Marcelo posted a note that Adam MacBeth has been building a Google map of all the software companies in Seattle. It is self service, if you own a software company, then you can pin it on the map. It makes an interesting contrast to the map of Silicon Valley that we are all so familiar with.
Seattle Software Companies . This is a map of companies in Seattle that do software work. It is not limited to companies headquartered in Seattle, but includes any company with a development office in the area. I’ve tried to keep companies off the map that are out of business or not yet viable, but please let me know if there is something that needs to be removed or edited. Source: Adam MacBeth
It is a neat map, then Adam’s blog is also interesting, in the longer run though, use the map, it is at least very interesting to see where companies are clustering.
After an interesting appeal to use Disqus, a comment management system for blogs, from AVC, sure I’ll go take a look and see what the hoopla is about. Then start coming up with problems on the reasons why I probably will not use it.
The biggest downside is that there will be two places to go to work with comments.
I have been using the WordPress comments for years, I’ll use the home page to write, screen comments, and see who has linked to me lately. This is where I am used to doing all the work for my blog, getting updates, reading stuff. I can get to here from anywhere without worrying about anyone blocking me from getting there. It has been this way for years.
This is where by using the Disqus admin page I would have to go now to do all my comments. Mind you I average .5 comments per blog entry. The compelling reason to pull comments off and drop them into another system is if my work blocked access to my WordPress comments section, or I had a ton of comments to plow through, there might be some work flow benefit here.
But in the mean time, it might be the greatest system in the world, but probably a low comment blog like techwag does not need it, a blog writer who can get to anything anywhere probably does not need it.
Here is the only compelling reason I could think of to use it, and where it might be handy.
You can basically “off shore” your comments without exposing all your blog login credentials. This is a good thing, if you want to outsource comment management, you can make someone an account here and have them do all the work.
For blogs with tons of comments, this might be a good thing, for everyone else, probably not all that compelling a reason to use the system. While it might be bright and shiny, off site management of comments and pushing all your comments to someplace else might make sense for a system that is overloaded, cranky, don’t want to deal with comments anyways. For people who want to push comments off someplace else and let another social network handle it, sure, makes sense.
For everyone else outside of the top 1000 blogs on the planet, this does not really make a lot of sense to do. If your audience is a highly trafficked blog, there are so very few of them that for everyone else, it makes sense to stick to what is already available to you in your blog of choice platform.
Tags: disqus, compelling, reason, not found, comment, system, off site, off shore, out source, problematic, shiny
Hopefully everyone will see a major improvement in operations here, no, didn’t move to a new hosting company, no didn’t do much other than strip out all the stuff that could have been impeding the smart operation of the web site.
While word press is a great blogging platform, when you go back and take a look at what we did as a major site redesign back in April to celebrate our first birthday, we added a pile of neat plug ins that we figured would help us out in learning about folks.
We had popularity contest running, and gregarious, and a host of plug ins thinking that people would want to use them, well they didn’t and the site slowly dropped into the dirt. So much for functionality, there is the reality of hosting.
We are limited to the number of CPU cycles we can take, and by stripping our word press installation down to a bare bones, all about blogging and not about digg, spinn, gregarious, and the rest of it, we noticed that when we disabled 5 social networking plugins, and moved to a stripped lean format, well guess what, the site is going very fast this morning.
It is not a WordPress issue, really it is more about the number of plugins and data connectors/collections that we can do in a shared hosting environment. Interesting if trivial, but for sites that are having performance issues like we are, stripping down to a lean site might just make a lot of sense here.
Marketers and other folks will go anywhere do anything within the social networking space. Boundaries do not exist, and in general folks that market on the Internet are as busy using web 2.0 tools to send their message as you are talking back and forth with your friends.
Download Squad has a great article on twitter spam, and the problems that ensues when people randomly start following people because they decided to follow them.
Twitter users are increasingly starting to question whether the frequent number of Twitter accounts that are following them are actually people, or simply a form of Twitter spamming. The rule of thumb with that sort of question is usually that if you think something nefarious might be going on, unfortunately, you’re probably right. Source: Download Squad
The cool part is that there is also an introduction here to twitter twerp scan as a way to identify those folks who are spamming, although the thought that we are having is that this is only going to be as good as the collective community that starts adding things to the twerp scan process.
Askimet and other spam tools, even stopbadware.org are only as good as their scanners, and only as good as the people who report sites. There also has to be a mechanism to challenge the entry in twitter twerp, some nasty marketing folks think it is just fine to lodge complaints against all their competitors in systems like this.
Business is a nasty thing to be involved with, and if you don’t believe us, check out the Chilling Effects Clearing house to learn all about businesses that try to claim copyright against their competitors, and use the DMCA and other rules to get their competitors right off the Internet.
