GetaFirstLife.com

GetaFirstLife.com: "Moreover, Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody. Indeed, any competent attorney is well aware that the outcome of sending a cease-and-desist letter regarding a parody is only to draw more attention to such parody, and to invite public scorn and ridicule of the humor-impaired legal counsel. Linden Lab is well-known for having strict hiring standards, including a requirement for having a sense of humor, from which our lawyers receive no exception."

Hah! That's the spirit! Lawyers weilding humor.

Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking

Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking - New York Times: "I wouldn’t want to join any social networking Web site that would want me as a member. You might say that I am into antisocial networking."

Heh, we clearly need more antisocial networks. I can't do this all by myself, people!

Layout

Mucked with this blogs Layout. Added a block of aggregator links and a few widgets (yea, FindMeOn's is too wide).

Beta--the four-letter word of Web 2.0

Beta--the four-letter word of Web 2.0: "We're well into January, and I'm guessing that by now you've probably ditched your New Year's resolutions or, at least, are 'reconsidering' their feasibility. Don't worry because I have a new one for you.

You're going to get your site out of beta this year."

Bwwwhaaahah!

Poking around the old links, I find services marked beta that I don't even remember ... Awesomr, iscrybe, and Orkut. Sheesh, Orkut invite beggery was one reason to hate betas forever. Although, I might make an exception for Klostu.

Gimmie a Banana! Gimmie a Beta! Gimmie an Invite!

Inside MySpace.com: The Journey Begins

Inside MySpace.com: The Journey Begins: "At each milestone, the Web site would exceed the maximum capacity of some component of the underlying system, often at the database or storage level. Then, features would break, and users would scream. Each time, the technology team would have to revise its strategy for supporting the Web site's workload."

"The Web site architecture went through five major revisions—each coming after MySpace had reached certain user account milestones—and dozens of smaller tweaks."

"And although the systems architecture has been relatively stable since the Web site crossed the 7 million account mark in early 2005, MySpace continues to knock up against limits such as the number of simultaneous connections supported by SQL Server, Benedetto says: 'We've maxed out pretty much everything.'"

Well worth the read for what might be the next pain point in your friendly neighborhood YASN.

The Problem With Profile Aggregators

The Problem With Profile Aggregators: "Profile Aggregators such as ProfileLinker, Spokeo, Profilactic, Iceflake, and FindMeOn are already trying to solve this problem."

"Users usually only have read access to their other networks. Social networks are not like news articles or blogs that you can just stick into an RSS reader, they require engagement and participation to become valuable to the user."

FindMeOn calls itself "A cure for multiple web personality disorder".

I can see not having Yet Another Profile, but, people have to browse to the aggregator page. It can not be found via interests or seen by browsing friends-of-friends. So far they've ended up being Yet Another Social Network to remember to log in to, and, wasn't that the very thing that was supposed to be cured?

YASNA!

Multiply 'Customize Site' mode

The Multiply Blog - Coming Soon: New 'Customize Site' mode: "That's right, you'll be presented with controls for all of the editable elements on the page, from your content boxes to your headshot. Handy links for further customization (themes, layouts, CSS) are available at the top of the page."

Keen! That was the way that I remembered it and wondered where the controls were. Turns out they got lost along the way. Tribe.net has many content boxes (rss and groupings of tribes being the most noteworthy) for both your public profile and private home page. Which is quite useful, even if it does enable the occasional eye-bending page.

Meebo IM mash

MeeboMe API Coming: "Meebo, the web-based IM service that aggregates all your messengers in one place"

Arg! It's the attack of the aggregators! YASNAAttack!

Nice widget, though ...

Vox Groups

Vox Groups got released! Give them a poke.

There has always been tagging on personal posts, now groups can have tags, which certainly made finding interesting groups easier. Looks like you can 'watch' a tag and get matching entries put on your Neighborhood view.

Happily, there are already groups about other services, which delight me to no end ... Vox - YouTube and Vox - MySpace.

