Category: Web 2.0

Zoli writes that the new version of Valleywag is an eyesore. He’s right. WTF was Nick Denton thinking? Further proof that gay stereotypes are wrong, because not all gay men have a strong sense of style and fashion…indeed, I think if Nick Denton launches any more makeovers like this the only thing people will be sending him for Christmas are guide dogs! 🙂

An interesting observation I’ve made while I was away: size sometimes is different. It’s odd, but it’s the little things you notice: the fact that the toilets are full of water and are low to the ground, that 10c coins are smaller than 5c coins….and in North America a broadsheet newspaper isn’t the same size as it is in Australia. The National Post in Canada…or the NY Times for that matter are suppose to be broadsheets….but they aren’t….they’re more like tall sheets as opposed to broadsheets, they’re the same height as an Australian broadsheet (think the SMH or The Australian) but width wise their like a tabloid. Bizarre to me, but it shows the point that although we call something an Apple in one part of the world, the Apple may be different in another part of it. Does size matter? In design, is a layout that you like going to be acceptable elsewhere? From font size, line spacing…catering to the various screen widths. Food for thought.

News Corp. Looking At BubbleShare: Techcrunch.

If it wasn’t a bubble before, it looks like it might be with this deal 🙂

If you’re reading this post I’m dead….sorry, wrong intro, I’m not Pauline Hanson (Australian joke).

If you’re reading this post I’m on my way to North America via Hong Kong, and the good news is that I’ll be able to go to the TechCrunch Party in New York again. I’ll also probably spend a couple of days in New York playing tourist, so happy to say g’day to people, or even do some video blogging or podcasting as well.

Steve Rubel points to LoudLaunch, yet another PayPerPost competitor (how many have their been lately??), although it would appear that the relationship might be pre-blog as opposed to post-blog: ie, you start up a blog on a topic with an advertiser behind you. Sounds like a solid idea, but it will be interesting to see what sort of dollars we’re talking about.

Congrats to the crew at Text Link Ads on being acquired by MediaWhiz. Like a lot of people I hadn’t heard of MediaWhiz before today, so I’ve got no idea what to expect. But I will say this to the new owners: TLA does a brilliant job with what it does, don’t mess with it too much. Suggestions of email marketing, CPA offers, CPM display ads may sound good on paper, but we all use TLA for text link sales, just don’t mess with a good thing too much, please? 🙂

Another reason to join the community at Second Life. I must get on more often, every 2 weeks or so just isn’t enough 🙂

Am I currently the only person out there who is sick and tired of refreshing feeds? If you’re using Bloglines and you’re subscribed to any feed that uses feedburner you’ll know what I mean. I just re-read the last 2 days posts for Techcrunch for the third time today. Blogaholics I saw 1 month old posts, the b5media blogs….they refresh so often that I’ve started to hesitate reading them all, because I’m getting the same stuff over and over and over and over and over….ENOUGH ALREADY. I don’t know whether it’s feedburner or whether its Bloglines, but for the love of god would people from both companies share a bottle or two of a good Western Australian Red and sort this issue out!

Details at The Blog Herald. I’m biased, but it would be a good gig 🙂

Ben Bleikamp posts that SixApart, and in particular, Vox sucks.

He has a go at some of SixApart’s other products, and sure, there’s been some mistakes in the past, decisions that certainly I’ve been very vocally against, but their products (MT, TypePad, LiveJournal) work for the people who use them, and I would presume have worked for SixApart in a business sense as well.

But on Vox, I think Ben’s totally wrong, and I think Anil Dash totally hit it on the head in the comments:

I think the key thing that informs your frustration /dismissal /whatever for a lot of our work comes from your assumptions that everyone who blogs is like you, or blogs for similar reasons that you do. And, well, they don?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢t.

It’s easy enough to do. I deal with some one every day who suffers from the same affliction. Some where along the line I learnt that I don’t know everything, that I’m not always right, and that everything out there isn’t meant to work the way I want it to, or in the case of products, play the way I want them to. I wish I could remember when that day was, I’m not sure if it was a year or two ago, but knowing that I’m not always right and there are different ways to look at things would be the single most important step in my life so far. It changed my life, and now, particularly with b5media, I listen, and listen, and listen. Not just pretend listening, but real listening. When I ask for feedback, I take in what I’m told. Don’t always agree, but if the person giving me the feedback knows more about their channel or niche, unless it’s outrageously bad, I act and do as they wish, not as others who think they know everything and seek to impose their will on every decision, every small detail, and indeed even my freedom to speak my mind, do. Web 2.0 is about empowering the individual and the wisdom of crowds. Old world one person is right about everything because they can be structures are business models that are doomed to failure.

But I digress, because I don’t believe Vox sucks. Sure, it doesn’t do everything, it’s not the smartest and most whizbang social networking package there is, but I’ve found it a great allround package that brings in some of the experience SixApart has in blogging, and has blended that with social networking. It’s clean, it stable, it’s fairly easy to use… I don’t know whether it will be a massive hit or not, crowded marketplace and all, but I would have thought that SixApart would have done it’s homework here on unmet niche’s in social networking communities and catered for one/ some as a result of that.

Tags: Web 2.0, SixApart, Vox, Anil Dash, b5media, CEO, censorship