New Years Eve here in 9 Minutes

from sunset to sunset - land of the midnight sun
Originally uploaded by lightpainter.

Well NYE is here in 9 minutes, and Im 9 posts short of 1000 posts for my first year of blogging. My resolution is to blog less, and blog less meaningfull insight, and then when my company is flicked people will think Im mysterious. No, I'm interested how far this blogging, RSS, tagging, podcasting thing can go. Ill be pushing it thats for sure. Look forward to meeting some of you for real, and hello to people I havent see for a while. I miss you.

I Could Have Bought $4k Ipod Speakers

$4k US
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Forget Jason Calacanis or some of the rich mid-level Yahoo senior execs using $300 headphones (they've been around for ever and are a must !! I use some DJ-Sony model) How about some $4k Ipod speakers with the proceeds of your 128% 2005 increase from your Apple stockholdings ? Ironically, in the real audiophile world, $4k is nothing. Add a zero for entry level setup for high end audio. I dont see good things for the high end music hardware market unless it starts doing new speaker/amp/etc product development for PC/Mac. Im using basic JBL Creatures 2 (black to complement Imac/Ibook white) and the sound rocks. I dont use my stereo setup anymore :( (I paid $175 Aussie / $130 US - probably double US price !!!) Anyway, I want, I want - Do they come in black ? "These speakers feature an aluminum-encased amplifier housing four powerful Class-A tubes. By using analog tubes as opposed to digital electronics, these speakers are able to generate warm, low-octave sound that is virtually distortion free."

More Brad Feld Commonsense

wheres my $100m
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Exactly. Brad Feld : Excerpts : "At the early stage, an entrepreneur is much better served by finding an advisor (or set of advisors) or angel investor that has good VC connections and fundraising experience who can get actively involved in the company as advisor, board member, consultant, or even chairman... For the period of time that you are raising capital, this should be your primary mission in life (to raise the money you need to continue to run your business) – no one will (or can) do it better than the entrepreneur. Your lawyers, agent, and others will help, but the burden of the financing will almost always be yours."

128% Reasons Why I Should have Bought Apple

Going Out 5
Originally uploaded by Northern Shutterbug.

Apple's stock went up 128.5% in 2005. I've been reading stock upgrades too due to Intelization and Video Ipod, let alone if they ever shifted to dual operating systems (Win/OSX) as a choice. I'd prefer Apple stock than Google even if they were the same price : While I think Google is worth maybe twice as much or at least tens of billions more. Tell me which is more valuable over the next 15 years. Dagh, Orange of course.

Linus Torvalds Busts a Rhyme

Fluid 107 Cropped
Originally uploaded by Knuckledragger.

I like Linus' style : "Cry me a river, Jeff. The kernel is GPL'd. That's my responsibility. Source code. Stuff that comes to me as patches. That's my job, and that's what I get paid for. In fact, my contract says that I _cannot_ work on anything that isn't open source." Rest here.

Fred Wilson Remixes 2006 Predictions

Fluid 096 Cropped
Originally uploaded by Knuckledragger.

The classic East Coast forever young Thai'holidaying hipster 2005 'invested in delicious / sold it to Yahoo', 2006 'we'll see whats next', Fred Wilson is the Positive Music Maestro of 10th Street. Here I sample Fred remixing Steve Rubel on RSS + 2006. I totally agree, with the caveat being other countries have just had the 'A-Ha' moment about blogging, with RSS again being the invisible driver. You will see the same trends replayed on Tivo time delay in Europe, Asia, UK, Downunder (note to banker : double down on anything fred wilson invests in 2006, for non-US markets for 2007 launch ! - VC's admit they have geo-contraints) Fred : '"RSS has become a critical fabric of the Internet, but it's still only something 5-10% of the Internet population knowingly uses. By that definition, "knowingly uses", the percentage may never change. But RSS is going to be used by everyone on the Internet within a couple years and its going to be The Future of Media.'

Ex-Soft Porn Chief Wikipedian might Sub for Ads

More Halloween 7
Originally uploaded by Northern Shutterbug.

Sam from The Podnography Podcast has some interesting subcultural points to make on the background of Wikipedia's founder, Mr Wales. Anyway, the ad discussion is interesting here - Combined with all the talk of Wikipedia's ascent within the PageRanked google, could Wikipedia be bigger (for google) than AOL for ad yield ? Facing similar issues to Firefox and Wordpress I guess (and the various spinoffs from those platforms) as well as MySpace (huge traffic, no/low ads) From TimesOnline interview with Wikipedia founder Tim Wales : "Mr Wales says that is true – but only because he "lives in a normal house and drives a Hyundai"... Wikipedia, which started in 2001, will notch up around 2.5 billion page impressions this month. According to Mr Wales, its traffic volumes are doubling every four months.. while the site does not carry any advertising, Wales admits it might. "There is a great deal of resistance to the idea, both from the community and from me. But at some point questions are going to be raised over the amount of money we are turning down," he says... "What we will see is a set of hybrid models with an increasing amount of citizen participation in the gathering of news and in feedback and in reporting and analysing the news. And at the same time, we’ll have professional organisations managing the process – basically being the core framework."

