Category: Web 2.0

Chartreuse Reloaded is finally up. The pdf info sheet linked to on the site states there’s going to be a $9.95 monthly charge for membership, although I take it some of the “cool” kids will probably get a free pass. I wrote last week that their were no rules, and I suppose if anyone could pull this off it would be Char, but past history with sites that charge a membership fee is pretty poor, who doesn’t remember the failures of sites such as Slate and others trying to charge for access. Indeed, if there is one rule, it should be free = good. Now having said that I know of a couple of forums that provide a wealth of information that is worth charging for, but access to a blog? I’ll sit on the fence for now 🙂

You know, sometimes by reading a persons blog you think you get a fairly good picture of the person, and until today I had a pretty good impression of Fred Wilson. Admitedly, the guy isn’t in my Bloglines subs, but I do fairly regularly visit his blog. I’ve always thought of him as being an upfront sort of guy, totally honest and fair, totally into disclosure and discourse.

And then I made the mistake of commenting on his blog.

You see, I read this post where Fred talks about the issue with tracking statistics on sites. It’s a topic I’ve been following for years, so naturally it was of interest to me. He also mentioned that he’d put his money behind comScores stats over Alexa’s. Well personally I think both a flawed to be honest, and indeed I used an entire column at The Blogging Times to say so. At this stage, having read a number of other comments on the post, including a number of comments from comScore representatives/ employees defending their product I thought I might chime in, again, only because it’s a topic that I’ve had a long standing interest in, and one I’ve actually researched fairly heavily as well.

F*ck.

It turns out that Fred is not only a comScore chearleader, he’s also an investor and a director in the company.

Mind you, not that you’d find it in this post. Maybe I should have known from past posts, but even Mike Arrington would have disclosed in a post such as this if he was a shareholder, investor, or even god bless, a director as well.

Suffice to say, I’ve received an email from Fred tonight that reads as follows (warning, unedited language ahead):

That is a bullshit assertion

Comscore is no way malware

It’s opt in for one, and its easy to remove.

That would be like calling the nielsen people meter spyware.

I replied on both your blog and my blog

fred

Now take another look at my Blogging Times article. I’m didn’t make this stuff up, reputable leaders in the field including symantic and CA (computer associates) have labelled comScores “internet accelerator” as being Spyware and Trackware in that order. There’s also other sites out there that say similar and even worse things about the program. Indeed, PC World itself talks about how this software in bundled in with other programs.

A guess the lesson learned is you can’t really judge a persons character by their blog…most of the time…and I won’t be reading Fred Wilsons blog again in the future.

Tags: Fred Wilson

OK, so I’m late to the party on this one, but I’ve been spending a good part of the last week on Pandora. The sound quality is top notch, and the selection technology good to boot. Ignore the fact if you register that you’re suppose to be in the States, any 5 digits make up a US Zip Code. My 3 existing channels are in the sidebar for those interested. And yes, Dave Brubeck is the greatest musician off all time, The Rat Pack were brilliant, and Crowded House was the best band of the last 30 years…so there!!! 🙂

I mentioned in passing, in this post, my theory on leaks. You see, in this post I used the figure that 50% of all leaks are authorised by the company involved as either a way to talk up/ hype a launch, or as a way to market test an idea or product. I used that figure because I thought it would be close to tangible, in that it would be hard for many people to argue with it. However my gut feeling tells me something else. I actually really think that the figure is 90%, but I can’t prove it, and I think that this whole Google/ YouTube negotiation stuff fits into the 90%. It’s controlled. Way to controlled. I don’t for one second believe that somewhere along the communications chain that some one has leaked without authority. Case in point: the b5media VC funding. Sure, we are only small fry, but get this: we told all of our bloggers hours before it became public. Of 90 odd people, none of them leaked it. Sure, Google is a whole lot bigger again, but Google employees are loyal. So to are their lawyers. So to would be the Youtube inner team and their lawyers. Mark my words, they would have swarn everyone involved to a strict cone of silence. The chances of someone leaking is about 1 in 10, so it’s not impossible, but 9/10 chance it’s unlikely, which is why I totally think the Techcruch rumour is true. Some one got the green light to leak this news, so that Google could see how the market would react. And hence, after days of free market testing (feedback) Google now has a decision to make. On what I’ve read, if they thinking about buying YouTube, they will. Sure, there’s been some negative stuff, but hey, no one really knows who Mark Cuban is outside of the United States anyway!. It’s a developing story, but one that will no doubt end up as being one of those stories that will last 20-30 years in folklore 🙂

