Web 2.0 Wars: Round 3

It’s time for Round 3 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 3:

Blogniscient
TinFinger
Shutterfly
Mefeedia
PodDater
Feedster
Favoor
Planzo

Blogniscient is meme tracker. I talked about it here. I like the design. But this space is getting crowded and it’s hard to tell who, other then Memeorandum, will be the winners.

TinFinger is a human search engine. I don’t think it’s live yet. I searched around and a lot of the areas were not populated yet. I sort of like the idea, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Shutterfly was my photo site of choice until I discovered Flickr. I suspect it still has huge market share and brand recognition. It’s the photo site for the Internet Explorer generation, and while that sounds like damning them with faint praise, more people use IE than Firefox.

Mefeedia is a video podcast directory and search engine. This is the first site I’ve come across dedicated to video podcast aggregation. Neat idea.

PodDater is a personals meets podcasting site. You make a video profile and upload it to share with others. I’m about a thousand years too old to be interested in this, but it’s a unique idea and the web site looks very well designed.

Feedster is a blog, RSS feed and general search engine. I’ve used it some before, but not in a long time. The RSS feed search results seemed pretty quick and reliable, but I’m not sure it has kept up with the competition in this crowded field.

Favoor is a site that allows you to create you personal start page- similar to Pageflakes and Netvibes. It looks pretty good, but so far I see very little advantages between the various players in this field. Tech savvy people can create their own start page from scratch and others can use My Yahoo.

Planzo is a web based calendar, like many of the contestants in Round 1. You can add entries via text messaging and get a daily email with your schedule. The demo calendar looked good.

Before Today I’d Heard of:

4 out of 8

And the Winner of Round 3 is:

I have to go with the one I know I’ll never use: Poddater, just because it’s such an offbeat and compelling idea.

Technorati Tags:
newsome.org web wars, web 2.0

Yahoo's New Plan: Why I Don't Buy It

Tired of watching Google get all the press for throwing away money, Yahoo has now decided that it needs to lower the price of its search service from free to we pay you.

That’s right, Yahoo has sent some emails to some Yahoo Mail users asking if they would be willing to use Yahoo’s (free) web search as their default search engine for money. Yahoo’s opening price is some extra email storage or a Netflix discount or maybe some frequent flyer miles. I thought about signing up, but I’m going to wait for a sale so I can get a bicycle or a toaster or something.

Here’s the problem with this war that Yahoo and Google and others are waging for internet eyeballs. It is based almost entirely on ad revenue and/or pushing something (like Google’s bloatware, videos of some old TV shows and DRM infested iPod fodder) on consumers that consumers really don’t need. At the end of the day, this whole business is designed to get money from us. Say it with me now: at the end of the day, this is about getting some of our money. None of these companies are charitable organizations. They are huge companies looking for ways to support huge valuations.

Follow the projected money trail upstream and you will find that the source of the river is our pocketbooks. Of course I think the river is a mirage, but what do I know.

So they can dress the dog up to look like a chicken by proclaiming the benefits of more bloatware in the form of pre-installed free stuff and some frequent flyer miles for some government subsidized soon to be bankrupt airline, but the ultimate plan is for us, the consumers, to part with some money. Not by buying a product from Yahoo, but by clicking on some online ads and buying something from one of Yahoo’s advertisers. It’s like paying us to stare at a billboard.

Yes, by giving away its money Yahoo may increase traffic to its video or music pages, but does anyone really think selling that stuff at such thin margins is worth all this effort? The content producers (record labels, Hollywood) get all the juice on those sales anyway, so a music or video store is really just an alternate form of advertising. It’s an Amazon Affiliate page on steroids.

Expensive corporate wars fought over the right to toss some cyclical and marginally effective online ads in our faces is not the approach I would take to support my lofty valuations. Go build something that people will pay for. That’s the way to make money. Sell something. Buying eyeballs is a losing proposition because eyeballs aren’t loyal.

Yahoo figures, correctly in many respects, that search engines are like gas stations- the best one is the first one you see. So if it can lock up proximity via some frequent searcher plan, it stands to have an advantage over Google (who will have spent zillions by then trying to get Google Toolbars installed on Dells and building a bunch of new internets).