Suck.com Domain Parking Hell. Scarlett $4m Deal

scarlett $4m ad deal
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Forgive me Father, park me not in domain hell : Anything but waiting for some 6 figure buyout by some scraping clickfraudish really simply sucking stealer. Suck.com was snark when it was smart, and monologues by Anuff and Steadman that you wondered how the hell they punched out the words and found the obtuse hyperlinks. Not to mention they were using pseudonyms - the opposite of todays always on RSS vanity watchlists. From Waxy.org : "The strangest part is that the domain continues to belong to Lycos, with Hotwired acting as the nameservers. If you query ns1.hotwired.com for the suck.com domain, it returns 198.65.105.202, an IP address of a Verio server currently hosting over 36,000 domains. The server is owned by a company called ParkingDNS.net, which seems to be hosting nothing but Parkingdots.com affiliate search portals. It also appears that there's no complete archive of Suck.com remaining anywhere online. Because the new owners have blocked web crawlers, Archive.org has purged the entire domain from its historical archive. (Last year, Suckarchives.com expired and was snatched up by a squatter.)"

Suck.com now greets you with :

THIS SITE CONTAINS ADULT MATERIAL

WARNING: ADULTS ONLY - SEXUAL CONTENT

The following web pages, associated links, and other material contain nudity and depictions of a sexual nature. All materials beyond this page at this site and linked locations are intended and authorized for access by consenting adults only. No minors are authorized, allowed, or permitted to enter beyond this point. Minors are persons under the age of 18 or 21 years in places in which 18 years is not the legal age of majority.

The Real Web 2.0 Business Model

i know me wrong
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

$1 per pixel, man why didnt I think of that in university. "MillionDollarHomePage.com - The idea: turn his home page into a billboard made up of a million dots, and sell them for a dollar a dot to anyone who wants to put up their logo. A square of 10-by-10 pixels, roughly the size of a letter of type, costs $100. He sold a few to his brothers and some friends. When he had made $1,000, he issued a press release that was picked up by the news media and spread around the Internet. Soon advertisers for everything from dating sites to casinos to real estate agents to The Times of London were putting up real cash for pixels with links to their own sites. So far they have bought up 911,800 pixels. "All the money's kind of sitting in a bank account," Tew told Reuters from his home in Wiltshire, southwest England. "I've treated myself to a car. I've only just passed my driving test so I've bought myself a little black mini."

Chris Messina realises George Bush Prefers Golf

uk sunbed
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Police often talk about the neighbourhoods and streetcorners that criminals congregate en masse, and the ineffectual result a raid will have on these serial abusers : The "flock" will merely congregate on the next corner or suburb and continue to peddle their IE tabs. Well Flock is trying to burn off its Friendster of Browser jibes, and I'm liking the language aigght ;) "Emo" Messina, which some of his anonymous commenters were calling him, blood'n'all (Lisa Williams : Dude! The blood is freaking me out! If you need to bond, what happened to a shot of whiskey?!), which is a complement in these MySpace days, busts it so : "We're hungry. What this country gives us doesn't feed our need to create, to produce, to solve and to connect. With all due respect, fuck you, we will create in the same action that destroys. We don't believe in what we're given; there is something better." 2006 The Lost Sheep will find its Browser Flock. Word. Peace. Out.

The Parable of The Lost Sheep - Matt 18:12-14, Luke 15:3-7 :
"Which of you men, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn’t leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it? When he has found it, he carries it on his shoulders, rejoicing. When he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that even so there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance."

Give me Dave Winer's Reader because GWebClipsSux

nat perfection
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Dave is right when he says there have been "not so many new ideas" in the RSS Reader segment. Now why Dave's product is perfectly positioned to kick a few goals, the competition in some ways, have in fact regressed, let alone new ideas. Google (check marissa interview) seem to be forever catching up to products developed years ago at Yahoo or getting others to release unfinished APIs. So today, I was getting sick of the random "web clips" advertising/items on gmail, so I clicked to customise : I cant import OPML, nor can I even import my feeds from the Google Feed Reader. Then you have to delete 15+ default feeds like Yahoo News, Wired, SI, NYT etc. With no other configuration options. (btw good interview transcript with Batelle on blog networks)

Time for that Google P/E to get a hit (founders are now focused on film), and I think the 2006 driver will be an expose of clickfraud - I've just been building an index of Australian sites to demonstrate some RSS technology, and the amount of fraudulent blogs - across mainstream platforms : typepad, blogspot, wordpress, spaces is pretty pervasive. Anyway, cant wait to try Dave's new reader on OSX : "My main reason for doing this work is to help bootstrap some new features in the market, specifically in two areas: Podcasting and Reading Lists. But first, I need to get a basic release out, get it running on some servers and desktops, and get feedback from users."

Microsoft + Kanye West' RSS GoldDigger

bellucci belissimo
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Ive been on the road today, did Microsoft buy Newsgator yet ? : Mary Foley care of Dave Winer : "Microsoft ended up looking like a company with a clue when it came to outlining its company-wide RSS strategy in 2005. RSS support will be built into not just Internet Explorer 7.0, but also Outlook 12 and Windows Vista itself. Almost all Microsoft blogs and sites have RSS feeds these days. RSS is gospel in Redmond these days."

