How Not To Blog

Wow. Not only will they make money from donor donations, Terry Schiavo's parents will also fuck over donors by selling their personal data to a marketing company.

Talk about taking advantage of human kindness. Do they think these people had to give money to support a brain-dead humanoid and her plight? Middle America is such a sucker for a sob story. At least a dead pope is worth crying about, but crying over someone very few people cared about or knew existed a few months ago is pathetic.

I'm sure they'll get a million or so for "their story" to be made into a television show, if they haven't already.

Here's a quote from the New York Times:

Pamela Hennessy, an unpaid spokeswoman for the Schindlers, said she was initially appalled when she learned of the list's existence.

"It is possibly the most distasteful thing I have ever seen," Ms. Hennessy said. "Everybody is making a buck off of her."

They are worse than the lowlife scum who run the "Terry Schiavo Blog"

In continuance of the Jason Kottke saga*, today we find Elliot Back's analysis of just how lazy the dude has become.

The "now-a-full-time blogger" is actually posting less than he was when he was only a part-time blogger.

As I've been saying all along, folks, it's all a sham. Milk users' pocketbooks for his pathetic cause then introduce "friendly" advertising in a month or so after. Do people really expect him to "experiment" with blogging full time, surviving only on the kindness of user donations (which, by my calculations have added up to a little over $20,000 for this begging season - it'll be much less next season), and still being able to keep up with his Manhattan digs and life in one of the most expensive cities in the world?

*the blogger who quit his job to blog full time. See:

Kottke looks to BoingBoing for inspiration
The Kottke Saga part IX-573
Kottke's Begging Goes Corporate...slowly
Begging... I mean blogging

Oh, Flickr. I really want to love thee. But it's been nearly a week, and you haven't 'approved' my fckng account yet. I suppose now that you've been bought out you don't need to tend to very basic administrative tasks anymore. Do you really want me on your bad side, oh Fuckr? I can be a real pain in the ass, you know.

I had a feeling Alan Greenspan was full of shit.

"According to sources at the Fed, Greenspan even takes pleasure in his obfuscation. Sometimes he will return from one of his speeches before Congress and order a video of his testimony, marveling out loud as he watches: "What in the world does that mean?" Obstruction, then, is the name of the game.

I think I recall taking a leak with him at a party once. Dude's gotta be at least one of the richest persons in the world, if not the richest.

Looks like the Pope is just about dead.

Excerpt:

Pope John Paul II is receiving liquid feedings through a tube that has been inserted through his nose and winds down into his stomach, Vatican officials announced today, raising new alarms about the pope's deteriorating health and his ability to lead the Roman Catholic Church.

After reading the story, you wonder how coincidental it is to the current Terry Schiavo drama.

Well, what happens when the Pope dies in a couple of days? This article mentions some pretty old-fashioned rituals:

As soon as the pope dies, the Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church -- a senior Vatican cardinal -- takes over. Usually referred to by the Italian title of 'Camerlengo' (chamberlain), he is the official who must ascertain that the pope is dead.

As recently as 40 years ago, the Camerlengo did this by tapping the pope's head three times with a small hammer and shouting his family name close to his ear, but that colorful ritual is not mentioned in the 1996 revisions made by Pope John Paul II to streamline the process, and referred to by the opening Latin words of the document as "Universi Domini Gregis..." -- The shepherd of the Lord's whole flock...

However, the Camerlengo is still required to slip the papal ring off the dead pope's finger, and smash the official papal seal.

An RSS-enabled chat client could allow your blog post to be sent as an IM to subscribers (feedback), and IM conversations to automatically post to blogs (feedforward).

Feedback

In feedback, your blog post is sent as an instant message (IM) to others. Others, receiving the IM, could easily respond to the message and have their response post automatically to the blog post. If you're interested in participating in the conversation, you click "Participate" and you will automatically be able to see the responses of other and participate in a flash chat session (think flash mobs, for chat rooms). If you're not interested, simply close the message window.

It could be made so that only those subscribing to a particular topic, category, or tag would see messages linked to that topic, category, or tag.

An RSS blog feedback system could have explosive consequences for blogs- as- collaborative- communities, or simply nice places to hang out.

Feedforward

In feedforward, every message you send to another would post automatically to a blog. This would be topic-driven, so that if you IM someone you first select the topic category and give the conversation a name. Your respondees' messages are automatically tied to the topic. When you want to discuss a new topic you simply 'change topic'. (This method would also serve as a constant reminder that others will see their conversations).

Anyone seeing the corresponding blog would see all conversations properly organized into the appropriate categories.

I think feedforward would benefit businesses most as more of them migrate some of their conversations to instant messaging systems.

Such a system could not just augment pointless meetings, for example, but replace them entirely if properly used. Colleagues could participate in "meetings" without actually being in them (just looking at the blog or blog feed at their convenience). Meetings could take place intermittently over days instead of crammed into 1 hour sessions. If they see something of interest or something to which they could contribute, they could easily pop into the conversation.

Really, the two systems could easily be one system. However, for ease of understanding I have illustrated them as separate concepts.

(See my previous article, RSS & the Evolution of Online Chat, for more crap.)

What's going to happen when people have a thousand feeds? Wouldn't it be nice to have these thousand feeds, but only display those that are tagged with what I'm looking for? Is there an RSS feed filter? I don't want to see everything that comes through the pipes. Alternatively, display only those that are titled with (or have included in the body) my pre-defined words.

[Update]

I'm referring to RSS aggregators here, not blogs that display RSS feeds. There are so many aggregators out there, somebody's gotta have it.

Illiterate is right! Who the fuck quotes news two years old as if it were just yesterday?

I think this is a great idea! Google was definitely getting clogged up with numerous weblogs linking to the same main article. Removing the weblogs from the main search index would allow the truly authoritative articles to be shown first. Then, should the searcher want commentary about an article he could go to Google?s Blog tab and find it. I wonder if they are thinking of developing their own blog search or if they will buy and intergrate Technorati. Either way I?m looking forward to it.

pointing to the article, Google to fix blog noise problem, from May 2003.

On top of that, it's a stupid idea. Which is why it was never implemented.

Now that the dude over at delicious has quit his day job and will work on the site full-time, I'm sure he and whomever else has invested some cash in the site is doing some thinking about where to take it (my money is on Google).

Google has more cash flow right now that HNTB has punctuation. It would be wise to invest in and integrate the popular site (and its concepts) into the Google gameplan. So, we must ask ourselves: How will del.icio.us make money?

What is can do, of course, is start with a community-based advertising scheme. Instead of just linking to a new used book service that I'm using that I think is wonderful, I could not only link to it, but tell the community what I really think about it in my user comments, and get paid for every click or order.

Think this isn't a good idea? Go to your favorite blogs or websites. Chances are, one or more of them will display Google Adwords (ads by goooooooooogle) somewhere on the page. These people are advertising products and services that they haven't even approved of. How much more valuable is a link recommended by someone you have some degree of trust in? A whole lot more.

Advertisers would list their products and services in the Tagwords directory. Users would pick out those products and services they're already using, add them to their bookmarks with their comments, tips, hints, recommendations, etc., for that product or service. If someone visits my links*, clicks on your product/service, and orders something, you better believe I want a premium price for the introduction. (The site operator would, of course, take a cut of that, too.)

(*Note: there's so much more that could be done with tagging and tracking sites like delicious and Technorati. I think the door has only just opened for these services. I'll try to crap it out in another post.)

Sure, there's plenty of room for abuse of the system, but a lot more room for non-abuse. Because the site is community-based, those users who abuse the system would simply not be successful at it.

Folksonomic clouds like delicious or Technorati must make changes if they're to integrate revenue concepts into their sites.

When I visit Technorati, I want to be able to look at their links, and easily add any link to my favorites. I should then be able to add my own personal tag and comment on the link for future reference. (And perhaps make the tags publicly viewable on my personal page.) "Tads" can then be implemented within this context. And how about giving me the ability to go to the next page while you're at it?

delicious should allow users to add a notes and other metadata to their bookmarks. (See del.irio.us for some reference.)

Though most users (including myself) would be annoyed at the new system for the ads, I think if the tagword ad (or tad) is 1) relevant; 2) not annoying; and 3) recommended by the bookmarker then I don't think most users would have a problem with the system. Remember, the last part is the most important part.

Of course users would display their regularly scheduled links. And you could set it up so that a user could only display one tagword ad for every x number of non-tads in my bookmarks.

Any visitor that visits my link page or searches for a tag will see my tads along with regular results. The number of ads per result set could also be limited so that a particular tag isn't littered with them.

Bloggers already link to do products and services that they love all the time. Why not make a little money in there somewhere at the same time?

Google is already trying out a new form of contextual advertising called AdLinks, where you can click on a keyword or keyphrase and be taken to a page of relevant advertising. If it does indeed partner purchase with del.icio.us, it would be taking the concept one step further.

So.. this is what advertising has come to?

Searching Yahoo personals through Google you'll get a result list of Yahoo personals profiles that match.

The format is:

site: profiles.yahoo.com KEYWORD KEYWORD KEYWORD...

A search for single teachers in Dallas gives us 25 results.

Supposedly, searching site: profiles.yahoo.com on Google brings back 631,000 results. Searching site: profiles.yahoo.com on Yahoo brings back only 175 results.

Who says Google doesn't have it's own yodel?

Thanks to Razvan Antonescu

Following up to my article, Google working out a deal with del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter of delicious writes on March 29:

After seeing my little project go from a small hobby to a large one and
then consume all my waking hours, I've decided to quit my job and work
on del.icio.us full time.

I've given a lot of thought to how to make this happen, and ultimately
decided that the best way forward is to take on some outside investment.

Although in the next line he confuses a bit, saying, "I've taken this step because it lets me continue to grow del.icio.us while keeping it independent."

My guess is that he's already sold off part of the company on the condition that he and the user community maintain full control over it. But it's anybody's guess.

We'll see what develops. It should be interesting.

Looks like Sony is rolling out hotspot-enabled wi-fi service for its new PSP (PlayStation Portable) in Korea.

(See previous post, The iPod is dead. Long live the iPod. Hello, PSP!)

In the US, they will probably use their their Sony Connect service to stream movies, music, games, and other media directly to your PSP over wi-fi (right now you connect the device to your computer, then download). This is HUGE. These aren't laptops.. these are devices you can carry around with you everywhere, just like the iPod. Live, streaming media to your portable device is the future. The PSP has a ways to go to get there, but it's obvious that is the direction Sony wants to take it.

People are already hacking these devices to play movies, music, etc., in any format, as well as ebooks, and connecting them to the internet. You can even get RSS feeds on it now. If Sony is, indeed, working out a plan with the many different wi-fi hotspot providers in the US so that PSP users can connect directly to the internet, as it is rumored, you can bet that there will be a huge surge in popularity and use of the device. Right now, however, most people are just buying the PSP for its gamesability and haven't yet discovered the PSP as the portable media device.

Is Apple paying attention?

Direct marketers will love the new Yahoo! 360. It appears that someone could easily create a script that will extract the Yahoo user ID from the "Friends" pages, and send out highly targets emails to 360 users based on their interests found in their profile (or just plain old non-targeted spam).

Just hold your cursor over the "send an IM" text to see what I mean. [Update: disabled!]

Hey, there, Marc Canter. Do I have a good deal for you!

[Update: 4:20PM]

Randy Farmer says on his blog that the 'leaked' Yahoo ID problem has been fixed. First day out of the super private arena and into the elite arena, and a big bug has already been squashed.

Wow.. I'm almost impressed. Except that it's not 'fixed' at all. The links have simply been disabled. Well, better that than the other.

Glad to know the good folks at Yahoo read this shit.

Who cares what's in your bag?

Show me what's on your mind.

Click the links below to see more Yahoo 360 blogs

Niall Kennedy, Jee, Kevin Marks, Frederique (81 friends, so you can view more blogs and profiles, etc., from her spot).

Take a look at a sample friends page and groups page.

It all looks so bland and boring. They could do so much more. (Why are these companies so afraid of taking intelligent risks?) But, for a beta, there's lots of room for improvement.

The April issue of Wired talks about Marc Cuban's efforts to convert all 270 of his Landmark Theatre screens to digital.

What it neglets to mention is that Ireland's Digital Cinema Limited will convert all of the country's movie theaters (about 500) from 35mm to digital during the next twelve months.

Film studios in the US are reluctant to do the same (hence Marc Cuban) due to the initial cost of conversion and, well, they're just old farts who can't see the future for the gas.

Each theatre in the US would cost about $50-150k to upgrade. However, the movie studios would save a bundle by not shipping film in canisters to those theatres every week. Studios would be smart to split the costs with theatre owners. They could easily make up the difference in less than a year by expanding their current offerings.

