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? fuck this and fuck that, hate slurs and so on, then where do you stand? hard selling evangelist popping crosses in my forum signature? will you one day move beyond the molloms of the world to implement or simply define “acceptable standards” for content contributions as yahoo and others have tried to do for years?

you’re fighting an uphill battle dudes. perhaps a mass ip registry with ip range blocking is an effective long term option, with a centralized store of all such data - similar to how society aggregates information about known offenders and makes such information available to a local community as well as enforcement agencies…but another captcha riddle-me-this approach, cryptic words with lines through them? it will be reverse engineered and duped in no time - and because many of you are doing it in the open source community, it will be that much easier to find a back door…

…either allow comments and participation from only people you know (moderate all) or shut them off.

stop trying to automate all of the responsibilities of being a human being while serving up a digital deluge of content or media. if you’re after the ‘everybody contributes’ model of every site out there and embrace this internet ideal, then think about more traditional approaches - eg wordpress’ option to only allow a commenter to post if he/she has had a previously approved comment. that allows you to keep it all turned off, shut down - and still for anybody to participate…but that will mean work for you, sorting through the shit to find what is simply the mental detritus of your community participants…

there’s no easy answer. spam fighting tools are wonderful…but there’s a reason why there are sooooo many, and there’s a reason why there’s another new one every month or two, with bold new claims…only to discover within months that it has been fooled and figured out…perhaps now you know why comments on passingnotes are almost completely locked down.

[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 your real email in your comment - it will not be displayed, only i can see it on the back-end (and i need it to reach you!)…in 14 days (end of sunday night april 13th), the guys at easyvoip will look over all of the comments and using a totally non-scientific approach (aka “gut feelings”), they’ll pick the best two ideas and let me know and will then send you free license keys for the software…i’ll let you all know how it shakes out in a follow-up blog post…

…but what’s easyvoip all about? well, did you read this article about recording phone calls?…oh, and don’t forget about all of those nasty phone recording laws…

short version (from their site): “EasyVoipRecorderis a small computer software which records VOIP softphones conversations. With this tool you can record and store Skype, Gtalk (Google Talk), VoipCheap, VoipStunt, VoipBuster, VoipBuster Pro, 12Voip, Yahoo Messenger, X-LITE 3.0, MSN Live, Globe7, VoipWise, VoipRaider, VoipDiscount , Net2phone, JustVoip, Freecall, Nonoh, SipDiscount, InternetCalls, WebCalldirect, PoivY and LowRateVoip conversations.”

so yeah, that’s the dealio…enjoy.

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…this site does just that..what? huh? exactly. with a slogan like “just use it,” how could you go wrong?

Registrant Search - ever wanna know all of the domains that some dude owns (or some company)? this is where you should be going…coolest feature: live ajax numbers as you type so you can refine your search terms if the number looks too big…

boardtracker - search all of the forums - this is an awesome business research tool…hey pharma researchers, no more hanging out on cafepharma all day long! you can search all of this shit in one place now…enjoy.

SMS web alerts to monitor page changes - okay, so you know all about tools to tell you when a page changes, right? this one does it by phone, for free…useful if you want to get alerts for small companies or personal pages without rss, particularly if you’re under the gun…

Mint 4 hour disposable email - so i’ve written before about disposable email addresses, in fact - i wrote about it twice…but this one’s different, it’s so easy to use, creates a URL that you simply bookmark to check email..duh.

Pingie - RSS to SMS - and it’s pretty much idiot proof! and aw shucks, what a cute name…put in your email address, your phone number and the rss feed, that’s it. you get an sms with the rss…cool now that i’m on unlimited sms…

Qipit - got a camera phone? …super cool service to capture notes, whiteboards, documents and so on by just snapping a pic with your camera phone and sending it to yourself…it can also be a fax!

scanR - like qipit, but also does business cards - this is super useful for getting business cards…you just snap with a camera phone, send it and you can download as a vcard…genius…

SpyPig - find out if your email has been read…attaches a little picture of a pig…there are better alternatives, i’ll try to write about them soon…oh, and i’ve written quite a bit about blocking these things too…

Verify email addresses - i’ve used a lot of these, this one’s the most accurate of the lot (for web based tools)…simple, self-explanatory…

mezzoman - meet in the middle for food - simple idea: you’re coming from providence, i’m coming from boston, we want to meet somewhere in the middle for food…enter the two addresses, select your preferred food and voila, up pops a maps mashup with restaurants on the left hand side that are roughly half way from both of us…

…too many others to list right now, i’ll be back…oh, if you’re going to BCLA next month let me know ’cause i’m gonna be speaking! my presentation is about the underground market for librarian sex workers ;)

[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 component from radio shack, catalog number 43-1237 - aka the “mini recorder control” - it’s only $17.99 and it’s simple: i unplug the cable that goes from the wall to my phone and plug it into the control thing, then there’s a plug from the control thing back into the phone, basically sitting now in the middle of the line - and coming out of the side is a standard little 1/8th inch mic wire that plugs into the ‘mic in’ plug on your recorder…that’s it. switch the little button on the recorder to ‘record’ and hit record on the digital recorder and then talk and it will capture both sides perfectly…