2 Shot in Car Park back of Prince St Kilda

prince of wales
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

For 90% of my readers who are not from Australia (apologies), we don't have as many Skid Row random shootings at 230am but (we do sometimes ;) with a couple people in critical condition and the shooter caught, in the car park behind Monroes, near Prince of Wales. Aagh, the St Kilda of Old. The shooter gave one warning shot - Me no hero, and alive. Stay away from crazy people who have already let off a round and are pointing the gun at you.

Leave James Packer alone Tom Cruise

crabby paris
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Kerry dies, MSNBC are no more on TV, but on the web, they are reporting Mr Tom Cruise Scientology is trying to get some ROI back on his grooming of James Packer for the Celebrity Sect of Scientology, now that he's a made billionaire. MSNBC : "Has Tom Cruise snagged the promise of more big bucks for Scientology? The “Mission Impossible” star has been honored for being the biggest donor to the religion, and is said to have raised more than $1.6 million for a controversial detox program for firefighters in New York that is linked to Scientology. But the real money may be yet to come. While filming “The Last Samurai,” Cruise became chummy with James Packer, whose billionaire father, Kerry Packer was the richest man in Australia. The elder Packer died this week, and James Packer is widely believed to be inheriting his father’s empire. “James Packer was spotted around a Scientology campus in Australia, has made frequent trips in Los Angeles where Scientology is headquartered, and reportedly spent time in Scientology counseling sessions in Sydney — and Tom Cruise is his pal,” Cultnews.com’s Rick Ross tells The Scoop. “Practically everything that Tom Cruise does has some connection to Scientology. The thinking is that Cruise has groomed this guy to be a big giver to follow in Cruise’s footsteps. After all, Tom Cruise is the biggest giver Scientology has.”

The Yahoo M+A List

leg and leather
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

UPDATE : This tops and tails the list from a couple days ago on who Google had bought. Today its Yahoo in another well put together piece. Of particular interest to me was the Geo-IP/UK Acquisition : WhereOnEarth Unlimited (October 2005) Location based advertising in the UK, with international geo-coding technology.

More Women into Podcasts than Web 2.0

chrysler division
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Ok, I made that up, but its probably true according to The Podtrac December survey (which I assume has alot of data behind it they wont release... based on how many sites have been doing online surveys) "68 percent of those who have ever listened to a podcast are male". Im off to download all the latest podcasts which have started publishing again after XMAS, which is a much shorter break than mainstream radio, that in Australia anyway have another 5 weeks off the air. Wouldnt work in podcasting, not enough oligopolies. Check out DJ Bishop "Hunga MixTape" (LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE) for some 'hot urban mashups, nice n podsafe too.

Nicky Hilton + Cuz Agree on Y-Delicious Probs

nickys the smarty
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I totally agree with BlogCritics. Delicious post Yahoo is a worry, although I hope its an independent master/slave infection problem, hi nicky.

400% to 1500% 04-05 Growth - MySpace, Facebook..

lost my top ha
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

These are some sweet numbers, from WebProNews : "Between November 2004 and November 2005, image hosting site PhotoBucket top the list of the fastest growing Web brands, spiking nearly 1,500 percent from 983,000 unique users to 15.6 million. MySpace.com, in like fashion, shot up 752 percent, stretching its online space from 2.8 million unique visitors in 2004 to 24.5 million unique visitors in 2005. Social networking sites Facebook and Memegen.net grew by 530 percent and 446 percent respectively."

Some Small Picture Tips for Rojo

lost in arena
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

After all this GEMAYA talk and RSS Everywhere, I've been meaning to ask for a post-XMAS small picture present from Rojo :

1. OPML Export - It tells me its only exported 100 feeds, I hope that doesnt mean I lose over 2/3'rds of my feeds when I switch for good.

2. 10 Search Results a Page - When reading feeds and only getting 10 items per page is awful - I personally prefer a never ending page, or like using Google, let me choose number of search results : 10, 50, 100. I hate only getting 10 a page.

3. Size of buttons : If you only give me 10 search results a page, and I have 300 feeds, and there is no smart personalisation - have a guess how many times I have to click this tiny button for next page ? Alot, Alot...

4. Placement of Next Page button : Since the Rojo redesign (btw Im on firefox on OSX) the placement of the (tiny) next page button is often not displaying at all at bottom : This means I need to read 10 articles then scroll back to top of page to click on a small button, nay tiny button to get to next page, which on an ibook is very time consuming/annoying.

5. Recommended Feeds - Dont recommend feeds I already subscribe to.

Otherwise good service, Thankyou !

No Heidi Fleiss but Charlie Sheen + CBS Yahoo

whats in vault
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Fred Wilson has been increasingly talking about the TV networks (and content owners in general) taking their assets online - Fred may be looking for some post-delicious love to add to his 2006 portfolio (youtube would be perfect candidate but sequoia already there), and comparably Yahoo would be pretty happy to have used some of its Hollywood connections to lock in CBS and allow us to watch Charlie Sheen streaming on the web legally ! This space will only get more interesting when the networks see the results from trials like this as well as the Video Ipod. It would also be very kewl to see AOL and Fox Interactive Media publicly traded entities, using video (with remixing tools of course) to amp up the (still largely text search) GEMAYA battles. (we all know google really want video content...) : "CBS comedies "Two and a Half Men" and "How I Met Your Mother" are being offered for free video streaming this week from the Yahoo! Web site. Available through next Monday, the half-hour shows, which aired earlier this season, will be available in their entirety and without commercials, CBS and Yahoo! announced. It is the first time that Yahoo! is streaming episodes of a CBS television series in their entirety."

