BlogHerCon : Greek Tragedy

In the spirit of Gender Positive Light Side Fem-Blogging, I'm spending a Sunday getting into the Female A-List : Quiet fascinating. Here's Stephanie Klein ('Greek Tragedy') - same surname as Naomi (anti/pro/anti branding Klein grrl that bores the hell out of me), plus the original Calvin : even though I bought her first book (once you work in a ad agency the last thing you want to be is idealistic - negative or positive about it : "Q : is a brand authentic ? A : who cares") Greek Tragedy is in the top 2000 blogs out of 13 million tracked by Technorati supposedly. It's been a great late night 'Sex and the City on a budget' read (things don't resolve themselves by end of episode and shoes do have to be paid for) : Steph works in an ad agency, has become a big f-blogger, but dating and adsense cheques havent changed her life too much. This is the best paragraph (it had 34 comments) in an hour of reading late Sunday evening :

"I’m on a date. It goes well, the kind of well where he ends up in my lobby, near my mailbox, waiting because I’ve said, “Oh, before we go up, let me just get my mail.” He offers to hold something. This is nice, being drunk with a male while I fetch the mail. Then a sobering moment will suggest itself, right there beside my college newsletter. Pottery Barn Kids. Posh Tots. HearthSong.

This wasn't a first date. Second. Or third. We were past casual. He'd read the Monarch Notes to my life.

“Um, Stephanie, why do you get children’s catalogs?” He asked causually, because that's what you do when you're past casual. And, as fast as that, I’m sober wondering why I haven’t unsubscribed to both of them. The catalogs and the man.

“Oh, I dunno. Let's think. Maybe 'cause I had an abortion. Wanna ask me anything else?” I know he isn't being mean; he is being a guy. He had forgotten. He smiles, a shoelace dangling from his mouth. He doesn't mention how his foot tastes. Instead, he turns quiet and sober. I know he feels bad. Well so do I. Grab a chair. It seems Pottery Barn Kids makes a lovely mini lullaby chair.

I take his hand and lead him upstairs. He reads me a bedtime story with the light of a nightlight. Not all is lost."

Surfette tells all to BlogHerCon

Lisa Stone is already kicking ass, she is a driving force behind (? or related to ?) BlogHerCon, and I have never been so interested in a conference, since.. um.. Gnomedex I guess ! When you women go off and have a conference us men start wondering - "Oh, so what are you doing with the girls ?"... "Just talking blogs and RSS honey"... "Oh, OK (very insecure now)"..."Yep, we're just figuring how to get on the Technorati A-List, or bypass the small cap-exchange and go to the People or Vaniety Fair Hot Lists".... "Really baby (increasingly insecure".. "Yes baby, we are just closing a one-off special magazine edition now with Vanity Fair for 50 Hottest (Female) Bloggers..They want the standards - Jessica Coen, Ana Marie Cox... but baby, they want me on the list too, isn't that great ? I'm under NDA so don't say anything. I've got to speak to their Publisher Monday."... "That's good baby... I've just go to get something from the garage." From Lisa.....

"The A-list? Sometimes I think it's stupid. But if you don't play into it then you don't get the visibility--and I think it is important to get visibility for what you do. It's a Catch-22: You have to play their game but their game kind of sucks."

Lisa, Ponzi, Susan, Danah et al : BlogHer Conference

hellooo
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I think BlogHer is the best idea in a long time. Females control the world. You run it. You do all the work. We know. We enjoy the return on your endeavours. But I love a kick ass smart women with a sense of humour. So bitchin aside its great to see some proactive gender action. Maybe soon, we could have a conference that has 'affirmative action' with a 50/50 gender split : Possibly at Syndicate in December in SF because I know I'm coming to that. I don't want to sit in a room full of male IT 55 year olds. ick... You know when your pinups (industry, not personal please ') are Dave Winer, Doc Searls and Adam Curry, we need some hot poontang. After a 5% max estimated M:F ratio @ gnomedex, its great that Ponzi, of Chris and Ponzi (who met thru Match.com - great podcast) with Chris being Mr Pirillo of Gnomedex fame... Ponzi is hosting and blogging 'BlogHer' - Love that excited estrogen :

"Do you remember that excited feeling you had the first day of school? I've got it - thanks to Blogher con. I'm so excited I woke up at 5:45 BEFORE the alarm went off. This is cool. I can't wait to see how it unfolds today. La, La, La - Happy, Happy - joy, joy... my morning is starting out good. :)"

And then there's Lisa Stone, the driving force, ""The A-list? Sometimes I think it's stupid. But if you don't play into it then you don't get the visibility--and I think it is important to get visibility for what you do. It's a Catch-22: You have to play their game but their game kind of sucks." Maybe, I'm a woman. I certainly agree with that quote. Or maybe Australian and women bloggers face the same issues.

And nice1 Susan Merrit : "I'm at BlogHer--the conference is swinging into gear with 300 folks crammed into the big meeting room and the sound of Kumbaya is faint above what's turning into a down and dirty moment with a blogger in the audience who tells Halley Suitt "I asked you for a link and you didn't link to me!" And Halley says "Okay, I blew it--ask me again." The room roars with laughter and the conversation takes off: Trish Grier,Liza Sabater, Staci Kramer, and others in the audience are chiming in on links, influence and playing the status game(or not). This is not your father's conference, folks--and this is not even your brother's conference, friends--this is the do-acracy and i have feeling it is going to ROAR. Congrats Lisa, Elisa, Purvi and Jory--you pulled it off."

I also like Scoble being humbled for a second : "I'm quickly reading the Blogher reporting. Nancy White has a TON of notes. You can see the world changing. Do women matter to the blogosphere? Mena Trott just reported that 71% of the bloggers on LiveJournal are female. You know I was a skeptic about this conference when I first heard about it. But Lisa Stone, one of the organizers, won me over. I'm really bummed I wasn't able to be there. But, actually, it's almost better than I'm not. As I read the blogs here I realize I'm part of the problem and need to just sit back, read, and hear what's being discussed there. It's time to learn, not time to participate. I hope every blogger reads at least 10 blogs that are writing about Blogher. The ideas being discussed there are ones that we haven't yet discussed well in the blogosphere. Congrats to Lisa and the other people who put this conference together. You've changed the world. That I'm sure of and the conference isn't even over yet."

And Danah - : "I'm at Blogher, which is a trip. Of course, the first thing you notice is how people greet each other - hugs, kisses, screams, joy. There's no feathers flailing, chests puffing. I smiled - i'm so used to the boys' world. I decided to sit back and watch the boys who are attending. The ones who usually have the most colorful feathers are sitting back, shoulders hunched, listening, trying. I remember what it was like when i first went to etech - i didn't know how to talk to anyone. I knew no one and i felt like such an outsider. I was afraid of looking stupid. I wonder if they feel that way here.

