With sites like del.icio.us, Digg, & populicio.us, the proliferation of RSS/Atom feeds & readers, and mainstream media (and sites like Google News) offering several ways to get the breaking news you want delivered to you the minute it happens, a lot of the ineffiencies have been removed from the links "market". The interval between the discovery of a new link and its subsequent ubiquity is much shorter now -- everyone sees everything at about the same time -- and as a result, the reward for being first with everything often isn't worth the effort. I'd rather spend my time compiling what I think are the best or most appropriate links, even if they're a couple days old by the time I post them.
I think it's important to keep in mind that the number of weblogs added to the Technorati database and the number of weblogs being created are not the same, nor are the trends necessarily the same. In particular, I'm very skeptical about the huge jump in blogs created per day that happened in the last two months of 2004. It seems likely to me that could be more an artifact of how Technorati is finding blogs (found a previously undiscovered vein of blogs or something) or some other explanation.
Before the show started, the girl in front of us (we were seated in the third row of the mezzanine) was very concerned about her line of sight and kept telling various people in front of her to sit down. Big fan, I thought. But then the Pixies come out and start playing some serious rock and roll (perhaps not quite \m/ grade music, but certainly close enough) and the line-of-sight police woman and her girlfriend hardly even twitch in their seats. They barely clapped between songs. It looked like they were cuddled up in front of the TV watching Masterpiece Theatre or something.
Is rock critic criticism somehow less worthy of your contempt than rock criticism? Or are you being ironic?
Google-watcher and web-designer Jason Kottke said Google's interest in Mozilla was significant for another reason. He said the work that Google is doing on Gmail and Blogger show it is definitely interested in building software that [work] more like familiar desktop programs rather than web applications. "Mozilla is a platform that definitely lends itself to doing that," he told BBC News Online.
Ah, this takes me back to such discussions as "what is a weblog?", "what is a web service?", and "are weblogs journalism?" I guess I'm with Stewart on this one for the most part. I would call Organizr and Gmail web applications, but it's fair to say that their utility is limited because they're not easily connected to the rest of the web. Of course, RESTian web apps are limited too...performing tasks page-by-page is not always the most efficient way of doing things.
It would be nice to see the Wired properties spun back out to Conde Nast. Wired (the magazine) should be doing a ton with the Web and they're pretty much handcuffed until they get their domain name back.
What's with all the redirects? On the page explaining the new Blogger, all external links (and, oddly, some internal ones as well) are redirected through Google. Same with extenal links mentioned in people's comments (example here). What's going on here? Is Google attempting to track clicks from the comments on all Blogger-powered blogs? Starting to track the trails on the way to building the Memex? Or is it just a comment spamming safeguard? That aside, the redirects are poorly done...they redirect to an actual page that loads in the browser before continuing to the final destination. Not exactly a seamless user experience. Yuck all the way around. Why can't they just let the links be links?
I used to be an Expedia user and think their site is still excellent (travel sites on the Web have good user experience compared to, say, car rental sites), but the Orbitz matrix won me over. Orbitz's attention to detail in visual design is superior to Expedia's as well. Compare their respective flight search results pages. Both have good IA going on, but Orbitz articulates their IA better through visual design. The same applies on the front page. Expedia may have their search box placed in the middle of the page, but Orbitz's is much more visually prominent. That's gotta count for something, yes?
This reminds me of the Turk, a chess-playing automaton and the subject of Tom Standage's book of the same name. Its creator toured this magical machine around Europe, giving demonstration after demonstration, always showing the audience the clockwork guts of the machine before it beat any and all comers. The whole thing was a hoax, of course, with elaborate partitions concealing a human player amongst the gears. As for the similarity between Nanniebot's prose and that of Mr. Wightman, it sounds like a job for Don Foster.
I'm so pleased to see Keisha Castle Hughes nominated for Whale Rider. Her performance was wonderful. I'm also liking Johnny Depp's nomination for Pirates of the Caribbean, Sofia and Murray for Lost in Translation, Triplets of Belleville for animated film and best song (so catchy!), and The Fog of War for best documentary. But, but, but...Seabiscuit for best picture? No way.
Another interesting question related to this is what happens if Dean doesn't win the Democratic nomination? When he concedes and throws his support to another candidate, how does that include the web properties? Does the Dean blog start posting stuff about Wesley Clark? Do the Dean Meetups become Clark Meetups? Does he donate the software he and his campaign team have created to the Democratic nominee in the best interests of beating Bush? The blogs and the Meetups have created stronger ties between the candidates and their constituencies than more traditional tactics used in the past, and when the time comes, it might prove difficult to shift that connection to another candidate (which may prove troublesome for the Democrats come election time).
I'm skeptical when it comes to marketing, but even so, some of brands on this list seem to have succeeded almost in spite of the marketing. LeBron was going to get a mega contract and mega endorsements no matter who his agent was. Bend It Like Beckham got positive word of mouth because it was a good movie. The iPod sold itself, especially when it didn't have any competitors to speak of. A former drug dealer turned rapper? 50 Cent doesn't need marketing, especially when Dre and Eminem put him on their albums (an *obvious* marketing move...you'd have to be stupid not to do it). When you're marketing good products, is it good marketing or are the products doing all the work?
The photo of Colonel Sanders doing the Cabbage Patch is the most disturbing image you've ever posted on this site. And that includes the MJ mugshot from the previous post.
Wow, that sounds like a fantastic spot to dine. When Meg, Matt, Kay, and I went to the French Laundry, our waiter suggested that we take advantage of a pause in our meal to go stand in the garden and peer through the screened windows into the kitchen. We were stunned by how quiet it was. I would guess there were about 20 people in the kitchen along with a steady stream of servers zipping in & out and you could have literally heard a pin drop.
Yes, let's rewrite history, redo all of our art, alter all the photos, and forget that there were ever buildings there in the first place. [fingers in ears] la la la laaa la lala la la la...
What I don't like is having service that I don't want being forced upon me, especially when the service involves the whole fucked-up culture of tipping. When I arrive at a hotel, I want to take the bags up to my room by myself. However, because I know that the bellhop derives a not-insignificant portion of his income from tips, I feel bad doing so because I'm depriving him of that extra income. As Jason says, I can hold my own door, I can dry my own hands, I can hail my own cab, thank you very much.
Her presentation of the same at Pop!Tech was similarly disappointing (and I think the two lines of your summary were adjacent bullet points on one of her slides). James Kunstler, who had just given his talk, was shooting daggers at her from his speaker's chair...you could tell he wanted to tear her argument apart.
Them's fightin' words, young'n! Whoever's cheffing over there at the Danube couldn't hold Tom Colicchio's sauce pan. But I realize that at 27, your palette isn't quite as mature and refined as mine, so I'll let it go.
Re: "numerous weblog authors" and your general tone that suggests all around speaker suckiness... I count 4 people on the speakers list with active weblogs and only one (Xeni) that qualifies as someone who is known for blogging (and even that is debatable; she writes regularly for Wired). That doesn't qualify as numerous...and what's wrong with being a weblog author? As for "unknown media types", many on the list are scientists, inventors, writers, Ph. Ds, and successful business leaders. Many people on that list may not be famous to you, but have done important work in their fields (Lessig, Kunstler, DeMarco, Levin, Metcalfe, Wright).
