Randy on Mark on the wasted internet.  I guarantee you American business loses millions a day to the loss of productivity caused by the internet.  If I were a business owner, I’m not sure what I’d do about the internet.  My hunch is that people who are inclined to goof off will do it one way or another.  Take away the internet and it will be something else.  Plus, it’s unfair to those who use the internet reasonably to take away their access because someone else surfs the net all day.  It’s a tough issue.

@Mathew: All he wants is the attention and that $12K got him a ton of it.  If he really wanted to create a successful Web 2.0 application, he would have listened to those of us who accurately predicted the problems he would face.  Rather, he elected to take anything critical as an attack.

@Richard: I’m not sure how Technorati works from the inside out, but Dave is a good guy and will help fix your issues personally if you ask him.  He helped me repeatedly when I was having problems getting indexed.  I have noticed in the past few weeks that Google picks up links to my blog faster than Technorati does.  Good thing for Technorati that (a) they have the link count/authority thing working in their favor and (b) Google is completely ignoring its blog search engine, as far as promotion and new features go.

I’m not sure I like the plea for a donation at the end of every post and now the $30 bounty for feed subscribing at Bob Meets World, one of my Swivel Feeds.  It makes me think he’s, um, blogging for money.  Paging TDavid for his thoughts on this sort of thing.

On the other hand, Quasi-Fictional knows how to link out, and get linked back.  It feels much more like a win-win, in the Darren Rowse mode.

The fact that there are some idiots playing the censorship card over Linden Labs policy prohibiting “real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions” of sexual acts involving children, sexual violence including rape, and other “broadly offensive content” is precisely why Second Life is not even close to being ready for serious business use.  I understand that who defines “offensive content” is an important issue, but that doesn’t mean anything goes should be the policy in Second Life any more than it is the policy in the first one.

Engadget has a Tivo Deathwatch update.  I had my own Tivo Deathwatch going, until DirecTV made me switch to their inferior PVRs.  Meanwhile one of those new satellites that are supposed to give us all those HD channels has been delayed.

Jeff Balke on Hurricane preparedness in Houston and Galveston.  Eric Berger may be “even-handed” now, but he adopted the “our job is to scare people” approach during Hurricane Rita.

Pramit Singh asks if blogging can change the world.  No, but the more efficient distribution and archival of information via blogging platforms can certainly change parts of it, similar to the way internet distribution is changing the music business.  Seth is correct that blogs have not flattened the earth as much as we’d like and there are still a lot of A-Listers (and, surprisingly, a lot of non-A-Listers too) who stare at you blankly when you talk to them, but it has at least made the hills smaller.

This dude has a 60 story house and a servant staff of 600.  Are you kidding me?

I still think this is a joke.  If Google buys this site, then we are definitely in the midst of Bubble 2.0.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the usefulness spectrum, Web Worker Daily has 7 Applications for Online Note-Taking.  For most of us in the corporate world, the two biggest issues with respect to online note taking are backup and security.

It’s a slow day in the blogosphere.  So here’s a little link around with the bloggers currently in my reading list.

ACE, Amy Gahran, Assaf Arkin, Ben Metcalfe, Ben Werdmuller, Bill Liversidge, Chip Camden, Corey Clayton, Craig Newmark, Dave Rogers, Dave Sifry, Dave Taylor, Dave Wallace, Dave Winer, David Airey, Doc Searls, Dwight Silverman, Earl Moore, Ed Bott, Eric Scalf, Ethan Johnson, Frank Gruber, Frank Paynter, Fraser Kelton, Greg Hughes, Haydn Shaughnessy, Hugh Macleod, Ian Delaney, Ilker Yoldas, Jackson Miller, Jake Ludington, Jay Neely, Jeff Balke, Jeff Pulver, Jeneane Sessum, Jeremiah Owyang, Jeremy Zawodny, jkOnTheRun, John Watson, Karl Martino, Kate Trgovac, Kevin Briody, Kevin Hales, Larry Borsato, Lifekludger, Louis Gray, Marc Canter, Mark Evans, Martin Gordon, Mathew Ingram, Michael Parekh, Mike Seyfang, Niall Kennedy, Nick Carr, Om Malik, OmegaMom, Phil Sim, Pramit Singh, R.C. Morin, Rahul Sood, Ric Hayman, Richard Querin, Rick Mahn, Rob Barron, Robert Gale, Robert Scoble, Rogers Cadenhead (that’s 8), Ron Jeffries, Scott Karp, Scott Kingery, Seth Finkelstein, Seth Godin, Shel Israel, Shelley Powers, Steve Gillmor, Steve Newson, Steve Rubel, Steven Streight, Stowe Boyd, Susan Getgood, TDavid, Thomas Hawk, Tom Morris, Tom Reynolds, Tony Hung, Wally Bangs, Warner Crocker and Zoli Erdos.

