete all of the extra interim destination pins.
• I still can not find a way to add my own text to the various pins … so I can’t figure out how to label the start, interim, and ending pins.  I actually saw on the right pane the ability to ‘edit’ the interim pin label … when I did that it blew away my whole route!  Ugh!

It is a cool new set of features for Google Maps.  I did a little experimenting and created this other route of another motorcycle ride off the Mirror Lake road in the High Uintahs that I really like to ride.  Not only was this simple to create, it also allowed me to discover and look at alternative routes like this one that I have never been on!

It is amazing where these technologies are going … now if only Google would add the ability to label the pins … then I would be happier with their product!

My friend Todd, who works for Apple, sent me this link tonight while we were IMing about the iPhone.  The post is titled “Apple Now Third Biggest U.S. Music Retailer“, and it is really stunning to think about.  A company that has no stores full of music CDs, nothing but a bunch of servers in a data center, has now become the third largest retailer of music.

This, to me, is absolutely amazing.  They have none of the overhead of stores, shelves, cashiers, or any of the other fixed assets required by Walmart or Best Buy.  Instead, they have a bunch of servers, lots of storage, some system admins, and a bunch of programmers.  In a matter of a few years, they have provided a way to buy your music on-line at a reasonable cost from wherever you have an Internet connection.
I have to admit that I am slowly transitioning to buying on iTunes.  I have always been buying the actual CDs, and then lately using iTunes to rip them and load them into my iPod.  A month or so ago I spent some time with my father using iTunes to track down a long list of “oldies” that he wanted to listen to in his car.  We found all of them but two on iTunes, downloaded and burned the CD for him … all without leaving the house.

We are quickly evolving from an economy of bits, to one of atoms.  Where it makes sense, more and more information will make this migration.  I believe that the next big statistic will be when videos begin their migration to the net.  Who will be the big provider of downloadable video … legally … for rent or to buy?  With bandwidth ever increasing it’s #inevitable that we’ll be pulling more and more rich media down … so who is going to be the big on-line retailer that dominates in that space?

I also begin to think … what is next?  Once music and video are primarily bought and downloaded over the Internet … what is next?  What will be the next big migration?

Today was a really nice afternoon … I had some time and took my motorcycle out for a ride.  I’ve got a 1988 BMW R100GS … I’m going to post some pictures of it … and I love the bike.  Not only is it a nice ride on the road, but it is fully capable of taking me off-road on the many amazing fire-roads and 4WD roads in the mountains of Utah.

I’ve been getting out on my bike again after taking a break for quite a while … almost 8 years since I’ve ridden it off-road.  Today was the first off-road trip that I’ve taken this year, and it was a blast.  Even for a 1000cc bike, it’s amazingly agile for cruising the dirt roads.  Today, I took a long round-trip ride from Heber City, up to Strawberry Reservoir, and then on East Main Canyon Road – a dirt road that degraded into some really rough and rutted less-than-one-lane parts – to Wallsburg.  From Wallsburg I headed back into Midway, cruised around the Heber Valley for a bit, and then headed home.  You can see my Heber-Strawberry-East Main Canyon-Wallsburg-Heber ride here … on Local.Live.com.

I’m looking forward to a few more rides this summer.  I’ll be heading up into the Uintah mountains, and maybe take a trip up towards Yellowstone.  We’ll see.  If you are into riding here in Utah and want to explore some nice rides, comment on this post … we’ll see if we can get a good group together to take some rides!

I always love to read articles like this one.  It reminds me of the level of R&D going on in the world today.  In the area of man/machine ionterfaces, we are making great strides … for all sorts of possible uses.

This particular article touches on the details of insect/machine interfaces.  We are now funding projects to create cyborg moths that could one day be used for spy missions, and maybe even weapons targeting.  Imagine as we get the ability to remote control these moths, and also ustilize embedded cameras and sensors to see what is around them.

We are quickly moving into interesting times.

KurzweilAI.net: Can cyborg moths bring down terrorists?
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA is growing moths around a computer chip implanted when the creature was still in the cocoon, meaning that the moths entire nervous system can be controlled remotely. Rodney Brooks, director of…

My one company HumanXtensions provides outsourced staffing in India and the Philippines. We offer software developers, testing, data entry, transcription, and several other services. I am completely convinced of the value of outsourcing, and got into the business when I started to use global resources for my own start-up businesses.

I do know that there is a lot of controversy about outsourcing from the numerous sales conversations that I have been in. There are a lot of people who see outsourcing as a threat to American jobs, and some people voice this to me very loudly. 🙂

I wanted to offer a few suggestions about an alternative way to look at outsourcing. If for a moment people can step back from the conversation, and look at things objectively, I believe they will see both a value, and an inevitability.

Specifically related to the software industry, I believe that our schools and higher-education curriculum are doing a huge disservice to Computer Science students. For some reason we are stuck in a model of teaching programming which seems to promote the software developer building applications completely from the ground up. Although we teach “object oriented programming”, we also teach the students to create all of the objects themselves!

There is almost no other industry that follows this model. If you were to look at the automobile industry, this would be like suggesting that the car manufacturers build all of their own nuts and bolts, windshields, gas tanks, wheels, tires, and floor mats. But that is not how it is done. Likewise, in the construction industry what contractor is out there cutting his own lumber, making doors, windows, toilets, and door knobs? None!

These industries, and I’ll argue almost all others, have evolved to understand the value of leveraging the value of other companies who can focus on the creation of components that can be used in their business. Automobile companies can focus on the core designs, and customer experience. Contractors can focus on constructing homes.

So why is it in the software industry that we want to pay our best and brightest software developers to sit around creating the “nuts and bolts” of software? Why are they spending their time – and your money – working on creating foundation elements of a software project that could be created elsewhere much more cost effectively?

I believe that the value of outsourcing is that we can leverage our own developers talents, and also leverage the cost-effective talents of a global resource pool. Our schools, in my opinion, would be educating CS students better if they were teaching courses on how to leverage outsource resources to create software. Not how to build every single object and component themselves, but how to define the specifications and manage remote developers. This would allow them to focus on the bigger problems, the overall architecture, and the core business that the software will target.

I can almost see the day that when I am reviewing resumes for software developers and I am looking for their experience working with outsourced resources. I would want to see information about the number of remote developers they utilized, and the tools they used to manage the distributed project.

In fact, I can see a day when I review a resume of a software developer, and he/she includes the details about the outsourced team they will bring with them if I hire them. I believe that the real future of being a software developer will be to become someone who understands how to leverage the value of the growing global pool of software developers. They are not going to go away …