Forget about upgrading ~36,000 screens. Take $200 million and try it out with 10% of that figure (50/50 split) to test the digital waters. Within 1 year you're estimated to save about $100 million in costs, not to mention probable greater consumer interest through that and expanded offerings. Hype it up.. do your thang. Heck, you could even lower ticket prices to celebrate. People would flock to theatres.

What could it mean to have a digital theatre in your neighborhood?

Wired mentions the better image quality of a digital film and the ability for movie theatres to easily balance out visitor load by shifting people to other theatres when a movie is more popular than expected. It also talks about "..high-res broadcasts or sports events, Broadway plays, fashion shows, and multiplayer electronic games". There's also the ability to show live concerts, take advantage of the Wi-Fi capabilities of Sony's PSP and similar devices, show more niche films (which are cheaper to produce and distribute digitally), nightly showings of popular television shows, and more. I think many people would purchase tickets on a frequent basis simple because the picture and sound quality would make it seem very real.

$7 for films and $3-5 for other showings. Theatres make more money from concessions, anyway. They could easily bring in more people to the theatres more of the time. They could have people coming through the doors all the time, not just at night and on weekends - older people during the day, younger people at night.

Currently, people only go to the theatre for movies. But they could be going for a whole lot more.

You knew it had to happen.

Don't get me wrong, the iPod is great, but the PSP is about to show that the iPod is played out in its current form. Apple can make some tweaks to the iPod's design, it can strip out features and make a flash player (the Shuffle), but as a music player, it's basically cooked, there isn't really anywhere to go except down in price.

What is the PSP?
-WiFi (802.11b) built-in; 100-meter range with a transfer rate of up to 2mbps
-Email
-Play MP3s
-View digital photos
-P2P file-swapping
-Instant Messaging (IM)
-Read books
-Web browser
-Bring media over from your Tivo
-Convert any video file into a PSP video file
-Download and play (mostly) illegal movie torrents

Add a keyboard

And Possibly...
VoIP (rumor)
Future PDA functionality
Camera attachment
GPS
Word processing

...all craftily disguised as a portable gaming device.

Which is cooler, someone going into a cafe and listening to music with their iPod, or someone going into a cafe and sharing photos that they're downloading in real-time with their friends from a photo website, and sending an instant message to their family, and then doing a whole lot more, including listen to music?

For now, Apple is lucky that only a 1-2GB Sony Memory Stick Duo is available. It's two totally different markets, but I think the PSP is appealing enough to Apple's future market share (or what it hoped would be its future market). The iPod still serves only 1 function.

But if I were Steve Jobs, I'd be scared shitless right about now.

"Internet TV" is a misnomer, I think.

It won't be television through the internet, it'll just be the internet.

Like the days of BBSes (before "the internet") where you didn't see any pictures and you could read the text faster that it downloaded then, gradually, images, animations, and other media came onboard, IPTV/internetTV, or rich mediacasting, is just the future of the internet.

It will be enabled by a mass adoption of broadband and the availability of cheap hardware, mobile WiFi devices like the Sony PSP, and lots of creative people.

I would imagine that a lot of blogging will be done live (internet shows), there will be collaborative live entertainment, collaborative film-making (think Flickr + film), lots of alternative news programs, rich media community sites, citizen watch groups, telemedicine, and lots more exciting stuff.

And, yes, the videophone will still be a pipedream.

Here's a new metasearch site called Oodle. Right now it handles only Chicago, Dallas, and Philadelphia. It's also including Craigslist listings in its results, interestingly.

The 5th largest earthquake in the world since 1900 was on December 26, 2004.

The 7th largest, on March 28.

Each, one day after a major Christian holy-day.

I can hear the religious folk already, saying "God is angry with the world!".

As the web becomes more integrated into peoples' lives, internet companies need to be able to better satisfy more of users' emotional needs than ever before.

In life, people seek out situations and experiences that are likely to fit in with their emotional patterns. A person's life experiences are, in a way, extensions of their complex personality. The web isn't much different.

The same way getting out to go shopping, going to a certain restaurant, or talking to a certain kind of stranger is an expression of one's self (and thus, emotions), people will seek out and continue to visit the websites that will most possibly fulfill their emotional requirements. A person's leisure time, it can be argued, is really time to validate their existence.

Compared to similar internet portals such as MSN, Yahoo, and even AOL, Google's range of services provide great utility without being emotionally stimulating. The longest-lasting, most successful internet-based consumer goods and services companies will make a business out of evoking, manipulating, augmenting, sharing, and extending a user's emotions. One can pretty much gauge the lifespan of an internet company (or the length of your relationship with it) by asking one simple question:

How does it make me feel?

How many consumer electronics companies or internet companies, for example, have come out with great products that were very innovative and useful but simply did not survive the marketplace? We say that those companies were "before their time". Perhaps many of them weren't before their time at all - they simply didn't know how to elicit a useful emotional response and create their own market.

Google, of course, will still say that they're not a portal and don't want to be a portal, all while being a portal but with no focus. I guess advertising revenue is good enough for them. But if people choose other sites over Google for their needs (including search), where will Google's cash come from?

People used to get very emotional over Google. It's still happening, but I think on a much less scale than before. How could one be so bold as to mess it all up? What does Google tag itself with? Will its lack of focus soon attract only schizophrenics? Google can do still do alot while maintaining focus - it just has to want to.

The marketplace isn't simply conscious. It's emotional, too.

If Yahoo! wants to maintain its family image past its purchase of Flickr, then it should find a way to get rid of all the x-rated photos on the site.

Meanwhile, my photos (as a new user) are still waiting to be approved. They're checking to see if I'm posting x-rated photos and/or advertising!

Here's a nice way to browse photos on Flickr by tag.

China will leapfrog over Western countries by issuing IPTV licenses later this month (article).

Anyone with a webcam will be able to create a "TV channel" over the internet. Podcasting doesn't have anything on this. Too bad licenses will only be given out to companies that are state-owned.

We'll see how this changes China's media landscape from one that's largely government controlled to one that's more democratic (if it does). Democracy usually comes in the door with open media, so this type of technology could open the floodgates in China.

Max Blumberg talks about marketing opportunities, primarily with search:

And where is Google in all this? Controlling Internet advertising will not help if it does not have a significant stake in the new converged media.

The logical move for Google would be to control the emerging IPTV search space, and indeed Google Video may indeed be its way in. Soon, you will undoubtedly be Googling your television set for your favorite TV content (with a few adverts thrown in for luck)...

Most of Yahoo's users are stupid when it comes to the internet and the web. In fact, I think they're only second in terms of numbers of idiots on the internet in their database, after AOL. Yes, I'm a Yahoo user, and I love Yahoo (except for the time when one of their email servers blew up and I couldn't access my account for about 3 years).

Yahoo should re-consider their strategy for 360 and related offerings.

They can't just roll out a sophisticated suite of products that include blogs, RSS, social networking, etc.

360 should first determine how stupid the user is, then present the appropriate menus to them. Not just "simple" and "advanced" menus, either. In addition to an algorithm that queries what they know about each user from its database to figure out how stupid that user is, they would do well to introduce stupid users to 360 the following way.

After signing in, display something like:

I want to...
Be able to upload and share my photos
Keep a personal log and share it with my friends and family
Write reviews of [whatever]
View my friends and their friends in a network
etc...

Not everyone knows what a blog is (only about 30% of Americans have an idea). Of these I would guess half only think they know, and another half actually know what they themselves can do with it. You can't just say "Click Here To Blog!" or "Join this Network" to your userbase if You're! Yahoo!

Hide the complexity from most of your users, while allowing more technical users to easily select what they want. Make sure, however, that the idiot always has the opportunity to use the system more intelligently. Truly customized user menus and user interfaces are the future, man.

I don't think 360 will be a kick-ass new service in its present or near-term incarnations. It's still in beta but I am pretty sure Yahoo will do its best to make it work, as 360 seems central to its new strategy of maintaining/increasing user stickiness.

You can now check out the Yahoo! 360 beta. Here's how:

1) Login to your Yahoo account

2) Go to the following location

The link may not last for long.

So far 360 has the following user menu: Home, My Page, My Blog, My Friends, Mailbox, Invite, Search, Settings

On the left panel, there are the following member-related options (social network menu): Top Page, Blog, Friends, Lists, Reviews, Groups

You can view a larger screenshot here.

The earliest post from the above-accessible blog is from Friday, Oct 22, 2004 - 11:37am (PDT) titled "Day two..." and talks about Project Mingle (360).

Integrating RSS functions with email functions is a logical path for email. There isn't a clear solution to the spam problem in sight, emails are pretty much 'final' when sent, email addresses are generally inflexible, inboxes are generally a big mess, and a lot of email from friends and coworkers is redundant and unnecessary.

The following idea for a personal messenger helps to alleviate some of those problems.

Goodbye Email Address
Your new "email address" is a web location that may look something like:

https://secure.rssemail.com/user/thom_flan/49t3k202ikw03k1.xml

Your new address is now as permanent or disposable as you want it to be.

Ideally, you should provide a unique message address to each of your friends, family, etc. So, you would have as many address locations as you have friends and family. Click a button and the messenger automatically creates a unique message address and announces it to the parties you choose.

You can also provide unique addresses for groups. Your family would get one address, your friends another, businesses another, etc. You can provide a regular email forward (eg., [email protected] - good for one send per friend) to people when you're out so you don't have to remember or repeat your entirely unique RSS location.

Now, no one can send you an email simply by spamming random email addresses, like when you have a Yahoo, Hotmail, or AOL account. You can also easily organize messages before you read them (see below). If a spammer somehow finds your address location, just block that location out automatically.

Move Over, Universal Inbox
Who thought of the universal inbox? Every piece of mail you receive coming in through the same door is like your mailbox at home. The benefit of being digital is that we can organize and manage email better, automatically.

You can automatically have all messages from Bob arrive into one or more particular folders, while putting Bob's wife in another. You can then put the two into categories. Additionally, you can have an Unknown folder where all messages from unknown senders end up.

The New Post
If someone sends you a new message they are actually 'pinging' your address location with their message. The message is live, meaning that the sender can change it as many times as they want before or after you read it. This is not only good for revisions and mistakes, among other things.

You can also automatically feed certain messages to your personal, private, or public website, or even other people. Messages shouldn't be 'sent'.. they should be posted in a manner that's accessible to both sender and receiver. This is the internet, after all.

Attachments could probably be sent to a FTP-type location for user-download, with the message ID tying the two together. RSS-based media enclosures may also work. Ideally, this would be sender-side, where the recipient would click on the remote URL to download to their desktop. Unless you really want all of Aunt Betty's uncompressed vacation photos sitting in your inbox.

Sending Messages is Just As Easy
To send a message, just click on a person's name or paste their feed URL into the address box. Write your message and send it as you normally would.

If you change your mind about something in the message, you can theoretically change it before the recipient has a chance to read it. Because the message is only received when a user refreshes their 'inbox' (as opposed to a server receiving it and not letting you do anything) there will be no regrets and less "disregard-that-last-email" messages.

Interface
Either a standalone client, web access, or both. A web location with a secure login would work best for mobility.

Obvious Benefits from Using RSS
-Much easier to receive messages on portable devices
-Possibly: ability to make some messages public (see below)
-Messages can be received more securely, using an SSL server instead of bouncing around unsecured mailservers.
-View posts on your terms (if, when how, etc.)
-No virii embedded in your messages
-Unwanted messages reduced tremendously
-Tag incoming and outgoing messages
-Easily opt-in and out of newsletters and other types of mass-mailings.
-A lot more that I haven't covered

Future Directions
I think the best reason to develop an 'rssmail'-type system is for the potential ability to change the access rights to messages that you send and receive. And that's because not all emails you currently receive or send are personal. These could be ported onto a more public platform, or made accessible by/to a selected list of users. So instead of sending an email to certain persons, those persons can choose to access your message feed at their convenience, then selecting which of those messages they want to read. ("Spam" from friends would be one example.)

My belief is that, one day, instead of opening up an email client and viewing email we will view our dynamic message feeds on our own blog-type pages. We won't send or receive messages in the traditional sense. We will announce what we want to send and select those that are worth reading. Some of these messages will be public. Other, private. We will also be able to view selected messages that our friends, family, co-workers, and companies that we do business with have themselves received and sent to others. The future of email... is open.

Online chat systems could benefit immensely from RSS integration and a different type of hierarchy based on the popularity of user conversations.

