Today, all most of these networks have a place.  Obviously Facebook is kicking ass. MySpace still has tens of millions of users, many some of them active. Even Friendster, for instance, is insanely popular in the Philippines.  Orkut, Google’s social network is very big in Brazil (though Facebook’s presence is growing there.) But what has become of Tagworld?  Nothing good.

Tagworld was a big deal at one point – big enough to secure $7.5 million in VC funding form Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  They differentiated via their widget platform (among other features).  Tagworld morphed into “Social Project” in 2007, and was later purchased by Viacom who also had a stake in the company.  Today, Social Project primarily focuses on a product called Flux, which “lets content creators build unique, customized, connected communities to grow their audience.”  Whatever.

What’s interesting is that some people do seem to still visit Tagworld – to me though, the site seems effectively dead.  If you visit the home page, you’re greeted with a stunning bit of verbiage (look to the right.) To me, between the lines this says: “we’re over it – if you want to keep using it, run it yourself.”  Some members do seem to visit and update their profiles – many of the public profiles on the homepage have updates newer than the last 24 hours.  One of these has a post that’s only 20 hours old.  Interestingly though, her most recent comment says: “I will never understand tag world :[ soooo confusing"  Ha!

Tagworld turned itself into Social Project, and got bought by Viacom to make a product called Flux.  Ok, cool.  Got it.  But the fact is, Tagworld is done.  Users don't know how it works. They've turned over operations to the user community.  There isn't any link to "About Us." And if you look at Compete scores, they're below 15K uniques. (Forget about Social Project [thought it wasn't intended to be a destination site seemingly.])  It’s bigger than 1to10, but not real good for a social network.  If anyone at Viacom is listening (unlikely) just close it down.  It’s done.  Stick a fork in it .

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When I first joined MySpace in 2005, it was relatively new, and allowed me to connect with a lot of people I hadn’t seen a long time.  Facebook was only available for college students.  Social networking was still a young-ish enterprise, and no one had ever tweeted. Ever.  Hard to believe.

MySpace quickly became less fun as more and more profiles turned janky, and more and more fake profiles started asking me to be their friend.  You it’s relatively easy to tell when a fake profile wants to friend you, because it will have a profile picture  that looks like a model’s head shot, and they have only 3 friends.  The same thing happens on Twitter – same kind of profile pic, and though they’re following 3,000 people, they in turn have only 7 followers (hapless schmucks who most likely have auto-follow turned on.)

Now, for the first time since I’ve been using Facebook (~3 years) I got a MySpace-style spam friend request.  See picture on the right.  I’m pretty sure I don’t know that person – I’d remember a stunningly hot woman named Miles Michaels.  And I notice that the fan pages “she” is following are both for clubs in Las Vegas.  Huh.  What do you know.

I was surprised to get this request, and kinda bummed.  I don’t spend as much time on Facebook as I used, but as it becomes pervasive enough for even my Dad to to have a profile, it’s increasingly useful as a way to share information (like pictures of my new dog, Cash.)

If I had to give this a rating between 1 and 10, I’d call it a 2.  Spam is lame in all it’s varieties, and Facebook is no exception.

Post Script:

If anyone believes that I’m wrong, and Miles is actually a sensitive, passionate woman who deserves friendship like anyone else, here’s her info.  Have at it:

Basic Information:

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Today 12seconds launched a new app in the iTunes app store. It’s called 12mail, and you can download it from iTunes here.

I know that I’m biased, being that I work with the company and all, but I do believe that this app has incredible potential – it offers a new medium for communication. It’s like video visual voicemail.  It leverages all of your friends in Twitter and Facebook to build your list of “contacts.”   You can then send short videos (twelve seconds long) to those people.  If they also have the 12mail app, they’ll be able to watch the video right there on the phone.  If not, they’ll either a.) receive a DM on Twitter with a link to the video (private) or b.) a wall post on their Facebook profile (public)

Combining the ability to record and send video with the social networks you’ve built up on services like Twitter and Facebook is an excellent move.  And the twelve second limitation on the length of videos works to your advantage on a mobile device.  It’s quick to upload when you’re sending, even over clunky old EDGE.  And it’s very fast to buffer and stream when you’re on the receiving end.

Sol, Jakey, Ethan and the rest of the team have worked really hard to put this app together, and I think the effort was well spent.  A number of different folks in the press and blogosphere have covered the app today, including Cult of Mac, AppleTell, Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Download Squad, and a bunch of others. I have no qualms giving this app a 10 out of 10.  If you think I’m biased, well, you’re right.  Don’t care.

A sample video I shot is below, as is a SRIBD doc that walks through the entire app.  Check ‘em out.

You should get 12mail for your iPhone. on 12seconds.tv

12mail Overview

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On a scale of 1 to 10, more people should really be backing up their hard drives.

You know you should.  We all know we should, but most of us rarely do.  If you go into a room of 10 people and ask: “Do any of you back up your hard drives?”, usually only 2 or 3 people will raise their hands.  If you ask a followup question: “Have any of you ever lost data or had a catastrophic hard drive failure?”  I’ll lay down a bet that the same 2-3 people raise their hands.  My friend Jeremy likes to say that “people don’t like to think about loss – it’s depressing, and our minds just don’t want to go that direction.”  I agree.  Most of the time it takes a severe loss of data to make someone a true believer when it comes to data backup and redundancy.

To fight that apathy, I am making September “Back It Up” month on 1to10reviews.  This month’s posts will all be related to storage solutions, data backup, and other related topics.  This will cover the gamut from:

- cloud-based storage solutions like Box.net

-to external HDD (Hard Disk Drives) from companies like Seagate and Maxtor

- and heavy-duty solutions like RAID, NAS (network attached storage) boxes and DROBO

Many people in September will be thinking about back to school.  Folks in Quahog are starting to worry about those damn leafers from New York.  But here on 1to10, we’re going to explore the depths and variegated folds of that tortured terrain called data backup and storage. If you have comments, objections, personal horror stories or other ideas to contribute (things you’d like us to review) let us know.  You can comment on a post, or email us at: david [AT] 1to10reviews [DOT] com

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Cautionary note: this post contains profanity. A 28 year-old guy named Justin is writing down the things his 73 year old Dad says and sharing them on Twitter. His feed is titled “Shit My Dad Says.”  The tweets are awesome.  Justin’s Dad is awesome.  I can only surmise that Justin must be awesome as well, despite Dad’s frequent and colorful critiques. As of the time of this post, he has 129, 825 followers (Yes, that’s more than pictured below.  Since I took the screenshot below, he’s gotten 429 new followers. Dude.)

This is my favorite tweet.  It has a personal connection to me, to Sol, and to our buddy Joel.  If I were forced to give this a numeric rating from 1to10, it would be a 10.  No holds barred.  Justin is the man right now, and so is his Dad.

