PassingNotes.com

[DEEP THOUGHTS] Librarians are so hot they make me sexist

Dave — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:19:42 +0000

okay, so i just got back from vancouver where the lovely carla graebner invited me to present a session on competitive intelligence in libraries - it was a blast…and so if you quickly refer to the 2nd edition of the Guide to Standard Male Fantasies, after the one where the hot female doctor asks you to cough again but before the one where the hot female cop tells you there’s a way out of the speeding ticket, there’s this one where the librarian takes off the glasses and lets her hair down and turns into the chick from van halen’s ‘hot for teacher’ - it was like that…

…hmmm, so vancouver, beautiful city, the most diverse group of white and asian people i’ve met in years…a lotta money there, blenz coffee rules, great sushi, nice views…

as for the library industry, because lets think of it like an industry for a moment, it seems that there was this ‘industry in potential decline’ theme glazing the edges of the conference cake…while individual sessions were reasonably granular, there was an overall trend toward (many) looking at how to increase the relevance of libraries to patrons…and while i suppose many of the tactical and strategic ideas make incredible sense, from gaming and use of web 2.0 services in libraries to changing programs and services, i felt like there was something huge being overlooked, perhaps best phrased as a simple question:

“why on earth should my 8th grade son get on his bike and ride to the library for any information if he’s got the interweb at home?”

…now if i look at my son (not right now, he’s still asleep), i see something very different from what i felt some librarians are talking about…when discussion of patrons comes up, it seems that ‘patrons‘ means current adults, not the adults-in-10-or-20-years that i’m thinking about…i tried to convey this idea by talking about the changing role of the information forager…

what do i mean by that? well, if my older son (and younger one) are raised in an educational environment that permits internet citations in papers, condones wikipedia as valid and generally doesn’t mention the library as a resource (or brings it up as an afterthought), then we’re collectively looking at a future in which the information forager has been trained to go online and online only to collect and harvest information…so how might a library fit into that information forager’s cycle? i mean, how might the library literally get in the way?

…that’s a tough question, but i think it’s the only question that matters. adults and peeps with kids will always hit the library for myriad reasons, but what i worry about most is whether samuels’ quote becomes a mantra - “a library is thought in cold storage” - and i’m not pretending to have the answer…

some of what i discussed in my session bears relevance, building ‘library branded’ online resources (e.g. the baker school’s amazing online research resources, free, available to all), using open source tools to build such resources, building identities and relationships in public online networks, offering advisory services and so on and so on…but in the end the same issue remains: in 10 or 20 years, kids (and adults) are going to be so used to online research and online reading that it’s going to take a lot more than one-off novelties like gaming or video centers to lure them in…

…until things change, and i mean really change, i do believe that the only real relationship that i (and most people) have with a local library is going to be an email reminder that my return is late…and the opportunity to engage has gotta be bigger than that, right?.

[OPINION] Has hubris settled in amongst the spam fighters? Are they really just fighting dross?

Dave — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 03:04:04 +0000

…is it a deeper issue - far beyond just spam? is it about miscomprehension of what constitutes spam and what is simply the intellectual dross that surrounds all online dialogue? there’s an interesting discussion going on over at the blog of dries buytaert, most famous for being the big brain behind drupal…

basically, dries has conjured up another clever approach to fighting ‘the shit’ on web sites, including his own drupal…and it’s great - certainly worth a look…but the discussion at his blog feels like a deafening echo chamber…it’s high fives all around, buddy!…but since you know i’m a bit of a shit, i had something entirely different to say (i’m a thinker that way):

“…[from my comment over there, but edited] i’m not so sure that i agree with any of this, though it all sounds wonderful…in the real world, this analog physical thing that we deal with each day, when one opens up a storefront he or she allows for any person to enter - and while we reserve the right to refuse service to anybody, it is often not the ‘terrifying looking’ stranger who causes problems, it’s the seemingly innocuous dude who accosts patrons or does something far worse…

…and so how is the internet any different? sadly, people have come to believe that if they produce a content site (blog, drupal install or other), they reserve the right to implement all sorts of draconian measures to keep out unwanted comments and contributions, rooted in their own baseless assumptions about what ‘probably’ constitutes bad behavior…

but that means different things to different people. if i’m on your site hawking vitamins and mlm schemes, you’ll catch my links and bar entry - just as you would stop me at the door of your store if i were carrying a ballpark vendor’s tray around my neck trying to sell peanuts to your patrons…

…but what if i turn into that other kind of visitor? (more…)

[TOOLS] Yo hoss, want a free copy of EasyVOIP Recorder?

