Kevin Rose at the Future of Web Applications (FOWA) conference

Three weeks ago I went to the Future of Web Applications (FOWA) conference in London's Docklands where about 2,000 developers, designers, entrepreneurs turned up to meet up, learn and discuss the bleeding-edge of web-based applications.

Although I'm involved with the internet in my job, I'm certainly no techie, so it was an enjoyable experience, even if some of the technology left me open-mouthed trying to get to grips with concepts such as web 3.0, mashups and APIs.

For example, Andrew Turner's talk about the way to use API map technology to present information was a fascinating, if fast-paced talk, sketching out the origins of maps to open-sourced applications such as openstreetmap.org that would allow a developer to mash-up information and create maps without having to build the whole application from scratch.

The one talk that I didn't expect to enjoy but found probably the most useful was by Suw Charman-Anderson about psychology and websites, or why is that I find some websites devilishly addictive, and others I don't. She described how the development of addiction to a website is based on the content, and how often it is updated. For example, I can remember becoming seriously addicted to Facebook when I initially signed up because I needed to know what people were doing, how many people had agreed to be my friend etc. The fact that these updates could come at any time meant I was going back to the site several times a day, rather than just once at say at 9am when the website was updated.

Then there was Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com, who spoke about the future of news - a topic close to my heart. Here is the full-length version of his talk along with Q&A afterwards.

Part 1 of 3

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

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