Internet Shopping - a bLaugh Comic

Another Cup of tea spilt on my desk…

Scoble’s Phantom Links

You may or may not have read Scoble rant here about Techmeme not putting most linked stories on its front page.

TechMeme (which started out as a blog news engine) has totally switched its focus away from blogs. I’m tracking the Plaxo news. I was among the first two sites out with news about Plaxo’s new 3.0 platform. I have the only videos. Posted two of them. I have one of the first real reviews. Google’s blog search shows I have the most inbound links. Om Malik, who posted a story about Plaxo two hours after I did, even linked to me.

Yet the top article right now? One by the Register which doesn’t even have comments and doesn’t link out and doesn’t have screen captures (like other articles do) and doesn’t have video and doesn’t even have any real news.

You can read Doc Searls respond to Scoble about this:

And some don’t bother to play at all. Yours truly, for example. I don’t follow Techmeme, Digg, Memeorandum or TechCrunch any more than I once didn’t follow Daypop or Slashdot. Somewhere way back there I began following topics more than bloggers. Last couple of weeks or so, for example, I followed Supernova and VRM, together, because VRM was a subject of special interest to me that was discussed at Supernova. If in the course of looking into topics I run into one of the popularity-following (or -making) sites, I’ll go there. But I don’t start there.

…

Every one of these valuation engines has its own weighting system, of course. But many links from many bloggers does not true authority make, especially when the system is gamed in the manner that Kent nails rather well. We’ve gone from SEO (search engine optimization) to BVE (buzz volume elevation). The results are often useful, but they can also turn the blogosphere into high school.

In his post he links to Kent Newsome’s hilarious post about this:

Scoble says he has all the inbound links and ought to be the top story about whatever the top story is at the moment.  He’s said basically the same thing before.  Here’s the problem with that: Scoble could write a post about arm farting and 30 or 40 people would immediately link to it, hoping he might link back.  Scoble has more yes men than Michael Corleone and Michael Arrington combined.

In other words, all those people linking wildly to Scoble aren’t doing so because they think he is the world’s greatest authority on arm farting.  They are simply holding out their hands eagerly and hoping Scoble will shake it (via a link) as he walks by.  Getting a link from Scoble is almost as good as getting arrested with Paris Hilton.  It’s not Scoble’s fault he’s the king of the blogosphere any more than it’s Paris Hilton’s fault she’s in jail.

 

But none of this is a sound basis for deciding what is top news and what isn’t.  There needs to be more to it.  There needs to be a balance between popularity, authority, freshness and inclusion.  Most of the target audience for Techmeme already subscribe to Scoble’s blog.  They are at Techmeme looking to see what others are saying about various topics.  And let’s not kid ourselves, a ton of Techmeme readers are bloggers who want to be included in the conversation.  To remove the opportunity for inclusion would change Techmeme in a fundamental and adverse way

Unfortunately no one has yet come up with a magic silver bullet or ( if I may mix my metaphors) the PageRank for blogs. Its a though problem to solve. Do you crawl the linking websites to see if they actually talking about Scoble’s expertise Arm Farting, or is it simply a link farm blog? Come to think of it, how do translate a blogs authority? Page views? Subscriber stats (Google will have no doubt added this in to their blog search)?

Authority is more perception than anything else.  You can’t get an algorithm to perceive the difference between Bush’s authority and Scoble’s ( that is authority as in “do people listen”).

Hey Robert, now that you’ve got  2 days on your hands, how about some arm farting lessons?

PodTech:Demo of VMWare\’s latest virtualization technology

PodTech:A talk with VMWare\’s lead geek

I have a Windows Home Server Vision

While I’m not that concerned about offsite backup for my Window Home Server. The problem has been dealt with in detail by a few fellow beta testers.

Check out a detailed look at the problem here and a further look at setting up IDrive-E with WHS ( the chosen solution) here.

Now, it seems pretty clear that an offsite back-up solution is a gaping hole in Windows Home Server. This is the case for one of two reasons. Either Microsoft deliberately decided that it was not going to bother ( possible, but unlikely in my view). or Microsoft has something up its sleeves ( if not for this first release of WHS, then then for the next one).

Now entirely by coincidence (sarcasm intended), Microsoft announced a limited private beta of its Live Folders service.

At the moment its limited to 500Mb of storage.

What if Microsoft integrates the two services together (Live Folders +WHS)? I mean, think of it.

• Your OS files don’t need to be uploaded since Microsoft already has the original files (Since you are using a Microsoft OS). Only the Changes need to be backed up.
• Microsoft products like Visual Studio, Office and Flight Simulator ( all three are the largest installed programs on my PC) don’t need to go since Microsoft already has the original files
• This leaves us with your personal files. Once all your stuff is up, only changes need to be moved, making it much faster.