Update:

Techcrunch picked up this story on August 28th, and graciously gave a link back.  Following that, the LA Times also covered this phenomenon on September 2nd.  According to Mark Milian at the Times, Justin’s in coversation for a book deal.  Mazel Tov!

Also, at the time of this update, Justin has more than doubled his Twitter followers since my original post.  He’s currently at 308,955 followers.  Egad.

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eStarling makes several WiFi connected digital photo frames, and I’ve been playing with their Impact V for a bit.  I’m impressed.

From the moment you open the box, eStarling does a pretty good job holding your hand and making use of the frame pretty simple.  You have all the usual options for displaying pictures that past digital frames have lead us to expect, including memory card slots that accommodate a couple different card types (SD, MS, MMC.)  But what’s way more interesting to me is the wireless and social mechanisms for displaying pictures.

When you pull the device out of the box, a greeting card immediately invites you to plug in the frame and connect it to your wifi connection (beware: this frame is much cooler if you have a wifi network.)  Once you’re connected, the frame prompts you to visit their website and activate your account.  Once you do you will get an email address dedicated to your frame, and you (or your friends and family) can email pictures to your frame.  You can also log into your account on their website to upload pictures from your computer to your eStarling account – these will then appear on your frame (it took my pictures about 15 minutes to show up.)  One of the neatest features is the social component – you can link your frame to a variety of social websites and services, including Facebook, Flickr, Phtobucket, Picassa, Twitter (not sure about this one), YouTube and more.   In addition to these services, you can also subscribe to RSS feeds – popular ones like National Geographic or even a user-designated feed.  You can also post small videos to play on your frame if you so choose.

I did have some issues with some of the social services.  For instance, I linked my Flickr account to my eStarling frame.  It was a pretty simple, one-click connection which presumably links up eStarling’s service with Flickrs API.  Two issues presented themselves though:

1. After clicking through the Flickr to link up the accounts, instead of a “Success, awesome job, well done!” screen, I was presented with a page full of gibberish.  There was no message to tell me whether I had successfully linked the account.  I didn’t know for sure until photos started appearing on the frame.

2. When those photos did appear, they weren’t mine.  They were photos of friends mine, people to whom I am linked on Flickr.  But none of my own photos made it into the frame.  Now, I like my friends and all, but I don’t need their photos on my frame.  Whether it’s going to sit in my home, or in my parent’s home, I want my own pictures on my frame.

Ultimately I was forced to use the “custom RSS” feature and take my Flickr account’s own RSS feed and manually link that with my frame.  Even after doing that, only my most recent set (about 20 pictures or so) showed up on the frame.  I don’t really know how to pull specific sets or additional photos from Flickr into the frame.

The frame has an eight inch display (800×600 pixels) and the clarity is pretty darn sharp. (Any blurring in the images in this post is due to the photographer, not the frame.)  It’s a touch screen interface, and there are light-up touch screen buttons along the right side.  You must use the touch screen in order to connect to the wireless network, but almost everything else can be accomplished through eStarling’s web portal.   The touch buttons let you skip through photos, or jump back to menus to select specifc photos, or access settings for the frame.  But I found the touch buttons a little finicky to use – fortunately the included remote also allows you to control action on the frame.

Lastly, there’s packaging.  In the unboxing I discovered very little wasteful or non-recyclable material.  There was one small piece of closed-cell foam for padding, and a foam sleeve for the frame.  Everything else was cardboard, including the majority of the boxe’s padding.  5 gold stars for being conscious of the environment.

Overall I was impressed with the frame.  The picture clarity, the simple setup, and the social components were all fantastic.  I love that it’s wifi, and I dig the fact that I can update the photos remotely, up to and including if the frame is in another state (or country.)  However, I do think the web interface and tools need a little refinement.  They are feature-rich but lacking in the fine points of usability.  Some improvements could include better feedback to user actions (letting you know if you succeeded in linking an account), and better fine-tuning of services (to include / exclude friends’ photos, etc.)  They don’t need more options, they just need to refine and improve the ones they’ve got.

eStarling Wireless Digital Photo Frame on 12seconds.tv

Daniel Lim at Slashgear also wrote a nice review of this frame. If I were forced to give this frame a numeric rating, something which I am loathe to do, I would give it an 8 out of 10. They did a good job.  I just hope they keep improving the little sucker.

This post is also available on LIVEdigitally.

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On a scale from 1 to 10, 12seconds has done something really cool.

Today 12seconds.tv has done a few cool things:

1. They’ve re-designed their website – cool new look and feel, with a strong focus on video consumption
2. They’ve concluded their invite-only Alpha phase and opened up in a public Beta where anyone can register and use the site

3. They’ve had their iPhone application approved and launched in the iTunes App Store (for $0.99)

I’m happy for their progress from Alpha to Beta, and I think the re-design looks great.  But I’m most excited about the iPhone app.  You all know (both of you) that I’m an iPhone user, and one of my few frustrations with the device has always been the lack of a video recorder.  Apple steadfastly refuses to release one, and there’s no third-party video recording application available (unless you choose to jailbreak your phone.) This annoys me.

12seconds did not manage to sneak a video recorder through Apple’s QA team.  But they did create about the best possible workaround.  App users will take 3 photos (or choose 3 from their picture library), record twelve seconds of audio, and then post their creation to their 12seconds account (unregistered folks can create an account on the fly, in their phone.)  Somewhere in the cloud, the pics and audio are combined and then spit out as a twelve second video slideshow.  Users can email a link to their video directly from their phone  Each video has it’s own unique URL on 12seconds.tv, and can be emailed, embedded (as HTML) or downloaded onto your hard drive.  Here’s a demo of how the app works:

iphone app for 12seconds.tv from Sol Lipman on Vimeo.

One thing I really like about this app is the story telling aspect.  The series of pictures with audio narration really give you that James Earl Jones feeling of comfort.  Also, if you flub the audio and need to re-record, you can do so as many times as you like.  With traditional video, if you blow it, it’s blown.  The moment has passed.  Here’s one video I recorded with a trial version of the app:

Cold Cuts – Chinese Food Style on 12seconds.tv

The app is a first draft.  It works, and it’s intuitive, but there are some features I’d like to see added, including wanting better flexibility in choosing photos and saving drafts.  But on the whole I think the app is very usable.  There’s just room to improve.

Kudos to the 12seconds team on a great launch and a cool app.  This is the best solution to the video-recording conundrum that Apple’s created that I’ve seen yet.  If I were forced to give the iPhone app a numeric score between 1 and 10, I’d call it an 8

Related Posts:

MG Siegler at VentureBeat

Greg Kumparak at MobileCrunch

Rodney Rumford at Face Reviews

This post is also published on LIVEdigitally.

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Wait, hold on.  Let me explain.