…with the sony, i use the sony voice editor software that comes with the device - including a little usb cable thing..i connect it to my computer, drag the file over from the recorder to the computer and then there’s an option to convert ‘fucked up sony format’ to ‘normal wav’ or other file type (though not mp3)…

...but dave, now i’ve got a big file - and i need to get it down in size…

so yeah, problem is, conversions to wav are kinda big - a one hour conversation can produce a 60 meg or greater file, and that’s a pain to email around (though it is easy with pando)…so what do i do? well, with parallels i just drag the file over to the mac and convert to an mp3 which shrinks it down a lot and it’s just as easy to burn to a cd for snail mailing - or you can do this all online with online (free) file conversion tools like zamzar (the best imho), or ‘media convert‘…

that’s about it. you should be good to go…please note: if you are on a wireless phone then you are going to need the wireless phone recording controller, catalog number 17-855 (it’s currently $24.99)

…but dave, i’m on a cell phone - what are my options?

well, if you’re using grandcentral from google, you can record any call (cell or land) with some simple button presses and then retrieve the file…

or you can also use third party services like recordmycalls that let you call in and out via their server and they’ll do it all for you and then you just download the file yourself…there are many of these online, selling cards and so on…and there are in fact a few devices for this, but i’ve not tested any - all they’ve done is modify the size of the jack so they’ll plug into a cell phone, and that’s a little component (jack adapter) that you can also pick up at radioshack for a couple of bucks (it’s a bit of a hack, and all sorts of ‘spy shops‘ sell this shit online for hundreds of dollars! they’re using 2 dollar components) - in fact, startstop sells their own recorder to cell phone connection jacks for less than 30 bucks for olympus recorders (should fit other manufacturers, but give ‘em a call to double check)! you can imagine what it really cost ‘em…

…but dave, i’m using skype or some kind of voip shit - so now what?

well, if you’re on windows check out stuff like easyvoiprecorder (covers skype, google talk, yahoo voice) - and if you’re on a mac, check out ecamms’ call recorder…both offer extensive file format options…and gizmoproject has built in recording, but nobody uses it because skype rules (kind of like google versus yahoo, y’know, but voip) - too bad, because gizmo is SIP and that’s great news! skype is unconventional transfer protocols, not good….or if you want to do it all on your computer for free, then check out this article about using the open source audacity program (multiple platforms) to record skype calls…another online not-free app to check out is hotrecorder - note that almost none of these are free, excluding audacity and gizmoproject built-in recording…

other ideas? you could plug a mic into your computer and record directly from a speakerphone into your machine (sound quality will vary, definitely put your dog away - and you’re gonna want what’s called a hi-gain mic for that kind of crap, and those cost real money - court reporters use them)…

..yeah, that’s about it for now, gotta run - but if you have any questions let me know in the comments and i’ll come back and edit accordingly…

this was probably the most polite and formal posting i’ve written in ages…shit…fuck…what are the odds? yeah, that’s right mofo’s…

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 financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

[[we were completely blindsided by microsoft's bid and we're afraid that the board will vote down our own bid considering the number of private equity firms lining up behind microsoft to take a stab at this. this is about more than just a transaction, it's about google getting kicked in the ass. it's about preserving our traffic volume through integrated applications before microsoft and yahoo beat us to the punch.]]

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

[[could microsoft now leverage their consumer and business marketing expertise and technical brilliance to alter the shape of the internet? while google rewards competitive innovation by acquiring and eliminating companies in a manner identical to that of microsoft, oracle and others over the past two decades, microsoft will have more leverage than us in all adjacent markets if this works]]

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft — despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses — to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions — and consumers deserve satisfying answers.

[[if this happens we'll have one tenth the volume of active web mail accounts and about 1 thousandth the volume of integrated instant messaging accounts. additionally, combined property traffic will make us the number two site and that will adversely effect advertising revenue and our adsense partners will take flight in volume for the new msft/yahoo channels. we'll be totally fucked. of shit, oh god, oh please somebody help us. oh please how did this happen. we were on top of everything and in six months that could all change and we'll be fucked, fucked like netscape, fucked like sun, oh shit, oh please. help us. somebody please help. please. i am crying. alone. in my office. i will sell my google stock now, should have over 700 but will definitely sell now. we are fucked.]]

This hostile bid was announced on Friday so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first — and should come first — as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.

[[this just happened so hopefully we can derail it with false legal pleas, perhaps tying up our courts with bullshit arguments and distracting from the doubleclick nonsense. we take choice and innovation seriously, provided it's a choice between different things that google offers, not things from other companies. we take aggregating immense amounts of personal data and communications very seriously, it's the core of our culture. leveraging information about you and all internet users to make money is the core of our culture. we are a for profit money making machine and this transaction could seriously fuck up our shit - and we believe that the interests of google should come first - as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and our own acquisition alternatives explored. we may have to purchase myspace or rethink our deal with AOL just to get through this mess. did i mention that we're totally fucked if this happens?]]

