Hackr WatrCoolr: Tech News Aggregation With No Mouse Required

A couple weeks ago, in an article about Microspaces, I said that Web entrepreneurs are finding new ways for you to navigate their sites, and many are now incorporating keyboard input, to jump to new comments or pages. Though I mentioned it in a quick tweet on September 25th, I thought it was worth highlighting the Hacker WatrCoolr, a site that displays headlines from many popular tech news sites, and lets you quickly flick through them using only your keyboard - no mouse required.


A Headline from ReadBurner on WatrCoolr Tonight
WatrCoolr shows the latest headlines from Digg, Hacker News, Del.icio.us, Techmeme, Reddit, RSSmeme, Slashdot, Yahoo! News and ReadBurner. Each headline shows its recency, and the destination URL (e.g. nytimes.com or makeuseof.com).


Scoble's Post Hits Techmeme and Makes it to WatrCoolr
But unlike many other news aggregation sites, the Hacker WatrCoolr doesn't shoe-horn them into one busy page, like AllTop. Instead, it displays one headline at a time. To scroll through older items from the same source, you just need to hit the down arrow key. To see a new source, hit the right or left arrow. And to read the article, you just have to press the "r" key, or press "n" to have it open in a new window or tab.

While Hackr WatrCoolr is not looking to replace your RSS reader, some of the functionality is very similar to that of applications like Google Reader, and it's a very easy way to get all the top stories from each of these sites in one place. It may be a little experiment, but it hints at one way the Web could go to make the process of our news gathering even that much more easy. I hope to find more Web developers who are thinking different about how we navigate today's often-formulaic and static Web sites.

DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to ReadBurner, and hold a small equity position.

Strands Targets the Mainstream by Going One On One

One of the most common themes in the blogosphere, and here at the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, is questioning how Web applications many of us are using will ever reach the mainstream. Will people's parents, relatives and co-workers ever get Twitter the way they finally get e-mail? Will FriendFeed ever get the kind of name recognition that Facebook and MySpace have? Strands, a nascent lifestreaming and content discovery service, is launching a new initiative, starting today, to take the service mainstream, to the masses themselves in a project they call oOo: One on One, or Operation mainSTREAM.
(See their blog for more).

Drew Olanoff, community manager for Strands, says "A lot of what we create is meant to make our lives easier and more entertaining," and that "companies like Pandora deserve to be known outside of our circles," so what the team at Strands is looking to do is to give its users many invites, and will incentive them to invite non-geeks to the service. Those who recruit "nongeek friends" can win geeky prizes, including an Apple MacBook Air for you and your friend, an iPod Touch for you and your friend, or miniature Flip video cameras.


Strands: Operation mainSTREAM
But Strands isn't going to be sitting around, waiting for you to do all the hard work of recruiting by yourself. The team is going one one one (oOo), traveling state to state, to take the story of all these cool Web applications to the masses. As Drew writes, "I'm going to be visiting old folks homes, hanging out with some soccer moms, and hey...maybe some lawyers, to let them know why technology and your personal presence online is important."

Will this work? Will taking something that's considered an edge technology even for those of us in the Silicon Valley, and introducing it to technophobes in North Dakota and South Carolina give services like Pandora, Last.fm, and Twitter that push they need to get into the mainstream? Probably not all by itself. But as part of the micromedia panel I participated in yesterday, we discussed a new rule of marketing. You tell 10, who tell 100, who tell 1,000. If Drew and the Strands team can find the right 10 people in each of these locations around the country, they may be on to something. And just maybe, Web 2.0 applications have found their new evangelist.

DISCLOSURE: Drew Olanoff, the Community Manager at Strands, is also the CTO of ReadBurner, where I am an advisor, and hold a small equity position.

Google Has Leveled the Internet Playing Field

By Robert Seidman of TVbytheNumbers (Twitter / FriendFeed)

There are many motivations to write something and publish it on the Internet. Some write in hopes of making money, others like Louis, write because they want to be a part of something they enjoy, others like Hutch Carpenter find their next job. But I believe whether it's Duncan Riley, Louis or Hutch the common denominator is this: they want their voices to be heard.

It's a Very Different Landscape Than 1994…
A very low barrier to entry brings with it some blessings and some curses. The more people who participate, the better things are for everyone in the aggregate. But the more people participating, the harder it is to compete and have your voice rise up above the cacophony of all the other voices.

During my first foray into Internet publishing in the fall of 1994, the landscape was dramatically different. I launched a newsletter essentially summarizing the big events of the week in the online/Internet space. At the time of launch, my only competition was for-fee subscription content. There was no freely-available competition and as a result, I gained access to readers and industry insiders very quickly. Fortunately, Robert Scoble was writing about visual basic or something at the time, so I didn't have to compete with his bullhorn either.

I first met Bill Gorman, who I now run TVbytheNumbers with, within two months of launching my 1990s Internet publication. Bill was an executive at AOL, who helped launch America Online's international division. Around the same time, Bill started reading what I was writing, so did the person who was running AOL – Steve Case. Basically within two months of launching I was reaching high-ranking industry insiders.

