The Betaflow Codex was started on a whim - a unique way to provide a list of all the companies mentioned here on Betaflow and make it easy to find all of our articles covering that particular company.

In the 2 days since it’s launched it has grown at a great rate; we now have 24 companies within 10 unique categories. If you’d like to make sure your company is listed in the codex, please feel free to contact us.

Head on over to the Codex and take in all the available info now!

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Serph launched late last night and is a search engine that allows you to gauge how much ‘buzz’ your query has going for it. Serph accomplishes this by searching through a variety of social networks and other web 2.0 services, such as sphere, del.icio.us, flickr, digg, newsvine, and many others.

In addition to the results, Serph displays a list of recommended queries - based on the sort of results it returns. For example, a search for “Techcrunch” would recommend queries of web 2.0, technology, Arrington, etc.

Serph does a pretty good job of aggregating the data found for your term under one roof - and it looks good doing it! It responds quickly and the results it returns are more relevant than those given by Google (for the terms I used).

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StreetAdvisor launched today and provides a detail view of your street and neighbordhood through the power of Google Maps. When you search for a street you are presented with a map of the area as well as a StreetScore based off of user’s opinions in various categories: vibe (the feeling), wired (technology), health (cleanliness), values (bang for your buck), essentials (public services and utitlities).

There are some basic social networking features tied in as well, allowing you to keep in touch with, or meet new, people on your street. Members of a given street can also collaborate on a Guidebook highlighting key points within the area and make use of a StreetBoard - a simple forum system for the members of the street.

I think the focus on the street level is a great idea, although much of the content (the Guidebook, for example) ends up focusing on the neighborhood and city level. One feature I really wish was included would be the ability to search for a city and see a list of the highest rated streets in the area.

Overall, StreetAdvisor could become a great asset for people considering moving into an area, as long as more content is added. Of the three addresses I searched for not a single street had been covered yet, and that is an inherent problem with this idea. StreetAdvisor must increase the awareness of their product and get as many street reviews as possible. When the average street has only 10-20 households on it your chances of one of them reviewing the street are minimal at best. A possible way to mitigate this lack of content would be to relate a street to a neighborhood and then let neighborhood reviews impact the StreetScore of any given street within the area. This way, a street with no reviews would still have some level of information based on the reviews of it’s neighboring streets.

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Richard McManus, from Read/Write Web, has posted an excellent point/counter-point article debating which is better: online desktop applications or offline web applications.

First off, the two sound remarkably similar and at first glance one might ask: what is the difference? The differences are significant here - with the most apparent being that a desktop application (whether it be online or offline) must be downloaded and installed first and a web application is merely accessed via the browser.

I am going to side with online desktop applications in this debate - primarily because of the 90% of the computing market that has no idea what Web 2.0 is or it’s definition. On my grandfather’s computer, if it’s not on the desktop it doesn’t exist. Of course, I could easily create a shortcut to the web application but that adds in another problem my grandpa must attempt to solve - “why does this look just like my web browser, I’m not online?”

From a usability standpoint I feel desktop applications are still the comfort zone for most of the market. I have attempted to explain to my wife why this website can do exactly what she wants but she always comes back with “why?” For her, she wants the icon to click, whether it be on the desktop or in the taskbar.

On the technical side, I once again side with desktop applications as they have the ability to access the underlying filesystem. Web applications are great due to being inherently cross-platform (although the browser wars are really starting to mess that up) but there are many tasks which simply need access to the operating system and that’s something a browser simply can not do. Also, a desktop application receives its own dedicated chunk of memory to use and abuse; whereas web applications only get what the browser allows them (many productivity suites limit the amount of data one can process at a time, usually to 512kb).

Firefox 3 might change my opinion on this - as there is a lot of innovative ideas being tossed around as to how to handle offline web applications. But, for now - desktop applications still take the cake due to their familiarity with the user base and the power they inherent from residing on the user’s machine.

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Jeremy Luebke is participating in the beta of Google’s Audio Ads and has posted a preview of how it all goes down.

Not surprisingly, the interface is very familiar to AdWords users with a few minor changes (rather than clicks and CTR%, you see ad plays and impressions). Google also requires a transcript of all ads and screens them before they are put into the live rotation.

If you don’t have the best speaking voice, Google has provided an easy-to-use search to find talent. You can even request that the talent bids on your ad, ensuring you get the best price.

In addition to the basic demographic targeting (location, age, etc) you can also focus your ads on specific station formats (genre of music they play), and schedule specific days/times for your ad to play.

It’s very interesting to see Google get into the alternative advertising markets (as opposed to web ads). If you recall, Google ran a similar campaign within various computing magazines - basically, Google purchased an entire page and then split that up into ad units and sold those to businesses. Unfortunately for the magazine model, it’s almost impossible to track the impact the advertisements have on your business; whereas Internet, TV, and Radio all have verifiable metrics (will Google be entering the TV market soon?).

This market could have an amazing impact for small businesses as these high traffic advertisements are often very expensive. If Google can continue to block out a significant chunk of the advertising, then resell that in smaller ‘ad units,’ while still turning a profit, this could change the advertising game as a whole.

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In April 2004, Google launched GMail with an astounding storage limit of 1GB. The news of this large storage limit made GMail invitations such a highly sought after item that many were sold on eBay. As Yahoo Mail and Hotmail looked on in awe everyone had come to realize the ‘golden ticket’ to webmail - storage.

Soon after Google launched GMail, Yahoo increased their storage from 4MB to 100MB, then again to 250MB in late 2004, and finally matched GMail’s 1GB in 2005. Now, everyone else will look on in awe at Yahoo as they completely get rid of storage limits and simply give out unlimited storage to everyone in May.

“We are watching the trend lines of how people are using e-mail…and they are sending more photos and videos and rich media,” said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail.

It will take about a month to get all 250 million users migrated over to the new storage capacities and Yahoo has decided to leave China and Japan out of the deal for now. “We will continue working with these markets on their storage plans,” Kremer said.

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YouTube will launch it’s mobile video website in June 2007, according to Katie Fehrenbacher over at GigaOm. The service will be in a limited state, featuring only 800 Editor’s Picks, as the development team determines whether it is a viable opportunity for YouTube.

Currently, YouTube is under contract with Verizon Wireless concerning video distribution, thus the delay in releasing this product. Fortunately, this contract does not cover the European market, so expect the service to open up across the giant pond in May.

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