More Goose, more often from Scoble

admin —  April 11, 2007 — 1 Comment

Scoble on Photobucket’s ban @ MySpace: Myspace is right, everyone else is bad, parasites even.

BS.

MySpace is the amazing success it is because it gave it’s users a creative freedom other sites didn’t.

My response to Scoble as follows. It will probably get deleted, so I’ll post it here.

I’ll tell you what I think, I think you’re a goose. News Corp’s Myspace has become popular off the back of allowing broad creative freedom to users, and now it’s trying to take that away. Have you actually checked Myspace to see if there’s an easy alternative there to Photobucket’s video hosting? THERE ISN’T. People are using services such as this because MySpace DOESN’T offer a reasonable alternative + they want to run this stuff on their sites. This is literally a case of MySpace bitting the hand that has helped fuel its amazing success, it’s not an argument about whether they should be able to make money off the site, that they should be able to make money is a given, it’s about creative freedom and what defines a given service, in this case MySpace, and its users.

Food for thought.

In Web 2.0
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Top 100 Australian Blogs

admin —  April 11, 2007 — 7 Comments

Got an email from Craig Harper today, a Melbourne based blogger and motivational speaker, he’s set up a rather nifty blog roll of Australia’s top 100 bloggers based on Technorati Rank (right side bar). Apparently duncanriley.com comes in at #22. Given that my motto at duncanriley.com is “I couldn’t care less what I post and when” I’ve got to say I’m a little impressed, god help me if I was actually trying here, and not dumping my good stuff at 901am :-), but I also have this thought, if I’m #22 then it’s a sorry state of affairs in Australia, particularly given that I’m not even trying here. Maybe I should try harder…or try full stop? and yet that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun! Maybe I need a new outlet? Food for thought.

In Bizarre
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Photobucket screwed, or just plain screwed over?

admin —  April 11, 2007 — 4 Comments

photobucketFollowing the recent speculation that image/ video hosting site Photobucket is on the market, the News Corp owned MySpace has moved to block Photobucket hosted videos in MySpace profiles in what can only be described as the ultimate act of corporate sabotage.

Photobucket currently has 39 million registered users and over 2.6 billion photos and videos hosted.

Photobucket is naturally down playing the effect of the MySpace blockage, stating that their business extends across various social networking sites, even going so far to suggest that Photobucket MySpace users may abandon using MySpace for competitors that support Photobucket video includes….yeah right, entire communities of people are going to abandon MySpace because of this. ROFL.

The question of course then becomes whether Photobucket is screwed, or just plain screwed over. I’ve got no way of knowing what percentage of Photobucket traffic comes from MySpace, and we are only talking a block on video content so far, so it’s fairly safe to say that Photobucket isn’t screwed, but given the investors are chasing between $300-$400 million for the company, you could probably easily knock $50-$100 million of the sales price now, if not possibly more, because when your product targets social networks and you’ve had access partially blocked to the biggest marketplace of them all…with the possibility of course that the ban could end up involving all content, your value drops, and drops dramatically…and because of this there’s little doubt that News Corp has simply just screwed Photobucket over. I wonder if News Corp ends up buying Photobucket? What better way to squeeze a better price! 🙂

In Web 2.0
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Dan Rather talks plants?

admin —  April 10, 2007 — Leave a comment

He hates the blogosphere, but it’s fairly clear we won, because Dan Rather has been reduced to doing guest appearances on Martha Stewarts TV show talking about….wait for it….Exotic Plants 🙂

danrather

What goes around comes around I guess, a lesson others should prepare themselves for, because I know a couple of people due a bucketload of Karma Kick Ass 🙂

In General
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Google invests in Maxthon: smart move

admin —  April 10, 2007 — Leave a comment

Michael Arrington @ TechCrunch has the scoop: Google has invested in China based browser Maxthon, which for memory has something like 25-30% of the Chinese market. It’s a very smart move by Google, knocking Baidu off in China and Yahoo off elsewhere as the default search option for Maxthon will exponentially increase their share in China, where they’ve so far failed to make a major indent. Arrington reckons the figure is $1m, that makes the strategic investment an absolute bargain as well.

