Web 2.0 Wars: Round 15

It’s time for Round 15 in Newsome.Org’s Web 2.0 Wars. The contestants and rules are here.

This is the final heat of the first Round. The playoffs will be next.

Other Rounds:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

Here are the contestants for Round 15:

Chatsum
Pandora
LookLater
30 Boxes
Webjay
Plazes
Noodly
Wondir
Diigo
Squishr
Jots
Xdrive
Blummy

Chatsum is a free add-on for your web browser that lets you chat with all the other Chatsum users that are looking at the same website as you, sort of like Yakalike.

Pandora is an online music service that helps you discover other great music. I wrote about it here.

LookLater is a private on-line bookmark and information archive.

30 Boxes is…is…is…another online calendar. A lot of people whose opinions I respect really like it, so it must be good. My hunch is that it will own the non-integrated (meaning not part of Outlook, Yahoo, etc.) calendar space.

Webjay is a tool that helps you listen to and publish web playlists of songs you like. It looks like you can browse for and stream playlists created by other people. Cool idea, but I’m sure the RIAA will object.

Plazes is a social navigation system that lets you find people and places near you. You can search for wi-fi networks and other stuff.

Noodly says it’s a “new service harnessing the power of user-generated content.” It’s not live yet.

Wondir is a place where you can ask questions, sort of like the now-retired Ask Jeeves. It didn’t know “how cool is Kent Newsome?” (which may be an answer in and of itself), but it did know where Cheraw, SC is. Pretty cool, but couldn’t this be found via Google just as fast?

Diigo is a social bookmarking service that focuses on “social annotation.” It’s an invitation only beta, and I don’t have an invite, so that’s all I can tell you about it.

Squishr has no information about itself on its page. It’s not live. Someone tell me why these sites are tossed up there before there’s anything to see or read? These logo only sites are the new “Under Construction.”

Jots is a collaborative bookmarking system. Users can store links and choose whether to make them private, share them with with a select group of people or share them with the world.

Xdrive is a popular online file storage and backup service. 5G of storage costs $10 a month.

Blummy is a bookmarklet manager. If I used a ton of bookmarklets, I’d give it a try. Neat idea.

Before Today I’d Heard of:

5 out of 13.

And the Winner of Round 15 is:

Pandora, because both the theory and the execution really amaze me.

Technorati Tags:
newsome.org web wars, web 2.0

Blogging Bandera, Day 2

We got up early and took a hay ride to a great breakfast. On the way, we saw about a hundred deer. Later the big kids did a trail ride while the little kids rode ponies.

After lunch we went fishing. No luck, but it was still fun.

The big girls went back to ride their horses some more, while Luke takes a nap and daddy checks his email.

Old Friends and Pancakes

One of the old school, larger than life lawyers I learned from as a young guy trying to make my mark in the legal profession used to begin his opening statement for every trial the same way. He’d talk about the way his grandmother cooked pancakes. First one side and then the other. And that even though the pancake looked ready to eat after the first side was cooked, the pancake wasn’t finished until you’d dealt with both sides.

That is a down-home, connect with the jury way to say that there are two sides to every story.

Of course long before my mentor ever got to the courtroom to deliver that opening statement, he had sized up his client to determine how good and sympathetic a witness he or she would make in front of the jury. Sometimes an unsympathetic witness can make even a case where the facts are favorable a dicey proposition.

It’s easy to march into court, be it of law or public opinion, when you have the facts on your side and a client the jury will love. When one of both of those aren’t the case, things get harder. The stakes go up. And you start to see what the lawyer is made of.

I remember many years ago a good friend of mine did something that while technically appropriate was very unpopular and perhaps a little shortsighted in the context of a business relationship. Consequently, he made a lot of people mad at him. Even people who didn’t know him or the actual facts began criticizing him publicly. A few other guys and I sort of shook our collective heads and lined up in support of him, if not necessarily his actions. We suffered our fair share of abuse as a result. We did it because he was an old and dear friend of ours and supporting him, even when he did something that we might have wished he hadn’t done, was more important than the reactions of his detractors.

I promised to stop writing about Dave Winer. Because even though he looks from afar to be in full self-destruct mode, there are at least two sides to the story and likely many more than that. Additionally, I have some friends who are close to him and I chose to stand down for that reason as well.

So when you see a post like this from Scoble. When you see words of encouragement from Doc. And when you see Nick Bradbury lament the mob mentality, you have to understand only one thing.

These guys see one of their real world friends getting attacked. They are standing up for their friend even though doing so will subject them to some of the same enmity that is being directed at Dave. The easy thing to do would have been to join in the bashing. They made the hard choice to stand by their friend.

I don’t know who’s right or wrong, and neither do most of the people weighing in on the matter. But I respect what Scoble and these other guys are doing. I hope my friends would do the same.

Technorati Tags:
rss, blogospats

Web 2.0 Wars: Round 14

It’s time for Round 14 in Newsome.Org’s Web 2.0 Wars. The contestants and rules are here.

