Monkey on Wordpress

Why am I seeing so much whining on the blogs today? Here are a few links:

Do NOT Install the new Firefox — Read this. - Oh noes! Teh firefawx buttonz haz been moved! I agree with him, I would totally run software with holes in it once my 405438 tabs open continue to get smaller and I certainly would not look for an add-on.

TypePad Woes - TypePad is one of the worst blog CMS options out there. I kid you not.  I rather use a Tumblr account than a Vox account any day. Nice people at TypePad though.

Google Gears — Who needs it? - Um, I do? Just because you have your Blackberries and EVDO card doesn’t mean you will be connected 24/7. I agree with fixing this “digital divide” but even still for those who have access to the Internet, why can’t I carry my Laptop somewhere and not be connected yet still access my stuff? At the very least, don’t use it and move on.

Let’s start right off the bat with me saying all that I heard of Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo made me not like it the least bit. Why? I just got a vibe, but I have been pleasantly wrong in the past so no reason this can’t be one of those instances, right? It seemed to me to be yet another search engine and really, creating a search engine now is suicide no matter how good you are. Does anyone use Clusty? Chances are most people use Google or MSN or Yahoo! and not much more beside a Wikipedia search from time to time.

Web 2.0 tested, Hippie approved.

So, this is what I get Mahalo to be: a people powered search engine. This should be wonderful. Let’s take a look at the start page.

Now, let’s take a look at Spock. What is Spock? Obvious planetary jokes aside, it’s a tag-based people search.

Looking at the start pages, they both give off the “I wan to be Google but cooler” vibe and it’s a toss up, I call it a tie, 1 point each.

Let’s get to the meat and potatoes here: the search. First up, Robert Scoble:

The page on Mahalo gave me links to the Mahalo top 10 which is…a feature. It’s not really that useful a feature, almost like they take the top Google results for the term and put it in there.

Below there is a professional profile. This must be where the actual human power comes in and boy must this be accurate. Mahalo intends to keep the top 10, 000 terms done by humans and I just think this will not get very far but let’s save criticism for later.

To be quite honest, maybe you can see where I am coming from with this when you go to the page, but this just doesn’t seem to be useful - it’s a page of links that are supposed to be in some helpful order but it doesn’t do it well. I can see that the people in charge of these pages do a search on Wikipedia and blogs as well as on services such as Technorati or Twitter and throw the links in under some classification. It seems to be a big, jumbled mess from a user standpoint.

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Spock actually seems better off. We’re presented with a bunch of tags that are useful. Why? Because I can click on one tag that is associated with Robert and find other people. I did this with “technical evangelist” and found Dave Winer and Chris Messina among others. In using it I’ve also realized it’s a good, quick way to find out who people are. Sure, I’ve always heard about this Dave Winer guy, but I never really cared to know anything about why I was always hearing about him, I assumed he and Scoble were camping buddies or something.

A really nice thing is the mini profile on the side of the page. Sure it is basically Yanked from Wikipedia but it’s useful because I may just need basic information on people and don’t want to sift through various wikis.

Spock also has a feature for a bunch of links called “On The Web” and I think Mahalo has the upper hand considering the fact that they at least attempt to divide their information.

Are you keeping track of the points? My head hurts too much to keep giving it out, all points have been revoked.

It’s obvious that Robert Scoble will have a well done profile, after all, he is who he is, so I decided to go for someone who might be less well known by these techies.

I decided to look for Rihanna on Mahalo and Spock.

The profile on Spock was great, had tags for the person as well as Wikipedia info as I showed you with Scoble. I can see the use of Spock being when you need to find out basically who people are. You may not want to read an entire wiki to get the informatio when Spock does it efficiently enough, I guess.

The Mahalo page…is a bunch of links. I suppose if they had the profile container like Spock the page would look more appealing to me, but it doesn’t and you know this fickle Web 2.0 crowd - one look at your page and they’re out. Oh, silly me, what was I saying, there is a profile-ish thing on the page up in the top right-hand corner.

Thanks for the guide note! I can tell a lot of time went into it. Also, the spelling error adds a more personal touch. Or is it just that the site is really cool with the gamer/forum lingo so they use “teh” throughout?