The obvious difference is that once I pull into the nearest gas station, there are things there to buy that I actually need. Gas, food, beer, etc. When I pull up a Yahoo search result there are, at most, only ads that I will never click on for other vendors’ stuff and links to video and music stores I don’t want to visit.

I guess the bottom line is that while I understand what Yahoo is trying to do, I just don’t buy it. Figuratively or literally.

Technorati Tags:
yahoo, google

Raising the Disclosure Standard

The Wall Street Journal has a piece today that raises interesting questions about bloggers who have advisory or financial relationships with the companies they write about. The question is whether there is or should be a duty to disclose that relationship.

Obviously there is a duty to disclose this stuff, particularly when the relationship will or could result in financial gain for the blogger. The blogger has a duty to his or her readers and the company has a duty to potential investors and customers, especially if the company is encouraging the bloggers to write helpful stories (and merely putting a blogger on some board would be considered encouraging).

While as far as I can tell most of the folks in the FON situation did disclose their relationship with the company, some are being criticized for not going far enough to explain the relationship. I suspect that any failure to clearly explain the relationship was not the result of a desire to conceal, but merely an oversight. That’s why it’s good to talk about this issue so we’ll all remember to make clear disclosures in the future.

Because if we don’t we will and should be criticized.

Speaking positively on your blog about a company you have a financial interest in without disclosing it is no different than hiring people to post positive stuff on a message board. It’s probably worse, since many bloggers are considered to be authorities on the stuff they write about.

Not to mention that bloggers are often the first to call someone out for not doing the right thing. If we want to be a check, then we have to be balanced.

We can’t have it both ways. The Goose and Gander Rule applies to everyone.

Mark Evans agrees. Paul Kedrosky sums up the issue very well:

[T]his is serious stuff, and it is a reminder to all of us that whether you call yourself a pro or not, with a large online audience comes responsibility. You’re kidding yourself — and playing fast and loose with your readers — if you think otherwise.

Darwinian Web has a survey of posts by the FON Advisory Board, and concludes that while none of the members did anything wrong, we need to strive for clearer disclosures. I agree on both points. If we want to be read, we have to be trusted. If that means we have to err on the side of too much disclosure, so be it.

I think the old media will try to make a mountain out of every molehill (witness the huge effort to make a scandal out of the understandable and appropriate censoring of the Stones’ half-time show during the Superbowl). So while I’ve seen no evidence that anyone has done anything intentionally wrong in the FON case, now that we’ve talked about it, the disclosure standard has been raised a little.

And that’s a good thing for everyone.

Technorati Tags:
bloging, fon

Bloglines: Patching Holes While the Water Rises

I really enjoy all the interesting reading and conversation in the blogosphere. And I enjoy experimenting with new technology. That’s why I write about it so much here.

But sometimes, just like in the real world, I don’t want anything new or challenging. I just want stuff to work the way it’s supposed to.

Let’s talk about Bloglines for a minute. When I first tried it, it must have been having some technical difficulties, because almost none of my feeds were pulling any content. I became frustrated and went back to an offline reader. Then, because I really want my read and unread items to be the same whether I’m at home or at the office, I tried some other online readers. Then I went back to Bloglines and things seemed much better.

Until now. Now I have two problems. One that is a nuisance and one that is driving me absolutely freaking nuts.

The nuisance is that for some unknown reason Bloglines is showing my main page as an .html file when people read my feeds in Bloglines, even though my feed contains an .shtml file reference. This means that if someone clicks on my site to actually go to my site, they get an error. I wrote Bloglines customer support on 2/2/06. I got a response on 2/4/06 saying they are looking into it. Nothing since. Maybe they are looking into it, but I don’t get the same feeling I get when Dave Sifry responds to my Technorati problems (we’re still working on the new link deletes the oldest link problem, but we’ll get there). I know that Technorati will make things right, so the little problems here and there are much less annoying. I wish I had the same warm fuzzy about Bloglines.

The bigger problem is that, for some insanely frustrating reason, a bunch of my posts show up for a second time as partial feeds every few days. I have all of my settings configured to full feeds, yet this keeps happening. Like many people, I am a big believer in full feeds, and every time this happens I get a few reader emails telling me they are going to unsubscribe from my feeds because the sender thinks I am syndicating partial feeds. So for no good reason, my reader base that I am working like a dog to build shrinks a little and I have to start over. This is extremely frustrating.

