TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Most annoying words on the internet

A funny article on the most annoying words on the internet (according to Britons at least) - things that make you feel like a goofball to talk about, like “wikis” or the “blogosphere.”

There is no way I’d put “blogosphere” into a conversation with a group of non-technical layperson friends - its easier and less silly sounding to just say “the web.” Apparently I’m not alone in this feeling.

I’d also like to nominate “webinar” for inclusion. Just call it a bloody conference or seminar, which happens to use the internet for remote attendees. A “net conference” would do well - much like we call it a “conference call,” not a “phoninar” (though I guess “teleconference” sounds ok).

Anyway, the whole discussion struck a nerve for me - see “Gaboogie and the truth about Web 2.0 names” for reference. Its really hard to balance attention-getting, descriptiveness, and market appeal when selecting a name, or creating a new descriptor for an entirely new service (like “wikis”).

Webomatica’s response points us to their “weblogisms” page which is a good compendium of often painful geek-blog terms. The Online Media Cultist offers his own take on some of the words, and CybernetNews is making me hungry with their cookie clipart. The Guardian’s post is notable for the funny words that are coming out in the comments.

BTW - have you notice my posts are sporadic and generally weak? I’m up to my eyeballs in craziness this week. ProBlogger had a post today that mentioned keeping a bunch of written posts in reserve for times like this - but to do so requires the time to build a store of written posts… which I don’t have. So it goes!

web words

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BBC on RFID / WiFi Gateway - Exactly what I’m talking about - the Semantic World

The BBC has an article today on the utility of combining RFID tags with WiFi for location tracking of people & resources.

Add to that presence-profiles (i.e.: changing your contact preferences based on whether you’re in a meeting room, your office, or the parking garage), and you’ve got the “Semantic World” where people, places, objects, and actions have meaning, properties, and methods - all of which can interact with each other.

I wrote on this a few weeks ago:

There’s a number of trends in technology that have the potential to come together and enable some truly radical changes in our day to day lives. I’d throw out RFID, location-aware devices, and pervasive wifi as primary examples. What I’ve really been hunting for, however, its a way to bring it all together - essentially a small, location-aware RFID-to-WiFi gateway.

Read the rest of that post here.

Sadly the BBC missed my blog post… and the larger implications of this combination of technologies.

bluetooth, gateway, gps, location, presence, rfid, scifi, semantic, semanticweb, semanticworld, web wifi

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THE CRAIGSLIST REPORT: April, 2007 - Massive Growth

Craigslist is a juggernaut. I used to doubt its power, but that is no longer the case. For the last month, I’ve been been tracking listing volumes on Craigslist, city by city, so see if activity is growing, and to what degree - I can tell you now, its growing, and massively. Here’s the main Craigslist Tracker Index Page that gives you access to all of the charts and data.

Top 10 Urban Centers by Growth in Listing Volume:

1. blacksburg (Virginia: charts data) 64.37
2. boulder (Colorado: charts data) 57.01
3. elmira-corning (New York: charts data) 46.25
4. bologna (Italy: charts data) 40
5. iowa city (Iowa: charts data) 39.79
6. sheffield (United Kingdom: charts data) 38.2
7. tippecanoe (Indiana: charts data) 37.87
8. st cloud (Minnesota: charts data) 36.66
9. wenatchee (Washington: charts data) 36.25
10. fargo / moorhead (Minnesota: charts data) 36.1

Top 10 Losers in terms of Decline in Listing Volume

1. hong kong (China: charts data) -5.43
2. kolkata (calcutta) (India: charts data) -7.94
3. birmingham (United Kingdom: charts data) -8
4. christchurch (New Zealand: charts data) -8.04
5. mumbai (India: charts data) -8.85
6. glasgow (United Kingdom: charts data) -9.25
7. durban (South Africa: charts data) -11.02
8. bristol (United Kingdom: charts data) -15.06
9. cardiff / wales (United Kingdom: charts data) -16.12
10. guangzhou (China: charts data) -16.67

I’m tight on time today (this week), so I’m not doing an exhaustive analysis. I will draw a few high level conclusions though: growth seems to be concentrated in the US, in non-core markets: i.e.: CL is expanding in the US outside of its traditional holdouts (Bay Area, NYC, etc.). International growth is a little choppier. Note that the 10 Losers are all international. This pattern is consistent - international growth is slower.

Why might this be the case? I’d hazard a guess that localized, homegrown solutions dominate in places like China or India, while Craigslist utilizaion in these areas would be dominated by expats. That’s a very quick conjecture.

General implications: CL has most of the US locked down. Newspapers should continue to fear it. Classifieds startups should look hard at their prospects and sources of differentiation. Craigslist has only MySpace and Facebook classifieds to fear; As MySpace and Facebook ready to move into CL’s territory, I wonder if CL will add a social networking component to move into theirs?

Notes on Data and Analysis Methodology:

1. Percentage growth rates are not weighted by listing volume. So, going from 100 listings to 200 in a small town would be a 100% growth rate, even though its small in absolute numbers. So - read the numbers carefully and consider them in context until I have time to do a better analysis.
2. The period of data collection is April 3, 2007, to May 3rd, 2007. Measurement takes place in the wee hours of the AM, by a very respectful automated scraper.
3. The full dataset is available here. I’ll make it downloadable someday when I have time.
4. Some cities are duplicated if they are listed in more than one state. The numbers should match for each instance.
5. All of the charts are created with PHP/SWF Charts - which is awesome. I’m using the free version.
6. If you see a chart with “Region A / Region B” - that’s the chart tool’s default state when it encountered an error in data. I need to do some cleanup and these should go away.
7. The odd city dropped off: Denver, for instance, I only have a week or two of data for. I haven’t had a chance to see what’s happened.
8. The growth rates are a lousy metric: its the listing count on April 3rd, divided into the listing count on May 2nd. That gives you a monthly growth rate, with n=1 (i.e.: april) for each city). It doesn’t do any smoothing or anything within the month’s data, so the numbers are pretty grain-of-salt and intended to give a rough impression of what’s going on in each city, supported by the applicable chart.
9. This analysis in no way takes into account listing quality - only volume. All of the gains could be spam for all I know.

That’s it for the moment - enjoy. Comments on analysis, methodology, etc. are welcome.

classifieds, craigslist, craigslistreport, ebay, growth web

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