Dave — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:07:29 +0000

so this is cool…after i wrote that article about how to record phone calls, the guys over at easyVOIP recorder dropped me a note to thank me for the mention and asked about advertising..

…of course, since you all know i’m a total asshole, i quoted them 10 thousand per month - but they’re just a couple of young dudes who have built a cool product…so we came up with a better idea: no charge for this blog post BUT they’re gonna give away 2 free copies of easyvoip recorder to passingnotes.com readers who comment on this post with the best or most interesting ideas for features or improvements…

rules (simple): check out (windows only) easyvoip recorder, look it over, come up with some cool ideas for features or enhancements etc., then comment here (down below) and be sure to include (more…)

Making Passingnotes easier to use, but still stupid!

Dave — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:30:10 +0000

okay, somebody just sent me an email about this and i had to share it right away - because you can try it for yourself…oh…it’s so exciting, maybe it will work forever (hope hope) - here you go:

go to elGoog’s search page, type in “fucking stupid“ - and what do you see? why, passingnotes.com is result number five! wow! and the article? none other than the rip on mahalo (you know, the asshole engine)

…at any rate, also writing to let you all know that i’ll be slowly cleaning up the tags and attributes throughout the site and if you swing by, you’ll notice already that content is easier to navigate (there are hundreds of my bits on here, it’s getting large)…just need to slowly go back and tag old crap…

[TOOLS] Pre-flop Gold! A whole buncha bullshit to play with on the interweb and your phone

Dave — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:43:50 +0000

you do know what i’m talking about with ‘preflop’ gold, right? it’s a poker expression - as in, “that ace and jack suited that i was holding looked great until the flop came out.” in the world of internet tools, it’s more like, “that site looked awesome - i registered right away! then i realized that it completely sucks ass” …so yeah, this is some stuff i’ve been screwing around with…some of it is solid, but some of it may feel like preflop gold to you…

Wakerupper! - okay, yeah, i wrote about this before and i’m writing about it again because it is fucking awesome! seriously, no joke, i use this for everything now…get recurring calls to remind me to pick up my younger son (poor kid, he used to stand in the rain for hours) - even set it to interrupt me on dates in case things ain’t going so great (they rarely are, because i’m a bit of an asshole)

your list - email alerts and reminders - if you can’t get into the wakerupper beta, and don’t want to configure google calendar to send you sms alerts for events, then consider just doing it by email like every other tom, dick and shanikwa… (more…)

[HOW TO] Recording Phone Calls

Dave — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:25:38 +0000

so i got an email earlier today asking for a recap of something i discussed with a few members of aiip a while back - how to record phone calls and convert the sound files on a project…thought i’d actually try to be serious for once and explain this in brief as a reference…but i typed this up fast, so there are some big ass typos! enjoy…

…before i begin, let me tell you that i never record illegally - i only record with the express permission of the interviewee…por ejemplo, i’ve worked on a bunch of television projects (hey, actually got some production credits, wahoo) and all involved extensive recorded interviewing and transcription…hey, did you know that i contributed to scip’s own book on ethics????

if you’re clueless about the rules for recording, then shit man, read up on the rules state by state - that’s why we have laws!

so let me explain my own situation - i’ve got a macbook pro, used to only have windows but now have both because i run parallels - why? because there’s some windows stuff that i’m using all of the time and don’t want to replace with ’style over substance’ mac apps…i’m using a landline for recorded calls, not a cell (though that’s covered down below)…

..yeah, so here’s the deal…i own a great little digital recorder - a sony pdp - you can pick up tons of these at any stapes, online, whatever you feel like doing…the sony models come with their own voice editing software, and that software will automatically convert sony’s bullshit oddball file formats into standard wav files for windows or mac (so you can burn ‘em cd for a transcriptionist and so on)

to connect the recorder to the phone and have a clear recording instead of just throwing the thing on a table and having it sound like shit, i use a small (more…)