…But It's Still Possible to Get Your Voice Out There
Today, if you were to launch a blog on social network services and hoping to get Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook to read it, I believe that task would be about 10,000 times more difficult. The likes of Louis, however, are proving that it's not impossible to write about companies you're interested in and gain 'inside' access. It may not be on the scale of Facebook executives for Louis (yet), but gaining insider access is certainly something he's accomplished to the point where he's now taken an advisory role with ReadBurner.

Louis might seem like an 'overnight success' story to many in the blogging circles, but not to me. What I see is a kid who has been plugging away since January 2006 and really started to get some traction by late 2007, which has accelerated greatly during 2008. Thirty-two months of plugging away to get where he is today isn't an overnight success story. It is a success story, but it is a success story that involved a lot of hard work, persistence and determination.

All Good Things…
The other day I brought up my FriendFeed and saw the link "Robert Seidman Quoted in NY Post On Phelps/Olympics" posted by none other than Louis. It was the first I'd heard of it. Although we have talked to reporters from the NY Post (and other publications) I hadn't talked to them about this. They'd just lifted the quote right out of a blog post and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Although getting quoted is nice, especially when quotes are just lifted off blog posts, the thing I was most proud of for the week was seeing this story comparing the minutes of online streaming to the minutes of viewing via traditional television pop-up in my Google Reader. An analyst working at Fox television crunched some numbers on top of some numbers I'd crunched in a blog post and Fox's PR team circulated it, citing our blog as the original source.

It's not lost on me that mostly happened because the song I was singing, "TV is still king", was a tune the people at the television networks really love to hear. But in a world where we're in some ways competing with Variety, Advertising Age, The Hollywood Reporter, Media Week, TV Week, The New York Times and the USA Today, to wind up having my thoughts on the subject heard was extremely gratifying. In some ways I'm in awe that the playing field is still level enough for that to happen.

Thanks Google!

I know a lot in the tech blogging circles will opine on whether Google is good or evil. For now in my mind, Google is still good. It leveled the playing field for us. We have little in the way of expense overhead (almost $0, really) and sure, it may work out that I've made about eight cents per hour, but that's the subject for another blog post. From my perspective, we are allowed to compete, and compete fairly without spending anything on marketing. It's hard for me to find fault with a system that provides that sort of level playing field.

Organic Google search (including Google News) is our number one traffic source. This leads to a lot of referral traffic from other sites and a good bit of the direct traffic.

A level playing field does not mean it's easy to get your voice heard, in fact, one of the best ways to compete in a very level playing field is with a lot of hard work. This may not equate directly to riches or fame, but if those were your goals the odds were already stacked against you before you started and you knew it.

Ultimately though, having your voice heard can lead to other very cool opportunities. Ask Louis, or Hutch, or even me. The best job I ever had, as a Senior Vice President at Charles Schwab running various portions of its online brokerage (from 1998-2003) came at least indirectly, and mostly directly, in my opinion, as a result of having my voice heard on the Internet. That was a lot easier to achieve in those heady pre-Google days, but even in this vastly more competitive era, Google does a great job leveling the playing field.

P.S. because I didn't think many FriendFeeders are interested in TV Metrics, I stopped feeding our blog into my FriendFeed stream and created a separate one here.

Seeing The Web's Racist Underbelly Is Saddening and Shocking

This afternoon, I caught a video broadcast with Wayne Sutton and Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net, where Corvida had the opportunity to share her story of asking Verizon to drop their relationship with Loren Feldman of 1938 Media, in light of his controversial video parodying African American bloggers. While both carried on a strong conversation around the issues of race, bigotry and getting ahead through hard work, their efforts were dwarfed by some of the most hateful, shameful, racist speech I've been exposed to in a very long time.

It's common knowledge that anonymous commenters often fall to the lowest common denominator. The wider the audience, the less respectable the discussion, with YouTube being a perfect example.

Most of the time, the places I engage in social media (and real life) are civil. But as Corvida and Wayne talked about her family's efforts with Verizon, and how black tech bloggers are often stereotyped, with Feldman's video as an example, the Yahoo! Live chat screen filled with filth, with racist words, references to Kentucky Fried Chicken and watermelon, comments on Obama, and discussion of penis sizes.

Essentially, you name the negative stereotypes and hatred that could be spewed against the African American bloggers, and they were there.

I don't want to spread the filth that was said during the chat, but it's worth exposing these purveyors of hatred, to illustrate the nonsense. If only there were a way to break through their anonymity...

There's no question the work was done by a few anonymous malcontents, but it was eye opening to unfortunately be reminded those people are out there, and are willing to share their nonsense in an attempt to intimidate both Wayne and Corvida, in hopes of persuading them to stop. But it didn't work. As Wayne said the issue of Loren Feldman was "a wake-up call for African Americans", today's nonsense was an unfortunate wake-up call for me.

I'm glad both Wayne and Corvida maintained their professional integrity in the face of ridiculous nonsense that could have brought weaker people to tears, but there was absolutely no reason they should have had to put up with that horrible behavior, which, as it was undoubtedly intended to do, made me quite angry.

Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, and with all the advancements we think we've made in Civil Rights, we still have to see this horrible, ridiculous, ignorant junk. I was appalled at what Corvida and Wayne had to suffer through, and I wish I never had to see it again. These people do exist, but they don't deserve a platform, and in this case, there should have been ways to either increase filters, block by IP address or reveal the real names of the trolls.

I am very sorry Corvida and Wayne had to suffer through that in what was otherwise a very engaging disucssion, and I hope this filth doesn't slow any person of any background down for a second.

What I Believe: My 10 Web and Blogging Expectations

Sometimes, when I talk to people about why I blog, and what I set out to accomplish through covering what I do, and engaging where I do, I say that I am trying to help shape the Web, and blogging as a whole, to be what I want it to be - a better community with some strong standards for engagement, ownership, news gathering and innovation. Over time, as the number of posts here has racked up, you can see some of these core elements throughout the site. As an exercise, I thought I'd outline my beliefs, and I'm eager to hear your comments, whether these are shared or we disagree.

1. I Believe You Should Enjoy What You Do

Whether you are are the co-founder of a hot startup, an entry-level programmer at a technology monolith, a blogger, or simply a fan of social networking tools, you should be sure you're doing what you're doing because you enjoy it, and at its core, it brings you happiness. At times, I've seen people succumb to the stress of posting every day, of racing up or down the comparative measures out there, or slog day in and day out at companies because they're too unmotivated to seek an alternative. Even on those days when the work required seems overwhelming, it's worth stepping back and saying, "Are you having fun still?" As Steve Jobs told a graduating class at Stanford University a few years ago, if the answer is no too many times in a row, it's time to think about doing something else.

When you're not having fun, it shows. Your work gets sloppier. Your posts get crankier. You start talking more about how much time it's taking, how much pressure you're feeling. And when that happens... take a deep breath, or take a break. Reevaluate why it is you're doing what you do.

2. I Believe In Supporting and Promoting Innovation

Without an entrepreneurial spirit, change in our technology landscape would be muted. Innovation can be sparked from a single idea, whether creating a new market, or simply improving a new one. When I see potential, I want to highlight it, and work as a partner with the team aiming to deliver a new experience, and fulfilling their dreams.

Often, a rush to call "foul" on a product, to give it a negative label, or call failure, is done more to grab attention than through benevolence. You're not doing the innovator a favor, or their potential users a favor, but seeing the glass half full.

3. I Believe In Trusting First, Looking for Holes Later

For the most part, people don't start businesses or create products with ill intent. New services crop up every day, and the overwhelming number are there to help you learn something new, find something more quickly, or reach peers in a new way. As it can be relatively inexpensive to launch new Web services, or to start blogs, there are, simply put, tons of them out there. Many do very similar things. But at their core, most are well-intended.

For every spammer or troll, content scraper or hacker, there are thousands of others working on the right side of the law. And sometimes, when it looks like a service might be on the border of what's "right" and what's "wrong", I tend to give the benefit of the doubt, so the entrepreneur can explain themselves. I also believe that every service out there, from those a day old, to the market monoliths of Google and Microsoft, has issues. It can be fun to focus on those issues, but unless they completely disrupt the user experience to the point the product is unusable, I feel the product owner is both aware of them, and is working behind the scenes to make the product more robust, faster, and more fully featured.

4. I Believe In Equal Access to Tools and Opportunity

I believe in the availability of free or inexpensive services that enable people to broadcast, share and collaborate. I believe that for-profit institutions should make efforts to spread the availability of the Internet, broadband and wireless access to bring this information spigot to people everywhere, regardless of their financial or geographical status.

5. I Believe In Portability Of Content and Clear Ownership

I believe that products should enable support for open standards, such that data can be simply exported and imported from one service to another. I believe that these open standards should be deployed such that content, be it blog posts, news, comments or other actionable items (be it up/down votes, likes, avatars, etc.) be easily transferred, while retaining clear ownership by the original individual performing the activity. This portability should be developed in such a way that the third-party service, the content creator, and the person reaction to said content, all have the option to approve or disapprove portability or modification.

In those cases where full portability is not yet available, I believe services have an obligation to state their intentions to move toward an API, an open standard, display best intentions, or publicly declare their position to keep data siloed, buyer beware.

6. I Believe In Giving Credit Where It Is Due

I believe in bloggers giving best effort to determining the original source of news, and providing linkage, especially when the alternative is to link internally. I believe in making it clear who the entrepreneurs are behind services, and displaying a human face to what could otherwise be a personless brand.

I believe in displaying clear attribution for the source of quotes, paraphrasing or other use of third-party content, even if it is from what's considered a competitor.

7. I Believe In Supporting The Little Guy, While Not Hating the Leader

I believe in giving a new service or a small company its unfair share of support and coverage, as they make a valid attempt to enter a market. I believe in helping the service clarify their message, their features and benefits to the point they achieve critical mass on par with other market leaders. I believe that this presumed bias can be shown without disparaging leading services, or holding ill will against those already having achieved success.

8. I Believe In Transparency and the Removal of Barriers

I believe that those services who make their intentions, their product plans, and their updates clear to users and partners will achieve a higher level of success and trust than those that do not. I believe that company representatives should be easily accessible through clear methods, and should give best efforts to rapidly respond to feature requests, downtime or other concerns.

