I really wanted to do an April Fools post, something along the lines of me moving back to America and joining the Marines and/or the IRS.
However, it appears that five years ago I officially posted my first of many highly sophisticated musings.
Actually, movementarian.com started a year earlier (around June of ‘02) as an attempt to recreate The Onion… with my friends as co-authors. If you look at some of the older content from archive.org you can see that some of the of the articles were good, others sucked (mostly mine).
Several of the contributors did a really good job poking fun at some of the odd things running around in the news. For instance Andy Stedman penned a popular article that still gets hits from Google (probably because of the picture…): Man Reports “Public Goods” Problem Spontaneously Solved
Anyways, David Veksler and I took the site down around February ‘03 to relaunch it as a blog community… (kind of like the Engadget for satire and humor) all under the umbrella name of Collectrix.
That never really panned out (which is a discussion for another day) and during the last days of February and beginning of March I started looking at other target markets.
If you recall, it was during this time that the buildup for the Iraq war was also crescendoing. As I was against the invasion - and all wars - from the get go (even marched in vain at the Dallas protest) I looked at setting up community blogs for libertarian types. I attempted to purchase antiwarblogs.com but the owner wanted to hold out for higher prices (he ended up sitting on the domain to this day).
Instead David and a couple of my friends started buying up other domains to build blog networks from (visit this older link from Archive.org to see a small list).
Different times
Anyways, if you look at the first 3 or so months of archives on this blog you can tell most of my posts had to do with the nascent blog industry. It was started:
- 6 weeks after Pyra Labs (Blogger) was purchased by Google
- when LiveJournal was still independent (and still shitty)
- during the days of the RSS 1.0 vs 2.0 — Dave Winer vs Mark Pilgrim war
- before TypePad (I managed to start drama with Movable Type and Anil Dash)
- before WordPress (B2++ and Cafelog were the two living and breathing creations)
In fact, early in ‘03 I started corresponding with Donncha O’Caoimh from Ireland about adding new features to his build of B2++. He eventually joined the WordPress development team and I believe, is still very Irish.
It was also during this time that commentators like Bill O’Reilly and Andrew Orlowski (of The Register) were lashing out against individual blogs… because anyone can post whatever they wanted on them. It was the beginning of the end to the gatekeepers.
At the time I thought that the burgeoning blogosphere needed a group of defenders so I teamed up with an array of now A-list bloggers and purchased/developed a site called: ProBlogs.org (promoting blogs and rebutting player haters). You can still see some of the older posts from archive.org: 123
These included: Roland Piquepaille (a French jack-of-all-trades, who now writes for ZDNet) Richard Giles (an Australian-based Web 2.0 innovator) Michael Fagan (a Canadian uber geek that has quite the digital pedigree) Stephen Dulaney (a pioneer and popularizer of podcasting) Elwyn Jenkins (one of the first academics to seriously study this new medium… my understanding is he had to go into hiding because of the mob or something)
Anyways, I can hardly attest to being a mover or shaker in this industry. I suppose I could make up a story about being flown into a Bosnian blog conference under sniper fire and mortar attacks, but someone’s already used that one.
I decided against becoming a billionaire geek and ended up going back to grad school. Smart decision, right? And over the course of the following years, I stayed on the sidelines and continued working within the antiwar/libertarian communities.
Some stats of how much beer drinking, girl chasing time I ended up spending on this web thing:
With any luck I’ll still be around in the next 5 years. However, I think I’ll try to spend more of my time posting super sexy music videos like Call On Me or Satisfaction. That’s why you started visiting in the first place.
Or in other words: in direct contrast to the lyrics from these band members:
Apparently I really enjoy making lists, plus it helps me procrastinate a little more before I respond to some lengthy emails (NASA has some “griefing” fanboys mad at my latest piece).
Some news junkies subscribe to dozens of periodicals and buy copious amounts of books in order to stay on top of their industry each year.