And those who are already in my new Swivel Feeds reading list.

Amyloo, Anne Zelenka, Ballastexistenz, Be A Good Dad, BldgBlog, Blonde 2.0, Blogging Pro, Bob Meets World, Bonnie Staring, Brad Kellett, Chris Brogan, Christopher Carfi, Claus Valca, D’Arcy Norman, Daily Cup of Tech, Dan Santow, David Rothman, Deborah Schultz, Hilary Talbot, J.A. Konrath, John T. Unger, Les Orchard, Lisa Stone, Mike Miller, Nancy White, Natalie Goes to Japan, Nick O’Neill, Opacity, Paul Greenberg, Paul Stamatiou, Quasi Fictional, Read/WriteWeb, Robert Andrews, Struggling Writer, Tresblue, UNEASYsilence and Zen Habits.

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit.  My mom used to tell me that saying “rabbit, rabbit, rabbit” as your first words at the beginning of a month would bring you good luck.

Congratulations to Dwight on the publication of his first book!

Here’s the real MySpace vs Facebook debate.

Looks like we don’t have to eat salads after all.

We Weren’t There: When Bill Met Steve at Carlsbad.  Nobody ever gets my puns, so here.  I loved the We Were There series as a kid.

Every time I drive by Cassidy’s first preschool I smile, and think about my then itty bitty Punkin who is now half way to 18.  She doesn’t even remember going to that school.  Kids grow up so fast.  Hug them.  Love them.  Take a lot of pictures.

Google Street View Hunting.  When you think about it, it’s just as arbitrary as drinking coffee.  The NYT’s take.

There’s a new version of Windows Live Writer available for download.  Lots of new features.  Kevin Briody likes it.  Why in the hell does it flash every time I add a link to a post?  It’s User Account Control (which I long ago disabled) all over again.

Mahalo launched today.  Steven Streight has a good write up on it, as does Mashable.  Mahalo says it’s:

the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven’t yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.

There’s a page for Scoble, one for Guy.  None for Seth.  Or me.  Seems oddly familiar….  Anyway, why does a search for wolves return NOFX (whatever that is), Kevin Costner and Instapundit as 3 of the 4 links?

Scott Karp has a good summary of the CBS/Last.fm business.  It’s about the declining radio ad dollar.  One of these days someone is going to start looking for a return on all this money old media is tossing around trying to become new media.

I was a guest on Dave Wallace and Mike Seyfang‘s The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show podcast tonight.  It was an absolute blast!  I’ll link to the episode when it’s up.

Movie Recommendation: if you like scary movies, rent The Gravedancers.  Very creepy.  Netflix link.

Louis Gray on the aging of a beloved pet, and a happy update.  We lost Virgil and Beanie within a few months of each other back in 2003.  Beanie (18) was my cat before Raina and I got married.  I still miss them.

Even birds are crapping on President Bush.

Zenhabits tells us 10 benefits of getting up early, and how to do it.

I never would have guessed this.

Blogtrepreneur (that’s really hard to spell) has a list of 101 Essential Blogging Resources.

eMoms at Home tells work at home parents how to keep kids busy during the summer.

Ethan Johnson smartly end-runs around Classmates.com.  This is a good idea, and I may do something similar for all the other geezers from Cheraw High School, Class of 1978.  Any of my classmates who read this blog, let me know what you think.

I’m going to try some of these on Luke.  Up until now, I’ve been satisfied with saying “look at the giraffe” every time we see a horse.  Just kidding, eMoms.

An exclusive interview with Jackson Miller.

One of these days I’m going to start a 5 questions series where I ask regular bloggers 5 questions.  Like what’s the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?  You’re young and you got your health, what you want with a job?  That sort of thing.

Reason number 187 not to play golf.

Rogers Cadenhead on the RSS Advisory Board.  This is the 7th time I’ve linked to Rogers, not that I’m keeping score or anything.

