Web 1.0 effectively ended Friday 14 April 2000, when the Nasdaq lost nearly 10% of it’s total value - a total of 37% was lost between March 10 and April 17th. It was the end of the “Internet Bubble” and triple figure PE ratios.

Yet since the term Web 2.0 was born in 2004 we have seen an exponential rise in the value of Internet companies and Web development spend. Google for example purchased You Tube for USD$1.65 billion after ten months only of it’s inception. But what does Web 2.0 really mean?

In this months article I look at What is Web 2.0 and try and bring a grounded perspective to you.

If you would like to receive these articles directly to your inbox every month then email me at stuff@xebidy.com. Next month we are looking at some of the leading Web 2.0 technologies.

Download article here: What is Web 2.0

We knew it was coming but here it is today!!

Google has released it’s uber search engine, combining news, videos, images and other related results into the search results. What will the mean for those with good (or bad) search results. I have checked a number of search results for some of the keywords my clients work with and in the majority most seem relatively unaffected at this stage. However, we will research it over the day and during the weekend to gauge the full extent of the impact.

One thing it will mean is the importance of including richer media such as images and videos into your websites. More soon…

Many of you have been eagerly awaiting (and badgering us) for the release of our XEFEED product. Well here it is in beta at last!

XEFEED, scans the “blogosphere” for content relating to particular words using all sort of RSS aggregators from Bloglines to Google Blog Search, takes in those feeds to our unique desktop manager, where they are “rinsed” (that is, checked manually for relevancy) and refed to a website for presentation as independent third party content. In essence, we are a big human powered search engine for information, comments, and reviews and ratings about your company or operating area through the social blog network. We can also set up alerts for management or marketing staff when bad news strikes - and inevitably it does - so that this can be tackled head on in the open transperant forum that the Internet creates.

Over the next few weeks we will be developing further marketing material on XEFEED and extending it to scan many of the leading other community sites that travellers use for sharing information, such as the photo sharing sites of Flickr and Photobucket and the video sharing sites of You Tube and OE.TV.

At present XEFEED is only in invited beta release, but you can see a very simple example on CarsandCampers.co.nz where we are taking blog RSS feeds from a few selected sources for the tag “spaceships”, rinsing the feeds and refeeding back to the site. The link back to the original content remains intact, maintaining the authenticity of the feeds.

If you want more information then definitely send us an email.

Today I had the privilege of being one of the first to view the new Cardrona Valley Resort by the guys at Benbrae - and there are two things I have to say: “Wow!” and “How did I miss such an opportunity”.

Unfortunately the website does not do justice to how unique the property is. In essence it is small to medium sized (2 or 3 bedroom) villas well spaced in a sort of a self contained village. At the centre of the village is an awesome heated outdoor pool, massive spa pool, outdoor bar (complete with big screen plasma and surround sounds) and a whopping great outdoor fire. Toward the back of the property are some terraced style villas also, which contain well sized studio appartments on the ground floor and two bedroom apartments on the top.

The interesting thing about the development is the theme or style. Unlike so many developments in the Southern Lakes they have moved away from the straight out stacked stone and exposed rough sawn timber cliche alpine feel and gone for this really unique colonial, almost miners town or wild west feel. All the villas and two bedroom apartments have their own colonial style verandha and there is plenty of room for barbeques or simply too many glasses of rose falling off the balcony on a sunday afternoon looking out at the immense ruggedness of the Cardrona Valley.

I sound like their marketing department!! It has been ages since I have been to Cardrona - a regular haunt 10 years ago; and the first thing to strike me was the sealed road, then the amount of development in the valley and unfortunately, I thought the Cardrona hotel was a bit tired inside.

So, thanks to Dean and Tristan for showing me around, I can’t wait till the opening do! For the rest of us, phase 2 (a large lodge with restaurant, bar, cafe and mini-market) is already sold out, but phase 3 is just about to be released. Get in there fast - as Cardrona is the next big thing and these guys are definitely at the forefront of that.

P.S. This is a cool image - but I didn’t see any chicks in bikinis - or even chicks in ski gear - not independently of simultaneously!

I went through an interesting exercise recently that rammed home a point to me - and it has been further emphasised following our article last month defining what makes a successful web project. The point involves return on investment modelling (ROI).

The project I was involved in was fantastic and the planning and strategy effort that went into preparing for a large scale web re-development has laid a foundation for what is shaping up to be not only a market leading project, but also a successful project.

