MyThoughts

My Experience With 10Links

My first shot at using 10Links happened on Friday evening. While I was participating in a late night podcast on Talkshoe called Techbytes, I opened up a browser window and loaded up the 10Links submission page. I told others in the podcast about the opportunity to self promote their site and or blog by getting their link on the front page and as midnight continued to get closer, I began to feel a bit of excitement because I knew other people that were going to participate at the same time.

While waiting on the submission page, 10Links provides a nifty counter which tells you the amount of time left before midnight. A weird anomaly happened to me when I refreshed the page with a little less than three minutes remaining. The page reloaded and the timer shaved off 10-15 seconds. I’m not sure why it did that but it only occurred once.

Timer Counting Down To Midnight

I wasnt sure how the submission button would appear, so I filled out the form to make sure that all I would have to do is press enter. When I refreshed the page with 15 seconds left till midnight, the submission form entries were erased and the submit button appeared. I’m still not sure why the Submit button appeared 15 seconds before midnight but when it did, I had to quickly re-type my information into the submission form.

As it turns out, my link made it through, but because I had to retype my information into the form, I ended up making a typo or two in my link. After emailing the 10Links folks about the error to see if it could be corrected, I ended up not receiving a reply back. My advice, make sure your information is correct before you press that button.

All in all, it was a decent experience minus those possible glitches. I did receive about 20-30 hits from the front page link while getting a few more hits once the link showed up in their archives. For you bloggers that are trying to get your site out their, give this service a try. Every link counts and the best part about 10Links is that its free.

Why Are Web 2.0 Sites Compressing Avatars?

I have a bone to pick with these web 2.0 sites and services. It may not be a huge bone but it’s an annoying one at the very least. Many of these sites and services allow members to customize their profile by uploading an image also known as an avatar. These images are usually .PNG, .GIF, or .JPG files. There is often a maximum dimensions rule as well as a maximum file size rule in place.

I don’t understand why these sites and services have to turn my images into pieces of crap. Most of my avatars that I have created in photoshop look great, until they are uploaded to one of these sites such as MyBlogLog or Technorati. Let’s go through a few Before And After pictures to try and illustrate my point. The first image will be the image as it should be seen, straight out of photoshop saved at maximum quality. The second image is what is seen after uploading the file to the service in question.

First up, Technorati avatars in JPG format.

Before Technorati Before Uploading To Technorati After Technorati After Uploading To Technorati

Now lets take a look at MyBlogLog avatars in .GIF format.

Before MyBlogLog Before Uploading To MyBlogLog After MyBlogLog After Uploading To MyBlogLog

In case you can’t see the differences notice how the second image always looks worst after it’s uploaded to the service in question. The image goes through some sort of compression and the end result is a crappy looking avatar. I have tried changing the images to .PNG and .GIF formats, saving them at the maximum quality level but the compression just rips these images apart.

Why do these sites and services have to compress these tiny images? Why can’t I as a user have a nice looking avatar without compression? I mean, take a look at that example for MyBlogLog, it looks like total crap. I urge you companies to turn that compression crap off. I think the file size limit along with the dimension limit is enough to restrain insane avatars from overtaking your hard drive space. There is no need to compress.

I wonder if I am the only one who has noticed this? Please let me know what you think.

Jaiku Lifestream or Feed Aggregator?

http://www.jaiku.comI was browsing the official Jaiku channel where users can voice their opinions, suggestions, and offer direct feedback concerning the Jaiku service. TheGirlInTheCafe published an interesting thought,

 

I wonder if it is worrying that 90% of the posts on Jaiku seems to come from imported feeds. That would turn it into a feed aggregator.

Excellent observation if I must say so myself. One of Jaikus biggest selling points is that it offers the ability to take your online presence and display it on one page, AKA, LifeStreaming. Users can import feeds from various sites that they are associated with onto their Jaiku page. When one of those sites are updated, the update is published not only on the users Jaiku page, but it can also be viewed on the Jaiku homepage.

Feed updates that are displayed on the Jaiku explore page as a direct result of your online activities are viewed as an acceptable use of Jaiku. In fact, this is generally how the service is supposed to be used. However, what is beginning to happen is that the Jaiku explore page is starting to become bombarded with a ton of feed posts which have nothing to do with the actual user. These types of posts are taking over the front page, leaving very little room for displaying actual messages through the Jaiku service.