Mandy Moore, Dr Evil + Scoble say Buy Newsgator

moore zach
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Mandy Moore and Zach dont go out much, but sometimes they just need a bit of a push from their crew. Scoble's rightly telling his billionaire bosses to get out and about over the XMAS/New Year and buy some drinks for the group. Newsgator is one acquisition I think is a matter of how much and when rather than if. I think the price would have an additional zero than your typical free to consumer, low to no ad revenue Web 2.0 tagging app. The quality people involved have built it as a business not a feature from the start, and just as Yahoo trumpet their "new" line of executives, so would Microsoft be getting some great talent at Newsgator. But this deal would not be one of those "we loved the people so much we bought the company" acquisitions. It is more expensive than that. Nor would it be purely about the marketshare in the enterprise and consumer segments of RSS. It also wouldnt be solely about the technology platform that has been built out by Reinacker, Bradbury, Simmons, Feld + Holston; Price/Earnings, Price/Revenue in a future NPV tense would come into it, but not be the sole determinant of price. Together though all these factors suggest a price in the above $50m, less than $500m range on David Beisel GEMAYA 'bipolarization' acquisition matrix. What are people thinking around the Pricing of a MS/Newsgator deal ? I said in the last week I thought the deal would be more Groove Networks price than delicious; I'm thinking up to $300M (and as low as $120m ala Ozzie's Groove) because they have done a few rounds of finance, bought a few companies, have enterprise revenue, real technical infrastructure, market leadership in RSS infrastructure at consumer and especially enterprise market, and dont really need to sell. On the buying side Microsoft and Google are behind in the RSS spaces which Newsgator lead in - Not to mention the fact the asset has a higher value to Microsoft because its DNA is MS centric. Now would be about the time to throw in the old chestnut about feedburner and technorati - the other mobius investments and round the number off at $1 Billion - which maybe isnt what someone would pay now, but there is no pressure to sell - esp as technorati's turnaround is doing very nice and feedburner just keep expanding like crazy. $1b dollars says recently divorced Austin Powers; Dr. Evil: I demand the sum... OF 1 MILLION DOLLARS. ) The Scobemeister in a great, classic post :

"Let’s be honest. We’d rebuild NewsGator from scratch anyway. That’s what big companies usually do after acquiring companies. But, it’s a lot easier to rebuild something that’s already done than have 500 meetings with seven groups figuring out what to do from scratch. What’s the opportunity cost of doing that?"

"Andrew Largeman: This is my life, Dad, this is it. I spent 26 years waiting for something else to start, so, no, I don't think it's too much to take on, because it's everything there is. I see now it's all of it. You and I are gonna be OK, you know that, right? We may not be as happy as you always dreamed we would be, but for the first time let's just allow ourselves to be whatever it is we are and that will be better. OK? I think that will be better."

MySpace.co.uk Tweens Idolise Sienna Miller

oh sienna sienna
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Supposedly anyway, UK sample but farely global search results other than Kerry and Sienna, who do come in 1 + 3 which continues my global (75%)/local (25%) thesis.

1 Sienna Miller
2 Gwen Stefani
3 Kerry Katona
4 Kylie Minogue
5 Hilary Duff
6 Charlotte Church
7 Jessica Simpson
8 Paris Hilton
9 Jessica Alba
10 Christine Aguilera

Hussey Century. Kerry Dead.

Cowgirl
Originally uploaded by RavenGirl.

Kerry Packer the Original Media Mogul of Australia with Rupert Murdoch has died. Kerry was 94th richest person in the world according to Forbes today. He invented world series cricket and Mike Hussey in a timely knock at the MCG Test has just gone to lunch at 112 not out, and Australia is 9/344 after a record 10th wicket stand between Hussey and Glen McGrath, when it looked like Australia would be all out for 250. Kerry Packer - you defined media in Australia (not to mention approving the number 1 australian portal i worked at in seminal mid/late 90's ninemsn) Im sure James, his son, will do very well carrying on the legendary Packer name.

Wired Top 10 2005 : 93yr Old Aussie TxtisGR8

Nidia in Lausanne
Originally uploaded by NubGod.

Wired's 2005 Top 10 Re-Cap is rather Tired, other than this beauty involving a 93yr old hardcore sms texter, who had obviously been in training for nearly a century to kick the ass of the myspace generation : "A race in Australia last April saw retired post office telegrapher Gordon Hill, 93, beat the dickens out of a 13-year-old girl named Brittany, who was armed with a mobile phone and a pair of flying thumbs. Brittany used SMS shorthand, while Hill sent every character of the 21-word-datagram and still won by 18 seconds. Lest this be mistaken for a fluke, a similar contest staged the next month by comedian Jay Leno produced the same results. Meanwhile, the FCC is considering dropping the five-word per-minute Morse code requirement for new ham radio operators. Maybe they should be making it mandatory for the rest of us instead."

AOL Email Value = A. $0.0003 B. $769 C. $5000

the real me
Originally uploaded by sexysabi.

