Josh Anstey’s Blog

Yes, that’s right, you are reading correctly. As Entrepreneurs, and specifically Internet Entrepreneurs, there is often the misconception, that to make an online venture work, and to succeed in this web world of Web 2.0, you need to be in Silicon Valley, USA or somewhere else in the country.

Last week, Mary Meeker, managing Director of Morgan Stanley’s Global Technology Research Team, said that the US was becoming less relevant in this web world.

Meeker’s presentation shows that the fastest growth was outside the US.

• Germany is winning the E-Commerce market
• China is winning the online gaming market
• South Korea is winning in broadband
• Japan in winning mobile payments
• United Kingdom is winning in online advertising
• Brazil and South Korea are winning social networking
• Philippines are winning in micro-transactions via SMS

So for all internet entrepreneurs out there, don’t be de-motivated or disheartened if you are not in the US. You can still succeed. If your country is in this list, there are great opportunities is some markets, and if your country isn’t in this list, challenge yourself to create a technology that will put it there.

If you want to read the original article, click here.

Demo is the launch pad conference for emerging technologies. At this year’s conference in September, some interest technologies were released. Of particular note were technologies that Michael J. Miller of Forward Thinking mentioned in his post: “Demo Aims at Marketing 2.0”.

A brief summary of the sites included:

• FastCall 411
• Shoutlet
• The Pudding
• 360 Desktop
• Myndnet

The one area they do help with is creating widgets. In any case, its always good to have a larger pool to get ideas from and resources to use. For more information on these, check out Michael J. Millers post.

The popular online world Second Life is hosting a Virtual Career Fair.

Check it out. It’s amazing how Web 2.0 has been extended and what it has evolved into.

Click here to read the article about it

Technorati Profile

I was doing a bit of netsurfing, as you do, and came across this site – Clickable.

As the website says, ‘clickable is an online solution that makes creating and managing search advertising simple and effective.’ It has a separate area targeted for advertisers or agencies which is a great way to provide different audiences with information. The product is currently in beta, but it looks like there is a bright future ahead of it. I can see this product going a long way.

Check it out: Clickable

About a week ago I wrote an article, ‘How to design Web 2.0 logos’. Thank you to everyone for your feedback. Some feedback I got was that people wanted to see examples of Web 2.0 logos.

Here are 2 sites that will show you hundreds of great logos.

Check out Go2Web2.0, the complete Web 2.0 directory.
Also check out, Web2Logo

If you know of any other great sites, feel free to comment and post them up for others to see.

Here is a little preview of some great Web 2.0 logos that you are about to see.

This is Elcom Technology’s new logo:

This image is from the Web2Logo website.

Technorati currently tracks over 107.7 million blogs.

It is a leader in whats happening on the world wide web. What is great is that Blogs so easily allow people to publish and share their ideas and thoughts, and allowed for millions of people to read and respond to them. Technorati helps to facilitate this and build a profile.

Check out my Technorati Profile

This week, the annual Web Directions South conference was held at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Center.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend this year, but I definitely plan on it next year.

A colleague of mine at Elcom, attended the event and kept a running summary on his blog. Click here to check out Anthony Milner’ Blog.

Click here for the Web Directions South website.

If you attended the event, I would love to know what you thought of it and how it was. As an entrepreneur, I am looking forward to some great ideas being born from this event.

Most of you out there are budding entrepreneurs, either eagerly awaiting to enter the marketplace, or already in the marketplace and maybe looking at re-branding yourself or your business. Now if you haven’t yet heard about Web 2.0, then welcome back to earth, please leave a comment and tell us about your long vacation in outer space. If you would like a quick recap, check out my earlier post: What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 logos are everywhere, and there are a few characteristics that define them, differentiate them, and enable them to stand out from the crowd.

Here are a few of the characteristics of Web 2.0 logos for you to keep in mind when designing your logos.

Colours
Web 2.0 logos are famous for their bright, soft colours, that both blend nicely into a website, yet stand out for you to remember them. The colour scheme is often very simple and basic, but can include many different colours. It is also interesting to note the high use of ‘white-space’ in Web 2.0 logos.

Fonts
Big artistic fonts are what embody the Web 2.0 logos. The type faces are often very founded but simple too.

Sizes
Web 2.0 logos are big and grab your attending straight away. Be bold and strong when designing your Web 2.0 logo, as it will make a stronger impact on the people that see your logo, and they will be able to remember it and your company better too.

Style
The style of Web 2.0 logos really shows the changing internet and technological world that we witness. They often provide a very futuristic and innovative look and feel, and this is often followed through in the theme of the website. Web 2.0 logos also have a very ‘rounded’ style to them.

Creative
Web 2.0 logos are very creative. They include shiny effects, bright colours, reflections, swoosh’s, fades, shadows and many other interesting effects. Try be original, and go with a fresh, innovative look.

That gives you a good basic run down on what characteristics Web 2.0 logos have.

Take these tips on board, and your Web 2.0 logos will have the potential to be used as great examples in the future. If these tips helped you and you have designed any Web 2.0 logos, it would be great if you could share them so we could check them out.

I look forward to seeing your Web 2.0 logos! Click here to see my follow up post, ‘Web 2.0 Galore‘ which has some great examples of Web 2.0 logos.

For those that do not yet know, Web 2.0 is the new or ‘second’ generation of the internet. This can be seen in the social-networking sites, wikis, folksonomies, blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds. The main focus is collaboration, increased sharing and integration between users and content. The term has been popular since 2004.

Web 2.0 shows the power of the internet as a platform, where applications can now be web-based. This has come about through a shift in software development, allowing for a rich interactive experience for the user.

Websites are no longer static pages, but are rather fluid, dynamic and evolving portals where users can interact and contribute.

I hope this gave you a good brief summary definition of Web 2.0. This is a topic that will be evolving throughout my blog. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this summary and Web 2.0 in general.