Bloglines | My Feeds (11) (10)

9/807! Done.

And if it's 302/807 in the morning I'll scream. No, louder.

Sci Fi Blogger

Sci Fi Blogger: b5media is hiring a second writer for its recently launched blog on Science Fiction (SFUniverse.com). The blog will primarily cover SciFi television shows & movies (present and past), as well as other important news in SciFi.

Whoa, someone's stoked.

Happy birthday Perl!

Happy birthday Perl!: "Tue, 18 Dec 2007. In case you hadn't yet heard, today is the 20th anniversary of the first release of Perl."

Whoa. Perspective blown, wayback machine on weld.

Odd to note that I'm no longer on any perl lists where I would have seen this sooner.

Bloglines | My Feeds (3248) (20)

193/806. Must. Unsubscribe. Must. Throw. Feeds.

Bloglines | My Feeds (3495) (21)

223/802! Blury eyes, though ...

Yes, Virginia, it was a PR stunt

Yes, Virginia, it was a PR stunt: "Starbucks has been taking it on the chin lately in certain corners of the blogosphere in response to their “Cheer Chain” promotion. It seems that random acts of kindness began popping up in stores all over the country, in which a person in line quietly paid for the following customer."

Oh! Is that what those billboards were? Well, color me grinch, but, I had no idea what they were going on about.

And however could you pay for the horror that the gum-popping cellion behind you is going to gibber? Some "Extra-hot half-caf with-whip hint-of-mint mocha ... inna bucket".

Pentagon Pursues Mashups and Microformats for Battlefield Intel

Pentagon Pursues Mashups and Microformats for Battlefield Intel: "The Pentagon is meddling with both technologies to use microformats with mashups to help expose legacy information for broader reuse"

Words that I never though would be seen together ... pretty fun though!

Sir Arthur C Clarke: 90th Birthday Reflections

YouTube - Sir Arthur C Clarke: 90th Birthday Reflections

Oh! Not sure how I missed this. I need better Feeds!

He does certainly delight!

Bloglines | My Feeds (3472) (19)

227/804! Still beasty s* folders to read ...

Humm, may have to poke at Blogines beta again.

Lovest.at

Lovest.at: "Lovest.at combines many of these media discovery sites - like del.icio.us and Last.fm - and turns their data into a people discovery service, for want of a better phrase."

Whoa, and leaves eddresses and birthdays up for the public to consume. It dumps whole linkfarms of public entries from other services. Wack.

Hundreds Line Up In Alameda For Ancient Liquor

Hundreds Line Up In Alameda For Ancient Liquoro: "On the first day that the legendary alcoholic drink absinthe went on sale in the United States legally in about a century, hundreds of people lined up outside an Alameda warehouse to get their hands on the stuff."

"Each bottle cost $75. Cases of four could be bought for $300, Gaughran reported."

Whoa, lining up all around the parking lot for $75 bottles of unknown quality? I think I even see some goths up before noon in those pix ...

Twitterrific

Twitterrific: "is a fun application that lets you both read and publish posts or 'tweets' to the Twitter community website."

I was always surprised by how much I saw this client used for twitter. Guess they didn't like the popularity because they started charging $15 for an ad less version when there are a plenty of competitors.

I'm quite happy with some combination of web, sms,
Spaz, and Flock ...

Bloglines | My Feeds (3897) (19)

254/808! Counting down ...

Paperspine

Paperspine: "Our book rental model aims to give you the best of all worlds. We offer a huge selection of books - over 150,000 - to choose from, they get shipped conveniently right to your door, and you don’t accrue any late fees. Even better, when you’re done with the book just drop it in the mail using our pre-paid postage mailer. Not only will you be saving money, you’ll reduce BCS (Book Clutter Syndrome) around your house."

Hay! I like my Book Clutter!

Weird to see a retro-netflix business model.

Bloglines | My Feeds (8662) (22)

391/837 noisy night! Gotta get to those s* folders ...