Dr MicroHoo, or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb

Dave — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:59:58 +0000

what in the absolute fuck is this? elgoog issuing an “official corporate statement regarding microsoft’s bid for yahoo“? is this a joke? after telling all employees last week to keep their mouths shut???? for those interested, i’ve translated google’s official statement into plain english and changed drummond’s dialogue into exactly what he’s means (my translations below each paragraph are in brackets and are italicized, the rest is from elgoog verbatim]]]:

Yahoo! and the future of the Internet
Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

[[yahoo and the future of the internet, and how google might be totally screwed. - posted by a guy with a law degree, google]]

The openness of the Internet is what made Google — and Yahoo! — possible. A good idea that users find useful spreads quickly. Businesses can be created around the idea. Users benefit from constant innovation. It’s what makes the Internet such an exciting place.

[[the openness of the internet is what makes it possible for google to aggregate incredible amounts of data on both individuals and businesses as well as governmental orgs and ngo’s alike. a good idea that users find that employs 8 or fewer individuals is a great google acquisition. users benefit from whatever we tell them to benefit from.]]]

So Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a (more…)

Hey PN readers, please update your RSS feed for Passingnotes!

Dave — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:02:04 +0000

so, i broke down this year and decided to give feedburner a try (elgoog bought them y’know) - seems simple enough…should also make it very easy to subscribe in any reader or reader service…oh, and you can also get new posts emailed directly to you if you like to sound out the words one by one and wish to savor and file each entry or bring the posts along to your EFL class…

…at any rate, got a great URL for this feed and you should see the link on the site as well: http://feeds.feedburner.com/passingnotes/fuckyeah

btw, got a new theme up too, it’s pretty and has stars. not sure how long that’s gonna last.

Google considers adding an apostrophe to a help document and other 08 Rumors

Dave — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:32:56 +0000

…hey, i’m back, was in the sun then back to boston, had to fly with a sinus thing and my ear actually blew up when i got home (very nasty shit, blood and deafness, like a black sabbath concert)…and then i remembered that i hadn’t written anything on this site in like a month or something, got a few posts coming…

…so with all the hoopla running around each and every change that elgoog makes - from changing text on one site to a new button or font on another site, i felt it was only appropriate to circulate my own rumor:

rumor: in 2008, elgoog may possibly add an apostrophe to one or more help documents in support of their online applications. i have heard this from a very reliable source, same dude who tipped me off about how bosworth was demoted last spring and how steve jobs shines eric schmidt’s shoes now (supposedly schmidt has jobs in a headlock at a party last month and he’s like, “say ‘i’m a newton, say i’m a shitty newton” and jobs reached around schmidt’s whale belt and in between his doughy lower back and his (more…)

Does Google eat its own dog food?

Dave — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:07:34 +0000

i have it from a very, very reliable source that elgoog began migrating their own internal corporate employees to google apps nearly 13 months ago…to be specific, as of last winter elgoog employees were using gmail for communications and assorted apps for collaboration (mostly calendar)…actually, i knew this last november but was only able to share this information with a coupla folks who needed to know (also figured nobody would believe me and was unwilling to name this source though it is an enterprise employee within the beast)…

now if we peer into the future of elgoog, most notably their fledgling enterprise offering, one has to wonder why this grand operator has not boldly claimed their own entity as the most obvious testament to the reliability of their enterprise offerings for support of a major public company with a globally distributed workforce…

so we know they use oracle for finance, probably powerpoint for everything investors saw through last spring, and we know that they’ve built tons of their own apps in house (not just back end search stuff, but their own crm apps, their own hiring systems and so on)…i figure that eventually everything they’ve built in house will make its way into the hands of (more…)

How the Social Internet simplifies Source Identification

Dave — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:39:16 +0000

How the Social internet simplifies source identification.

This is an article that I wrote for my regular column in Competitive Intelligence Magazine, published by the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP.org). It’s been reformatted here for online consumption. Oh, and it was written in draft form a little while back, so if you know of any great new sites to add to the list, please throw ‘em into the comments!

