Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch gave his annual list yesterday of Web 2.0 companies he couldn’t live without. Included on the list was BlueDot. Writes Arrington:

“BlueDot is a social bookmarking service that is similar to del.icio.us. I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve started using it instead of del.icio.us becasue I like the interface better and it allows sharing of bookmarks just among friends, whereas with del.icio.us you have to choose between fully public and fully private bookmarks. The company launched in July and had an update in October.”

I’ve spent 24 hours playing with the service, and I’m hapyp to say he’s right, it has a much easier interface than del.icio.us., particularly with the ability to post your bookmark without ever leaving the page you’re in through a very nice use of what I presume is DHTML and Ajax. I’ve never been a huge del.icio.us. fan because I’ve always found it too cumbersome, where as BlueDot is a sinch to use, and it’s super quick. The only thing really lacking at this stage for the service is third party plugins for WordPress, being the new comer though I’d expect to see WP plugins for the service in the future. In the mean time though it was easy to cut and paste a BlueDot box into my right side bar, they give you a number of options, plus you can also pull bookmarks via an RSS feed as well. Recommended.

Tags: BlueDot, del.icio.us.

Obligitory plug, although given last nights Podcast where Cam and I probably offended at least 1 billion people world wide, perhaps I shouldn’t be promoting it, but if you’re interested I’m Co-Hosting the G’Day World Podcast this week with Cam Reilly (no relation). One podcast down and I’ve already broken all my personal rules: no politics and no religion. God forbid (pardon the pun) what the next 4 shows may deliver 🙂

Joey Alarilla at CNet Asia notes the rise of Pinoy bloggers into positions of prominence in the blogosphere. Not before time, and thoroughly deserved. Congrats in particular to Jayvee on his recent promotion, to others he’s definitely a blogger to watch.

901am reports that AOL is going to release Blogsmith, the Jason Calacanis designed blogging platform that powered the Weblogs Inc blogging network into fame and fortune, onto the world in 2007. But to who, and in what form? Cowboy states that MovableType (SixApart) and WordPress (Automattic) should be afraid. I don’t agree on the WP/ Automattic front, WP is free on the .org side, and the .com side is a model that continues to evolve and so far doesn’t quite fit the mold of an atypical company/ lets make lots of money plan. SixApart on the other hand, if only due to their exposure across the broad variety of blogging types (free, paid and DIY) may have reason to keep an eye on things, but the question then becomes: what things? Will AOL launch Blogsmith as a competitor in the free blogging space, up against Live Journal? Not likely, after all we already have AOL Blogs. Will it launch Blogsmith into the DIY category, with a licensing deal similar to SixApart with MovableType, or for free against WordPress and others. Free is unlikely, AOL hasn’t paid good money to own Blogsmith to offer a free in all forms product. Paid…well, how and why? The how is probably the main argument against such as strategy, although AOL has a user base from which to promote such as product, it’s a user base that is far more consumer oriented than business oriented, and it’s the business market that’s the pot at the end of the rainbow for paid DIY solutions. Secondly, AOL is limited in how it could and would promote such as service, Automattic and SixApart already have distribution deals with Yahoo, and given it’s affiliation with Google, Yahoo is most likely out of the picture, Google are unlikely to promote it, and neither is Microsoft. Of course there is some scope within the TimeWarner family, but surely this would be fairly limited in the larger scheme of things? or perhaps this may be enough?. The more likely scenario is AOL using Blogsmith to launch a paid and hosted solution, in direct competition to TypePad. We know Blogsmith scales well, after all it powers uber sites like Engadget, and one would presume that the backend would be fairly user friendly as well. AOL could also use Weblogs Inc., for promotion, both in name dropping (we power Engadget, we can power you), and directly as well, after all what better forum to advertise a paid hosted service than on the Weblogs Inc blogs themselves.

No matter which way they go, it will be interesting to watch.

Tags: AOL, Blogsmith, Weblogs Inc, Jason Calacanis, SixApart, WordPress, MovableType, TypePad

