April 13, 2005
This Blog is Dead — Long Live the New Blog!
04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Whatever
Ok, the wait is over. This will be the last post for this (old) blog, so you’ll have to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds to the new Zoinger. The new blog is located here (http://www.zoinger.com/words/) and the new RSS feed is located here (http://www.zoinger.com/words/feed/).
The index page for this (old) blog will now be located here (http://www.zoinger.com/old_blog.html) if you are interested in reading any of my old posts. I’ll also have this linked to from the sidebar of the new blog.
April 12, 2005
Zoinger RSS Feeds to Change Soon
08:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Movable Type
Well, I’ve been reading up in detail on WordPress, and it looks like I’m going to have to change the URL for the Zoinger RSS feeds. Sorry in advance for any inconvienience this is going to cause.
I’ll probably be changing over in the next day or so, but will let you know what the new feed URL is/are when I do the change over. I’m planning on keeping the entire MT site live so old URLs to the posts won’t break.
April 11, 2005
More on Moving to WordPress
04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Movable Type
As I’ve written about previously, I’m in the (slow) process of moving my blogging application from MovableType over the WordPress. WordPress has got momentum behind it, so I think it’s going to be more future-proof than MT.
Anyway, a sneak preview of my WordPress blog is available here. I’m obviously still working on the sidebar links and such.
I installed a new theme over the weekend, which was a piece of cake. I also did some quick edits to the main CSS file to change the look and feel a bit. I’m a little unsure about how I’m going to do the transition… I’ll thinking that I might move the pointer for Zoinger.com to my WordPress directory, or I might create a jump page for Zoinger.com which will have links to the blog. WordPress also allows you to create a manage static pages.
So far, I’m really impressed by the easy-of-use and great documentation of WordPress.
April 08, 2005
Memory Maps — Why Yahoo! Bought Flickr Reason #126
03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1) ~ Biz - Internet
I was reading the Flickr Blog today and came across this post about “memory maps.” The idea is that you post a screen shot of an area you are familiar with (from a service like Google Maps), and annotate the screen shot with your memories. Wild!
Here’s part of a picture from the Memory Maps Flickr group showing an example of the annotations.
Just make sure you have a browser that has Flash enabled so you can view the annotations.
Google Maps Satellite View vs. TerraServer
09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
This is probably not news to anyone but me, but I just noticed that Google Maps now has a “satellite” view. This displays an aerial photo of the area you are looking at.
However, if you’re looking to zoom in further than Google allows, it’s worth checking Microsoft’s TerraServer. For areas that they have recently updated (such as Palo Alto, CA), you can zoom in much further than Google. In addition, the TerraServer offers older aerial shots and topo map overlays.
Here’s a screen shot of 500 University in Palo Alto, CA from Google at maximum zoom:
And here’s one of the same area from the TerraServer dated 2/2004 at maximum zoom:
And another from the TerraServer dated 10/91 at maximum zoom:
And finally a topo map view from the TerraServer dated 7/98:
(I zoomed out one level to show a bit more of the region… of course this part of Palo Alto is pan flat, so not much to show regarding topology.)
Hopefully, Microsoft will update their UI a bit, since Google’s UI is clearly superior. I can’t wait until Yahoo! offers this type of service. That is, the more competition the better (for the users anyway!).
April 07, 2005
How "Good" Are RSS Ads?
12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
By “good” I mean would I actually click on one, and is the click-on result relevant to the content.
In my post on why RSS ads are important, I wrote about how this article discussing MobileTracker.net’s use of Feedburner’s feed-serving technology. This allows Feedburner to serve ads within MobileTracker’s RSS feed.
To try some RSS ads out, I used Bloglines to set up a RSS feed from Mobile.net. The first ad within the feed was attached to a post entitled Virgin Mobile launches K10 Royale . The ad was for Ring Tones and Wallpapers from Jamster which points to here. Here’s a screenshot this post and ad.
Ok, I might not be their target, but I could see people clicking on that.
The second ad was for Liquid Lense - $13.95 which points here. It’s a little off topic from the post’s content, but you can see the “match.” Heck, they might even sell some of the stuff. Liquid Lense, that is. Liquid Lense “Repairs Scratched & Cloudy Glasses“… oh, and for the quality seal of approval… “As Seen on TV”.
And finally, this one.
Which leads to YourMobileDesk.com’s page offering all times of retractable-cable products (like a mini travel mouse). Pretty good.
Man, these are all better than the old days on the GlobalHyperMegaNet with endless ads for ImGonnaFailRealSoon.bomb.
April 06, 2005
Ads within RSS Feeds... Important Stuff
07:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
So… some random surfing led me to Scoble’s post about why Google might be syndication shy.
This lead me to Steve Rubel’s post on that subject which, in turn, lead me to an article on how Overature is working with Feedburner to deliver ads within RSS feeds.
That’s the important point.
Feedburner… Yahoo! or Google should either re-create this service (unlikely) or purchase Feedburner (more likely). Since Feedburner’s business model places it as an intermediary between blogs and their readers (readers that use RSS anyway) Yahoo!/Google would be buying reach into blogs. Oh, and they get a little thing called reach into RSS feeds. Clearly RSS is looking like it will be a mass-medium… ie, everyone will use it in the future.