Because I am poor and because it exists, I use an RSS reader to fulfill most of the habitual need to stay ahead of the curve. I made the switch from Bloglines to Google Reader this past fall and look forward to the healthy competition in the future. Below is a list of sites I tend to frequent and heartily recommend (the actual list is 100 or so):
Techdirt: despite my disagreements with Mike on someissues, I think Techdirt offers some of the best commentary on the technology news industry bar none. Mike & Co. also have a useful information analysis service called: Corporate Intelligence. Not that he would hire me, but this is certainly an endeavor I would like to be part of. It is the long-tail of tech micro-news (think: a lower-cost Forrester Research or Gartner subscription, but with more frequent updates similar to that of Bloomberg wire reports).
DealBreaker: if you don’t have time to read TheWall Street Journal, or get annoyed by Cramer yelling all the time, yet you need to stay on top of the interesting stories in world finance, this site is for you. As I told founder John Carney, DB is much more interesting and informative than any finance class I took in college… and has a spunky refreshing attitude that makes me look good at cocktail parties. Plus, if a 20×20 grainy jpg is any indication, Muffie is kinda cute. The sometimes Austrian-bent also doesn’t hurt either.
ArsTechnica: I’ve been reading these guys daily for about 8 years now. ArsTechnica is one of the largest sources for original computer news and reviews. Plus, they have two excellent supplements: Journals.ars and Nobel Intent, both of which discuss the latest reports found in numerous scientific journals.
Organizations and Markets: If you have spent much time working for The Man or consider yourself an entrepreneur of any stripe, then you have at some point thought about how firms should be organized: flat, horizontal, vertical, Terry Tate-ish, ad nauseam. I find the academic debate surrounding these issues interesting, though at times, completely Ivory Towerish. However, Peter Klein and his Denmarkian friend make the discourse interesting and germane. Plus I have a soft-spot for their Austrian-esque approach to Bureaucracy.
DamnInteresting: What’s not to like about a site that frequently posts informative, typically historical, articles? Not only is it well-written prose, but they actually cite sources and allow readers to publicly critique and comment on a piece… proto-Open Peer Review?
CoyoteBlog: While one of the few non-tech-centric feeds on my Reader, Warren Meyer posts some interesting cultural brain droppings he finds around the intarweb. If you like him, you will probably find Overlawyered of interest too.
The GMU Four: I have mentioned that I think academic institutions should consider using blogs as a cheap means to advertise departments, recruit passionate students, and keep the public informed of current events (especially research). Over the past several years, numerous economics professors at George Mason University have maintained frequently updated blogs on topics ranging from economics, culture, statism, technology, and just about everything else (even sports). They also happen to be somewhat libertarian-leaning and Austrian-friendly:
Cafe Hayek (I’ve met Boudreaux, good guy, plus having the legal background adds more flavor)
Marginal Revolution (a friend in the PhD program says Cowen is as eclectic and informed as his blog posts)
Crash Landing (I interviewed Gene Callahan here and I use to harass Murphy on a listserve)
Not Even Wrong (he wrote a critique of String Theory which I discussed here)
Note: despite the fact that I think most of their users are complete morons (RTFA), I still read Digg and Slashdot everyday. And the emo-marxists at BoingBoing can be interesting too.
If I didn’t mention you or your blog, I might start if you happen to be a hot chick or want to fund an empty scholarship. Or both.
I just tested it out, and while you can now incorporate your blog into your profile, you can’t do the opposite — there is no output RSS feed for the world to consume your thoughts.
So while the FB devs are busy creating a cleaner, more niche MySpace, the very nature of their operating model (a Walled Garden) prevents this new tool - and its musings - from becoming part of the larger blogosphere corpus.
My closing thoughts: it will probably help increase time logged into the system, as users will be busy writing and reading the notebook entries of their friends. Thus, in the end, their advertisers will benefit in the long-run (more page impressions, more eyeballs and more clicks). Smart business move.
