Jessica Alba Says Its All About Post Grazing, Relevance, Clustering

jess in paris
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Bokardo has a good 101 on news filtering services that (Kevin The Filter Guru Burton linked to) in a very interesting Post Grazing, Relevance, Clustering : Even Jessica was down with it, having a break in Paris instead of Hawaii for a change. It will be interesting to see the various deployments of these 'Filters" downunder. In Australia, the problem is less inbound links, and those with the most links are generally high traffic blogs linked to by non-Australians. Globally it will be interesting how these services can be applied (in a "personalised" way) to other file formats such as Podcasts, YouTube videos etc. Bokardo :

Post Grazing - I would say post grazing is getting nearer our end goal. It is grazing for the latest, most interesting posts, regardless of what feed they come from.

Relevance - is the make or break of these services. Many of them use a link-counting method to find the most talked-about content, often combining that with some measure of authority to present the most relevant information.

Clustering - is extremely important because otherwise the content becomes an echo chamber. It is very useful to have related posts clustered so that we don’t see the same news over and over.

Elisha Offers Promissory Note with Conversion + Redemption

elisha rap
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Brad Feld talks about how startups can fund themselves and use angels. I wonder if he's talking about Judy'sBook or another company ? Sounds vfamiliar : "Convertible Debt: This is the easier approach of the two. In this case, the investment is in the form of a promissory note that converts into equity on the terms of a “qualified financing” (where qualified financing typically is defined by having a minimum amount – say $1m of total investment.) The note will either convert at a discount to the price of the qualified financing (usually in the 20% – 40% range), will have warrant coverage (usually in the 20% to 40% range), or both. This discount and/or warrant coverage gives the angel investors some additional ownership in exchange for taking the early risk. This note should be a real promissory note with the conversion and redemption characteristics clearly defined to protect both the investors and the entrepreneurs from any misunderstandings."

Newscorp's Mobile Studio - Mobizzo

Latest Porsche Cayman S at the Polo Open
Originally uploaded by JonBauer.

Sounds like a nice little earner : "News Corporation has created a mobile entertainment store called Mobizzo and a production studio to focus exclusively on developing cellphone entertainment in much the same way that 20th Century Fox creates movies and television. What they came up with seems simple: text alerts from a gossip column in a British tabloid, The Sun, and kung fu movie posters and yoga and meditation music from the Star media group in Hong Kong. So far, Mobizzo has acquired some of its 2,000 pieces of content from the unlikeliest places: a Hollywood tattoo designer, a Chinese art collective and a Los Angeles street artist. Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation's chief executive, is so taken with the idea, executives say, that he wants Mobizzo to be a global brand by the end of the year."

My Own Personal DNA : Animated Leader. ENFP

to cover lunch
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

My Own Personal DNA : My true self revealed – how f’n kewl. I will finally find out where I came from. Web 2.0 Judy Bloom with Ajax.

“They said to call about My Personal DNA Report.”

“Yes Sir, we have the results.”

“You are an Animated Leader. You are a Leader. On a Myers-Briggs® test, you might be classified as ENFP.”

"I'm usually a f'n ENFJ or at least a INTJ. I must have lied incorrectly on the test. You guys are f'n useless. I mean F'n Maslow and Michael Jordan are ENFJs and I'm stuck with Robert Fn ENFP Downey Junior."

"Sir, you have solid groundings in the practicalities of life and a willingness to appreciate new things, which makes you a LEADER."

"I want to be a f'n ENFJ."

Heck, I’d been in enough trouble to know I was never one to pass on an adventure, and I had consistently been seeking and finding new things, even in my immediate surroundings. Why I started blogging though I have no idea.

The intellectual curiosity that drives me, leads me to seek out the causes of and reasons behind things. F’n A man. I’m looking alright.

I’m well-attuned to my talents. If I do say so. Minus paragraph breaks that is.

My independent streak causes some trouble, but I call it fun, and the benefit is I don’t let my emotions hold me up. It’s all business baby.

If you didn’t get this already, I believe I control my life.

And remember, I’m up for anything, which makes me ANIMATED. An Animated Leader no less. Kewl.

Some people find crowds and parties exhausting, but not me ! And when the party stops Ill keep going if you’re game. K-Fed in the house. Papaoza.

Sometimes it is hard for me to understand why others feel the way they do, but usually it’s because of brain damage they suffered when younger. I’m OK with that.

I know the world is complicated. I would rather experience the world than sit back and observe it. I don’t want to see other people flip and myself end up with nothing to show for this boom except another tax debt for unexercised vested options that went under water thanks to a dodgey entrepreneur. Thankfully this time I’m that dodgey entrepreneur.

As I begin to wrap this up I want to show I’ve been schooled in argumentative balanced thought diagnostics, so I’d like to reiterate I am an independent thinker and don't get too worried about how others might perceive me. So don’t kid yourself either way.

I have trouble seeing why people get so upset and emotional about things, unless it’s from a good looking Masters Educated girl. She doesn’t have to have gone to Stanford or have a 3.5 GPA either.

I have faith in the people around me — I trust others to do the right thing. I trust you OK. I learnt this from Stage Jumping.

My lack of trust in others limits how close I can get with them. Personal DNA said I should try to open up to others a bit more without losing my healthy skepticism. OK no more post-snark earnest bites into my delicate life.

Next.

Famous ENFPs:

Franz Joseph Haydn
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Will Rogers
Buster Keaton
Theodor "Dr." Seuss Geisel (The Cat in the Hat)
Mickey Rooney
James Dobson ("Focus on the Family")
Andy Rooney
Carol Burnett
Paul Harvey
Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched)
Bill Cosby (Ghost Dad)
Dom Delouise, actor
Dave Thomas, owner of Wendy's hamburger chain
Lewis Grizzard, newspaper columnist
I. King Jordan, president of Gallaudet University
Martin Short, actor-comedian
Meg Ryan, actor (When Harry Met Sally)
Robin Williams, actor, comedian (Dead Poet's Society, Mrs. Doubtfire)
Sandra Bullock, actor (Speed, While You Were Sleeping)
Robert Downey (Heart and Souls)
Alicia Silverstone (Clueless)
Sinbad
Andy Kaufman
Regis Philbin

