A new McBrew threatens Starbucks

Yet in its efforts to expand and attract less affluent customers over the past couple of years, Starbucks has started to become more like McDonald's -- even as McDonald's, for its part, has been moving upmarket to become more like Starbucks.

Last year Starbucks' share-price fell by 42 percent, making it one of the worst performers on the NASDAQ exchange."

McDonald's has already made smaller forays into the coffee market, and with some success. Last year Consumer Reports, a trade magazine, rated its filter coffee more highly than that offered by Starbucks.

A new McBrew threatens Starbucks

Sheesh, good McCoffee? Next, Starbucks will have food and then it won't even matter what grey water we drink. Oh, they already did?

With friends like these ...

Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist experiment: can you make money out of friendship?

Why on God's earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? What was wrong with the pub?

With friends like these ...

True That. Although the pubs around here are full of ubergeeks.

Startup Schwag

Startup Schwag: is a web2.0 startup schwag tshirt of the month club. It’s based on a simple, wonderful idea recently abandoned by RubyRed Labs in San Francisco: Valley Schwag. They shipped Silicon Valley schwag to subscribers every month."

A Barnacle Startup? Are the shirts stamped 'beta'? Certainly a sign of Bust 2.0 ...

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12/809.

FriendFeed Blog: See popular items from your friends-of-friends

As of today, you will start seeing your friends' comments and "likes" in your own feed.

FriendFeed Blog: See popular items from your friends-of-friends

Ah, a friendly feed. The social feed got three sizes larger that day ...

Why CondeNet Is Banking on Facebook

Why CondeNet Is Banking on Facebook: "Flip.com launched in February as CondeNet's effort to target teen girls with an ambitious social media site. Less than a year later, the digital arm of Conde Nast is reversing course to embrace a distributed media strategy and converting the destination site into a series of applications that will live on social networks, starting with Facebook."

Funny, I didn't figure that flip.com would fly. "Hey, this site would make a great widget".

Ten Reasons We're Doomed: CES Edition

it might look like it's all product announcements and good times, but that's far from the truth. In reality, it's a vile clusterfuck of nerds, sluts and suits; a deadly combo.

1. Booth Babes
Are we such simple people? Are we so easy to manipulate that all it takes for us to decide that a product is worth writing about or purchasing are some out-of-work strippers in skimpy outfits handing out 64MB thumb drives? Yes!

2. Gimmicky Booths
Cheesy fake game shows? Yes, that'll make me take your company seriously. Magicians? Wow, I am optimistic about your company's potential in the CE marketplace.

Ten Reasons We're Doomed: CES Edition

Oh, yea! Almost makes me want to wander the floor of Macworld with a clipboard and a TV-B-Gone.

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187/817.

A couple of nights out will do that ...

And yea old greader is stuck at 1000+.

FindMeOn.com : Intellectual Property Announcement

FindMeOn.com Blog: "As one-of the earliest, if not the first, entity dedicated to Social Network Portability, FindMeOn.com pioneered many of the systems, methods, and techniques now common to online identity indexing, standardizing, searching and porting."

Oh, great. In the deadpool and evil to boot. They should at least get the service up if they want to dibs on the obvious.

Strip clubs | The Texas pole tax

Strip clubs | The Texas pole tax | Economist.com: "On January 1st the state's strip clubs began imposing a $5 surcharge for each visitor. The “pole tax,” as it is commonly called, is expected to bring the state an additional $40m in revenue each year."

Ah, I'm afraid that these words have been altered forever for me ...

Facebook Profile

Facebook Profile: "this tool will give users the option to move extra profile boxes to an “extended portion” of their profile. Users can choose to move these boxes; we will recommend that they keep the Friends Box, Mini-Feed, Wall, Basic and Personal Information as well as the top 12 application boxes they have added. At the bottom of the profile will then be a link to “Show Extended Profile”. Any user will be able to expand the profile at any point in time to see all the applications a user has added to their profile."

Whoa, a nice piece of ajaxy goodness. A big yellow 'move stuff' banner turns into a box with recommended moves checked, then the profile rearranges without repainting. No choice to drop the wall into the extended bit, though. Wall seems like an old bit of MySpace lingering on.

Twitter Jobs

Twitter Jobs: "Twitter is seeking a Business Development Manager who is focused on bringing Twitter's potential to mobile and IM operators the world over. You'll be tasked with building and maintaining strategic partner relationships and dedicated to producing results in the form of cost-reduction, localized promotion, and revenue."