While on Facebook, I saw an advertisement related to rock climbing.  I like rock climbing.  So I said to myself: “Why don’t you check that out.”  The ad suggested that the advertisers in question were seeking Beta testers to check out their new rock climbing-based social network.  I then thought to myself: “You’re on a social network right now.  Maybe this one would be cool too.”

So I clicked.  I was taken to a site offering me a free T-shirt to become a beta tester.  Interesting.  Not great.  Just interesting.  That’s a pretty old-fashioned marketing technique for a web 2.0-style site.  But hey, I wear t-shirts all the time.  And clearly these guys are not appealing to Twittering tech geeks (at least, not unless they also climb rocks.)  They are going after a niche (technically, it will have to be a niche within a niche, those who like rock climbing, and who also frequent the internet / social networking world.)  So, they decided to throw some marketing dollars into it.  I sort of get that – I guess.  I mean, they are going after a tough to reach audience.  Kinda.

What really threw me for a loop was the scammy, “sign up for 2 or more credit cards” advertisement I was shown right after I signed up for the Beta.  I gave them my info (email, DOB, gender, the basics), hit submit, and was immediately shown an advertisement displaying an awesome package deal of rock climbing gear, as long as I sign up for at least 2 services, for a fee of no more than $5.  Super ghetto.  Giant turn off.  Totally inappropriate.

I just find the whole thing frankly weird.  Are they trying to make ad money already?   On the signups to the private Beta they haven’t finished offering?  They’re throwing money away on the one hand (paying for ads they don’t really need,) and then trying to re-coup it in a totally inappropriate way on the other (serving creepy, spam ads.)  Here’s what I don’t understand:

• Crankjam is advertising on facebook for beta testers?  $$$
• Crankjam is giving away a free t-shirt for beta testing?  $$$
• Crankjam is pushing credit card schemes (and netflix memberships) after Beta signup?  Too weird.

Now I’m not just trying to be a pill here.  I like rock climbing.  And I like social networking.  I think it could be a great site.  I just don’t understand what they’re doing – seems like they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.  Why are they buying ads on Facebook to recruit for their private beta?  More importantly, why are they serving spam ads right after.  Here’s some of the things I think they should be doing:

• Use free social media: Twitter, FriendFeed, FB fan pages, Jaiku, Pownce, Message Boards, Discussion Forums, make a funny video on Youtube, create a channel on 12seconds - there’s all kinds of social media and services with which to create community and market yourself.  The key here is to be active in the community, spend time there, follow people, listen to what they say, and make sure they know you’re a real person, not a spam bot.  Then ask them questions.  What do you think of this idea?  Do you know anyone who likes rock climbing?  Get some real market data, and recruit some real Beta testers.
• Partner up with other people – do a little Business Development.  Reach out to the admins at rock climbing forums and retailers – tell them you want to trade some ad space and partner up.  You’re creating a rock climbing social network.  They sell gear to rock climbers (or provide a locale for them to gather and share thoughts.)  It’s a good fit and a win-win situation.
• Contact University groups – every college campus in America has a rock climbing club, rock wall, rock gym, etc.  Every one of those groups has young people who like to climb, every one of which uses the internet on a daily basis.  That’s your target audience.  Recruit them.  Buy them pizza (instead of FB ads) and recruit there.

This is the news announcement they’ve issued, and there’s an excerpt below.  Crankjam is a mass producer of niche social networks based in Columbia, South Carolina.  Lifefitter in turn seems to be a product of another “incubator” called LoudDoor, also based in South Carolina.  Now, the Lifefitter guys seem to sort of “get it.”  They have a blog.  And they’re even writing some posts that express expertise and understanding of their space.  Kudos, that’s sincerely excellent.  They are creating a bunch of niched social networks, online communities for the outdoor (and technologically) minded.  Cool.  Personally I think Ning makes more sense, where existing communities can form their own online social network, but there’s a place for this product too.  It’s even a cool idea.

However, this spammy approach is creepy, up and down. It’s disconcerting.  If I had to give this a numeric rating, on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d call it a 2.  And that’s without ever getting a chance to see the product itself.  Purely based on the experience of finding and signing up for the Beta, I am truly uncomfortable.

New

Lifefitter to release CrankJam, a social network for rock climbers, in private beta.

Columbia, SC: Today, Lifefitter Networks announced CrankJam, a new social network dedicated to the rock climbing community. The site is accepting requests for invitations to the beta program and will be released in private beta within the next 45 days.

“Rock climbing is such an intense sport, it takes a lot of guts to go out and climb all over the world,” said General Manager Bobby Redfern.

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On a scale from 1 to 10, I am mildly impressed.  I just saw that Chrome was live and available for download, so I gave it a test run.  

I’m going to keep this pretty short, as Walt Mossberg already did a wonderful review of Chrome for the Wall Street Journal, but I’d like to share my initial impressions.  On first blush, the new Google web browser, Chrome, is pretty plain jain.  They’ve kept the user interface wonderfully simple, which is very much in keeping with the Google heritage (remember the very first Google search page?  Actually, it doesn’t look all that different now, does it?)

Like Firefox, Safari, and (now) even the venerable Internet Explorer, Chrome uses tabbed browsing.   They’ve tried a new mechanism wherein tabs that are opened from links on a single page all remain grouped together, which is a nice feature.  Also, when a new tab is opened, rather than a blank page, Chrome offers thumbnailed versions of websites you’ve visited previously, trying to anticipate where you want to go.  It’s a neat feature, sort of like a widgetized view with non-functional widgets cum bookmarks.  

In terms of performance, the browser seems stable enough.  If I have the time and the wherewithal, I may try to do some benchmarks tests on memory leakage.  My favorite browser by far (almost exclusively) is Firefox, but it leaks like a sonofabitch, and if too many tabs are open for too long, I find that it starts using many MB’s of RAM.   As you can see from this screenshot of my task manager, Firefox is already using over 300,000K, and that’s after being open for about 30 seconds.  Interestingly, Chrome seems to be also using many kilobytes of memory, but it’s split into numerous different processes.  Someone a lot smarter than me needs to explain that, but my (distinctly ignorant and amateurish) guess would be that by splitting the usage among a variety of processes, it’s less likely that a machine will choke on a single point.   I believe each instance represents a different tab, which explains the ability to set individual tabs as “mini applications” that can stand alone in your start menu.  I’ve not yet played with that feature, but it sounds cool, and reminds me of Fluid for Safari (on OSX Leopard.) 

A little bit of brief blog searching (courtesy of Google) shows that other people have explored this issue as well.  Pdileepa wrote a neat post and mentioned a cool “just for nerds feature” available by hitting shift+ESC. Newsvine explored the memory use as well in their post reviewing the new browser.  Comment from the more educated masses are very welcome. 