“I’m so happy ‘cause today I found my friends. They’re in my head.” – Nirvana

At the cold dawn of the modern internet era, back when Paris Hilton was only undressing Ken & Barbie dolls, ‘connecting online’ meant geeks were exchanging data on digital bulletin boards. As the internet matured, pornography took center stage and dominated the dial-up lines, prompting critics to consider it all a fad.

But as time passed, eye-opening internet businesses emerged to crack the foundations of industry – Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist to name a few. Around the time of Al Gore’s recount (2000), mind-boggling applications changed the way everything worked, from new distributed data models to nascent software-as-a-service platforms. Not surprisingly, pornography still crowded the highway

(more…)

Prince Albert, Wikipedia and some Shaved Balls, or, Wikipedia needs Adult Content Warnings

Dave — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:33:02 +0000

okay, so i’ve got a new beef with wikipedia - the absolute and total lack of adult content warnings…so let me tell you this little story, it’s kind of funny…

my older son and i have developed (as of late) a bit of a mildly raunchy rapport, something his mom might not go for..i remember what it was like to be in 8th grade, to see the nude scene in the movie while sitting in the same room as my parents, squirming, adjusting, hoping that the glow of the screen wasn’t bright enough to show the red face sitting just a few feet away…didn’t want to go through that exercise with the fruit of my own loin, so yeah, i told him about the shenis…

at any rate, i’m reading this book - fucking brilliant btw - called ‘foreskin’s lament’ by shalom auslander…about half-way through he uses this random expression during a diatribe on circumcision, jokes about having to shave his son’s balls and give him a prince albert…never heard that one before….

…so my boy is on the machine with his friend and i shout out, ‘hey, do me a favor, hit elgoog and type in ‘prince albert‘…he does, and voila, the first result up links to wikipedia! wikipedia is, of course, a favorite research tool used by all junior high (and elementary) students, teachers even talk about it as a resource, how to cite articles if used…

but do me a favor, would ya’? take a look at the entry for prince albert that turned up as the first result on google…

does it bug you that there’s no adult content warning on that? does it bug you that the real prince albert turns up halfway down the results page after the wiki article? are you wondering just how cozy wikipedia and google have become?

exactly….

so naturally i hit wikipedia and did searches for all sorts of shit (nipple piercing, mutual masturbation, anal sex (which leads to tons of shit, no pun intended), blowjob - which led directly via link to autofellatio and so on and so on and ditty ditty so on)…

is it time for wikipedia to enlist their editors to mark content as adult?? anybody listening???

New article for Competitive Intelligence Magazine running on Profy.com

Dave — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:22:05 +0000

a few months ago i talked about this article i was putting together for “competitive intelligence magazine” (from scip.org) about finding sources online - it finally went to print this month and will then go up on the scip site later, as well as on my own corporate site…

at the time, dozens of you requested copies (drafts/previews) and on a very positive note, scip has agreed to let me post it online at the same time as the print version as a guest editorial on profy.com

this is actually nice because it includes dozens of links and while displayed online, every link is ‘live’

…and as an added bonus, it’s now entered into profy.com’s ‘iphone’ contest - meaning that if you have any comments, questions or thoughts about the article then *please* feel free to post them directly at the article on profy because apparently that’s how they’re ‘calculating interest’ (soft science if i might say so myself, but whatever)…if i win, the plan is to swap the iphone (no interest) for a new ipod for my 8th grader (ipod touch is very cool stuff…)

so at any rate, the link to the article (full path) is:
http://www.profy.com/2007/09/26/how-the-social-internet-simplifies-source-identification/

or the tinyurl:
http://tinyurl.com/38ha8j

…for those of you who would like a copy in PDF format (for printing or whatever), just drop me a note at “dcarpe@gmail.com” - it will be up on clew.us in a couple of weeks as well under publications - as well as here on passingnotes.com…

thanks - and i hope you enjoy it! and again, i’m certainly happy to discuss and field questions about the dozens of resources covered here, though i welcome the opportunity to answer them within profy’s commenting system so that a) others can read them (tons of non-scip and non-aiip folks will be reading it) and b) it’ll improve my winning odds ;) (that last part is shameless, i know, bear with me…)