KeiraKnightley Lunching with JamesGross@Feedster

c u c me
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I thought this story might have been on Valleywag, but soon realised the company didn't have a large enough market cap, have flipped, or be a Sand Hill Slave - and it involved a group of rising character actors; I think it was James Gross from Feedster (ive not got great vision) with Keira Knightley. After her Tom Ford/Scarlett naked Vanity Fair cover, Keira wanted to be known for her brains, not just personality. James was listening very intently so I didnt want to interrupt. "One of the reasons we are in favor of full text feeds here at FeedsterLand is the fact that we only crawl and index feeds. Similar methods of indexing are employed by search engines like Google BlogSearch. If a blog, or any publisher with a feed, is only publishing the partial text of a feed then that is all that we can index. Maybe this is not that big of a deal right now, but in time not giving yourself the full opportunity to be optimized in an index is probably not a plus if job #1 is traffic and revenue. More importantly, feed syndication provides what every media has been trying to conquer for many years; taking content and distributing it in multiple channels with some control and minimal overhead cost. So not only am I ‘James’ on http://…, but I am also ‘James’ that is partially syndicated on other websites, on the train in someone’s reader in the morning, in an OPML file of favorites, and indexed in Feedster or Google. Whatever form of syndication allows you to reach the widest possible audience will generally serve you the best. Right now, access to the widest possible audience is available through full text feed syndication." Oh, and when will celebrity endorsements come to Web 2.0 ? Even Friendster had a fake Pamela Anderson page.

Evangeline's Reading List for Every Occasion

evangeline lost
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I'm more and more sure these (Dave Winer invented) OPML Reading Lists, are going to be a great way to subscribe to Your Passions. Australia for example has 50 great food blogs (growing weekly), 30 of them in Melbourne. So Australian, Melbourne and Sydney OPML Reading Lists are a no-brainer. The brains come in on how the Reading List(s) are maintained : And what is centralised, and decentralised. Because I want an OPML Reading List for another 200+ topics in Australia (every football team here should have one with the season just kicking off - I'll develop one for MFC in the AFL - Go Demons !) But I dont want to maintain (all of) these lists. Especially when someone else downunder is more passionate about other topics. (im farely superficial when it comes to my interests as you can tell) So... My thinking cap's on - "The first step is admitting want you don't know" etc. 2.0 Consultants tell you to go stand on the Edge, outside of "The Firms" Resources. Um, ok I'm there, What Now ? :) I think I'll develop one's for my interests and go from there by co-opting other people who like totally different things to me. Dave Winer : "Brooklyn Joe created a NY Yankees reading list. Oh man, you can tell I'm really behind reading lists because there are two weird things going on here. First, the Yankees? You gotta be kidding. Second, what's a guy from Brooklyn doing rooting for the Yankees. Hope he doesn't tell his neighbors in Brooklyn he's doing that. Brooklyn is on Long Island, and folks, that's National League territory. Let's get clear on that. But even if the guy is a traitor to his homeland, and without any discernable philosophy, at least he's getting behind OPML reading lists."

Steve Jobs'/Disney Apple a Day M+A Diet

cutie
Originally uploaded by hoorayreiter.

One way to avoid the 10 year path of being an intermediary ala google into main media, is to vertically integrate. Absorb the edge in 2.0 parlance. 800+ diggs as you'd expect but the source is Marketwatch.com. Interesting when you compare to what just (unsuccessfully) happened with Icahn/Timewarner-AOL and whether new/old media has more value as separate entities or integrated. I'd still prefer Apple buy Tivo. I worked at ninemsn, Australia's number one portal with Ch9 the number 1 TV station, and operationally there are alot of benefits. ninemsn took 10 years of organic growing/pain though : Infoseek-Go.com Part II ? : "I think he has an open option," Barron's quoted analyst Christopher Whalen, a New York-based managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics. "Disney is badly undervalued right now. Jobs might get an opportunity to take it out."

Carmen Electra Would Switch from Itunes Navarro

nip slip
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Internet Stock Blog has some great analysis quoting The Mozilla Foundation’s Executive Director Frank Hecker, about what it would take to be a sustainable number 2 in Online Music (which Yahoo as good as admits recently is a BIG challenge with Music Labels supporting DRM), behind Apple/Itunes/Ipod. (generally only Itunes works with Ipods, but Itunes does allow MP3 so there's a window there so the argument goes) Frank thinks the answer to Itunes dominance is pricing discounting/differentation for singles/albums, adoption of the MP3 format, with EMusic as a case study. Some extracts : "In my opinion the only way for the labels to break Apple’s control would be to move to a model where they sell non-restricted MP3s playable on all devices, including iPods, and can then undercut the iTunes Music Store on older releases and album filler while charging more than iTMS for recent releases and hot singles. For example, on a 10-song album they could price the two singles at, say, $1.50 per track, and the other eight tracks at $0.50 per track. They could then undercut iTMS on the whole album, at $7 as opposed to $9.99, and stimulate demand for whole-album downloads while likely getting more money from the people who simply like to get the singles. But this would only work if they and/or their partners can offer a digital music service that’s equivalent to or better than iTMS, which means being iPod-compatible using the one digital music format that Apple doesn’t control but can’t afford not to support, namely MP3." He follows : "However the place that is really worth watching is eMusic, which already has a thriving digital music business that by their own account is second only to Apple’s, built on low prices (as low as 20 cents a track), the absence of DRM, and music from independent labels not locked into the RIAA/major label conventional wisdom. For an insight into eMusic’s strategy and what makes it successful, check out this interview with David Pakman, CEO of eMusic. Key quote: “[T]here are really only two companies in the world who can market music to iPod customers, and that’s Apple and us.”

It's Monday Morning Downunder

easy riders
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Fred Wilson is going to invite his Positively 10th Street Family of Music Lovers to sample Web 2.0 and Myers-Briggs personality test in one, through PersonalDNA. I'll be doing it later today after some errands. It has ajax and Fred likes "what's even cooler is that you can ask others to complete profiles on you via the "psyche you/psych me" feature."

You Put Data In. You Can Get Data Out.

evangeline lost
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I wonder if Yahoo will follow Jeremy's insight (after reading Dion's piece) in the medium term (u cant change the world overnight y'all) "The single most frustrating thing about many services is the lack of any good way to get my data out--either for backup purposes or to import it elsewhere."

Getting Figgy 'Wid 'it

LOGO2.0 part II
Originally uploaded by Stabilo Boss.

You would expect Microsoft Australia's Zen Buddhist Evangelist Guru - Mr Frank Arrigo (founding CTO ninemsn), to accept Rocco Corleone's Figs. Befitting The Don, he got his #2 to try the produce, who lived to (later) drive off in the Mazda 4WD. (good undercover vehicle) Frank had a listen to our tech team on the GNU part of gnoos : "During the meeting, the folks offered me a snack - a nice healthy bowl of figs, picked fresh from a tree out the back of their 'office'. I couldn't eat the figs. I had a lump in my throat, but I did take a photo."