I have to admit that the beginning conversation really got to me. There's definitely a lot of frustration and anger here, frustration over the purported authority of the men in blogging, anger over the validation that the mass media gives them. So there was a lot of airing that negativity. That's hard to hear. Some of it, unfortunately, was lacking facts. One issue came up over the fact that women don't network. Well, that's bullshit. Actually, women are traditionally the maintainers of domestic social networks. They tend to network more than men. The gender difference concerns the style of networking. Men are more likely to gather many weak ties; women tend to work hard to maintain strong ties. Each have their value. But when it comes to technology like Technorati, there is a validation of weak ties over strong ties. Or more actually, there's an assumption that all ties are created equal, which inadvertently validates the weak ties over the strong ties. My argument here is that we need to pay attention to the network structures. If folks are angry about their position in some purported hierarchy, they need to understand how the hierarchy works. And then change it. I'm not interested in having separate networks; i'm interested in making certain that people understand the gender bias they build into the network and that it represents a diversity of perspectives, is flexible to deal with a diversity of social structures." I'm new to Danah's work, but to me, the next Eggers, Foster Wallace, Franzen, ZSmith, Foer, Krauss.. will come from building fiction from real life observations like these :

"I'm sitting in a cafe trying very hard to frame blogs in Ong's terms and ignore the conversation next to me but i can't. A woman is loudly talking, using her hands for emphasis; the man next to her is leaning in and nodding and uh-huhing, saying confirming statements every few minutes. They've been talking this way for a long time. She's analyzing another woman, critiquing her view of the world, her actions, her attitudes. She's looking for validation, offering stories to keep this guy paying attention. Finally, wrapped up in their conversation, i IM to Barb about it; she's sitting right next to me, pretending to blog but mostly chewing on her pen. I find myself analyzing her analyzing this other woman. Barb notes "you realize - we're the backchannel for their conversation." And we both laugh. My conception of backchannels is so biased by the primary discussion around it, whereby backchannels are a second front channel, a known presence of people with computers. Do they know that we are their backchannel, the meta on their meta? What does it mean that a perspective on their conversation is being recorded for posterity, only they will never know it. Or will they? What happens when strangers recognize digital records of their physical traces? Ah, secondary orality. I'm fascinated by moments when people don't realize the bridge between the digital and the physical. My techno world is far too always techno. You know anything can and will be blogged. But the rest of the world doesn't. As Barb notes, "it's no different from any other meta-gossip." So what does it mean to blog about it, to meta meta it, to meta it beyond any realization of gossip? There's a koan in here somewhere."

Today vs Yesterday's Web

alba jealous of BF, why ?
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

People seem to interchange the terms RSS Search and Blog Search. (and even Web Search, plus Pubsub try and say they are 'Tomorrow's' Search !) To me, technorati.com, feedster.com, icerocket.com etc are Blog Search first, Web Link Search second, RSS Search third. If I want to subscribe to an RSS feed of Bit-Torrent files for latest 'Lost' Episodes, or DSC podcasts, feedster etc aren't that useful in letting me search for (and subscribe to) "RSS FEEDS" vs web pages with links to these feeds. But they are more useful if I want to understand recent conversations in blogs, although they still seem to generally exclude/limit many blog networks and long-tailers within (blogspot, spaces etc) in favour of A-C list bloggers, which is really annoying/sad/ineffective. I'm sick of blog search engines using a delicious tag as their manual filter for quality and recency on a topic. Its a shortcut, which will end up with alot of spam in delicious and not help todays search engine deliver better results.

But I've worked in search for many years, so I understand how hard, complex and demanding it is. Imagine selling a Porsche for free, and people complaining the quarter mile wasn't up to a Ferrari ? If only we could have an open source economy as buyers, but capitalist structure as sellers ! So this Doc Searls post is on the Money :

"Mike Warot is 'worried that the "buzz" signal might get tuned too far in the wrong direction. It would be tempting to say that the fastest is the best... We need to have reasonable speed of communication. It seems obvious to me that a blog-only search engine should be able to keep the response time down to a day or two, but it needs to do it for everyone, regardless of rank. I feel it's very important to make sure that everyone gets to participate in the conversation. When you use a search engine, you're looking for quality, and not merely the first post. (ala Slashdot) I'm not implyling that fastest is best — except at being fastest. If you're searching the Live Web, the part that is conversational and human and not static and not a set of "sites" that are "constructed" but instead is a vast pile of live journals, "buzz uptake" or speed to index matters. A lot. It's also the aspect of syndicated feed search that is most different from what Google and Yahoo do. It's important to remember that what the syndisphere — the World Live Web, or whatever else we want to call it — is very different in kind from the static Web of "sites" that all the mainstream engines have been searching since Lycos was a project at CMU and Infoseek charged on a per-search basis. We have journals here. We may not be live, exactly, but we're a lot closer to live than real estate projects that are "designed" and "constructed."

"..RSS search is still new, and still innovating and adapting all over the place, as what they search keeps changing too. As Mary Hodder is showing us, these engines are all doing different things, in different ways. The results, across the bunch of them, are far more varied (and for my money, interesting) than the results across Google, Yahoo and MSN. They differ most from the traditional search engines in one clear way: freshness. Currency. Live-ness. They excel in their ability to help users participate in conversations and to drive knowledge forward. For that, buzz uptake or time to index may be their most important distinction. It's just as important to note, however, that this is still one among many distinctions, owing to the fact that what they search has to do with people and time, and not just sites and subjects (though they're about that too).

And let's not forget that new technologies, practices, standards, topics and concerns keep coming along too. Tags, for example. Outlining. Microformats. Attention. Identity. Aggregation. Integration with other technologies, such as browsing and email. Plug-ins. The list goes on. All that stuff gets followed (or led) by the RSS-activated engines as well. That's another reason I don't look forward to the big traditional engines either buying up the RSS engines, or coming out with competing services. Independent developers are at the base of any healthy software ecosystem. The Live Web is still in its paleozoic. Let's let it grow naturally."

Newspaper VC Maths : Topix.net

croatia si
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

"What have you got ?" rants the editor to his features editor (whose blog has close to the same traffic as the papers :) "How about the maths on the Topix.net deal ?" "Great, thats not one of ours, so lets run it."
From PaidContent : "Topix.net, the news aggregation play got majority bought (75 percent) out by Gannett, Knight-Ridder and the Tribune Company in March. Mainly related to how much did the three newspaper giants paid for that stake... according to SEC filings from Tribune, it paid $16 million for the 25 percent stake, and according to Gannett's SEC filing, it paid $18 million, and assuming Knight Ridder paid $16 million (lower of the two), the total amount would be $50 million, the higher side of the previously speculated range." (for 75%) SO in March Topix was worth $65M or so. Compared to the MySpace deal at 10X that seems pretty sweet and more strategic. I like their local news/postcode feature (useless though given I'm in Australia) but they need better RSS, contextual content (re findory) and UI sucks. Great asset though and nice shared price. I wonder if all publishers and media companies now need VC arms. (time to clean up the linkedin profile "Has Masters in Venture Capital, can spend money on building RSS website")

del.icio.us Sunday Links

Another RSS Reader by one of the 4 Net Horseman. In this case by Ask Jeeves (owned by Interactive Corp IACI whose founder Barry Diller used to own/run Hollywood), ASK owns Bloglines, and today they released a Beta RSS reader. Wonder if it competes with Bloglines' RSS reader. (which is still probably the leading mainstream web based reader) Will test it today and get back to y'all (what else do i have to do on a sunday than test RSS readers, that or write an information memorandum with a stoopid valuation)

Become your own brand, your own search engine, just enter your name, powered by Google. No costs. It takes 3 seconds. You'll be worth $90 Billion Dollars in no time !
Google's RSS SEO Plans. This area, jokes aside will become as big as keyword SEO is today.