Business 2.0 has a really good write-up of all the blog-enterprises that are now funded through advertisements.
The main reason for their success: these blog cater to specific niches, thus the ads can be targeted to specific demographics much more effectively. It is the Long Tail of advertising, what Chris Anderson calls “nichification.”
I am not an investor, nor should the following be taken as investment advice. Well, maybe.
Earlier this year, Mark Cuban hatched a new idea: investigate publically traded companies and then short the stock if he didn’t like what he found. It is aptly called Sharesleuth.
Today, the first company he shorted was unveiled, it was Xethanol Corporation. Never heard of them? Then check out this hugely ginormous report.
I recommend reading the report if only to illustrate what you probably should never do: shaft colleagues and investors, it will catch up with you.
His website is Okdork.com and topics he typically discusses surround those of entrepreneurship, shoe tying and finger painting. Funny, witty and a all-around geek.
Anyways, if you goto his site and look to the right you will see he has a poll currently running. If you would be so kind to vote for Movementarian, this is what I will do for you.
You each get a shot of winning these prizes if I win, all you have to do is be the first one to claim one of them by posting a comment at the bottom of this post.
And it doesn’t do any good to not vote, because if I don’t win, you can’t get the prize (so make this viral and tell your friends as well).
His prizes include:
A 3 month link on a highly visible part of my website
I will write 5 articles that you want. You can post them on your site or do whatever you want with them.
I will do a write up on you or your business on my site.
I will let you write 1 post that will go on my site.
You will get an early copy of my Facebook book and my Easy Guide to VC eBook.
I will send you an eCard that says thank you.
1 hour of consulting on your design/functionality, marketing or product development.
If I ever see you in person and you want one, you get a hugï?Š
A signed autographed 8 x 10 of myself. Hahaha. I have these but I doubt you want one and hopefully realize this one is a joke.
All you have to do is vote and then leave a comment in my blog about which prize you want.
There is one catch… I just ate a bunch of crusty oatmeal and I need something to laugh about.
Therefore, your comment must be funny or witty in order to be considered valid. Linking to funny and witty things - including YouTube videos I haven’t mentioned previously - counts.
Summary: I am not keeping any of the prizes. You all get them. First one to make funny, is first to get “the money.”
Remember earlier this year, when the Department of Justice demanded that search engines turn over logs of over 1 million URLs?
Remember how Google resisted and countersued?
Remember how the Judge ruled that the DoJ could only have 50,000 nerfed results?
Well, someone at AOL haphazardly released the search results of over 650,000 quasi-anonymized people into the public domain a couple days ago.
Oops.
Markus Frind explains why this is not a good thing for Google, the same company that recently paid AOL $1 billion for exclusive rights at powering search across all of AOL’s properties.
Update: the New York Times actually managed to track down one of the users and interviewed her.
So some starry-eyed ad agency got the idea of trying to capitalize off of the potential buzz-making machine that YouTube has turned into it.
Agency.comuploaded a video of why they should become Subway Inc. agency-of-record.
However, not everything is an instant viral hit just because it goes through some seemingly calculated process.
To put it bluntly, their video stinks.
A much deserved satire was created soon thereafter by Coudal Partners. It does the job nicely too — although I wish they had used the word “synergize” at some point.
I’ll be honest, I don’t care much for the Google Reader. Here’s my brief review of it.
After a solid year, I still have stuck with Bloglines (despite trying others such as Rojo).
However, some people do like it and the gReader team has recently provided some interesting aggregated numbers for our consumption.
Note: these are extensions to the namespaces only — they only looked at things like how often a Creative Commons license is embedded into a feed (and not if it was RSS/Atom).
One of the popular memes being discussed today in the blogosphere is the seemingly contrarian statement from Eric Schmidt of Google regarding click fraud. And like usual, The Stalwartuses an interesting analogy to better understand Schmidt suggesting that click-fraud is by-in-large a self-correcting process.
