TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Link Roundup for Wednesday, July 11, 2007

1. Project-D: Universal Threatens Apple. Apparently the labels are getting antsy again about being able to change prices on a track-by-track basis. Perhaps Apple’s non-DRM pricing is giving them ammunition.
2. Project-D again: If tracks are selling so well on iTunes, why do artists bother writing and recording the filler that composes most of any given album - why not just focus on the hits, and sell them track-by-track?
3. 9:01 AM on Zillows expansion into community pages. 9:01 just reports it. IMHO, its bizarre, like eBay buying Skype or StumbleUpon. There’s tenuous connections, but turning that connection into user-facing value is going to be hard. Nevertheless, OMC thinks Zillow may have something.

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Link Roundup for Wednesday, June 27, 2007

1. SpringWise on Craigslist Meets YouTube at RealPeopleRealStuff - will video classifieds take off for anything other than houses? Speaking of which, why aren’t their video classifieds for houses?
2. Janet Johnson discusses Michael O’Connor-Clark discussing lack of portability of social network profiles. Interesting stuff - perhaps an extension of APML is in order…
3. Janet Johnson double header - turning information into insight. Great discussion on capitalizing on the mounds of data that enterprise-class organizations furiously work to accumulate.
4. Markus Weichselbaum (The Broth) writes on Web 3.0 and posits that it will be a blurring of lines between what we already know from the 2.0 world.
5. Pownce - which I didn’t have time to write on - is covered in depth by DeepJiveInterests (underwhelmed), Frantic Industries (its IM with better multi-person chatting), ValleyWag (underwhelmed), CenterNetworks (actually tried it, loved it), and ParisLemon (acquisition bait?).

Note: the only person that actually tried Pownce was the only one that liked it.

techfold

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Link Roundup for Tuesday, June 26, 2007

1. The Wired Jester: 5 ways to get through writer’s block.
2. Rob Hyndman: Lawyer ranking service Avvo gets sued — by lawyers.
3. Gino Cosme: Get ready for Christmas ‘07.
4. WebWorkerDaily: Three location-based social networks you should check out.

speedlinking

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One of those Weeks

I’m up to my eyeballs at work and home again, meaning light posting. In the spirit of sharing I’m going to lean on some comrades from the blogosphere instead and just point you to the great posts out there that I’d love to be commenting on myself:

1. Scrawled in Wax: iTunes and Zeitgeist - iTunes as platform, and a lifestyle.
2. Community Guy on Online Etiquette - article nails a bunch of my pet peeves.
3. Mathew Ingram - YouTube is the Farm Team - on the changing role of YouTube as a recruitment tool.
4. Vaspers the Grate on top Web2.0 problems - with a great foreword on choosing post titles based on Google query volume.
5. Somewhat Frank on Funny or Die.
6. Janet Johnson on Alignment for Enterprise 2.0 - an excellent insightful post on rolling out 2.0 apps into existing environments.
7. Michi Konos - Five Beginner PHP Tips - a great deconstruction of the Magic Quotes “feature” among other things…

communityguy, janetjohnson, mathewingram, michikonos, scrawledinwax, somewhatfrank vaspersthegrate

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Stranger and Stranger

Just a quick one on Amazon vs. Statsaholic. Extortion, criminal recods, litigation, pay-offs. Zoli and TechCrunch sum it up.

Who’s gaming who here? I find it hard to believe the Amazon, under media and shareholder scrutiny, with entire departments devoted to communication, litigation, and oversight, would try to blackmail Hornbaker into paying them an insignificant sum and handing over a domain. I just don’t believe such a decision could be made, especially when Amazon has legitimate legal avenues (in spades) to pursue in renegotiating their relationship with Statsaholic.

The alternative is that Hornbaker is playing Amazon in an elaborate PR game to get publicity for himself and Statsaholic. Everyone loves a david vs. goliath story, and Hornbaker is working hard to provide just that, deeping the depravity of Amazon’s behaviour on a regular basis and keeping everyone’s interest piqued. Is it anything more than base manipulation of public opinion?

Only time will tell.

Other posts here - the first calling out Amazon for being lame, the next starting to question the whole situation.

amazon, hornbaker, lawsuit, statsaholic techcrunch

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The Google Roundup - big week

Many of these announcements have been sort of under the radar, but overall, Google has had quite the week:

1. GooglePoint: Google pulled the powerpoint trigger, completing the bulk of their anti-microsoft suite with the purchase of java-tool-maker Tonic.
2. Google Vs. StumbleUpon: After eBay’s questionable purchase of StumbleUpon, a pouty sounding Google fired back by adding dice to the Google toolbar - a button that apparently taps similar functionality as StumbleUpon’s.
3. Froogle is Getting Some Attention: Google Product Search. About time. Froogle was one of Google’s earliest branches out from core search, and has languished more or less since launch, getting demoted of the front page, and generally wasting away.
4. Charts: Google fleshed out the Sheets document type with charting - finally. EDIT: Zoli does charts.
5. RSS API: Google’s added an RSS/Atom handler to their search API. I haven’t really had a chance to dig into this, but its sounds a lot like the server-side functionality provided by MagpieRSS will now be available in JS.

api, atom, excel, google, magpie, microsoft, rss, stumbleupon tonic

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Ask put their foot in it, SEO 95/5, Metasearch = Bad

3 quick ones that stuck out for me today, with the common thread of being search engine related:

1. Valleywag: Ask launched a guerilla campaign against Google that has pissed off and alienated users. Whoops - shows what attack/smear ads will do for you.
2. Danny Sullivan breaks down the 5% of SEO that earns SEO firms their dollars: URL structure, link buying, IP cloaking, template mods, agency life. The funny thing are is the number of times he explains “this used to be blackhat…”
3. Jason Calacanis walks us through the questionable legality of metasearch, or “search engine aggregators” that serve up results from multiple sources using automated background querying.

ask, calacanis, google, metasearch, search, searchengineland, seo techfold

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