In theory, Chrome is supposed to offer a Java-friendly browsing experience (Java script is a software development language, popular for building modern websites.)  Google is apparently looking to the future when the browser is a true operating system, and cloud computing can compete effectively with a traditional OS like Windows, OSX, Ubuntu, and others.   From what I’ve read these Javaphilic benefits are largely invisible at the moment, for the vast majority of websites currently extant.   But they’re the wave of the future…

However, even for the time being Chrome is a useful addition to the web browising space.  I’m interested to see how my opinion shapes over time, and to see how Chrome performs under more stringent tests.  But as I said, I’m mildly impressed.  If I were forced to give a numeric rating, I’d call Chrome a 7 out of 10.  

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Blippr is a review service; you write short-form reviews of all kinds of things (books, movies, etc.)  In an oxymoronic set of circumstances that only the Internet can enable, “micro” services are becoming huge.  Twitter started a couple of years ago, and has become a popular (in the Valley, not in Kansas) “micro-blogging” service.  In 140 characters or less you give your followers a status update.  Some people use this for life-casting (i.e. I’m going to get a burrito) and others for starting conversations (i.e. what are the chances that Vista will stop sucking?).  In my opinion, the latter is a much more interesting use for the service.

Twitter is about “micro-blogging” because they have a strict limitation on your content – all posts must be 140 characters or less.  That’s as opposed to say Wordpress, which is unlimited blogging (gurgitate to your heart’s content).   12seconds (which we’re involved in directly and which we posted about last month) also imposes a user constraint (twelve seconds, in case that wasn’t obvious.)  Blippr follows suit with a constraint of their own, 160 characters or less.

Erick Schonfeld at Techcrunch wrote an article about Blippr a couple of weeks ago, which offers a fine summary of the product.  I just signed up for an account myself – want to be friends?  So far I’ve reviewed a couple of movies, Dark Knight and 300.  Blippr encourages reviews for all kinds of products, including movies, music, games, books, and more.  The restraints force you to be choosy with your words and even your characters.  (Might want to start liking the ampersand.)

I see lots of opportunities in this product to link out to other products and services, whether amazon book and music purchases, netflix movie rentals, booksfree book rentals, social networks likes Shelfari, Facebook, and more… the list is more or less never-ending.  Some of those deals could include affiliate deals that might even generate revenue, which is always a nice little bonus in an internet company.

I like the UI in Blippr.  When you type out a review, a blue bar below the text window indicates how much space you have left.  Where Twitter uses a numeric counter (which turns red and features a minus sign when you pass 140), I think the visualization of the blue bar is effective and more interesting to watch.

Blippr’s also done a great job of integrating other services; it’s quite easy to link your blips to your Twitter stream, to your FriendFeed, and to a myriad of other services.

There are a number of things I think BLippr could improve upon – doubtless they’ve considered these already, but I’ll voice them anyway.  I think it would be cool if you could embed blips, make a widget out of all my blips, specific genres of blips, etc.  It’d be nice to have the option to embed them directly on my blog, on a profile page, etc.

Also, SMS integration makes a lot of sense.  According to tehir Get Satisfaction page, that’s coming soon.  I can see a great deal of utility to that feature, especially in regards to a spontaneous interaction with something or other (i.e. I just walked out of Indiana Jones 4, and I’m so offended by the refrigerator scene that I want to tell the world RIGHT NOW!)  I get it, they don’t have the money / resources / infrastructure / developers etc.  yet.  But they need to add SMS soon.

I also think this is an appropriate complement to Yelp, and other restaurant / business review services.  I’d like to see them expand their focus (or create a sister service) that is dedicated to that market.   And lastly, outside access seems really important to me.  How can I dip into the Blippr-o-sphere on my mobile handset when I’m in line at the movie theater and the movie I wanted to see is sold out?  Or I am at Green Apple Books (Clement and 6th in San Francisco, check ‘em out) and I want someone’s opinion on a book.  A short, to-the-point opinion.

Overall, I think this service shows more promise than most “web 2.0″ (god I hate that term) companies.  I’m interested to see where it goes.  To the right I’ve embedded a screenshot of my (considerably) shorter review of Blippr, using Blippr.  Neat.

This is also posted at LIVEdigitally.

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Let me disclaim in no uncertain terms that this site was started by some very close friends of mine, and I am personally involved as well.  I mean for this post to be informational.  I want both of my readers to know about 12seconds.

As you will see from their blog post, 12seconds.tv is launching their public alpha today.

12seconds is the brainchild of some friends in Santa Cruz who love the web, love technology, love twitter, love their iPhones, and can’t help but start company after company.  This is serial entrepreneurship at its best.  The basic idea behind 12seconds is video status, being able to record and share little moments from your life.  Use a webcam or cell phone you can record videos up to twelve seconds long.  That’s it.

You can link your videos to your Twitter account, so anyone who follows you there can receive will receive videos through your Twitter feed.  Friends can also visit your 12seconds page directly, or subscribe to your 12seconds RSS feed. You do NOT have to be a member of the site in order to watch other people’s videos. Request an invitation to join the site here.

This idea is a cool one, especially if you have a cell phone that records video. It’s easy to imagine being out at a bar with friends, out on the street where you see something funny, or at a Bar Mitzvah during the Haftorah service and wanting to publish the moment and share it with friends. What if you’re on vacation at the grand canyon and standing over that crazy skywalk platform? What a cool moment to share with friends and loved ones.  Here’s a link to my 12seconds channel.  Here’s Jeremy’s channel.

This is also posted at: LIVEdigitally

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Techmeme has added search capability to it’s news aggregation site.  The story broke on Techcrunch a few minutes ago.  Their exclusive was busted a few minutes later when Techmeme announced it themselves on their company blog / news page.

If you haven’t used Techmeme before, it’s a neat site for taking a overview look at what technology news is hot at the moment.  Techmeme aggregates news stories that are popular across the web.  Popularity is established according to a number of metrics, an important one being cross-linking.  The more inbound and outbound links in a story, the higher it rises on the Techmeme site.  The self-congratulatory Techmeme leaderboard has become a fashionable place for bloggers to feel good about themselves as well.  It’s not surprising that the news site who broke this news (Techcrunch) is also consistently number one on the leaderboard.

Techmeme does offer a neat look at what news is hopping, though it is sometimes criticized as a popularity contest.  It also is subject to gaming, as many bloggers make an effort to exchange links and push their own site / story onto the Techmeme homepage.

All that being said however, the search feature is really cool.  It’s a great opportunity to find hot stories on specific topics you want to research or analyze.  And it offers a very cool snapshot look at how popular a topic was at a given time.  Founder Gabe Rivera told us a long time ago that we should not hold our breath waiting for search on Techmeme.  I’m glad that he decided it was time to pull the trigger, and it’s a feature I will certainly use a lot.  9 out of 10, and thanks for the memories.