This is the final heat of the first Round. The playoffs will be next.

Other Rounds:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

Here are the contestants for Round 14:

Gabbr
Gcast
Blinkx
Openomy
Riffs
ajchat
Blogger
Jambo
Protopage
Rollyo
Alexa

Gabbr is a social news community. It’s a little like Digg, a little like Delicious and a little like Tailrank.

Gcast is a free podcast creation and hosting site. It contains tools that let you create your podcast online. I haven’t used it, but it looks pretty comprehensive.

Blinkx is a multi-format searching and organization application.

Openomy is an online storage service. It uses tagging to identify and organize stored files.

Riffs is a social recommendation site. You can recommend and review all the things you like and don’t like, and to find others who share your interests.

ajchat is a simple online chat system which uses Ajaz.

Blogger is a free blog creation and hosting service. I use it to publish this blog, though my files are hosted on my own server.

Jambo is a social wi-fi service that allows users to locate people who share similar interests, etc. via wi-fi.

Protopage is a free personal portal, similar to Netvibes and Pageflakes. It looks pretty nice. One of my favorite personal portals so far.

Rollyo lets you create your own custom search engine. Sadly, the one I created tells me that neither Scoble, Om, Steve nor I have ever written anything about cat juggling (until right now). Shame on us.

Alexa is a search engine.

Before Today I’d Heard of:

4 out of 11.

And the Winner of Round 14 is:

I’ve got to go with Blogger, simply because it helps so many people join the blogosphere.

Technorati Tags:
newsome.org web wars, web 2.0

Wireless in Bandera

We made it to Bandera, and my Verizon wireless is working. Barely, but it’s working.

We’re off to a barbecue. More later, maybe.

Blogging Bandera

We’re about to leave for Bandera, Texas, where we’ll be horseback riding, fishing and having fun for the next few days.

Assuming any kind of internet access is available, I’ll be posting some late at night, after the kids hit the hay.

If I catch any fish worth bragging about I guarantee you I’ll figure out a way to post a photo or two.

My Favorite Records:Goose Creek Symphony – Established 1970

This is the another installment in my series of favorite records.

One of my favorite country rock bands of the early 70’s was Goose Creek Symphony. Although named for a place in Kentucky, the band was actually formed in Phoenix and played a San Francisco-influenced country rock sound.

Any of their first three records could have made my list, but I’m going to pick their first one.

Among the many great songs on Established 1970 are Charlie’s Tune, the first Goose Creek song I ever heard and still one of my favorites, a fantastic version of Satisfied Mind, Confusion, the excellent and Band-like Raid on Bush Creek and Talk About Goose Creek.

All of these songs are fantastic. Their next two records, Words of Earnest and Welcome to Goose Creek, are also excellent.

In the trivia department, the fiddle player’s wife was the maid of honor at my sister’s wedding in College Grove, Tennessee in 1976. Small world.

Goose Creek and The Amazing Rhythm Aces, along with Area Code 615 and its offspring, Barefoot Jerry, were among my favorite bands of the early 70’s- and they still are today.

Technorati Tags:
top 50 albums, record reviews

ScobleFeeds A-Z: The Complete List of Winners

I have finshed my review of Scoble‘s feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

Here are all the winners:

A blog doesn’t need a clever name (RSS feed)
Ask Dave Taylor! (RSS feed)

Bernie DeKoven’s FunLog (RSS Feed)

Conversations with Dina (RSS Feed)

Dare Obasanjo (RSS Feed)
Down the Avenue (RSS Feed)

eHomeUpgrade (RSS Feed)

Feld Thoughts (RSS Feed)

Greg Hughes – dot – net (RSS Feed)

HorsePigCow (RSS Feed)

iBLOGthere4iM (RSS Feed)

J-Walk Blog (RSS Feed)
Jake Ludington’s MediaBlab (RSS Feed)

Knowing.Net (RSS Feed)

Leave It Behind > Brian Bailey (RSS Feed)
The Long Tail (RSS Feed)

Maryamie (RSS Feed)
Manufactured Environments (RSS Feed)
Marc’s Voice (RSS Feed)

Neopoleon.com (RSS Feed)
Neowin.net (RSS Feed)
New Media Musings (RSS Feed)

Overdo’s Land of Nothingness (RSS Feed)

Portals and KM (RSS Feed)
ProgrammableWeb (RSS Feed)

Ratcliffe Blog (RSS Feed)
Raw (RSS Feed)
Rexblog (RSS Feed)

Simon Speight (RSS Feed)
Seth Godin’s Blog (RSS Feed)

Things that Make You Go Hmmm (RSS Feed)
This is Jordon Cooper’s Weblog (RSS Feed)

Unmediated (RSS Feed)

We-Make-Money-Not-Art (RSS Feed)
Web Pages that Suck (RSS Feed)