The difference between the following idea for a chat aggregator and a regular chat client is not only that you can export conversations via RSS feed and display the topic of a real-time conversation on your website (and a user can easily join a conversation by clicking on a topic), but that conversations take place in organized 'fluid segments', which means that a user can easily move back and forth between multiple conversations with ease. Perhaps most importantly, a user does not have to be in a chat room to participate in the conversation.

This idea is based on three main components:

:::Fluid Segments:::
In a regular online chat, a user joins a chat room and usually experiences multiple conversations if there is more than one other person in the room. A user can also join another room and move back and forth between rooms, participating in even more conversations. In this scenario, a room could have a countless number of topics within a chat period, displaying segments of each conversation one after another with no regard to order or categorization.

In chat aggregation, there is a much greater focus. A user participates in topics, not rooms. Topics are grouped forum-style. Sub-topics automatically graduate to Topic status depending upon popularity. Because this type of chat is more focused than other chat systems it will most likely encourage greater user participation and dialogue. Keep in mind that because of the way this chat system is designed, you don't have to be in a chat system to participate in the conversation. The conversation can be, at times, "undead". Meaning, there's no one actively chatting right now, but the conversation is still taking place.

When opening the chat aggregator, you can select the channel that you want and see a list of topics, listed in descending order by those topics with the most replies. Additionally, clicking on any topic will list any of its sub-topics, again displayed in the same kind of order.

Order is maintained because a user has two choices, start a new topic or reply to the current one. In this scheme, the popularity of the topic is of greater importance than its chronological placement. However, a user can still easily scan new topics and new posts (color coded, alerts, etc). Replies to a topic are, of course, still displayed in chronological order.

It doesn't matter if no one else is currently on the feed, as no topics will disappear before a set time (say, 30 days). You can participate in both live conversations and 'undead' conversations at the same time.

Someone could theoretically, using a chat aggregator, participate in a handful of conversations at once much the same way someone could read 100 blogs in one session using an RSS aggregator - scanning each for interesting posts. There is no need to actively participate in every chat topic one is watching, of course, but I think there is a need to have captured the many spontaneous thoughts or conversations that are lost simply because there isn't a readily available facility.

Tags could also be applied to topics, allowing for easy search through Technorati or using other methods. (When was the last time you searched an online conversation?)

:::Conversational Hierarchy:::
Conversational hierarchy is much like regular forum hierarchy. For example: A user creates the "Games" chat feed in the chat aggregator. She then creates a new topic and posts it to the chat feed. Another user can then select either the NEW TOPIC or REPLY button next to the her topic. If he selects REPLY then his reply shows up under hers, indented.

Should a user select NEW TOPIC then the new topic will show up on the same level as other topics.

The trick is to list topics and sub-topics in order of number of replies underneath it. Any sub-topics can graduate to topic level should it have more replies under it than its parent does (minus the # of replies in that topic). Only topics are listed when selecting a chat feed to participate in.

:::RSS Integration:::
Any conversation can be exported in real-time via RSS to any web page or RSS reader. Chat topics become RSS feed titles. If you see an interesting conversation you want to join instantly, you just click on the topic.

You could also display live conversations on your sidebar from, for example, the "Blog" chat feed in descending order of most popular topics. You would only need one RSS feed, and users could click on a topic in your feed sidebar to join that conversation instantly.

The ability to easily export, archive, and search online chat sessions is something that's long overdue. Though it's easy to see why it has been ignored, considering the reluctance of people to participate in current chat systems in the first place because they're such a waste of time.

The Idea
The many kinks in this chat aggregator idea haven't been worked out. (I only throught of it a few minutes ago.) But I believe that the power of one standard, open-source chat platform with feed-ability will at last revive our long lost friend, the chat room.

Look for Google to work out 'a deal' with del.icio.us soon, on the heels of Yahoo's announcement regarding Flickr.

If Google does, indeed, acquire or partner with delicious, they'll be making strong headway into the social media & content field. All that would be then left to do to get back on track is to tie all of their services together in an easily digestible format and then spend some marketing dollars.

C'mon Google. You can afford it. No matter how badly I talk about Google as a company, you're still my default search engine. Don't be so pathetic!

Ack! The dinosaurs have taken over HNTB!

Here's the bullshit:

Russell Crowe's new album has failed to gain a position in the midweek charts, after selling just 156 copies in the UK.

His record company says Crowe had not wanted to make a big marketing push for the release of the album, Clarity, by his band Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts.

A spokesman for his label Resolution/Gruntland Records said Russell is not interested in over-hyping or marketing his music.

Didn't want to market it? A talented actor that's also entirely full of himself? Maybe it didn't sell because the album sucks. Albums from the 1920's outrank his newest at Amazon.

See for yourself.

Story from Ananova

There really are more important things to focus so much media attention on than one brain-damaged person.

However, I don't expect any mainstream news channel or newspaper to steer off course from a story that middle America is eating up.

Here's a story from earlier this month about a man whose family couldn't afford to keep him on life support. This is a story that barely gets mention outside of the Texas press. He'll probably be dead in a couple of weeks because of the inability to pay or receive Medicaid/Medicare.

But who the fuck cares about an old man? People aren't "made" to care about the plight of a specific elderly person unless that old person is famous.

During my short trip to Malaysia, I realized just how vast China's distribution network is throughout all of South Asia.

I've also learned how much I love bootleg copies! You probably do, too. You just don't know where to find the good ones.

Malaysia gets their DVD and software bootlegs mostly from China. Good quality multi-region DVDs can be purchased for about $2 each. You can find not only Hollywood films, but independent features, musicals, opera DVDs, complete boxed sets of American televion episodes, and a whole lot more. Software can be bought for approximately $1-2.50 per disc, including titles that just came out. Any software you can imagine, you can find for that price range. Looking for an illustrated CD on laparoscopy? How about 30-50 different music-maker titles or 10 titles on CAD-designing your own house?

Where are the Malaysian bootleg shops? In the malls, of course. They had a peeper network stationed throughout the popular mall that I visited. 3 closed down their gates within seconds of one-another, only to open again within an hour after the overcover authorities disappeared.

Malaysia then sends their bootlegs on to Thailand (don't ask me how this works, considering that Thailand is closer to China than is Malaysia). Thailand's DVDs can be bought for about $2.50-$4.00. However, some of their material is sourced from the internet.

You even get a receipt for your purchase. How wonderful is the disruptive marketplace!

Information overload will gradually kill off web search. The top 10 results will no longer be what most people are looking for.

You want to tell me that my neighbor's search for "weather models" is the same as mine? I don't think so...

In its place, your mama predicts, will be information aggregators. RSS aggregation is headed in the right direction. But really useful aggregators will serve me information in many different ways. They will be a substitute for my decision-making processes - this can be something as simple as providing me with an extensive and customizable set of user options.

Gone will be the days of ma and pa going to Google to search for what they're looking for (prescription drugs, for example). Their Pain Relief community members will feed links to them on their personalized Yahoo 360 (v2, I hope) interface. Most will consume (such as internet users do), some will feed, Google will turn into Froogle, and everyone will be happy.

Social Software for Set-Top boxes, from PlasticBag.

-A buddy-list for television
-Presence alerts
-Watch with your friends (BAD idea - how lame)
-Chatting and planning (what's the input device?)
-Choosing channels and playing games
-Sharing a social library

Great idea, though.

de.lirio.us is a del.icio.us clone, announced by Steve Mallet.

What's really sweet about this is that you can include a long
detailed note with each post in addition to a one line description. That becomes your blog post.. if you want or just leave it for folks to read.

Can't anyone think of anything new?

Consumerpedia is a Wikipedia clone.

It seems to be built to display Google adwords. (Making money for whom?)

Do they really expect companies, entrepreneurs, spammers to behave with a website that anyone can edit?

[Update 3/29: Here's what they had to say in response to the above:]

But, you never really know if you are any good or not until someone starts badmouthing your efforts, so thank you to How Not To Blog blog for giving us our first extra boost with your post of "Consumerpedia is a Wikipedia clone. It seems to be built to display Google adwords. (Making money for whom?). Do they really expect companies, entrepreneurs, spammers to behave with a website that anyone can edit?" (How Not To Blog - Bring in the clones.. the slimy Wikipedia clones)

Thanks also for giving us the opportunity to make some additional points:

As discussed above, Consumerpedia is not and is not meant to be a Wikipedia clone.

Consumerpedia is not a wiki, but rather a different type of tool designed to handle a different type of content.

As to the name, the roots of the word "encyclopedia" are "medieval Latin: encyclopaedia, general education course, from alteration of Greek enkuklios paideia, general education" - thus "Consumerpedia" = "Consumer Education" (Dictionary.com/encyclopedia)

As to "Do they really expect companies, entrepreneurs, spammers to behave with a website that anyone can edit?" - while everyone and anyone can indeed add a comment or navigation suggestion (and rate those of others), note that no one can "edit" someone else's comment - you can only rate how helpful or not it is. This is one of the reasons why Consumerpedia is not based on a wiki platform.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of a wiki" - meaning that with a system like Wikipedia, since anyone can edit anything at any time, you need people who are willing and able to watch and correct "bad" edits at any time. The stabilizing factor with Wikipedia is the ever vigilant users.

"Cumulative vigilance is the benefit of Consumerpedia" - meaning that with a system like Consumerpedia, as users rate the helpfulness of comments and suggestions (and thus indirectly also rate the users who made those comments and suggestions - and also indirectly rate themselves as to how well their ratings correlate with those provided by others), the collective wisdom of what and who is good and bad (helpful and not helpful) grows over time. The stabilizing factor of Consumerpedia is the nature of the Consumerpedia system itself.

Short version: while spammers may indeed be in issue an the short run, the Consumerpedia system is designed to increasingly damp out their effect over time. The stored collected and correlated contributions of the non-spammers should (hopefully!) swamp any spam attempts over time (and no, this is not a challenge - please give us a chance to at least start building the pool before pissing in it!)

As to why we are using Adsense, it was in large measure due to watching Wikipedia's experience with supporting their site through contributions alone. We tried to think of an easier, more natural and more direct way. Indeed, Wikipedia itself hit upon the exact same method by using Adsense in their latest venture, Wikicities.

My response:

Forgive me for jumping the gun.. I don't spend too much time checking out websites with next to no content. I think the idea is interesting, though I think you could innovate more. First thing I'd do is get rid of the Adwords.. you're not going to make shit off of it anyway, and I think you'd be perceived by others the same way I did.

It is easy to innovate in this field, because most of you guys do it all the same. You could expand on your "consumer education" idea up the wazoo. Read Cluetrain for some ideas. Allowing your visitors to communicate directly to companies would be one idea. If you're site becomes popular enough, then you could set up a help desk system in each sub-category. You would lease access to these subs to other companies. In turn, they would answer any questions a consumer has about a kind of technology, product, or kind of product. There are many more ideas to explore in this field. But, unfortunately, you're not contributing to the HNTB kitty so that's for you to figure out if you want to go there.

I appreciate your response, though. It's nice to see that you're not quite the assholes I thought you were.

The April '05 issue of Wired magazine wonders, "What If Every Kid Had a Computer?"

The article goes on about how a $100 laptop would be so good for the world's kids. The is a project being worked on by MIT Media Lab, AMD, Google, and NewsCorp. The $100 Laptop site at MIT and the article itself talks a lot about specs, and not enough about fundamentals like, who really wants this crap? These people are so enamoured of their own technology and spreading their genius across the world that they haven't bothered much to think their dream through.

They say:

Why is it important for each child to have a computer? What's wrong with community-access centers?
One does not think of community pencils?kids have their own. They are tools to think with, sufficiently inexpensive to be used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics. A computer can be the same, but far more powerful. Furthermore, there are many reasons it is important for a child to "own" something?like a football, doll, or book?not the least of which being that these belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.

How can so many supposedly smart people think of such stupid shit? I knew Google had to be involved somewhere.

Littering the world with cheap laptops will create a hell of a lot more problems than it solves. Nevermind the toxic waste from discarded computers (there would be a countless number of old and broken computers - have you ever given poor children a high tech device?), the support logistics would be near-impossible on such a bound-to-break-soon device. And who would translate the OS and other apps into their language? Or does every child in this dream speak English?

Their assumption is that kids who would benefit most from these computers "have their own pencils", have a reliable supply of electricity (and the money to pay for the extra usage), and are actually interested in such devices. Many of the "1.8 billion children" don't even know how to read and write, much less have the mental architecture, a lot worse than uncle George, to use a computer. And many kids do not have access to writing instruments, much less books. I suppose they'd just automatically know how to use a laptop if it fell into their lap. Have they actually spent time in poor communities and done their market research?

Or do their superior asses assume that every child would want a laptop and use it for whatever it's intended for (or have they figured that out yet?)