It’s safe to say Spock does this way better than Mahalo and Mahalo is essentially shooting themselves in the foot by using these people.

A Word On Usability

Spock is easy to use, really. It is using tags in a way to help people and I honestly think that it’s something that Google could even benefit from, the same goes for Wikipedia. In fact, either one of these entities could probably utilize Spock as some sort of “alternative”, so maybe an acquisition will occur, that or a blatant rip-off. As for Mahalo…it’s a website but why do I need a legend now for this site? I don’t care about this, don’t tell me which links are the best, just put the best links or don’t say anything. Make the user experience as painless as possible, I do not need a learning curve for a search engine.

In all honesty, I can see people using Spock occasionally but Wikipedia seems to be the best way to go. I remember Jason Calacanis saying how simple it would be to get people to moderate Wikipedia since the debate about Wikipedia’s accuracy was popping up. It seems this is what Jason is intending to do is just that.

Spock has me thinking, I can do a search for “inventor” then get a list of inventors. Suppose I am doing a project and need to find an inventor, a Google search doesn’t give you a list of people who are inventors Spock does. I can search on Spock then get detailed information on Wikipedia. Nice. Maybe I don’t “get” Mahalo and I’d love to give it another go if it is I haven’t been using.

Just a note, I have 2 invites to Spock, leave a comment and they’re yours.

So, as you may or may not know, I’m back with Google Reader. What can I say, she’s more in sync with me and the relationship overall is good, so I’ve moved back in and here’s my linkblog. There’s not much there since I’m not easily excited and I have no idea if you might be interested in subscribing to it. If at least one person is then I will make a more conscious effort to highlight some interesting stories that I may or may not blog about. But this isn’t one-way, I want your link blog, yes I do. I’m all-encompassing like that.

Been a while, I know - been working on two projects, one of which should come to fruition by mid June. That said - I’ve moved back to Google Reader! Bloglines just didn’t do it anymore. Specifically, I’ve had the same few items marked as unread for the longest while, at first it was because I wanted to read those entries later on rather than skip them as I do many feeds, but when I was ready to mark the entries read and flush them out it just wouldn’t happen. That along with the aesthetic aspect just threw me off. To me, Bloglines is great for a beginner in RSS, I suppose, but Google’s Reader just drew me back just because it looks so nice and it’s link blog, starring and ease of use thanks to shortcuts is really great. I’ve also subscribed to quite a bit more feeds and GReader seems to be keeping up.

Google reader has only a few bad things about it at the moment. I just want to know why it is it won’t say how many items you actually have to read, it currents just says (100+) but that does me no good. Also, I’ve placed my feeds into folders and now want to re-name my folder (called tags) and I don’t see an easy way to do this, just deleting the folder and placing feeds back in there individually. This is way too tedious.

I’ve also started using FeedDemon again, because I think it might be better to read feeds offline as well, but Google Reader is way too appealing. Google, damn you, you’re taking over the world and I like it.

I’ve been using Bloglines still and have to say it’s still fast. I can’t go back to Google Reader now, not for a while anyway. The thing is fast, really fast, and I like it. With that said, what could be done to make it better?

•  Why does everything have to be marked as read when I click on a feed? With Google Reader, I click on a feed and use j and k to scroll, but when I reach an individual story, it is marked as read. Minor irritation, but what happens when the browser closes mid-feed? I’d miss out.
• Fugly! Please make this thing look better, please!
• No linkblog - There is a blog feature of Bloglines, but I could care less about it. From what I’ve gathered, it’s like having an actual blog since you write about something in your feeds. I don’t want that, I want a linkblog like Google reader, just press a button and it puts that entry from the feed into a blog of entries which I find interesting, or can use to read later.
• Marking a feed item as unread sucks. I don’t even know how something like this could suck, but it worked better in Google Reader.
• Stupid features such as a wall of images are being worked on, but no ability to search feeds? Google can’t search feeds either, so we’re even, I guess.
• We need an “all” button like Google reader so I don’t have to go to each feed individual feed to read. Of course, if that was done, the whole thing about only marking items you actually read as read would have to be implemented.
• We need something like Google Trends, use the information to suggest blogs.
• Get aquired by Google.
• Get a toolbar or something that will work with Firefox. I know there’s a notifier, but I’m none too keen on downloading it.