Hey Podcasters, don't quit your day job, says Business 2.0 (fast following Fast Company as totally irrelevant - it was always nothing more than airport reading after every other magazine, book and CD. MSNBC, says podcasters, quit your job, and come work for us as Podcasters. Me spells le clueless le muth* f**ka's

Oliver Stone thinks today's youth didn't get Alexander, hence its failure. Um, yep. But I do love Natural Born Killers. (still gotta see DVD Directors Cut) The original concept was Tarantinos (in his heyday when he had True Romance, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, NBK all in pre-production or pitching while he worked at video store) Anyway... so last night when I got home from a great day for my brothers bucks day (races at moonee valley then onto docklands for dinner - great speaking to jeremy, richard, jacob, wayne, tim, the waiter at the restaurant who knew who Run Hubbard was but tried to sell us his mother when ordering drinks - hey guys send me gifs and jpegs i will put up on flickr and my blog) I watched Pulp Fiction. I have always been in the 'Reservoir Dogs' is better than 'Pulp Fiction' camp (Randy: It could be fuckin' "Reservoir Dogs" by the time this thing is through), and I think his like for gakk has wrecked his output in last 8 years (other than 1 scene in Sin City but its Rodriguez digital vision that made it work) but last night... I was blown away by Pulp Fiction - I remembered why it won the Palmes D'or at Cannes, as there are some really languid French movie moments (I remembered it more frenetic and pastiched), with amazing scenes from Bruce Willis, (also great in Sin City) Marcellus "What now? Let me tell you what now. I'ma call a coupla hard, pipe-hittin' niggers, who'll go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. You hear me talkin', hillbilly boy? I ain't through with you by a damn sight. I'ma get medieval on your ass." followed by "Zed his Dead" and the it aint a Motorbike its a Chopper, Samuel Jackson's enlightenment "Yolanda, I thought you said you were gonna be cool. Now when you yell at me, it makes me nervous. And when I get nervous, I get scared. And when motherfuckers get scared, that's when motherfuckers accidentally get shot.", Mr Wolf Keitel, Tarantino playing a gourmet coffee bitch) less chiched than I remember b/w Samuel Jackson (who gets paid to do blockbusters now) and John Travola's re-entry film. (and Mr Harvey "I'm Winston Wolf. I solve problems" Keitel ("Now, you've got a corpse in a car, minus a head, in a garage", Tim Roth etc) I had watched Jackie Brown only 2 months ago again, and it is similar in style and pace. What a cranking soundtrack. No scene is wasted. Amazing how time can change perspectives. It's on PSP for $15. Now that TOTALLY ROCKS !

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

2% use RSS knowing what it is...

645 cab $425
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

For a second there I thought the Pew's Report '13% of internet users using RSS' was as part of the dreamland as Nasdaq north of 5000 - With Forrester's 2% of internet users using RSS (KNOWING WHAT IT IS !) As they say - 'knowledge is power' ! or 'ignorance is bliss' ! From Charlene at Forrester :

"68,000 North American households showed that only 2% of all online households were "using RSS". Now here's the caveat -- that doesn't include all the people who may be using RSS (for example, through My Yahoo!) and don't realize it. Young consumers between the ages of 12-21 were more likely to be using RSS -- 5% of online young consumers say they use RSS."

'The new model carries an MSRP of $425 for the electric-powered version and $250 for pedal-drive. No word on the release of an M version.'

AOL's Ajax "Feed" Reader not called RSS

AOL this time : And like Microsoft's Start.com and Feedtagger.com its all about the Ajax. Like the way they dont mention RSS and use mainstream pre-populated feeds for AOL type audience. Like the DenverPost/Newsgator solution, but Ajax, another thing which people won't know the name of, but happily use.

Ebay 'Elvis' Weird...

annabelle sg
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Lucky I don't have a 2 year old ! They start clicking early these days, all the way through to "Are you sure you want to complete this transaction? 'Yes Daddy' : "The latest is the story of a limo that was once owned by Elvis Presley. The owner tried to sell it on eBay, with a "buy it now" price of $245,000. He was therefore quite happy when someone did, indeed, agree to the "buy it now," price. There's just one problem the owner of the account claims his two year old daughter was playing with the mouse on his computer and she is actually the one who made the bid. He apologized, but apparently that wasn't good enough. The seller is now suing him for $245,000, plus an additional $150,000 in "damages."

'Dad I'll Skype you'.. Can I borrow $3b ?

porsche_9ff_supercar
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Dear Dad,
I have left NewsCorp to pursue other avenues of business.
Namely, I'm buying Skype. If you won't fork out $3 billion, I will.
Oh Dad, BTW, can I borrow $3B ?
Thanks
Sarah sends her love
L

Just when you think Lachlan Murdoch's resignation is the biggest News4Corp, the one billion minimum Draper wants for Skype, and $100M Yahoo offer a joke, now in reality appears to be closer to $3b : "And the Google of VoIP looks like it might be Skype, which was almost sold last week to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for $3 billion." Very interesting analysis :

"Skype comes from the people who did the Kazaa peer-to-peer network application that drives record company executives mad while simultaneously loading spyware on your PC... Skype sees its payday coming primarily by linking its system to regular old telephones... Skype has 20 million regular users (there are 2.6 million signed-in right now as I am writing this).. The big difference between Skype and Hotmail or ICQ is that Skype threatens existing, highly profitable franchises. As free e-mail, Hotmail may have threatened paid e-mail services, but there were no hugely profitable paid e-mail services. And ICQ threatened nobody. But Skype absolutely takes money out of the pockets of existing telephone companies. And since the value of a telephone subscriber is generally a known quantity, the value of an active Skype customer can be at least guesstimated...If Skype really has 20 million active users and the company is worth something near $3 billion, then the market value of a Skype customer is $150...While that may seem like a lot of money, it is around 10 percent of the imputed value of a traditional telephone, mobile telephone, or cable television customer.

This lower value evidently factors in the ephemeral nature of a Skype customer who might disappear forever at any moment, or go for months without using the service... Rupert Murdoch wasn't really serious and mainly looked at Skype to see the company's books and to learn more about the VoIP business without having to pay for the lesson...It also means that whether News Corp. is the purchaser or not, Skype WILL be sold sometime in the near future... But I think the most likely purchaser of Skype would be a mobile telephone company. Since Skype service requires broadband, and broadband so far is inherently fixed, Skype threatens only incumbent FIXED phone service, not mobile service. Skype causes headaches for Verizon, but not for Verizon Wireless. So Skype would appeal most to mobile phone carriers who have no fixed telephone assets. That means no offers from SBC, BellSouth, Sprint, or Verizon, just to speak of U.S. carriers, but Skype might be supremely attractive to a Vodaphone or an NTT DoCoMo, both of which have the ability to finance such a deal effortlessly..Of course, the rest of the VoIP industry loves this. If Skype is worth $3 billion, then so is Vonage and maybe Packet8.

This purchase will validate the VoIP industry, give it a per-subscriber value number that can be used to justify more debt, raising more money that can be used to further undermine those creaky old phone companies. And that may be the greatest reason why Murdoch was interested in the first place. By putting Skype in play, he distracts for no money at all most of the major media companies. And while they try to figure out how to respond to VoIP, old Rupert will be attacking them on some completely other front. He'll be stealing their shoes. "

"...Dear Colleagues,You may have already seen the announcement that I have decided to resign as an executive of News and that I will remain a director. I would have liked to talk to you all personally about my decision but clearly that's impossible so I hope this email will go some of the way.As you can imagine, this was a very difficult decision. And while it was of a personal nature, it is important to me that you know that it was not made lightly. Only after long and hard deliberations over many months did I come to my final conclusion that now was the time for me to take this next step forward in my life and my career.

Growing up in and around the company, I spent my most formative years looking up to the men and woman of News Corporation with great admiration and deep affection. I knew from around the time I could walk that I wanted to join this great team of people and share with you the thrill of working for a truly unique and exciting company.Since early days cleaning presses on the old Daily Mirror in Sydney to publishing the New York Post, from interning as a sub at News International to running our US television stations, from working alongside you from Rome to Darwin, my admiration for you and your work has only grown stronger. Along the way we have shared many adventures and forged many strong and lasting friendships.

Going forward we face many difficult challenges as the media world evolves at a pace never seen before. As our markets fragment we must lead the way in finding ever more new and exciting relevance to those who read our newspapers and watch our programmes. I am looking forward to exercising my new role as a non-executive director to help steer us through the next generation of media challenges and opportunities.News is the most truly global of all media companies.

Our strength lies in our local management in markets around the world, not just in Los Angeles or New York. This culture is unique and, coupled with great leadership from my father, provides a powerful engine for growth.Needless to say I will be watching closely and anticipate celebrating your many successes for years to come. There is no more talented team of creative professionals in the world. You will go from strength to strength.