Cultures such as ours that are based on technology assume, without thinking, that everyone else could use what they benefit from.

Here's the secret... Poor people in developing countries don't want laptops. They don't really give a shit about high tech wizardry. Outside of those who might use technology for business, they actually don't want high tech. They want to be like the rich, white people they see on television. It's sad, but it's mostly true. The mindset is so bad, black-colored gadgets don't even sell well compared to their lighter counterparts.

If you're talking about black and latino kids in the US and their poor white cousins, that's a different story. But much of what I'm saying holds true in their case, too. (What do I know? I've worked and lived with them.)

Have you ever been in an internet cafe in a third-world country? I have observed hundreds of mostly unsupervised kids on computers. They don't 'surf the net' or 'discover knowledge' or 'send email'. They play games. They all play lots of games. All day if you'd let them. And these are kids that can actually afford the $1 or so per hour for computer usage. The poorer kids don't even go to school (usually, their parents can't afford the direct or indirect costs). So, they basically work the greater portion of the day. Did these guys fit that into their equation?

"Poor" and "Knowledge seeking" does not compute. Some great learning is happening in many poorer communities, some revolutionary, but they're the exception.

Most poor kids wouldn't know what to do with a laptop. In under a month, it's almost guaranteed that half the shit would be lost, stolen, or broken. Laptops are extremely sensitive devices that need constant repair. Nevermind the lifecycle of a battery, where would a poor child keep a laptop safely?

Bill Gates seems to be the only one with some original sense. His foundation actually wants to help developing countries where its needed most. What good is a child on a laptop (with no electricity, perhaps) if they're not going to live past 20? What good is a "$100 laptop" if it's $95 too much, or the child doesn't even know how to read?

Why don't these companies just admit that what they really want to do is ready the next generation of consumers (from developing countries, now that the rich world is saturated) with their products?

If you're that concerned with spreading the God-given right to technology to the unblessed, then build some cellular networks where there's little phone or transportation service. People will rent, share, or purchase their own cheap phones, provided the market is liberalized. The users' economic status will grow over time. Then, they can decide for themselves what kind of technology would most benefit their kids. I'm guessing it would be the kind of education that isn't done via computers.

Kottke's blog, ad whore-to-be, points us to a post on GlassDog that discusses the fucked up state Boing Boing has gotten itself into with too much on-site advertising.

And if Boing Boing were a corporation ? oh, wait, it is; that?s what the little ?LLC? down in the corner means ? they?d be the first in line to point a finger at that big, sticky wad of hype and say, ?Um. Really?? These champions of the purity of the Web, these advocates of transparency would be poking holes in that balloon before the clown got it out of his mouth. It?s just that pointed fingers get awkward when you?re in front of a mirror.

So many sites that love to beg for money complain about their high hosting bill. True, you can get 1.2 terrabytes of bandwidth for only $100/month. Sounds like a bum with a sob story about how he needs money for busfare.

This is typical for ass-kissing blogs like Kottke's. He doesn't mention it until someone else does. Now, BoingBoing must respond because they've been outed by 'respected peers', even though everyone's been thinking it all along.

Dumbasses, all of them.

What.. does Wired feel obligated to have a "blog", since it is at the forefront of offline online reporting?

Is it just me, or is the server that their blog subdomain rests on always slow? If it's not slow, it surely is pathetic. Have only their writers (or, ghostwriters?) Leander Kahney and Bruce Sterling not forgotten about this place?

Besides that, the wiredblog.com domain was dropped a few days ago. It was picked up by someone through the Pool.com backordering service for $60+. Wired could have had a happening tech blog & community there, but I guess they'll have to settle for their weekly porn updates.

They say:

...As a new site feature, these blogs will grow and develop into living, breathing areas for the exchange of links, thoughts, and information.

As time goes on, we'll be adding new features, blogs, and authors, so come back often to find out what our writers are up to!

Bullshit.

That would be like this blog promising to enable comments and become a 'real' blog. (What am I, crazy?)

Blog Herald writes:

Slashdot recently commissioned a survey of readers of its RSS feed to determine just how Slashdot readers are using RSS technology now and detect future plans and platforms for accessing content via RSS.

Survey highlights include:

-73% will increase their use of RSS feeds in the next year.
-Most users received their feeds through a Web-based RSS syndication service but many users do not use traditional methods to read their feeds, instead relying on mobile and other devices to obtain their feeds.
-Receiving feeds through mobile units such as cell phones, SMS messaging, voice mail, WAP or portable audio players will increase.
-Technology will improve as RSS use increases, making RSS feeds easier for users to read and for publishers to deliver.

Jeff Bates, co-founder of Slashdot noted, ?This is the first RSS survey to reveal new possibilities as RSS technology gains more footing. Our user community looks to us to provide information and guidance on the most cutting-edge technology for their work. As we rely on RSS to streamline our content more efficiently for our users, we are also examining new ways to enable marketers to tap into RSS as a vehicle for audience outreach and acquisition.?

The Next Pandemic by some guy with too many degrees after his name looks back to the great influenza pandemic of 1918 to see how a similar pandemic could develop as a result of the H5N1 "bird flu" virus strain mutating.

Really, it's about what could happen when too many Asians are all unsanitary at the same time and how many farmers are too stupid (not wanting to lose face) to report dead chickens to the authorities.

You've got kids and adults in SE Asia keeping diseased birds as pets, kitchen "staff" who never wash their hands, rats running around everywhere dropping shit all over the place (and being eaten in some parts of China), and governments who only start to care as a result of international influences.

The real issue isn't the mutation of a virus. The problem is a lack of education and concern in poor countries.

Having a case of the bird flu? Eat some kimchee.

Some chess fuck thinks he knows the best way to talk to aliens. And I thought I had too much time on my hands.

What's the best way to talk to aliens? First, consider them alien. And you, too, will be alien to them. Don't think they'll want a copy of Shakespeare or want to listen in on a Boccherini string quintet or knows anything about primary numbers. Searching for other civilizations assumes that "they" will have a "civilization". They could be so much more understanding about the universe than we without having a civilization. We start out on the wrong foot, and we haven't even left the planet.

What we're actually looking for is something very interesting to us, and much like ourselves. We are, in effect, quite vain. Progress is neither a universal concept nor a technological one. The old version works better.

We could be paying greater mind to the countless alien civilizations right here on this Earth. We've explored just about as much of it as we have our own brain, and we're just as intimate with it.

It would be quite funny if, in a thousand years, after much trial and tribulation trying to explore the universe in a heavy spaceship and expending untold material wealth, we discovered that the only way to communicate with other entities was through the portal of our mind.

That would, indeed, be alien.

The long and tedious Micropayment Smart Codes: New Online Payment System... can be applied to quite a few things.

Codes are assigned 'payment types' (my term) whereby the code is only good for a certain kind of payment.

The system is quite flawed, I believe, but on the right track. The internet needs a good solution to the micropayment problem. Providing metadata and other properties to payments (or tags, for all of you Flickr and Folksonomic heads) is the future. Money is become more and more abstract, like data, so there's a tremendous amount of flexibility here that hasn't even begun to be exploited.

link via SmartMobs.

The only way Google will survive is to rebrand itself as a content-sharing portal.

But, alas, it doesn't want to be a "portal" at all. It doesn't want to tie any of its many services together in a coherent way like Yahoo is doing (especially with 360). It's doing everything portal-like while at the same time screaming that it's not a portal, doesn't want to be a portal, and isn't competing with portals.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Schmidt said Google would not seek to turn its website into a broader internet portal, a move that would take it into more direct competition with Microsoft and Yahoo.

How stupid is that? We're not talking AOL, here. We're talking about a new generation of content-sharing portals, a la Yahoo 360 on steroids. I'm sure Google knows that the average user spends less than 3 minutes on Google. For Yahoo, it's more than 5 times that.

Rule #1 at Google should be "Don't Be Stupid", not "Don't Be Evil". Lately they seem to be having trouble with both.

Google is already a portal. Their unwillingness to communicate what they already are to consumers (yes, consumers) will be their downfall. Google's Picasa, desktop search, GMail, Hello, Blogger, Keyhole, Adsense, Adwords, web search, news, mobile services, local search, discussion groups, freelance expert answers, catalog directory, their soon-to-be-released browser, and a whole lot more will show up at the bottom of Google searches if they don't follow in the direction that Yahoo is going.

Google needs to actually spend real money marketing themselves and communicating to you and me. Google's old strategies will not continue to work indefinitely. No one is talking about Picasa, Google's Flickr-like offering. People are talking excitedly about Flickr itself.

Advertising accounts for near 98% of Google's revenues. This would scare the fuck out of any reasonably intelligent company. Google should be ashamed to focus on search so much.

Why?

Not just because MSN and Yahoo are re-developing their search algorithms, but also because RSS feeds and other aggregators will kill Google searches (and revenue). Yahoo knows this and is embracing RSS and I'm sure will popularize it even more and begin to use it in ways that Google can't imagine. Google search will continue to remain as relevant as it is today, but RSS and other types of feeds (that effectively bypass search) are even more relevant. The only way to handle this is to become a content-sharing portal.

Where's the ?Add to My Google? button? Wait... where is My Google?

Yahoo is forcing a reluctant Google into being a portal but, alas, only Yahoo sees the big picture.

Now that Google is a publicly-owned company, it is mandated to grow, grow, grow. I guess it has no interest in remaining competitive. Google needs to diversify its revenue base, for one. But first it needs to get its head out of the sandbox.

Is Ask Jeeves really worth $2 billion?

Ask Jeeves owns Ask.com, Excite.com, and iWon.com. It also effectively purchased Bloglines through its purchase of Trustic in February.

Yahoo got a much better deal when it bought Overture in 2003 for $1.6 billion. For that purchase, it now has more than double the profits every quarter than it would have had otherwise.

However there's a bigger picture here, and I'm sure Barry Diller sees that.

They both realize that the future lay in bundled social services that tie together social networking, photo-sharing, blogs, and other content. If you want to retain your users, this is the way to go.

They seem to want to make personal blogs and the sharing of media as popular as email. They could even be thinking of these new services as a type of replacement (or enhancement) of email. I love email but, really, there's got to be a better way. And who isn't annoyed by spam? They could market these services as a spam-free, dynamic way to communicate and get everyone signing up. (No, most people in the US don't even know what blogs are, silly. You're in your own little world.)

Yahoo has Overture for PPC, search, mail, and is putting a new spin on blogs with its 360 service. It's also coming out with a publisher network to rival Google's Adsense. It has also recently acquired Flickr, a photo-sharing service (I'm guessing they paid $200 million, which fits in with previous purchases and the kind of value that Flickr brings to the table).

Google has Adwords for PPC, search, Blogger for blogs, GMail, and Adsense for advertising on blogs and other smaller sites.

Microsoft is coming out with its own blog offering, MSN Spaces, Hotmail, and will have MSN Adcenter (an Adsense rival).

Now, Barry Diller, a bisexual, gets to swing both ways. He also purchased ZeroDegrees, a social networking site, in 2004. That, on top of IAC's many other offerings.

And soon, there will only be a few of these companies around - those that can afford to keep up.

I have lost all respect for Gizmodo, Nick Denton's popular gadget blog.

Since receiving $75,000 from Sony late January for a 3 month sponsorship deal on Lifehacker, Nick's other blog, Gizmodo, has never been the same.

Sony-related articles on Gizmodo already number 21 for March, and there are still 11 days to go in the month. Last month, the count was 19. January showed 15 and December showed 9. And that's not including the non-article advertising.

In comparison, Gizmodo has 8 Apple-focused articles, 6 Nokia, and 4 for Windows & Microsoft.

Is Sony really that good? The articles seem to suggest that. But, really, the company has lost its bearings. The only good thing going for it is its game console and portable coming out. They are actually revolving around pretty-stupid, in my onion, and can't seem to figure out much.

I've visited Lifehacker once, and once was enough. A tech blog sponsored by a billion-dollar tech company just doesn't seem right.

Gizmodo is the slut that tastes funny. Read more about Nick selling out to corporate interests. (Too bad he couldn't even secure his own name as a dot-com. And dot-slut isn't yet available.) Get some style, Nick.

Engadget is a much better site for gadget/tech. At least it doesn't make your eyes hurt.

Jigsaw is in the business of buying and selling contact information to/from you.

For every good contact you give them you may get about $1, depending on what it goes for in their marketplace. They use a points system whereby buyers can buy points for $0.20 - $0.12 and sellers can sell points at $0.10.

All contacts in their database include a person's phone number, email address, and title. They don't say anything about how another person might feel having their private information traded back and forth like it was a stock. I guess they would refer to this as "pre-emptive networking".

