Web Directions now with Connections

Web Directions 06 begins next week in Sydney and I'm not the only one looking forward to it. The line-up of speakers is fantastic, and their topics sound nice and geeky. Not only that, but it's a great chance to catch up with friends and colleagues, and others working in the Australian web industry. I always come away from these conferences seriously inspired.

Talking about seriously inspiring, in preparation for the conference Cameron Adams and Tim Lucas have built a great web app called Web Connections. Conference attendees can login and use the app to find fellow attendees, find conference-related events, view geo data on where people are coming from, find out who else is attending and what they look like, and discover people with like-minded interests through tags, and more. Cam sums it up beautifully: "... It's got maps, tagging, AJAX, and microformats spouting from all orifices ..."

The tagging functionality is extremely useful, not to mention great fun. By browsing the tags, I have discovered there are other new dads going as well, meaning I'll be able to compare Flickr baby photos :-) On the other hand, I'm don't want to ask what this tag means ...

The Web Connections app is a very well implemented example of using the available free data that is out there (thanks to API's) to create something that's not only extremely useful, but well designed and fun to use. Great work, guys.

Technorati Tags: wd06, tv, conference, web, application, web2.0, Cameron Adams, Tim Lucas