Bloglines | My Feeds (7998) (23)

663/838. Guess I've got some cleaning up to do! Did sort a few feeds out of the add folder, anyways ...

Clipperz online password manager - Sharing

Clipperz online password manager - Sharing: "Clipperz can make sharing your secrets a secure and straightforward process."

"got PINs, CVVs, IDs, SSNs?" throw them to the wolves! Guess I shouldn't be surprised with everyone handing out their passwords: "oh, yes, please scrape my address book" "sure, log in as me an rummage though my account". Shesh, you'd think that they would have received the usual lecture from the local System Administrator.

Cisco's Social Networking Strategy

Cisco's Social Networking Strategy: "Infoworld reporting that Cisco will introduce its Entertainment Operating System (EOS) platform next year."

"EOS will help visitors find content through a recommendation and relevance engine that looks at a user's activity patterns and makes personalized suggestions, Scheinman said."

Ah, finally some glimmer of the tribe code. I was guessing a weird network appliance/media portal set-top, this sounds more hopeful.

Also, tribe goes pay-for-features. Tribe Gold Star Club, got stars on thars?

Dmitry Medvedev listens to Black Sabbath

Baby-faced Dmitry Medvedev keeps fish tank in his office and listens to Black Sabbath - Pravda.Ru: "Medvedev, dubbed by Western press as a baby-faced man, is a big fan of music. He prefers to listen to hard rock: Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple are his favorite bands. Medvedev likes to play vinyl disks, not CDs."

Humm, I think that I like him more, but, trust him less. Funny That.

Facebook Unwalls Garden

PlatformArchitecture - Facebook Developers Wiki: "Facebook Platform unlocks significant value for both developers and users: it gives developers access to the core of Facebook’s value – the social graph – and gives users a better social experience on all Facebook applications, whether they’re inside or outside the Facebook website. A primary goal of Facebook has always been to make it easy for users to share information, and Facebook Platform opened up that information to benefit users and developers everywhere."

Drat, I guess that it's too late for "tear down that wall" speeches. Facebook is waay out ahead. Heck, there are even VCs devoted to Facebook Apps.

And Bebo throws a gantlet as well ...

Bebo Launching Platform: "The Bebo Platform is nearly 100% compatible with the Facebook Platform: the APIs, markup language, and query language are all the same."

So started the Social Graph Platform Wars!

Second Life Residents To Get Calls From The Real World

Second Life Residents To Get Calls From The Real World: "In the first quarter of 2008, users in Second Life will be able to get real-world phone numbers assigned to their avatars, and receive calls from real-world phones"

Ack! I don't want salesbots breaking into my flights of fantasy.

Sheesh, bad enough that Reuters has reporters and a Auditorium

absinthe legit

absinthe legit: "Earlier this year, a lone Washington, D.C., lawyer took on the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau in an attempt to lift the ban. After some legal wrangling, the agency agreed - with some limits.

Last week, St. George Spirits of Alameda received the news that, after seven applications, the federal agency had approved its label, the final obstacle before going to market. On Monday, the small artisan distillery sold its token first bottle, becoming the only American company since 1912 to sell absinthe in the United States. Then the staff took a moment to celebrate."

Oh, now that's Repeal Day in style!

minglenow

the making of minglenow: "Thank you in helping making MingleNow the leading nightlife community website over the last year. But even good things come to an end, and due to many factors we have decided to close MingleNow.com."

TechCrunch saith: "We assume that Yahoo simply isn’t interested in maintaining another social network, especially since its purchase of BlueLithium was for its ad network"

Funny, I was going to swap my reg to a more active eddress and put it in the cycle. There certainly are a glut of event sites ...