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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 dockers and pulled his tighty-whities up a few inches and then they both laughed and drank vitamin water while talking about what an incredibly fucked up company yahoo has become)

another rumor: elgoog is going to acquire a mobile carrier though it may be a glorified branded mno (think espn phone, but with elgoog shit on it) - my guess is tmobile usa operations (wrote about this a long time ago so dig it up if you’re interested), not the beleaguered sprint…

another rumor: barry and sergio will announce succession plans this year. the big ‘03-and-earlier vesting cycle is in full swing, and everybody interesting and smart from around that time is moving along…or rather, they need to create multiple new pyramids to retain about 8-12 very specific people…investors will absolutely demand this.

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 customers, but that’s not my point here…

why is this giant “10-thousand-plus-employees” publicly held software and services company posturing as the fat controller for the future of web services if they are still unable to state out loud exactly how they eat what they make?

…does this bother anybody else? should ge or other enterprise prospects really consider hosted apps if they can’t see a case study from the maker and peek behind the curtain to see the wizard at work? specifically, what is broken inside the infrastructure that fails compliance for a publicly held firm such that this one player still can’t show its hand, even though it’s been well over a year since the experiment began (september 06 to be exact, that was the first employee-base mail migration)

it’s one thing to throw free stuff around and grab low hanging fruit, like higher education or tiny companies, but seriously - how might one expect elgoog to really take on ibm, microsoft, oracle or others if they aren’t ready to profile how it all works…investors need to start asking questions about google’s enterprise ambitions because they do not appear to have any real plans beyond the AFM approach (afm = anything for money)

yeah, i’m rambling…just bugs me that i’ve still seen nothing on this and it’s almost the end of 2007…

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.

CONNECTING ONLINE

Fast forward a few more years and MySpace explodes from a small dating site into the world’s largest social network. Skip to 2007 and — if you believe the analysts — connecting online is actually going to eclipse porn for the first time in the history of the interwebs.

Why are people connecting online? Well, in my opinion it’s mostly for dating, talking rag time, and sharing places to steal music and movies. However, many people are actually connecting with real business goals. (Others are living together in virtual worlds, but let’s not talk about them because it spooks me out, okay?

So hooray for the internet and capitalism; together they make us all want to join the social. This article is all about the new deluge of human source information that’s arisen in the wake of this furious networking.

AGGREGATING PEOPLE INFORMATION

Several years ago I wrote a piece for SCIP.online about ‘Direct Pathways to Sources on the Internet.’ Since then, things have really matured. For starters, nobody capitalizes ‘internet’ anymore.

In practical terms, hundreds of new sites have become very good at aggregating and organizing information about people via networks of personal pages, blogs, and elsewhere. Some have emerged with an exclusive focus on people search, and still others have sprouted hoping only to help people manage their Cybil-esque online identities (as in, “I’ve got a blog, a corporate site and a business profile too, but when I’m drunk and want to share the photos I become Awesomeo4000”).

SITES WITH INFORMATION ABOUT PEOPLE

Rather than walk you through a dizzying array of sites, I’ll cluster these assorted tools into a few large groups and grade several as if they were students in the class of Web 2.0 (where there are no straight A students). From here, you can easily identify those sites worthy of your honest time and consideration. As you may imagine, this list is by no means exhaustive.

Wink.com: grade A-, but must show formulas next time.
Wink.com is quite an interesting site – a social networking site meta-search tool. It searches for people across sites like MySpace, Friendster, Bebo and others. They claim to be approaching the 200 million profiles mark, but considering how many people exist on all of the sites searched, and how many profiles are fake and abandoned, that number may be well below 100 million.

What’s particularly nice about this site, beyond the simple and easy interface, is the ability to search for tags as well as names (or location). This is an excellent tool for supplemental source research, a way to work with your source list and uncover their other possible online identities. If you’re hiring, it could be an equally good tool for checking out potential hires. They’ve also built an interesting sort of ‘white pages’ to browse all of these profiles, including the many built directly at Wink (you can build a profile there). But could you imagine navigating a 200 million entry version of the white pages? Exactly.

Cogmap.com: grade B+, for effort.
Cogmap is really just several clever guys who took organizational charts, merged them with wiki’s, and put them up in a cool “Web 2.0” interface. The site is about collecting organizational chart information for America’s largest companies as well as ‘any company’ for which a volunteer user might contribute data.

Why might someone help to build an organizational chart for Cogmap for no money? Honestly, I have no idea, but people are doing it – and they’re doing it well. The ‘wiki’ effect means that every chart change produces a new version, so if a user is suspicious of any element, he might spontaneously ‘roll back’ to a prior version or select multiple versions to compare on the fly. This site has some very serious potential; the only major drawbacks being lack of company coverage and contributor volume. However, it’s a good first place to stop if you are examining any major player in the industry or want to build and present an organizational chart online for public consumption.

Ziggs.com: grade C+, but with permission for a retake.
Ziggs is now calling itself a “free service that organizes the internet around your people, your work and your life.” Isn’t that what my computer is for, even though it cost money? Originally Ziggs tried to build a business scraping the web sites of every company online by pulling in all management-type pages, and populating its database with reams of profiles. That information is all still there, and it’s reasonably solid.

Last year, in a fit of apparent social-networking-itis, they relaunched their site as a place where you should register, give up some personal information, and centralize your contacts. Many company employees are listed, along with loads of people in general. But the site’s not outstanding, and it doesn’t get Boston-caliber traffic, so it’s often wanting for ‘more cowbell’ (per Saturday Night Live). Oh, and Ziggs is also trying to hawk a five-buck-a-month ‘profile promotion’ service – and that smacks of desperation.