However, it nearly did not happen!! A lot of effort was put into constructing a ROI model as part of the strategy phase to justify the expected cost of development to the Board of Directors; and the model that was constructed was very thorough although too conservative as it transpired. The conservative nature was not the problem though, but rather the model and figures became something very concrete that the Board of Directors hung their hat on, perhaps too rigidly. Rather than appreciating the model for what it was, a model that proved that financially the project stacked up and in fact had more than enough scope for variation to still show significant returns on investment, the model was viewed as a gaurantee of delivery. The expected increases in bookings and decreases in associated administrative overheads were viewed as certainty; more so, than in other times that I delivered similar models for capital expenditure etc. My feedback is that this is actually probably not outside the norm, but rather quite typical of Senior Management who are, no matter how much they are embracing the growth of the Internet as a massive source of revenue, they are still uncertain and wary of it.

The lessons learn’t were accentuated in my recent article which emphasised the importance of attaching real life measurable goals and objectives to any web development project so that such management can embrace the project.

Fortunately, the model we had derived was rooted in a well thought out framework and in the end the interrogation of it drifted toward the numbers and not the model itself - half the battle was won!! And, I am happy to say the project has kicked off thanks to the forward thinking Board of Directors.

We are overjoyed to welcome Mat Weir on-board at XSD as this week as lead developer. Mat is heading up the Queenstown crew - with avengance in not just developing but also snow-boarding and judging by my headache on Saturday morning and the fact that James (one of our two resident US imports) had his wheels fall off by 9pm; he is also leading the late night charge.

Mat was previously web developer for 5 years with Inspire Net leading projects all the way from conception and client management to production and launch. Some of these successful projects include www.thejets.co.nz, www.studentcity.co.nz, www.morefmmanawatu.co.nz, and www.nznog.org. Mat is also solely responsible for the www.experiencequeenstown.co.nz and www.waihekeonline.com websites; sites he personally develops and promotes. His experience in PHP, Ruby, XML, and Javascript coding and content management system development brings a unique level of expertise to the success of our projects. Mat has received a number of Netguide awards on behalf of Inspire Net.

Check out this really interesting site: www.archive.org

It allows you to type in a URL and see how it has changed over it’s life. Firstly, you cringe when you see what your site used to look like - but secondly it means you can’t hide; if you say something on your website it is there for everyone to see forever!

Well the last 3 months have been fantastic to say the least. We launched the blog and this website and they have been very well received. Although we are not getting the comments on the posts themselves I have been innundated with emails and positive feedback. Perhaps the NZ and Australia tourism industry are not quite ready for this type of interactive communication amongst ourselves (take note though as we keep saying your customers are!!). Changing this attitude will be a goal for the next 3 months.

3 months into our regular monthy article and the number of subscribers has grown exponentially, and adding downloads nearly 500 copies per month are being read. Our first issue on Search Engine Optimistation and Internet Marketing is still the most well recieved; however, it has been interesting the number of you that have come back to us asking about how to explore using your confirmation emails and generating surveys to communicate better with your customers following our second article - Creating a Relationship with your Customers. So far I have only seen Oz Experience set up a My Space site - but I am sure there are alot more to come.

In terms of blog posts the ones that have generated by far the most interest have been the ones that relate to keywords and onsite optimistation. The three posts that have generated the most interest have been:

• The Right Keywords: 02 March 07
• Number of Meta Tags (Keywords) 11th April 07
• Top Sites have a Specific Word Count 25th April 07

Two other posts have generated a stand out amount of interest and they relate to the Art of Writing Web Content. After we posted the results of our little test of mates sites to see who was the most customer centric using the we-we test there has been a significant number of you clicking on the link to test it yourselves (by the way Spaceships Rentals was the most customer focussed in our little test). The second post on the Art of Writing Web Content related to the importance of making a big fat claim in your introductory sentence.

As a company XSD has had a grat 3 months with Dan Roberts, or Managing Strategic Designer, guest speaking at the backpacker break-out session of the ATEC Conference. He really enjoyed it. We have also been involved in a number of really exciting projects that we hope to see come to fruition in the next quarter. And to that we are looking ahead to the coming three months with real excitement. The office in Queenstown in full swing with a team of 5 being led by Mat Weir. Look out next quarter for the beta release of base Backpackers phase 1 website and the ongoing development of the Oz Experience My Space and Adventure Tours Group You Tube Channel.

Finally, a note to wish everyone the best of luck in the coming Trenz and ATE trade shows; and the guys at OE.TV with their second quarter of business (see my post here).