What's next? Will I be able to sell my friends' contact information for $1 each, too? Sign me up! I've got a list of people I don't particularly care for.

I've always wondered why the old women to old men ratio was so high. Obviously, it's because women generally live longer. But why?

A longevity expert recently said that women are almost six times as likely to live to 100 than men because of their bleeding out iron when they menstruate. (Article)

"Iron is a critical factor in our cell's ability to produce those nasty molecules called free radicals that play an important role in ageing," Dr Perls, an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University, said outside the conference. "It may be as simple as having less iron in your body."

So, actually, my recommending to my girlfriend that she take iron supplements to make up for its loss during menstruation could actually be shortening her life! Excellent. I don't want anyone else sucking on her wrinkled breastisis when I'm dead. The doc didn't do a study on men with iron-poor diets, like Peter Pan, to see how long they usually live. I wouldn't be surprised if people like that lived to be 130.

A guy with a good book says that Women invented the concept of time. It is quite natural that they would have a better relationship with it that men do.

It's a fucking conspiracy, I tell you!

The problem with people receiving spam is usually that they use only 1 email address. They give everyone and everything [email protected] and then complain that they get too much junk in their inbox everyday.

Here's my solution:

1) Register a domain at an inexpensive registrar. (If you pay more than $9, you're getting ripped off.)

2) Spend $3/month for a hosting account like this one where you can get 1GB of space and a catch-all email address.

3) After you're done signing up and pointing the domain's DNS setting to your new host, set up your email client (with many modern hosts it's a one-click process from the control panel if you're too stupid or lazy to figure it out by yourself).

4) Now, here's the most important part. When you give someone an email address, make it unique. If you register at Corbis.com, for example, use [email protected] in the registration field.

5) Receive email as you normally do, in Outlook Express, Eudora, or whatever. When you see that you are receiving spam addressed to a particular email address go to your email control panel at your host (or using Outlook) and BLOCK that field. Example: if company X has sold your email address (which, inventively, you provided them with [email protected]) then you can just filter out any email coming in that has that email address int he "to" or "cc" field.

6) shut up about spam

My spam count (over 10+ domains and countless email addresses) is never more than 3 per day because of this very method that I have been using for years and years. Works like a charm.

Every blogger in blogspace knows that Adsense sucks. Not many speak up about it. Afraid of getting banned from Google?

Most likely, Google is ripping you off. They won't even tell you what percentage you're getting. That's so funny. With any other company you would simply refuse to do business with them. With Google you're just taking a beating willingly. The reason they don't tell you is because it's so fucking low, you would be pissed.

Bend over, my friend! I'm going to wow you with my colorful logo and cool algorithms before I punch you in the ass. Behold! A nifty little script to install on your Blog and provide us with half a billion in Adsense revenue to add to our ever-growing Adwords pile of cash. You keep blogging, we get rich. Isn't life grand?

Are you serious?!?! Any Adwords advertiser (the system used to display your Adsense) knows that the 'content' part of their campaigns sucks big time. An ad that gets a 5-10% click-through ratio on Google search is lucky to get .8-1% on your blog. The shit's not targeted, and not interesting. They're raking in the big bucks, anyway, so they don't really care about you. As long as you remain interested in the possibility of making $20 next month with your blog and maintain faith in the Google brand they've got you.

Really, they should call it "AdCents" and get over with it.

What Google should do is let the publishers know exactly what percentage they're getting. Then they should increase the percentage to a fair 50%. (I'm guessing it's about 5-8% now from my Computor's calculations).

I don't get what the new trend is making some category terms large than others, a la Technorati peanut butter sandwiches. I'd rather encounter an old X-10 minicam popup than to see that gruel on your website. Threadwatch tells us that Folksonomic tagging is good for search marketers, but is it good for searchers? Sure, tagging is good for searchers. But making some tags larger than others is not.

What would Amazon look like if it adopted the same system? Pretty horrible (and much more unusable), if you ask me. They'd be much better off just adopting the extensible metadata (tags) and not playing around with the font size.

Yes, some categories have more content than others (obviously).

That doesn't mean that there will be a proportional amount of persons interested in each of those categories. Meaning, most of your visitors will probably be frustrated.

When you treat each category equally you enable the user to make their own decisions about what they want to see. Some of the Technorati tags on the tags page, for example, are very difficult to see. Some of them aren't even listed (e.g., 'wikipedia'). But, nevermind, it looks cool. And it's new.

These are the same people (e.g., David Sifry of Technorati) who preach about the Long Tail of searching and the web, but don't understand the concept of niche visitors.

Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.

Don't be too shy to admit your stupidity.

Terry Schiavo.. who the fuck cares???

Why doesn't Trump stop over-promoting himself and admit that he's been bankrupt since I was 20 years old? Tacky bitch has no sense of style.. gold everywhere. Shit, save some money and shut the hell up. Who is he trying to impress? He actually looks better with his toupee on.

Speaking of rusty toupees.. you would think Bill Gates could afford a better toupee. It looks pretty darn good from the front. Just don't look at it from the side. That's a dead giveaway that no one ever mentions because we're all in awe of his vast fortune.

Did you ever stop to wonder if the Japanese originally came from another planet? I mean.. their bodies are shaped so much differently (look at their legs). And everyone knows that Tokyo is really a city modeled after their technologically-advanced homeworld. Or maybe it's us that are the aliens with big glands from planet Alphabet Soup 9.

Black comedians: shut the fuck up about being black. Fat comedians. Same to you. We know you're black or fat. So what? Are you that uncomfortable? Tell me something original.

I swear.. if you look into Bush's eyes you'd think you were looking at a psycho crackhead. Are his eyes crossed, or something, or is he just that high on schizo meds?

People's televisions should automatically self-destruct if left on for more than 3 hours at a time.

Forget about charity for poor children in other countries. Eat me! That's the breaks. That kind of charity just encourages poor societies as a whole to not be responsible for their offspring. If you saw the way they treated their own kids, you wouldn't give shit, either. If you can't provide for your kids, don't have them. Your roaches aren't my problem. Let's think about poor grandma and grandpa next door who we seem to have negleted in favor of those cute little dirty kids in foreign countries. Many of them live in horrible conditions and are physically abused, not to mention starving. Let's not treat them too well, though. We don't want to encourage society to put out more of them.

Ben Affleck is going to be penniless in 10 years. And I'm going to laugh my fucking head off. Bling bling!

Where's my Virgin Galactic lottery ticket? I don't mind paying $20 for a chance to win a trip to outer space. Dumb-ass entrepreneurs, always waiting for someone else to think of good ideas.

Cousin Arnold. You and your wife, Maria, have been planning your 2008 presidency ever since you two met. I admire your long-view approach. But stop using language from your fucking films. This isn't Hollywood anymore.

View blogs.. literally.

Wait for the images to load. See something interesting? Hover your mouse cursor over the image and read the original text from the blog that it came from.

This would be perfect for an Amaztype-type service. Show me the cover of the book, then give me a summary.

Are you ready? For this?

They will come in droves.

That's actually a good thing. Without AOL, we'd be accessing all 3,500 internet sites in an advertiser-free world on 56k modems.

Why can't social networking sites bother to network with one-another? Are they that anti-social? As long as they don't they will never be much more than a novelty. To be truly useful they need to do more in the way of bringing together not only people but more of what people do with their lives. I'm not just talking tags, here.

Tribe, for example, allows you to view events, classifieds, groups, etc. But it doesn't really link any of that together. And that's one of the better sites out of many.

I can't think of a larger publicly-accessible database of people, places, and things than Google. However, its vast database is actually quite disparate and scatter-brained. It does not contain a single, reliable identifying method to link you with what you need to be linked to no matter how good you think it is at finding what you're looking for. Google still has to search through hell and high water for it.

A unique identification code for every event, person, place, and thing is the next logical step. It's where the future is headed and we might as well go there now. There's simply too much to keep track of to not have a unique way of identifying something you're related with.

Wikipedia is the perfect platform on which to bring everything under the sun together. It is already well on its way, with hundreds of thousands of user-submitted articles and bits of information. This could easily be extended to include, for example, the man sitting in the cafe, the cafe itself, the event he's waiting for in the cafe, and the book he's reading while he waits.

Every person, place, thing, and event would be assigned a unique ID (this can be automatically done for both new and current entries). One could then form or enable the formation of a relationship with anything in the database merely by copying and pasting the ID. Put it in your blog profile, mobile phone, an email, feed reader, or other field in your client. It will automatically know what it is because of its categorically-oriented ID, and how to organize it in your profile. You could even select the type of relationship you have with it ("relationship key") from a list of relationship types.

I could, for example, create an event in Wikipedia and then send its unique ID in an email or post it on my website. Others could then import that into whatever type of client they're using and know, immediately, everything about the event. Because of this unique type of information aggregation-by-ID they can know that the place where we're meeting has delicious French pastries and closes at 5PM on Saturday or that John, one of the attendees, owns the cafe and will give us a 20% discount (he also likes to play his classical music collection). If, later on, you wanted to aggregate all of that information into a blog post, Flickr, your PodCast, or ID-tag an email in Gmail all you would need to do is paste the ID. This has a tremendous immediate applications in schools and universities, not to mention everywhere the access of information is involved.

Google is great for searching. But wikipedia could be excellent for finding something specific, then using that information efficiently and dynamically in ways that we cannot now imagine.

Following up to the article yesterday about how Google should include more of its offerings on its main page, apparently they had this up in their Google Labs for a short while, according to tuaw.

The bottom of the page read:

"Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X rocks. Homage to you."

Is it really that hard for them to come up with something original, or are they really not copying Apple but Microsoft?

While we await blogger-turned-beggar Kottke to psyche everyone out and announce his advertisers, we must first congratulate him on being #4 Yahoo result for "begging blog". (When he's sleeping his ranking falls to #6.)

As Jason "Sally Struthers" Kottke mentions in the note section of the PayPal form:

In considering an amount, try $30 on for size. It's $2.50/mo. over a year and it'll qualify you for one of the nifty gifts being given away. For you, $2.50 is a coffee in the morning, a magazine at the newsstand, or a beer at the pub but in the aggregate, it will help me immensely. But any amount -- from $5 to several hundred million dollars -- is welcome and appreciated.

So, anyone searching for a begging blog will surely find him.

I'm surprised my dirty mouth hasn't inadvertantly made HNTB the #1 result for "asshole blog".

Come to think of it.. Google needs to go back to its "beta" days. It needs to figure out how to be smart again.

blog comment spam
they can't seem to figure this one out. Duh! Ignore the 'name' part of the comment. A billion-dollar company shouldn't suffer the same problem as a Daypop or a Feedster.

autolink
...still not communicating to the webmaster community, and the internet community as a whole. As I mentioned before, signs of Google's self-destruction. Why would you simply not care to uphold and maintain the integrity of your near-perfect reputation? That is googolistically illogical.

irrelevant results
somewhat excusable, considering the hard work is a machine's job. but how about a Craigslist-type "relevant?" feature on the results page (a tiny button would work) that lets the community filter out spam or simply irrelevant results?

the 3 month wait
new websites generally have to wait 3 months to be shown in Google's search results. They've gotten a bit better at this, but there's still a long way to go. This site is already visited by over 100 people per day and isn't even 3 weeks old yet. By the time it shows up on Google I may have retired already. There are lots of other websites worth visiting that you won't know about until a few months from now. Yahoo is a new site's friend. Being #1 and #2 for a mis-spelled search term isn't bad, indeed.

fear of clutter
because Google wants to stick to its clutter-free look, you actually have to dig for many of the services that Google offers. Not only is there this but there's also this. Not to mention Zeitgeist They forget that most users aren't geeks and haven't memorized all of its useful functions. Mom doesn't know about any of it. Neither does little Johnny, for that matter.

the competition
kicking ass. Yahoo will prevail, simply because of its more human element. (The element that makes everything more useful.) To me, Google is just a faceless machine with no personality. Google is just inspiration. Nobody uses the Betamax anymore.

Hundreds of PhDs at Google. I guess 95% just sit around all day picking their noses and jacking each-other off.

Google needs more than just Adwords as a cash cow. Yahoo has figured this out, fortunately. The market may not be so forgiving of Google if its Adwords revenues take a dive when its first-it-is-laughed-at replacement comes along. I'm sure most advertisers won't like its new format. I know I won't.

Send Google back to its own labs for a re-work. Let me know when it's ready.

I'm still waiting for someone to create a web search based on the Google API that displays results on one line only with the keyword(s) in bold. Not everyone wants to see the URL or the page file size, or even its keyword-in-context text. I fear that Google's results are becoming more and more useless due to the efforts of certain search engine optimization parties that don't mind being irrelevant (or just Google's algorithm being off. Maybe this is why some ads on Google have keywords that consistently get a +25% click-through rate - the ads are oftentimes more relevant).