Here's a question for future Google employees to practise on before their big Google Labs Aptitude Test. But first : Digg Spy, Im addicted - I have it running on the Imac 20" screen and I watch it (like a trader) and see if there are any random stories to blog. So fulfilling my dream of being a runner of a highly leveraged hedge fund dealing with 3rd world economies, I've noticed on digg spy if you outlay $769 (just like people that buy shares in car parking spots for asset growth with guaranteed dividends : if they cant afford a house).. why not instead buy an AOL email address. Only $769. Now it all makes sense about that ex-AOL employee who stole 92m AOL email accounts. Except he sold them for $28,000 : Or 3/100th of a cent per email ($0.0003) Man this guy is so not Web 2.0 - He has no idea how to flip. He could have held and sold for $769. Or wait like Google is to 2008, for the $5000 per user numbers to come back. So we have 3 valuations now :

1. The AOL ex-employee court case and spam mafia @ 3/100th of a cent ($28k for 92m emails = $0.000304347826087)

2. Google on the other hand, have assumed a higher growth rate and long term NPV on each account as the churn from dialup is reversed as The G-Web O/S meets dark fiber and free wi-fi becomes a reality : They value them today at $769.

3. Nasdaq 1.0 : The third valuation is what they used to be worth, which is $5000 per account according to the Taipei Times, which itself sounds like a ebay spam newspaper (thats a good idea actually) :

"If you have an e-mail address ending in @aol.com, Google has put a price on your head. You are worth US$769.23. Unfortunately, you will not be able to use it to pay your credit card bill. That's because Google, best known for running the world's most popular search engine, put that valuation on AOL's 26 million users worldwide on Tuesday by buying a 5 percent stake in the company from Time-Warner for US$1 billion, suggesting an overall price tag of US$20 billion. (By contrast, Yahoo's US$30 million purchase last week of the social tagging site Delicious valued it at about US$100 per user.) The AOL valuations, however, are a long way down from the US$182 billion merger of AOL and Time-Warner in January 2000. Then, the Internet provider had 20 million users and AOL had a notional value of US$100 billion (being 55 percent of the merged company); that's about US$5,000 per aol.com address."

Google vs Yahoo Acquisition Semiotics

1st time using a green shade
Originally uploaded by Sita ; ).

I've always liked the word se·mi·ot·ics. Almost studied it.

The theory and study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language or other systems of communication, and comprising semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics.

Semiotics is the perfect word to use in a perfunctory manner when benchmarking the name of companies that Yahoo has bought versus Google, helpful in CSI like profiling. Yahoo's M+A semiotics read : fun, jagged, dangerous in the same way a rollercoast ride is; delicious, flickr, konfabulator (sadly renamed) Google's scrip semiotics are more complex, obtuse, asexual + asynchronous : Android, Akwan, Urchin, Keyhole. Great list on all Google's acquisitions here, minus the semiotics.

Kate Moss YouTubes. Tom @ MySpace Cool

kates virgin ad
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Im not sure if there is a connection but I watched Kate Moss' Virgin Mobile Ad on YouTube (via Gawker) + learnt she drinks Earl Grey (my favourite tea, with japanese green sencha a close second) and that she talks as well as a bit of bump'n'hoove. I then saw The Scoble, Rubel and MiniMicrosoft comic parody. All on YouTube, which is executing the "flickr4video" strategy people joked about + Sequoia invested in (note : flickr would probably be competing head to head against youtube now if it wasnt bought/assimilated by Yahoo) - It has a real community growing and very schweet functionality, uploading, converting and dropping into blogs. And addictive videos that download quick. Did I say addictive ? So far the most of all video sharing sites I've used. Come on flickr is so 2005. The MySpace backtrack noted by TheGigaOmMaestro is very interesting : from YouTubes blog; "Well Tubers, thanks to all of your emails and blogging, we have been able to get in contact with Tom from MySpace. Turns out this was a simple misunderstanding, and MySpace has re-enabled all YouTube embeds. Everything should now be back in working order. We can't thank you enough for your support. Happy Holidays from all of us here at YouTube." Who is Tom ? Is It The Tom ? What were his real motives ? Was the Kate Moss / Lindsay Lohan meetings in LA a rouge for Tom + Kate. TomKat2. Spooky. Time for a visit to the Scientology centre...

AOL/GOOG Deal - Question for Smart People

google labs aptitude
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

So everyone's (still) talking about preferential algorithmic help and banner ads for AOL and there's that whole $300m advertising auction credit, which is pretty cool, minus the $1B cost. Now, GOOG full of smart people who passed the Labs Aptitude Test (actually not a pass, more HD++) get 5% of AOL, so there's like another $700m there, and lets throw in another $100m for consulting and travel expenses (anyone know how the whole geography business unit thing will work ?) So is GOOG paying $600m for the 5%, or what is the actual number, smart people that Google is paying AOL minus advertising and other costs for the 5% ? Thanks BB

NYE Folksonomy sometimes need Geo-Love

Gorgeous
Originally uploaded by oz sailor.

