How Not To Blog ?

Sony Chief Financial Officer Takao Yuhara states, "For the year end sales season, simultaneously building up both the PlayStation Portable system in America and Europe as well as the next generation PlayStation is one option that we have."

I plan on purchasing the PS3 when it comes out (it'll be my first gaming console purchase ever). The thing kicks ass!

The new Sony Playstation 3 will have one 3.2GHz Cell processor for a total system performance of 2.18 teraflops (FLoating point OPerations per Second). That'll be about 2x as fast as the Xbox 360.

I'm guessing it will cost somewhere around $300-$350 US.

The fastest supercomputer in the world is the IBM Blue Gene/L, which runs at 70 teraflops, with peak operation of about 91 teraflops.

The owner of the first Playstation 3 will possess ~100th fastest supercomputer in the world. At a cost of a few hundred dollars.

Buy 100 PS3s at a cost of around $35,000, mesh them together, and you have the world's fastest supercomputer, running at 218 teraflops, more than twice as fast as the Blue Gene/L and much faster than the human brain, which reportedly processes information at 100 teraflops per second. Included in the price is 15 terabytes of storage (from 100 Blu-Ray discs), which itself is worth several thousand dollars.

The Solipsis P2P Virtual World project aims to set up a massively shared virtual world on using your PC.

Looks boring thus far. But the best thing about the project, of course, is that it's open source. It could evolve into just about anything.

[See an article about it from CNET]

Spid.ero.us allows you to view the latest social-bookmarks from del.icio.us, spurl, and furl in your browser's sidebar.

Works with Firefox, IE, and Opera.

Gap should take a lesson from HowNotToGap. Their new business venture, Forth & Towne, is too fucking difficult to spell. Or is that the point? Did I miss out on the Cool memo?

I'm getting all their traffic because of my previous post. People are searching for every variation of the spelling under the sun. HNTB is currently the #1 and only result for the following variations on MSN search:

fourthandtown, fourthandtowne, forthandtown, forthandtowne, 4thandtown, and 4thandtowne

I'm even confused myself what the proper name of the store is going to be. (I wouldn't shop there but some old guy in Utah gives me a large sum of money to talk shit about anything I want, and this one's easy. The Mormon bastard doesn't even have inter-net.) I suppose only Gap's target market, 'sophisticated' white Amerian women aged 35+ (whew!), are sophisticated enough to find the sophisticated URL in its exclusive location in a web cul-de-sac.

Me thinks their play on words will backfire. The definition of "forth":

1. Forward in time, place, or order; onward: from this time forth.
2. Out into view: A stranger came forth from the crowd; put my ideas forth.
3. Obsolete. Away from a specified place; abroad.

"Gap" is easy. They could have saved themselves the trouble and chosen a name that wasn't difficult, like Aging Bitches (or Ageing Bitches in the UK.. ok, so it's not that easy).

Backpack is a new email app (not yet launched) that promises to make your imaginary to-do list easier to update.

Need to send yourself a to-do item from your cell phone or Blackberry? Email it to Backpack and it will be converted into a to-do item with a checkbox. Need to send yourself a text note plus some images and even a file? No problem ? send it all in a single email and Backpack will post the note, thumbnail the image(s), and attach the file(s). Clean, quick, effortless ? and familiar. There?s barely an easier way to get content online.

I don't suspect that this sort of service will be useful when compact PDA-style mobiles become ubiquitous.

Wippit, a music download service, will start to offer movie downloads with no timit limitations, starting from 99p (about $1.40).

Currently, Wippit offers legal music downloads for 29p a track from a 60,000 track library and has an unlimited download plan for ?4.99 a month (~$7.50).

Do you really need to see all of your favorite sites on one page?

There's something big to this idea (flat-aggregated media), but I don't know what it is yet.

Gap, Inc's profits are dropping and they're getting desperate for sales. With their new store, Forth & Towne, they hope to recapture one demographic they've missed more of. 35+ year-old female who used to like the Gap.