On a personal note Sarah and I are looking forward to returning home to Sydney with our son, Kalan. I know how much many of your husbands and wives, children and friends sacrifice for this company, often with little official recognition. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you and your families, for your dedication, loyal support, and friendship over so many years.

Very sincerely, Lachlan"

What's Wrong with RSS Aggregators

biely
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

This is Russell Beattie from Yahoo's (their penultimate blogger) best post for 2005. Maybe its coz I'm in the RSS game. Maybe it's because I agree. Maybe it's because I use RSS very similarly to how he describes and I'm selfish - I JUST WANT IT FIXED ! He's also very honest about his employer and the industry, and having worked for large portals myself (MSN and Telstra in Australia) I also get the smugness of showing a graph with 10 times the market share than number 2. But I've also done my startups. And now Im doing an RSS one. So near enough is not nearly good enough if I want freedom and respect.

The dirty truth in RSS is, even though acording to feedburner, there are over 2000 RSS Readers, most are really bad. In fact, of web based readers, I dont think any are any good. And I mean any. It's why I work in the space. If you look at MyYahoo and I have used it daily (with other readers since Dec 05) it only has headlines in text, not sortable, delivered by site, with no-refresh or filters. Its embarrassing, because Yahoo do everything else in RSS really well "Add to my Yahoo" is everywhere. (except maybe in Yahoo search results !) Bloglines or Newsgator are no better. NetNewsWire is good for Mac (but an app) Rojo is alot better, the list goes on. Microsoft's latest attempt with ajax on start.com is closest to what I like in an RSS reader : Smart, fast, sortable feeds, tags, but let me get on with my reading. Quickly. AD A.D.D. Look it up product developers, this is your target market, people who want information, new information, for them yesterday, and the market at the moment is split in two : Advanced early adopters (lunatic fringe acc'g to podcast411) and innovative mainstream, who dont know its RSS but get value out of it. Functionality needs to cater for both. (with the biggest challenge with RSS being the signup process which scares off 90% of potential market)

I totally agree with alot of Russ' points, especially for someone trying to like the Pheedo report says, mainline 400 feeds in 10-15 minutes each weekday morning ("give me all new items from all sources I haven't read ordered by time, and make sure you fetched the last feed 60 seconds ago" - "I'm not joking" says psycho entrepreneur. (director yells "cut" on "Web 2.0 : What went wrong" mockumentary/vblog/podcast) Adam Curry talks about DSC addicts that go to dailysourcecode.com and press refresh waiting for a new episode to arrive. (I did the same at curry.com to get his closing address + it was worth it)

So I've decided to 'distribute' or RSS (really simply steal) the whole article : "With the appearance of My AOL, Microsoft's Start.com and Google's RSS home page it seems that My Yahoo! has some company in the "RSS Home Page" space. These competitors are right to jump in as according to FeedBurner, Yahoo! is currently enjoying nearly 60% of the aggregator market. Though it's nice to see that mainstream portals are jumping onto the RSS bandwagon (lead by my employer), the problem is that all of these services generally suck. Why? Because they all break a very simple rule: You should only see an RSS item once. If I go to a page and see the weather for the day, that's it. I don't need to see the weather again until it changes drastically or tomorrow. After I've seen it once, it's noise. If I see a news story headline, that's it, I don't need to see it again unless there is something new. It's very simple. There's too much information out there in the world to constantly have to search for updates on my own customized news page. New information should stand out, and old information should go away.

The way all these "Box Aggregators" are set up, you have all these boxes on the page with different feeds in them. At a glance you have no idea what is new and what is old, nor do you have any idea when things were updated relative to each other. I don't necessarily subscribe to the "River of News" method, but honestly, I'd rather have that sort of basic interface than a bunch of boxes which contain 90% old news and don't scale beyond a few dozen feeds. Of course my beloved Bloglines seems to hit the sweet spot, though the interface could definitely do with another refresh and some more accurate functionality. I love the fact that I'm able to click on a category and get all the new items for that category in one long list - which could be 200 or more stories - there's no latency in scrolling. I love that once I've done that, those stories go away. I've seen them, I don't need to see them again! Though if I want to, I can view items from a set time period in the past and they reappear. I wish this worked better (sometimes the dates seem to be wrong or I get ENTIRE feeds from some blogs) and I wished Bloglines had a better concept of sessions - even if I had to log in more - so I could just say, "show that last click to me again, I changed devices and missed the updates."

Read marks and session management is the key to aggegators IMHO. As a person who scans almost 400 feeds daily, I can tell you this is the only way realistically keep up. Even aggregators made for the general populace, who may only keep track of a dozen or so news sources, not providing this functionality is just wasting their time. Though actually, I think that many people start out with a small list of feeds and just keep adding to them. Why not give them a scalable solution right away? While I'm on the topic, I have to say how AMAZING Bloglines Mobile is yet again - this time on my PSP. The PSP is a perfect Internet tablet - it turns on instantly, connects in seconds and really makes browsing enjoyable, not just possible. Though sites with a lot of JavaScript and frames and tables either don't work or are just cramped, Bloglines Mobile just looks and works amazingly - again, scrolling has no latency so it's so comfortable to sit back on the couch and keep up with my feeds reading them on a great big portable screen. Last year at Camp Foo (which I didn't get re-invited to, waaah), I told Mark how great Bloglines Mobile was and I'm still impressed with it. Now that the PSP is out, they need to add back in the "enclosures" link (which is missing from the mobile version) as the PSP is a great Podcast listening device as well. Hopefully these are all first generation services and we'll see a quick progressing to more useful versions. Seriously, all this stuff looks just like Netscape's original use of RSS on its home page back in 1999, no? RSS is so much more than that now."

Its Microsoft Day - Ajax, RSS, Spaces

ol stompin ground the edgey
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Maybe I should go back to Redmond in their Evangelists/PR Division. They certainly are in the blogosphere and media today, after their 'Analyst Day' : Key messages :

1. MSN Spaces - #1 Blogging Site/Network : 18.5m blogs, 55m unique users mth, 10% of all RSS Feeds WOW

2. Launching a 'Linkedin or Friendster like' "Friend of Friends" service, almost so late it might work - They will just pre-enroll push offers to Hotmail, Messenger and Spaces clients, doh. (oh and MSN !)

3. MSN.com did $1.39 BILLION in ad revenue in last year !

4. New Hotmail solution will be all AJAX'y, ala their start.com team of 3 RSS reader which is pretty funky

5. Moving msn.com search from delivering 'links' to 'answers' - good luck. (I still surf the web for an experts site - unless MSN are going to scrape site content I dont want Britannica/Wikipedia/Anzwers.com type search result)

More Reasons for Newspapers to be Scared

moore jess
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

When you already have declining competition, what you really want is your competition to cash out and take up a hobby, like flying planes and getting their pilot license (its hard and time consuming according to some podcasters - im jealous ok) This is why the founder of CraigsList which JJ blogged is so on the money I wish I could hire him for my business :

"My title at craigslist is “customer service rep and founder,” and my customer service role is at least a full-time gig. A CEO runs the actual organization now. I’ve always had difficulty articulating why I have this obsession. I work anywhere from two to ten hours a day, seven days a week, doing stuff like deleting “bait and switch” posts from New York apartment brokers, moderating discussion boards, and sharing community suggestions with the team. If you e-mail me about the site, I’ll probably write back–quickly, too…. I figure that reasonably good customer service is part of the social contract between producer and consumer. In general, if you’re going to do something, you should follow through and not screw around. As a nerd, I have the tendency to take things pretty seriously, so if I commit to something, I try really hard to stay committed. This isn’t altruism or social activism; it’s just giving people a break."