I believe that activities or barriers which reduce transparency, reduce access to company representatives and create confusion will be extremely damaging, reducing trust and good will.

Similarly, bloggers should be extremely reachable and should display and pre-existing biases, monetary engagements or sponsorships, be there any.

9. I Believe In The Ability to Disagree Without Ill Will

I believe that it is absolutely possible for multiple people to look at the same data set or service and achieve completely-differing conclusions and perspectives, without meaning either person to be lacking in intellect or experience. In the event that disagreements do occur, I recommend open communication and statement of beliefs will be much more successful at proving a point than labels, one liners or personal attacks.

In parallel, services can expect that not every review will be one they want to print out and send home to mom. If the author's found to not have a conflict of interest, efforts should be made to expose that, but otherwise, it can be assumed there might be some valid points, even in the most vile of screeds.

10. I Believe In Finding New Ways To Find, Share, Manipulate Data

I believe that the creation of data and content is nearing commodity status. New blogs and services debut every minute and die almost as quickly. But each month brings new and exciting ways to manipulate, share or otherwise locate the best data, through the launch of new social networks, aggregators, search engines, or semantic tools. The services we all use today will almost with certainty be different than those we use next year at this time.

It is with these 10 tenets, and likely more, that I look to engage. Through my small voice here, I believe I have been lucky enough to play a role in discussing how blogs give attribution, how they prioritize external links vs. internal links, the growing issue of RSS repurposing and comment fragmentation. I've tried to support the little guys and highlight individuals doing innovation. I've made a small number of negative posts, in contrast to my more supportive posts, and avoided throwing the second stone at times when my views weren't universal. The Web, and our ability in the blogosphere to impact it and play a role, is ever changing and exciting to me.

Guest Post: What Digital Media Can Learn From Books

Guest post written by Arvin Dang, currently writing for The Apple Blog.

We are the generation that lives through media. We don’t watch to pass time, we watch to learn and grow. I’m not sure what this reflects on our education system, but just as literature inspires, media can spark the same creativity and instill similar values.

What can media learn from books?

The inherent value we gain from a book's physicality is amazing. I can buy a book, write in it, store it, trade it, share it, sell it, copy it and burn it. I may not be able to physically hold a movie or a song, but I hope to be able to create the same utility surrounding it.

When comparing digital media and books, I’m not comparing E-books or E-Readers because they face the same DRM issues as most music and videos do. I understand the rules and regulations of copyright placed on books, and I understand the necessity of including plagiarism in context of this.

Now let’s have a look

With a book, I understand the author’s words and right of ownership, but I’m free to quote them and to share their words. I can literally copy every page of a borrowed book without ever paying for it. Will I have RIAA or the Government following my every move? Borrowing a book, if anything, builds reputation. Just as word of mouth is the best form of advertising, sharing someone’s content enables the ability for word to spread. Not only will the author or creator gain readership, they gain reputation. Ultimately, that seems to be far grander than any monetary benefit. Why can’t the same happen with digital media?

Libraries, where books can be borrowed completely free seems completely unconventional right? If video content were offered on a public level similar to libraries, who’s losing out?

Why hasn’t independent content caught on as successfully as the Industry?

I don’t know. You tell me. Is it quality of production? Is it the acting? Or the writing? All I know is media should be based on reputation, not profit. If it helps make you more known, provides meaning, and basic ownership is understood, then why can’t TV follow the same path as books?

I understand the role of money in media. Without monetization, the Entertainment Industry may not be able create the beautiful epics we see. I see the success of independent creators like The Next New Networks proving that the industry doesn’t need to equate profit with content. It makes me very curious to see the actual breakdown; to take a season of The Office and see how much total production costs verse how much is monetized and gained from commercials and sales (DVDs, etc).

It’s a greedy market and a demanding world, but if books can find a balance, can’t media?

Dealing With Offline Companies Can be Such a Pain

Unless you're a brand-new visitor to louisgray.com, you might remember a post from a few weeks ago where I revealed my wife and I are expecting twins, our first children. While that announcement was sure exciting, there are a number of very real offline preparations which are going to take real physical labor and change - not the least of which being getting our home ready for two permanent visitors. But as easy as it is to plan things online, it's those offline who can throw snags into the whole operation.

With my wife having more than a decade's experience in teaching school, and the two of us having accumulated our fair share of material goods, we're going to need a place to put some of our own things and get a room in our condo ready for the kids. So, on Monday night, before my trip to Boston, I reserved a 10' by 15' unit at a local Public Storage, letting us start moving our items. I was able to register online, and gained a confirmation e-mail, saying, "This price and unit will be held for 7 days."

But during my time in Boston, Public Storage called my home phone number, which I had left on the site, on Tuesday and Wednesday to confirm we would be ready to move in by Saturday. By Thursday, the afternoon I came home, a final message was left by a woman who gruffly said as we hadn't returned her call, that we had lost our spot. Held for 7 days indeed. A short 7 days from the night of the 25th to the afternoon of the 28th!

Did I get a single e-mail asking me to confirm I would be ready to move in on Saturday? No. If I had gotten one, I definitely would have responded. And what am I supposed to do now? Sue them for breach of contract? It's not even worth it. So of course, I logged back on today and reserved a new unit at a different Public Storage somewhere else in town for about the same amount, and yes, its automated e-mail has the same "7 days" guarantee.