I'm a total addict as people know to a whole range of "keywords", "topics", "watchlists" or "tags", such as 'rss', 'podcasting', 'video', 'hollywood', and more specific local companies + individuals (sensis, ninemsn, pbl, people i wont name ;) I wont even get into the technical difficulties of tracking a non US company or individual on non-US sites (because thats my startup day job - email me tho !) but the same theory applies to any non-US folksonomic venture and even to the geo-sub-communities within the dominant dotcom-tagdoms. If the Internet is one thing fundamentally it is the most kick ass thing ever to connect people with similar passions and interests (for good and for bad) irrespective of geography. So when Dave Winer says Flickr being a "world-wide thing" is a good thing - I totally agree, 100%. However, if you live 24 hours from the centre of the world and you want to upload, tag and share a news item, web link, video or photo, 2 or 3 times out of 10 some local geo-coordinates would really help (maybe more so you can get a handle on the 'voice' that is emerging from different geo-regions)

Dave, imagine if there was a place outside the US called 'New Orleans' that had more items in flickr under that tag, so you couldnt even see the 'New Orleans' you know - this is a problem we face continually downunder and from what I hear in all other "other" countries (not all the time - just on some geo-sensitive areas) - Same arguments apply to politics/delicious etc - Although our leader John Howard has similar "Iraq" issues as George Bush, Howard is a far better leader + economic manager (of a much smaller pond).

This global/local experience is consistent with traditional media in that a majority of (non-US english speaking) TV and newspaper content (in Australia for example) is "global". (eg at moment being summer here on free to air TV we have all the dud US shows from last year but local sports - cricket - during the day) Not to mention the Michael Moore's of this world and the classic French Film Industry vs The US Film Studios, and digress into cultural theory. I guess Im saying, in some cases local does "also" rule and it would help to be able to combine bottom up user folksonomy (x) with geo-coordinates (y) Now I dont want to end up like ghost-town backfence.com with $3m of Valley VC and only 600 registered members, nor do I want to be competing for free Ipods and coffee cards for those on Yelp and Judysbook - I want to be part of the global village but this New Years Eve Im more interested in finding a party within a 10km radius in coastal Victoria. And ride my bike home....

2006 Prediction : Dave Winer moves to Australia but leaves country when Itunes Australia doesnt allow him to download latest Lost episodes...

Jacques Out and Live Local Flickr Streams

rye map
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Damn, Jacques is out for 2 runs in his first innings for Australia on an overwatered pitch, in a late starting Boxing Day Test Match at the MCG. It was a good ribcage ball, dropping to batpad. Anyway, I totally agree with Dave Winer on the benefits of a global Flickr community. However, when your own country (eg Australia) doesn't have a local flickr like photo sharing community to find amazing locations across your continent : The Margaret River in West Australia, Byron Bay NSW, and Red Hill Victoria, that creates a localised opportunity (kottler who some marketers worship i was told ! would call this an old product placed in a new geographic market ;) Im in Shoreham for example, a seaside community 1 hour from Melbourne AUST (next to Flinders on the map), but there is another "Shoreham" on the beach in UK - So in flickr I go to the tag shoreham and I find The Australian + UK Shoreham beaches (as well as people's family photos when they went to Shoreham but being the English, stayed inside and didnt click "private") To generalise behaviour, just like 30% of websearch is commercial, and more than 50% of purchases are done within 25kms of the house (im generalising from my yellowpages experience) I'd similarly think we're all more likely to be interested in pictures with people (we know) and places we (live in / go to) that are often within an 8 hour flight (dave's photos are consistent with this thesis) : and even then they might be locations we knew as children, went to Uni at, etc Dave Winer's kewl flickrset : "It's a Flickr holiday if there ever was one! I'm so glad I'm subscribed to the photo streams of people who are taking pictures all over the world today. Cyrus Farivar in Senegal and the Sudan in Africa. Kathryn, who I "met" through Megnut is in New York City, while Megnut herself is skiing in Vermont. Betsy Devine in Cambridge. Doc Searls is in Marin. Scoble in Silicon Valley. Dan Farber practicing martial arts. And of course Ernie the Attorney is in New Orleans. I have correspondents all over the globe and our connection is through the bits traveling over the network. Never has the vision of Holding Hands in Cyberspace ever seemed so real to me. And every year it gets more and more real." This is definitely a great opportunity to develop downunder in 2006. Feel free to leave comments or email me on this one. Its so obvious maybe its been missed. No-one wants to fly 24 hours (except the Wilsons for a foot massage and elephant ride in a river) OK, back to the cricket...

Jason Calacanis talks Xbox 360 Turkey with Chris Pirillo

lovn the bilson
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Great Chris Pirillo podcast with Jason Calacanis, talking about his AOL corporate funded fully specc'd 17in Powerbook, Digg being bought by CNET.. one day (or Yahoo), and his BlogSmith blogging tool which will be private-beta'd Q1, 06 - which is also "powering" AOLs blogs (on 27 servers) - blogsmith was carved out of the transaction. Interesting discussion about a whole range of things incl video game content, and how to write a story that is "diggable" (eg 15 things you can do with gmail etc).