My question is, what is an objective definition for click fraud? And can this be tied into time-shifting technologies used by TiVo and MythTV users to by-pass advertisements altogether?
The basics
The way AdWords and Overture are currently setup is through an auction system on keywords. An advertiser will bid for keywords that are then displayed on participating websites. The advertiser is then charged every time their ad is clicked based upon the auctioned off price point.
Individuals like Mark Cuban have suggested that the current PPC model is flawed due to massively underreported click fraud. While automated bots and unscrupulous competitors may be the easiest to identify (e.g. tracing IPs and click patterns), how do you measure the intent of a John Doe web surfer? Is it quantifiable with existing technology?
Measuring intentions
The biggest problem in assessing the size of this problem is measuring it in some objective way. As of right now Google and others have fraud departments and use a series of algorithms to identify and measure questionable click patterns from suspect IP addresses.
But how do you really measure the intent of any web surfer? What is a legitimate click versus an illegitimate one? As of this writing, I am unfamiliar with any technology that can scan the mind of web surfers to discover their preferences and intentions. Assuming none exists and ignoring the identifiable fraudsters mentioned above, how can anyone claim that there is massive fraud being perpetrated?
Rumor or not, one theory proposed by John Battelle for why Google did not purchase MySpace when they had the chance was because of really poor conversion rates. The thought is, while there may be millions of users accessing the site each day, the quality of clicks is deplorable (i.e. they click on everything whether they care about it or not and thus cost advertisers millions, see Dan’s comments).
Caveat emptor
Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, popularized the term “The Long-Tail” in an effort to describe how companies such as Google and Overture effectively paired advertisers with potential customers through targeted keywords.
The holy grail of targeted marketing is catering each ad to the preferences of each individual (Vistas Unlimited in Plano has made some great advances in this area). These web firms essentially paired their large databases of keywords with an auction system which allowed advertisers to target their ads more effectively and with a potentially higher RoI.
This was in stark contrast to the shotgun approach used by incumbent search companies like Lycos and Alta Vista whom simply plastered ads comprising the most commonly used keywords (e.g. sex, mp3, britney spears). And when the dust settled, the keyword auction method became the de facto standard.
Interruption Advertising
Seth Godin, among others, has done a good job explaining the need for a change in how advertising is done. He coined the term “permission marketing” which is essentially an opt-in approach, one in which the marketer asks permission to engage potential clients.
Over the past several decades the traditional advertising approach used in media such as radio and television, was typically done by interrupting a program (or pop-ups in the case of the internet). Due to a shift in viewing habits (e.g. DVRs) and demographic groups, advertisers have now been forced to change (e.g. subtle product placement) and have used technology to further fine tune where ads are run in the first place (e.g. geo-location).
I mention this because Google and Yahoo have successfully used a toned down method of displaying advertisements that minimize disruptions while you search and visit websites. Their use of clearly defined advertisements also sets the tone for consumers, letting the customer ultimately initiate the sale-cycle (see also Pay-Per-Call).
Evolution schmevolution
How you target and who you target ads to — these are a yin-yang interconnected process that is continually being refined. And I suspect that much of what is being blamed on “click fraud” can be attributed to an inefficiency in the execution by one of these and not by conspiratorial underpant gnomes trying to destroy the system (1. Click Ads; 2. ???; 3. Profit!!!).
Be sure to also check out the video on Etre to see how the layout of your page can change viewing and click habits.
Here’s the deal, an actress by the name of Amanda Congdon was fired/recently quit from a video podcast show she hosted called “Rocketboom.” While the show was nothing revolutionary in terms of actual content (think: peppy girl talking about nerdy things), it had attracted a large following of geeks and bloggers. And over the last couple of days, everyone and their cousin has learned about the business relationship between Congdon and her partner Andrew Baron.
Who gives a shit, right?