[ Currently Playing : Music - Madonna - GHV2 (03:49) ]

Published Sunday, February 26, 2006 10:59 AM by frankarr
Filed Under: geek, ISV, Blogging

Google's Low Margin One Stop Ad Shop Thang

andreina 02
Originally uploaded by photochino`s.

Andreina agrees with The Internet Outsider on Google's want to be the middle man for print and radio advertising, among others, may be somewhat vertically challenged in the short term : "At an 11% operating margin, for Google to generate an incremental 10% of operating profit per year from its new radio and print business ($260 million, if we annualize Q4 operating profit), it would need to generate an estimated $2.4 billion of radio/print revenue per year (more if the operating margin is actually lower, which it probably is). To put this in perspective, this is closing in on as much revenue as Google currently generates in its Networks business ($3.2 billion annualized) after several years of growth with a dominant industry position. It is also approximately a quarter as much revenue as Time Warner (print) and Clear Channel (radio) generate in their print and radio businesses combined, after more than half a century of growth."

Tony Soprano's 2.0 Advisory Capital

oh yeaaaaah
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Jeff Jarvis' point makes sense but the problem would remain that the non VC funded (such as my business) would not have access to the advisory services in reality because the avg amount VC's invest wont change : "I think that VC shops would be wise to set up — and arrange compensation for! — networks of advisory capitalists, who could aid the startups with advice and expertise and the VC firms with deal flow and with help managing a far greater number of far smaller investments." If the amount VC's invest doesnt change, which it wont overnight (except for potential home run companies) this leaves one back in the same 'advisory capital impasse' as now : Proactive entrepreneurs and angel investors seek each other out and determine the best structure ! Damn, this one is a conundrum : Cause I guess where there is smoke there is fire. Idealabs in retrospect has probably had enough home runs to show the model can work. Even if it was applied to smaller size funded Web 2.0 emigre'. What I would personally like most is the ability to find the right people to advise (the top 1%), and then a template/community to (help) structure the relationship (almost an open source business community resource ala a corpus of docs incl Brad Felds Terms Sheet series, where there were some generic Advisory Board/Capital documents which details benchmarks, case studies, the legal relationships, stock, options components, notes from other entrpreneurs etc - things to look out for, .xls for vesting periods, etc) Summary : It's so time consuming to find the right advisor(s), and then vhard to get the structure "right". As Tom Evslin says well : "But what if you don’t need money but still need advice and connections? I don’t think you ought to sell more equity earlier than you have to just to get the advice and connections you want. I do think that the venture industry, just like so many others, can be horizontally delaminated or micro-chunked like much content is or ought to be. No packaging of one service with another is sacrosanct." Maybe it's better to get Tony Soprano down to sort it out. Once and for all.

The ABC of Blogging + Linux WiFiRadio

linux wifi radio
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

My brother's going to Europe with his wife in April. He hasn't been before, nor has he blogged - even though he is an early adopter with most technology. He may blog when over there - We'll see. Certainly easier than email, and a better scrapbook too. Dave Winer's explanation below is very simple for non-bloggers who want to get with the program. And for blogs to go mainstream it needs to be even easier. Blogs to some journos short of a social media flip to report on, may be nouveau dead, but there is a huge curve still to ride. It will be interesting to see how projects like Wordpress.com + Six Apart's Project Comet go in driving adoption. (With a $100m+ valuation and a payfor model sixapart will need to do something special for C-round investors to get the returns they expect.)

Segments such as business (broader content management tools) and family (easier) require better products. Vertical applications such as sport and education have extensive growth to occur. How ironic that it is easy to click on "Geocities" from the Yahoo Home Page in 2006, but the word blog is nowhere to be seen. (Maybe I should have guessed if I clicked on Y-Small Business/Web Hosting, there would be some Movable Type + Wordpress 'hosting' packages a few clicks down : Or maybe Yahoo 360 where's that ?) I guess I should shutup about this because it all seems rather obvious in terms of Product Planning 101 : Features, benefits, brand names, customer segments. Where are the pre or click to install customised themes, plugins and applications ?

Dave Winer on how to setup a blog : "First, create a new weblog on one of the free services, like Blogger or MSN Spaces. It takes about five minutes, and is about as hard as creating an email address on Yahoo or Hotmail, and represents less of a commitment. Then make your first post, something like Hello There, or Testing 1-2-3. Once you've verified that it works, you can stop there. Then someday, when you're in the shower or lying in bed in the morning and get an idea that you wish you could tell everyone, remember that you have a blog, and go to the computer, and write it up and publish it. That actually feels pretty good, even if you think no one will read it, because you got it off your chest. Then in a few days Google will probably visit your site and index the post, and then when someone searches for that subject, your page will come up, and maybe you'll pass that idea on to someone who can use it, or meet someone who agrees, or someone who disagrees. And that's blogging, and that's all it is."

11.2 Billion Reasons to Sell GOOGs Online

The Jungle
Originally uploaded by modelux.

There's Eleven Point 2 Billion reasons why google (as bad as their product releases are) can stay in the (leading) game - this quote from their blog. Modelux + Gaunt, Models : "If you take a look at the history of Google's advertising programs and online services, one thing you notice is that online billing and payments have been a core part of our offerings for some time. To run our ad programs, Google receives payments every day from advertisers, and then pays out a portion of those funds to advertising partners. Over the past four years, Google has billed advertisers in 65 countries more than $11.2 billion in 48 currencies, and made payments to advertising partners of more than $3.9 billion. When one of our consumer services requires payment to us, we've also provided users a purchase option."

2 PHP or not 2 WPMU : Sun Giving Bloggers Servers

Steam
Originally uploaded by ]kac[.

Wordpress.com founder Matt Mullenwegg is looking for one of those free Sun Servers they are giving out to bloggers. ("if you write a blog that fairly assesses the machine's performance (positively or negatively), send us a pointer, we're likely to let you keep the machine. (And before you ask, the marketing team makes the decision about what qualifies for the promotion, not I - although I know they love drama, charts, and compelling competitive analyses.") BTW, any gun PHP programmers ping me to chat on some paid work opportunities in this area. Photo Matt : "I put in an application for a free Sun server to try out for either WordPress.com or Ping-o-Matic, depending on when/if it arrives. Everything we’ve done on WP.com has been Dell thus far, and honestly they’ve been pretty good with the exception of one box that they’re going to replace soon. Our biggest DB server (a Dell 6850) does north of 300 queries per second, but it weighs as much as me and uses a crazy amount of power, which is expensive. Of course as more and more of our infrastructure becomes distributed, high performance boxes don’t matter as much." Matt has also announced Wordpress.com Widgets, vkewl : "Basically what we’ve done is broken down the sidebars in themes into discrete blocks of goodness, and created an interface for you to add, delete, and rearrange them by simply dragging and dropping. It’s as easy as falling off a blog. The widgets are basic right now, things like search, categories, pages, etc, but we’re going to be adding more based on your requests and we’re opening up an API for anyone to create their own widgets. (It’s as writing a single function and wrapping it in a WordPress plugin.)"