Digg Reverse Engineers Attention Owners

cant smoke like kate
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Digg recently raised a few $mill in quality VC, and alexa analysis has shown a head to head battle for users/traffic with (their quite different peer) slashdot (as we know alexa is dodgey on many fronts and has heavy IE skew) The Digg boys crack open new beers on their weekly Diggnation podcast, which while lacking the X-Factor does well promoting the most digg'd stories, and is almost entertaining banter. 2006 Jason Calacanis predictions include they will be bought by CNet - Alex Bosworth article is interesting saying the digg algorithm is farely basic (users "digg" a story) but the "ecosystem" around how a story is dug is more complex, harder to control, but a major quality driver. What digg is doing is definitely a piece of the puzzle, and a current midpoint between opensource forums/slashdot and yahoo/google news. Mr Alex Bosworth : "The main function of digging is really used by those who patrol the link queue. People who probably have run out of interesting things to read, are looking for the newest of the new news, or want to help control the front page watch over the torrent of submitted links, looking for diamonds in the rough that belong on the front page. The interesting thing is that these people are served differently by digg than their upstream brethren, they use digg to look at a giant link queue and not just another news site. Without these people, digg would cease to function: nothing would make it out of the link queue." News @ 11

BillG : Email + Feeds + Podcasts are Different

no more home + away
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

At the vectored growth rate we are moving RSS towards the moon, it will only be 325,439 hours till all content will have a RSS component I can subscribe to. Anyway, if anyone happened to still use Outlook (and Im sure like IE, hundreds of millions do) - but, if the latest Office (on Mac) is any example, there is no way I want my feeds spliced with my Outlook email (communication). Just as I dont want my podcasts (audio) with my feeds (text) or bit-torrent (video) with my flickr accounts (images) And then blogspot (blogging) is also separate. There needs to be attention and application glue between, just not an arranged marriage till each parts are best of class. Scoble was the one who said at start of year Microsoft need to produce a new office application which combines the Best of Web 2.0 (like scoble says "Web 2.0" is quick to type) So I think Microsoft taking RSS into Outlook as Yahoo is taking RSS into web based mail, is just an inevitable extension of RSS Everywhere. Will it be any good though ? Or will be it more like Windows Search today vs Spotlight or Google Desktop (Search) ? Come on Microsoft just buy NewsGator already : At least it wouldnt be another sub $35M rounding error acquisition. MS buying Newsgator would have to be more Groove Networks $300-$500M+ size. OK, I guess MS will have to fail first and then pay The Feld Colorado premium.

Kevin Burton on Attensa and Newsgator re MS RSS Outlook announcements "If you're writing code for Microsoft platforms you're a sharecropper. They own the ground underneath your business. This isn't by itself a bad thing you just have to be aware of it. It's a bad market to be in if you can avoid it. NewsGator and Attensa were somewhat smart."

Commodore 64 (1982) - My First Computer

My first and best computer ever (although the imac 20" is close !) : I still remember going into the Computer Labs in Grade 3 which were also Commodore 64's (I was 9 years, wow, 22 years ago) and getting a copy of Galaxy (based on Galaga) onto a cassette. I had one at home (my first) so I could do "homework" - So lucky we didnt get a Vic 20. and you can take your TRS 80's and....

27. Commodore 64 (1982)

The best selling computer of all time still appears to be the Commodore 64: Estimates of this PC's sales range from 15 million to 22 million units. The first C64 cost $595 and came with 64KB of RAM, a 6510 processor, 20KB of ROM with Microsoft BASIC, 16-color graphics, and a 40-column screen. (How times have changed!) It also was the first PC with an integrated sound synthesizer chip, according to Ian Matthews of Commodore.ca. Photo courtesy of the Computer History Museum.

I had to go to friends house for the Atari 2600 - WOW did the Atari rock.

7. Atari Video Computer System (1977)

Later known as the Atari 2600, the VCS brought video games out of the arcade and into America's living rooms. It was a snap to set up: Just plug the clunky-looking box into your TV set and grab the joystick. The Atari 2600 was the first successful console to use game cartridges, which allowed consumers to play multiple games on the same system and created a huge market for crude-looking but addictive titles such as Space Invaders and Pac Man. The Atari's games may not have looked much like Grand Theft Auto, but its influence can be felt in today's Xboxes, PlayStations, and GameCubes. AtariAge has more details. Pong, anyone? PCW photo by Rick Rizner; Atari VCS courtesy of Mike Mika.

Check all of the best 50 gadgets over 50 years - PC World article here : Vkewl.

Jeff Jarvis Tazers National Geographic

female co-carver
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Jason Calacanis or JayCeeSquared (JC 2)- not to be confused with backstreetboy JC1 or Kfed (who now has his own homepage and myspace account with one friend) - has a penchant for calling people he likes "playaz" and those he doesn't or competes against as the King of Blogging (eg Jeff Jarvis) "playa haters" - Jeff told him to 'get back on the meds', but the really bustin Jarvis dope thang is when he takes the old school to the hood and tells em what time it is and pops them a hit of viagra, mainlined straight into their digital printing press. This time he's schooling the National Geographic, that boomer-tween targeted african booty call, that in Web Two Point Oh My Oh Baby Lets Rock it, sees value in co-opting flickr amateurs for its very professional ends. Nice interview Playa ! But, after years of selling/developing "banners" (the crude name which has stuck) I do relate to this quote from the National Geographic Society President "I can't say how we'll get marketers to support the new, fragmented media as they do the old media. There is a tsunami of money flowing into the web, and some will trickle down to bloggers. But advertisers are not agents of change. For the most part they are risk averse. They aren't going to embrace things they can't easily measure or compare and at this point they don't seem inclined to bother with small audiences. So until they can measure and buy easily and not risk the boss' wrath because they bought Gawker.com instead of The New York Times, it's going to be tough. But in the final analysis, quality, performance, and passion will overcome most barriers." One decade on and we are still winning advertisers one by one, and percentage of their spend, by percentage of their spend : Sometimes being an accountable medium doesnt help. Long term it will though. This is what Jarvis gets, and he's willing to rollup the sleeves with yesterdays big newspapers and help em bust a digital rhyme.