"Also, I’ve learned from the open-source movement that people want to contribute to endeavors of mutual benefit. So at craigslist, we’ve turned over a lot of control over the site to the people who use it. We seriously listen to suggestions and actually change the site in response to them. I feel that all this is a deep expression of democratic values. From a business point of view, of course, it makes good sense, too: it lowers our costs and improves the quality of what’s on our site. Finally, it helps keep management in touch with what’s real–or at least that’s what we hope. Unfortunately, in contemporary corporate culture, customer service is often an afterthought, given lip service only. This seems to be part of the general dysfunction of large organizations. As a company accumulates power and money, the people who are skilled at corporate politics take control of it. Customer service never seems to be highly prized by people with those skills. Maybe it’s because they lack empathy."

This seems farely accurate...

Hotel Windsor
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

1. Pay attention to your conversations with the person in question. Does this person show a special interest in having a conversation with you and, once started, make an effort to keep that conversation going?

2. Is this person "accidentally" running into you in places where he or she knows you will be, such as at your desk? At the Laundromat on Tuesdays? At your brother's birthday party?

3. Make a note if he or she mentions future plans to spend time with you: "That band is coming to town soon. We should really get tickets."

4. Spend time alone together. Canceling other plans in order to be with you longer, or not finding excuses to leave, could be a sign of interest.

5. Has he or she been calling for random reasons, such as, "I was wondering if you knew what that pizza place down the street is called," followed by, "Are you hungry?"

6. Has this person taken a sudden interest in your life and hobbies? This is a sure sign that he or she is interested in something - and it's probably not your stamp collection.

7. Observe how the person acts around your friends - he or she might be extra friendly to your closest pals for a reason.

8. Sometimes seeing someone you have a crush on results in telltale physiological signs. Does the person in question blush when you look at him or her? His or her sympathetic nervous system is probably going into overdrive. Does he or she have trouble speaking, using jumbled words when talking to you?

9. See if the person in question mirrors your motions: When you lean back, he or she leans back; when you put your elbows on the table, he or she does the same.

10. Note whether this person sits or stands in the open position - that is, facing you with arms uncrossed. In addition, a woman tends to cross her legs in a man's direction.

11. Does he or she move closer to you and/or touch you subtly, such as with a pat of your hand or a touch of your cheek?

12. Other elements of body language include frequent eye contact, holding your gaze and looking down before looking away, energetic speech coupled with open hands, and flashing palms.

13. Does the person you're wondering about just plain smile at you a lot?

Microsoft RSS Goes Beyond Blogs

pam tats
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

While I was rubbing coconut oil on MyPam.com Microsoft read my last post, admitted all wrong, and like Adam Curry meeting Steve Jobs, all I can say "No Damn Announcements" - Look I cant say much about my meeting with Microsoft's Security Division, but Pam did jump off up her towel at the new Mercer Miami (and some big bodyguard started chasing me) and Will Poole, Senior VP of Windows Client (care of PaidContent) said :

"RSS isn't just about big major newspapers. They're about people and their blogs. Here's a blog of a friend of mine, a photo blog. You can see pictures of the family, even some videos incorporated into them. We can take a look at the RSS feed as well. It's going to do a nice job of laying that out. I can add this to my local store of RSS feeds so I'm subscribing to this site. And then there's the ability for applications to use these types of feeds. One example might be creating a slide show or a screen saver based on this blog. I'm going to kick off that experience here. So what it's doing is it's pulling the photos from that blog and the videos from that blog and giving a very beautiful, a very nice experience. This is an example of an application using the RSS platform features within Windows Vista. What a great way for families to stay together and stay connected."

Microsoft dont get what Web 2.0 'BETA' is !

pitcher eva
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

"Its a BETA !" scream Microsoft. Um, duh, Microsoft, where have you been - 'Beta' now, thanks to Google, means the official name for when you launch a product that has been tested and bugs ironed out, not one that hasn't. Google have conditioned everyone for this.

Is Gmail still a beta ? Of course it is ! Is it buggy ? Um, unless you are Adam Curry and you just ran out of 2G audio storage today on DSC from Gmail (he wants Infinity + 1 storage which he could almost get by sending himself the 50 invites Gmail give users as part of the "BETA")

I'm not saying Google is right either, see my last 2 months of google posts. Even in their core advertising marketplace would you rather have a stake in adbrite.com ? a huge blog/RSS/site network where you can buy guaranteed CPC ads on brand name mid-level sites (funded by Sequioa, growing at 30% per month, private, founded by founder of fu***dcompany.com) with a valuation of say $100M ? Or advise mom + pop to buy some GOOG at $90 um Billion mkt cap ?

'PERCEPTION IS REALITY' esp when 'launching' something as big as Internet Explorer. Microsoft you came to Gnomedex, did the followup emails with any who blogged on the topic, gave Steve Rubel and others (where's mine ?) a IE7 RSS - Search Subscribe - Microsoft Baseball Jacket - Be prepared for the quid pro quo. Launch and Beta = It works and every A-Z blogger wants to be the 'first' to use it. Make them feel special. One-up these vain adsense controlled bloggers and show us why you are the Mac Daddy (sorry 4 that reference jobs'y - ipod is driving your numbers really nice but you better innovate on basics like record, fm radio and video on an ipod, plus bring back the Newton before nokia rock u.. oops)

Then you have the industry setting of Firefox kicking your ass. Do you know that my backup RSS reader - rojo.com (A VC brand funded play) doesnt even have a Internet explorer version ? You are too small a market ! Straight faced jittery hilarious. And the biggest problem is you aren't cool. If you were to take a private equity buyout approach to cool and Web 2.0 technology, you have the technology, but dont know how to "connect" to be SethGodin-like or market to be Branson like. Scoble cant do all the work. In fact at a certain point The RS becomes counter-constructive. In the last fortnight Scobes is trying to promote Microsoft Mapping and something about the Moon or Earth, IE7, Tablet PC's, Blog Search engines (just give Scobes the power to buy the one he wants) but there need to be more senior Product Division Heads blogging - The people that report to Bill, Steve.

When you release a version to 'MSDN' developers and thus make everyone 'not invited' they will be predisposed to be negative, which creates what we call in Australia, the 'Tall Poppy Syndrome' : "Cut em Down" !

Personally, I used to work for Microsoft. I've been to Redmond and loved it. Smartest large group of people on the earth, thats why Microsoft is worth what its worth. But culture and hipwise they still never receovered from dot-com part 1. They kept making products but where when other very large companies preach 3 month product cycles through Open API development and 'transparency' through blogging, we have Scobes and Channel 9 (whatever that is) innovating, but then we have farely long product cycles elsewhere in Redmond : Even this beta seems "We will surprise the market by launching early, except we'll use that line we used years ago 'Its a beta'"

Being in Seattle n'all, no-one told Microsoft (maybe because they lost their best engineers) that beta now means launch. Or at least invite your A-C List of bloggers. As a D-List blogger, and through limiting supply, I then want to buy an invite to IE7 through ebay like I did on Gmail and havent stopped using since. In fact from the night I did that, 2 years ago or bit less, I havent used Outlook, which I used for 8 years prior. IE7 deserves the same approach.

Cameron O'Reilly, Founder of thepodcastnetwork.com, ex-Microsoft 6 years, made a great post about what is hot in Microsoft - there is alot : PocketPC, Mac-Office, XBox, Messenger, Firefox...TabletPC... lots more... Where is google with competitors to those ? Dodgeball will not help me write a business plan for a client or do a presentation or spreadsheet for tomorrow's meeting. Google need to look at companies like JotSpot and opensource players like OpenOffice and develop Gmail or Yahoo like Ubiquitous offerings. Brin is on the record saying he is worried that in the next 5 years the next search company will come along, but he doesn't need to worry, he should just be at peace, because Google has already lost, unless something disruptively positive happens. Like when Bill Gates made a speach about the Internet or Rupert Murdoch bet the company on satellite. Google has already lost. Their self congratulatory engineering nerdy smarts is starting to takeover from their hard working, smart deal structuring obsessively perfect consumer products that are simple. "The Best, Most Relevant Search Results" "The Best Way to deliver Relevant Advertising and drve Acquisition for Advertisers"... The SEO industry has almost won with Google.