See Also:
ValleyDeath
CrunchPool

Tribe Premium

Tribe Premium: "The overwhelming consensus is that our users love tribe.net so much that they are willing to pay for a premium subscription for all the functions that we now give to you. We’re excited (happy? grateful? nervous?) to say that we’re going to launch the premium subscription service next week. Between November 30th and December 15th we’re going to offer premium subscriptions at five bucks for thirty days. "

And here I thought that Tribe was in the ZombiePool. Paid features has certainly worked for LiveJournal, dunno what sort of add-ons tribe can come up with.

GeekList: Gaming in the Nine Circles of Hell...

GeekList: Gaming in the Nine Circles of Hell...: "'Gluttony,' Virgil explained. 'Those gamers who always want more and more can never be fulfilled by what they have. They repeat this same horrible fate for all eternity--that which they desire most is useless.'"

Humm, maybe it's time to add to my wishlist ...

ashnod @ bbg

Facebook | OpenSocket

Facebook | OpenSocket: "A demonstration of an OpenSocial container implemented as a Facebook app."

A fine idea!

Foamee: a barnacle app for indebted drinkers

Foamee: a barnacle app for indebted drinkers: "So I think I’ll call this type of application a “barnacle app”. It attaches itself to Twitter and kind of filters through certain things it wants to keep."

Barnacle! Certainly a better word than mashup.

1984: Quotes

1984: Quotes: "In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face… was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime…' —pg 54"

Ah, there's a word that I have to use more often. Or cook up a named Facebook app ...

Feedster Quietly Dies...

Feedster Quietly Dies...: ". Now Feedster seems to be, if not in the DeadPool, then at least in the PurgatoryPool. PubSub was another victim in this market."

William Gibson

William Gibson: "nobody would buy anything like it. It's too complex, with too many huge sci-fi tropes: global warming; the lethal, sexually transmitted immune-system disease; the United States, attacked by crazy terrorists, invading the wrong country."

Ah, the now is stranger than SciFi would have it. Interesting Times.

Twitarrhoea

Twitter starts to limit outbound SMS in UK: "UK users may start unsubscribing from people who tweet incessantly (those afflicted with “Twitarrhoea“)"

Ah, Twitarrheoa. I will say it three times fast. Often.

Facebook Accepts $240 Million from Microsoft

Facebook Accepts $240 Million from Microsoft: "Facebook and Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft will take a $240 million equity stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation, and the companies will expand their existing advertising partnership. Under the expanded strategic alliance, Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the United States."

Ah, Facebook staked to the ground. The certainly deserve each other! Leaving the market much more intereting ...

How to Ride MUNI and BART

How to Ride MUNI and BART - Instructables - The World's Biggest Show & Tell - art, craft, diy, food, games, home, life, offbeat, ride, tech [category: life]: "Please please please let people off the train before you get on. "

"If you're sitting, put your bag on your lap or between your feet. If you're standing, put your bag between your feet on the floor or hug it to the front of your body. If it's at all crowded, do not wear your bag so that it protrudes from your side or back. You will end up wacking people and make it harder for people to get on and off if it's at all crowded."

Hear! Hear! Clear the door, make room for people to move. Seems like common sense, but, noooo!

Lobbyconners crash tech conferences to schmooze, cut deals

Lobbyconners crash tech conferences to schmooze, cut deals: "They simply loiter in the venue s lobby - without paying - in hopes of mingling with other entrepreneurs, collecting business cards and cutting deals. Who cares about hearing Microsoft s CEO opine on stage? Schmoozing in the hallways for free is far more valuable, many technology insiders say. The phenomenon has become so prevalent that it has been given a name: lobbycon."

#lobbycon is a fine twitter tag!

Relationship Update Stream

Elsewhere I'm: Relationship Update Stream: "Six Apart's Update Stream provides a simple interface to clients who wish to subscribe to a persistent stream of entries, this stream does the same thing for relationships. One key difference is that through the support of OAuth for signing incoming pings to the stream, this stream is able to include data from services beyond Six Apart as well."

Love the

/sorryTooSlow@youMissed ::=

lolfeed! Too Fast, Didn't Read ...

glueon is pretty funny too.