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twhirl’s website is down.  I can’t download the app from them.  download.com will let you download it successfully, though of course you need Adobe Air installed in order to open and run the app.  I’ve done a bunch of news and blog searches, but I can’t seem to find any information.  The twhirl blog is still up, and even has links to the home page to download the latest ( 0.8 ) version.  But that link is dead too.

I don’t know if I’m on crack and this is old news, or if I’ve happened on something new and troubling.  But I don’t like it.  So twhirl being down gets a 2 out of 10.  Boo.

UPDATE: The site appears to be back up and working fine now.  Everyone relax.

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A buddy I went to college with and was in AEPi with named Jason Nazar is the CEO of docstoc.  He just closed a $3.25 million B round from Rustic Canyon Capitol.  I saw the update via Twitterific from Michael Arrington, and then read Jason Kincaid’s full article on Techcrunch.

I’ve used docstoc a couple of times to find templates for various documents (I think I got a NDA off of there once.)  I’ve also uploaded some docs, including a really nice expense reporting template.  The service has worked perfectly well for me in that regard.  I’ve never had a need to embed a flash document before, but who knows what excitement the future may hold.

I don’t have a whole lot to add to TC’s article, other than my personal relationship. I reconnected with Jason last week at the Web 2.0 expo in San Francisco, and this is a great, exciting follow up.   Jason is a buddy and a brother (Nazar, not Kincaid.  I’m sure Jason Kincaid is a lovely guy, I just haven’t met him yet) and I’m thrilled for his success and wish him and the rest of the docstoc team the very best of luck.  A solid 9 for them, and my heartfelt good wishes.

One note: Jason, I do think you guys should update your blog and announce the news officially, take that tiger by the tail.

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My Review: 6

Twitterific is an Apple-only application from Icon Factory that allows you to follow updates from twitter on your Mac.  You can download it for free here, on Apple’s download site.  Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb wrote an article about Adobe Air apps that covered Twirhl (a Twitterific competitor.)  So there are lots of options out there (free, paid, competitive apps, etc.) that will let you accomplish the relatively simple task of monitoring your Twitter friends.  But here I am focusing on Twitterific.

What’s the good?  The app is shiny and semi-transparent (always a lot of fun) and really easy to install and to use.  And it works great.  It will give you a brief pop up every time someone you are following updates their Twitter, but it is unobtrusive and self-limiting, so it doesn’t get it your way.  It has shortcuts to update your own Twitter status, and to reply to someone directly (i.e. @thesolster) if you want to send a direct Twitter messsage.  In fact, because it’s super simple, pretty and does exactly what it supposed to, it should probably get a 9 or 10.

So what’s the bad? It keeps breaking.  Every 20 minutes to an hour, I will get a “lost network connection” error message.  Supposedly it’s Twitter’s servers breaking down under huge and strenuous loads.  Either that or my internet connection is spotty.  However, since all my other online apps and services seem to continue uninterrupted, I don’t think it’s my connection.  And, whenever I try to update or refresh my twitter through Twitter’s own website, it seems to work fine there as well.  So what’s the issue?

Now I like Twitter just fine.  I don’t agree with Andy Ihnatko’s blog post that Twitter is the best web app ever, but he’s for damn sure entitled to his opinion.  Myself, I’m a recent and reluctant new twitterer, sucked in along with my friend Jeremy’s recent explorations.  And it is kind of fun and sometimes useful.  But that’s not really the point of this post.

The point is, Twitterific is a good app and I like it, I just wish it would stop effing breaking. And until it does stop breaking, I can’t in good conscience give it more than a 6 out of 10.

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I like muxtape.com.  Sol told me about it (more or less) when he sent me a muxtape that he had made.  It was good (we like similar music) and it inspired me to make my own.

The idea is super cool.  You can upload as many as 12 .mp3 files to muxtape, name the “set,” and even configure the header bar color.  Then you can share it with friends.  They can opt to buy the songs on your set list (presumably the founders are getting a cut.)  It’s neat.

However, it’s also sort of cumbersome.  It would be a huge improvement if you could pick multiple songs and do a bulk upload.  The current setup requires you to upload a single song at a time, which is annoying.  I also found that quite a few songs failed.  I don’t know if it was because the files were corrupt somehow, or if maybe the meta data was too ugly to deal with, or what.  There are clearly stated restrictions that it must be a .mp3 file, and that it must be under 10 MB (all the files I attempted met those criteria.)  Having my chosen songs be un-uploadable was annoying.

They have a blog up on Tumblr and seem very interested in and open to feedback.  I like that openness a lot, it’s the right way to go.

The UI is pretty plain-jane, but I kind of like that. It certainly wasn’t confusing, and that is a huge plus in my humble estimation.  I think the concept rules, the product is cool, and the implementation is pretty-ok-kinda-good.  A solid 6, though the idea is really an 8 or a 9.  Just needs some more work.

UPDATE:

You know what else would be sweet?  There should be some kind of “Number of times this mix has been played” hit counter.  Currently there is an RSS feed meter that tells you how many people have favorited your mix, but not a total number of times it’s been played.  Everyone thinks their own mix is rad.  Muxtape should take advantage of that.  Come on muxtape, feed my ego.

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Google either dropped or lost IMAP support today.  Techcrunch’s Mark Hendrickson reported it here.

Now it’s back up – it seems to look fine and work fine.

It’s lame that it failed and/or went down and / or was taken away – lots of businesses rely on it.

It’s good that it is working now and seems as though it’s going to stay there.  If it was a bug then it’s weird that it actually disapperaed from the settings tab itself (as opposed to simply not working.)

But, since it’s there now and appears to be working, we’ll just call it a 5 and keep an even keel. 

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I first read about Hulu, as usual, on Techcrunch. I also go my invite to the private Hulu beta back in January by reading an article Mark Hendrickson wrote for Techcrunch.  Many people across the blogosphere have now written about Hulu, largely with good things to say.   I don’t plan to be unique in this instance – I have good things to say too.  Below is a brisk, bulleted battery of reasons why I think Hulu is excellent and likely to be a winner in this space.  Note to developers and Hulu competitors: most of my likes have to do with, you guessed it, user experience.  Try to keep up.