Once 20 Million households (the current MS estimate for the WHS market) all upload their data, Microsoft can literally organize the worlds data far more conveniently than Google.

Not that I’m being alarmist, but its a scary thought.

I can see Google coming out with a similar app, but in the form of a Universal Binary to reach a cross-platform audience (case in point - a friend of mine mistakenly reformatted a UNIX drive. WHS could not have been used to recover lost data. Any suggestions on recovering the data on the drive?).

In closing, Mary Jo Foley says, ominously:

Software+Services (S+S) is Microsoft’s alternative to software-as-a-service (SaaS). Unlike Google, Salesforce.com and other pure-play Web 2.0 companies, Microsoft is making sure that there’s both a services and a software component to all of its products, going forward. That’s the crux of S+S.

Shel Isreal needs help

Shel’s engaged in a new project to, in his words:

I have 60 days to produce three anecdotal research reports on The Americas; Asia Pacific and Europe-Mediterranean-West Asia and I need your help.

A report on what?

Here’s what I am doing.  I am trying to answer a single, overwhelming question: “What is going on in the world with regard to social media? I am looking for useful statistics, but those are often outdated before they are published as we learned with the book.

And Shel needs our help on this project:

I suggested to Mike that we conduct and report on this project, transparently, online on this site in the same way Robert and I wrote Naked Conversations. If the book had magic, had not come from the research or the actual writing.  It came from the collaboration we had shared with the blogosphere.  Bloggers gave us leads. They corrected the facts.  They let us know when we were making valid points and when we had gone over the top.

I proposed that we do the SAP Global Social Media Research on this blog, in collaboration with the blogosphere, that we do it transparently and that what we find we share on this blog. This, as far as I know, would differentiate it from any market research and the process in itself would become an example of thought leadership.

…

I want your stories.  For those of you who started reading this blog after the book was published, I interviewed most of the people in a Q & A style and posted them on this site.  Then other people left comments.  Those interviews got incorporated into chapters.  Early versions of the chapters were then posted and we received more comments before finalizing the chapter.

So, please start those cards and letters coming now.  If you have a story that reveals something about blogging, blogging trends in any country of the world please let me know.  SAP is more interested in business than consumer, but what people are doing is  valuable in that it shapes  all markets. You are encouraged to leave a comment here.  If you are shy you can email me at shelisrael1@gmail.com.

 

I’m looking forward to seeing this unfold ( I missed this the first time around with Naked Conversations). I fully intend to participate.

Well, what are you waiting for?

iPhone Watch

Lets see what iPhone news I can find this morning.

Although Jobs announced that no SDK would be release for the iPhone, thee are a number of web applications that have been announced.

Don Farber points out that Etelos has made sure that its CRM App runs on the iPhone.

Don says:

the ideal use for the iPhone and Etelos is “listening to iTunes while sending out a group message to your prospects while riding a ferry across Puget Sound.”

Ajaxian points us to a list of iPhone Apps that is already exhaustive.

Mary  Jo Foley has the scoop that Exchange and the iPhone will play nicely. This is an obvious move for Microsoft as it wants to ensure the widest  possible distribution of Exchange ( Even if Mitch Kapor doesn’t like it and is building a replacement , but I digress)

Continuing the speculation over iPhone licensing, Don MacAskill complains loudly that there are no corporate licensing terms for the iPhone.

He says:

I’m so bummed. We’ve got our sleeping bags ready to go so we can get iPhones for the SmugMuggers. We even have SmugMuggers who flew in from out of town so they could join the party on University Avenue (click that link, it’s worth it). Like most companies, we have a corporate plan with AT&T so we can share minutes, save money, etc etc.

They won’t sell us iPhones. Not one phone, not twenty phones. For any price. At all. Neither will Apple.

 

Which is really strange. Apple and AT&T should be trying to get as many people as possible to get an iPhone. On the other hand, as one of Don’s commenters points out,  AT&T could be waiting for the semi-religious demand to die down before coming out with a business offering. It make sense to get the phone out to the masses.

Talking of an iPhone SDK, Simon Brocklehurst says :

As I’ve said before,  iPhone will be an incredible device to develop applications for; and, Apple simply won’t be able to develop all the great new applications themsleves.  Neither will Apple have the bandwidth to build one-to-one relationships with many software development companies in ways that make the economics work.   So, Apple will need to come up with ways of helping any developer to build great native applications for iPhone.

Scoble comments in Don’s post and asks if anyone is brings a generator to charge everyone’s devices  while they wait in line

This is the smallest subset of iPhone news available. Just a few things I found interesting. More as the news comes in.