Social networking has dangerous side

Social networking has dangerous side: "buzz words such as 'Mystalking' and 'Facestalking' have been coined"

Humm, sounds better than SocialStalking ...

When I sign up for Yet Another Social Network, I always poke around for the Usual Suspects ...

Yahoo! Message Boards

Yahoo! Message Boards: "Welcome to the new Yahoo! Message Boards"

Humm, I fail to see the point. Looks like someone resurrected a bbs. Maybe it's a troll den?

Charlie Foxtrot

JURIST - Jones: The Charlie Foxtrot at Guantanamo: "There is a phrase military people use to convey the fact that something is just totally screwed up. That phrase is “Charlie Foxtrot” and it has nothing whatsoever to do with ballroom dance. Expressing its exact etymology while maintaining proper decorum is difficult, but here is a good explanation. Charlie Foxtrot is the long version of the initials “C.F.” The “C” stands for the word “Cluster”, while the “F” stands for . . . well, the F stands for the F word."

Yahoo! Avatars

Yahoo! Avatars onto your desktop via a Yahoo Widget.

Wack.

Seems like there should be widgets to put the avatar anywheres, but, this is a start.

Looks like you can give other Avatars Makeovers, too.

Facebook Fatigue

Facebook: "the latest flurry of trendy and “me too” 2.0 applications. Surprisingly it is also the catalyst for Social Network Overload (SNO) or Fatigue (SNF) amongst those within the echo chamber, with some going so far as declaring Facebook Bankruptcy."

SNO is certainly catchier, as in SNOooo ...

Surprised that someone hasn't run with "Facecrime".

Going.com Lands $5 million

Going.com Lands $5 million: "Event based social network Going.com has taken an additional $5 million in funding, in a round led by the sites original investors General Catalyst Partners and Highland Capital Partners."

Socialize and Buy Event Tickets: "promoters that would like to push an event and sell tickets at the same time can do so on Going. It takes Going in the direction of becoming a one-stop shop, for promoters and end users."

All that, and a Facebook App too!

Eh, There's no there there. Few events. Horrible navigation. Poor search. I log in every few weeks pulled via the facebook app to update the feed. I can't see them making a go of it.

Ashnod @ Going

Six Apart to support Palm Foleo

Six Apart to support Palm Foleo: "Six Apart is working with Palm, Inc. to give Palm Foleo mobile companion customers access to Six Apart’s wide range of blogging services"

Nice! Shame that it's $500 with bluetooth only. That's one expensive keyboard ...

Think I'll continue to lust after the Nokia 770 keyboardless wonder ...

Networks Try 'Twittering'

Networks Try 'Twittering': "ABC Family, the Walt Disney-owned network has launched a promotion around 'Greek,' a new comedy-drama about fraternity and sorority life. Twitter allows consumers to follow the show via text updates and behind-the-scene tidbits from the show's cast and writers.

The title character in the new NBC show 'Chuck,' about a computer geek who becomes a secret agent, will twitter to fans of the show. The campaign launches next Monday and NBC hopes Twitter will send users to other platforms like MySpace, where Chuck will also have a profile."

Angry mob gathers outside SF datacenter

Angry mob gathers outside SF datacenter: "There's a reason most datacenters are located in distant office parks: It's harder for angry customers to line up at your door."

It was fun following along on twitter, esp. LaughingSquid and SixApart

Facebook

Finally took the Facebook pill ... slow to find stuff, but, pretty much once the pill has bloomed.

ashnod @ Facebook

Keen Zombie App!

Facebook in 40 Years

Facebook is the new AOL: "Eventually, someone will come along and turn Facebook inside-out, so that instead of custom applications running on a platform in a walled garden, applications run on the internet, out in the open, and people can tie their social network into it if they want, with privacy controls, access levels, and alter-egos galore."

Google’s goal: to organise your daily life

Google’s goal: to organise your daily life: "Google’s ambition to maximise the personal information it holds on users is so great that the search engine envisages a day when it can tell people what jobs to take and how they might spend their days off."

