Bloggin’ down under: the official Google Blog.

OMFG. This post followed the Postini announcement. Could the cliche’s be any thicker and the content more curdling. It’s hard enough having Americans tell you how much they love your accent and thinking that you’ve got a bloody great big knife in your pocket without having the worlds biggest search engine add to the stereotypes.

As for it being NAIDOC week on Google Australia, I didn’t notice because I’m too busy using Google.com. Google.com.au still hasn’t been updated to include the latest UI changes, the ones that allow an easy switch to other Google search services such as Google Blogs. Perhaps the Google Australia team should spend less time with the logos and dicky posts, and more time with the UI. And BTW, Google Maps may have started in Australia, but the imagery still sucks and is in many cases years out of date, my house is still a vacant block despite the pad going down 3 years ago October, and if I use the mapping feature to get out of the estate I’d run straight into a mound of dirt. Please explain! 🙂

The more friends and comments I’m getting, the more I’m liking Pownce…which is just as well, I was prepared to rip it to shreds at first. Dave Winer’s Twittergraming (audio twitters) will work great in Pownce, and probably more importantly they’ll work natively as well.

http://pownce.com/duncanriley

Unlike Twitter where I was getting swamped with requests and subsequently stopped reciprocating, I’m will recip on Pownce until I get some good numbers happening. Join me now! 🙂

I actually read this yesterday (my time) but never got around to posting.

It’s sad.

ThreadWatch is the site that got me interested in SEO and a site through which I made a number of good contacts over the years. I don’t want to diss Aaron, but the site has never been the same since Nick Wilson sold it. Nick’s shoes were too large for just about anyone to fill; Nick’s often sarcastic style and biting commentary is something more unique to the English, certainly its a style you don’t often see from American writers aand although Aaron tried it was never the same for me as a reader, although notably where as I may have unsubscribed to other sites during this time I have kept reading Threadwatch.

I’m also interested as to why the site is being shut and not sold. An Alexa ranking under 10,000 would make it a decent sized asset, maybe Aaron has other plans?

The Times is running a story that News Corp is in negotiations with Yahoo that would see News Corp give MySpace to Yahoo in return for a 25% stake in Yahoo itself.

The report claims that the discussions remain tentative and could collapse after the departure of Yahoo CEO Terry Semel. Other News Corp assets including IGN are believed to also be on the table as part of the deal.

To say that it’s a rumor out of left field would be an understatement, and yet it’s not impossible either. Yahoo is still desperate to get its hands on a major social networking platform, having failed to buy Facebook and more recently being rumored to be in acquisition talks with Bebo.

On the News Corp side there would be absolutely no reason why the company would wish to hold on to MySpace when a potential deal could deliver it access to a much broader audience. Rupert Murdoch has a long history of selling out when the return is right, and given the potential risks MySpace faces from the rapidly growing Facebook now would be as good a time as any trade MySpace.

MySpace would deliver in excess of 150 million users to Yahoo, although there would likely be duplication in the user base. More importantly for Yahoo it would also deliver Yahoo search to MySpace, presuming that the $1billion 3 year deal between Fox Interactive and Google could be broken.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has confirmed the story. It’s not signed but it is definitely being talked about.

Just had a post up at TechCrunch on Movable Type 4.0 and the fact that it will be open sourced.

I’m conscious of just running posts at duncanriley.com that link to stuff at TechCrunch given I’m writing there, but bugger it, this is a post worth writing about and linking to.

I talked to Anil Dash for about 45 minutes today (my time of course, AWST +8 GMT). Even in the darkest moments of my relationship with Mena and SixApart Anil was always the consummate gentleman. It was a delight talking to him, he admitted that SixApart had make mistakes in the past without naming them, and said that open sourcing MT was about going back to MT’s roots. If I was nasty I could say that it’s all too late, but Web 2.0 me isn’t quite as negative: it’s never too late to embrace your community, and although I’ve now spent years working under WordPress I’ll be giving the new version of MT a serious shot. I only just received the MT 4.0 source files, literally 5 minutes before the TechCrunch post so I couldn’t include a test, but it’s next on my agenda.

It looks cool and I really hope that it is as well. More soon, although first thought: I wonder if they have included a WP to MT tool?

 Techcrunch: Relaunch For Ask: Ask3D

I’ve been hard on Ask previously, their Algorithm campaign in the US and Information Revolution campaign in the UK is a joke. I may not be a marketing expert but in my own defense my Commerce degree included a major in Marketing and I’ve spun for a living for many years so I’m not totally without a clue: running an obscure campaign for a search engine that doesn’t include the product name is daft.

But that aside the new Ask is pretty damn cool. Layout is spot on, from the opening page through to results. Feeds or Wikipedia info is displayed to the right and the search results are above standard. I can’t measure them objectively but my initial feel is that they may be better that Live or Yahoo, Google may be not. As a complete package though its a competitive offering, nearly to the point that I’d figure them in when I’m using search in future.

The more I use Facebook, the more I’m convinced that in 12-18 months Facebook will slay MySpace.

Anyhow, I’ve now switched to bookmarking via Facebook. I love Bluedot but having accounts all over the place seems a bit daft, and the whole Facebook as a Platform thing is going to make this even more so.

For those who want to connect on facebook, username is: duncanriley.

Now I’ve just got to work out the best way off pulling Facebook data into Google Reader. 

Vista Day 4 and it turns out that my favourite blogging platform BlogDesk doesn’t work under Vista.

Microsoft released Windows Live Writer Beta 2 during the week so I’m giving it a whirl with this post.

First observation: wow! hasn’t this changed!

The typing space is laid over a frame taken from your blog, complete with default paragraph widths (image pops):

Cut and paste for images is now fully supported and there is inbuilt thumbnail creation. Image editing includes effects and a number of pre-set borders.

Insert features go further again, users can insert tables and maps, and the new version of Windows Live Writer has the MOST EXTENSIVE tagging support built in I’ve EVER seen in a blog posting tool.

Forward posting is supported for WordPress blogs and users are given access to edit html along with the usual preview options.

This is literally my first post using the new version of Live Writer so it’s difficult to make a final judgement (I’ll be interested to check the markup in particular) but on what I’ve seen so far, Windows Live Writer kicks ass big time!

OK, so maybe I can be easily impressed, but this is a phenomenal improvement from the lame version 1 released about 12 months ago. It has every single thing I’d want from a blog posting tool and more. If you’re running Windows or Parallels on Mac give it a shot.

Update: looking at the markup now, it’s clean aside from a div class for the Technorati tag. I missed in the review categories, which are now fully supported along with excerts, manual trackbacks, per post comment settings (on/ off over-ride) and even keywords. This literally have everything. Now if only Microsoft would fix my Vista problem 🙂

Why do Pandora keep sending me emails telling me how wonderful they are when I’m blocked from using the site? I wasn’t blocked at first when I first heard the news that Pandora was blocking non-US users, but they’ve since implemented geo-blocking and now I can’t.

Microsoft Surface. It sort of reminds me a little bit of the old look down Pac Man arcade machines circa 1982 but it’s a lot more. The ability to recognise objects is unique and although I can’t see this being in every home (although it would make a cool coffee table) the retail possibilities are endless. How can a company like Microsoft that threatens Linux users over patents one day be so cool the next? Jekyl and Hide mentality maybe? That aside Microsoft really can innovate.