Category: Web 2.0

Jason Calacanis points to Federated Media’s new Digg style site:SearchMob. Haven’t had a deep look at it, but what I did notice is the link to the CMS, a Web 2.0 Open Source package called Pligg. Yep, you to can now run your own Digg clone from the comfort of your own home and all for free! 🙂

Amazing stuff: the top blog in terms of incoming links now at Technorati: this blog, a Chinese language blog hosted by Sina.com. I’m surprised there’s not a huge amount of discussion about this as yet: I picked it up a Techmeme and there was only one incoming link on the story…remember this blog has knocked off Boing Boing and Engadget to take the first spot…yes Virginia, there is still indeed the opportunity in the blogosphere for the little guy to win 🙂

Day 2. The blogging talk went well yesterday, at least the feedback was immensly positive, which was a relief in itself. Met the Australian Poker Champion and a chap who is the Asia-Pacific Rep for Pokerstars.com, interesting conversation, but as dinner sponors they had a couple of games of poker running for funny money….great stuff, I know how to play Poker but Texas Holdem has always been a bit of a mystery to me previously, playing it on a laptop or even at a table…suffice to say I can understand for the first time why Poker has become so big…of course my problem now will being trying to avoid the temptation of playing on line when I get home. 🙂

tags: Media Connect, Media Connect Conference, Web 2.0

Day 1. Some 24 hours after leaving the end of the world and I find myself in The Hunter Valley, NSW for the Media Connect Influence Conference, with a presentation to make on blogging in a bit over 60 minutes that I haven’t written yet. 🙂

The first session was Web 2.0. Unfortunately if this was representative of Web 2.0 in Australia we are in deep, deep you know what. I actually felt sorry for 2 of the 4 speakers. The first guy was so far out of his depth it was embarassing. I got up and asked him a question about how his company was embracing Web 2.0 after he’d basically explained a business model roughly based on Amazon in 1995. His only response was that his company offered…an affiliate program! Oh well…

The highlight though was Ross Dawson from Advanced Human Technologies, excellent 5 minute speech, indeed the only speaker of the 4 who concentrated on what I’d actually consider to be Web 2.0. Of course, having had about 4 hours sleep when Ross introduced himself to me prior to the presentation I responded like I had no idea who he was, despite the fact that not only have I read his blog I’ve also exchanged several emails with him over the years. Sorry Ross. But back to the speech, Ross spoke on the rise of user filtered content and the tools and companies seeking to gain audience share in the long tail…now if only Ross was the keynote speaker as opposed to being 1 of 4 🙂

Anyhow back to planning my little session on blogging, and touch wood I don’t get ripped to shreads like the poor chap from Poker Starts did in the previous session….jeez, some people really, really don’t like online gambling 🙂

More soon.
PS: I’ve got no spell checker so please be kind. Firstly my typing on a laptop sucks completely, secondly I’m lost without my BlogDesk spellchecker.

tags: Media Connect, Media Connect Conference, Web 2.0

For some reason Google keeps defaulting today to the Google personalised home page, not Google search, even when I type in www.google.com. It’s frustrating. It’s trying to force me to use a service I don’t want to use, but what’s worse is that is ridiculously slow to load in comparison to the normal Google front page. If I get much more of this it will be a matter very shortly of Yahoo here I come. Is it just me, or is this something Google’s doing to others?

From Kevins Rose’s blog (emphasis added):

…today we read a couple blog posts that highlight users digging each others stories. This is something we encourage through our friends features and will continue to expand as digg evolves. It is our goal to create a platform in which you can share and promote news that is important to you.

Isn’t this exactly what Weblogs Inc. was doing, i.e. getting their mates to Digg their stories? If it’s ok to get your friends to vote on your stories, then there’s no gaming Digg if your friends vote for you, right?

Tags: Digg, Kevin Rose, Jason Calacanis, Weblogs Inc

SixApart acquires Rojo. Coverage and Niall and Techcrunch. Odd thing though is this line: “Six Apart intends to sell a majority interest in Rojo?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢s newsreader services in the coming months.” So why buy something just to flog it off later? Rojo doesn’t seem like a natural fit for SixApart either, after all its a feedreeder and blog search engine, not a blogging platform, and putting a company that in based upon hosted blogging services into the feedreader game where it will compete against other companies that index SixApart hosted blogs seems silly….but not if they were only buying the talent and not the feedreeder. Rojo CEO Chris Alden is to be the new head of Movable Type…but still sounds like a lot of money to spend to acquire talent. Chris, you must be a special sort of a guy. Insert machevellian plot here 🙂

Tags: SixApart, Rojo

Tucows has announced that they were the buyer of the dead Web 2.0 startup Kiko. Interesting buy, mainly because probably like a whole pile of other people, I’ve always thought of Tucows as a Web 1.0 company. Is this a step into the Web 2.0 field for the once mighty software download player? only time will tell I guess.

Tags: kiko, Tucows

I’m off to the Hunter Valley this weekend for the Media Connect Influence Conference. I’ll be in Sydney briefly on Saturday 9 September then off to the Hunter Valley Sunday through to Tuesday. My thanks to Phil Sim for the invite. I know fellow Western Australian resident Richard Giles is attending, but if anyone else is going drop me an email.

Tags: Media Connect