Instead of scrolling further and further down a bulky search result list for many keywords that the SEO guys target, just show me more of what I want to see. I played video games when I was a kid, so my eyes are pretty quick. The 1-line trick would be useful.

This should be part of Google's user preferences, but it ain't.

Really, they need to liven up their core product and give users more options to display and sort what it does best before their search box becomes irrelevant.

This site uses the Amazon API to display books, music, and DVD titles from Amazon in a novel way. At the end of the search the images form out your search term.

Too bad it's not really useful.

I think a display more like a grid of bookcovers (more like a physical bookstore) with the ability to organize them in multiple ways would be useful. Each book's background would have a color that co-ordinates with how popular, how well-reviewed, or how much on sale each book is. In a store with over 1 million books, it would be nice to see a whole lot more on one page. And don't be too shy to add your Amazon affiliate ID to each link.. we know you need money, too.

I'm convinced that 'blogs' are a stepping stone to a much greater kind of tool just as bulletin board systems (BBSes) were a stepping stone to what is now the internet.

Slate makes mention of something similar to what I'm thinking about. They call it newsmashing, pointing to an old annotation tool called iMarkup.

An extension of the blog-as-network concept would be taking the blog itself and internetworking it out to the actual websites where they want the discussion to occur. This type of 'direct blogging' would, I believe, allow for a greater intensity to develop surrounding whatever is being blogged about.

The HowNotToBlog website would, for example, only be a gateway or placeholder to the HowNotToBlog electron cloud. Kind of like bit torrent sites (TorrentSpy.com, for example) holding only the files necessary to download what you're looking for from other locations outside of the site itself - a reference point. The HowNotToBlog .whtevr file would be downloaded from here (or anywhere) and then you would use your next-generation blog reader to browse the many other locations where HNTB conversations are taking place.

In effect, you wouldn't even need a website to blog. Just a piece of software that lets you participate in endless communities of web existence. Blogging would go from one-to-many to many-to-many. We see part of this now in community blogs like Metafilter where you have many people contributing to the community's content. However, most of the Metafilter community doesn't participate at all - they just sit and watch the conversation taking place. Immense social capital is being wasted right now simply because the tools aren't there yet. But the next generation Blog is right around the corner.

Your Blog Universe reader/writer would filter out all of the other blogs conversations, or channels, that you're not interested in, on the website you're looking at. So, each website would actually be a kind of portal to endless, networked conversations. I could go to the FoxNews website and comment on a recent article and view the comments and annotations made by others in my particular community. Persons involved in another type of public or private community (say, the conservative homemakers community) would not see my community's postings unless they chose to. The differences in preferences would insure that no communities, except for the very smallest, exist in silos.

I may have a different view of Joan's graduation photos on Flickr than her grandma Sally in Georgia. She may not want to read what I think of Joan in her high heels. It may be her granddaughter. Joan's family could see one version of the photos and comment on them, etc., and my horny toads and I could see another version with more humorous versions of the photos. As well, her family could post private information like phone numbers, messages, and additional photos without anyone else seeing. The possibilities are endless.

The reader would categorize posts and other media like photos, videos, documents, so that it's not too messy. You could also chat with others, leave session-activated private messages, view XML feeds from related sites, etc. The technology is here already. It's just not put together in such a way.

iMarkup is a nice tool, to be sure. However, it's taking us back to the 60s when Engelbart was annotating websites and couldn't do much else. I'm talking dynamic peer interaction, here. (No, Yahoo 360 won't accomplish this.)

Blogs today don't really create communities or much peer interaction, either. They're more a tool that encourages interaction with others. The next generation of blogs and blogging won't be based on websites at all. We thought of networking the BBSes and other networks together more cohesively and that was great. Now it's time to do the same for all of the disparate conversations that continue to result.

ebay, 25% owner of Craigslist, has launched kijiji, a Craigslist clone for parts of Asia and Europe. All of the satellite kijijis are non-english, so I guess that's what makes it different.

First off, the name is really the wrong name. And, they're a bit late to the game. Not only are they late, they brought the wrong equipment. Craigslist is a community site. It's not a corporate-looking website or one that's trying to hide that's it's owned by a billion-dollar daddy.

A quick look at the WHOIS for the domain tells us:

eBay Inc. (OWMARHRDID)
2145 Hamilton Avenue
San Jose, CA 95125
US

I guess ebay is assuming that if it builds a community site with no real purpose, then people will come. Pretty much the main reason for the popularity of Craigslist is through word-of-mouth and Craigslisters from S.F. moving to other cities and asking for a local site. I can't even think of a reason anyone would want to post on kijiji.

'kijiji' is going at it from the wrong direction. ebay is trying to do too much. It wants a community site (no doubt to eventually integrate auctions in it) but ebay doesn't know shit about person-to-person interaction. Customer service at ebay is horrible. Has anyone ever tried to find out how to send in a support ticket or get some help from a real person? Even my lame blog has easy access to user assistance. (Granted, it's to give you a slap in the face, bitch!)

And who the fuck thought to build a site for Quebec in French only, with no choice for English? Do they even do their market research? Maybe that was part of the Craig$li$t deal...

I'll give them 6 months to forget about 'kijiji'

Because Google now sucks, they have not spoken up regarding the autolink debacle.

They're trying too hard, and failing. Yahoo and Microsoft are fast gaining momentum with a shitload of new competitive offerings.

Google is now making a big mistake by not being part of the autolink discussion. Microsoft backed down from Smart Tags because of customers' comments. A sure sign of Google's impending demise is its decision not to.

Google has been a cold & inherently "evil" company ever since they went public. People are only now starting to realize it.

Modern capitalism is such a smelly whore with a bad case of bling bling. No matter who you are or how stupid you are or how awful you treat a business, they will still want your money.

This doesn't mean that you can call a customer service rep an a$$hole or something - you'll probably get hung up on or transferred into Siberia. Unless you're a new customer. New customers get the golden treatment no matter how rude, stupid, or ignorant they are. Companies will bend over backwards and still let you fuck them in the ass if you show them so much as a twenty dollar bill. That's because businesses don't care where their money comes from. It all looks the same to them.

I'm sure even Bill O'Reilly, the first a-hole on my alphabetized list of a-holes, can still get new phone service or open an account at any bank in the US, even if the company was filled to the brim by the most liberal of liberals. He might get some snot in his soup when he goes out to eat, but he'll still get his soup.

The capitalist whore has gone blind from a bad case of syphilis. Even GM and Ford did business happily with Hitler, among hundreds if not thousands of other companies at the time. Patti Vasquez will happily shine the floors of Dr. Evil's laboratory every night.

Like millions of other North Americans, I run a small business. (No, I'm not a paid assassin, in case you're wondering.) If a customer is being a prick, I let him or her know. And then I tell them that I don't want their business or their money.

Yes, I turn down business. It's my Rude Customer Policy.

Why do I want to waste time and effort with your stupid ass? Do you think I care how many legs you're missing and how much of a discount you want because you pay so much for medicines every month? Are you angry that it's been 5 minutes since you left me a voicemail at 1 in the morning or have sent me an email, and you haven't heard back from me yet? Go fuck your grocer! Take your business where they'll do anything for it.

Customers are choosy with whom they do business. Businesses should be, too.

"A judge ruled Monday that California's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional," Associated Press reports.

Now, thousands of gay men who just love to pound each other in the poop shoot will not fuck so much now that they're married. I'm sure the head of my department will want to move westward ho and settle down with some new Jack. Maybe then he'll stop looking so fucking tired every morn from the anonymous bang the night before.

Does this also mean that housing prices will drop in San Francisco because of the pool of available (and single) homosexuals will run dry? (And why are homosexual areas always the most expensive part of town?) Marriage is definitely not good for the economy. People double up and save! They start carpooling and shacking up, even sharing the grocery bill and blowing each other for FREE. Married gays won't even purchase condoms or cruise in bars on "American Idol" night anymore. California's Gay Dick Population (GDP) will drop like Steve's pants whilst dancing onstage at the Manhole last weekend.

All the crime, pollution, corruption, and crap that goes on in this country and Ma and Pa have to cry about "gay marriage" between two consenting people. Some innocent queen gets beaten to a pulp, or even killed, one day in their own backyard and they won't say much of anything. But when the same man wants to get married, they start yelling at the news and talking about how fags and Mexicans (and Mexican fags.. aye the worst, chica!) are taking over this country.

Could there be any other place in the world more segregated than the US? Truly, it's not homosexuals with something up their ass.

Want to beat the shit out of your woman one day but don't want to start too soon? She's a little too independant now. But soon she'll be completely under your control. That's because you'll learn how to physically and psychologically condition your property for total domination, from an expert!

Give orders effectively
Spank that ass!
Why raping your bitch is a good idea (It's not rape when you're having fun...)
...and more!

Two weeks after your first lesson, she'll be begging for more! Push her with a smile a few times at first. Then go back to grimacing, but push her consistently and reliably. Then she'll be coming to you like a dog wanting a piss! Men who can take control bring healing power to a woman's mind.

The man who takes control of a woman does just that. When it comes time to smack a woman's bottom he chooses the time, place, position, instrument, rhythm, duration, and the like. By doing so, he creates a contradiction in that, while very little he does at the moment pleases her, everything he does is for her. In the end, both he and she must understand that he is in control. The ritual is a contest of wills in which he wins, without doing her any permanent damage, and she respects him as a result.

It's all about love and kindness, you know.

For further brainwashing, give her a copy of The Surrendered Wife by some smiling white woman. Not only will she love it, it'll make your pathetic life a hell of a lot easier. Heck, you can even go fuck her juicy-looking sister now. She might even join you!

Stick that bitch in the international support network of controlled women. She'll learn:

1. Men should do the finances and women should be ignorant thereof, because only men know about money and how much we spend on hookers every month

2. Women should NEVER correct their husbands. Even if you're driving the wrong way down an interstate highway, The Surrendered Wife recommends your wife shut the fuck up and give you some head. (Guys... even that's worth the full price of the book, don't you think?)

3. Wives should say "Whatever you think" to whatever the husband says

And if you're just on the prowl for submissive, spineless and buxomed single automatons always keep a few copies of The Surrendered Single on hand. She'll be in your hands (and your cavernous pants) in no time. Order now!

AP reports that "thirty Muslims walked off the job at a Dell Inc. plant after alleging the company refused to let them pray at sunset".

YOU'RE WORKING IN A FACTORY. In the US, no less. What the ^^#@$ do you expect? Do you see any devout Christians praying the Psalms everyday? If they do, they don't make a big deal out of it. You want special treatment because your chosen faith is so demanding of you? Do you want to spend all day praying, or do you want to get paid? I thought so...

If they were Muslims that went out for a smoke and a short prayer, nobody would give a shit. Because they want to be as moslem as possible and bash their faith on the heads of other Americans in an American factory, people have a problem.

Here's the funniest part...

Muslims are required by their faith to pray five times a day. Most of the prayer times are flexible, but the sunset prayers must be said at dusk.

As if they all do. That's such BS. I've never personally known a Muslim that prayed even once a day. I knew several single Muslims from different countries that believed strongly in the Quran, but were actually expert whores. One girl I knew professed her devotion to her religion, then went out and had a baby with some guy out of wedlock (and with a non-muslim, at that). Another doesn't like to be in her predominantly Muslim country because she likes to get drunk every day.

How many more "devout" Muslims (usually wealthy) conveniently travel to the US every Ramadan? Fellow Muslims know that they do it and are living it up while they starve and get horny back at home, but nobody gives a shit.

These devout Muslims, if they really care to pray as freely as they want while working with the other infidells, should find another job.

My guess is, they're looking to sue Dell so that they, too, can live it up in the land of sour milk and honey.

C'mon CNN. You're still lost in the 90s for some reason. Still licking your wounds from an ass-kicking by a stupid fox? Is there anybody there?

Do something about it! You need a make-over. Big time! Start by changing your logo. It screams out, "NINETIES! I AM PATHETIC!"

Educated dumbasses.

Michael Jackson arrives late to court in his pajamas! Here's the story, if you can call it that.

The bitch just gets crazier and crazier. I feel sorry for his kids. (Did he have them to molest them, too?)

I don't buy the whole "ooh.. shit! What time is it?" story. He probably tried to flee and then his handlers, who aren't afraid of their skin color, took his ass back to court. Then they threw some pajamas on him to make it look like he was sleeping. The proof: he's wearing his little MJ shoes!

He was about to pull an OJ.