Google's new business products, organic and acquired are so far awful : While ASK pick Bloglines, Yahoo pick Flickr, and someone willing to pay a Billiion gets Skype, Google's RSS attempts are pathetic. I could name at least 50 RSS readers on the market that are better than Google's second attempt this week. Sack the product team on that Google. Sometimes the culture is just too collegiate. People talk about how great the 20% rule is. Yeah it was good. Imagine a poker game at the googleplex but instead was a hackathon and whoever programmed the product feature in one day that made the most revenue/profit over the following year, got their stock options doubled (or won the stock of the programmers they were competing against) Show some toughness, read how Microsoft (who you copy all the time) expanded their business through competition between business units and programmers. Business is not university. As much as we all liked summer break and First Year !

I was a 'New Media Development Advertising Manager' @ DDB ad agency in 1995 and honours thesis student on the 'information superhighway' in 1994 when companies like Compuserve, then Netscape, then AOL, Lycos, ICQ, Excite, Alta-Vista were all portal, browser, ISP, communications market leaders. To me, Google has already lost, but Microsoft hasn't : Because of their asset base. And Microsoft hasn't won. There will be new leaders. SimplyHired.com for jobs, AdBrite.com for contextual ads. Oodle.com for local classifieds, Jotspot.com for small business applications. Both Microsoft and Google need to wake up. As someone posted the other day - GOOG, YHOO, ASK, IACI, MSFT are the new digital buyout firms (all bad at integration, in fact no-one wastes time trying do they ?) so its not like they have no options. But Ill personally be very interested to see how long firms like adbrite, linkedin, simpolyhired, newsgator, feedburner etc last, in terms of M+A. I think a couple firms there have got what it takes to go all the way (IPO then life as a public company) because its ironic that Flickr's technical problems have never been worse than this week, post - acquisition. Once you are rich, some people find it hard to be motivated. (not billg) Please BillG, SteveB and hi ChristaD give Scoble some help. We need more viewpoints from across the company - Where is the head of XBox division blogging about gaming and why the PSP sux and the PocketPC exec talking about how it is better as a platform than the Treo 650. Better talk up Spaces - 17m blogs, is that right ? Amazing, get some testimonial from users, esp in the slipstream of the MySpace/NewsCorp acquisition. MSFT is sitting on a goldmine (as I believe YHOO is, if like google it can improve search and reduce spam plus growth business execution)

Google isn't there yet, but it has redefinied what beta means. It's when you launch your product. IE7 is in Alpha, and should be behind the 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond Address ! From Molly :

"I WOKE UP this morning to find countless emails and IMs pouring into my accounts asking me about the IE 7 beta. Some developers are expressing relief at seeing some of the bug fixes and improvements, but of course as I’ve been expressing all along, this is a process with which we have to be patient. Expecting full bug fixes and implementation in any beta software is ridiculous, as is expecting that WaSP / Microsoft Task Force can perform retroactive miracles."

"IE7 is in beta. Not only that, but it’s early days yet. So it’s a little bit premature to start complaining that things don’t work. I mean, why have a beta, much less one that’s made it out first to developers and press if not precisely to get their feedback pronto? Brian Goldfarb, Product Manager for the Web Tools Team and Microsoft’s liaison to WaSP pointed this out in a conversation we had today while trying to address developer concerns as they’ve been pouring in. “The whole point of doing a developer beta is to identify potential rendering breakages and changes and resolve them before we hand out IE7 to the broader marketplace. We are working actively to identify any issues with actual rendering problems and resolving those. This beta is one part of that mission.”

What annoys your Web-Site Visitors

main ridge turn-off fri am
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Combination of an iMac and Firefox, I havent seen a PopUp ad for years, but I agree with users that sites that you need to register and log-into (esp for each session) plus sites that are slow, with out of date content, lacking clear and prioritised navigation, are the bane of my life : "Some 2,500 adult consumers throughout the US were asked to identify things that annoyed them about commercial Web sites :

#1- More than one-third of respondents cited pop-up ads.
#2- Having to register and log in (16.7%)
#3- Having to install extra software (15.7%)"
#6 - Confusing Navigation
#7 - Content that is out of date

Post-Blogging-ism

misha is single
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

The Human Buzz Machine himself, Jeff Jarvis, who has a history longer than the internet, but (only) a bit shorter than the printing press is like an animal protecting his cub, or maybe is his involved in reverse-snobbism (lots of ex media people are bagging newly ex media people for being so late to blogging, and some as a result are not getting into blogging thinking it's too late and getting straight into podcasting, oops i got distracted)

First Bob Cauthro said : "Memo to mainstream media: You don’t get to blog.You have a publishing apparatus. So you don’t get to blog. You have a broadcasting apparatus. So you don’t get to blog.In case you missed this the point while you were reading up on youth slang, I’ll repeat it for emphasis. You. Do. Not. Get. To. Blog."

Then Jeff Jarvis said "Who are you, Cauthorn, to say who can and who cannot blog? You are trying to import the worst traits of old, big media — exclusion, snobbishness, the closed club — to citizens’ media. And it is most unbecoming, especially since you served in both worlds, since you yourself are a mainstream media guy who is now, uh, bloging (can you smell the irony, Bob?). You make fun of “a very senior, 50-something editor at a well-known American newspaper” but, you know, Bob, you’re looking a little long in the tooth yourself, fella. And once upon a time, don’t you remember, you saw online for the first time. You learned new tricks, dog. Why can’t that old fart (who happens to be my age, by the way)? I thought ours was the new medium of inclusion. But not according to you."

Maybe they should watch Fight-Club, and kiss, fight or do a podcast-off.

Linkedin meets Oodle meets CafePress 4 Property

why we hate hr duh !
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I decided to put on my McKinsey wannabee meets Web 2.0 hard blogging Slacker when a report called "Real Estate Advertising 2005 : Time to Listen or Lose" came out. It makes you realise it's not just recruiters (or employment classifieds salespeople on commission;) who have to worry - What about that agent (or local newspaper realestate media sales exec :) down the street that sold your house - or did he really sell it ? Did he just take a couple % points, place an ad (which he places a marketing services margin on), runs an auction if a proactive buyer doesn't search craigslist, contact him and make an offer. Yes, its getting closer to disintermediating the real estate agent and while the local newspaper for real estate isnt dead : There is a shift going on when a newspaper property ad, will be a premium 'addition' to a property sale campaign for buyers that that have already optimised their online campaign. This will affect the economics of the property business.

By disintermediating I mean making a 'frictionless' sales process for buyer and seller, thus allowing a cheaper selling price, and thus decrease in total revenue for laggard realtors. Like all classified category plays, stage 1 happened mid-late 90's with a replication of newspapers but online and with pictures. Stage 2 is more local meta-aggregated free listings orientated (eg oodle.com) with the controlling value chain player being the realtor. However, their greed (plus sheer relative weight of emails and calls vs spend vs newspapers) drives them to use online more and more, churning their print spend. Before long (its almost there now) the realtor cant live without the online leads. The online business in stage 3 then increases the price dramatically. Sellers, then realising what the realtor really does (just as they did to the newspaper in the stage before), have the choice of bypassing the agent by using an end-end selling service 'linkedin meets oodle.com meets cafepress.com for real estate' (they deliver a board to put outside your house, the copy for which you build online like an adsense ad) - as well as manage your online selling campaign like a CPC search adsense campaign. (with a post-click behaviorial tracking engine of interested buyers - like a recruitment tracking app)

I haven't yet seen a vertically focused player in this space with the depth of application or offline real estate smarts to turn online classifieds into a smart buying and selling property service. (cross industry capabalities that are hard to develop/acquire/partner) There is vertical work in the online world to do (customer generation, tracking, copy writing/photos for property sale, SEO property and Feed pinging of major search and real estate sites to optimise sales) plus offline (delivery system for property brochures, board outside house - think cafepress or zazzle for property marketing, plus robotic distributed 'agents' to run auctions, rentals, financing etc)

Ironically when MSN entered the 'intermediary' space in the 90's with Sidewalk.com (which I worked on) as well as expedia, investor and carpoint, which I launched downunder, this was the original 10 year vision of assisting both buyer and seller. Anyone interested in discussing post or email.