• Hulu has lots of good content, most importantly: full length movies as well as TV shows
• Great selections from multiple networks (Fox, NBC, etc.)
• Fun, old school TV content as well as new / popular content: lots of old school shows like Battlestar Galactica (the original), Knight Rider, and Flipper
• Incredible Selection of full length movies
• User Interface and User Experience:
  • The in screen player shows video in very high quality
  • There is a full screen mode, still very good quality
  • There is a pop-out player, so you can arrange your desktop as you like – the pop-out size is adjustable
  • Outstanding memory features: I watched 1 1/2 hours of a movie, and then had to close my computer.  I came back the next day and as soon as I logged into Hulu, it the movie restarted from the exact same spot where I had stopped
• Queues and Favorites – you can easily set up a list of favorites or shows / movies that you want to watch

The site is clean, easy to navigate, and well thought out.  There are some basic social features, for instance you can set up a profile with your favorite shows, movie, books and music.  And you can rate content as you watch it, and see feedback from other users.  I’ve used many other video sites before, like Veoh, Daily Motion,  and obviously YouTube.  None of them even come close to Hulu in terms of content variety, content quality, or user experience.  Huge thumbs up and a resounding 9 out of 10.

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Disclaimer: I work with kwiry.

kwiry is a reminder service. Imagine you are on the bus, or at a restaurant with a friend, and you see or hear about… something. It might be a book, or anew movie, or a new album by Jimi Hendrix (even though he’s been dead for 38 years…) You know this is something you want to check out, but you will probably forget about it by the time you get home again. kwiry lets you send a text message about the movie/book/album/whatever and stores that message for you online, and sends you an email. That way, when you get home with a keyboard and a monitor at your disposal, you get your reminder email and you can check out said movie/book/album/whatever. In addition to the email reminder, kwiry also delivers search results (Yahoo!, Amazon, iTunes, etc.) on your kwiry.

Some people might raise objections: why not just send yourself an email directly with your smart phone?, or using the memo pad function on your phone? But not all phones do email. And you still need to remember to look at your memo pad when you get home. But all cell phones do text messaging, and most people have their cell phones with them all the time. kwiry took the least common denominator (texting) for the most number of people (mobile phone users in America) and created a useful service.

One of the things I like most about kwiry, aside from emailed reminders and search results, is the centralized list of ALL my reminders. Post it notes get thrown away. The tasks I put in my calendar (pay the bills, pick up the Hanukkah bush, etc.) get lost in the shuffle. I think it’s neat (and useful) to have a centralized list of all the little notes to myself that I wanted to remember – these are things I can look at weeks or months after the fact.

I tagged this under the gadgets category, even though it’s a website. I did that becasue it’s useful, and I use it with my phone most of the time. In my mind that makes it (sort of) a gadget. I think kwiry is a cool service, and it’s free. Even though I work with kwiry to promote the service, I still find myself using it on a regular basis, for my own personal needs. And I’m a fan of kwiry on Facebook.

In spite of any potential conflict of interest, I independently find kwiry useful. That’s high praise compared with most of the web 2.0 garbage that I see, take note of, and then promptly disregard as unnecessary. kwiry gets an 8 out of 10; it helps me remember things on a daily basis.

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I tagged this under Web 2.0, but really this a very Web 1.0 site and issue. I just tried logging into my online account for my credit card, provided by U.S. Bank. I got a message that said: “Internet Banking is experiencing high traffic volumes at this time. Please try again later.”

That is not acceptable. U.S. Bank is a major financial institution with millions of customers. They ought to be able to scale their servers well enough to deal with my traffic. It is not acceptable that I can’t check my credit card balance anytime I want, not in the year 2008. These are the kinds of FUBAR’s that cost companies their customers.

U.S. Bank’s website gets a 3 today, and they barely deserve that.

————————————————————————————————————————

UPDATE:

I have to say that as annoyed as I was with US Bank, I was not expecting much in the way of a response.  But I was pleasantly surprised and impressed.  I sent the tech support an email with my post, and I heard a prompt response:

“I apologize for any misunderstanding or inconvenience regarding this issue.  We are not aware
of high traffic issues on our website over this last weekend.  Your browser may have stored an
incorrect shortcut in its temporary internet files (cache).  Please clear your cache, delete any
bookmarks or favorites for www.usbank.com, close out of your computer and manually type in our
web address to log on with your current Personal ID and Password...”

The response goes on for literally 2 pages after that.  Their answer did not at all satisfy my issue.  I know that it was not a stored cookie issue, or anything of the sort.  I still think it’s ridiculous to have the site be unavailable, and because that is inexcusable, I am not revising my rating.

Nevertheless, this lengthy and timely response was more and better than I expected to get, and I want to acknowledge it.   It shouldn’t have happened at all, but they did try to respond to my issue.

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I regret to say that Couchville has apparently bit the dustbin. The web-based TV service (which I first heard about on Techcrunch) is no longer available.

SnapStream, the makes of Couchville are no longer able to support the service. For those who did not know, Couchville was a simple web-app that let you enter your location and receive a simple and straightforwardTV schedule. My wife loves it and is super bummed.

SnapStream is a Houston, Texas based company that produces both enterprise and consumer focused TV-related software. We’re sorry to see their handy little web-app go.

The SnapStream forums show that the decision to stop service was announced on the 18th of January. The founder got online and said:

“In the week or two, we’ll be taking our free TV listings website, Couchville (http://www.couchville.com/), offline. At least for now, this is the end of the road for any kind of a free TV listings website from SnapStream.

For the Couchville loyalists out there, we’re sorry to take the site away from you. If you’re wondering why we’re making this move, simply put, it doesn’t make business sense for us to keep the site running.

So thanks to everyone who blogged about the site, spread the word, wore the t-shirt, and, most importantly, used the site day after day. TV recording software for consumers (and now for businesses too with SnapStream Enterprise) has always been more of our ‘thing’ and that’s where we intend to keep our focus.”

The service actually went down on February 11th.

Couchvile itself deserved at least an 8 for simplicity and utility. Seeing it go is a bummer, and thus merits a rating of 1.

UPDATE:

Techcrunch posted today about Couchville joining the TC deadpool. Duncan gave us a shout-out. Thank you Mr. Riley.

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I like PayPal, generally speaking. They make Ebay payments simple and straightforward, and it’s convenient in a number of different web-related payment circumstances. But I had an issue today.

I bought an item that I found on Ebay. The seller made a mistake when they were listing though, and because of that mistake I could not use the Buy It Now feature – it was unable to process. So I wrote to the seller and told them what was wrong. They told me to just send them the PayPal payment and they would end the auction immediately. I’m not a moron, so I did call and email with the guy several times before I was comfortable to do so. I also reviewed their seller history, and it was impeccable. So I went for it. You got to have faith sometimes.

Everything went through without a hitch. He received the payment, ended the auction, and promised to ship the item the following day. One problem though. Paypal thought it was suspicious, and chose to freeze the funds and limit my account access.

Those measures are in place for my security, and I appreciate it. But I think I should have gotten a phone call. Someone, a person (human being) should have reached out to me and tried to help. Instead I received an email, which immediately makes me think it’s a phishing scheme. Secondly, I have to jump through several account-related hoops, including changing my password. That’s some bullshit, right there. I don’t want to change my password.

