dark web of the yukon
In the past two months I have had to explore the business community of the Yukon I have come to realize that it relies heavily on meeting people. Great, easy to do right? This is a small town. (20 000 people or so).
Now, imagine you have been brought up in the age of the internet and wish to find contacts/comanies/anything in, say, Whitehorse.
Go ahead, use Google, I dare you.
A great majority of the IT community in the Yukon does not exist on the internet. At the IT conference I went to a majority of the people I met did not have a web presence. This is simply unacceptable for any company that wishes to expand to The Outside.
That is not to say there is not some really amazing (if totally unbookmarkable and internally invisible to Google) web sites devoted to Yukon exploration. But there are also a long list of sites that belong in the Interface Hall of Shame. You will no doubt come across those sites in your searching efforts.
I think it is time for me to find out who I can talk to about putting together a presentation and get things rolling in the right direction for the business/IT community in the Yukon.
After all, it is just a new interpretation of the old saying : location, location, location. In this case on Google's first page of search resultes.
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Oh and by the way,
Oh and by the way, driveyukon.com was developed by a Calgary company. Sweet late 90s pointless Flash animation.
Evan,The majority of people
Evan,
The majority of people you met at the IT conference were likely old school software developers - folks that believe the only way to deliver a functional app is to distribute it via an .exe. Sad but true, as YTG continue to throw boatloads of development money their way. It's the method by which things have always been done, so why change? :)
Seeing how many of these folks can't distinguish between CSS and RSS, their websites (if they even have one) end up being, at best, a block of un-styled text and if you're lucky, an email address.
On the upside, you'll find there's a small number of us (Andrew Robulack, Jason Rayner, Patrick Gourick and myself for starters) who feel otherwise. We all believe in the power of the web as an app delivery vehicle. We're the young guys, the underdogs - but one day we'll get there. Our voices, while still on the outside of the radar, are starting to be heard in the hallowed halls of our government and other large organizations.
Perhaps we should have a "people who get it" conference and don't invite the COBOL guys. Then maybe you'd see some good URLs...
geof
mostly on your side
I am almost in step with you but I am looking at the next wave: web service based delivery. One fine example of this is Meebo. They put a slick AJAX based interface to multi-client IM on the web and, in a flash of brilliance that their investors will regret, got 10 meeeeellllleeeeeon dollars. For an web based IM client. With no business model that I can divine at this moment.
I mentioned it in my comment on your site Geof; it's all about reliable recurring revenue. The 3 R's if you will. In fact, this is triggering so many thoughts that I will post about it instead.
I think the idea of web
I think the idea of web services delivery for major applications such as Office is very cool, but it's going to be a long time before this method gains any serious momentum. While Writely and Num Sum are great products, they're fringe and will likely remain in the geek realm for many years. Re-teaching your average information worker how to use MS Word on the web represents a major mental shift that the majority of corporations and small businesses aren't willing to deal with. Cool products - perhaps ahead of their time.
a slight correction
Meebo only got 100k$. See their blog for more information.
If you think reteaching a web interface would be a large task you should see the new interface that MS is pushing out for Word 12. It is based on the notion of only showing the commands that pertain the task at hand. It is going to require a rather large amount of retraining although MS is saying the new interface is much better than old.
I have yet to play with Office 12 but it does look like a major shift in UI design and how users interact with their applications. I can't imagine the retraining for Office 12 would be any worse than a web interface that implements the same functionality.
Click here to learn (much) more about Office 12's UI