"The dominant search engines (especially Google) are becoming in attracting local real estate advertising money... Google has begun pursuing the real estate category directly, now employing three regional sales teams in the U.S. that are focused on the real estate and other classifieds categories. The search giant has been making presentations to major brokerage firms such as Century 21, RE/MAX, and Coldwell Banker. Those real estate companies are buying advertising as part of Google's AdWords and AdSense programs, where they pay per click, and they're bidding up keywords to $1 per click, and $2 in some cities. A growing segment of these bidders are local advertisers, says Borrell - individual agents and brokerage firms. A Realtor in Austin, Texas: "That (Google) ad is working great. ... We are busy as hell, and that is the only advertising we are doing right now. We quit our print advertising after we posted that Google ad."

"The CI report similarly concludes, "The bulk of Realtors' online expenditures will be on pay-per-click local-search advertising and in support of their own websites." Some 31 percent surveyed said they're spending no dollars with local print newspapers in 2005, and 37 percent of Realtors said they'd spend no money in print newspapers in 2006."

Google try to Patent RSS Advertising

f40 hovercraft
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

When google isnt buying irrelevant concept companies, and not fixing its spam results, or delivering a blogging, rss or podcasting search engine(s) its trying to patent RSS contextual ads. Yup, di**heads : "Incorporating targeted ads into information in a syndicated, e.g., RSS, presentation format in an automated manner is described. Syndicated material e.g., corresponding to a news feed, search results or web logs, are combined with the output of an automated ad server. An automated ad server is used to provide keyword or content based targeted ads. The ads are incorporated directly into a syndicated feed, e.g., with individual ads becoming items within a particular channel of the feed. The resulting syndicated feed including targeted ads is supplied to the end user, e.g., as a set of search results or as a requested web log. Embedding of targeted ads into syndicated feeds and/or user response to the embedded ads is be tracked in an automated manner for billing. The automated targeting and insertion process allows ads to be kept current and timely while the original feed may be considerably older."

Teenagers need to blog too....

have pic need blog
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

If Hollywood nitelife is a ghoulish b-grade horror flick parents ordering baby soy lattes and talking about their teenagers blog is Herbie Unloaded : "My daughter discovered online journals, or "blogs," when she was 16. After a lot of negotiating, she was allowed to start her blog on www.xanga.com. Her "xanga" had to be accessible by me. She couldn't post her real name, photos of herself, or her location, and I encouraged her to warn her friends not to either. But in keeping an eye on her xanga, I also had access to her friends' xangas. Surprise - this opened me up to a whole new world of insight into today's teenager. These kids can write. To keep a blog going, you have to have the discipline to write daily. This puts today's young bloggers on the fast track to future Pulitzers. To keep your friends coming back, you have to be interesting, funny, intelligent, relevant. These kids are all that and more. Once I got past the immature spelling and punctuation (along with usual teen slang and vulgarity), I was treated to some of the best poetry I've ever read. All of their blogs together are a veritable anthropological study of high school life."

Technorati Speaks Many Languages

worlds ambassador
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Technorati.com CEO is almost over-blogging and doing so in a bit too formal way. It's good content though, just needs to be a bit more ADD Scoble-like - not, as if he is proofreading and getting head of corp comms to do a polish ;) The International features sound cool though ! Does it speak Australian ?

"While we've been building out and scaling the infrastructure, we haven't stopped innovating and rolling out new features! Yesterday we released a beta language filtering service - this lets you filter search results by language, one of the top feature requests from our users. We listened hard to your feedback.

Go and give it a try, you'll see the filtering pulldown on every keyword search result, and you can restrict your search results to Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, or Spanish. It remembers your filtering preference, so you don't have to remind us every time you come and do a search on the same computer. This new feature is only in keyword searches for now, and it's still in beta. We think our algorithms for doing language detection work reasonably well, but there's still lots of room for improvement, and for giving you, the blogger, more control about specifying the language that your posts are in. We're working on additional features to really help tune and tweak the system, but we thought that what we had so far was useful enough that we wanted to share it with you, in the spirit of "release early, release often". So, as always, enjoy! And please let us know how we're doing."

Time Inc SME Poll on Finding Staff

45 Minute Wait for 1 Hr Train Ride
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Q: What is your favorite resource for finding new employees?

Friends and/or colleagues : 38%
Current employees : 16%
Newspaper ads and/or Internet postings : 21%
Job listings on our corporate website : 23%

Facts are Convincing

josie moran
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

"87% of all teenagers used the Internet in 2004 according to a new Teens and Technology report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project." Image is Everything.

Ms Johansson

Growing Up
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

SJ after nearly messing up her predictive text message and U-Turn in the latest AMG uttered to any and all paparazzi that following her "I was driving through Los Angeles and I look up and see the biggest photo of me I have ever seen in my life on a massive ad space. I screamed and slammed on the brakes. I couldn't believe it. It's very strange to see my cleavage the size of a brontosaurus. My breasts were huge. I had long hair and my goodness, I couldn't get past the cleavage...But if someone catches sight of your bare breasts, you think: 'Let them have it and enjoy it for the day."

1994 NewsCorp buys the Internet

carrera 4s little collins
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Jeff Jarvis' byproduct point feels retro future-present : "When I went to work for Delphi Internet Services as editor in chief in 1994, Murdoch had just bought them (I worked for his TV Guide then) because they were the first service to take consumers to this future-shocky thing called the internet (I heard a sleezy stockbroker on a train one night tell a chump that he should buy News Corp. stock because, “You’ve heard of this internet thing? Well, Murdoch just bought it”). They were text-only and were trying to invent their graphical user interface to compete with Prodigy et al, but I was one of the guys who said nevermind that, try this Mosaic thing. I left Delphi (passing that IQ test) before it essentially imploded under millions of Murdoch’s misspent dollars and came to Advance, where they were debating between AOL and Prodigy for their newspapers. Try this browser thing, I said, and we went onto the internet and never looked back."

A Fine Line b/w Brilliance + Insanity

ride it brittany
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

The Group Publisher for Fast Company aint got either : "I want to clarify Fast Company’s mission a bit more, and make sure it has something to do with something that’s going on in the economy now."

Ana Marie Cox : Post Dot Com / Pre Web 2.0

deedee cont... si
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Ana Marie Cox sub-edited then edited the best blog ever - suck.com - and now a denton pussy @ wonkette.com. She reflects on post dotcom life and pre Web 2.0 exhuberance : "I was a blogger, and here I was at the New York Yacht Club drinking free booze surrounded by all these well-connected young Republicans. I felt incredibly conspicuous in Levis and this shirt I'd literally cut the sleeves off of 30 minutes before because I'd decided they were too frilly. This was a ridiculous period - there were more stories about bloggers covering the convention than there were things for us to write about. Conventions are such incredibly stage-managed things that reporters are starving for anything they can claim is different from four years ago. So it became 'Bloggers are here!' I'm sure that as soon as they can figure out how to get podcasters on TV, bloggers will disappear."

BellaSG vs Siebel/Salesforce.com Mashup

bella sg nasty mmm
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

'Widespread and costly investment in customer relationship management tools has not resulted in a better service for consumers, according to consulting firm Accenture.'