Well, the Washington Post apparently had nothing to report yesterday and decided to write a blurb about this departure, as have a million other bloggers with too much time on their hand (see Technorati’s top searches).
What this has all amounted to is a bad high school break up that was aired out live onto the internets (Valleywag has certainly had fun with it). And for whatever reason, hoi polloi have forgotten that entertainment personalities leave all the time. People change jobs all the time. Shows evolve all the time.
It also shows two things. First, it illustrates just how boring the lives of most bloggers are in order for them to spread gossip about such a relatively mundane occurrence. Second, if Congdon’s show was one of the best (and I would argue that it was at least as good as Ze Frank) then it goes to show you the state of video podcasting is in. After all, there is a reason why most people podcasting are not high-paid radio or TV personalities in the first place, they are either really dull and/or ugly and therefore have little appeal to the masses (note: I’m all for by-passing the Gatekeepers).
Just a quick recap, Scoble used to work at Microsoft as a developer/evangelist/engineer and recently left the company for a podcasting start-up. His departure also caused a huge media orgy, which made little sense seeing as he was not trying to make any sort of statement to the top brass at MS.
Anyways, while I have zero inside knowledge as to why Google and other web firms did not appear at Gnomedex, I have a hunch: the convention is the equivalent of one-hand clapping or trying to hold a conversation in a vacuum. No one outside the blogosphere gives a crap about Chris Pirillo, tagging, podcasting, RSS, BitTorrent, etc. (this is not to say that Pirillo is a bad promoter of useful technology, I like the guy).
The thing is, I know hundreds of otherwise tech-savvy college students that have no desire to start or maintain a blog, podcast or anything of the sort and perhaps understanding this, Google decided not to waste money preaching to the choir. And as weird as it might sound to some hard-core bloggers, I predict that if I went to campus tomorrow and asked Tom, Dick and Harry what they think Amanda Congdon will do now, no one would know let alone care (kind of like Steven Levitt’s bet regarding his own fame).
Which now brings up the meme regarding why 99% of humanity does not use or care about “Web 2.0.” While there is no silver bullet answer, there is a common theme: priorities. Some people fear democide and have no property rights, let alone an internet connection. Others simply do not have the time or inclination to maintain one. So while “Web 2.0″ might be an inevitable step in unbundling the University, in the scheme of things, it is still rather low on the priority totem poll for most people.
Okay, dork
And just another example of how out of whack trends in the blogosphere are, Noah Kagan a web developer recently left Facebook, yet no one posted a thing about that. He was the only public blogger that had any kind of audience at that firm, a firm with a ginormous user base and one worth millions of dollars. No offense to Condgon et al., but uhh, Kagan actually is one of those movers and shakers guys, the kind like Scoble. Where is the outrage from the masses and a BBC interview?
My theory: as educated, cosmopolitan and erudite most bloggers think they are, in reality most are no different than the teeny boppers they lament. Because yammering on about the latest Lindsay Lohan faux pas and asking Amanda Congdon on a date in her comments section are the same thing.
So is this critical mass the sign of the times, some sort of rite of passage? Not really.
The burgeoning market of web personalities has actually been going on for years and represents a mature medium (how can one forget dotcomguy?). Heck, if more people like Mike Abundo took Seth Godin’s advice on “BrandYou” we might all have the great fortune of being the talk of the town, even receiving unsolicited bids from the likes of Jason Calacanis.
For those of you who haven’t seen the data, be sure to comb through David Sifry’s latest “State of the Blogosphere” report. Unlike the political counterparts to its namesake, he actually publishes zeitgeist-like trends a couple times each year and always unearths interesting factoids (such as the title of this post).