I finally called them, and spoke with Nicki. She was very nice, and very helpful. But she was insistent about the password. She went and spoke with a supervisor, after I insisted on it, and discovered that while I did indeed need to change my password, I would be able to later on (in an hour or so) change it back. Well that sounds all right, I guess.

I appreciate her helping me solve the issue. I think Nicki did a great job. But there are two pieces of feedback I have for PayPal based on this experience.

1. Call your customer to alert them, don’t make them change all of their personal information when they have been appropriately using your service. I appreciate the security, but there is an obvious flaw if I can’t use the service without shutting down my account.

2. Make sure employees and FAQ’s list little facts like the one that says “you DO have to change your password, but you may change it BACK if you so choose.”

I like PayPal, and this experience isn’t making me quit on them. But this whole account limitation system sucks, and I give it a resounding 3.

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I have a confession to make.  I have been fuming for days about Skype and their customer service, but I really had no right to do so.  They’ve done a good job.  I am an idiot.

I wrote a long, long post about how they did a terrible job responding to my security concern.  After I finished, I proof-read it and in so doing re-read the correspondence between Skype support and myself.  When I re-read their very first email carefully, and then followed the link to the main Skype Blog page and read the content there, I realized that they had in fact addressed my concern appropriately from the very beginning.  If I had read it more carefully, I could have saved them and myself a lot of time.  So, instead of posting a rant in which the Skype Support team receives a rating of 2, I am still going to post a blog entry, but give them a well deserved 7 instead.  Sorry Timo T., and well done.

I am still posting some of the content I had written, and revising other sections to show Skype in a more appropriate light.  Revisions will be highlighted with bold text and lots of strikethroughs.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am not blogging here about the Skype service itself. I am a huge fan of Skype, and if you haven’t used it yet, you should. It is a free VOIP software service that let’s you make free phone calls over the internet to other users. You can also instant message with other Skype users, make inexpensive calls to regular phone lines, make cheap international calls, and even have video calls with other Skype users – it is really cool. Skype is free to download and free to use with other members of the network; they charge reasonable (read: cheap) rates to make outside calls to regular land lines.

But I had a virus / bug / attack / phishing scheme / problem and I received adequate and appropriate responses. It has pleased me enough to blog about it.

So, what happened is this: my contact list was hijacked. I went to lunch with my Skype open (I leave it open most of the day so I can send and receive chat messages) and when I came back from lunch I had two chat windows open.  Both were from people in my contact list.  Both had almost identical messages, asking me to click on links to pornography, and to download malicious files.  As it happened, I was using my Macbook so I was largely immune to the viruses these messages were trying to get me to download.  But it was pretty disconcerting.  Who has my contact list?  Why do they have the ability to send me chat messages as though they were my friends?  If I had been using my Windows PC would I now be host to some kind of malicious, hard-drive eating, identity stealing virus?  I am still pretty upset about it.

So what do you do when you have a security concern with a piece of software?  Who you gonna call?  (Don’t say it, and I won’t either.)   You call the manufacturer, that’s who.  So I went to the Skype Support page and sent them a message.  I also took a screenshot on my Mac with the chat windows open, so that they could see the content of the messages, and see that the chat windows were both from people in my contact list, even though my friends did not in fact send me those chats.  Here is that image:

I regard this as a huge security breach.  I think it’s a really big deal that strangers, posing as my contacts, can send me chat messages, ask me questions posing as my friends, and I might not realize until I have said something I shouldn’t.  I now know what Skype is going to do to fix my problem.  So far, the answer is a big fat “we’ve addressed the issue and released the answers on our blog.  Read about it here.”  Below I am copying all of my correspondence with the support team at Skype.    Please read for yourself:

First is the initial message that I sent to Skype Support via their website support email system:

Topic:      Abuse (harassment, fraud, scam, spam, etc.)
Subtopic:   Other abuse
Subject:    Inappropriate Chat Windows That Appear to Be From My Contact List
Message:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I had two chat windows open up while skype was open - both appeared to be from my skype contacts
 list.  Neither of the chats was actually from one of my contacts, but they had the contacts\' names
 and images.  Both were trying to get me to click on links to pornography and other inappropriate
 material.  I think they might also have been trying to install a virus.  The links tried to
 download files with the extension \".scr\".

Neither of these people had actually tried to have a chat with me, both were fraudulent and had
 essentially the same content.  I took a screenshot of both of the chat windows, though I don\'t see
 anyway to upload an attachment here.  I will hold on to it in case you want me to send it along.

I know two other people who have had have had similar problems.  This issue makes me very
 uncomfortable becasue some malware, spyware, program, or malicious person has access to my account and my
 contact list, and can make it look like they are one of my legitimate contacts when they try to
 contact me.  I\'d like a response on what this scam means for me regarding my security using skype.

Thanks,

David

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next is the series or emails and responses between myself and Skype Support:

First Response:

Hello David,

Thank you for contacting Skype Support.

Skype has learned that a computer virus called “w32/Ramex.A” is affecting users of Skype for
 Windows. Users whose computers are infected with this virus will send a chat message to other Skype
 users asking them to click on a web link that can infect the computer of the person who receives
 the message.  Please note that Skype users ONLY become infected after they have downloaded the
 link and run the malicious software. The chat message, of which there are several versions, is
 cleverly-written and may appear to be a legitimate chat message, which may fool some users into clicking
 on the link.

Skype has been in contact with the leading antivirus software companies about this worm, and we
 know that they are updating their software to effectively stop this worm and as well as its side
 effects. Currently, F-Secure (www.fsecure.com) and Kaspersky Lab (www.kaspersky.com) have already
 updated their antivirus products to detect and remove the worm.

We would like to encourage our users to ensure that they are running anti-virus software on their
 computers and to download the latest anti-virus updates in order to provide the best protection
 against this and other viruses.

More information can be found at heartbeat.skype.com

Best regards,

Timo T.
Skype Support

————————————————————————-

My Reply: 

Hi, and thank you for the response.  I don’t think I fit into the category you described in your email.  I am using a MacBook, not a PC, and I never clicked on a link or installed a virus.  Someone, somehow, has access to my contacts list and can initiate chats as though they were one of my contacts.  I am attaching a screenshot here of the two chat windows that were opened.  As you can see both of them appear to be from my contacts, though neither of those people actually tried to chat with me.  The content of both of the fraudulent chats appear to be very similar.

It looked like the response you sent was a boiler plate that you send out to lots of people.  I’m sure you have lots of customers and lots of questions to answer, but I’d like a more personal response, rather than a cut and paste, addressing this issue.  I regard this as a very serious security concern, and I am considering switching to Jah Jah or Gizmo rather than continue without any answers.

If you need or want any more specifics about my system or the circumstances please let me know.

Thanks in advance for your help and attention.

David

————————————————————————-

Their Response: 

Hello David,

Thank you for contacting Skype Support.