$200K Ford GT Crash + Federated Media Portal

ford gt wreck
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I'd always assumed Federated Media would have an aggregate page. In fact I thought it would already be there. Instead you get a industry type company news/hiring blog. I wonder how they will position the brand to consumers (incl what the URL will be ?), given their targets so far have been advertisers and A-List bloggers. Valleywag : "So the upside is, an FM portal page could put all your time-wasting onto one site. You already refresh Boing Boing and Fark all day, so why not have just one page to suck your life away? Clever move, Battelle. With these powers combined (Fark! Buzzmachine! Metafilter! Boing Boing! And Ma-Ti, with the power of Heart!) the FM founder can become Captain Intarwebs."

Ordering the 997 GT3 from Local Porsche Dealer

i want gt3
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

How kewl that you could walk around with your phone and check realtime availability of product and pricing, in your local area. From Mobile Analyst Watch : "It was a pretty easy process to download and install the app to my Audiovox SMT-5600. I submitted my cell phone number at the S'lifter page and immediately received a text message with a link that took me to the download page. The page correctly identified my handset as well as my network operator and then I downloaded and installed the app over the air. After a few clicks I was shopping. I decided to search if there were any Xbox 360s in my area and quickly found out that the Best Buy three towns over had it in stock. I also could see what other stores had it, get product info, make a call to the Best Buy as well as text the item to myself or friends."

Franky has a Dream, and TechTalkBlogs is Born

997 gt3
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Tom Evslin says VC's like to invest in dreamers who execute, so I love TechTalkBlogs which Frank Arrigo has helped deliver for the Australian tech bloggers market. Dave Winer will love the use of OPML downunder. Nice 1 Frank. "This project has been a dream of mine for a while. It provides a single aggregated view of all the local bloggers in the OPML, as well as the ability for bloggers to add/remove them selves from the list. I love it. No longer do I have to manual edit an OPML file in notepad again!"

I Reddit on a Startup Beach in Boston

crc09
Originally uploaded by El Observador.

I've been using reddit more and more, along with tailrank : I prefer these engines for the broader news stories : I cant read anymore about a 20% project at Google that sux. I wonder why ? Why empower people 110% when you can get 20% ? Imagine athletes trying to succeed by giving 20%. No wonder crap like g-reader, base, pagecreator, pack, blogsearch, chat, talk, webclips, and all the other 20% cells are junk. Anyway, Reddit is a team of three people and has some neat hot or not, features and a good filtering algorithm, although I'd like more dynamic content on the home page. Some notes from Dharmesh who went to the latest Boston Startup Meeting : He prefaces his notes saying Reddit have a "lack of real plans for revenue generation for reddit. Though there were some oblique references to advertising, subscription fees and other possible avenues, they didn’t really seem to be worried a lot about revenues." I've included his points below because we've been talking about reddit all week in the office : and how they do ratings, tagging, and comments. I've summarised some of the points :

- Initial idea was different. Inspired by del.icio.us.
- "Digg is likely reddit’s biggest competitor"
- "Reddit is up to 20,000 unique visitors a day"
- They’ve got a feature called “sub-reddits” (most common being certain languages).
- "Experimented with Google AdSense on some of their sub-reddits..didn’t seem particularly enthused"
- ".. wide diversity of “content”.. makes it difficult for engines like Google to really figure out what kinds of ads to place."
- "They’ve had “issues” with their hosting providers.. moving to a new infrastructure and multiple servers."
- "They’re still a small, tight-knit team (3 people)"
- “almost daily” offers for investment and/or acquisition..."

A(sia) Pac Bloggers put the new A in A-List

lets go home. now.
Originally uploaded by cybele malinowski.

Fred Wilson linked to an awesome post on the rise of AsiaPac bloggers, not dumbo white boys like me from Australia, but instead the silent majority of Asian IM, blog, bokee crazed. Some great analysis by Tristan : "A quick analysis seems to point to Asian blogs becoming a major force, one that I personally have not heard much about in discussion of the evolution of the blogosphere. David Sifry's State of the Blogosphere did not cover any of this type of movement when he did his last overview of the state of the blogosphere. I don't know if he deliberately decided to ignore the data or whether he did not see it as that important but I consider this a pretty powerful observation. In a world where globalisation is key, the blogosphere has not yet fully grappled with the impact of the Asian Pacific region and there probably will be some interesting discussion around this in the future."

The James Ellroy Black Dahlia Roadster

zonda f amg 7 3
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

A selection of movies below I'll want to see this year. Esp Black Dahlia (from the LA Quartet) because James Ellroy is one of my top 3 favourite writers and Black Dahlia one of my favourite books ever. BlogCritics :

The Black Dahlia (TBA): When L.A. Confidential came out in 1997, I expected lots more movies based on James Ellroy novels. But the first one since is only now coming out. Directed by Brian DePalma, The Black Dahlia is about the famous 1947 L.A. murder case. DePalma is great at aping the style of better directors, notably Hitchcock or Scorsese, so with the words of Ellroy behind him, expect a noir tribute worthy of John Huston.

Zodiac (fall) : David Fincher returns to serial killer land with the search for the Zodiac Killer, who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and 1970s and remains uncaught. He was like the template for every killer CSI ever saw. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo.

The Fountain (TBA) : Another film that should have been out by now but is probably worth the wait. Darren Aronofsky's (Requiem for a Dream) strange tale of the search for immortality and love told over the course of 1000 years stars his pregnant girlfriend Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman.

V For Vendetta (March) : Pushed back from its November release, the futuristic vision of a totalitarian Britain and a lone avenger seeking to restore its humanity as based on Alan Moore's graphic novel. Produced by the Matrix's Wachowski brothers, this is the film that got Natalie Portman to shave her head. Harry Knowles from Aint it Cool News wrote, "This is the most intense cinematic cry for Anarchy since A Clockwork Orange."