In Web 2.0
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More evidence the Sun is responsible for Global Warming

admin —  April 10, 2007 — 1 Comment

All those eminent scientist will ignore this, but straight from the Beeb:

A new analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years….Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star’s activity in the past.They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth’s climate became steadily warmer.

But it gets better, because theres even more evidence to suggest that climate change in the past, including cold periods, can be correlated to sun spot activity:

In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun’s surface.

This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it.

Ice cores record climate trends back beyond human measurements
It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the “Little Ice Age”. Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events – but the exact mechanism remains elusive.

About it getting hotter:

But the most striking feature, he says, is that looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years.

Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer.

The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer.

But it’s all mans fault, right?

In General
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Has Twitter passed its peak?

admin —  April 10, 2007 — 1 Comment

Has Twitter passed its peak? or is it more of an adjustment following the post SXSW hype, a rollercoaster ride of traffic? I’ve got an ever increasing list of friends/ subs in Twitter, and yet the level of posting this last week is actually declined. Might have something to do with Easter…will wait and see I guess.

If you want to join me: http://twitter.com/duncanriley

Nothing too exciting, but I am trying to post the occasionally interesting thing.

In Web 2.0
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My Google Wishlist

admin —  April 10, 2007 — 2 Comments

For those not following my posts @ 901am, I wrote yesterday about my switch to all things Google.

But I do have a small wish list of things I’d like Google to implement/ change so I can perfect my experience:

1. Outlook style functionality in gmail
I need folders! The main reason I download my email to Outlook is so I can drag emails into an extensive array of folders. Yes, gmail has tags, but it’s not the same. I’d switch permanently to only using gmail via gmail.com is I could have this feature, if Yahoo can do it, surely Google can as well

2. Full screen text in reader
I’m liking Google Reader more and more each day, but the text from the feeds should use the whole screen, not wrap half way

3. Firefox bookmark integration
I’m staying with Google Bookmarks for sure, but having two Bookmark buttons in Firefox is stupid. Foxmarks integrates with Firefox Bookmarks, GMarks (which isn’t from Google) doesn’t…and Google’s only alternative is the Google toolbar, which I’m not interested in using. C’mon Google, support your product!

There’s probably more things, if you’ve got any suggestions for Google, please share!

In Web 2.0
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If you’re a games developer and you didn’t back the Wii, guess what?

admin —  April 10, 2007 — Leave a comment

If you’re a games developer and you didn’t back the Wii, guess what?

Your profits and sales are down whilst your competition is seeing increasing profits and sales.

Officially.

Dare I say to EA as a Wii owner: sucked in 🙂

In General
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It’s time for people to grow up: Scoble vs Winer

admin —  April 10, 2007 — 1 Comment

Looks like the Scobles have fallen out with Dave Winer.

I don’t know much about Maryam because I don’t read her blog, but I’ve observed Robert’s behaviour long enough, he’s a “you’re with me, or against me” sort of guy, one who takes a disagreement as being a personal attack, a declaration of war if you like, very much in the same way that a spoilt small child with a chip on its shoulder can’t take constructive criticism either, or agree to disagree civily.

Winer is right, hypocrisy was the only winner. The alleged wronged not only milked the whole threats/ death meme for everything they could, they reacted by trying to incite a mob against good folk such as Rageboy…making them just as bad, if not worse, than the original commenters that started this whole thing. Best still, Winer get its. He gets that two wrongs don’t make a right. He gets that the accused wrong doers have now become the victims, and that someone needs to stand up for their rights as well.

And for this Winer has been condemned by Maryam Scoble, and now Robert doesn’t want to be his friend anymore…sort of, at least he’s now trying to lecture Dave on wrong and right because, OMG, Winer commented publicly on being castigated by Maryam Scoble for not joining a lynch mob.

What more can I say other than: grow up.

In General
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