There are two things I foresee Jaiku doing to alleviate this problem. (A) Jaiku could only show member Jaikus on the Explore page. (B) Jaiku could simply add a tab to the Explore page which will only show users Jaikus without showing any other information.

Seems simple enough to me and I have to agree, that Jaiku is starting to look more like a feed aggregator than a Lifestream service. Let me know how you would solve this problem.

Pownce Thoughts Plus 10 Invites

http://www.pownce.comAlthough this won’t be a thorough review, I thought I would post my thoughts on Pownce. I now have a total of 10 invitations to the service. If you want one, please leave a comment which includes a working email address and I’ll send you one.

First, you have to ask yourself, how much free time in the day do you have to join yet another social network. Twitter, Jaiku, ect and now Pownce. In order to be successful within these social networks you either have to be popular in the real world, or you need to actively contribute and participate within the community for that particular service. Do you have the time to do so?

Honestly, I think if someone were to take the best of Twitter, with the best of Jaiku, added a few features that Pownce has, establish an open API, you would have something that blows all three out of the water. I don’t think Pownce has what it takes to knock Twitter or Jaiku off the map. Pownce reminds me more of an instant messenger client rather than a micro blogging service which is why I don’t understand why so many people are comparing Pownce to the likes of Twitter and Jaiku.

I would rather see a review of Pownce as it compares to AIM, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, ect. Then we could really see what Pownce has to offer. One thing I noticed with Pownce is that they at least have some sort of revenue stream by offering an ad free client for $20.00 Something AIM nor any other messenger offers. Jaiku has a few Google ads on the right hand side of it’s site, but I wonder how much revenue they bring in.

Simple and short, Pownce defines what it means to be beta. There are quite a few things missing that would make Pownce a complete package, open API to name one of them. Hopefully, the Pownce team will remedy the shortfalls associated with the client. I am looking forward to watching Pownce give all of the other instant messenger clients a run for their money.

I have a total of 10 invitations. Simply leave a comment on this post with a valid email address and I will send you one, then you can provide us with your own opinion.

Web 2.0 Convergence

Valeria Maltoni posted an email she received from Greg Verdino which contained a paragraph that struck a chord with me.

One biggish issue that nobody is really talking about is that anyone who starts using more than one of these services (or multiple social networks, sharing sites, etc) finds herself with multiple circles of friends, constantly updating various profiles/status posts, etc – there isn’t any way for a user to bring all of their stuff/friendships/updates together in a single interface — which can be a real pain if you’re in MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Flickr, Photobucket, YouTube and del.icio.us. YIKES!”

Wow, this guy hit the nail on the head! Bill Gates always seems to talk about convergence with technology but I feel that because of the amount of Web 2.0 sites/services, social networks that have sprung up across the web, now would be a good time for a business venture to figure out, Web 2.0 convergence. Right now, users could probably get away with using RSS feeds on different sites in order to converge their online presence. Let me give you an example.

I use Twitter and Jaiku, two micro blogging platforms. Twitter being the main service that I use to post updates and links to my blog. I take my Twitter RSS feed and post it into Jaiku so that my Twitter updates can be viewed on Jaiku. I also take my Twitter feed and place it into my Tumblr account so that Twitter updates are displayed on my Tumblelog. Facebook has a Twitter application which takes care of my Twitter updates showing up on my Facebook account.

The downside to using this method is that, most of these sites do not check RSS feeds in real-time. At the very least, the feeds are checked once per half hour, meaning that what you post on twitter now, wouldn’t appear on any other site that is displaying your Twitter RSS feed for at least 30 minutes. Sure it’s not real time, but it works.

What I am trying to accomplish, is to join these other social networks and then join the communities inside of those networks that correspond to the content on my blog. I’m trying to build power profiles on these specific sites which will provide updates to my friends attached to those profiles, hopefully via Twitter.

Sorry for going on a tangent here but reading that paragraph up above sparked this response! Just thought I would share what I am trying to do in order to converge all of this stuff so I am not doing what is described above, being apart of 50 different networks, spending all of my time providing separate updates to those sites. What a nightmare that would be.

Friend Redefined

I was trolling around my blog feeds the other day and came across a post, written by, Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent. The article revolves around the question, Are There Too Many Social Networks? Near the middle of this post, Valeria says the following:

How many friends do you really have? How many people can you really call friends? I mentioned I have an extensive network in a previous post, these are not all friends and most do not read my blog.