One nugget in particular that rings home to me is his mentioning of “splogs” or spam blogs. I hate them. I wish providers of “free blog service” would somehow rework their system to remove these from their databases and [temporarily] ban the creators IP address (similar to Wikipedia abusers). I know they have tried extra super-duper hard since Mark Cuban’s outcry months ago, but what do you say when almost 90% of the sites that link to your piece are automated bots adding no original content — just using you for a pagerank? Comment spam is also frustrating, but is more manageable from my end allowing bloggers to kill the devil before it spreads (i.e. I filter out what I want commented on and WordPress, among others, has an easy-to-use function for this capacity).
The only thing Sifry touts that I really don’t buy into the “tagging” system. I like it in theory, but I see it as too broad and too easily abused — just as meta-html-description-tags of yore. Adding the tag “Google,” “Microsoft” or “Apple” to a post does very little in telling potential readers what your story is about. Why? Because there is so much involving these companies, from lawsuits to innovations, that one word conveys little. I think it is perhaps the most overhyped feature of “Web 2.0” (aside from the very concept of “Web 2.0″ itself). For to-the-point people like myself, it does not help me locate the pithy thesis quickly or succinctly.
[Note: this is a test message from the Digg interface where you can apparently post an entry word-for-word straight into your own blog]
How will technologies such as podcasting, VoIP and OpenCourseWare affect their bottom line and their ability to stay competitive with online distance education programs? What role will digital libraries play in empowering independent scholars and researchers? These questions and many more are discussed in the following article.
I should start collecting a fine for every time someone says ‘Web 2.0‘… it’s utterly ridiculous. It reminds me of the ‘blogosphere‘ talking about social revolutions and such 2-3 years ago, yet few participants realized that they were simply talking to themselves. Or as one quote from The Simpsons reveals:
Milhouse: We gotta spread this stuff around. Let’s put it on the Internet!
Bart: No! We have to reach people whose opinions actually matter!
My main beef is not so much with the technology involved in this hub-bub, it’s the starry-eyed marketing push behind it.
Unfortunately, there are numerous tagging schemes used on websites or blogs that are seemingly worthless:
- “Folksonomy” tags - they are no different than meta-tags from the ’90s. The great thing about most search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN (GYM) is that they ignore these completely.
- Calendar archive tags (e.g. month-to-month, week-to-week)
- Category tags - these are redundant
- Trackbacks - great, 273 people linked to your article about an AJAX-based periodic table, trackbacks are not organized in any useful way; perhaps using the OWL-based Flash system that News.com has implemented can put them to some use
- Blogrolls - sure it’s nice to know who you read, but if left unorganized or extraordinarily long, are near meaningless (aside from boosting your PageRank)
Applications that actually implement tags in a useful manner:
For better and for worse, tags are here to stay – as they say, it is not the tool itself that necessarily has value, but what you do with that tool. Hopefully more tagging tools used in Flickr and Mechanical Turk will continue to sprout up (note: the Facebook now offers a feature that allows you to tag the individuals in a picture, which adds another dimension to the “popularity halo effect” that gives it more staying power in the long-run).
Just a quick post to prove that I am indeed alive, I highly recommend using the web-based RSS reader called “Bloglines.” If you have ever used a webmail client like Hotmail or Yahoo Mail it’s similar in style. You simply add feeds you are interested in and every 5 or so minutes the client pings the feeds to find updates. It is highly addictive, especially when you have numerous sites that update multiple times a day (basically you always have something to look forward to). Try it out and let me know what you think (Rojo is also slick as it uses “social bookmarks” like Flickr).
Among other professions, my dad has a background in engineering (received a EE from U of Washington in the early ’70s). He and I, despite our personality differences, share many of the same kind of creative imaginations — continuously concocting some hair-brained scheme. Throughout the past 25 years he has tried, failed and succeeded in more endeavors than anyone I can think of in all the history I have sifted through. If a movie were to ever be made of his life, I could think of nothing other than “Meet the Parents” mixed into a business environment — coming so close that it hurts. And now I can see how he must feel time and again when that eureka becomes someone else’s (i.e. in the early ‘80s he visited Japan and thereafter contacted various American car manufactures, noting that there was a large market for minivans – all of which fell on deaf ears).