On that note, Scoble says his link blog isn’t getting enough return links.  Sometimes I think he writes stuff just to irritate me.  It’s a real shame you have to be sycophantic or bombastic just to get included.  I like Randy’s plan better- and it obviously worked.

TVSquad on the future of Lost.  I really liked the season finale.

Thanks to Mike, Penelope (author of the book I was discussing) and Ayelet for commenting on my recent posts.

Looks like Google is, in fact, going to buy FeedBurner.  That makes me sad.  Google is trying to corner the market on information.  Like when someone shoots the moon in Hearts, it may be too late to do anything about it when people realize it and start to care.

Now cola has gone open source.

Kodak is getting out of the “low end” digital camera business.  Hmmm.

My home state gets serious about beer.  When I lived there we were happy to get our hands on PBRs and Falstaff.  I even had a taste of moonshine a time or two.  Anyone drinking those high falutin’ beers would have been beat up summarily.

The Civil War in 4 minutes.  This is a great video- watch it before they take it down. (via Kevin Briody)

Tris Hussey asked the $64,000 question, and then deleted it.  Here’s a clip from my reader.

Scott Karp is a blogging buddy, but when I see both “disruptive” and “disintermediated” in the first 13 words of a post, it’s time to mark it read and move on. 

My funny line of the day, from a TechCrunch story on some scheduled Second Life downtime: “Second Life entrepreneurs are particularly unhappy with the downtime, after all, if you’re trying to make a living from Second Life this downtime affects the bottom line.”  That’s what I tell my wife when she makes me and the kids stop playing whiffle ball and come inside for dinner.  “Honey, I’m going to get rich playing whiffle ball one day….”

Blonde 2.0 on brand building via social media. 

Randy Morin is 100% correct.  Those on the outside looking in could easily change the game by linking to each other.  For me, it’s a matter of recreating the blogosphere or leaving it altogether.  Once we get a collective voice, the blogging elite will let us in the club, and we can all blog together.  It’s not about pulling the A-Listers down, it’s about pulling ourselves up.  Scott Kingery agrees.

Google declares Google Office victory.  Maybe, if victory means being used by non-corporate cheapskates.  I don’t know a single person who uses Google Apps in lieu of Office or Works.  Not one.

Karl Martino makes some good points about online news, and expects to be ignored.  See item 1 above.

Darren Rowse, who I consider an un-A-Lister even though he never answered my question, has a good post on growing a blog.

Random blogs I like: Ben Metcalfe, Brad Kellett, Craig Newmark, Greg Hughes, Jeremy Zawodny, Kevin Briody, Ric Hayman, Richard Querin, Steven Streight and Zoli Erdos.

Amazing rumble in the jungle between lions, crocodiles and buffalo.  (via Rob Gale)

Robert Scoble says he’s in a blogging malaise.  That’s sort of like those celebrities who complain about all the fans asking them for autographs and whatnot.  Robert should be thankful for his blogging fame (which he deserves and earned through hard work).  So I’m not going to shed too many tears for him.

Seth makes a good point in the comments to my unblogosphere post.

On that note, I have lately forgotten to implement my new policy, so thanks to Seth, Barbidoll31, Mike, TDavid, Richard, Louis, OmegaMom, Ethan, Susan, Holly, DeeJay and Kelly for commenting on my recent posts.  Please keep ’em coming!

Dave Wallace has some good ideas for blog promotion.

Tutorial Blog has a list of free Photoshop plugins.  roScripts has some nifty Photoshop resources.

Download Squad on my blogging buddy, Guy Kawasaki‘s Truemors.  Guess what: “[J]ust a few hours after the site went live, it was filled with spam.”  I told you so.

More Moore.  Earl’s son Aaron is blogging with him.  That is very cool.  Here’s Aaron’s post on Unsanity’s Shapeshifter: “Back in the days before I ever thought I would be using a Mac as my only computer, I did everything I could to make Windows something different.”  I’m a Windows guy, but I totally get that.

Am I the only one who is overwhelmed by the number of posts at Engadget?  I can’t help but think a ton of those posts get blown off or skimmed due to the huge volume.

I am depressed by the thought of Google buying Feedburner.

Hugh MacLeod has 15 new blogcard designs available.  Hey Hugh, I’ll pay you $50 out of my promotion budget for a Newsome.Org card.  It doesn’t even have to be flattering.

Kevin Tofel has pictures of the Dell Tablet PC.