It looks like Santa Claus was kind to Nick Wilson and the team behind Performancing, with news that the metrics arm of Performancing has been sold off to PayPerPost. Naturally it would be remiss of me not to offer congratulations to Nick and the team on the sale, I have little doubt that the money offered was good, and in all honesty in a similar situation (presuming that the money was good as a given) I would have also sold. However, I can’t help that think a little that this has a little touch evil about it. My first thoughts were to state that this is not dissimilar to selling a child care centre to a group of paedophiles, but that is probably too harsh, because as much as I’m not personally a fan of PayPerPost (although I note positively they’ve been forced by law to force disclosure) what they do is legal, even if many do not like it. The question I suppose is what exactly are PayPerPost’s intentions for Performaning Metrics. Numbers, and the control of them is a powerful position to be in. As we know with the toolbar download occasionally lumped into a P2P or other package company comScore, knowing numbers = money. Certainly the numbers behind visitors to blogs are a more limited market, but surely knowing who visits various types of blogs, how often, and when provides some sort of positive to the PayPerPost people. I’ve not gone through all my Bloglines feeds for the past week yet, nor my 3000 unread emails, but it will be interesting to see what the reaction is amongst the Performancing Metrics user base is. I think it’s a given to say some will stop using the service, but as we know apathy is the norm in current day society, even amongst bloggers.

Tags: Performancing, PayPerPost

It’s supposedly Christmas, although you’d think it’s the silly season with news at Mashable and TechCrunch that Jimmy Wales is going into the search engine game. Just because Wikipedia was successful, it would appear as though Jimmy Wales has been drinking so much of his own Kool Aid he now thinks he can conquer the world. Watch for the “non-profit” Wikipedia to start showing links and driving traffic to the new search engine once it’s fully up and running. Given how Google currently treats Wikipedia articles as though they are gold, expect a change on that front as well. Google may well deny any attempt to punish the ever popular wikipedia, but given Wikipedia will be used to now push a potential rival, they’d be mad not to act. Merry Christmas, and will some one tell Jimmy Wales to lay off the punch 🙂

Apologies to those who were unable to leave a comment here at duncanriley.com over the last 2 days, it would appear as though the site gained a db corruption that needed a quick repair. Odd thing is though, I’ve noticed other blogs I help people out with, or a few oldies I still have, all seem to eventually experience a similar issue in one form or another. db corruptions seem to be par for the course in aged WP blogs as opposed to the exception. I say aged because I’m not sure if it’s a usage/ content point that results in db issues or literal age, perhaps in the same way that an aged install of Windows XP often starts behaving oddly. If anyone is having any similar issues leave a note, and I can compile them and send them to the WordPress people to consider.

Des has the details. I was in on one of the emails prior to the announcement, looks like some great speakers lined up, free registration, and Queensland in March usually isn’t quite as hot as Queensland in February..but it will be warm 🙂 There’s also a call for sponsorship, if you’re interested Des has the details as well.

Tech Digest reports SixApart’s Mena Trott saying that Vox is winning over burnt out bloggers. I see the logic, and I understand the how, but WTF? Surely this isn’t the key target area for Vox?

“People have really embraced it,” she says. “They’re saying they think blogging is fun again. A lot of people got burned out, because blogging had become a task rather than a pleasure. But we’re winning those people back, along with some of the people who are usually more skeptical and cynical about Six Apart as a company.”

Great…..great. But what about the kiddies? what about new bloggers? I’m the first to admit that Gartner was right about blogging hitting a peak, in the Western nations at least, but are we at a point now that the market is so mature that a new product is aimed at poaching existing bloggers from other products? Wouldn’t this strategy cannabilise users from other SA products? Don’t get me wrong (and ignore past history), I’m not having a go a Mena or SA here, indeed I happen to think Vox is a bloody good product (indeed, if I wasn’t such a control freak I’d be tempted to setup my permanent home there), but SA must know something the rest of us don’t know in terms of the marketplace, because to an outsider without access to the market research and other data SA has, it seems like…well like a rather “interesting” growth strategy, at least in respect to the history of the commercial blogging marketplace to date.

Tags: SixApart, Mena Trott, Vox

Another day, the same Chadstone foodcourt. With she who must be obeyed and the golden child catching a movie at Chaddy I’ve got some time to catch up on some reading. And what do I find? Refreshing bloody feeds. Not all of them, just the ones from people using Feedburner. Every single one of them. Again. Even Steve Rubel’s feed, which rather famously was supposed to have been fixed earlier this year is showing stuff I read yesterday. There may be Christmas cheer all around, and I can literally here the sound of the cash registers turning over as I type this, but once again Feedburner f*cks up my day. I’d name some of the other sites with this issue, sites that have been refreshing and refreshing over and over and over again for months, but at least in with some of the sites I’m not legally able to do so at this stage. So I have a Christmas Wish: that people using Feedburner would stop doing so, or alternatively they pressure Feedburner to finally fixing, once and for all, the issue their feeds have with Bloglines. And before some one suggests that I should change from Bloglines, I’ve got no intention of changing. ALL of the non-feedburner feeds work fine, it’s only ever sites using feedburner ALL THE TIME!!!!! Surely I’m not the only person suffering with the same issue?

Tags: Feedburner