Pagani Zonda F for Founder + Stewardship

the billionaires ride
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Good HBS article on Founder motivation and related issues - I agree with the conclusion to this assessment : "In contrast, stewardship theory posits that some managers - "stewards" - will put the organization's interests first, especially when they identify closely with the organization and are very attached to it. The interests of these "organizationally centered" executives are more likely to be aligned with those of the owners. Stewards identify closely with the organization and thus derive higher satisfaction from behaviors that promote the organization's interests than from self-serving behaviors. Also, intrinsic motivation should be higher in people who create an organization and feel a sense of control over its direction. Hence, there is much less of a clear divergence between managerial and shareholder interests. It struck me that many founders I had studied are much closer to the steward ideal than to the agents described in agency theory." That ZondaF Roadster is truly mad.

Regional Inbound Link Authority Up the Duff

up da duff
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

A Venture Forth identifies a problem I've been encountering, except for me its at a country level not global. Chopper Diplomatic MBA's solve this : Australia has some "A to C" List bloggers who have lots of inbound links from non Aussie "A to C" list bloggers. Meanwhile Aussie blogs linked to by other Aussie bloggers, have less inbound links in an absolutist sense than the above-mentioned (aussie "A to C" list), but they have more links from other (non global) Aussie bloggers. Alot of (local) Aussie blogs dont have a high amount of inbound links to start with due to 20x per capita net audience shrinkage, but do have a large number of comments per post : The Conversational Index rears its head. As well as the simple measurement of pageviews/unique users through a realtime intelligence tool. A Venture Forth : "The problem is that Technorati’s algorithm for measuring authority is too simple–they look only at inbound links (the more links, the more “authoritative” a blog is). Just because a blog has many inbound links doesn’t mean it necessarily has significant influence or control over others. That said, it isn’t immediately obvious how to do a better job? What additional factors should be considered? Can these factors be evaluated consistently? Will the process of evaluation scale to cover the entire internet?" The same problem applies to all the international regions that account for 39% of Google's revenue in 2005, up from 34% in 2004. Happy to take this one offline with mathematicians.

Eric Rice : Does Earthlink Sponsor Engadget on Podshow ?

Earthlink sponsors.... uh, Engadget?
Originally uploaded by Eric Rice.

Eric Rice is pretty spot on here. The odd time I'd used podshow.com for browsing podcasts, it's been unclear to me the "different classes" of shows. It's also a function of needing better UI, design, navigation, and balance between advertising, Podshow content and directory features. I'm sure if my mom was to use it she'd believe engadget is owned by Podshow. Eric "Aside from the lack of delineation between who's on the podshow network and who's just listed in the directory, we noticed that podcast pages there have no direct links to the podcasts' respective home pages. And then you see WeblogsInc's Engadget (owned by AOL) with an Earthlink ad on the page.... and you gotta wonder, how much cover do we need to take when this hits the fan?"

I Wish my Video with Ipod Would Arrive

need my mommy
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

"At approximately 12:37 PM Eastern on February 23rd, 2006, Apple sold its one billionth song on iTunes, marking the end of their Billion Song Giveaway campaign." - I'm using an Ibook with Sony DJ Headphones as an Ipod and its not exactly inconspicuous. Sounds good tho.

Jessica Alba Wants to Sell you Some Banner Ads

the jess
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

It's a pretty good time to be a downunder entrepreneur : Yesterday in AFR it was announced internet advertising is again the fastest growing media - 60% p.a the last 2 years. It's now bigger than cinema, pay TV and outdoor advertising combined. On current growth its going past radio and magazines in the not too distant future. After 10 years on most sides of this industry - it's a great time to be in control of one's next steps. Nearly everything I'm doing I've done before multiple times, however the difference this time in 'my own' business is to combine all the elements into a successful package - Done right. Yup, right. I dont believe I've ever worked on a website in a decade where end-end I was happy with the result. Yesterday I was talking to Frank Arrigo (Australia's Blogfather as he says he has been nicknamed) about our plans for an Aussie Blog Network attached to gnoos.com.au, because first and foremost there's no group to join for Aussie bloggers who want to connect with fellow bloggers, exchange tips, get more traffic, hookup and down the track make money. It was timely then that today I spoke to Original Gangsta Banner Pimp Daddy Karl Morris, now GM of Soush, which is a subsidiary of Ansearch Ltd, the newest publicly listed pureplay search engine in Australia. I couldnt shut him up about how they are helping monetise a range of (announced, and soon to be) Aussie Websites : As well as their recent google publisher deal. I was interested as I thought I might learn a few things about how it could be applied to Aussie Blogs :

- CPC + CPM Advertising Options to Aussie Website Owners
- 100% fill rate on sites represented
- 50,000,000 page impressions est per month with two ad units per page
- Total 100,000,000 ad impressions.
- 70% Used for Paid Advertising
- 70,000,000 ad units to sell
- 0.2% est clickthrough Rate (CTR)
- $0.30 avg Cost Per Click (CPC)
- 70,000,000 x 0.2% (CTR) = 1,400,000 clicks
- 1,400,000 * $0.30 (CPC) = $420,000 revenue per month
- $5m+ annualised revenue, with larger share going to Website Owner

Given the lack of website representation options in this country other than Overture, and global online options like Adsense, Blogads and Adbrite, "localised" (eg australia) and "verticalised" (eg blogging) ad selling makes total sense to me. Jessica would agree.

The Olsen's GeoCode their Aussie Big W Blog

olsens big w
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

This is pretty kewl "Geopress, Ravi Dronamraju's Wordpress plugin for tagging blog posts with location information." From Ravi's Blog :

1. You can geocode each of your posts by just giving an address. Any address you give in yahoo! maps should work
2. You can insert a map for the post’s location within the post.
3. You can Geo enable your RSS feeds with a small bit of coding
4. You can insert a quick link to show off all your posts on a yahoo! map
5. You can save favorite locations

Search is the New Black says Sophia Bush

sophia bush
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Remember One Tree Hill, who does ? incl Sophia pictured. So Goobile has the latest research from Nielsen and the like and everything old is new again : Search is the New Black ;) "Almost 5.1 billion online searches were conducted in the US in December 2005, up 55% year-on-year, from 3.3 billion searches in December 2004. The figures were measured across 60 search engines."

