"Reinventing the Web" - Web 2.0 at Yahoo! and Amazon with Ajax and Search Technology

Munich, August 23, 2006

On September 7th- 8th the international „Media in Transition Conference 2006“ opens its doors. The focus of the conference is the structural transition in the media industry. Innovative media companies, researchers and strategists from England, USA and Europe are discussing the present and future of Internet media at the Goethe Forum in Munich.

The invited speakers are among others - Simon Willison (Yahoo!, Flickr), Genevieve Kunst (Amazon), Martin Stiksel (Last.fm), Ludovic Lecomte (Ask, Bloglines), John Buckman (Magnatune), Andy Bell (Bloombox.tv), Umair Haque (Bubblegeneration) and Ernst Hecht (GEMA).

Simon Willison, developer at Yahoo! U.K. - Yahoo! Developer Network YDN, is the poster-child for the “new web”. He is the 2nd generation of the web, not a Californian dot-com boy wonder, but a blogger and computer science major from London U.K., who built a Python-based Web 2.0 application framework during a year in Lawrence, Kansas. Still in his final year in computer science, Simon started contributing to prestigious web magazines, such as www.alistapart.com, and maintaining a comprehensive weblog on web development at www.simon.incutio.com now considered one of the top 100 blogs on the web.

When an obscure newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas, decided to fund the development of an innovative Web 2.0 application framework in Python called “Django” (www.djangoproject.com), he moved there for a year from London, England. Together with Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Simon built a framework, which many consider to be the top contender to the popular Ruby on Rails. Guido van Rossum, inventor of the Python programming language and engineer at Google, calls Django his favourite Web 2.0 application framework.

Back in London in 2005, Yahoo! U.K. snatched up the gifted youngster and today this modern day “Harry Potter” (Simon with a Harry Potter t-shirt: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mollyeh11/66848020/ ) is reinventing Yahoo!'s next visual interface, developing their new Ajax library (YUI - Yahoo! User Interface Library) and their overarching web services architecture, connecting diverse services such as Flickr photo sharing, Delicious bookmarks, Yahoo! Search and Maps.

On September 7, 2006, in the “Web Tools” panel of the conference, Simon will be presenting the new Yahoo! Ajax library and Yahoo!'s Web APIs, allowing for programmatic access to services, such as Flickr, Delicious, Yahoo! Search and Maps. In the same panel Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves) will introduce the concepts behind “Expert Search” for their search engine Ask and their blog service Bloglines.

Genevieve Kunst from Amazon is also not the dot-com college drop-out kind. She has an MBA from the prestigious Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania and has worked as a management consultant at A.T. Kearney. At Amazon, Genevieve is responsible for the “search inside the book!” initiative and strategic relations with publishers. It is another example of how off-line traditional content can be enhanced through the interactive nature of the web.

Traditional publishers are betting on the highly contagious nature of the web, hoping to generate customer referrals on Amazon's platform. “Search inside the book!” allows customers to perform a full-text search on books and preview a subset of pages. While Google has recently made news with their book scanning project, digitizing the inventory of major libraries in the U.S., Amazon has a head-start with being the single digital provider of recent book content.

On September 7th, 2006, in the “Content Management” panel, Genevieve will be presenting Amazon's efforts around the digital book and information management techniques on handling digital media. Also speaking will be the German Internet wonder Martin Stiksel, presenting Last.fm, an Online community and personalized Internet radio station.

Further, on September 8th, the “Distribution” panel of the Conference will be focusing on the aspect of Internet media, presented by e-commerce pioneer John Buckman, founder of Magnatune Music, and P2P file sharing innovator Steve Turnidge, inventor of Weedshare. Andy Bell, founder of Bloombox.tv, presents their Web TV technology and Europe's largest music rights corporation, GEMA, with Ernst Hecht will discuss the critical topic of digital rights management (DRM).

The “Marketing and Strategy” panel on September 8th will be covering topics ranging from mobile marketing to streaming, Web 2.0 strategy and hardware innovations. Creative Labs, with their proximity to the Asian chip market, will analyze the trends in the hardware market for media technology. Umair Haque, the well-known strategy blogger from London, will present an attempt of a grand strategy for the Web 2.0 market. Christian Ehl, managing director at Hillert & Co. Interactive & Mobile Marketing, will analyze the bridge to true customer relations.

The Media in Transition Conference 2006 offers a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art Web 2.0 tools, communication and business models, as well as distribution methods used on the Internet today. Under the slogan “from experts for experts“, the conference has a very compact format and further introduces extensive networking possibilities for contacting and partnering with other participants. This concentration of information and know-how represents a novelty in Germany.

Find out more about “Media in Transition 2006” at www.mediaintransition.com

The conference cost for both days is 850, - Euro. Daily tickets are sold for under 450,- Euro.
Press contact: Özlem Günay | Karlstrasse 54 80333 München | 089 45247701 | oezlem@mediaintranstion.com
www.mediaintransition.com

propagandapussy
Oezlem Guenay
Karlstrasse 54
80333 Munich
Germany
oezlem@propagandapussy.com
0049/89/452 477 00

Oszillation Media is an online distribution,management, music Studio and label based in Germany.
Matthias Köhler has been running the company since 1999.
In 2006 Oszillation Media is organizing the Media in Transition conference in collaboration with Medientage München.
Media Partners:
Internetworld
e-commerce magazine
Musikmarkt
World Telemedia
NOC
One to One
Hightext

This release was published on openPR.