Perhaps in a few years RSS becomes a big part of how users interact with the web. Heck, you can already get a Gmail RSS feed, do package tracking via RSS, so why not? Being stuck in the “old school” of browsing-only ad serving — ie, not offering RSS reach and ad-serving technologies — could be a huge shortcoming for web media companies.
The Feedburner model is pretty cool… publishers get ad revenue from their RSS feeds by merely letting Feedburner serve the feed, and advertisers get reach into RSS via a targeted, contextual ad-serving technology. Right on!
History Flow — How Wikipedia Pages Evolve
07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
History Flow is a tool created by IBM’s reseach team to study the history of collaborative documents. Specifically, they study how subjects on Wikipedia evolve over time. I found out about History Flow over at Nate Koechley’s blog. As the IBM folks say…
history flow provides answers at a glance to questions like, Has a community contributed to the text or has it been mostly written by a single author? How much has a particular contributor influenced the current version of the document? Is the text’s evolution marked by spurts of intense revision activity or does it reflect a smooth transition from its beginning to the present?
Here’s a screen shot of one of the History Flow displays for term Islam.
This and Jon Udell’s screencast looking at how the the heavy-metal umlaut page on Wikipedia evolved give a good overview on how the Wikipedia community is working.
Alexa and Intelliseek — Roll Your Own Metrics
04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
I used to work at a company that had access to all sorts of marketing and metric reports from the likes of Jupiter Research, Forrester Research, etc. These types of companies can supply you with just about any metric that you’d like in areas that they cover, which is great to get a “feel” for a market. Now, I have access to none of these reports.
However, not all is lost thanks to the power of the web. There are a couple of sites out there (and probably more) that let you roll your own metrics: Alexa and Intelliseek.
Alexa, which is owned by Amazon, has a service called Alexa Traffic History Graph found here. This allows you to create traffic graphs in various time domains for any URL on the web. I created one in a previous post for WordPress.org to show their rapid growth over the past few months. Below I’ve created one showing Flickr’s reach over the past six months.
With Intelliseek’s BlogPulse you can create a graph that illustrates the percentage of blogs that include your search term vs. various time periods. For example, here’s one showing the percentage of blogs that mentioned “Flickr” over the past six months.
Together these two graphs help illustrates why Yahoo! acquired Flickr.
Bissell ProHeat ProTech Steam Cleaner — Mini Review
03:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Reviews
Spring is here! To celebrate, I borrowed a friend’s Bissell ProHeat ProTech Steam Cleaner that he picked up at Costco for just under $200. The ProHeat is pretty impressive. You load it up with hot tap water in one chamber and carpet cleaner (available at most major supermarkets) in another. Plug it in, turn on the heater and suction, and you’re off. It’s well balanced, so pushing it around is really easy. A trigger on the handle turns on the water/cleaner which you can see getting sucked back up into the dirty-water reservoir (and I mean dirty).
My friend said that he had hired a professional to clean his carpets before he purchased the Bissell. He really didn’t like the job the “pro” did, so he picked up the Bissell which he said did a much better job.
The Bissell did a great job on my carpet which had several food stains here and there. I don’t think that I’d buy one for myself, since I don’t have own a house, but it’s great to borrow. If I did own a house that had a lot of carpet, it’d probably be worth it.
April 03, 2005
Package Tracking by RSS
10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
Bloglines an online RSS reader (recently purchased by Ask Jeeves which in turn is being aquired by Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp) announced last week that Bloglines is First to Go Beyond the Blog with Unique-to-Me Info Updates. What does that mean?
Starting today, people can track the shipping progress of package deliveries from some of the world’s largest parcel shipping companies—FedEx, UPS, and the United States Postal Service within their Bloglines MyFeeds page. Package tracking in Bloglines encompasses international shipments, in English. Bloglines readers can look forward to collecting more kinds of unique-to-me information on Bloglines in the near future, such as neighborhood weather updates and stock portfolio tracking.
You can check out the package tracking here.
With IE7 rumored to have a built-in RSS reader, services like Blogline’s package tracking and My Yahoo!’s RSS integration, RSS (or some type of syndication… why do we have RSS, Atom, et al.?) sure seems like it will be mainstream pretty soon.
Two New PocketPC-based QWERTY Mobiles
09:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Mobile
There’s a couple of new QWERTY-keyboard equipped PocketPC-based mobiles out in the market (or will be soon).
The Orange SPV M2000 has pretty much everything… WiFi, Bluetooth and a side-out QWERTY keyboard. Unfortunately, it’s not as small as the HTC Magician. Since this is an Orange phone, it’s only available in Europe (or maybe you’ll be able to gray market it someday from sites like this).