I recognize that I can't exactly compress my offline materials, attach them to an e-mail and send them to a new location, while that would be nice. But it's gotten to the point I expect customer service to be much better and for true online companies to be much more responsive and interactive than these offline clowns. That they wouldn't even think of sending an e-mail, after the initial confirmation made no sense. Why ask for it then?

If You Like Twitter, I'm Not Bitter

We gained some great feedback on why many of you utilize Twitter's microblogging service to tell the world what you're doing, to solicit advice and feedback from your peers, and share resources. And despite my continuing to hold out on using the service, for now, I'm not of the mindset to bash the service.

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail following my note, saying:

"It may be a better play for you to remain as the guy who doesn't like it. Seems like you're somewhat known for your anti-twitter stance at this point. "

Ha. I don't know if I'm known for much, but I won't be holding this contrary position simply for the sake of being the devil's advocate. So, what did my readers recommend I do? Let's take a look!

Points in favor of Twitter:

1. Stories first break on Twitter.
2. It's a good networking tool.
3. You can dictate how you use it.
4. It's not noise if you follow the right people.
5. It offers a live pulse of friends' lives.
6. It's another way to exchange ideas and communicate.
7. It can be used as a journal or notepad.
8. You can follow local people.
9. You can directly interact with bigwigs.

Points against using Twitter:

1. At times it's completely useless.
2. Complete failures under peak load.
3. It looks like a tool for egomaniacs.
4. It's full of life's minutia.
5. It requires too much attention.
6. You can miss conversations.
7. People ego stroke.
8. People post like they have ADHD.
9. Micro-conversations about everything and nothing.

Looks fairly evenly split down the middle. Those who like Twitter say it acts as a backchannel for the blogosphere. Those who hate it see it is as useless nonsense for people already too full of themselves.

Beyond the wealth of comments on the article, many took the time to write their thoughts in detail, which impressed me. I don't know if that's a factor of Twitter's popularity, a good topic, or simply the fact that once it hit TechMeme, everybody wanted to be part of the conversation. Needless to say, below are some of the best reactions:

Tech Confidential: Why use Twitter? Because it's there
Oliver Thylmann: Why I Use Twitter
Clunky Flow: If blogosphere = conference main hall, then twittersphere = buzzing side halls
Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot: The Twitter Debate

Early Reaction to PlugandPlay Expo

The biggest problem to trying to navigate a few dozen startups in a few hours' time is that there's only one thing guaranteed - I won't get to them all, especially when I'm trying to vie for attention in competition with early-stage investors who could mean the difference between their seeing another six months, or looking for work. I did manage to talk to 10-12 of the companies at reasonable length, and found some services I'll definitely use, while others just simply weren't built for me as a consumer.

The conference, organized by the PlugandPlayTechCenter (yes, all one word) in Sunnyvale, aimed to put entrepreneurs in the same room as VCs and have them make their case in rapid fire. A representative from the three dozen companies was given all of two minutes to deliver their elevator pitch, and based on a vote, four were selected to move to the next round, where they got all of ten minutes to elaborate on their offering, and business model. (Most, of course, were ad-based. Others looked to take a portion of revenue generated from their own users' sales.)

I showed up to the conference around 4, as soon as I was able, and tried to catch up for lost time - visiting many displays and talking to CEOs, CTOs, co-founders and the occasional VP of Marketing. And while some were very pleased with the close quarters and rigid schedule, I did hear complaints. As one exhibitor put it, "If you're the 28th presenter out of 37 companies, the audience is pretty glazed over. You don't even know who the investors are!" You can be sure that he hadn't been selected as one of the final four, and was all too eager to pick apart the process.

Two highlights for me were speaking with Spokeo's Mital Poddar, the company's VP of Marketing, and Jeffrey Tannenbaum, CEO of PhotoCrank. Mital, only a month or so into her new role at Spokeo, did a great job demoing the social network data aggregator, and were we in another situation, I'd have tried to recruit her away from her current job. Needless to say, I'll have a follow-on note around Spokeo shortly. Jeffrey also was all too happy to demo his photo and image annotation tool (now live on this site), and thought of some unique applications for it - which I'll discuss in a bit.

I also enjoyed talking with Leonard Backus, CEO for Datamash, Tomás Zeman of Wirenode, Steve Gibson of CCube.com and Ernstjan Albers of Headr.com, to name a few.

Depending on who I talked to, you could see differing levels of strain or excitement on the exhibitors' faces. Some were hard core geeks who didn't like public speaking and couldn't wait for me to stop asking questions. Others, after finding out I had no money to give them for an "A" round of funding, were all too happy to cut their pitch short. But the good majority seemed to enjoy demoing their service and walking me through, screen by screen, how they planned to change the world. Maybe some will. Many won't. But it was a unique Silicon Valley experience. More soon.