Clicking on the Nicole Lenz/Paris Video RSS Ad Not

nicole lenz
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

The BlogHerald's been ripping it up, and the A+ mid generation Scoble himself notes why RSS advertising hasnt take off yet. Funny, I thought it was because no-one, Microsoft and Google included, had developed a self service contextual rss ad auction platform that works. That people click on. I think the below reasons are subjective distractions not grounded in the science of click math. Scobleizer :

1) The audiences are too small.
2) The audiences are too geeky and too full of smart people. Hint, those people don’t click on advertisements unless they are very targetted!

Marissa Cooper to Sell Rare Fendi Bag thru 9MSN

orange county
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

The New Fairfax and Trading Post rivers of classified gold (as well as corporate online display ads) are well and truly within PBL. Minus the Search Piece of the Puzzle. And the round the corner Web 2.0 strategy. The Age "PBL's growing portfolio of strategic investments, such as online portal ninemsn, pay-TV sports channel Fox Sports and internet jobs site Seek, contributed $35.7 million to PBL's net profit, up from only $3.4 million in the previous corresponding period... "If you look at things like ninemsn and Seek all working, new growth businesses like carsales.com.au, which is a fantastic business — they're becoming big contributors," he said. "In the scheme of this company they're not huge numbers, but ninemsn did $12.7 million profit for PBL. That means it's making around $48 million a year. This is a big business now."

Niteclub Bathroom + Banking RSS Feeds

changingroom
Originally uploaded by cybele malinowski.

Ongoing makes total absolute sense. So much common sense, I wonder how long it will take to happen, and then downunder. TBray : "So why can’t I subscribe to my bank accounts and credit cards? I wouldn’t mind at all, after I’ve been out for a shopping run and used the debit and credit cards a few times, seeing those charges trickle through on my aggregator. And I’d welcome a look at the many automatic debits and charges I’ve signed up for."

Another Day, Another Dollar, Murcielago

I was in Melbourne today catching up with The A-Team (apologies to those i missed meeting) re actioning our projects : Uno Duo. I liken it to making a film vibe (where im an extra) : A tight team of specialists bought together to deliver The Baby(s) : Most people with different complementary skills who are experts in their areas (oh nothing like a php vs python vs java debate pre running onto a train and nearly knocking down an old lady) 2.0 Steven Soderbergh ethos : One film for you (Sex Lies) and one for them (ErinB) - retaining artistic control, and delivering a kick ass product(s). Later in the Day The (Aussie) Blogfather Frank Arrigo, Founding CTO Legend of ninemsn who I worked with back then, now Lead Tech Evangelist at Microsoft, dropped into our office (he said it looked like a house ;) on the way back to the Sydney Harbour. Nice1 Franky. Dejavu on reading these technorati features : "We've made it as easy as possible to add blogs to your Favorites. All over Technorati, just click the star icon to add that blog to your favorites. Looking for good blogs on a certain topic? Check out Blog Finder and add blogs from there! There's also a bookmarklet you can take with you, so you can add to your favorites wherever you browse (get it on the Favorites Help page). And if you use another subscription tool or service, you can export your subscriptions and import them using the Favorites Importer! Once you've got some favorites, you'll see the most recent posts from them, newest to oldest, as they happen. If you prefer RSS, don't worry, it's available. Got your own blog? Wanna make it easy for Technorati members to mark is as a favorite? Just use one of these handy buttons! You can even display recent posts from your Favorites on your own blog with the Favorites Widget. But the best part is that now you can search just your favorite blogs. The second tab on every keyword search result is now "Your Favorites" - click it to search just your favorite blogs. Finally, Technorati Favorites are for sharing! Note that everyone has a public favorites page (here's mine). You can share yours with your friends with the link at the top of your Favorites page."

The Day the Podstock Revolution Grew Up

Sundays and Cybele
Originally uploaded by dreadfuldan.

I've been using gmail for 2 years as my standard email : Cant even remember last time I used Outlook, probably May 2004 as a secondary client. Anyway, today gmail was down all day for me till 5pm (altho it might have been an ISP level problem) : I could access other sites, but it was strange none the less. Which leaves me with a 610am Vline train from Bittern tomorrow/Wednesday (in 7 hours) which means a 5am alarm : Which isnt good because Im on the Macs till 130am-2am every night. Its 1020pm and Im downloading my 4 hours of power podcast travel tunes + casts. I prefer funny comedy stuff, not tech podcasts (in general) but esp for travel, so it makes the dreary just that bit better. I wish my Ipod with Video would arrive. Anyway, so I just downloaded Episode Twelve of Ricky Gervais, which given they've had millions of downloads, kaching - the next ones will cost'ya'us. The Itunes audience will pay, but unfortunately this is the start of ID3 Podcast Stratification : Take me to the Commission Flats, 12th Floor Laundry, Building C. Bit-Tech : "iTunes doesn't currently support the purchasing of podcasts through its own store, but does allow the purchase of audio spoken content through its link with Audible, which can be accessed through the Music Store.An Audible subscription to the show will cost $7 a month in the US and £4.50 a month in the UK. For the money, you'll get four half hour shows." I hope Karl does a breakaway free even more anarchic mindshow, and take the learing soon to be richer Gervais, away. As much as I liked the show. Stern, Gervais, Keith from K+TG getting an agent. The audio sellout is on. I agree with Gamer Andy's ambiguity on this development. "I'm not adverse to money. I keep mine in a jar on top of the refrigerator. I'd like to put more money in that jar. But that's my business, and it's (frankly) unrelated from what we do here at GA" If you want some great Aussie (mainstream free) podcasts - check out Hughesy, Kate and Dave, as well as Merrick + Rosso - Lots of good comedy, regular programming and free. Gervais may be selling out, but I know Cameron and Rich will be very happy to take the market share !

Calacanis : YouTube = Red Bull + 2 Tween Programmers

Jason Calacanis posits YouTube may not have a business model and in Maslow's theory of 2.0 consumer motivators is a closer relation to Bit-Torrent. I think it's a bit more complex - It's a given that early adopters want to microchunk, syndicate, upload and share kewl klips. The Itunes mass then want it easier again and pay $1.99. As Reality Bites concluded : "The Answer is Pizza." Calacanis : "YouTube and other video hosting sites have made it easy to pirate stuff on the web (which is where piracy started), but they shouldn't be positioned as some revolutionary business. It's a silly, little business that anyone could setup in a week. The fact that folks are talking about them being bought for some large amount of money by Newscorp is commical. They are a glorified FTP site with TAGS people! I could set this up in a weekend with two kids in high-school and a couple of cases of Red Bull. In fact, the first two programmers to email me with a decent resume I'll back you guys to build a YouTube compeititor--provided you can build it in under five days." If U2'be does end up with its 'natural owner' I wonder if they would :

A. Keep 'Business as Usual' : Keep running it ala MySpace blogger, and increase legal funds and eliminate content from those copyright owners with equally big legal budgets.
B : Go 100% Amateur : Like Napster did years back after court case, or the Podsafe Music Network-esque.
C : Turn it into the New Itunes Video Distribution Channel : An integrated media player, with their own content and dying shows like SNL to prop up, could use YouTube for an injection of sex. Like the way The Office is more popular on US TV now its on Itunes.