And the 'send a private message' link at the end of each post is great.

WineLog.net

WineLog.net: "One of the best features of WineLog is that you can track the drinking habits of your friends."

Heh. There's a funny upsell for an online social service. That sounds like 'what you did last night' pictures.

"A new feature is the ability for other users to comment on your Wine Log.Connect with other WineLog users and keep track of what they are logging with our new friends feature. Our recommendation system is constantly working to find others users with similar tastes to you, and now you can easily add these users to your friends list and see what they have tasted and how they have rated new wines."

They just seem to have blogs and wines, but, no profile info and no rss feeds per user.

Coastr is all about the beer and is still quite simple (it's got rss feeds, though!). Not sure what MingleNow's going to be when it grows up.

tribe.nut

donut freak out. tribe.net is undergoing maintenance and will be back very soon. thanks for your patience.: "Tribe.net has fallen and it can't get up."

Bah! However can I xpost everything? My keep new in bloglines and 'revisit' tag in del.icio.us overflow.

Gimmie a Donut!

Death2.0

DEATHWATCH: The new year roundup - Valleywag: "A couple of key execs have left Wallop, the social network"

Yeash, one of the ugliest social networks ever. Although, one of those that requires download like Mugshot might be even more horrid.

"Tagworld's founders haven't logged into their social network site for a month, and are said to be both "out of town". The problems at Tagworld serve as a reminder: in the competition between social network sites, it's winner takes all. And there are few winners."

Oh, yea, Tagworld! Gotta track down my login one of these weeks ...

Also: Valleywag Deathwatch, The Growing Web 2.0 Deadpool Meme

Clock Moves Forward Two Minutes

Clock Moves Forward Two Minutes: "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock on January 17, 2007, from 7 to 5 minutes to midnight. "

2007 5 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT: The world stands at the brink of a second nuclear age. The United States and Russia remain ready to stage a nuclear attack within minutes, North Korea conducts a nuclear test, and many in the international community worry that Iran plans to acquire the Bomb. Climate change also presents a dire challenge to humanity. Damage to ecosystems is already taking place; flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt are causing loss of life and property.

2002 7 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

1998 9 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

And don't miss,

The Rapture Index

'ware Nation ID initiatives!

Tolerability Index

Tolerability Index sez Raytard's "face is in your cabinet somewhere, grinning loudly. Be Afraid."

Couldn't agree more! A recent trip to the food sideshow showed her on stacks of mags (besides her own), cereal, and oil. And there's more where that came from ... a Rachael Ray Sucks Community or you could hasten our doom and buy a Yum-O! shirt.

Relevanta

Digging though the bookmark tags and noted that Relevanta was gone ... the site now says "Please visit Pokkari." I enjoyed the reputation system, just didn't have many playmates over there nor much interest in the political feeds underlying it.

Tracked down an old post. Reputation-based System for the Blogosphere: "All members of the Relevanta community have the ability to contribute information, commentary, and valuations of both the authors and their written works. In addition, Relevanta's underlying database provides automatic linking of keywords and provides members with extended data and background information…"

Tag: relevanta

Google Video xpost

Google Video: "Please provide the following login information."

Whoa, Google Video asks for remote logins to xpost to blogger, lj, myspace, or typepad. I've seen the 'gimmie your address book' jive, but, have been seeing a lot of these xpost requests recently.

Welcome to Flow in Games

Welcome to Flow in Games: "FlOw is a game about piloting an aquatic organism through a surreal biosphere where players consume other organisms, evolve, and advance their organisms to the abyss."

The ole feed reader lead me in a mighty circle to a fine game and back to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Flow fame. A fine flow of an afternoon.

Hat tip to Creating Passionate Users: What comes after usability?

MyBlogLog

Following along with the MyBlogLog feeding frenzy ... espcially since Yahoo Acquired them. I cut an account, ashub @ MyBlogLog, joined a few blogs, friended a few people. It's fun poking around, New Neighbors from My Communities is espcially cool. I note that the profile as a really limited set of service (YASN and IM) fields. Ah, well, guess there are already enough profile aggregators to go around ...