Jigsaw.com: grade A- for clarity, but benefits from a grading curve.
First some disclosure: I’ve served on the board of advisors at this company, though I no longer do, and I still talk to their CEO all the time. The site is a modern day business card swap, simple as that. Put in cards and information on company employees and earn points. Spend points (or hard cash) to buy contact information.

Searching is reasonably granular, and the site has begun to amass reams of novel private company information (via users) such as company size (headcount and revenue) and other salient details. They’re getting better, but it is only free to those who contribute and regularly swap – otherwise you are forced to ‘pay to play’ so to speak.

They’ve got some amazing features in the works right now, and the user base is becoming quite large. Definitely a great place to search for specific company employees by function, location, industry, and so on at very low cost (versus a list broker or other large data vendor), replete with direct dial phone numbers and email addresses.

Linkedin.com: grade A-, but note that this is in the lower-level course.
LinkedIn is the best-known player within this whole category of business networking, a MySpace for the money crowd. The site is several years old and has close to ten million profiles, although it doesn’t disclose how many profiles are abandoned, made-up, duplicated and so on. My guess is that their ‘real active user base’ is about one-third to one-half of what they claim, but it’s getting better as time passes.

LinkedIn not only allows for extensive searching of company employees, skills, titles, locations and the like, but they also allow for filtering by current and past employees. That’s useful stuff. They have a contact mechanism, with an option to pay for more search and contact privileges, but you probably won’t need it since the new LinkedIn trend is one in which people edit contact information directly into their profiles.

The site allows for one to expand the search feature by establishing connections with other users, sort of a kid’s version of social networking analytics but with only a linear interface. Using the site will make you feel popular and connected once you see how big the network gets through just 5 to 10 connections; this makes it an excellent resource for both consultants seeking sources as well as those low in self-esteem.

Zoominfo.com: grade B+, but this is a tough course!
ZoomInfo, formerly known as Eliyon, is still trying to get people to pay thousands of dollars per year to use what is effectively an ‘advanced search’ button on their website. They’ve scraped and harvested tens of millions of profiles from the internet by drafting natural language queries that search for job titles and similar nomenclature within industry, and they’ve done an amazing job pulling it all together.

Over time, the application has become easier to use, bigger, faster, and generally more prominent via partnerships (for example, they power the people search at Yahoo!). Oddly, this company was put together by individuals who created a business card scanning device, so one might not think of them as ‘search engine’ gurus.

They play a heavy optics game when it comes to bragging about the size of the database, and that can get tired. Even if you filter out all of the garbage, however, the numbers are still enormous. This is a great research resource and I truly hope that they open up the service and get rid of the fee structure. Such a move would require a leap of faith, but they may honestly hold the potential to be the Google of people search.

Spock.com: grade C, despite the hype this kid does not test well.
Spock has got to be the single-most overhyped entrant in this entire category in years. They have some big brains, a roll of venture capital money and a brilliant teaser campaign running through A-list bloggers. I was recently invited into their beta and all that I can say is, “when will this page refresh?”

The site is a mish-mash of profile manager meets Wink meets LinkedIn – going for a networking layer that leverages tagging as a core search tool. Users are urged to fill out details, add tags, tag others, add favorites and so on. What’s really confusing is the intended audience. There are better, faster, hipper and ultimately easier profile managers out there (see section below), so is this site chasing the business crowd (LinkedIn.com users) or do they want to get college kids on board?

As things stand now, the site search tools are severely lacking, but tech company coverage is solid. However, it’s quite difficult to search. Since anybody can self-tag or tag others, searching for a company name via tags is slow music. Hopefully they’ll mature a bit before their big launch, and when they do I’ll come back to try it again.

WikiYou.com: grade C, needs to pay more attention in class.
WikiYou bills itself as the “unauthorized biography of every person on earth.” With fewer than ten thousand entries, that’s quite a claim. Perhaps they mean the planet B612, that tiny little planet where The Little Prince lived in Saint- Exupery’s famous children’s story.

In any case, this team has created a compilation of both personal and celebrity profiles subject to edit and commentary by any site visitor willing to endure a brief registration process (people appear to be quite interested in telling stories about folks they know). At first blush, they appear to be a bit like Spock.com, yet they’re after something altogether different — biographies layered onto social networking features.

Users might edit their profile or add another individual that’s worrisome, wouldn’t like to find myself in there unless I did the edits) and link to external profiles, and blogs. Many users fill out professional and educational information and add or embed links to photos and videos. To top it all off, any registered user may be a “fan” of any other profile (celebrity or personal) without that individual’s consent or approval (just like in real life!).

Feels like a case of reinventing MySpace with a new design and interface for a slightly more mature crowd. However, what holds my interest on this very young site is the degree to which people are willing to add real information and links within profiles, hiding less from the public. This makes it more like a FaceBook.com than a MySpace. com. Links to personal details, friends’ sites, and additional networks makes it a potentially userful source location tool. Only problem is that this has all been done before, and I’m far from convinced that this site will get real traction.

