I wanted to point out one brilliant feature I think you are going to see much more of.  Rather than force users to register with the service they have leveraged hooks into Facebook, Google, AOL, Windows Live ID and Yahoo.   So to join this site you simply enter one of your existing ID’s and you are instantly logged in.   For sites that want to on-board users as fast as possible, this is a great way to get them in the door and using your application quickly.

Pro’s
-Calendar & Contact Sync through Mobile Me is dead simple
-Browser - Finally a kick ass browser for your phone you can use
-App Store - Amazing and addictive
-Also an Ipod - Time to throw out my old iPod
Con’s
-At least in Canada the Rogers network is patchy in far-flung places.  You need an edge or 3g network connection to download email (unlike with BB’s)
-No Email Search - Almost makes it impossible to use.
-No Cut-and-Paste - I’m serious.
-Non-Tactile Keyboard - If you are use to the crackberry it will be a tough switch.

Overall I’m pleased with it, but it is going to take another few releases until Apple fixes these basic problems.

Image via Wikipedia

Imagine if OpenID were extended to support a concept you might call OpenGraph. Rather than just maintain one central identity you would also maintain one central network of friends and groups. In this fashion you could login to any OpenID enabled service and could selectively grant access to parts of your social graph. The concept is reminiscent of FOAF (friend of a friend) which is a means of defining your social network. FOAF was more of a toy than a standard that had any chance of being picked but with OpenID picking up a little steam something like this might actually work.

Say you wanted to join a new scuba diving community site powered by one of the many white label social network platforms. You login with your OpenID account and are asked if you would like to open up your social network to that community service. The OpenID service would only release detailed information on friends that are already a part of the scuba diving community. Those friends would be instantly available to you and you could message them directly or within that community site. All of your other friends would be unavailable to the community site until they too become members. In this fashion you could prevent these communities from spamming all your other friends. Nonetheless, numerous security and privacy issues would have to be worked out.

Unfortunately there is zero chance of an idea like this being picked up by the big social networks. Imagine the valuation hit a site like Facebook would take if they suddenly did not own the social graph!

Update: I forgot to mention dataportability.org but that is more about sharing ALL of your data….your photos, your videos etc.   Obviously much more ambitious and difficult to gain consensus on formats.  I see your friendships as one block of data that is easy to define and certainly valuable to take with you from site to site.

Install the App

The concept: You’re stranded on a desert island, yet by some magical force you are able to bring people and your favorite three movies, three books (and eventually more). Who or what would you bring? Decisions decisions.

The Revenue model: It will cost just $10 / month to….just kidding. Obviously the model is referral revenues to the various books, movies etc. that people list. Can referral revenue models exist within facebook? I have my doubts because I am not convinced people will actually want to leave the Facebook world when they find something interesting. Ad click through rates are abysmal on Facebook but perhaps contextually relevant referral revenues are a possibility. Time will tell.

Install the app: http://apps.facebook.com/my_desert_island/

I joined Kaboose through the BubbleShare acquisition back in January 2007. Over the last year I served as VP Product Development and am proud of the team I’ve built (30 devs) and the direction I’ve pushed Kaboose.  Kabooose is well on its way to becoming top-notch Ruby on Rails/PHP powered system. In a few additional posts I will write about some of the cool apps I had a hand in building.