I realize that this could be a Feedburner problem, but I talked to the co-founder of Feedburner about the .shtml problem and we concluded that problem was not on Feedburner’s end. Again, I just want this stuff to work for me, not against me.

As an aside, I am not the only person whose feed is nutty in Bloglines. Thomas Hawk‘s feed in Bloglines is totally random and has been for a while. That Microsoft dinner story showed up as the top new post about 25 times along with a random assortment of other old posts. I saw that Allchin cat’s picture so much I started thinking I was related to him.

If my feed and Thomas’ feed are goofed up, it’s likely that others are goofed up too.

I don’t want Bloglines to change my life. And generally I still think it’s the best online reader. I just want it to work and not to create new problems I don’t have the time to engineer around.

Sometimes I just want things to work like they are supposed to.

Update: Eric Scalf tells me in a comment to another post about this same problem that this may be a Google issue (Blogger doesn’t host my blog (it’s hosted on my server) but I do use it to publish my blog pages). If this is the case then the first person who can recreate my template and move my blog to some other platform for anything close to a reasonable price has a job waiting- and I mean it.

Om Likes His X41 Too

Om likes his Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC as much as I do.

He promises a full review soon. I have said before and I’ll say it again: the X41 is simply the best choice out there for a notebook power user who travels even moderately. I can’t imagine traveling without mine.

Hey Om, get one of these babies and you’ll be ready to hit the road. 10 minutes after getting to my hotel room, I am up and running in wireless mode, accessing whatever I need on my home or office computer via Foldershare and ready to go.

Technorati Tags:
tablet pc, thinkpad

Dell and Google in Bloatware Venture

bloatware

I know it’s hard to believe after my spit take on the new Google internets and my resounding yawn in the face of Gmail chatting, but in general I really like Google. Or at least I did until it started spending billions on stupid ideas.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let me tell you the other reason why I think this new Dell/Google deal to get Google software pre-installed on new Dell computers is bad news. Henry Blodget has already covered the financial side of things.

It’s bad news because the very last thing in the world- and I mean the very last thing- Dell needs to do is pre-install more bloatware on its computers. There are far too many trial versions and thinly disguised ads on new Dells now. Dell has been criticized for this before. In fact, excessive bloatware is one of the reasons I stopped buying Dells (and other brands) and started building my own computers.

Here are a couple of rules that should be mandatory for every computer manufacturer:

1) Except for a very few major things like anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, don’t pre-install any trial versions or other disguised ads on new computers. Either give us a the full, non-crippled, non-expiring version of something or don’t give us anything. No one believes this is anything other than a disguised ad.

2) Other than an internet browser, don’t pre-install anything that we can download for free off the internet. I probably don’t want that stuff and it’s easier to add what I want than to remove a ton of bloatware. This applies to the Google software that will be stuffed down our throats under this new arrangement.

I use and love the Google Toolbar. But I prefer X-1 (even though I have to pay for it) over Google’s desktop search. And just because Google will pay Dell to pre-install a bunch of junk that third party vendors pay Google to include in the bloatware package doesn’t mean it should be stuffed onto my new computer.

Everybody gets paid in this caper except for the person who pays for the computer. He or she has to either spend hours removing or pay some computer geek to remove all the stuff he or she doesn’t want. It’s an entire industry designed to screw over computer buyers in the name of a few dollars. Anyone who thinks this is about helping the consumer is living in Google fantasy land.

And don’t even get me started about the Google Pack. If I want that stuff (most of which I most definitely don’t), I’ll go get it. Do not pre-install any of that stuff on my computer. None of it.

The Dell/Google deal is a bad idea for Google (too expensive) and for consumers (even more bloatware). Dell, of course, makes out like a bandit, but at the expense of its customers.

Technorati Tags:
dell, google, bloatware

Very Cool Favicons Mashup

hawkicons

Thomas Hawk made a really cool thing. He took the most recent 320 websites he’s visited that have a favicon, grabbed a screenshot of the Firefox tab displaying the favicon and put them all together in this amazing image.

Very cool. And, yes, I am honored that Newsome.Org is one of the websites in the image. Thomas is a cool guy, a great writer and my favorite photographer. I am pleased that he has visited here.

You can access a larger version via Thomas’s post.