Jobster.com: grade B+, but this kid has some trouble focusing.
Jobster launched with venture capital money a few years ago as a job referral networking engine – you’d post a job (for money) and then ‘network through contacts’ to a hire. They’ll deny it, but it never really quite took off as imagined, despite the press. Along the way, many people began posting profiles and resumes with tags and images and a slew of LinkedIn. com type details.

Jobster took the natural next step and began to focus on a combination of morphing into a ‘career networking’ hub and massive coupon mailings and relentless hounding of users to post jobs at assorted discounts. As time passed, the career networking piece got some serious traction, Jobster raised some more money, trimmed headcount, and completely ‘repurposed’ the site. Along the way, they’ve flirted with assorted content and community offerings, though few have really floated well.

The name itself may give you indigestion, but this is an incredible place to find a very actively maintained database of corporate figures. In my estimation, this user base is devoted and unlike LinkedIn, I have yet to hit a load of dead, duplicate, or otherwise bad profiles.

Pipl.com: grade C, with a detention for not telling people about the money.
The Pipl.com site, still in beta, boasts that it is the first people search engine exclusively focused on searching the deep web — all of those profiles stored in databases as opposed to static web pages, and coming primarily from public records database vendors. (Can you smell an incentive structure here?

My main issue with this site is that the search results appear to be great, but when you click through to retrieve property or other records, there’s typically a link to a paid service. Plus, when I searched for myself, it found me dead, bankrupt, and possibly living in France (none of this is true). If one clicks on the “directory” link from Pipl, however, there’s a nice little tag-based search engine that will allow you to unearth company employees and then run the search back into Pipl’s main engine.

Zabasearch.com: grade C+, for not talking about the money, just like Pipl
Zabasearch bills itself as the internet’s number one people search engine. The study data used to produce this claim is unfortunately not available at the site (surprised?). The person behind this site is the same man behind US Search, a one-time high flying company. Like Pipl.com, the site scours public records databases, returns impressive looking results, then prompts the user to click through and pay money for most of the data.

Now I’m not saying that the data isn’t any good, but on the surface there is no disclosure that the site operates this way – just like Pipl. If you’ve got a real budget for your project, these tiny fees won’t matter, but it can be bothersome. The site scores a slightly higher grade than Pipl.com only because the company was put together by a person who has done it before, and it appears to have larger quantities of data coming into the system.

Crazedlist.org: grade B, but possibly an F for plagiarism.
Crazedlist is a free site built by a Craigslist.org addict who was tired of searching multiple cities via multiple browser windows. What’s here is a Craigslist.org meta-search engine – search any or all locations at once. This is great for finding guitars or dates, but what’s particularly interesting is how they’ve created the first real free alternative to Monster. com for resume search.

At any given time on Craigslist, major cities present one to four thousand plus resumes – all less than ten days old (per the Craigslist ‘freshness process’ that requires reposting). Sure, Winnipeg only has 3 resumes this week, and Maine only has about 90, but Los Angeles, Boston, New York – these kinds of places are huge and hold fresh troves of information on company employees and partners, past and present.

Until Crazedlist, searching was so tedious that you might be put off entirely from using Craiglist resumes as a source research tool. As of today, that’s all changed. As for that possible ‘F’ above: the site is admittedly built on the back of Craigslist, and Craigslist already offers this service albeit in a nightmarishly burdensome fashion. If they call out Crazedlist, you may be editing your bookmark file by the end of the year.

SITES THAT SEARCH ACROSS THE NETWORKS: A QUICK ROUNDUP

An interesting little niche is getting solid trendwatcher attention: sites in the spirit of Wink.com are trying to put a ‘new spin’ on the already ‘very new’ process of searching across the social networking sites. These players are all so young that it would seem silly to do detailed write-ups (they all have a similar purpose), but they are all worth bookmarking should you need to unearth sources via the social networking sites.

Yoname.com
YoName is probably the most promising of this entire lot, and if they get better then look for them to usurp Wink. com as the go-to resource for social site search. Why? This site not only covers MySpace, Bebo and that crowd, but also MSN Spaces as well as social bookmarking communities like Digg.com. That’s quite a feat. The interface is also wonderfully simple.

UpScoop.com
UpScoop takes a different spin by asking users to import their address books and contacts, and then it will scour the networks to find resources or profiles for these individuals. Looking for sources? Simply create a new file with all of the project source names, import, and then run the query. The site supports direct import from Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail and AOL.

Socialgrapes.com
SocialGrapes, sickeningly cute name aside, offers search that expands beyond people to include images and events. The interface is as simple as the others, and the results are often quite similar. Perhaps this will become a basic user- interface preference war, with purple and green battling it out for Web 2.0 color of the year. Note that Socialgrapes is heavily bent toward ‘socializing,’ hence the one-click ‘single women/men’ options.

Streakr.com
Streakr hasn’t officially launched yet, but early review and coverage by other beta testers indicates a service very similar to SocialGrapes and YoName, though possibly making use of a different primary color for the home page. The current site suggests that competitors are just ‘fakers’ and Streakr is the real deal. This remains to be seen.

…BUT DAVE, I WANT TO NETWORK MYSELF - MUST I JOIN ALL THESE SITES?