In all, it is a good idea, but as spammers get more creative, and marketers seem to be willing to take up any way to get their message across, all web 2.0 social systems need to take precautions. This should be a standard part of the business model for anyone that is hoping to make money off of user contributed content. Spammers are good, quick to hop on any new technology, and if they are allowed free reign on a system, will quickly figure out ways to saturate said system until it is no longer usable by anyone.
Keywords: twitter, twerp, scan, chilling effects, friends, idiots, web 2.0, users, sad
Regardless of social network, there is always someone out there that has a fantastic profile and you immediately run around to make them your social networking friend, to share things you have in common interest. We make our little friend connections, and then go about our day, but what about those consistently excellent and funny profiles that we visit daily? We might laugh, point, cry, or have an opinion, but who are the best of the best?
These are some of the more eclectic wild stumbleupon profiles that we have been able to find, and all of them are worth checking out.
Flabbergastedly is a delightfully funny profile that is well worth checking out. Any profile that starts off with a quote from the Devils Dictionary is a must read. Flabbergastedly says on their profile: DAWN, n. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.
[Ambrose Bierce, the Devils Dictionary]
Coffee Blue is another one of those fun people but covers more technology that life. Coffee Blue runs across a lot of interesting things when it comes to technology and social networking. Often with an odd twist or two like Cannon 3D paper craft.
Sophiag is another more tech geared stumbler that covers some of the more popular and arcane things that have to do with technology. Worth checking out when you get tired of techmeme and the rest of the A-List bloggers.
Swags is an SEO person from the UK, makes for an interesting contrast to the SEO hoopla that we are used to reading in the USA. Interesting view points and also runs their own blog right here.
When your avatar is a picture of a nuclear silo warning message, and you cover science and technology, you know this has to be eclectic and interesting, Prescribed God does not disappoint, if you are interested in science and technology, she covers a lot of very good viewpoints across the map.
As profiles go, these are some of the more interesting ones you can read up on at Stumbleupon, and all of them are worth checking out. If you have a favorite profile, put it in the comments, I will go check them out.
Keywords: stumbleupon, profiles, best of the best, humor, science, web 2.0, fun, cool, neat
This is one of the few times that I have looked at techmeme and basically walked away thinking “what is all this stuff”. It is not only the quality of the posts, but what the posts are talking about. If there is anyway to track bloggeria, then techmeme is it. What happens though when techmeme fails, and there are really no decent meme’s to follow along with.
There is a lot to be said for following the bouncy ball of things that we love to blog about, but when the meme’s fail, it makes the lot of a blogger much tougher. Alternative sources of information are needed, or generally the blogger is then obligated to whine about the lack of info on new stuff, and being able to jump on the train.
While Google app engine may be cool, it will be better to see what people are going to do about it. Yes, it is another nokia phone, yes the same Iphone killer….nothing from Scoble he must be on a plane, Read Write Web, ohh there they are, and all the rest of the folks jumping on the band wagon and positively cooing over the new toy from Google.
While in general this is somewhat fun to watch, after a year of running a tech blog, what is interesting is that we, all of us seem to be following each other as a small covert group of people who try to and often succeed at influencing what is happening in technology.
What we don’t see is when someone thinks that the system is crappy. Anyone ever do a negative review? I think we are getting beyond ourselves, and the moment we loose the ability to say no, that is really a bad product, or the meme just isn’t working, then we really need to step back and ask ourselves what we are doing.
If we want to be responsible journalists, then we also have to talk about what is bad, not just gush over the latest new toy. Maybe that is what we need to start looking at as bloggers, and call it a day when the show is really bad.
The movie Fitna was released on Live Leak today, amidst death treats to Geert Wilder, and the refusal to show this movie by dutch broadcasters. The good part is that this movie is identifiable propaganda, it shows the worst, this movie in its propaganda context could have been made about any religion.
The movie is below.
Web 2.0 makes a lot of promises in brining information to people, this includes movies like Fitna, and the propaganda movies of the radical Christian, the radical Muslim, the radical Jew, Republican, Democrat, Communist, Socialist, Green, or any other movement that you can think of. It was Christians that blew up abortion clinics in the south, and a Christian that blew up the Murrow Federal Building in Oklahoma. It was radical Muslims that took out 4 planes and the world trade center, as well as trains, buses, and embassy’s.
Web 2.0 poses particular issues when it comes to movies like this, of course we expect many people to watch the movie because of the publicity, we also expect countries to ban live leak and any other site that carries the video. We expect death threats and “thank you’s!” along the way. We are polarized by this kind of propaganda.
See it for what it is, the absolute worst statement you can make about anything, that is what propaganda is, that is what it is meant to do. Then make a choice.
Keywords: fitna, Geert Wilder, islam, christianity, radical, death threat, live leak, movie, propaganda, dutch, take down, censorship
Marketers and other folks will go anywhere do anything within the social networking space. Boundaries do not exist, and in general folks that market on the Internet are as busy using web 2.0 tools to send their message as you are talking back and forth with your friends. 