Ah! There's a bit about that revenue stream that everyone was going on about a few weeks ago. Never saw anything that came out of the chatter ...

Confessions: The Meanest Thing Gizmodo Did at CES

Confessions: The Meanest Thing Gizmodo Did at CES: "CES has no shortage of displays. And when MAKE offered us some TV-B-Gone clickers to bring to the show, we pretty much couldn't help ourselves. We shut off a TV. And then another. And then a wall of TVs. And we just couldn't stop."

video

So much fun! And here I only turn off the bellowing at sports bars ...

Nick Bradbury: Feed Overload? Hit the Panic Button!

Nick Bradbury: Feed Overload? Hit the Panic Button!: "The 'panic button' in this case is a feature I've added to the next pre-release of FeedDemon 2.6. FeedDemon will automatically detect when you've got a ton of unread items, and then offer to mark them (or a subset of them) as read."

Oh! Nice. I need several of those! I would be great if Google Reader trends would do that and even suggest feeds to drop.

A Taste for Brews That Go to Extremes - New York Times

Many beer lovers are aghast at the creative liberties American brewers are taking with traditional styles, feeling that the bigger-is-better principle is reducing American brewing to the equivalent of a frat party.

To judge for ourselves whether these transgressive beers were simply stretching boundaries in creative ways or were the doomed siblings of cars with tail fins, the tasting panel sampled 25 examples, all from American brewers.

Phil likened the appeal of these beers to the macho allure of hot sauces, which almost dare enthusiasts to try the hottest ones.

A Taste for Brews That Go to Extremes - New York Times

Nice! I'll take my Pliny young, please! Odd selection of beers, guess I'm just spoiled with all of the west coast hop bombs ...

Knights of Moleskine, Spirit and Ale

Knights of Moleskine, Spirit and Ale: "the Knights of Moleskine, Spirit and Ale are dedicated to Journaling, Drinking Good Beer and a Spirtual Way of Life. 'Libertas de Juditium. Unitas per Variantia.'"

Whoa, alternate universe. A beer Moleskine mashup?

Bloglines | My Feeds

0/803. And they said that it couldn't be done ...

klostu.com

About us - klostu.com: "A Klostu account is also a powerful unified identity which can be used to automatically signup and login effortlessly to any board"

Sheesh, and here that I though that last year was "get out of beta free". I was beta begging for 'super early beta invites' last year around this time.

10 things I hate about your social network

I don’t want to give you my photos. I already have them at flickr. Let me stream them in, avatar and all.
I don’t want to post anything on your wall. It’s lame - I do my blurting at twitter. And pownce.
I don’t want another blog. One and a half is plenty.

It’s time to make the portable bits portable. Focus on people vs users. Presence vs profiles.

Aaron Mentele, Charisma 18 » 10 things I hate about your social network

Heh! Just so. One day they will learn to play well together. They probably just need a time-out ...

Not as punchy as my usual YASN 'about me'.

Why can't social networking sites bother to network with one-another?
Are they that anti-social?

http://hownottoblog.com/index.php/2005/03/18/ (domain gone)

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5/807!

Dragged some noise (like the BART feed, which is useless) and some postless wonders to the delete folder. We'll see if they fall out ...

XING: Update: No Online Ads On Premium Members’ Profiles

XING: Update: No Online Ads On Premium Members’ Profiles: "Premium Members are exempt from all advertising on the XING platform – both in terms of their own profile page and their general user experience on the XING platform. Basic members will continue to see ad banners on their start page, on profiles of other basic members, the search and search results pages, and other parts of the platform."

Oh! Another goes ad or pay. Livejournal seemed to do well with that model, sort of doubt that Tribe will make a go of it ...

What This Gadget Can Do Is Up to You

What This Gadget Can Do Is Up to You: "Neuros Technology International, based in Chicago, is providing full documentation of the hardware platform for its recorder, the Neuros OSD (for open source device), so that skilled users can customize or “hack” the device — and then pass along the improvements to others.

Because the OSD saves the recordings in the popular compressed video format MPEG-4, the programs can be watched on a host of devices, including iPods and smartphones.

The OSD has not only open hardware, but also open software: it is based on the Linux operating system."