Perhaps you’ve just read this article, wondering to yourself why you haven’t yet succumbed to the social networking craze. Maybe you already have a profile on some major site, but wish to join others or generally encounter fewer frustrations managing your online identity.

You probably just want one place to send people to let them find all of your profiles, bookmarks, web sites and so on. Sure, you could use a personal page or an email for this, but why sharpen a spoon when people are giving away knives?

In this case, the following sites will not help you to discover sources, but rather to become the source (hey, that feels a little Zen…‘become the source’). Do note that these sites are all quite young, so expect some change and consolidation within the coming year.

ProfileLinker.com.
Just like it says, link your disparate profiles together under one main umbrella, drive traffic to this site, and simplify the process of finding your online identities.

ProfileFly.com.
Also just like it says, but without flight. This also includes your bookmark collections and so on. Collect, consolidate, and share with one or two clicks.

Tabber.org.
Import your contacts, like UpScoop, and then get updates and centrally manage your details as well as those of your contacts. Perhaps this is will become more like UpScoop than ProfileFly, but as of today they appear to be bent toward the latter.

8Hands.com.
Okay, this one is technically a download and what it does is similar to ProfileFly as well as Tabber, but it adds a few key features, such as the ability to instant message contacts via the social networks and track statistics regarding your growing contact universe. It’s a great idea, but personally I don’t like to install software for this kind of purpose and it’s only a matter of time before the others build in these features using online widgets for such functions as messaging or photo sharing.

SocialURL.com.
SocialURL is quite similar to the others above, with the main twist being that they spin the aggregation as your own ‘new URL’ (as in, new internet address). The service is easy to use, well managed, and appears to not focus exclusively on the kids as much as the others. Like its brethren, they also include video, photos, and other online presence resources beyond just the web page.

LinkMyBox.com.
This is an interesting twist. It’s like ProfileFly or ProfileLinker, but visitors can leave you comments. The idea: you take your ‘box’ (a small snippet of code that you place on all of your pages/sites) and when you change a page or profile, the information is updated instantly across your whole online presence. The site is a bit sparse, but it’s a nice idea.

Ziki.com.
This site is similar to all others above, but really is the only one of the lot targeting business users and companies versus MySpace teens, starving musicians, model wannabes, or other internet attention seekers. The site is still young, covering roughly two thousand companies and only twelve thousand people, but the concept is solid – and somebody has got to focus on the business users, right? Don’t we demand that?

A TURKEY IN EVERY OVEN…

To be honest, these sites are all full of promises, much like the technology industry in general. And wow, that’s a lot of sites to check out (I was just re-reading). I selected them because they’ve earned “cred” with myriad reviewers and users alike, and have withstood serious volumes of user growth plus my own unforgiving review of all things internet (in which everything sucks unless proven otherwise).

This article probably doesn’t even really begin to scratch the surface when considering the hundreds of other sites popping up daily around this space, from Lijit.com and Dandelife.com to the many others focused on trends like ‘lifestreaming’ (think Twitter.com but with way more detail). Oh, and I’ve not even begun to round up the foreign versions of these types of sites; there’s a LinkedIn equivalent in nearly every major country. Same for the MySpace type sites.

The real challenge with these resources is finding the ones that work for you, those providing meaningful data that’s reliable and useful for real ongoing projects. If you’re reaching out to sources directly there is still a serious need for verification and scrubbing before migrating data into your own systems.

David Carpe is the Principal and Founder of Clew, LLC, a competitive intelligence consulting firm serving several of the world’s most formidable organizations. He recently received a “2007 Future HR Leader” award recognizing his work bringing CI to corporate HR teams; he also received this award in 2005. This column was based on an edited excerpt from David’s upcoming book about research. Before selling out to pursue a career in business, raise venture to start a software company, earn an MBA, and create Clew, he earned a BFA in studio art. David resides in Boston with his two sons and their one-eyed dog. He may be reached at dcarpe@gmail.com, or you can find him at ResearchZilla.com, a social networking site for research wonks that he created.

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 copies of the same PROMIS-derivative software on the Russian black market for $2 million and al Qaeda used the software to penetrate U.S. intelligence database systems“…

…and the mystery of the whole story grew following the death of danny casolaro way back in 1991, a journalist who supposedly got way too close to the secrest surrounding the inslaw/promis scandal and wound up dead in a bathtub (a suicide never accepted by his own family who had been warned by danny himself that he might die mysteriously)…danny began to call this big conspiracy “the octopus” (now does it ring a bell? there was an entire book written about his research and his death by two other writers, the octopus: secret government and the death of danny casolaro ) - bill hamilton chimed in the whole thing back in 1991 (audio transcript of interview is online) and in 1993, wired magazine ran an astounding article about promis, the octopus, danny’s death and other findings which is now in their archives…

why is promis of so much interest, and what the fuck is my point here? well, for starters, promis has the ability to combine far flung databases and track people by their involvement with the legal system…but the legal proceedings revealed suspicion that the doj modified promis to monitor intelligence operations, agents, and other global operations - not legal cases (israel has reportedly used promis, as has oliver north, supposedly) - think dbases from the doj, fbi, and so on, and not plaintiffs (”The software has reportedly been mated in recent years with artificial intelligence. PROMIS has long been known to have been modified by intelligence agencies with a back door that allows for surreptitious retrieval of stored data.“) and in the year of potential economic downturns, i suspect that we’ll all be hearing more about “the war on terror” to distract our collectively pessimistic selves, a grinding broadcast distraction from the weltschmerz that might otherwise consume us all and in turn, we’ll begin to all see exactly what it means to use social network analysis on a grand scale, thanks to a lot of open information channels, watchful eyes, boredom with consumer-oriented social networking (not at all similar) and a general interest in understanding exactly what is being done with the amazing billions of dollars being spent on national security…maybe promis is still in heavy use, a fully web based version…maybe an open source project?