Ah, Total Information Awareness is so benevolent ...

Make your own gadget

Make your own gadget

Haven't seen many of these out in the wild. Seems like a fine idea, though.

George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house

George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house: "The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell's 1984 has become a reality - in the shadow of the author's former London home.

On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move."

The New Upcoming

The New Upcoming: "The new release of Upcoming is finally out the door. ... Another big change is our switch to Yahoo! IDs. Following closely on the heels of Flickr and Bix, we've finally abandoned our legacy sign-in system for Yahoo's own login system."

Eeep! Not sure that the redesigned front page is an improvement. Really short pages of your or friends events. Lots of just headlines is much easier to scan. Guess I'll have to live with the rss feeds instead of the interface. The category pages are much better by being short and showing number of friends going.

Google’s Personalized Search Features

Google’s Personalized Search Features: "Google’s new recommendations features will allow you to add a new tab to your start page, name it “recommendations” and you’ll get some nifty search results based on your search history."

You have to let the GooglePlex Id your search history ...

Al Jazeera English Launches on YouTube

Al Jazeera English Launches on YouTube: "Unable to land deals with any American networks, Al Jazeera English is launching a YouTube channel."

Finally! Silly to launch the channel without being able to get it to a primary audience.

Dodgeball Left for Dead: Twitter Victorious

Dodgeball Left for Dead: Twitter Victorious: "Dodgeball, the text-message based social networking service, seems to have been left for dead."

Funny, Dodgeball's been on my signup list for so long that everyone's gone web only. Ah, well, guess it's time for the shiney new Twitter account.

ashnod @ twitter

Fake bloggers soon to be ‘named and shamed’-News-Politics-TimesOnline

Fake bloggers soon to be ‘named and shamed’-News-Politics-TimesOnline: "Hotels, restaurants and online shops that post glowing reviews about themselves under false identities could face criminal prosecution under new rules that come into force next year."

"From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court."

I love me some Sock Puppet.

Funeral home in Second Life

Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education: Funeral home in Second Life: "Death in Second Life: a funeral home has opened up. Actually a combination funeral home and crematorium, with urns."

Ah, just need a live video feed of the funeral into second life. Guess there are already a couple of funeral homes that webcast ...

A Taxonomy of Social Networks?

GigaOM � A Taxonomy of Social Networks?: "Earlier this week, Om called social networks a feature. It’s a good point, though, one that seems all too obvious to someone like me who’s covered way too many social networks and often ends up bored before making it through yet another registration form."

Heh. Yet Another Profile could be our middle name. Abandon this!

55% Of People Regularly or Always Fake Their Web Identity

55% Of People Regularly or Always Fake Their Web Identity: "After 511 votes so far, an astonishing 55% of respondents say they regularly or always use fake Web identities."

And this surprises them, how?

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

Bebo

Bebo: "Bebo is the next generation social networking site where members can stay in touch with their College friends, connect with friends, share photos, discover new interests and just hang out."

Bebo's everywhere. I finally had to cut an account and poke at it.

ashub @ bebo

No links out to homepage, limited html (no anchors!), no rss out. Weird safety blurbs throughout. Hard to find people ... conspiracy theory sez that equals page views. A well walled garden.

Ah, well, picked out a skin and found one band that I like ... Machine Head

Tag: social network, bebo

Don't Back Down: Leaving Bloglines for the Google Reader

Leaving Bloglines for the Google Reader: "I've been using Bloglines since a couple of days after they launched (a little over forty months now, if memory serves). I've even written a mildly popular Firefox extension for the service - the Bloglines Toolkit. It's safe to say that Bloglines has been a part of my life for a while. But it's time to move on."

The interface of the Google Reader is just better, and while the Bloglines folks have tried to upgrade their offering recently, giving it some small updates to make incremental improvements - it's like putting the proverbial lipstick on a pig."