Is Google the REAL Octopus? Google IS just like PROMIS…

Dave — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:21:54 +0000

well, back from summer fantasy land and immediately hooked into this little conspiracy theory that bubbled up a while ago on socnet, the listserv of insna - comment had to do with the nsa’s foray into sna back in the 70’s through promis (the “prosecutor’s information management system”)…promis was authored and created by inslaw inc, a software co run by bill and nancy hamilton who both (according to legend) worked for the nsa…”In March 1982, the Department of Justice awarded INSLAW Inc., a $10 million, 3-year contract to implement a version of PROMIS to which the government had already obtained a license in the 22 largest United States Attorneys Offices.” (from wikipedia) - if you go to archive.org and plug in this page, http://www.webcom.com/~pinknoiz/covert/inslaw.html, you will find all of the house proceedings and hearings summaries (page went offline in early 2005, ain’t that odd?)

…the story actually got a lot more outlandish before it was all over, “In 2001, the Washington Times and Fox News each quoted federal law enforcement and/or intelligence officials familiar with the debriefing of former FBI Agent Robert Hanssen as claiming that Hanssen had stolen for the Soviet KGB copies of PROMIS-derivative software used within the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies to track the intelligence information they produce, and used by U.S. intelligence within banks to track financial transactions. These reports further stated that Osama bin Laden later bought (more…)

Google acquires Mahalo and Calcanis to be Google COO

Dave — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:11:20 +0000

hah…in mahalo’s dreams…what a stupid ass company…this is just a TEST post because i skipped all of august (very busy with iced coffee, work, a new dog, trip to maine etc)…curious to see if this backdates…

new post coming shortly.

10 ways that Google is like a doody with corn in it

Dave — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 03:44:01 +0000

kidding! there’s no elgoog in this post, just thought the title would trick the clickers…and wow, haven’t written in a while, been busy with something else but thought it would be nice to do a quick roundup of some assorted tools that i’ve been dicking around with…generally speaking, most of what’s on the interweb either a) sucks, 2) has been done before or c) is crap (similar to sucking, being crap is also distinguished by a tendency toward browser compatibility issues)…enjoy…

myIPneighbors - got a site on a shared server and wondering why it’s soooo fucking slow all of the time when all you’re running is brochureware? hit this site and you may soon find a new person to send hate mail to!

call it fake - remember when i was talking a while ago about the stygian state of caller id spoofing? well say hello to the free pc-2-phone version…

fichey, whacked search thing.. - not sure what to say, but what the shit? is microfiche back!? have we all gone full circle on the interweb?

senduit - very cool, share files just like a buncha other services, but with very short expiration dates (as in, “dude, go download the song quickly, it expires in 30 minutes”)

50matches: search delicious, digg and reddit at the same time… a social bookmarking meta-search tool for the only sites that appear to matter anymore (sorry to those others who couldn’t keep it fresh, “yo, keep it real…worrrdddd”)

getgrandpasFBIfiles - concerned that you didn’t get that job because of your family history and not just because you suck at what you do? then consider following this dude’s cookbook approach to digging up family fbi files…

phone number geolocator - wondering where that call came from? hit this site, you’ll like it, trust me…

big list of best css design galleries - um, have you ever, uh, maybe, uh, ripped some other dude’s site design ’cause it was so cool? like sucked the whole thing down, pulled out the css in an editor and made it your own? this list will lead to you some awesome new site design ideas…got some favorites on this list, but there’s a lot to look over…

zniff, just iceland - yeah, here’s a nice search engine…might not matter much unless you are hjalli, and you launched this ages ago as a sister site to spurl…but i like it! just gotta find mo’ reason to use it…

and lastly: things you never knew existed - gotta keep my boys off this site, there is just too much cool shit for sale…what a way to waste a day or two…

Truemor 2: what Google and Apple are really doing together.