This is something I have been thinking about for quite some time. Here we are, in the middle of this web 2.0 social networking craze, adding people as friends that may not be friends at all. If I were to ask a majority of social networking users if most of the people on their friends list could actually be considered friends, I have a hunch that the answer would be no, which leads me to my next question.

With the advent of social networks, has the term FRIEND lost it’s meaning? Just because a user is on your friends list, does that make them a true friend? According to Wiktionary, a friend is defined as, A person other than a family member, spouse or lover whose company one enjoys and towards whom one feels affection. Can you honestly say that you feel this way towards everyone on your friends list?

If the meaning of the word FRIEND has changed, due to social networking on the web, then what would the new definition be? Am I paranoid, or does anyone else see a problem here?

Would You Pay For An Invite?

In a recent post, I described a conversation I had with my father concerning invitations and if there was a business opportunity in the making by perhaps, selling these invitations. Here is what was discussed.

I asked my dad if he thought that perhaps, there would be some sort of business opportunity surrounding invitations to these new services. Allow people to bid on an invite or pay a low price. My father responded by saying “people won’t pay for something that is free, or that they could obtain by some other means.”

Turns out, my father was wrong. While browsing around on Ebay, I came across a few auctions in which the item being sold was an invitation to GrandCentral, the new service which was acquired by Google. Here is a link to an auction that has already ended as you can see, there are other auctions taking place, asking for as much as $10.00 for the invitation.

Now I can’t wait to tell my dad that people are willing to pay money for something that really has no monetary value. Would you be willing to pay for an invite?

By Invitation Only

https://i0.wp.com/jeffc.me/images/inviteonly.png

Sam Harrelson has put together a nice post detailing the buzz surrounding the GrandCentral acquisition. Sam discusses the activity with GrandCentral before the acquisition and then after. Once GrandCentral was acquired, Google then locked down the system to new users by making it an invite only service. Because of the acquisition and the move to an invitation only service, the interest in GrandCentral has skyrocketed.

Sam makes an excellent analogy between GrandCentral and the recently launched service, Pownce. Pownce, Kevin Rose’s new startup has become the hot commodity to be invited to. Everyone and their mother is seemingly still trying to grab an invite to the service, although it is not necessarily brand new.

Whats the moral behind this story? If your a Web 2.0 startup, lock down your service. Invite a couple of big name web sites to review your service and give them the ability to hand out a number of invites. Those who read the reviews will then have an opportunity to sign up to your service and in return, invite their friends. You can see where this is going. Although the invitation only technique only works for a prolonged period of time, it is hard to argue against it’s effectiveness. I suppose being part of a locked down community gives users the impression that they are special, that they are among a group of elitists.

I asked my dad if he thought that perhaps there would be some sort of business opportunity surrounding invitations to these new services. Allow people to bid on an invite or pay a low price. My father responded by saying “people won’t pay for something that is free, or that they could obtain by some other means.”

Whatever the case may be, the strategy of being an invite only service in the beginning appears to be a winning one!

My Rant Against Defining Web 3.0

Apparently, web 2.0 won’t be around for as long as 1.0. During a conference held at the Red Herring East building in Boston, panelists gathered around to discuss Web 3.0. According to the panelists, web 3.0 would be a period where users generate content for fervor, not for cash.

The economic structure of Web 3.0 will rely on advertising, said Michael Jones, chief executive of Userplane, a provider of communications software for online communities that was acquired by AOL in 2006. But unlike the scattershot approach of much of today’s online advertising, users will be served Web. 3.0 messages tailored to their interests and location.

“Advertising money is shifting to the Web because of targeting and direct response,” Mr. Davis said. “In the next couple of years you’ll see a big shift.”

Who are these guys to say what web 3.0 will be? Sure, their is the O’Reilly web 2.0 definition which everyone seems to cite as the premiere definition but quite honestly, most people have come up with their own interpretation as to what web 2.0 represents. It’s ok to look into the future, but please don’t define what Web 3.0 will be. For Pete’s sake, let web 2.0 sink in before you begin to mention web 3.0.

Click Here To See My Source Of Frustration

Is IM That Big Of A Threat?

In response to S.M. Schrama’s post on IM Forms A Security Risk To Companies I too believe that, IM should not be stopped on a corporate network. I think the company in question should definitely put together a list of guidelines for using an IM protocol on a corporate network but it shouldn’t be banned. If Pownce is a sign of the future in instant messaging, I don’t think we will have to worry about malicious code attacks via the IM protocol.