I think it would help their current sales if they improved the quality of their apparel. I've never understood why Gap stores are so popular among young folk. I think Gap clothes are made like shit and don't last 2 weeks wearing and washing them a couple of times.

Would it be difficult to spend a few more dollars and make the same shirt or pants higher quality? They'd never do it. It's better for you to spend a few more dollars yourself and buy something that's well made. (Which is one reason why the older demographic left the store - the other reason being the clothes are for kids.)

Gap currently has registered fourthandtown.com, fourthandtowne.com, forthandtown.com, forthandtowne.com, 4thandtown.com, and 4thandtowne.com. Talk about confusing! Is their store "fourth" or "forth"? Is it "towne" or "towne"? I guess I have to be in the secret club of well-to-do 35+ white American women to find out.

Cartoon Fridge allows you to view popular cartoons from your browser. Once you have installed their browser plugin, the video is streamed to your web browser.

Currently they have The Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, The Venture Brothers, Clerks, Looney Toons, King Of The Hill, Ren & Stimpy, with Tom & Jerry, Flintstones, Jetsons, and more coming.

Here's part of their legal notice:

If you wish to be a viewer of this website you must meet the following requirements before you watch,
1) You own the program(s) on DVD/Other legally obtained form of media.
2) You receive a cable/satellite/antenna feed with the program(s)

Visual Radio should quit now before they spend any more money.

Behold! They allow you to also "Purchase a virtually unlimited range of products and services such as concert tickets, games, video clips and ring tones - immediately."

The broadcasts will be aimed at next-gen cell phones that have FM radio-ability. Infinity Broadcasting and Hewlett-Packard are behind the effort in the US.

FM Radio with pictures and 'buy this now' buttons. A wonderfully stupid idea.

They say:

"Here's an industry that's really old and becoming threatened by new technologies," said Vikki Pachera, vice president of strategic alliances and business development for HP. "We're able to help them create a relationship with customers they've never had before, and a revenue stream they've never had before."

Here's the CNET article.

Participatory Culture Foundation is working on an open-source desktop television application where anyone can "...broadcast full-screen video to thousands of people at virtually no cost, using BitTorrent technology". It will uses RSS feeds as channels, allowing you to automatically download media that you are subscribed to. Their software also has caching to expire video after you've watched them to make room for new videos.

They're also developing what they call a 'Broadcast Machine', which is built on top of their open-source Blog Torrent script.

Launch in June.

Dear Mr. Banner Advertiser

Wow! After some 14 years of looking at banners, I finally found one I want to click on. Isn't today your lucky day?

Alas, I mouse over the banner ad, hesitating to click because I think it will make me feel dirty when.. what do I see? You're using a Flash banner. That's nice in itself, but it makes me think that if I click the result would be that you hog my bandwidth for a few seconds while you download all of your marketing materials (more Flash animations) to my PC. And perhaps a couple of cookies while you're at it.

How about some simplicity? Provide an option at the bottom of the banner for those who just want the facts, without flash or Flash, without cookies or other BS. I think part of the reason Google Adwords is popular is that people really don't mind ads, as long as they're to the point and simple. Most reasonably intelligent people walk away when they feel they're being marketed to. The same kind of marketing doesn't work with everyone - but one would never know it by the way you advertise. If you can somehow assure me that you won't try to rape my senses or my sensibility, I'll guarantee that I will listen to your message even more closely.

Call it "TruClix" or some other nifty name (you gals are good at that) for those of us who don't click for various reasons. When someone clicks on your TruClix link, show them how different you are from all of the other companies. Heck, you could even take me to your product's Wiki page that you've developed and opened up to the community. Err... but don't touch it or splatter crap all over it. Don't ya know, the most successful marketing is when actual people have control of the marketing message? If your product is good, it's good. Trust the marketplace. (You've made money thus far, right?*)

I didn't end up clicking on your banner (who does?) but instead performed a search for your product and found another site that showed me everything I wanted to see on the first page.

*made you look!

Freesound is a new website for the exchange of Creative Commons-licensed audio material.

Great. All they need now is a decent URL to replace their current freesound.iua.upf.edu. Unless they weren't exactly planning on popularity?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.