Dave — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:48:31 +0000

okay, so i just wanna put this out there for reactions and for you to noodle over…short: google and apple are in bed together for a reason. google will use safari on windows and mac to control ‘web as desktop/os’ (not mozilla)…read on…

first - we already know about the big apple/google relationships (schmidt on the board and all of that)…and here’s a very nice and clean visualization of that web of relationships for you to look over (apple/google)…

…but some lesser known and KEY relationships here? okay. first off there’s ann mather - she’s a director of google and the former evp/cfo of pixar and a former right hand gal to steve jobs…next up is jamie dinkelacker, a guy who was hired last fall as ‘program manager’ for the enterprise engineering efforts of elgoog, an agile software guru, and an all around super smart guy - why mention him? oh yeah, he was a former senior scientist at apple - also the dude behind the first calendaring app (netscape) and so on…

…oh, but i digress - the point (!) of all of this: in order to really succeed, google needs one standardized browser to enable and support all of their online and offline services, api’s, coming-stuff (offline synch etc) and given mozilla’s lack of interest in seeing another ‘fork’ emerge (yet again, please, no more flock) it will be a long while before google can control their directions (yeah, even with dibona running open source at elgoog, i find it hard to believe that he gets to set priorities, plus he openly admits that goog doesn’t like people to know what they’re doing, hence the interest in open source inside their walls and their ability to control shit - another mozilla fork would fuck it all up)..

shit, yeah, got distracted again - so yeah, if you roll up windows and mac, you’ve basically covered every consumer and business user in the mainstream world (sorry, ubuntu cronies, you just don’t count as mainstream) - so what’s a big company like google to do if they wish to control the browser experience, specify functions/calls and maintain absolute secrecy over any such plans? answer: partner with the other most secretive company out there, apple computer, and co-opt safari to put embedded solutions directly inside the browser (the one that handles java quite well mind you), and now runs across platforms…

…does that make sense? fuck ajax apps on the iphone, i am talking about all of the apps on the internet…so now, does that “ iGoogle offering’ make a little more sense to you? does it feel a little personal as well as a little appley? maybe it’s just me, but elgoog doesn’t need to buy apple, they just need to control and influence core partners across the board and push for one browser to rule them all…btw, if you can build that app for iphone, you can sure as shit get it to run on safari - wouldn’t this offer a nice channel for google into the mobile market without making a phone or any of that bullshit?

think about it: apple is the comeback kid with safari on windows, but they NEED the presence of google to expand the ‘mainstream’ user base, integrate with their own services (think ‘.mac 2.0′) and in turn ride the elgoog wave into the shore of the interweb-as-desktop while yahoo and others lay about, beached whales who either didn’t see this coming or just couldn’t shift adroitly enough to respond to the changes…

Truemor: What Google is REALLY planning to do for 2008

Dave — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:14:26 +0000

Okay, the rumor starts here (my theory, duh)…Short version: elgoog (Google) is planning to launch the world’s largest social networking site ‘overnight’ and at the flick of a switch and will become the Mitsubishi of the internet.

Huh? Exactly. Let me explain…while yahoo and others continue to explore acquisitions in the social networking space (e.g. bebo et al), and the “buy-me-i’m-facebook” dance continues, stop and ask yourself a question: having already built or acquired every relevant component of a consumer and enterprise social networking solution, why has elgoog not postured in this space beyond orkut? alternatively: with billions of free working capital for acquisition, why has google ignored social networking site acquisitions beyond the super-niche (e.g. dodgeball, now dying on the vine)?

the answer: because elgoog is planning to launch the world’s largest social networking application within 12-18 months on its own. it will dwarf everything else out there and rattle the entire internet and new media landscape. facebook gets it, hence the “we’re now an OS” dream…but they’re far too small to matter. ‘some people in the world‘ use facebook right now - but ‘over 60 percent of people looking for anything online‘ use elgoog (compare those numbers)

…ever hear of mitsubishi? cars, electronics, all that shit? did you also know that they’re making and moving over one-third of the world’s fertilizer? (hey, this is going somewhere)…mitsubishi believes in a philosophy called “insiderization” - think of it this way: why make fertilizer and then sell it to others, or why simply trade the commodity and let others move and sell? why not just BE the maker, the market and the buyer and move inside, up and down the market? that’s what they’ve done over the years…fertilizer is a great example, just look at how they work with monsanto and others to control all angles in the channel..

…as for elgoog, well, they’ve already got every targeted service (messaging, voice, mail, video, pictures, payment, data storage, collaborative apps, et al)…and they’ve got a simple publishing platform in place (think ‘google pages 2.0′) - now all they need to is flick a very small switch: you log in and are presented with an option to ‘publish your google profile‘ and in doing so elect to include select apps/services and make all/some available to groups/user across the ‘google network’ - very simple for elgoog to execute.

