On The Turning Away gets a link for pimping Hugh’s Links for Sex deal 🙂
Do You Like the New Technorati? Poll Results
Posted on July 27, 2006 ·
Here are the poll results, based on 347 354 votes:
Since I am still getting quite a few page hits (thanks for the link, Robert), for now I’ve left the poll open and will continue to update the numbers. The poll is now closed, thanks for your participation.
(Poll taken by Zoho Polls, chart created by Zoho Sheet.)
Technorati Got a Facelift
Posted on July 24, 2006 ·
Technorati got a facelift this morning, and I caught it in the process. Before 5am (PST) all got was a white blank page. A little after 5am, the new Technorati came up:
I haven’t used it enough to decide if I like it or not, only have initial impressions. Search is different: now you have to use a pull-down menu to sleect between blog posts, tags, or blogs. Access to the “ping” buttons on the front page is definitely helpful. Once you click on your own blog, you get some additional useful information, like who has you as favorite, charts showing your traffic history, posts per day ..etc.
I’m sure David Sifry will post a detailed list of the changes later today David Sifry posted details of the upgrade, including a video.
What’s your first impression? If you can’t see the poll box in your feed, here’s a direct link.
Tags: technorati, blog search, blogs, blogging, technoratifeedback, zoho polls
Zooomr 3.0?
Posted on July 22, 2006 ·
(updated)
For a second I thought I was seeing yet-another-upgrade, Zooomr 2.0 only lasted a few days, and we’re in Zooomr 3.0.
Then it hit me: this isn’t Zooomr, but a classic case of typosquatting. This has to be one of the most frequent typos. In fact as much as I like making fun of Web 2.0 names, I haven’t even realized there were 3 “o”-s in Zooomr until I signed up.
Kris and co. should have registered Zoomr.com while it was available: now it is owned by Getdomainsiwant.ca, a domain name registrar who sends traffic to Zooomr’s competitors. The moral of the story to all entrepreneurs: buy all possible variations, including typos of your domain before you become a brand.
Update (7/23): Kris just posted this: “Great news everyone! It seems that a search for “Zooomr OR Zoomr” on Google displays over one million results.” Great, Congratulations! But it also means that Kris and team are aware of just how typical the Zoomr typo is, which further empahsizes that they must own the domain…..
Related posts:
- Dotster
- Yahoo Sued for Spyware, Typosquatting-Based Ads
- Why are there so many scumbags?
- Company Swiping The Domain Names You’re Thinking About Registering
VC Firm Hummer Winblad the #1 Search Term on Technorati
Posted on July 22, 2006 ·
Why is Hummer Winblad the #1 search term on Technorati most of Saturday? 
I can’t find anything significant. Anyone? Will? Oh, well, Technorati’s gone crazy in the baking 110 heat…
Update (7/22): I can attest that indeed there is a lot of search activity on Hummer Winbladt: this very post is getting a lot of hits, from none other than Technorati….
Helping Bloggers in India
Posted on July 19, 2006 ·
India is a democracy, I simply don’t believe the current blog censorship will stay in force for very long… but for now it hurts. I myself have Indian readers, and I also follow some blogs based in India, in our global world I’m sure most of my readers do so. Bloggers from all around the world are trying to help. Here are just two of several resources: India Censored, Bloggers Collective.
I’d like to do my little bit, in case the ways to circumvent to blockage don’t work for someone, I’m offering my fellow bloggers from India a temporary home for your thoughts; email me your articles and I’ll publish them on my blog, under your name. (My email is the domain name of this blog at gmail)
Related posts:
Microsoft: Crimes Against the English Language Quantified :-)
Posted on July 18, 2006 ·
Ethan “Zvents” Stock caught yet-another-incomprehensible-corporate-press-release:
No, this is not the first paragraph, it’s just the title. A crime against the English Langue, says Ethan, and I agree. Ethan contrasts it to “the gold standard for communicating meaning without baloney“: Winston Churchill’s famous final paragraph of his 1940 “We shall fight on the beaches” speech.
I thought I’d run som numbers on these two gems.
The Gunning-Fog Readability Test is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take for someone to understand the content. The lower the number, the more understandable the content is. Results over seventeen are reported as seventeen, where seventeen is considered post-graduate level.