Web 2.0 Wars: Round 2

It’s time for Round 2 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 2:

Scobee
Shadows
Gravee
YouTube
Zimbra
Furl
Smugmug
Newsgator

Scobee is an event planning service. I already reported on it here. My conclusion then: “too early to tell, but I’m not blown away by the concept.”

Shadows is a social bookmarking service. It looks like it’s shooting for a combination of Technorati and Delicious. I couldn’t find too many results for my test tag “memeorandum” without creating an account and logging in. There may have been more results had I logged in.

Gravee needs to change its logo because it looks like Grovee. It’s a community powered search engine that somehow shares revenue with sites that appear in its search results. It’s a pretty crowded field with some formidable competition and I can’t imagine the revenue share would be all that significant, but the search engine was fast and reliable based on my test tag and my test blog (Newsome.Org, of course).

YouTube is a video hosting, sharing and search service. It’s free and seems fast and reliable.

Zimbra is an open source collaboration tool. I don’t really understand the description, which means that a lot of other people don’t either. There simply must be a better way to describe itself than this: “Zimbra focuses on solving the cost and complexity for enterprises that run large email/collaboration systems. We accomplish this by combining industry-proven open source components with our experience in designing and operating large-scale messaging and mission-critical software systems….”. I learned the hard way in the last dot.com bust to avoid companies who can’t explain in simple terms what they do.

Furl is a information bookmarking and information clipping service that lets you store information you find on the web for easy access. It looks similar to Onfolio, but the information is saved online. I have an automated bookmark for it on my posts here, but I haven’t used it very much. It looks pretty cool, though.

Smugmug is a photo storage and sharing site, similar to Flickr. It lets you create a store to sell prints of your photos. Lots of people use Smugmug and it has both market share and brand recognition.

Newsgator is an online RSS feed reader, similar to Bloglines. The basic service is free. The premium services will soon include a synchronized copy of FeedDemon, a popular desktop feed reader. It’s a competitive field, but Newsgator has some market share and brand recognition.

Before Today I’d Heard of:

6 out of 8

And the Winner of Round 2 is:

YouTube in a battle. Lots of good contestants in this round. Some of the others suffered from an unlucky draw.

Technorati Tags:
newsome.org web wars, web 2.0

No Comments: Old School or Playing Hooky?

[T]his is a safe place. A place where we can feel free sharing our feelings. Think of my [blog] as a nest in a tree of trust and understanding. We can say anything here.

–Old School

Mathew Ingram has a compelling post today about the value of and need for Comments and the conversations they engender. This conversation arises out of Russ Beattie’s decision to remove Comment functionality from his blog.

First about Russ’s decision. While I agree that he sounds defensive if not petulant in his response to the brouhaha over his election to discontinue Commenting on his blog, I can’t help but believe that part of all this is a circling of the wagons after the absurd cease and desist letter he got with respect the that SMS.ac post. If I got attacked like that for merely stating my opinion, I’d probably circle the wagons a little bit too. That’s not being a jerk; it’s human nature. Maybe he made the decision about Comments before he got that letter- I don’t know. But, again, if I were in his shoes I might very well do the same thing, at least for a while.

Now about Commenting in general. I think it’s a huge mistake to remove Comment functionality from a blog. And while I think Russ is reacting too strongly to the rational parts of the debate about Comments, even Comments on his blog (we should all ignore the fringe cases who just want to scream), I don’t think he’s wrecking the blogosphere or trying to offend anyone.

Mathew mentions Dave Winer, who for whatever reason doesn’t allow comments on one of his blogs. I don’t know Dave, but he seems like an alright guy- I like people who speak their minds and don’t mind challenging something I or others want or believe. I don’t know why he doesn’t allow Comments, but I suppose if your Wikipedia entry reads like this, you don’t have to allow people to Comment on your blog. I would ask him about his Commenting policy in a Comment, except, well, you get the picture.

My bottom line on this is that I agree with Mathew about the value of Comments and the conversations they promote. But I recognize that others may or may not share my criteria for a good blog. If someone, be they Russ or Dave or anyone else, doesn’t want to read what I think about something, no worries. I’m sure I can find someone who wants to talk to me.

All those people who want to comment at Russ’s or Dave’s blog are free to comment away here and over at Mathew’s blog.

P.S. Mathew also has a very nice implementation of his coComment feed on the right side of his page. That looks really good.

Technorati Tags:
blogs, comments, web 2.0

Category: Tech