"I am hosting a new night at Tokio in Los Angeles on Thursday nights....Please come support..I would love to see you there..Dont be sgy, walk up and say hi!! It will be happening every Thursday and is being put on by hustler...."

'A survey of 1,000 UK consumers found that over two thirds thought that customer service had not improved over the past five years, despite many companies investing heavily in CRM systems.'

"I am very happy recently.. I met a very nice guy in which I am totally smitten with... Sorry boys.. hehe We'll have to see if he will be more than a friend."

Over half of the respondents have switched service providers because of poor service. "These findings are troubling for any industry with heavy customer interaction, given that poor service was the predominant reason for half of the respondents changing service providers in one industry or another last year," said John Freeland, global managing partner at Accenture's CRM practice.

FAVORITE ARTISTS: Sailor Jerry, Coop, Horiyoshi...and one that can be true to themselves....and about any tattoo artists...They don't get enough credit!!

"Winning companies strike the right balance between using technology to help reduce costs, and streamlining the customer experience with well-considered processes that contribute to more personalised services."

FAVORITE FILMS: True Romance

One in five of those questioned cited 'technologies that delay or stop service' as a key annoyance, but being kept on hold too long was the primary problem for 82 per cent.

BODY MODS: I have over $20,000 in ink ...My lip and belly button pierced...

The average UK consumer spends nearly six minutes on hold when seeking assistance via a telephone help line, and speaks to 2.7 service representatives to resolve an issue.

"I am not surprised by this report. It's a classic example of rolling out technology and expecting it to solve all your problems," said Chris Boorman, vice president of marketing for Europe at Salesforce.com.

TO SEND LETTERS AND/OR SWAG SHIT---I'm doing a "from my friends and fans" photo shoot where I will be posing with everything sent!! So be creative, not icky or dirty (as in clean or dirty)... please. If it's gross, It will not be used...at least in pictures...Then I will just send it to my Ex-boyfriends...Hehe PLEASE SEND MAIL/SWAG TO:

Attn: Bella Cats
Official SG Bella Cats Mail,
Secure Mail Systems,
12537 - 15th Avenue NE,
Seattle, WA 98125
USA

"Organisations need to focus on meeting business requirements first and foremost. They should not adapt to technology.

I am currently in Montreal Quebec and was doing some things with Ryan Dunn and the boys of Wildboyz/Jackass..Fun fun fun..never a dull moment with them. I have known them for a long time and Ryan is like a big bro...along with carolla and the rest of em...

"Technology should adapt to companies and it's crucial to customise for each industry. You cannot have an off-the-shelf product that suits every vertical sector."

Check out my personal Myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/SuicideGirlBella
Add me I love you all and hope all is well...

Technorati Wants You !!!

psp 2.0 white
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I like Technorati because I still use it before Google (OK sometimes) and Feedster (definitely) and their VC is cool (how messed up I like a company because their VC used to be called Softbank and the posterchild of VC Investing !) From Mr Sifry their founder, his sales pitch to you prospective Product Managers and Engineers, reprinted in full text RSS feed :

"Lots has been going on since I've last had the chance to blog. It really is true what they say about the cobbler's kids having the worst shoes. I know so many people who have gone to work for companies in the blogging industry that now rarely have time to blog. c'est la vie! Anyway, here's some of the neat stuff that's been going on, in no particular order: Technorati is hiring! We're looking for a great Product Manager and Marcom Manager, Analytics Engineer, Project Manager, Web Applications Engineer, and are always on the lookout for great Search Engineers. We've recently won some awards as well: A 2005 Forbes Best of the Web Favorite, and we were named as an AlwaysOn 2005 Top 100 Private Company. Both are humbling, and we give many thanks for the kind recognition.

There's been a lot of great press: BusinessWeek just did a story, Wired News had a column, The New York Times had a couple of nice mentions, USAToday, Wall Street Journal, and lots more.We have been working really hard on performance and scalability improvements, See the next post. While we've been building out and scaling the infrastructure, that hasn't stopped us from rolling out some new features as well! Yesterday we released a beta language filtering service - this lets you filter search results by language, which was one of our top feature requests. More about it here. I've also been working with the team on a new State of The Blogosphere report, updated with statistics through July 2005. I'll be posting about it over the next few days. Some tremendous growth, with the blogosphere expanding in leaps and bounds."

Sales Channel Cannibalisation is Junk

adrenalynn sg
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Since I started blogging I no longer watch TV - even Lost or OC;) So, the issue of technology cannibalisation is something which scares the bejessus out of old established f**ks that have made good money, sent their kids to nice schools, got their Desperate Housewive/mistress used to the life they are accustomed to, but have this tricky last 3-8 years left on their career - when many things they learnt (about media distribution channels has changed)

Legendary sports stars, like Jack Nicklaus, will always go out on a high, even if he kept playing to 100 and shot the same score. (which he would never do BTW he had a great last final round at the British Open) On a segueway... I'm happy to say TechDirt, who is Web 2.0 Red Herring, deliver a nice 280 word praisy (sic) into my RSS Feed for me to really simply steal !

"A few years back, the Authors Guild positively freaked out when it discovered that Amazon.com offered links to sellers of used books right along side the new books. They sent a nasty letter to Jeff Bezos about how he was harming authors and publishers and told authors that they shouldn't link to Amazon.com as it would take money out of their wallets. Unfortunately, just like with the entertainment industry the actual data shows a very different story. Research on used book sales suggests an active used book market helps, not harms, the sale of new books. There are a couple of explanations for this. First, an active used book market means that newer books have a higher resale value (effectively allowing people to estimate how much it costs to "rent" a book). Secondly, it turns out that many people simply don't view used books as a substitute for new books. That is, many people only buy used books or only buy new books. On top of all of that, giving customers more choice tends to increase the overall size of the market, whether by giving them more reasons to come back or by introducing them to something new that encourages them to buy more. For example, people will buy a used book from an author they're unfamiliar with, but if they like it, they may then be willing to buy new books by that same author in the future (when, without the used book, they would never have been willing to buy the new book). Once again, though, the kneejerk reaction from a group in the content industry is leading those they represent in the wrong direction."

Robbing Peter to pay Paul (or Scoble)

sacramento si
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

If you think bloggers that blog about blogging or podcasters that 'cast bout podcasting, or meta-blog/cast hybrids that talk about both - here's my story for today : I have a 'Paying' client that has world leading Full Screen Video Streaming technology - They've done full screen trailers for movies such as Matrix, Sin City, War of Worlds and Madagascar - and another RSS AJAX start-up that Im an investor/partner in. Both of which have been Scoble-ized. The irony is that the paying client funds the seed capital play and the only thing in common is Scoble, and Australia - although both businesses are global, as Im realising after 10 years of working on Australian monopolies they should be.

"This big beer ad is making the rounds. Last week it was quietly released to 25 people who work at Carlton. SMH is reporting has already been viewed by more than half a million people. All by nothing more than word-of-mouth."

99.999% Uptime on your Website ?

bentley gt
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

The marketers tell us that one pissed off customer will tell at least another 20 (in the world of blogs if it is Dave Winer or Jeff Jarvis multiply that by thousands) who will then tell 20 people and so on, like a pyramid money scheme, but in reverse, where you have leading edge technology adopters telling their mainstream friends 'X + Y' suck. Brad Felds full article on this topic is very wise and a must read for those addressing this issue from both a technical, financial and even SLA perspective. The final answer I'm sure will be reserved for his portfolio companies who might have had issues with their hosting company and fire outbreaks, but its still a must read. Ill just snip the conclusion and you can read the full piece at feld.com (Brad - where's my CPC ;) ?

"I’m searching for a way to describe “acceptable downtime” for an early stage company on a steep adoption curve. I’m still looking (and I’m sure I’ll feel pain during my search – both as a user and an investor), but there must be a better way than simply saying “5 nines.”