- Microsoft-Nortel: 17 (maxed out at post-graduate level)
- Winston Churchill: 12.66
For reference, here are some typical index scores:
6 TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain
8 Reader’s Digest
8 – 10 Most popular novels
10 Time, Newsweek
11 Wall Street Journal
14 The Times, The Guardian
15 – 20 Academic papers
Over 20 Only government sites can get away with this, because you can’t ignore them.
Over 30 The government is covering something upMy own little test shows most business blogs are in the 8-10 range. Ethan scores 9.83, I am rated 8.38.
Now, let’s take another most scientific test: the Gematriculator. “The Gematriculator is a service that uses the infallible methods of Gematria developed by Mr. Ivan Panin to determine how good or evil a web site or a text passage is.” The results:
- Microsoft-Nortel: 50% Evil, 50% Good
-
Winston Churchill: 29% Evil 71% Good
-
Your site: ___ (?)
Now, if you ask me, no, I don’t believe in pseudo-science… but it’s 105 degrees outside 
spam.icio.us
Posted on July 18, 2006 ·
There is a somewhat lesser known feature in del.icio.us: you can send sites to your friends/colleagues…etc feed readers by using the for:username tag. I’ve been using it for a while, when I want to point to articles relevant to my friends’ businesses; it’s a real timesaver, I don’t have to wrap the URL in courtesies and make it an email.
But Steve Rubel is proposing something that smells SPAM to me:
“You could send the message to several people all at once, including all of the most prolific bookmarkers on the site.
Open letters are just one possibility here. What if PR pros used this methodology to pitch reporters and/or bloggers who frequent del.icio.us regularly? You could pitch 10 reporters at once in an open way. “
I normally like Steve’s ideas, but this is just wrong. Del.icio.us will be spammed, with or without Steve, but at least don’t welcome it…
Related posts:
Bush’s Candid Moment – Take #2 :-)
Posted on July 17, 2006 ·
This morning I am getting a surprisingly large number of hits on an older post: Bush’s Candid Moment. They candid part in that video:
“WOMAN: … and I’m sorry I’m rambling on like I have –
BUSH: So was I though, for like an hour –
[laughter]”
But why are people reading it today? Let’s look at the visitor log: the typical search-terms are Bush, candid, video. Gotcha! They are loking for the President’s unguarded comments he slipped to British PM Tony Blair before lunch at the G8 summit:
“See, the irony is, what they really need to do is to get Syria to get Hizbollah to stop doing this s**t,”
Seconds later Tony Blair discovered the microphone was on, and switched it off before responding.
Watch the video on Sky News. I wonder how long before this shows up on Youtube, which just announced it is serving up a hundred millionvideos a day….
Email is Still Not Dead
Posted on July 17, 2006 ·
( Updated )
Yet-another-email-is-dead-article, this time from the Chicago Tribune, via Paul Kedrosky. It’s the same old argument: teenagers using IM, or increasingly SMS, instead of email which they find cumbersome, slow and unreliable – hence email usage will decline.
I beg to disagree. Sure, I also get frustrated by the occasional rapid-fire exchange of one-liners, when by the 15th round we both realize the conversation should have started on IM. Most of teenagers’ interaction is social, immediate, and SMS works perfectly well in those situations.
But ask teenage entrepreneur Ben Casnocha how many emails he receives and responds to daily on his Blackberry, even while sitting in class – I know first hand he responds fast. We all enter business, get a job..etc sooner or later, just not at age 12 like Ben with. Our communication style changes along with that – often requiring to a build-up of logical structure, sequence, or simply a written record of facts, and email is vital for this type of communication.
Email is being “attacked” from another direction though: for project teams, planning activity, collaboratively designing a document, staging an event… etc email is a real wasteful medium. Or should I say, it’s the perfect place for information to get buried. This type of communication is most effective using a wiki.
No, email is not dead, and it won’t be any time soon. But we all have to learn to use the right tool in the right situation.
Update (7/20): A day after my post the Email is Dead discussion flares up again:
- Email is Officially Old School says Steve Rubel
- Changing Online Behavior: Email is Old – Emergence Media
- youth and email: the fear factor – Blogspotting
- Email Gets Old – Ataridemocrat
- Leaving Email Behind – Business Blog Consulting
Update (9/7): Rod Boothby created this chart:
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