YouTube is a business in the same way Skype is a business, in that it's another cut into a large industry. It's valuation as a business, assuming it keeps it's growth rates up user wise, will depend on whether someone wants to punt on its commercialisation. The fact the content driving YouTube isn't totally "professional/illegal" means it has alot more chance of this outcome than your more blatant rogue P2P TV and movie trading. Like ifilm.com which was bought by MTV for $49m. So it really depends what your valuation for X Factor is. Jason's value is a case of Red Bull and 2 High School Programmers, which is fair enough ;)

"We are thrilled about the acquisition of IFILM. This move is at the heart of MTV Networks multi-platform strategy and meshes with our tradition of cultivating independent and creative brands. We're combining the top brands in all digital media with our global reach and programming expertise to speak to consumers everywhere they live their lives," says Judy McGrath, CEO, MTV Networks.

Jessica Biel does Yoga. Ansearch does Google.au

biel workout
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Andrew Pascoe's got the buzz on the Google/Soush (Ansearch - ANH) deal for Australasia, in more prequel action to the Aussie Web 2.0 Smackdown ! "According to Soush though, one key difference is the publishers that take up their offering won't see the infamous "ads by google" strapline next to the ad units. The other key difference is the same ad space, for the publisher, can run either the AdSense resold product OR a normal CPM display ad."

ANSEARCH LIMITED price history chart

Disclaimer : I don't own any shares but suffice to say Ansearch (ANH : ASX stock market) is going in the opposite direction to google at moment. Probably because it's market cap is in the low tens of millions, not $100B+. And what else can you trade on the Aussie Stock Market that's a pure play search engine or internet media company other than large cap seek. Alot of their execs I know because we all worked at sensis during the market downturn. And they like to execute fast. But, I like art too. Geek art. Esp Monetised geek art, which is where the tech net'k-effect and ad yields collide. You gotta love the Australian market at moment : Lots of multi-billion dollar media companies and telcos looking to eat lunch, before they are. And little 2.0 competition.

Rachel McAdams Goes Out with The Blog Archetype

the mcadams
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Fred Wilson's readership is interesting. Michael Moore talked about 'Stupid White Men' but Fred's audience would better be referred to as 'Smart White Men'. My international readership breakdown is quite different to his. 78% of his readers are in the U.S, while for me the number is 44% (last time I looked) followed by strong Canadian and English followings (eg 24%, 14%) with my fellow Australians only 8%, which surprised me. Federated Media will like Fred's demo breakdown esp the 36% of Fred's audience being CEO's/Chairman types. A VC - "78% of you live in the US (i am slightly disappointed by this number as a much larger percentage of foreigners seem to comment and track back so i had hoped for a more global audience)"

$100m+ Valuation for Six Apart. Name the VC's.

mrs heath
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

SixApart is the deal Brad Feld always mentioned as the one RSS investment that got away, at the time when he invested in Newsgator, Feedburner and Technorati after drawing a RSS value chain, analysing his own behaviour and extrapolating it into investment opportunities, a couple years back (Great Timing) I wonder what he thinks of this price and who are the investors in Six Apart's rumoured $12m/C Round. I think the interesting VC meets blogging action myself will be around the Wordpress commercialisations. (see brad's mention yday of judysbook use of microformats etc) From one of Om's blogs : "While I have not been able to speak with anyone from Six Apart, some of my sources in Silicon Valley are telling me that this one is rumored to be a hotly contested deal. The pre-money valuation was said to be around $80 million when Six Apart started raising money, but since then it has become a hotly contested deal, and the pre-money valuation is said to have climbed north of $100 million. Sources say the funding round hasn’t closed as yet. I am going to qualify all this as a rumor since I have not spoken to Six Apart folks. And when I do, I will update the story accordingly."

The New Pick Up Line

Another year
Originally uploaded by hailun.

Her: “Do you have a card?”

Him: “Just Google me, babe.”

(Rick Segal eavesdropping @ Tech Crunch 5 Party)

Where are the Google Bulls ?

MacBook Pro Packaging
Originally uploaded by andrewe.

Gees, since GOOG went down by a quarter-ish or some other equally large amount (i dont watch it), which btw was the most obvious short of the century which as usual I wrote about but didnt invest in (only Amazon in the last century came close) So, I wonder when the Google bulls will jump back in, double-up, and ride their 'adsense will dominate everything' thesis to a gold medal, or will they receive a dumping on their sled to Suicide Hill. (btw i have no idea where people sled but i listen to fred wilson's birthday podcasts where they go sledding and heard the mention of Suicide Hill or similar.. altho i guess i did sled in washington dc in grade 3 when i lived there for one semester when i was 9 years old) Anyone ordered a MacBook Pro ?

848am Flinders Golf Tee Time + Sand Hill Slave

IMG_6298
Originally uploaded by michaelarrington.

If you want an inverted world in addition to Nik taking Mike's job, its Rocco, Modelux and Switters causing trouble on a Full Moon'esque Thursday night with "the melbourne car show is coming up" models having a birthday party for the Swedish quotient : While I bang out project management emails. Karma is a bitch. Except Im playing 18 holes at Flinders with my brother who has an RDO at 848am tomorrow. Anyway, I'm digging this linked to post from Post Money Value where the respondent I believe is female, and the language is suitably postgrad, rich enough, high IQ, acerbic. (im so transparent) Extracts from The Sand Hill Slave who definitely knows how to bust a fn rhyme : "My friend Steve* does these little network mixer gatherings for his alumni from a certain Ivy League institution. He usually asks me to show up to "up the hot chick" quotient. With a bribe of my drinks being paid for, I feel that this is other people's money well spent. During the summer, he had another one of those mixers. I show up to a swank lounge, and I find my friend surrounded by women cooing and batting their eyes at him. He's not my type at all, but I can see why women are all over him. Steve is a very charming guy. The last time we partied together, he went home with 2 Danish women. My parting words to him were, "make sure your Danish rolls are fresh before you eat them in the morning". (Gross and immature, I know)... And hits it again : "The woman was trying to play super alpha female on me by trying to interrupt my conversation with Bob. She's an investment banker and liked to pepper her conversation with liberal a sprinkle of the usual "I'm the lead on this deal, blah blah blah" nonsense...