Gee, Mr. HNTB, how can I be a better blogger?

Well, Sonny, you have to start by having a niche. (Unless you're a celebrity blogger where people just come to sniff your ass because they have no life of their own.) Whether your niche is Disney, Porn, and Kitsch, or boobies, sex, and bigotry, you're bound to find an audience to share your fetish. When it doubt, talk about sex or politics - two topics guaranteed to get your fair share.

But don't worry, Sonny. If you don't have anything to talk about you can still blog. Just take a look at these fine examples here and here.

What if I'm just smart and political? I play chess at school, you know.

There's always room for smart and political, my boy. People will love it. Even if you're just pretending to be doing something important.

How can I become popular so that people will like me?

Well for one, you must kiss the asses of other bloggers frequently. Then, they'll take notice and link back to you, driving other visitors to your site. Those visitors that will stay will stay because they agree with your opinions and outlook, more or less. A natural following will develop over time.

But if you've become popular, remember to spruce up your format every once in a while and keep your blog up with the times. Otherwise you're going to gradually seep into the abyss of insignificance.

Gee, thanks asshole!

You're welcome, Sonny Boy! Happy blogging.. And don't forget to slip in a few ads for your friends along the way to blogging paradise! Try the new xTreme Slurpee while you're at it.

"In deciding to start my own little company of one...", Kottke writes in his blog.

Apparently, he's decided to take the advice of this blog and introduce advertising into his blog. But he wants to introduce the idea slowly.. like it was actually you, his faithful readers, that thought of it! How original.

He then goes on a whirlwind tour of other entities like Craig Newmark (of Craigslist fame) and Flickr, and how they magically put ethics before profits. If you say you do, you probably don't. But I'm sure you feel bad about taking money. Now you have no job.

What he's really saying is, "Thanks for the money, suckers. Now I'm going to get even more money advertising."

Here's one of the best quotes:

Google is aiming high -- focusing on the long term, trying not to be evil, taking on risk, not giving too much control of the company over to shareholders...

That's pretty funny. Whose illusion would that be, anyway? Whoever buys that crap, I guess. Google belongs to the shareholders. It is now their company to control. Many shareholders work at Google, true. But employees get human and sell out. I'm sure in the long term Google will end up like Microsoft, in the hands of mom and pop. And they don't give a shit about the "not being evil" part. They want a good ROI for their retirement and for their grandkids.

There are lots more people other there doing wonderful things with their business lives (37signals, the independent Mac developers like Ranchero, Delicious Monster, and Panic, etc.) but that's enough for now.

I'm sure it makes him feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

"Until next time", ladies and gentlemen. "Wait until you see the wonderful advertisers I've lined up."

Sly prick...

The pathetic saga unfolds. I wonder what effect this will have on his street cred. As long as other bloggers continue to kiss his ass (such as bloggers do), they won't mind.

p.s. I'm sure he's going to upgrade to a new 42" plasma with your money.

MSNBC mentions that Boy George, of 80's fame, has written (or probably, had written) ?Straight,? memoirs from his life.

Obviously, a promotional scheme to try and get attention for the book.

In it, mentions MSNBC salad, he calls Rosie O'Donnell a Pottery Barn lesbian for bankrolling a Broadway play about his life that they worked on, Taboo.

Obviously, he's angry that it wasn't a success. Where will he find money for his drug habit?

Besides, who the fuck cares about a has-been circus queen from the past? I only mention her/he/it because he's an easy target. Is that gay-bashing? I don't have a problem with gay.. I do have a problem with queens who pretend to be something they're not.

Wired news used to be a good, clean place to get your tech news from. But ever since the porn star news reporter, "Gina Lynn", came onboard... things have been a little different. (Ok.. she's not the Gina Lynn, but I'm pretty sure they're both using fake pornstar names.)

Now, instead of the regular news and on-time-every-time monthly rave about some new military gizmo we have to deal with a sex-deprived techie whose every article seems to be about cybersex.

First there was Fleshbot, the porn blog so often linked to by the Disney-and-Porn obsessed BoingBoing.net (did they ever figure out how to work their site?) Its popularity spawned dozens of copycat blogs trying to make their publisher's fetishes popular so they won't feel so bad about the size of their penises.

Wired.com, give me technology news. If I want to read something that will turn my private into a soldier I'll peruse Craigslist's WSW section.

Other blogs, you don't need to put in a picture of a new type of vibrator or a closeup of my vagina every week just to garner additional interest.

I suppose the only job a washed-up actress can get these days is playing herself.

I bet they bought her at a discount rate. Heck, she's probably doing it for free to get some publicity.

Watch out! If her show is successful we will see the return of Gary Coleman, the other midget from Fantasy Island (or is he DEAD?), and Corey "Crack Head" Feldman.

Hollywood is out of ideas again. How about a line of television shows based on successful movies if you can't think of anything?

The Netscape 8.0 beta is out.

So, what we've got now is three very similar products from basically the same sourceforge: Netscape 8, Firefox 1.1, and Mozilla 1.7.

What value does Netscape add to this mess? Besides taking the Firefox 1.0 platform and mucking it up with their own AOL shi7, they also made it less functional, made it 11MB (more than 2x heavier than Firefox) with no support for either themes or extensions, and with a butt UGLY user interface. In addition, its plugin to access IE's engine makes Netscape 8 vulnerable to the same security issues as IE regardless of what engine is being used. Talk about a waste of resources. Who's going to download and actually use this crap?

How could you "improve" on Firefox by messing it up completely?

Way to go, Netscape.

Users don't want bloat-ware, AOL/Netscape. They want less. Only you want more. You want your AOL crap to self-install on my PC (which is why you don't bother telling users about this on your product page). You want me to use AIM and other future AOL crap.

Does AOL still use IE for their browser? Does anyone still use AOL besides clueless suburban familes? Netscape went from browser company to AOL baby to low cost ISP. Now they are wasting time and effort on this browser. Why do they even still exist?

Netscape should have died a long time ago.

The Globe and Mail had, on page F9 a few weeks ago a short article about Hunter S. Thompson, who apparently was writing an expose -type book or piece on the 9/11 WTC demolitions.

Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn't always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He'd been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: "They're gonna make it look like suicide," he said. "I know how these bastards think . . ."

The New York Post also talks about it on March 4, "suicide fuels conspiracy buzz".

"There was a spent shell casing, but although there were six bullets left in the gun's clip, there was no bullet in the firing chamber, as there should have been under normal circumstances."

There was also a power down around the WTC buildings a couple of days before. Also see the video, "New York Firefighters Discuss Bombs in WTC Towers"

Funny, the Lone Gunman (X-Files spinoff) pilot episode on 3/2001 was about a WTC/airplane conspiracy.

The only conspiracy here is that the secret government wants a story on the WTC buildings being demolished by Bush & co. so that you won't think about his love monkey, Jeff Gannon.

If you haven't seen it already, check out the Paris Hilton Sidekick Simulator. A friend of mine, Albany Supereight, sent this to me. It's pretty damn funny.

People will never feel comfortable paying for Wi-Fi access at exorbitant rates. Who wants to be charged by the minute or hour.. or megabyte... just for the privelege of being outside the home?

When is someone going to come along with a nice little script that allows businesses to sell targeted text ads (like Google Adwords) to display to users surfing on their wifi networks for free?

Is broadband really so expensive that companies can only think of how to charge for the "luxury" of internet everywhere? They're missing the exponential value to business everywhere by limiting the natural outgrowth of being online at home.

In my example above the more you would like me to use your wifi the more money I could actually make you.

Businesses and enterprising citizens would be screaming to spread their wifi connections everywhere. The whole country would be blanketed with free high-speed wireless in less than 3 years.

To help the process, I wouldn't mind some kind of innocent tracking cookie in my jar that allows you to show me only those ads you're pretty sure I would be interested in. Don't show a lot.. perhaps rotate one ad (and one ad only) every 2-3 minutes. That way, I'd want to see what the next lone ad is, instead of wanting to avoid that section of my screen entirely. I think an ad scarcity model would work because I think most people would long for some kind of external message/validation.

Google or some other company would surely make a killing on such ads, guaranteeing their own future relevance in the process. I would almost say that Google needs this kind of growth if it wants exponentially greater profitability.

Continue to think of WiFi as a commodity, and you miss where the real money is. Traffic.

In China, Microsoft will start offering large discounts on its products to those who have bootleg versions and are willing to rat on their suppliers.

Who in their right mind would think of something like this? This is as stupid as Ballmer wanting to make PCs in China and India cheaper than the software you want on it.

The "discount" of 50% is still expensive for most Chinese, which is why the black market for software and other media thrives. Walk through any market in any good-sized city in Asia and you will find every kind of Microsoft product imaginable for $4 or less. (Even this is a little expensive.)

As far as they're concerned, the product is real (the CDs work 95% of the time, just like the authentic version - ok, so I know some people). So much for US companies losing billions to piracy - tell me how? Most of the people who purchase the bootleg versions would never in their lives have paid full retail price for it. In many large cities you can't even find a place that sells software. Much of the piracy that occurs is in internet cafes and other communal settings, where one bootleg copy is ghosted to every computer. A lot of students use Excel after class to work on a project, for example.

By the calculation of companies like Microsoft, every person who used a bootleg version was actually going to purchase the full retail version, but the bootleg was cheap and readily available so they purchased that, instead. This kind of tomfoolery sounds great in the news, but there's no substance behind it. It would be interesting to see some research done that reflected the reality of piracy in developing countries.

They should actually be thanking pirates for doing them a favor and ultimately helping their bottom line by the magic of free brand building and free advertising. They get $0 distribution and marketing costs all across Asia and South America, among other places. Consider it a promotional copy that got way out of hand. (But that's good under certain conditions, right?)

Here's the How for Microsoft...

If everyday Chinese are forced to buy Microsoft products, they wont. (Unless it's the same price as the bootleg - market forces are at work here. And there's no way to stop piracy in China. You've got to be kidding!)

If you crack down too hard (wasting much precious time and resources with nothing substantial to show for it in the end) then the market for FREE software will explode leaving you with no street cred in the largest consumer market in the history of humanity.

Let piracy flourish with Microsoft products in developing countries. Build your brand among the up-and-coming class. Educate them about how your crap smells a better than the free, low-class crap they could be using right now. You're Microsoft, dammit. "You want to be rich like Bill Gates? Then buy from Microsoft." Fuck Windows Longcock. Call it Windows VIP. Use slivers of real gold in the product packaging. (No pirates in their right mind would want to follow you.) Suck their little Chinese penises with every Enterprise Server purchase. They'll love it!

Then, when they're middle class enough to purchase your products, most of them will. If a few people who now could afford to purchase your products don't.. so what? Heck, I started using Windows when it first came out.. but I didn't actually buy it until I was older and could afford it. That first copy of your shi7 product made me very proud. I still love your shi7 products for some unknown reason. Even the Linux nerds keep multiple OSes and IE on their boxes.

My guess is that for every dollar companies like Microsoft, Time Warner, Macromedia, Adobe, Disney want lawmakers to think they're losing, they're probably only really losing about 5-10 cents. Firing a few thousand overpaid WASPs is a whole lot easier and cheaper than combatting international piracy.

They should just shut the hell up, focus on piracy in rich countries like the US and Europe, and devote more time and energy to building better products - the kind that are actually worth the pirates time and effort - and try to understand the value of a little creative disruption.

Embrace what China is. Don't work against it. It is changing. Are you?

Philip Winn talks about his experiences with the new Napster at Blogcritics.

In 5 years, who will remember either? The iPod's cool novelty will pass gas, and there will have been an even better device to come along that will start another wave of copycats. A small device with a full-color display that lets you experience music like people are starting to experience and share photos and blogs with variable pricing plans would do the trick.

The only great thing about mobile phones in the US is that you can purchase a subsidized one that would have cost you a lot more if you commit yourself to a service plan. (You're also locked, which would be a benefit to the media companies.) Europe, with it's much better and more flexible GSM legacy, is actually looking to the US companies as a model for expanded profitability.

Why not the same thing for an iPod Shuffle and regular iPod? $40 and $15 a month for 2 years for the Shuffle. You'll break about even with the first $40 on the Shuffle. Wrap it with a revamped Napster-like buffet music plan according to how much people are paying you every month, and by locking your users in you can at least stave off an attack from another hardware company with a better product until you get your engineering department in order.

In other words, give me a good reason to give you more of my hard-earned money. The illusion of cheap is good enough for most people, including the millions more who haven't bought your products because of the price.

I try not to smoke, myself, but this is what religion can do to people. Some people can't handle their own delusions, and this pastorale SOB is one of them.