This must all sound terrible but it really is not. In the end it comes down to speed and functionality which Bloglines has, but they’re not the only ones on the block, so they do need to buck up a bit, listen to their customers. Had I been employed there, I would actually go into more detail as to the things that could improve the service. As it is now, I just want a product that works better.

I like Google Reader, I like it a lot, but my problem is that it runs rather slowly. I’ve heard people talking about Bloglines before, I joined, didn’t think much of it, but decided to give it another go today. The feeds in there were full, and stopped updating to the latest stuff for some feeds (Did you know Newsvine isn’t requiring invites anymore? ;p) but it’s fine. You know what I realised? Google Reader is pretty similar to Bloglines, it has the keyboard shortKuts you Just need to use. I think I will use both Google Reader and Bloglines for a while and see just which of these is the best one to use. If Google can improve on it’s speed, that would be great. Bloglines is moving blazingly fast, I’m impressed. The downside, it looks horrible.

But is the way Bloglines looks really that big of an issue? Well, it’s certainly not anything too bad, it’s just the flash and functionality of Google Reader has me spoilt. Then again, I rather a fast, functional reader that looks good as opposed to a slow, good looking reader. What do you use to read RSS? I’ve used FeedDemon before but I don’t want a desktop client, I’m big on web services and there’s the whole catching up on your feeds no matter where you are. That’s a big one. I did notice bloglines saying they’re hiring for a UI person. Changes seem abound. Again, I’d love to hear what other people use - I’ll be doing my own research. Prior to Google Reader, I used Netvibes, I still have some feeds there. Prior to that, I used SearchFox RSS but they were aquired by Yahoo! if memory serves me right. The service closed down and nothing was mentioned about them again. I also know of people using FeedLounge, but I’m not familiar with this “paying” thing.

This post on techcrunch points out that there is reason to believe that a PowerPoint-like product will soon come out from Google. Um, duh? It’s safe to say that Google is on-track to do a web based competitor to Microsoft Office. Why all the hoopla? Isn’t it just a question of “when ?”rather than “if?”?

After Google acquired Writely, did anyone really not think a PowerPoint-like product would be soon to follow? Be it home-grown or the acquisition of another company, let’s not get hyped for what we know is coming.

Try again, Techcrunch.

Well, isn’t this great? We’re familiar with the amount of time and effort taken by the U.S media to report on the frivolous happenings in the lives of celebrities. I’m creeped out and could care less about Angelina Jolie’s fascination with blood. No, I don’t care about Star Jones*, I don’t want to know who’s responsible for all the wars in the world. One of my favourite shows on Television is The Soup. Why? Because they know just how idiotic it is that this stuff is going on and how much more idiotic it is that the media continues to feed us this drivel. What’s ironic is that it’s on E!, whose bread and butter is doing just this.

A common practice is to give one name to a celebrity couple, because it’s cool, apparently. It’s safe to say this all started to get popular when Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez became known as Bennifer. The Soup, being the trendsetters they are, decided to have a segment on their show called the “The Celebrity Hookup Nickname Generator” which is, coincidentally, the name of the machine that does what the name implies. The latest buzz is around musician John Mayer and Jessica Simpson (she’s blond). Their name: “messica”. The Soup was spot on with this segment, showing just how dumb this thing is, but Web 2.0, not to be outdone, has joined the fray.

Imagine how odd I felt having to read Michael Arrington’s usage of GooTube. We have so jumped the shark and I don’t think there’s any going back. This isn’t an isolated case by any means, it’s spreading. We need to do something. Alas, my blog doesn’t get to charge $10, 000 for 125×125 pixel ads, therefore, I am but a mere nobody. Since I can’t do anything, I can only contribute. But how? By getting in on the action before others take notice, that’s how. So, from now on:

Robert Scoble and Mariam Scoble = Scobiam

Chris Pirillo and Ponzi (real name Latthanapon Indharasophang) = Ponzillo

Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington are doing conferences together, which is close enough to being married, please meet Calacangton.

Be sure to fight the good fight, and help make Web 2.0 greater by consolidating names. It makes you cool.

*until she returns my calls, I will just stop caring.