Recent Posts
- now i know why someone else said the download appeared broken - i was still linking to the beta version download. Fixed now.
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But after sinking time into almost 150 apps over the past five months, the Great Software List is now updated with some kickass apps! I added a new Usenet, P2P/File Sharing Tools section, found/updated 40 fantastic new programs, and managed to ditch 65 old ones for various reasons — unaddressed security issues, lack of development, overpriced in latest version, somehow it got shitty, and so on. I’m excited and completely exhausted.
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TrackMeNot runs in Firefox as a low-priority background process that periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. It hides users' actual search trails in a cloud of indistinguishable 'ghost' queries, making it difficult, if not impossible, to aggregate such data into accurate or identifying user profiles. TrackMeNot integrates into the Firefox 'Tools' menu and includes a variety of user-configurable options.
I remember meeting Adriana Foley, the blogger who keeps 17 blogs, including the one on Linday Lohan. She actually says she hates doing the Lohan blog, but that’s what pays the bills so she does that to fund her other blogging.
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Driving the car yesterday, I realized that I haven't listened to any of my Elvis Costello records in a while. The reason, it turns out, is that they hadn't been picked out for me by the magic of shuffle. I've got enough music on my hard disk that some of it has become invisible.
The same thing is true, times a million, with websites. Every blog, every site is invisible... until it comes up on shuffle. The shuffle of reddit or digg or a cross-reference in someone else's rss feed.
The page that Ron and I did was #1 on Digg and Delicious yesterday, at least for a little bit. And the traffic was huge. It really is like winning the attention lottery.
And that's what has happened to all of us. The local newspaper never had to worry about an attention lottery--everyone in town read the paper. Today, because it's become molecuralized, our attention flits around, shuffled by one automated (or handbuilt) editor or another.
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This is actually bad, I think. The current crop of meta-portals like reddit, digg, del.icio.us et al are mass-popularity contests, and mass-popularity contests seem to always end up emphasizing flashy novelty, curious factoids, inflammatory extremism, or tales of freakish happenings or people.
Lessons From The Death Of A Web 2.0 Startup:
Google Is The New Microsoft: Back in the day, lots of software companies made sure that their business models kept them out of the cross-hairs of Microsoft. They didn’t want to get stomped on. Today, though this is still the case in some sectors, Google is a much more formidable (and scary) competitor. Google has all the power of a multi-billion dollar company, but a lot of the nimbleness and energy of a startup. With Google’s introduction of Google Calendar, Kiko really didn’t have a chance with it’s original business model.
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Like listening to music or audiobooks in bed? Then this is for you! Goodnight timer reduces the sound volume of your computer in a given amount of time and speed and then shuts down your computer.
A week or so ago a video of Web 2.0 CEOs being interviewed by Arrington made the rounds. I posted here, as I felt the video was a little too much propaganda, and not enough substance (and check out the 3-minute version too). I also issued a bit of a ‘challenge‘ to the interviewees (and others), asking some ‘meaty’ questions. Interestingly enough, I got quite a few responses (individuals identified below), and here they are: