mostly research stuff
okay, this is really a fascinating little undertaking…dutch company unifiedroot is trying to give people and companies the ability to have their very own personalized top level domains..yeah, you heard me correctly (unless there’s some kinda shit or wax in your ear) - not a .com, .net or .biz. or .ws (they get crappier as the list goes on) but your very own .you domain….
from the company, “UnifiedRoot enables individuals and businesses to have their own top-level domains (TLDs). The TLD holder has the full and exclusive rights to manage their namespace, and to create or offer second-level domains (SLDs) to other parties. For example, corporate top-level domain (cTLD) holders can create SLDs to better organize their web architectures and simplify the way customers navigate to their websites.” ….this means that instead of going to cnn.com/mobile, you’d simply type in mobile.cnn (again, not .com, just .cnn)…
…but there’s always a story problem, right? the big one here is that Read the rest of this entry »
so it would appear that sergio and barry are in fact “boys gone wild” when it comes to separating people from money and information…i’m talking about elgoog base, this ebay-cum-craigslist-plus-amazon type of platform that they’re building to capture mo’ info…and though the main site talks a lot about recipes (oh, thanks, couldn’t find those online for free), reference articles (again, not enough of ‘em!), personal profiles (excluding their ceo of course) and all of that shit, what really fascinates me is how incredibly hypocritical and blatantly insincere this company’s ‘code of conduct‘ really is…
…i now quote directly from sergio in that playboy interview, “For example, we don’t accept ads for hard liquor, but we accept ads for wine. It’s just a personal preference. We don’t allow gun ads, and the gun lobby got upset about that. We don’t try to put our sense of ethics into the search results, but we do when it comes to advertising…As I said, we believe that “Don’t be evil†is only half of it. There’s a “Be good†rule also.”
oh, right, right, and elgoog base isn’t advertising? i must be some kind of neanderfuck, confusing product page postings with advertisements like that…sorry.
…so what’s the first thing i did on that elgoog base site? i typed in keywords like ‘porn‘ and ‘liquor‘ and ‘rifle‘ - and voila, i found ‘em all, en masse…
…if you want a really good laugh, check out the elgoog base terms of service, and then look up every single one of the prohibited items (you should look forward to a very high score in this particular research game)…
these two founders, these dissimulators if you will, they are clearly opening up a back door to their policies and will most certainly push the blame outward toward users while citing their role as a mere ‘platform’…and unfortunately, it’s way too easy to see into their backyard right now…oh, and btw: when i clicked on the “report bad item” link (appears next to everything), i noticed only a radio button option to tag ‘adult content’ - but nothing for guns and booze….
what’s next? wal-mart actually selling sex-toys instead of cleverly packaged ‘vibrating massagers’?…the same damned walton clan that also loves to prescribe behavior?…hmmm, smell something here? elgoog is just a digital walmart…mark my words, within five years people are gonna be like mad fuckernauts looking to rip up elgoog’s monopoly (’data utility and mobility’) and they’re gonna use the same argument as walmart: for the benefit of consumers, in this case offering a lotta free shit versus just gouging suppliers and labor (but you can just bet that advertisers will get gouged! elgoog has got the ability to do to online advertising what enron did to utilities…just takes a twist of a formula to engineer keyword bid wars and ideal shortages in a world where no outsiders are privy to the actual methodologies, or where such methods are beyond the grasp of participants)
did you ever call a company for service and support only to discover a mind numbingly endless series of prompts to push buttons and do a whole lotta wasteful shit in the hopes of reaching a living, breathing and sentient human? ever get so pissed off that you kicked something, swore out loud, hurt the ones you love and ripped your sleeve a la ‘jazz singer’?… and then took it all out on the rep when he/she finally did answer (with an accent, totally underpaid in some other country…and ultimately requesting that you redial and enter some other nonsensical string of digits)? well, this guy named paul english finally took some action…you might recall that i mentioned him briefly in the ajax part 2 round-up (he’s a founder of kayak)..
…back in the day, when kids were just called “hyper” and lived med-free lives, it used to be that you could call some company and then just bang that fucking zero key on your phone over and over until some living thing picked up - but companies cut off that route, hoping to drive down service costs by forcing customers (all highly valued, mind you!) into automated self service systems…but that’s never good enough, you know? so this guy paul actually took the time to collect and organize all of the shortcuts and dial-arounds that will allow for you to call some company and bypass all of the bullshit and get a real person on the phone…from paul’s explanation, “I created the IVR Cheat Sheet to help you more quickly get to an actual human when you are trying to call a company for service. (The term “IVR” stands for Integrated Voice Response, the fancy name for those annoying computers who answer most phones these days.)”….