Wii Offers Original Mario Bros. for Five Bucks

While the Nintendo Wii is still new to me, I'm sure some of its more advanced features are sure to prove me late to the game. Yesterday, while browsing the Wii's Shopping Channel, I found that you can download classic original Nintendo games directly to the Wii's hard drive, without buying a game disc. For the equivalent of $5, I was able to download the original Super Mario Bros. video game, helping me reestablish my dominance over Goombas and gain the opportunity to save The Princess, all for less than the price of a McDonald's Happy Meal.

Like any good NES user back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I played my unfair share of Mario Bros, and know all the hidden tricks. But while it's been a long time since I've played the game on an NES console, I had the game fired up and ready to go on our 42-inch plasma TV last night, a brand new experience.

Engadget posted a story yesterday calling for Nintendo to enable DVD playback on the Wii - a laudable effort, to be sure. But for me, I continue to get geeked out by the fact this slim console has the ability to move beyond DVDs, and can grab new games from the cloud for near-immediate playing. It's a lot like video games on demand. For an extremely small cost basis, I was able to pull down one of the world's classics, a game which doesn't get any less fun with time, and one I likely would have paid ten times as much for the first time around. That's almost as fun as finding a hidden "1 Up" mushroom!

New TAB Post: Why Not Integrate Safari With Finder?

One of the things I actually like about the Windows platform is the ability to type in a URL in the desktop environment rather than needing to open a Web browser. While that's a byproduct of their illegal bundling practices that aimed to kill Netscape, I occasionally would like to see similar functionality on my Mac OS X boxes.

So far, readers at The Apple Blog believe a move to integrate Safari with Finder, mimicking Microsoft's move, would be a daft one, arguing that malware and feature bloat are two things Microsoft does that Apple should not. But it's worth looking into in my opinion. I could view boomarks and search Google from the Finder, rather than jumping into Safari, and Apple has all the necessary tools.

That's the background behind my most recent contribution to The Apple Blog, titled Why Not Integrate Safari With Finder?. Per agreement with them, I will not be cross-posting the piece, but instead, have provided a link. Enjoy.

Comcast Cable Out Again - 7 Hours and Counting

For the second time in a fortnight, our Comcast Cable access to the Web and television has been completely knocked out, without any rhyme, reason, warning or apologies.

The first sign came at work, when I got an e-mail from Kristine, containing the note, "P.S. TV and (Wifi network) are down. Thank goodness for neighbors wifi." That was nearly seven hours ago, and so far as I can tell, our cable TV and Web access are still out, sending us scrapping for alternative entertainment, and new ways to get online. So far, we've determined which open WiFi networks in our apartment complex utilize Comcast, and therefore aren't working, and those that are working, and therefore, must be using an alternative vendor. The good news is that one works well enough for me to get the basic Internet readings done and let me contribute my whining here.

One line's outage has significant impact, setting off a chain of events. Our TiVo is recording gibberish. Our Apple TV isn't showing anything from YouTube or the iTunes Store. Our PowerBook isn't connecting at all, and I'm stuck on the Dell trying to eke out something resembling bandwidth. The only real technology item unaffected so far appears to be the Blackberry. With time, I'm sure Comcast's evil ways will take it down too somehow.

Google Reader Feeds Restored Following Outage

Turns out the missing feeds and trends data in Google Reader will look more like a blip than a calamity, as the company rapidly responded and restored all previous data in about an hour after customers first started noticing their RSS feeds and shared link statistics had been obliterated. I went back from having only 4 feeds to 190, and my trends data shows 400 shared items in the last 30 days, not zero. This gives us incredible relief, and reduces our level of frustration which hit mid-day.

Some circles define the Web 2.0 movement as being where the Web functions as an application. Instead of photos being stored on iPhoto, they can be stored on Flickr. Instead of Outlook, e-mail is on GMail. Instead of using NetNewswire, we use Google Reader. And while the portability of data from computer to computer and browser to browser is excellent, it does raise the fear that my data is outside of my immediate reach, and therefore, subject to the security of the third party. If Google Reader has an outage, my data is lost. If my blog platform goes down, I shut up for a while. And so on.

So what should we do? The common answer seems to be: Back up your data. After today's outage, many Google Reader users rapidly backed up their OPML files, in case it happened again. But there are a ton of companies out there actually offering backup services through the Web, from Apple to Google (GDrive anyone?) and others. What if those services go down? Are you S.O.L., or will a simple user agreement bail you out when the time comes? You honestly can't be too safe, or have too many backups of your data.

I absolutely appreciate the speed in which the Google Reader team responded to today's data meltdown. They even just posted a note on their official blog about the outage, which they called "brief" and within the "response time that we strive for". But before we saw this post, we genuinely thought our data was nuked and that we would have to start over, and that feeling was uncomfortable indeed. It's amazing how reliant I've become on the Web to give me my information as fast as I can get it.

Comcast Cable Internet's On the Blink

Typically, when we lose Internet access at home, my first inkling is to start the finger pointing toward our Airport Extreme base station from Apple. Despite a recent upgrade, it seems we lose all connectivity for about 20-30 minutes of each evening, often at the most inopportune times. But, in a flashback reminiscent of the 2000-2002 timeframe, when this happened all the time, tonight, in our corner of Sunnyvale, it's our cable modem that's literally on the blink, denying us connectivity.