Well, my moment came today while reading a story at News.com on the Gawker blog phenomenon:
The simplicity of the model may be why Denton is alternately guarded and dismissive of all the hype surrounding blogs. He seems to recognize that he is not up to anything particularly trailblazing, and that it’s only a matter of time before others catch on. Competitors like Jason Calacanis’ Weblogs, with its network of more than 70 consumer and niche blogs, are already copying the Gawker model.The idea of grouping the blogs, Denton said, was to give the company an air of respectability. “The only reason we’re listed as a group at all is for advertisers,” he said. “Advertisers treat Gawker titles more seriously because it’s part of a group.”
Let me tell you a story about a company called Collectrix.
2.5 years ago I hatched an idea of selling various wares online, notably collectible cards (i.e. Magic: The Gathering). Collectrix seemed like one of those names that fit the bill and was available for procurement (check out DeletedDomains.com for a list of some graveyard names that can be purchased). A long story short, because of how the supply-chain works within that industry, card makers (such as Upper Deck) frown upon virtual stores and would therefore charge Collectrix retail prices (as opposed to wholesale). In fact, because of how I wanted to cut out the middleman, I seemed to make an enemy, with of all people: Steve Jackson (read up on how he got shafted by some spooks).
Anyways, so I had this domain but nothing to do with it.
Then some buddies of mine asked if they could have a subdomain and email address through movementarian.com. At around the same time I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the editorial policy at movementarian.com. For those unfamiliar with this site, in the summer of 2002 I started a satire-esque website after being spurred by various events in my own life and from some of the more nuttier things found in the zeitgeist (such as religious zealots and the upcoming Iraq War). So back-tracking a couple of months…
It was one thing to have this idea of creating a more libertarian version of The Onion and another to implement it. Thus around July of 2002, I turned to my trusty dirt-cheap technically-inclined Ukrainian immigrant guru, David Veksler. Another long story short, David is hard working guy that can pretty much handle any task, but he and I were ideologically worlds apart. The agreement for the ultimate editorial authority on the site culminated into one of those regrettable 50/50 decisions – since he would do the work for free, he was entitled to censor stories he felt that failed his litmus test (he is an Objectivist).
Anyways, after having several stories rejected and deleted from the main website I decided to turn to my own personal blog under the current subdomain. This decision was ultimately made during the first few months of 2003. For those doing the math, March was D-Day for the Iraq War. And this is what I had concocted.
I purchased about a dozen domains covering everything from the university world (AggieBlog.com, BevoBlog.com) to open-source software (GNUBlog.com). From these central sites I planned on setting up subdomain’s from interested parties and then link all their content together through RSS/XML feeds – pointing back to a main page. Thus, I would have effectively created community portals, complete with their own forum and central unifying theme (somewhat similar to what Geocities did back in the day but with more freedom for unlimited customization).
But I also wanted to make a concerted effort to put together blogs that could capitalize off of the information that would soon transcend from the soon-to-be war in Iraq, primarily from the perspective that it was avoidable and foolhardy. This ultimately never happened due to time constraints and a lack of technical coordination (though it did not help having a pro-war contractor building an anti-war community).
From a business model perspective, bandwidth and storage space were fixed costs which in the long run were relatively low. The software was free (i.e. Blogger, WordPress, MovableType) and publicity/traffic was easy to come by (I struck up a couple partnerships out-of-the-blue and Google liked blogs). All the sign-up, registration and blog set-up could be automated leaving the only variable costs for customer service. Therefore, profit margins were high and still are to this day [note: do not let anyone tell you that it costs oodles of money to maintain a website; in fact, patronize this guy – he took over the clients I dropped during a crazy fiasco a year later -- his rates are the kind you should compare everyone else to].