…or think again, does a web based promis already exist!? duh. if you’re already connecting online (think myspace), banking online, buying online and using a credit card and a cell phone and have an ‘on-the-grid’ address that ties to your domestic expenses (utilities, rent et al), then i suppose it might be even easier to tie these disparate databases together and pull in requests for information through a promis “permission level access” interface (think gov agency, or better yet, think about recent approval for domestic spying…now are you catching my drift?)…or am i off the wall here? is 2007 or 2008 the year when we start to instill a new virtue in our children, something about privacy, suggesting that it’s as important as not stealing, not lying and all of that other important stuff? seems that divine inspirations and thousands of years of text never saw this kind of information exchange coming, at least not with this type of wanton access privelege provided to a select group of folks…whatever, now i’m just fucking rambling on and on…try reading those complete links up above to get some more insight into what i’m talking about…

…so, do you worry about using so much of elgoog? is it worth thinking about?

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)

Color me crappy: some more new tools to play with

Dave — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 04:31:23 +0000

hmmm, so i’ve been way busy but wanted to try to get back to blogging at least once a week (!)…maybe…thought that since folks are always emailing with requests for tools and resources, it might make sense to throw out a bunch of quick round-ups for readers…with that in mind, here’s another batch of things to play around with, along with ratings from ‘useful’ to ‘pretty much bullshit’ (yes, i’m a huge fan of hard science and reason)

ibegin source - unfuckingbelievable, one step closer to a free hoovers!!!
useful? no words to describe it…
http://source.ibegin.com/ - please just go look at this and tell me this is not the first step toward the ultimate open source hoovers, wiki style…they’ve got business data for all, and it is FREE for personal use, and they have (for commercial) map elements, phone etc….now just add a layer that is not ‘yelp’ and instead real business insight and voila - a free version of dun and bradstreet meets hoovers…just cull the web sites, autofill the execs and all of that…please, please, please ibegin, please work more on this…

zudos - monitor what people are saying all over the interwebs
useful? yes
http://zudos.com/ - very nice little tool, considering that people used to actually pay serious cash for this kind of service

google image ripper - just the images, no bullshit
useful? compared to froogle.com, sure, but very niche application…
http://dearcomputer.nl/gir/ - self explanatory, skips the bullshit, gives you pages of images (very useful if you need to extract and archive product images for a large project, or if you’re mark cuban back when he used to collect porn)

delexa - rank domains by tags and keywords
useful? convenient, but so is pissing by the side of the road
http://www.delexa.org/ - this is really a bit of a mashup pulling data from multiple other sites, but quite useful to investigate, for example, possible channel ad focus for select keywords and categories (as in, does yahoo panama really stack up, or was it just a bunch of colorful ads stuffed with echo chamber praise?)

popurio.us - check out a site’s popularity
useful? convenient and clean, but so is an air-dryer instead of paper towel, and sometimes you want the towel
http://popuri.us/ - useful if you’re looking for another one-stop resource to measure a site’s rank when doing evaluation of all sorts of startups…

profilelinker - follow all social networks from one place
useful? just like that service that facebook offered, you know, the one that pissed everybody off?
http://profilelinker.com/ - okay, so you’re supposed to be using this to follow friends - but why not any source? doh. thanks for the free people tracking service guys!

trulia - another way to find out how much some source’s home is worth
useful? as one writer put it (for zillow), “yuppy porn”
http://www.trulia.com/ - like zillow, but with some interesting variations on data sources accessible through advanced search (school district elements, property types, etc - quite useful for very focused regional research and data sampling…

phonemyphone - validate phone lines or perhaps just annoy the shit out of people
useful? yeah, if you’re 12, or if you’re an insane ex-lover, mark cuban, or just feel like playing games with people
http://phonemyphone.com/ - this one will raise hell, since it allows for awful crank calling potential…original idea was to call your own lost phone (under the sofa? oh, ever see that curbed episode where the phone is in her, uh…vj?) - but you might find a valid use, right? okay, so right now: everybody go and register and then let’s all pick one big company like (elgoog?) and coordinate with twitter (doh…)

make steve jobs happy, free your itunes tracks from apple’s DRM!
useful? abso-fucking-lutely (take that itunes collection on over to your zune dudes and dudettes)
http://seidai.50webs.com/ - mac only - this uses the imovie conversion process to strip all drm elements from your itunes tracks without having to waste time burning and then dropping in again (okay, so it’s not a research tool at all, whatever, enjoy it while it’s still around)

March of the penguins, err, I mean Librarians

Dave — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:05:10 +0000

i laughed, i cried, i choked on a jujube…this is truly magical…(it’s a video, so click through if you’re not seeing it via rss)

or visit: youtube (to add to your own youtube video collection)