All I have to say is thank goodness for nearby neighbors with unsecured wireless basestations that don't have a password. When our home network goes down, I just go to the Airport menubar and choose one of the available networks and keep going.

But truth be told, any time one of the key cogs to the Internet gets wiped out, it has me thinking how vulnerable our information delivery systems are. Prior to the Internet's pervasive presence, we could expect TV to always be available, or in the case of power outage, it was always a smart idea to have a battery-powered radio handy, to keep updated through an emergency. Now, we have made the Internet a key player in our communication, entertainment, news and commerce. Disrupting Web access for communities, regions or on a larger scale would have dramatic effect. Forget the obvious issues of forcing geeks to go outside of their cubicles without sunblock. It actually could stall the way we operate.

I'm not saying a mere blip in Comcast's uptime is the end of the world. I obviously found a work-around. But today's virtual highways are just as important as the real ones and disruptions or snarls could slow us down in a big way.

SF Chronicle Editor: Newspaper Business Model "Broken"

One day after Neil Henry lit up the mediasphere with his stark comments on the world of journalism in a brave new world of instant, independent media, more bombshells continue to drop at the San Francisco Chronicle, as the beleaguered paper saw its managing editor quit yesterday, despite not having a new job. In his leaving, he said the business model in the newspaper business "is clearly broken."

Not too long ago, San Francisco was a two-paper town, with the Chronicle and Examiner publishing every day. The Examiner functioned as an afternoon paper, including the closing day's stock prices, and the Chronicle was the paper of record. In a series of missteps, the Examiner cut back the number of editions, went to tabloid format, and all but disappeared. The Chronicle, the seeming victor in the race, has seen its own struggles, and is circling the drain in an extremely wired, connected landscape that is turning elsewhere for its media intake.

I was once a newspaper addict. I read the paper daily from the age of 12, scoured for newspaper headlines and editorials all over the nation when the Internet evolved, and seriously considered journalism as a profession, becoming a charter subscriber to the defunct Brill's Content, and making myself a student of the craft. But the landscape changed under my feet, and I was lucky enough to make the jump to a more forward-looking, aggressive environment. If others in the newspaper business don't make similar moves, many will find themselves starting their careers over, voluntarily or not.

Google Gears Another Utility That Won't Work With Safari

Ratcheting up the company's applications battle with Microsoft today, Google debuted a new platform called Google Gears, a new developer API that lets Web developers also develop for offline use. Some are calling the introduction a game changer, and the service's cross-functionality on multiple platforms is lauded. But in what's too familiar a story, if you're a Mac user like me who prefers Safari as your Web browser, you're locked out.

The Google Gears page says in its system requirements it supports both Firefox 1.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+ browsers, with no mention of Safari. This despite recent close interaction with Google and Apple to deliver YouTube for the AppleTV, Google Maps for the iPhone, etc.

For some reason, being one of those on Safari today is akin to being a Mac user in the 1990s. Developers are coding for the major browsers, and we're lucky to be thrown a bone. Below are a few more bigtime apps that refuse to work under Safari:

1. The Alexa Toolbar

Alexa always, always dramatically undercounts Macs because Mac users site visits aren't counted. Despite years of knowing this was an issue, Alexa has made no move to offer anything but a toolbar for Windows users with Internet Explorer.

2. StumbleUpon

Although StumbleUpon has achieved success, recently making news for being purchased by eBay, the service is mostly mystery to me. The StumbleUpon toolbar is available only for Internet Explorer and Firefox. Safari users are not invited.

3. Google Pack

The Google Pack is available only for Windows users, period. Forget about any Mac version.

4. Google Toolbar

Making Safari 0 for 3 in the toolbar battle, Google Toolbar is only available on Firefox for the Mac or Internet Explorer. Safari users need not apply.

5. Yahoo! Toolbar

Aha! 0 for 4. The Yahoo! Toolbar is only available for Windows Internet Explorer or Firefox. Got Safari? Got no toolbar.

So whose fault is it here? Is it Apple's fault for creating a Web browser that wasn't extendible or developer friendly? Is it instead that the developers are ignoring the Mac OS X Safari market? Or further, are Web standards not being followed? I'd assume Google has the manpower to provide Mac OS X Safari capable Web applications, but they are putting resources somewhere else. For me, Safari is the very best browser. That these popular sites and programs are unavailable is extremely frustrating.

Blogosphere On Holiday Drops RSS Feeds by 40%

On Saturday, I speculated that U.S. Web traffic was down significantly for the Memorial Day weekend, as I had seen a spike in the percentage of international visits to the blog. But the drop-off wasn't nearly as stark as the reduction in total posts received by my tracked RSS feeds in Google Reader for a typical Monday. On the whole, total postings were down on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, with Monday's holiday being down more than 40% off average.


I typically read about 500 RSS items per weekday, and half that number on Saturday and Sunday, according to my Google Reader trends.


My Google Reader stats, by day, with Mondays marked.

• On May 28th, Memorial Day, I read exactly 300 items.
  
• On May 21st, I read 509 items.
  
• On May 14th, I read 553 items.
  
• On May 7th, I read 530 items.
  
• On April 30th, I read 515 items.