You are correct that this virus does not work on Mac.
These messages show that your contacts have this infection.

We apologise for the inconveniences and for being unclear.

Best regards,

Timo T.

Skype Support

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Last Reply:

To: Timo - Skype Support <support@skype.net>
Subject: Re: GQW: Inappropriate Chat Windows That Appear to Be From My Contact List

Thank you for the response.  Can you please tell me what I should do?  Is there any danger or
 liability associated with this?

David

————————————————————————-

Their Last Response:

Hello David,

Thank you for contacting Skype Support.

The only thing that you can do is  notify your contacts about this problem. As you are a Mac user,
 this virus can not affect your computer even if you visit these links.
If you have more questions please feel free to contact us again.

Best regards,

Timo T.
Skype Support

————————————————————————-

Since that communication I have not heard from them, nor do I expect to.  There is no need since they gave me a good answer in the first place and I have been bothering them for no reason since then.  Once I finish this post I am going to send them another email with a link to it.  Not that I think it will have them quaking in their boots or anything, but maybe it will express my pleasure and chagrin in a more concrete way.  Maybe, just maybe, they will realize that I am pleased enough not simply to send them emails or smile to myself, but to also try and reach a wider audience with my words of praise and admiration for Skype’s support team.

What am I hoping to accomplish?  I’m not 100% sure.  I certainly don’t want to quit using Skype.  I like Skype.  A lot.  But I am so pleased by their communication, their response (or lack of it) and their willingness / ability to offer a solution.  I am not solely a Mac user.  In fact, I am writing this post on a PC.   So I could indeed have downloaded a virus; I am not immune.  What’s more, there is not even a mention of the fact that my contact list has been appropriated by someone who most likely has a malicious intent.  I can’t imagine that they have my best interests at heart.  How did someone gain access to my contacts?  Why can they initiate chats with me?  I now know what exactly is going on with Skype security, and that they have addressed the issue in good faith.

I would love any comments or thoughts from all you people out there in the ether.  Thanks for letting me squirm and writhe with chagrin at my stupidity.  Maybe something will come of it.   At the moment, and because someone kicked a little ass, Skype’s customer response gets a lovely seven, and they are probably deserve more to scrape by with than that. Grrrr. Hooray for Skype.

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I hesitate to even put this in a Web 2.0 category becasue it is patently not Web 2.0. However, it could certainly serve as an example of to avoid in making a modern website. And when creating a blogging tool, a way for people to record their great life events… avoid these mistakes at all cost.

Let me back up a bit. My friend Justin went on a trip to South America for one month. While there he wanted to keep an online journal, a web log (blog for short) to keep a record of his travels and share his adventures with friends and family. Sounds cool right? Well, Justin picked the wrong service (in my opinion.)

First of all, the UI (user interface) is terrible. The tabs are ugly, the font is ugly, the whole site is cluttered and hard to navigate. There are no page updates without a manual refresh of the entire web page (AJAX anyone?), the style is clunky, and nothing seems to flow well. Here is the site’s homepage.

Here is a shot of the screen for adding a new post. This is an excellent example of terrible user interface design and implementation.

But, their concept is still a good one. A blogging site, targeted at non-technical travelers who want to keep an online journal of their travels is a cool idea. Unfortunately, their execution is weak. The site, as mentioned, is clunky. But that’s not all. They cover all their users’ pages with large, high visibility advertisements. The ads are not generally contextual (meaning many are not related to the content displayed on the page, though they might be travel related.) And they are big and super obnoxious.

And lastly, let me explain my final criticism. Data loss and lack of security. As you notice in the screenshot from Justin’s blog, Travel Blog managed to lose the data they were holding for many of their users. What happened to backup? What happened to redundancy. A month’s worth of travel thoughts and written experience is lost. That is way, way not cool.

In my opinion, the triple whammy of poor user interface design, obnoxious advertising, and insecure data backup make this a loser of a site. Hence, a rating of two.

And I know that I said the last criticism was my final criticism, but what’s up with .org? Clearly this company is not a non-profit. Travel Blog.org is a weak, uninspiring offering.

Wordpress is way cooler.

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So, Techcrunch (a popular technology and Internet blog) threw a party tonight (Friday July 27, 2007) and Sol and I snagged a couple of tickets. Their own post about the event was located here. This is sort of an important event for those people who work in Silicon Valley and engage in all things internet. Lots of people, sort of a ‘who’s who’ crowd was there; it’s a good place to see and be seen, and to network. But I don’t really want to expound too much on the “networking opportunities,” or the “chance to engage with “influencers.” That’s kind of boring.

Instead, let’s focus on the aspects that most people can identify with. Namely the venue, the food, the drink, the atmosphere, the company and the ambiance, the bathroom situation. All those myriad factors which, aggregated together, combine to form an overall level of enjoyment. That’s what I want to review. How fun was the Techcrunch party? How well did it come off?

To do this, I am going back to the highest level of statistical analysis which I can still safely claim to have mastery over. 5th grade level math. Addition, division, averages and means.

I will give each of the above named categories a score (out of 10, naturally). I will add these up, divide by the total number of categories, and that is the means by which I arrived at my score. How did I pick these categories? Well, not with any painstaking analysis or extensive research and polling. Nope. These are pretty much arbitrary and off the top of my head. If you have suggestions for some party factor or category that you think ought to have been included, please comment and I may revise the list (and consequently the score.) If you attended the Techcrunch party, please feel free to offer your own rating, either with my well-thought-out method, or one of your own choosing.

• Venue:7
• Food:8
• Drink:5
• Atmosphere:3.5
• Company: 6
• Ambiance:7
• Bathrooms: 2

• Total: 5.5

In summary, I have to say that the TC party was “pretty good.” They had good beer and terrible Margaritas, which is better than a dry party by far, but I would have been happy with a cash bar and as much JD as I wanted to buy. There wasn’t “dinner” so to speak, but the appetizers were pretty good (I liked the vegetable samosas and the mini ice-cream sandwiches).

The venue was nice, mostly the back porch of August Capital off of Sand Hill Rd. in Menlo Park. I was able to smoke a cigar with some friends, so that was sweet. However, there were over 500 people present, and only two bathrooms available. It seemed fitting to give that terrible oversight a 2 out of 10; this did not help the party’s average. I was pretty pissed about it – pun very mich intended. The bushes in VC land got a little extra watering on Friday night, from yours truly and many others.

The atmosphere at the party was more-or-less as expected: stuffy and self-important. Most of these people think their sh-t doesn’t stink, and those aren’t people I especially enjoy hanging out with. But, some friends were there, along with some genuine entrepreneurs who were trying to network as best they can, so the company overall wasn’t bad.

I think a 5.5 is fair, though I’m sure Mike and the TC crowd might have a different opinion of their party.

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