Tags: Google, YouTube

Just read Scoble saying that the new Firefox, currently at RC 2 is quick. He’s right, just downloaded it then, I’ve immediately noticed the different.

Also a tip for Firefox users, if you haven’t downloaded it yet, get DownThemAll.

From their page:

“DownThemAll is all you can desire from a download manager: it features an advanced accelerator that increases speed up to 400%, it allows you to pause and resume downloads at any time and, last but not least, it’s fully integrated into your favorite browser!”

I’ve actually had it installed for a while but wasn’t using it for my downloads. I started about 2 weeks ago…downloads are just that much quicker. For example, the download of FF RC2 which was about 5.8mb downloaded on my 2mb cable connection in about 7-8 seconds at an average of 200kb/s…incredibly quick compared to the standard FF download feature…indeed, it looks like the Mozilla team hasn’t done a thing in the new version to improve this feature of Firefox either, which is a shame,anyhow: DownThemAll is highly recommended.

Tags: Firefox

Credit where it’s due, Quadszilla over at SEO Black Hat might just be on to something with this post.

Cam has a scoop. Idiots. Good help someone that they write the truth, and in this case it was only in part the truth, after all, we all know how completely and utterly up sh*t creek Telstra are as a Telco 🙂

Technorati has launched a daily Vlog. Great. Great way to promote the service, but I can’t help but ask the question: why spend time doing a Vlog when your rank service is still broken? Case in point:

Notice the 862 incoming links down the bottom, and yet it’s ranked on 628 links? There are 37% more links than is showing in the rank line. But it’s not just my own personal blog either:

Indeed, I can go through just about every single blog by b5media and get the same result, as well as thousands of other blogs as well. The rank index isn’t being updated. Please, make the video blog shorter, and use that time to get someone to press the magic button once a day! People trust you Technorati: they use your statistics to judge their own sites and those of others. You’re not repaying this trust because you’re not paying attention to one of the core features your users like to use. Indeed, you’re making video blogs instead.

Tags: Technorati

I’m surprised none of the A-List picked up on this.

David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative (Tory) Party in the UK has launched his own blog, and to make it more interesting, it’s a video blog at that.

And dare I say, it’s pretty damn good.

Sure, I’m not interested as an Australian in what he’s got to say, but format wise it’s 100%. I’ve watched a couple of the videos, and my reaction: it’s not just spin: Cameron comes over as being natural and honest. It’s a great step forward in terms of political campaigning. Recommended.

Tags: David Cameron, Tories, Conservatives

Steve Rubel: Technorati Intros Smarter Blog Search Feeds

Spam blogging just got a whole lot easier. Why rip a feed or two when you can just get a smart topic feed from Technorati on auto pilot and without the need for an account. OK, so they’re part feeds. Guess what, the parsing part from the link to ripping all the content is actually very easy…and no, I’m not doing it, I’m not a programmer, but I know where to look and I’ve seen it work. Having said that though maybe I should set up a Popurls.com style site, after all they all seem legit trading on links going elsewhere, all nicely on autopilot as well. The sky is the limit topic wise, after all, I’d just run a RSS aggregation plugin for WP pulling a Technorati smart feed on the given topic…tweak it so the template is nice, then presto 🙂

Tags: Technorati