Assuming the total number of RSS feeds I read remained constant, the usual 526.75 average I could expect for a Monday had been whittled down by 44%.

Sunday and Saturday were also down, but to a lower degree. On May 27th, I read 259 items, whereas my typical Sunday list tops 280. The decline was only about 10%. On May 26th, I read 248 items, whereas a typical Saturday list is about 260. Saturdays are almost always the lightest days of the week, and the drop-off was miniscule.

Causes for the decline are numerous, of course. With most U.S. offices close, you would see a drop of work-related news, technology events to cover, and press releases to hit the wires. Some took the holiday away from the computer altogether. Others considered Monday a blog holiday as well. But rather than just have a gut feeling that traffic was down overall, Google Reader's stats give us a statistical benchmark.

U.S. Web Traffic Down For Memorial Day?

This being a 3-day weekend and the traditional kick-off to summer vacation season, it looks like even the geeks have left the keyboards behind and headed for more enjoyable places - ostensibly without net access. Robert Scoble's on his way to South Lake Tahoe, and even TechMeme makes it look like it will be a slow weekend.

Of interest, I looked at my own traffic, and I see that nobody from within 1,000 miles has come to the blog in the last little while. Instead of the usual domestic traffic, with much of that from the Bay Area, I've been frequented by visitors from India, Egypt, Belgium, New South Wales, Poland, the UK and a flurry from Nova Scotia. I guess they didn't get the memo the rest of us are on holiday.



Also of interest, it looks like the Register.com laptop theft I mentioned yesterday is leaking to mainstream press. The Inquirer (UK) starts the coverage. Paul Ferguson notes the security breach as well.

BitTorrent Bails Me Out on TiVo's Simpsons Miss

This evening, after work, I settled down in front of the TiVo, expecting to find last night's season finale of The Simpsons. Long anticipated, knowing the finale was to feature Keifer Sutherland and Mary Lynn Rajskub of "24" in a mashup of the two popular Fox shows, I was shocked to find The Simpsons nowhere on my TiVo listings at all.

Due to an unfortunate season pass error, a rerun of Gilmore Girls (not my idea, trust me) had overtaken Marge, Homer, Bart, Lisa and Maggie's would-be dual offering. Lucky for me, the Internet was there to back me up. Though I typically steer clear of the peer to peer sharing networks, I believe that if every intent is made to obtain media through mainstream means, they do offer an acceptable alternative, especially for free media like broadcast television. (Side note: If The Simpsons were available on iTunes, I'd have gone there instead)

Sure enough, both episodes of The Simpsons from Sunday were available in crystal clear quality. Clocking in around 174 megabytes apiece , the two AVI files opened up in QuickTime, and delivered the amusement I was seeking. Despite the fact I watched both episodes on my 15-inch PowerBook instead of on the 42-inch plasma TV, the viewing experience was excellent. While The Simpsons can vary from week to week, both shows were very solid, including the excellent 24 mashup parody involving the "Counter Truancy Unit" or... CTU.


Click Either Image to Enlarge and View Higher Quality

As you can see in the inline snapshots, the quality of online video is nearing that of DVDs. Thanks to easy access and high speed broadband, the delay to download didn't make much of an impact. While I'd prefer to have gotten the shows off TiVo or iTunes, BitTorrent sure did come in handy.

Application Stability is as Important as OS Stability

Just last week, I set off a bit of a minor firestorm over at The Apple Blog by my complaining about having to restart my PowerBook after installing Apple software updates. But what's even worse than the occasional restart is the issue of locked up applications, which can dramatically impact productivity. With the expanded move toward Web-based applications, the opportunity to lose in-progress activity looms large.

It's common practice for any seasoned computer owner to frequently save work in progress, especially when working in Microsoft Office applications, like Word, Excel and PowerPoint (sorry, Microsoft, but it's true). Hitting save while penning long e-mails isn't a bad idea either, although most modern e-mail applications, including Microsoft Outlook, have an auto-save feature. It's as if as users, we anticipate the applications will be less stable than the operating system, and could go down at any time. It's not too infrequent for me to be in the middle of launching a new application only to see it hang, and require a force quit. It's not too uncommon for me to force PowerPoint or Word to quit and hope that the next time I open the application, that enough of my work has been automatically recovered.

But now, the Web poses a new problem, and last night, I got bitten by the issue in a big way. As Web 2.0 applications move toward the Web, for example, my moving to blogging within the Web browser instead of a desktop application, hitting the Save button isn't really an option. Hitting save won't capture the state of my blog post, but instead will drop an HTML file on my desktop. Last night, near 1 a.m., I saw the Sacramento Kings had released a list of seven candidates for their head coaching position. Keen to post that to Sactown Royalty, I had written up a detailed summary, including links to Wikipedia for all seven candidates, relevant background information and recent articles. During this process, I was writing in one browser window, and opening new window tabs to confirm correct URLs and find more data. Sure enough, as I got near completion, my hard drive started to whir, my cursor locked up and my Safari Web browser was completely useless. Waiting 10 minutes didn't bring it back to life either, as I was eventually pushed to force quit and lose everything. Instead of starting over from scratch, I closed up the laptop, and went to bed.

While it's true that Apple's operating system has excellent stability, a