Nice! They certainly got the jump on Android for TV

social-network-anti-patterns

social-network-anti-patterns: "Since so many sites seem to use your uploading of your address book as tacit/implied permission to spam all your friends with invites, this will annoy your friends, and make you look foolish."

Ah, quechup! That's what it's called. It gives a flavor to bacn and spam.

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5/819

singlism

singlism - Double-Tongued Dictionary: "This notion that you can live a full and completely happy life as a single person is so underrecognized that people who feel that way are reluctant to say so"

Singlism is very bit as ugly a word as Quirkyalone. Come on people, put your heads apart and work that OED!

"obiticide"

"obiticide" citation from Double-Tongued Dictionary: "the Star did in fact kill a couple of well-known people by mistake, a practice known as “obiticide,” or death by media"

FriendFeed - Account Settings

To make it possible for you to subscribe to your personalized FriendFeed in feed readers, iGoogle, and a number of external sites, we generate a secret key for every user that lets those products get a read-only view of your FriendFeed without knowing your password.

FriendFeed - Account Settings

Ah, and another fine idea.

ashton @ friendfeed

Jaiku

Jaiku's main goal is to bring people closer together by enabling them to share their activity streams.

Jaiku | About Jaiku


Oh! You can subscribe to people and then drop specific feeds. Instead of seeing the twitter and then the copies from pownce, friendfeed, facebook, jaiku, and YAPresence. Now I can see one less! What's a word for an item that you see multiple times in various feeds? It's certainly going to get worse downstream from Google Reader ...

Per account api keys is something that every service should do.

ashnod @ jaiku

Bloglines | My Feeds (489) (4)

90/817.

Oh! The paywall for Adweek and Brandweek seem to be gone. Yay! More feeds.

14 American Apparel Models Freed In Daring Midnight Raid

14 American Apparel Models Freed In Daring Midnight Raid: "Acting on information gathered from billboards, alternative weeklies, and Internet banner ads, an FBI strike team liberated 14 dazed, sallow, and undernourished American Apparel models in a raid on the controversial organization's downtown Los Angeles compound early Monday."

Perfect! Every once in a while I'm sitting on the Muni reading the Onion and when I reach the last page, I realize that I've been mooning the grandmother with the sleazy ad on the back page. copyranter's been all up in AA's business ... and we have yet another feed!

darkgate comic slurper

darkgate comic slurper: "The latest strips of your favourite web-comics slurped from the internet."

Best comix feed evar! You don't even have to create Yet Another Account, just pick 'um, grab your feed, and enojoy.

Bloglines | My Feeds (638) (8)

89/814. It never stops!

Now, about that 1000+ over in greader ... I am enjoying Google Reader trends, though.

Facebook's "Secret Crush" malicious widget

Facebook's "Secret Crush" malicious widget: "Secret Crush appears so far to have infected about three million Facebook users."

'Secret Crush' malicious-code widget tells you someone has a 'Secret Crush' on you, and if you want to find out who it is, you first have to invite five friends to use it by using the Facebook invitation process,"

Instead, Lovet says, the application displays a small iFrame with a download link that will try to infect the user's computer with the Zango spyware software to serve up ads."

Nice! Overdue, I'd say. Facebook's got the viral ...

Who will be the next Open Source Public Enemy #1?

Who will be the next Open Source Public Enemy #1?: "The SCO Group was delisted by NASDAQ. It was the latest bump down for SCO, best-known in recent years for claiming it owned Linux"

Sheesh, I'd forgotten all about sco. Good riddance.

Facebook | US Politics

Facebook | US Politics

ABC / Facebook / Politics. I certainly didn't see that coming. They're even getting good response numbers.

Haute Barnyard

Haute Barnyard - BuzzFeed: "for you foodies out there, it's the phrase that Adam Platt coined for restaurants that only serve food that's in season."

Funny. Surprised that the term so sticky, though. Especially with the food freaks who seem to have small humors, artfully arranged. I'd guess they'd go with "Seasonality" or "Freshies" or the ilk.

Facebook to Scoble: all your data belong to us

Facebook to Scoble: all your data belong to us: "intentionally or unintentionally, celebrity blogger Robert Scoble has put himself right at the center of the data portability issue, and at the same time is helping to expose the fascicle nature of Facebook’s claims of openness."