Tina: I've seen you around...you are class of...?
SlaveGirl: I haven't graduated from there.
Tina: Oh so you are still in school??
SlaveGirl: No.
Tina: Did you drop out?
SlaveGirl: No. I never went there.
Tina: Ooookaayyy..
SlaveGirl (goes for the jugular): Well I know alot of your alumni because I've fucked plenty of them. Does that give me special status?.."

Never Give an Aussie the Keys

IMG_6225
Originally uploaded by michaelarrington.

Unless it's Nik. Well this should be interesting. And a variation on the old San Francisco Homeless person "Will Blog for Food" Placard. I'm sure Nik will do a, um, swell, um, what's the Australian term for it, bewwwwdiful, job of it. The SoCal 2.0 vsn of Seinfeld : "Nik Cubrilovic has accepted my my invitation to guest blog for TechCrunch in my absence over the next ten days." (bb - you might see nik in the corner of the photo with nivi, talking about their plans for conquering SF post Tech Crunch party) No, really, TechCrunch, couldn't be in better hands. LOL.

I'm not Sure what BlogCritics are Talking 'Bout

They mentioned a 3am call and Rita Hayworth. Can anyone decipher ? I like the script though ;)

AF: Hey, aren't you dead?
RH: Shut up cockface. Now listen here and listen good. I need three jars of Ron Perlman's sweat, don't ask why, just get it done.
AF: Well shucks, that sounds tricky. Will Tom Waits' do?
RH: Yes but be snappy about it, my plan for the resurrection of the old Hollywood studio system will not wait.
AF: Actually if that's what you're doing then I'll have to give you the big fuck off.
RH: Ok so I was a bit harsh I'll admit...

"..It was then that I hung up the phone. Stupid fuck has all these grand ideas about giving the classic system the Lazarus treatment, an awry bunch of bollocks I say. She ain't realising the full repercussions of her proposed action. Where the hell are down-to-earth actors like Jeff Fahey going to scuttle when old Hayworth succeeds in her maniacal plans?"

WOPM + hReview Microformats et Mini S Cab

For those interested in having a kick around the local space, what you dont understand of the following paragraph I won't be telling you ;) Brad Feld : "For the techies in the audience, we’re now supporting WOPM (“write once publish many”) where you can create a review in Judy’s Book and have it published automagically on your blog (TypePad, LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress, and Movable Type are currently supported). Oh – and these are formatted using the hReview microformat (hmmm – wonder where we are going with that? – remember – I said we made architectural changes to make it easier to roll out new functionality.) There are plenty of RSS feeds easily discoverable to see what people are writing about in each city in the US, or – if you just want to see what a particular person is writing about, you can subscribe to their feed also. Members get their own pages with a user-definable URL – think “platform” for this if you want a sense of where things are going.""

Juliette Lewis' Band Plays Full Crowd inc Guy Kawasaki

lazy bunnys
Originally uploaded by Zappel Jazz.

The Inventor of all things syndicatable is decreeing a Mickey and Mallory'ism on Guy the Hawaii VC now I'm a Typepad blogger when I'm not playing Ice-Hockey Kawasaki : "In a few short weeks Guy Kawasaki has turned from a blog skeptic to a blog evangelist. He's what I call a Natural Born Blogger. He knew how to blog before he knew he knew."

Mickey: The whole world's comin' to an end, Mal!
Mallory: I see angels, Mickey. They're comin' down for us from heaven. And I see you ridin' a big red horse, and you're driving them horses, whippin' 'em, and the're spitting and frothing all 'long the mouth, and the're coming right at us. And I see the future, and there's no death, 'cause you and I, we're angels...
Mickey: I love you, Mal.
Mallory: I know you do baby, and I've loved you since the day we met.

First, Rojos Feedshare. Now, Pluck's BlogBurst

Pluck's BlogBurst
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Isn't it funny how the Web 1.5 RSS Readers didn't do anything in the 'blog network' space for a couple of years, but now in a bid (which I quite empathise with) to monetise their index and increase ad page impressions, we now have Rojo's Feedshare, and Pluck's Blogburst. SomewhatFrank has the inside juice : "BlogBurst, a soon to launch product by Pluck, mines the blogosphere for solid bloggers and then offers their valued blog content back to publishers. So basically, Pluck is creating a blog network for publishers to grab solid blog content and place it on their site. Bloggers should benefit from the added exposure and publishers get fresh blogosphere content. It is a win-win situation for bloggers and publishers alike! I think BlogBurst a great idea and will offer an out of the box solution for online publisher and websites alike seeking blogosphere content. The product offers a way for publishers to leverage the power of the blog without having to find and manage their own in-house blogger staff. I think this product has huge potential because there is a definite need by larger website and publishing companies to add compelling and relevant grassroots blogosphere content." Mr Arrington has further details on TeeCee : "Participating publishers have “workbench” tools to map content to specific areas of their site. Integration is “via simple JavaScript calls or robust SOAP or XML APIs". BlogBurst charges publishers for this service. They do not share revenue with bloggers, although each post has a byline and attribution/link back to the blog. For most bloggers, this extra traffic and attention will be very welcome.BlogBurst already has a number of top publishers signed up, including the SF Chronicle, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle and San Antonia Express-News." Interesting :( business model - In effect bloggers have to rely on traffic from (blogburst) readers who click (to read more) even though its a full text rss feed (that bloggers cant have ads in) BlogBurst keep 100% of syndicated and RSS ad revenue. Um. Adbrite is kicking ass and they keep 20-40% or so. The numbers here dont add up, unless Blogburst drive such strong traffic that the (short term) trade-off is worth it. I assume there are 30 day termination clauses anyway. I think I prefer Rojo's devil u know, Feedshare, in which ad inventory is shared within a 2 degree network, rather than Blogbursts three degrees. All good tho...

Aussies in Amsterdam + Perth

How good's this photo from the kewly named Two Sitting Ducks Blog, from Perth. (reminds me of the Red Hill/Main Ridge Valleys where I am at moment) On the flip side Aussie Grrl Donz from MySpace is in Amsterdam : "Last night i went out pub crawling with two brits i met in the hostel, we went to an aussie pub where i got a VB!!! yess! it was a little piece of heaven, im tellin ya...they even had xtra dry at this place, and coldies, coopers and crownies. and tonight its off to the aussie pub again with a cool guy i met this morning who was born in brissie."