Today I found the widget in the wild! On Susan Mernit's Blog and followed it along to Susan Mernit's Blog - MyBlogLog

Some other feedback:

The breakthrough that is MyBlogLog:"MyBlogLog makes the Internet feel like a huge party where you bump into random people that might be interesting and see friends that you didn’t know were in the same place as you. It’s weird. It’s awkward. It’s fantastic."

Adding Community To The Comments: "if you think someone has written a particularly interesting comment (or a particularly annoying one), you can click on their icon and be taken to their MyBlogLog profile. You can see where they blog, what other MyBlogLog communities they belong to, etc."

A parallel universe

I was happily reading along in the Economist about politics, oil, and the price of hamburgers on Tuesday when they suddenly bust out with a couple of pages of mythology.

I clearly had taken a turn into the universe next door ...

Jinn | Born of fire: "Although a few Islamic scholars have over the ages denied the existence of jinn, the consensus is that good Muslims should believe in them."

New Reuters HUD has local content, personal RSS

New Reuters HUD has local content, personal RSS: "Reuters has launched an updated version of its free Second Life heads-up display, the news HUD, now available at the Reuters island (Reuters, 142, 90, 25).

The redesigned HUD also allows you to enter in your own RSS feeds, making the Reuters HUD a general-purpose reader so that you can keep up with your favorite Web sites from within Second Life."

Yeash, a virtual island, an embeded reporter, a double-reverse newsfeed. Wack.

new Blogger Layout

Switched the ole blogger account Out of Beta, switched the template of one malingering blog, and poked at the Layout. Pretty smooth and lots of options to poke at. This blogs layout is going to be fun with goofy xfn links and widgets that I want to add.

Tag: blogger

Track your reading trends with Google Reader

Track your reading trends with Google Reader: "added a Trends feature to Google Reader, allowing you to track your reading and subscription trends in Reader. Reader's Trends can help you decide which feeds have a high signal-to-noise ratio based on how much of the feed's content you actually read."

A fine idea. I resisited Chameleon on top of Bloglines, but, this is nicely integrated. If only I did not cringe and avert my eyes every time I try to use the Google Reader ...

I could stand to loose a few feeds, though.

Tag: aggregator

Sensing Opportunity in Dormitory Air

Sensing Opportunity in Dormitory Air: "One of the first Febreze air freshener products was designed to look like a CD player. Febreze Scentstories, released in 2004, features “stop” and “play” buttons and “discs” that radiate scents rather than music. The disc titled “Wandering Barefoot on the Shore” features scents like “splashing in the waves” and “sailing in the bay.”"

"Febreze Scentstories: Enjoy the wonderful scent of candles without striking a match!
With six different interchangeable, scent-themed discs to choose from, you can create the atmosphere of places like a mountain trail or a tropical island right in your home."

There are many frightening scents to choose from ...

Flickr MiniCards by MOO

Flickr MiniCards by MOO: "The way it works is you setup a MOO account, then allow it to access your Flickr photostream. Then you can select 1-100 photos to use for your cards. People are even starting to swap their cards, like mini trading cards."

Flickr moo pool

Whoa, too cool. I've always wanted to get a set of iconic cards. Now I have to ponder what contact info to put on them ...

MySpace Hooks up with Cingular

GigaOM � MySpace Hooks up with Cingular: "Those of you waiting for MySpace mobile to move beyond just Helio, well, Cingular and MySpace say today that they are offering the MySpace Mobile service to Cingular customers. $2.99 per month plus data charges."

Pretty much to look at ugly myspace profiles on a tiny screen. Besides it doesn't have nearly the stalking potential of the Helio.

But, really, anything that could scrape the band bulletins or tour schedules out of myspace would be grand.

Tag: mobile, myspace