Archive for June, 2008

July 1st brings the launch of a business finding search engine that is powered by referrals, Vendor City. The purpose of Vendor City is to make finding a trusted business who will do a good job for you easier and less of a headache. I think it is a solid concept, though it needs a little work.
Vendor City only lists business that are referred by others. Even when you sign up your business is not really "listed" outside of your [...]

Ben Metcalfe wrote an incredible post today about the current state of the tech blogosphere. The entry, which carries the title Puppets, theatre and the conflation of 'successful' with 'popular,' notes that much of the posturing around the hallowed halls of Techmeme High is not so much an effort toward producing quality reporting and analysis, but rather, an effort to be the coolest kid on the block.
Even online, the tech blogosphere is still but a tiny corner of the world. [...]

As part of the ongoing series about politics in social media, we turn our sites to political web site Ameritocracy. To its credit, this site differs somewhat from other political social sites. It doesn't try to be a strict social network around political candidate or opinion. It has a twist to help it stand out.
What Ameritocracy does is focus on what the candidates say. They are a quote submission, searching, rating, debating and sourcing site. Users log in, create [...]

It should be unstated by now that websites and media groups will never be free of torment from record labels and music protection groups.  In fact, I hardly give a moment's notice to "news" about some website or college student coming under prosecution from the RIAA or one of its many cronies. 
I am, however, keenly interested when a social network or media site comes under fire for user-created content.   Today I read that popular social network Hi5 is [...]

I've made no secret of my unabashed enthusiasm for password manager PassPack. Of all the apps I've tried and reviewed, PassPack is probably the one that gets used most throughout the day, simply because of the enormous number of accounts I need to wrangle as part of this job.
One problem that I've had frequently, however, is the lack of either an offline or mobile version. There's been many a time when I'm sitting at a soccer game or at [...]

I was excited to try out Evri, the new "semantic" search engine on the block. Usually our author Cyndy gets more excited about semantic web applications than I do. I'm ever hopeful of finding one that truly works and becoming sold on the whole idea of a semantic web, though.
Sadly, I must continue to hold out hope for true semantic web. Evri, while attractive in appearance and very pleasant to surf, is not the semantic web search answer I was [...]

I hate your partial feed.
Yes, I've heard all the arguments for partial feeds: they prevent splogging; they ensure people visit the site and generate the precious ad revenue; they keep feed readers from stealing eyeballs.
Sploggers, however, scrape sites any which way they can. A full feed may make it a little easier, but a partial feed won't prevent it. I have one hilarious splog in my bookmarks that scrapes the content, translates it to another language, then translates it back [...]

When the ship is sinking and the closest land is a tiny island, you want things and people that work and that bring benefit to the table in your lifeboat - it increases your chances of survival. This is Life 101 level knowledge, yet Twitter seems to have forgotten it lately. Even writing this post makes me cringe a bit - you all know I am a heavy Twitter user and a total cheerleader for the service. That said, these [...]

Google, this is Amazon. I was wondering if you could show Amazon what an algorithm is and how to properly use one.
You see, Google, I've been an Amazon customer since 1996. I realize that due to my constant changing of ISPs in the late 90s, I lost my first account, but still, you'd think that 10 years of ordering history in this account would give Amazon an idea of what I might want to buy.
Instead, Amazon here is relying on [...]