Your God can reclaim Uranus and sop it up til hell freezes over. No need to worry, though. Such demons are only in your mind.

Without people like me and he, bitches like these wouldn't have anyone to promote and sponsor their short-comings. Bad ideas can only survive through the actions of well-meaning people. The best punishment for ignorant people is just to let them be - give them mind and they will subtract from you. We're all massively ignorant about something. Some of us are just more annoying about our ignorance and stupidity than others.

Anytime I hear "he" in reference to "god", I know I'm talking to The Chosen Brainwashed. When they start talking about gays or 'unwed sex' then it's time for me to jump backwards three times and douse myself in mineral water to cleanse myself of intellemotional filth.

Without reference to Him, this world would be a much better place. There'd be a few billion more of us, but I think we can handle it.

Obviously, the "pastor" Fred Phelps is sexually attracted to Jesus and wants to suck from the lamb's teet. Why does he have a problem with that? I personally don't have a problem with "gay", as long as it's not me whose teet you're trying to suck.

To prove his manliness, he's had 13 children. And he told all of them that Mr. Rogers is in hell right now.

I will personally donate $5,000 to the Westboro Baptist Church, $1,000 towards counseling for all 13 of the Phelps' kids, and apologize in this space for being possessed by Satan herself if Mr. Phelps publicly kisses an image of the God he supposedly loves so much.

How far does his love go?

One solution to the 'Happy Birthday' copyright.

Sing it in Spanish.

?Feliz cumplea?os a t?!
?Feliz cumplea?os a t?!
?Feliz cumplea?os a ......!
?Feliz cumplea?os a t?!

and if the federalis bust down your door and hassle you for a bribe and your virgin wife is out blowing someone else, try this version on them...

? Cumplea?os feliz!
? Cumplea?os feliz!
? Cumplea?os feliz!
? Cumplea?os feliz!

That's right.. sing the song backwards!

Or, just give ASSCAP your middle finger like we all do with every other song.

Here's the history behind the song.

Less than 3 days of sitting on the toilet thinking what am I going to do with my life, registering a domain just for the hell of it, then launching How Not To Blog to unleash hell like Maximus, one of the blogs down below gets a mention on Corante.

...If you like a bit of bile with your breakfast, it's worth checking out the site: How Not to Blog launched on March 1 and in less than 72 hours, has already given Bronx cheers to Google, Jason Kottke, BoingBoing and the Apple iPod Shuffle.

Makes me sound like a bat out of hell. If my calculations are correct, I will be burnt out after 18.5 days. Like a horse going too fast out of the gates, or grandma getting up too fast out of bed to make your bile breakfast.

I didn't know anyone was reading this shi7, especially not within so little time. I guess there's just no privacy nowadays. The problem with most blogs is that they're usually dishonest about their surroundings. And that's strange because normally in faceless social interactions people are much more honest because of the enhanced sense of anonymity. But I guess when you have your name plastered everywhere on your blog you gotta kiss some ass to build up your cred points. Or perhaps I'm confusing angst with honesty, and not realizing the true value of social capital. Geeks have to make up for their lack of social grace somehow, so it might as well be kissing ass online.

Unfortunately, I have no Bronx cheers for Dominic Basulto or Corante New York. I don't even know the kok-sucker.

Look forward to more oddly self-congratulatory posts like this one. At least for the next fortnight.

Our dear Canadian neighbors at Ludicorp have struck web gold with their new photo-networking service, Flickr.

Too bad they dropped the ball on their massive multiplayer Game Neverending. It had a certain charm I hadn't found since the early (really early) days of the net. A real people place.

They also dropped mention of the project from their corporate website, so I'm assuming they're not going to pick it up again now that they're flush with cash. GNE does have a page on Flickr, however. (Who the hell thought of the name, Flickr? Obviously not the same person who thought of Ludicorp.. I have to think about it twice every time I type it. From now on I'll just say "FKR" for short. The name sucks. [Yes it does, bitch!])

I propose all of the hundreds of Game Neverending fans scattered around the globe storm the gates of Ludicorp to proclaim the infinite game undead. We'll buy it out from Ludicorp for the token sum of $1 and then we'll find a way to turn a profit. Maybe McDonalds will want to stay competitive and open up shop in the game and we'll all save up money to buy objects by flipping in-game burgers and such. It's all about synergy.

I hope Stewart (nice guy, by the way.. no time for love, though) and his are thrown lots of clean money to roll around naked in.

In Long Island, the South Huntington Public Library started lending out iPod shuffles loaded with audio books from the Apple iTunes store.

Great marketing gimmick (are libraries still in business these days?), bad vehicle to actually make it useful.

Who the ^#@# can make good use of a random, faceless flash device that looks more like a vibrator than something you can shake other parts of your body to? It's cool factor is limited to it being a product from a cool company. That does not make you look cool.. that makes you look stupid.

Random is the New Order

They actually think a severe limitation of such a cheap device can pass as a cool new feature. That's not good business sense. Taking choice and selection away from the user makes the device ultimately useless. The idea is that the user will only load songs that they like - but how long can you frustrate a user before they purchase a better player with a display for $99?

Can you imagine Microsoft coming out with a media device for your living room that plays movies at random? Granted, a song is over much more quickly but consumers want instant gratification. The only gratification people who buy this will have is the joy of their existence being validated when they see other people with the same white box. You can be cool, too, for only $99.

For that, it's ingenious. It's a great way to sell lots of cheap stuff from SE Asia and another way to introduce poor people to the Apple brand. They'll sell millions because most people have no sense of self (or much savings). The ones who really want a good device that they can actually use will buy the regular iPod.

But, hey, for $99 I'll buy it for my little brother.

The current issue of the Economist continues to make mention of US Dollar's future prospects, which at this point look pretty bleak. Korea is now starting to diversify its holdings. If China does, we're screwed. (Guess who's holding the trump card in international policy?)

The dollar fell against leading currencies. Markets were spooked by the decision of the Bank of Korea to diversify its currency holdings, increasing speculation that Asian central banks were moving away from the dollar as a reserve currency (this would cause a problem for America in financing its current-account deficit). The greenback recovered somewhat after the Bank of Korea said its decision did not mean it would sell the American currency.

The major problem is that Asian countries, with China in the lead, are pumping too much money into the US economy, via treasury bond purchases. They do this because the US is so fucked up when it comes to managing spending. If Asian countries don't do this, their own economies would deeply suffer.

Letting the dollar fall against the Euro and other major currencies is not a good way to reduce the current-account deficit (now stands at $603 billion). Prudent spending and planning is the only way to save the US from going to hell.

Unfortunately, with a mighty a77hole at the helm, the only prosperity we will see in the future is on the battlefront.

No solution here but personal ones - it's a bad bet that anyone at top would come to their senses soon enough. Hedge.

Just follow my 6 Point Plan to Not Getting Screwed in the Ass (unless that's your thing)

1) Open a foreign-currency account. Euros is probably a good idea, though you could also invest in China by opening a stock trading account in Hong Kong. My money is on India, though, as soon as they build some roads and install electricity. Chinese people want to dominate. Indians want to integrate. The age of domination is over. The US fucked it up last and we have turned off the lights.

2) If the dollar fell 8% against the Euro the quarter previous, be sure to somehow recoup at least 8% of your income the next quarter. This could mean selling the shit in your garage, or selling someone else's shit. Or start an online business in a hot sector for $1,000 then sell it a year later to a lazy businessperson. Whatever. You don't want your money sitting in the bank. If your interest rates are lower than inflation you're losing money.

3) Fall in love with a well-off man and/or woman and lead them on for several months, getting them to buy you expensive things. If you do this several times per year, you won't have to work at all. You can just be a lazy, no good bitch with a nice TV and fat bank account.

4) Invest in fine wine. The good stuff always goes up. A good monkey in the middle will handle everything for you. A small investment in fine wine every quarter will help you recover your economic losses.

5) Tithe 100% of your earnings to your local Church. If you believe in the Lord, you'll get at least double your money back in 60 days in some way or 'nother. This is the best damn investment out there. Too bad they don't send you statements fiscal year end.

6) Stop reading pointless blogs like these and use the time to plan your escape from prison so you can actually make more than 11 cents per day, you spoonless lizard!

Jason Kottke, blogger extraordinairre, has resorted to begging. Jason recently quit his job as a circus clown in order to blog full time. He has a page where he takes Paypal payments and credit cards, and checks.

I almost donated $300 to his cause. NOT!

Get a f557ing job, moron! Do you think people will continue to support your pathetic cause? Why is it pathetic? Not because you're not a good blogger (you are) but because you haven't sold out yet. I know, I know.. you see the on-rush of other people making a nice living with their blogs (mostly through advertising and other sponsorships) and figure you can do the same thing. But you want to do it with a clean conscience, not accepting any advertising whatsoever. Only subsisting on the kindness of others through their financial contributions.

If it works, hundreds of other popular bloggers (read: not me) will try the same thing and the market for begging bloggers will be saturated, driving your profit margins below the grave and into a Chinese sweat shop.

Fucking advertise and get it over with. You already advertise yourself like a cheap hooker with lime-green spandex. And you advertise your ideas everyday, as well as products, services, people, and other websites you like. I can't count all the ads on your begging page in good time. However, I did catch your referral code in your Movaeble Type link pointing to www.movabletype.org/track/?kottke .. nice. It looks like you're a whore after all). You link everywhere buy up my grandpa's fat ass. But you will not do it for money. (At least, not yet.)

Pathetic sites like this one can't do it because nobody would want to advertise here. (I could always install Google Adsense. Heck, they'd take anyone.) Sell out already!

I will support your sponsor, but I will not sponsor you.

Great. One of the earliest color photos and it's of a guy taking a leak. There's some history for you. Heck, he might even be some famous general or something.

So many people see Google as god-like, they who can do no wrong.

When Google tries out new tools from their wonderful labs, some people have a fit, others gape in wonder (link).

Googling 'google evil' we find an article from IT world wondering if Google has opted-out of their abstract policy to do no evil. We also find Google Watch's page (see bottom).

Google's toolbar is what I will call 'evil creep' disguised as an enhancement to the user experience. "Wow it's so cool" delights. Everyone is happy. Google is a multi-billion dollar company whose concern is now to shareholders, not the public. Much like slowly boiling the frog, Google now has an obligation to exploit the respect and admiration of millions of its users (though the frog never had so much fun).

I remember America Online back in the day, so respected because it offered an easy way for thousands of people to navigate online when few others besides Prodigy and Compuserve could not have foreseen the internet's potential. Who doesn't know someone now who got burned and/or screwed by the company? Simply saying "AOL" is enough to make most smart people laugh uncontrollably. It is the nature of for-profit companies to take advantage of their customers, and squeeze them for all the money they can.

Google is no different now that they are public. They are obligated to turn higher profits than they did the year before. Their model rests almost entirely on Adwords profits, which is probably not a good idea. Soon the multitudes of fraudulent clicks will put a big dent in most of the PPC engines out there. That's what happens when you allow anyone to publish and make money from displaying your ads. Brazil and Romania Clicking Crus in the house!

I'm pretty sure Larry Page and Sergey Brin would have wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. I guess they'll just settle for watching their baby burn shi7 up while starting some other cool ventures in 2008.

Don't get me wrong. I would screw you, too, and invent things like GMail and such. It's nothing personal. It's just business.

It turns out that gay men are better at navigating than straight men.

Researchers at the School of Psychology, University of East London, have determined that homosexual men make better use of landmarks while navigating.

Could it be because most landmarks are shaped like penises? Any gay man can easily steer you down any wide or narrow metropolis with ease. All he would need is some KY.

How many times have I heard this from a passenger when driving?

Me: "So, do I go straight or turn?"
Not Me: "Never straight, baby! Gaily forward!"

The next study should try to find out why so many IT professionals are closeted homosexuals.

Hello world. This is the first post in the new blog. Well, what is a first post in a blog, anyway?

Let?s go over to BoingBoing and see what their first post was. Some shit sbout Streettech from Jan, 2000. Their next post wasn?t until 1 month later. Lazy f*cks. At least they got their act together to become the #1 blog. For now, at least.

What else do I need besides a lame first post? Right, categories.

I took the liberty of stealing a few categories from this guy ?cuz I couldn?t think of my own quickly enough. (I googled ?blog categories?. How much of a neuro synapse substitute is Google? It?s made us 10x smarter and a bit dumber at the same time.)

I guess the above rambo qualifies as the official start of the ?How Not To Blog? blog. This isn?t an instructional blog or one about weblog standards. It?s the offspring from a Metablog/meets/F*ck you-f*ck me f*ckfest (although not yet, technically, until I have crystallised the meaning of the blog)