Great title! The blogging anthill was certainly overturned. For a while there you couldn't get a meme in slantwards. Turns out that Plaxo was scraping Facebook. Sheesh, it wasn't so long ago that Plaxo was spewing bacn. I'd certainly never trust them with any credentials. Seems overdue for a LOLSocial ... Plaxo, Fail!

Ah, luckily captured on this video of 50 hours of Techmeme in 50 seconds.

Airport profilers: They're watching your expressions

Airport profilers: They're watching your expressions:
TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program -- called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) -- that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent.

"Ordinary people who are feeling anxious are 'much more open with their body movements and their facial expressions as compared to an operational terrorist (thinking) 'I've got to defeat security,' ' Maccario said. 'We're looking for behavior indicators that show a certain level of stress, fear or anxiety above and beyond that shown by an anxious member of the traveling public.'"

Avram Grumer draws a vivid parallel to Orwell's facecrime

Google Reader/Share

Updates from Your Gmail Contacts

Ah! Finally found shared stuff. It used to be on the same page as Google Reader - Shared, but, guess it found a new home when Profiles came along. Still finding it quite odd to have feeds in the reader via chat.

Google Reader - Ashub

Google Share - Ashub

Google New Year's Logo With Easter Egg

Google New Year's Logo With Easter Egg: "there’s a sort of easter egg hidden in the Google-colored confetti at the bottom of the logo. If you look closely, you will notice it reads SYN SYN/ ACK ACK"

Sweet. Plenty of Google Doodles to choose from!

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33/805. Keeping it down!

Re-evaluating Your Online Commitments | 43 Folders

My suggestion for this year addresses a problem I suspect many of the people who read this site have: the sheer number of online commitments—that is, blogs, social networks, message groups, IM accounts, Flickr, Twitter, and any other online time sink that ends with an R—that we try to maintain.

but I knew I had to scale back or else I was going to end up speaking only in 140-character, hyperlinked sentences.

Re-evaluating Your Online Commitments | 43 Folders

Funnee. I just started putting accounts on a reading schedule, maybe I should put some of them on a deathwatch, as well ...

BoardGameGeek Forums

With this extra support, I will definitely be hiring some additional programming and design help. We'll be able to roll out some really great new features, along with a lot of enhancements and fixes that you guys have been suggesting forever.

2007 Support Goal Met! And 2008 Info | BoardGameGeek Forums

Congrats! BBG is a fine social network that continues to improve: have and want lists, geek buddies, rss feeds, and tagging. As well as a ton of content and very active use community.

Bloglines | My Feeds (299) (8)

12/811

Fun watching the feeds pop in as I read though. Reminds me of reading usenet with nn.

Poking at the Facebook/Google/Yahoo feeds in greader. Discover feeds made some excellent recommendations.

kinnear

All We Are Saying - New York Times: "kinnear v.

To take a candid photograph surreptitiously, especially by holding the camera low and out of the line of sight. Coined in August by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee of the Yarn Harlot blog when she attempted to take a photograph during an encounter with the actor Greg Kinnear at an airport."

Funny, another named coinage.

FTW

All We Are Saying - New York Times: "FTW interj.

For The Win. A bragging exclamation of approval, as in “K-Fed got the kids FTW,” or “I was able to open the file with Photoshop. FTW!!!” Originally part of the patter of the game show “Hollywood Squares” and later found in online games like World of Warcraft. Now largely used ironically and sarcastically."

This one is still not natural. I started seeing it on twitter used unironically and had to look it up ...

10 Google Feeds You Should Subscribe To

10 Google Feeds You Should Subscribe To: "Stay up on all the official Google posts easily by getting the feed. Read posts to the All Official Google Blogs Feed here; get the actual feed here.

Nice! And here I've been trying to collect them all.

How to Lose Your Job on Your Own Time

How to Lose Your Job on Your Own Time: "Employment law in most states provides little protection to workers who are punished for their online postings, said George Lenard, an employment lawyer at Harris Dowell Fisher & Harris in St. Louis. The main exceptions are workers who are covered by collective bargaining agreements or by special protections for public-sector employees; members of these groups can be dismissed only “for cause.” The rest of us are “at will” employees, holding on to our jobs only at the whim of our employers, and thus vulnerable."

Oh! doocing all around?

Chapter 12: How to not get Dooced: "To avoid Jen’s or Simonetti’s blog-based mistakes, you need to know your corporate culture and what it is and isn’t willing to accept."

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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.

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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 ...

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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