Ah! I use the bloglines toolkit constantly for web clipping to Breadcrumbs. It's part of the reason that I seldom think of swapping feed readers. I use Rojo for high-volume, low-information feeds and don't think twice about marking all feeds read. Google Reader doesn't seem near as useful as the above, maybe if I found a few more hotkeys it could be.

Tag: bloglines, rojo

SuprGlu

SuprGlu: "500 - Internal Server Error"

Bah! I finally get around to signing up and this greets me. I wanted to collect all the feeds and dump them into the identity aggregators.

Tag: aggregator, suprglu

klostu.com

klostu.com: "provides members of boards (and even blogs) advanced profiles with a growing range of social tools and useful widgets. Klostu profiles appear within the boards and will move seamlessly from one board to another, wherever the user may travel on the boardscape."

Ah, An identity service for bbses and forums. Yay. Oh, bah! Closed beta.
So weird having to create yet another id for a services forum or wiki ...

Tag: bbs, beta, identity

Flickr: The DS Tie-In Games I Wanna Play

Flickr: The DS Tie-In Games I Wanna Play

Funny meme pooling onto flickr. Some of my faves are The Wall, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and The Elements of Style.

Identity aggregators

ProfileLinker Takes Meebo Approach to Social Networking: "You tell ProfileLinker your site credentials and it pulls your bio, friends and other information from those sites and centralizes it. You then use ProfileLinker to manage your activity on those networks: aggregate and manage multiple social profiles; discover new social networks and communities of interest within social networks; and receive notification of messages and friend requests from multiple networks."

Really busy website with way too many blinky things going on. A few browser crashes, even. Looks like it's trying to do central profile, though.

Guess to make it really useful you have to cough up passwords for the other sites. I'll have to create some shortdurperselves to try it out ...

ashton @ ProfileLinker

Now, Ziki on the other hand looks more like a feed aggregator with some profile links. Nice tagging and 'find similar', though. A limited set of social networks to choose from, which is odd since they don't seem to pull anything from them, but, you can still slurp feeds from whereever.

ashton @ Ziki

Gimmie a plain ole rss feed slurper and link farm anyday. Oh! And tribe finally make rss feeds for their blogs.

ashton @ Tribe

Guess I've got switch to the new version of blogger (gooblo?) and mess with the sidebar now ...

Tag: Identity, aggregator, ziki, profilelinker

Ask.com - Blog Search and Feed Search

Ask.com - Blog Search and Feed Search:

1 Binoculars Roll-over to preview the site without leaving the page.

2 Subscribe Subscribe to feeds using your preferred reader.

3 Post To Share results by posting them to your favorite sites."

Whoa, nice drop-down subscribe. Now if I can only remember to use it ...

Upcoming.org: News

Upcoming.org: News: "Here's a little Christmas present before the end of the year... You might have noticed a new little feature pop up on our event pages yesterday, tucked under the list of attendees -- suggested events based on the interests of everyone going."

"If you like this, you might also like..."

Awesomo linking powers!

Repeal Day, December 5th

Repeal Day: "Here's a classic Repeal Day video to get you primed and ready:"

Ah! A much better name than Twenty-first Amendment Passes Day.

"Generally, Repeal Day is celebrated with the consumption of alcoholic beverages."

I'll drink to that!

Multiply

Multiply 3.0 looks good, the combined network/group view is certainly a model that more sites should adopt. Humm, seems to me that orkut had something similar, but, I'm not finding it now.

Multiply: " Cross-posting allows you to have blog entries posted to LiveJournal, Blogger, TypePad, Xanga, or Windows Live Spaces automatically posted to Multiply as well.

Allow any combination of people from your Network, Contacts and Individuals to see your posts."

Ah! Feeds for both people and groups! Skins and CSS. Oddly there doesn't seem to be much a profile, just basic user name, picture, and location.

ashub @ multiply

Tag: multiply, social network

Boingy!

Oh! ashub @ multiply is the 2nd hit for boingy at Google Search.