And here are the honorable mentions (recall that any blog I already read was ineligible to win, but received an honorable mention, along with a few others):

A VC (RSS Feed)
A Welsh View (RSS Feed)
Addicted to Digital Media

Blog Maverick (RSS Feed)
BoingBoing (RSS Feed)
A View from the Isle (RSS Feed)

Cyberspace People Watcher (RSS Feed)
Chris Brooks (RSS Feed)

Doc Searls (RSS Feed)
Dan Gillmor’s eJournal (RSS Feed)

Ed Bott (RSS Feed)
Engadget (RSS Feed)
Ernie the Attorney (RSS Feed)
Evil Genius Chronicles (RSS Feed)

Flickr Blog (RSS Feed)
FuzzyBlog (RSS Feed)

Gizmodo (RSS Feed)
Global Voices (RSS Feed)

Incremental Blogger (RSS Feed)
Inside Microsoft (RSS Feed)
Ian Dixon (RSS Feed)

JKOnTheRun (RSS Feed)
Jason Calacanis Weblog (RSS Feed)

Kottke.Org (RSS Feed)
Kevin Schofield’s Weblog (RSS Feed)
Kiruba Shankar (RSS Feed)

Longhorn Blogs (RSS Feed)

Memeorandum (RSS Feed)
Micro Persuasion (RSS Feed)

Naill Kennedy’s Weblog (RSS Feed)

Om Malik on Broadband (RSS Feed)

Performancing (RSS Feed)
PVR Blog (RSS Feed)
Paul’s Down-Home Page (RSS Feed)
Podcasting News (RSS Feed)

Scobleizer (RSS Feed)
Sifry’s Alerts (RSS Feed)
Solution Watch (RSS Feed)
Scripting News (RSS Feed)

Techcrunch (RSS Feed)
Tech.Memeorandum (RSS Feed)
Techdirt (RSS Feed)
Thomas Hawk (RSS Feed)

Unofficial Apple Weblog (RSS Feed)

The Independent Blog and the Network Question (Part 2)

Unaffiliated sites number in the hundreds…
– Batman (Justice League)

As promised, Darren Rowse has posted the second part of his blog network series today, this time covering the reasons why a blogger might not want to join a blog network. I addressed his reasons why yesterday, in the context of some overtures I received from a couple of blog networks.

Let’s take a look at his reasons why not.

1) Revenue Split

I discussed this yesterday. Revenue complications are a major negative to the decision.

2) Ownership/Rights

I didn’t even think about this, but I should have. I publish a lot in the real world and, except for the one-off newspaper article, I always reserve the rights to my work and grant the publication a license to use it. I wouldn’t consider a blog network unless I retained all of the rights to my work here.

If I post a guest article on another blog, that’s one thing, but content here is off-limits as far as network ownership goes.

Definitely negative to the decision.

3) Reputation

Much like a real world association, a network member would be affected by the actions, good and bad, of other network members. Since it is unlikely that you would know all of the other network members well, this is an issue with respect to blog networks.

Of course a lot of risks could be addressed via a network-wide acceptable content policy, that could not be changed without the consent of all or a large percentage of the members.

I could write around this problem (via the aforementioned policy), so it’s only mildly negative to the decision.

4) Loss of Control

I talked about this yesterday as well. I need less administration in my life, not more. Negative to the decision.

5) Risk

This gets down to how hard or easy it would be to get out of the deal if things changed that made me uncomfortable with the direction of the network. As a musician, I often tell my musician friends that the only thing I found harder than getting signed to my first publishing deal was getting out of that same deal.

I could write around this too (via escape clauses should certain things happen), but it’s still negative to the decision.

6) Legalities and Responsibilities

This would not be a problem for me, given my day job, but I strongly suggest that anyone who is thinking about signing a network affiliation agreement have it reviewed by a lawyer. I have signed many network affiliation agreements with regard to my websites and if blog network agreements are similar (and I bet they are), they are one-sided and need to be negotiated to be fair to the blogger.

Darren says that, the issues notwithstanding, he is happy to be part of a network and believes it has helped him grow his blog, both traffic and profit-wise.

Blog networks may the just what the doctor ordered for some blogs. And I’m not ruling them out as far as my blog goes. Not now, but maybe later.

But proceed with caution, because blog networks and the agreements used to create and administer the same can have a tremendous effect on your blog and your blogging.

The secret is to maximize the positive effect while reducing the potential negative effect.

ScobleFeeds A-Z: The X’s, Y’s and Z’s

This is part twenty-four through twenty-six of my A-Z review of Scoble‘s feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

There are very few X’s, Y’s and Z’s and I didn’t find any that knocked my socks off. So after four months and 78 winners and honorable mentions, we’re done.

I have really enjoyed writing this series, and I’ve found a lot of good blogs to read. Stay tuned for a comprehensive list of all the winners and honorable mentions.

In a week or two, I’ll start my next blog discovery project. Stay tuned!