HP’s iPaq Mobile Messenger h6500 is due out in April. It’s got an integrated QWERTY keyboard similar to the Treo. It trades built-in WiFi for GPS which seems like an odd trade off to me. However, you will be able to add a WiFi card through the SD/IO slot (it as another slot for miniSD), and you’ll have the benefit of being able to break the antenna end of the card off. Add-in WiFi-card solutions suck… like so 1999. Additionally, the screen is fairly low resolution at 240×240. It’s mostly smaller than the M2000, but not close to the Magician.
| Product | Length | Width | Thickness |
| M2000 | 4.92” | 3.00” | 0.74” |
| h6500 | 4.65” | 2.80” | 0.83” |
| Magician | 4.25” | 2.28” | 0.71” |
| Audiovox SMT5600* | 4.25” | 1.81” | 0.63” |
| Treo** | 4.40” | 2.30” | 0.90” |
| *MS SmartPhone | |||
| **Dimensions not including external antenna |
I’m still waiting for a PocketPC mobile the size of the Magician that has a built-in QWERTY keyboard, WiFi and Bluetooth. GPS is highly optional for me.
Update: 2005_04_05
To partially solve the problem of SD WiFi cards sticking out of the slot, here’s a stubby one from Spectec.
April 02, 2005
Flickr — What was Google Thinking??
10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
I’m sure that everyone has heard that Yahoo! recently acquired Flickr. In my opinion, this was a brilliant, strategic move. Flickr has the “feel” of an early Hotmail or Paypal and maybe even Ebay (hey, with those tags you can definitely see some network effects going on).
Sure Flickr’s not making money now, but who cares when you are acquiring users like mad? It’s like homesteading right now. Land, that is users, will never, ever be this inexpensive to acquire, so “Internet companies” better make the most of it RFN.
It’s interesting that Yahoo! would buy Flickr in that Yahoo! already has Yahoo! Photos. Yahoo!’s been in the online photo business for many years now, and is probably doing pretty well. However, the Flickr acquisition could end up making them the online image archive of choice.
Google’s Picasa is a fine little application, but that’s it. It’s not an online image store (yet?), and doesn’t have any network effects (yet?).
So WTF was Google thinking in letting Yahoo! snatch up Flickr? You go IPO to generate a pile of cash that you use to grow the company (oh, and to make a bunch of insiders rich). With Google’s P/E ratio, investors want to see that IPO cash working… not sitting in some bank earning a negative real interest rate (heard of inflation lately?).
In other words, Google needed Flickr more than Yahoo!. And more along that line of math: everyone will own a cellphone in the future + every cellphone will have a camera + everyone loves photos + everyone loves sharing photos = a really, really big, strategic market.
Acqusitions are like movies. Out of 10, 7 will be duds, 2 will break even and 1 will be mega-hit. I’d say there’s a better than 10% chance that Flickr will be a hit, and make Yahoo! a pile of cash in the future.
Google, what where you thinking???
Yahoo!'s Digital Printing Strategy
09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Digital Photo
Here’s my feelings on digital printing. Home printers suck… too expensive and hard to do (and is reflected in the dropping market share of home printing vs. retail and online). Online services (like Shutterfly and Ofoto) are nice, but cost more than retail, and have to be mailed to you. Retail printing is great, but do you really want Costco or Walmart to store all of your photos? Are they going to have cool tagging services like Flickr. Ahhh, I think not.
So the best “solution” is for Yahoo! and the retailers to get together, and allow Yahoo! Photos/Flickr digital images to be printed at the retailer of the user’s preference. I don’t want Yahoo! to have some sort of “preferred,” exclusive printing relationship, I want choice. For example, I’d love to upload all my images to Flickr, and have them printed out at my local Costco (which you can’t beat for price and quality). In addition, I am not so wild about having Yahoo! print my photos, and mail them too me. Costco et al., are always going to beat Yahoo! in cost, convenience and probably quality.
However, the retailers probably are still thinking it’s 1998, and they can become the center of a person’s digital image world. That is, they think their brands equal “cool, online, trustworthy, perpetual digital-image store.” Again, I think not. Do you really trust Wal-Mart to store all of your images forever? Yeah, right… lemme offshore that to where ever, and, oh and sorry, you’ll have to upload all of your images.
Yahoo! probably thinks it can own the world and that all of it’s users will want to use their online service. This, of course, is myopic.
I’m waiting for the day when reasonable minds prevail, and everyone figures out that:
Yahoo!’s brand = cool, progressive, perpetual, trustworthy, future-proof digital image archive
Retailers’ brand = great price, convenience, transaction for digital images
Update:2005_04_22
Yahoo! and Target have announced plans that will allow Yahoo! members to print their online photos at Target (Flickr will probably be included too). I imagine that Target paid Yahoo! a “distribution” fee (perhaps payable in advertising on the Yahoo! Network), will have to promote Yahoo! Photos in their stores and will share some of the print revenue with Yahoo!. Yahoo! will most likely have to offer some promotion of the Target service within Yahoo! Photos. Yahoo! probably had leverage in this deal, since it was widely reported that Target has been late to the online photo game.
I think this is a good deal for both companies. It’s a good brand match… both companies are upbrand-mainstream (that is, an up brand from the likes of WalMart).
In the future (assuming Yahoo! plays it’s card right), Yahoo! should be able to capture a disproportionate share of the online digital assets market. This will increase their leverage over retail printing shops, so they should be able to demand a large revenue share of the printing fees.