Wack.

I shall have to abuse boingy!

boingy womble insanely!

Tag: boingy

The Blasphemy Challenge

The Blasphemy Challenge: "You may damn yourself to Hell however you would like, but somewhere in your video you must say this phrase: 'I deny the Holy Spirit.'

Why? Because, according to Mark 3:29 in the Holy Bible, 'Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.'"

Hat tip to BuzzFeed: "Damn yourself to hell via YouTube, win a free DVD! Wow, no one told me that my fellow comrades in the War on Christmas were HOT! We are totally gonna win this one."

Wonkette: "Our favorite part, besides checking out the cute atheist teenagers, is that they’ve advertised in Tiger Beat and Boy Scout Trail"

Mugshot

Mugshot: "Show updates from all your sites on one page. Get live updates from friends. The Mugshot website is just a backdrop for the activity that unfolds for people who have the Mugshot running on their machines.

We currently support blogs, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube, with more to come soon."

Huh, a weird combination of social identity aggregator and stalker. Not so gleeful about the download and the communities don't make much sense via a browser.

Tag: identity, aggregator

BuzzFeed

Everyone - BuzzFeed: "'Time' magazine cops out and awards Person of the Year to you. And all you got was a whole slew of annoying blog posts about it in your RSS reader."

Heh! And they're still rolling in ...

On the bright side, BuzzFeed keeps my reading singing with things like the Blasphemy Challenge and the War on Xmas.

MingleNow

MingleNow Slides into the Social Economy: MingleNow is "online/offline social network dedicated to connecting users to their favorite clubs and bars and the people who go there."

Eeek! Those pix should have scared me away, but, noooo. Looks like they slurped places from somewheres and slapped random images on them. Ah, well, it's built, maybe they will come. Not seeing any blogging or rss feeds.

ashton @ MingleNow

Coastr also has a nice angle.

Don't really see how this will fit into the upcoming, evite, dodgeball mix ...

Tag: minglenow, coastr, social network

SFist: MUNI Wants to Know What Love Is

SFist: MUNI Wants to Know What Love Is: "Transit Effectiveness Project are taking this whole 'listening to the people' thing to a whole other level . Mainly they now have an online survey for you, the rider, to fill out and tell them how you feel about MUNI. It's fun too. And the best part? There's a whole section where they want you to write anything that you wanted to say to MUNI."

Heh, that's going to leave a mark.

The SFCron says that a Muni deficit is projected, but fares will hold steady "Muni has raised fares twice since 2003, with the cost of a regular adult fare now at $1.50 -- a 50 percent increase. Going back for a third fare increase would not be politically palatable, particularly in a year when Mayor Gavin Newsom will be running for re-election and Muni's service reliability is slipping.

Muni is the Bay Area's busiest public transit system with about 618,000 boardings each day. But by the agency's own measures, vehicles are overcrowded, service is slowing down and missed runs are the norm."

It's even better that Office of the Mayor sez that "Newsom sponsored legislation implementing Rescue Muni's reform plan and helped put our Municipal Railway on the road to recovery."

Now, about that Central Subway ...

Social Networks are Killing Email

Social Networks are Killing Email: "so many students use chatting tools and social networking sites that MSU is even considering phasing out the #1 internet tool of the last 30 years: email accounts. Because students are online all the time and messaging through other means, there is little need for personal, school-based email accounts. Everybody simply uses the built-in tools in the virtual spaces they inhabit."

Funny. Gimmie a pipe and get out of the way. What would I need another account for?

SF Muni: Central Subway

SF Muni: Central Subway

Ugg. So Dumb. Looks like they might actually connect to existing metro stations via tunnels. They don't even make it up to Stockton or North Beach, just dump 'em off at the Lion Gate.

MySpaceIM

MySpaceIM: "Requires Microsoft Windows 98/2000/XP and Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher"

Ugg. Like that's going to happen. Why didn't they just slap in a jabber?