Simple proof that Google IS selling ads for Porn, Liquor, Drugs and Guns

Dave — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 20:21:16 +0000

okay, so we all remember this bullshit interview with playboy that barry and sergio did a while back, in which they not only blathered on about their do-no-evil mantra, but also went on to rationalize how and why they’ll take ads for wine, but never for liquor, guns and porn? well, apparently times have changed, and though i’m not sure quite when it happened, the bidding must be getting coo-coo crazy on the really hot keywords…let’s start with porn:

porn ads on google

okay, this one is really easy, just hit google and do a search for ‘porn‘ (or ‘get laid‘ or ‘eat pussy‘ or ‘handjob‘ - you get the point). check out the ads running down the right side, and then click on the ‘more sponsored links’ area to see the full roster…i’m not going to do these folks the honor of linking through, but my top ads included simplefreeporn.com, fantasyfinder.com, everythingfreeporn.com, freepornhandbook.com and many others…surprised?

liquor ads on google

so wine is a no-brainer, you can just type it in and up comes the ad block…but throw in beer or vodka (or others) and you get a blank ad slate…but this is odd, simply type in ‘buy beer‘ or ‘buy vodka‘ or ‘buy booze‘ and you’ll get assorted ads…i saw a LOT of ebay - they like to buy up all of those blocks through their relationship with elgoog for volume ad purchasing…

drug ads on google

so this wasn’t really the focus, nor in the title, though i still find it fascinating that elgoog is selling so much ad space to online pharmacies and purveyors of cheap online drugs with zero regard for site review or accreditation (can you say planetdrugs? also try a search for ‘buy paxil‘ or ‘oxycontin‘ or ‘buy viagra‘ or ‘buy sudafed‘ or one of many other big time drugs or currently prohibited items, namely sudafed - in fact, check out a search for pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in sudafed that’s on the watch list, tons of advertisers)

gun ads on google

guns are a little mo’ tricky…elgoog clearly sells ads for keywords like ‘handguns‘ though direct search yield few sales prospects (oh, unless you count another few links to ebay! again!)…’buying guns‘ turns up another few ads (including my favorite from shopping.yahoo.com, ‘buy guns and more!’)….

—

you know, i’ll be totally honest with you…i only spent about two minutes digging up this shit because i figure that’s about right on par with the attention span of most people in the world…i’m certain there’s quite a bit more out there beneath the stones…

…but more importantly, this raises concerns about elgoog’s ad programs…we already heard the shit about the ad reps helping movie download sites gobble up precious keywords to promote sales, but how far is elgoog going with these other taboo categories? clearly they’re full of shit, we know that much, but is there still any kind of line in the sand at that company?

Some useful and not so useful research crap

Dave — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:26:21 +0000

hey, yeah, i’ve been under water for a while…wanted to write up a bunch of cool tools and utilities that i’ve discovered but to be honest, a lot of them (upon closer inspection) turn out to be shit…so with that in mind, i’ve pulled together a short list of stuff i’ve been screwing around with for research and have used a very scientific approach to categorization:

not shit:

pipl - http://pipl.com/ - a new and really nice ‘people search engine,’ gets great results (for free of course)

craig’s number - http://www.craigsnumber.com/ - gives you a temporary corporate sounding phone number (like a disposable email, but a phone number!) and yes, like allfreecalls it might also be abused, but this is much more slick and clever…

change to link - http://changetolink.com/ - extremely useful…you cut and paste some text into the box and voila, it creates a random web page that you can link to which includes the text…dumb? no way..for example, if i want to send some notes to somebody who does not want to pay for an SMS message in the states, but has free web browsing on his/her phone, these are super fast loading text pages…also great for creating bookmarks for yourself from remote locations…

short text - http://www.shorttext.com/ - same idea as ‘change to link’ but a different name, see which one is easier for you to remember…personally, the two consecutive letter ‘t’s’ are a little harder…

pc names - http://www.pcnames.com/ - this has got to the fastest tool i’ve seen for checking out domain availability…in turn, this makes it an amazingly speedy utility if you need to take some guesses at which domains a company might have registered under their corporate umbrella…

change notes - http://www.changenotes.com/ - a fairly young domain watcher, alerts you of changes to web pages, similar to many others out there but nice watch list feature, easy and fast and an interesting directory (you can find out if others are watching the same page)

useamap - http://useamap.com/ - it’s like a url shortener (think ‘digbig.com’) but for maps and directions…super useful…

sorta shit:

allfreecalls - http://www.allfreecalls.net/ - coulda been ‘not shit’ but i have a bad feeling that rogue researchers are going to abuse this (it will mask caller id concerns)

the fake name generator - http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ - it works well, but for what? definitely awesome if you’re a total scumbag, but otherwise useful only for the mitnick cronies…

slide share - http://www.slideshare.net/ - billed as a social network and community for corporate wonks who wanna share powerpoint presentations, it’s actually full of existing and recent research on big trends and companies (try throwing in some big company names)…but unfortunately, most of the presentations are so boring that i found myself pulling out all sorts of eyebrow hair waiting for slides to change…

mostly shit:

…oh, far too many to list here, but this one comes to mind: http://www.digg.com

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