he’s pulled together an amazing IVR cheat sheet with the help of countless user contributions and it is organized cleanly and neatly into the following sections: finance (amex, paypal, etc), government (social security, veteran’s affairs etc), insurance (aetna, geico etc), pharmacy (cvs, walgreens, etc), products (bose, sony etc - needs some contributions here!!!), retail (best buy, toysrus, etc), shipping (ups, dhl, etc), technology (aol, dell, etc), telco (all of landline and wireless carriers), travel (airlines, etc) and tv/satellite (from comcast to tivo and xm)….and btw, the information page describing the cheat sheet also offers some ideas to bypass automated systems, remember to check it out…
…and please note: the entire database (as it is presented with user contributions) is maintained in real-time on a separately searchable site, so you might want to visit the quickbase home for this whole project to add your own (11/21, evening update: this used to say, “to get the absolute latest additions, changes and commentary, including those most recent additions still pending approval” - but the visible quickbase site is no longer visible, sorry!)…
the instructions are clear - and read carefully, because it’s not always a series of numerical entries - you often have to say something at a voice prompt like “i don’t know” or in my case, “what the shit?“…enjoy it and bookmark it! btw, i’ve got one to add: direct treo support from sprint/nextel (dial 866.818.1944, that’s it…and of course you’ll still have to wait, but at least you’ll skip the other bullshit queues)…
okay, so i wrote a whole bit about this rapidly expanding world of ajax applications earlier, and this is the part 2 in which i round up a whole bunch of other nifty tools and utilities, along with some resources for developers….but you know what? it dawned on me that there are more of these ajax apps popping up than there are new cia leaks and natural disasters combined…we must now think about a better rating and review mechanism, okay? (we being ‘me, myself and i’ along with my blind dog and my imaginary friends)…oh, yeah, here’s the part 2 round up, developer notes are down at the bottom below the list…
backbase: a whole personal portal build-it-yourself tool (reminds of the crap from the late 90’s that nobody really wanted back then either, but hey, it’s pretty cool - doesn’t yahoo already do this? and elgoog?)…they’ve also put up a cool-ass demo of an rss reader in ajax…
protopage: you could also build your portal here too….
backpackit: a whole bunch of cool ass tools, you know who loves this shit? david clark does!
tadalist: an all ajax to-do list app that dave clark also loves, we’ve both used it to launch sites…
tudu: …yes, another to-do list application…
remember the milk: okay, yet another to-do list, but with the best name!
the facebook: connect with high school and college buddies, all ajax (or is it?)…
kayak: you can dig up tickets and travel info for anyplace with this interface, even if you don’t kayak, duh….oh, and one of the founders is getting his own upcoming blog entry for a very, very cool little pet project that’s got zero to do with kayak…
playbabble: actually an ajax word game, because i love word games…this weekend my son and i played scrabble and i felt so bad that i let him play “zn” (you know, for ‘zinc’) and then he wound up winning and i was all bummed out and shit…
..and for developers, there’s some sweet shit to learn from bindows - a whole software development kit… Read the rest of this entry »
okay, so i’m obviously not talking about ajax cleaning agents for your still-warm toilet seat…i’m talking about ajax, the web applications development approach - if you’ve used the internet lately, then you’ve probably used ajax…you can get a data dump at ajaxinfo because i do NOT want to be the umpteenth person who has to explain that it’s a technique to use a bunch of stuff that’s already been around for years…just understand this: it makes lightweight apps work quickly and allows for developers to whack out “situational software” - which is just another buzzword that allows for marketers to sell more ajax-related crap….unpopular this year is the big ajax issue: developers are having trouble getting great stuff to work in all browsers, and that’s just the start of the problems - kinda like how french and english both use the same alphabet but that means shit when you’re bleeding in the middle of the riots and you’re an american with zero foreign language skills trying to explain where it hurts…
oh, sorry, i’m totally off topic - the point here is to showcase a whole buncha cool ajax type applications that you can use, almost all are free (actually, i think only one below costs moola)…and they do pretty much everything a basic home or small business user is gonna do each day provided you’ve got your own phone, internet connection and a working brain…this is part one (the list is long), so check back later this week for part 2…
mypimp: a personal information management tool, hands down the best name for any ajax application….coolest part of it is getting the alerts sent to your cell phone (i need that, for birthdays and shit)
24sevenoffice: a whole office suite online (good luck taking on microsoft and elgoog! hah!), replete with real erp and crm functions…and sorta semantics here, it uses ajax - but is it all ajax technologies? not so sure…
writely: all ajax, word processing and doc sharing online…and don’t forget to check your spelling with another ajax-like tool - but firefox only for now (via ruby on rails, a different project that’s a server side scripting language, very cool, keep an eye it)…or you could use this spellchecker too, and Read the rest of this entry »
this blog is mostly safe for work, though i sometimes throw around a 'fuck' or two. you'll find a bunch of my articles from CI Magazine, SCIP online, other research pieces and some other crap. enjoy. there's lost of content here related to getting information about, around, from and through people and organizations...