Merry XMAS

bin laden niece gq
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Its 935am XMAS morning in Australia (Im at my parents house in shoreham, melbourne), and ive just checked memeorandum and all I can see is more AOL IPO 2008 and 2006 predictions - which are so 'like yesterday' ! Slow News Day :( You will probably see some irrelevant posting today as I avoid explaining what blogging and RSS is to relatives who dont particularly want to know. The weather here is nice, so have a good one. Special hellos to people out there I havent seen for awhile, for whatever reason...

Keira Knightley gets into Web Development

keiras long hair
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Now I've exhausted the best of her latest shots from The Esquire magazine, I can reveal Keira Knightley may be about to take inspiration from a Webmaster who left his promising career and after burning $25K in savings learnt that the real money is in "link trap websites. I'm not sure if there's just one small ring of sleazebags out there, or if there's a zillion mini-sleazebags, but this is the real way to make money. About 50% of the clicks on my various AdWords ads are from link traps setup on squatter domains, and I've paid them probably 10 times what I've made on the AdSense ads on my sites."

I like Dave Winer's 2006 Ipod Predictions

can i use bathroom
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Makes me smile when I think one day an advaned Ipod may have the functionality of an AM transistor "wireless" radio, with the inevitable Steve Jobs twist. Dave would know alot more about live streaming podcasting and the possibilities for The Ipod and the mobile phone of course : I'd love radio on my shuffle anyway. Dave Winer's predictions here : "2006 prediction: Apple will ship two generations of iPods. The first new generation, released in April, will have a satellite receiver built-in. The second will have a low-power FM transmitter built-in."

The Super-GEMAYA Cold War Escalation

now we r talking
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

With no more physical assets to be mined - Judgement Day did arrive and John Connor was now working at Google, Governor Schwarzenegger was facing a race riot from the next generation of Crips, who were unhappy about exclusion from The Grid, which back in The Web 2.0 Enlightenment had meant free wifi and applications supported by advertising. Everyone had a unique digital ID that tracked where they went, what they were saying and who they were interacting with, all on autotagged satellite images tracking every movement, person and transaction. There was no safe or private space. Dissenters of Googleplex 2 had their access cut-off and tried to live outside The Grid on dial up and the hotbot engine using a version pre-Lycos acquisition. First Class Citizens lived in 7 star luxury in a gated virtual community known as GEMAYA that had Governor Schwarzenegger as its leader. (rumours were dark fiber had caused seismic shifts in California which was now underwater) Historian John Battelle JR, trying to understand the subtext of his dads Federated Media, was looking through the digital archives of the universities which had been indexed prior to their eventual absorption into GEMAYA in a stock/cash deal, and found an article about GOOG buying into AOL at a $20b market cap (3 times revenue if growth targets were hit) AOL hoped to have a nice run on the public market - but making GOOG even richer. This led to the Yahoo/MSN alliance - which made sense at the time given MS had no real interest in being a media company, although Live.com/Office widgets were to be free / ad supported. YHOO bought 5% of MSN for $500M @ $10b valuation. It wasnt long before there was a rapid escalation of large caps wanting to become supercaps (AMZN/IACI ultimately merged with EBAY/SKYPE) : "Although Google will hold only a 5 percent stake in AOL, it retains the right to demand an IPO beginning in July 2008, according to the SEC documents. If Time Warner doesn't want to pursue an IPO then, it could buy back Google's stake based on a fair market appraisal, the filing said."

KFeds almost Search Daddy but its BoyParis

A Socialite's Life have analysed their site search terms :

10. Hayden Christiansen
9. Nip Slip
8. Janice Dickinson
7. Kenny Chesney Gay
6. Katie Holmes
5. Jack Osbourne
4. Janet Jackson Nude Video
3. Fabian Basabe
2. Sean Preston Federline
1. Paris Latsis

My (other) Most Viewed Flickr Photos Q4 2005

These are my most viewed Flickr photos from my "other" flickr account (my usernames are redbarren + benbarren fyi) These photos are largely from a 6 week period Q4, CY 2005.

	#1: boob job tara • 824 views / 1 person counts this as a favorite
	#2: grace park • 581 views / Nobody counts grace park as a favorite
	#3: ferrari gg50 • 386 views / Nobody counts ferrari gg50 as a favorite
	#4: nice shaved legs • 332 views / Nobody counts nice shaved legs as a favorite
	#5: katir so running • 234 views / Nobody counts katir so running as a favorite
	#6: whatever you need • 211 views / 1 person counts this as a favorite
	#7: nice boots + belly ring • 206 views / Nobody counts nice boots + belly ring as a favorite
	#8: closer to garden state • 198 views / 3 people count this as a favorite
	#9: hi scarlett • 198 views / Nobody counts hi scarlett as a favorite
	#10: eva in australia today • 193 views / 2 people count this as a favorite