Anyways, the main idea was that Collectrix would set-up these communities based around a central theme, sell easy-to-use hosting packages for bloggers. Each of these bloggers would have links to one another (i.e. blogroll) which in turn increases their Google ranking (be sure to read up on PageRank). So in addition to receiving residual income through web hosting, advertising now comes into the equation.
At one point I was approached (emailed) by two different companies wanting to advertise across the entire network of sites for several thousand dollars per year. At the time of their propositions (September of 2003), I was gearing back up to return to graduate school and put this on the backburner. This idea ultimately fell apart when my upstream bandwidth provider dropped all of his clients for who knows what reason (to this day I have no idea what happened to him).
However other entrepreneurs have stepped in and done the same thing (i.e. Weblogs inc). And it has even evolved.
For instance, here is another idea spawned from putting together digital automation and the semantic web. If done properly, you can create countless websites with legitimate content by simply aggregating topical news, bypassing the need for any human editor overhead. For instance, if you wanted to make a blog discussing baseball cards you would search for all the RSS/XML feeds that were produced by sources on this topic. Then you would build a database that would filter and collate the news. Then you would assign some sort of hierarchy point system for a given authority (i.e. more authority/relevance points are given to the source if the information comes from a dealer). I suspect that this is the basic idea by which aggregators like News.Google operate with.
The only tricky part is filtering out the signals from the noise and if nothing else, which would be one of the tasks left to an editor (i.e. sift through headlines and repost snippets of the articles). When the visions of the semantic web come into existence (i.e. real AI agents) then even the lowly task of responding to emails could even be delegated to these digital assistants.
More to the point, earlier this year I actually emailed Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit regarding this topic. I asked if he simply aggregated news dealing with set topics (i.e. Iraq War, papacy) and merely cut-and-paste a snippet of the article onto his site. While he never replied, the idea of creating a databank of pithy statements is another doable solution made possible by MySQL and PHP. Plus, through the use of AdSense, you as a website operator do not have to try and solicit advertisers business. Everything is done for you through generated code that can be cut-and-paste into the blog system. Quick, easy and painless.
And recently, an associate and I put together a website that did just that; though, due to legal liabilities I cannot divulge what it is called. But that is besides the point as this type of service is easy to setup so as long as you know how to operate a webserver. In fact, I would not be surprised if some aggregate-management system is created through the open-source community in the near future (all you would have to do is modify blogging and database software).
So here is to a brave new world of automated news junkie content provided to desk jockeys from sea to shining sea. Next time I will be sure to patent this method of allocating and distributing information — bunch of terrorist thieves!
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I thought I’d help all my fellow bloggers out there and point to some new plugins that will help aide in stifling our most loyal readers: spam bots.
The ever-geeky Anders Jacobsen pointed to some Movable Type and Word Press utilities that are quick, easy and painless to install (even for a wannabe nerd like myself).
Let me know how those turn out or if you know of any other ones on the burner (I also use Farook’s WPBlacklist and recommend Jay Allen’s MT equivalent).
This weekend Mike Ewens is helping me move the blog from Movable Type to Word Press. Everything (knock on wood) seems to be going smoothly — the most annoying thing is having to import my staple+tape blogroll.
So in the meantime, I tried to find the worst Geocities-esque “Under Construction” picture to show off:
That one is winning because if you zoom in close enough, the creator didn’t bother chunking the hovering mouse image.
I really wanted to do an April Fools post, something along the lines of me moving back to America and joining the Marines and/or the IRS.
These included:
Apparently I really enjoy making lists, plus it helps me procrastinate a little more before I respond to some lengthy emails (NASA has some “
Do you know someone who is fighting, has survived, or died from pirate attacks?
One of the popular memes being discussed today in the blogosphere is the seemingly contrarian statement from Eric Schmidt of Google 
For those of you who haven’t seen the data, be sure to comb through 
[Note: this is a test message from the 
I should start collecting a fine for every time someone says ‘
Just a quick post to prove that I am indeed alive, I highly recommend using the web-based 