…so while facebook dreams of some bullshit world where third parties clamor to build shitty little apps inside their cluttered networking space which reaches only a minority of global interweb users, elgoog is just going to “be the entire space” and throw networking into the mix to expound the details and nuances of services and features…there will be a consumer version and an enterprise version…

goodbye myspace, goodbye linkedin, facebook, bebo and all of the others (yahoo and wallop included for now)…you’ve all completely missed this dark horse running in the social networking universe - the interweb IS just a social networking infrastructure, and all elgoog is doing is building a simple utility to search and connect users with increasingly finer gradations (e.g. collaborative apps, calendaring and other ‘group/singleuser’ services) until one day - poof! - the dark horse emerges.

…oh, and btw, in my opinion the only (and i mean absolutely the only) player that can rattle and compete is microsoft - with the largest installed sw user base in the world, all they need to do is allow for the same profile publishing services as they already do for enterprise, roll it out to consumers at zero cost and integrate a world of online apps and services…

so yeah, that’s what was on my mind earlier this morning, just wanted to throw it out there because i have not found ANYBODY ELSE talking about it yet! what the shit? am i the only one who really sees it this way?

Mahalo is maha-fucking stupid, also causes gas and cramps

Dave — Thu, 31 May 2007 03:50:39 +0000

…has the whole world of startups turned into a vanity contest? a cradle for investors low in self esteem? for real, just when i though the vc’s couldn’t throw money at anything more stupid (200+ photo and video sharing sites funded last year? duh), along comes the ultimate insult to the collective intelligence of internet users everywhere, a site that aims to take us all back in time to the late 90’s, when about.com helped ‘do the thinkin’ for us’ and told us what mattered, a new ass-kissing machine that brought up half of my chicken tikka masala lunch within 30 seconds of use: welcome to mahalo

what’s mahalo? haven’t you heard about this? this dude jason calcanis, formerly from the team at netscape that sorta copied digg, well he joined a vc firm as an “AWMIR” (’affluent white man in residence’) trying to figure out what to do with his time and somebody else’s money and along comes a new “human powered search engine” led by 40 guides who have managed to focus on “what’s important to internet users” by visiting (gasp!) the search engines themselves…

what do you get at mahalo? uh, how about shit with large fonts? seriously, these “guides” if you will, for it’s a formidable task to unearth the biographies of all, they are much smarter than you - they know, for example, that people looking for information on iphones need a new site, a new way to quickly find links to apple.com, wikipedia.com, some competitors (pick a phone manufacturer, any manufacturer) and that these same people want it all on one page. fucking briliant. geniuses. how did i ever live without you? how do you do it over there at mahalo? who can figure out such devices?

…the real magic is how they figure out what’s important, and then waste time building shitty little one page summaries of this crap…why use it? because they have very, very carefully figured out within a seven day period of furious editing that apparently “internet users” really want to know about every A-list blogger who might conceivably write about or otherwise promote “mahalo goodness”

don’t believe me? here, check out this page for one of the main guides and mahalo’s editorial director who goes by the name “CK” on mahalo - now scroll down through his list of major edits between may 21st and may 29th (yes, last week)…notice anything unusual about that list? are those all things that you’ve searched for yourself? here’s a hint: go click through on each of those over-inflated pages describing each major blogger, then visit the blog and look for a positive note on mahalo…do you smell an incentive structure here? for example, arrington at techcrunch couldn’t help but write gushing words about the launch, and oddly he’s what everybody on the internet is looking for these days!

…sorry dudes, but as somebody who actually has to get real research done on the interwebs, i can only tell you that:

a) sequioa capital apparently does make some stupid fucking investments…(did i mention mahalo’s plans for actually separating people from money? exactly…)

a1)..as do elon musk and news corp (other investors) - what are you thinking elon? did you lose a bet or something?

b) nobody is gonna want this product, period. you are breaking a cardinal rule here: trying to create a solution (which sucks) and then trying to manufacture a problem through a poorly executed perception exercise (as in, “oh, thanks, i didn’t realize that google, yahoo, msn, wikipedia and those others didn’t work! thanks! really!)

c) the race to beat jimmy wales to the finish line with an alternative entrant in the “human powered search engine” was in fact over long ago, back when about.com got tired…nobody’s gonna want what wales is selling either, but yet, it’s your money…

d) something else, i forget (but it was important!)

hmmm, so yeah, my impression of this site is that even if they get past the amazing 10 thousand pages of information goal in 2007 (could you imagine that? over 10 thousand pages of information on the internet all just at one site? wow!), they will never be able to recruit a series of guides capable of delivering superior quality information aggregation in a uniform fashion (and it must be superior) who are also interested in doing the whole about.com thing all over again (or should i say dmoz.org?) to help some other white dudes make more money by creating a bullshit solution to a bullshit category in a one-size-fits-all craposphere of lookalike startups championed by the same golf players from the same zip code…

Fat men rejoice, research shows you need only be handsome to get punani

Dave — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:44:24 +0000

oh, so now here’s a great piece right in time for summer - particularly for those men who insist on wearing greek-style bathing suits at american beaches…apparently women care more about your face than your body….this is from a recent new scientist bit: the face, not the body, attracts a mate

…of course this totally conflicts with some other research data in which i read that women are looking at neither face nor body, but rather behavior…but whatever, i’m probably fucked in all directions, but i think i’m gonna work out less hard and go back to heavy candy…and in yet another study, women who are riding the cotton pony also behave quite differently: “what an ovulating girls wants”

..as for you all you single male geeks out there wiping tears of relief from your eyes, do be careful not to get any cheeto dust in there - it stings!

Forbes attempts web 2.0 thing, fucks it up.

Dave — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:39:27 +0000

okay, now this is just so dumb and so poorly executed that i want to chew my typing hand off (with my recently whitened teeth) - and i feel soooo bad for the talented coders who spun their wheels on this thing…forbes.com is trying to launch an org chart wiki - the “big news” was tucked away in a little box on page 16 of the may 7th issue (which, btw, is about half ads - total bullshit, making forbes like ‘vanity fair‘ for the business community, though in the case of vanity fair, ‘long articles‘ do count as literature in most american college classes)…

so where was i? what the shit? what was i talking about? oh yeah, this fucking orgchart wiki thing…so clearly these dudes either partnered with or completely and totally ripped off the folks behind cogmap.com (an orgchart building web 2.0 thing started by some dudes who might be reading this just now going, “forbes did what? forbes is total vanity fair bullshit“)…oh, and forbes.com actually has a link to this wiki-shit-generator right on the homepage (as of today anyways, sunday the something of may, i mean april)…here you go, click on through if you feel so inclined: forbes orgchart wiki

the big problem: the data that they provide (boards, execs and so on) is plain and far too easy to infer structurally to benefit from an org chart online…but the BIG problem is that no registration is required to fuck with the data (as in, i myself took the time to promote several marzipan level execs earlier this week at many of the fortune 500 - and congratulations to all of you, especially you ‘lil abner!)

the real BIG problem (bigger than the ‘big problem’ and also considerably larger than the second BIG problem which made use of ALL CAPS up above): let me give it you in question form forbes, “why in fuck’s name would any researcher give up this information, contribute such information where it violates corporate policy - or otherwise contribute valuable information to your site with no benefit of any kind?” you’ll have better luck with a little paypal button that simply says, “hi! forbes is scrapin’ by, care to help out?”

so yeah, as a CI dude who has actually been paid very large sums of money to dig into large organizations for assorted information, i can tell you that in many cases a well built org chart can help one to understand how an organization is directing or shifting emphasis (by product, channel, location, function, etc)…if i know that, then why on earth am i gonna give it to forbes.com? are you really that slow on the uptake?

dudes, you run a business mag and web site, don’t you already know that nobody does shit for free for anybody? my advice: take it down and use the development dollars to help cogmap privatize their service such that individuals and enterprises can subscribe to private and shared org charts, otherwise there’s nothing going on there…want more advice? then feel free to ping me directly because i’ve got a lotta expertise in this particular niche (those corporate orgchart exercises, the dark market for such information, the buyers and suppliers, the end users etc)

PassingNotes.com

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