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Amazon’s Kindle — I Don’t Get It (Yet)

Amazon launched its new ebook reader this week, and while I can definitely see the value in owning one, I think I have to pass for now.  The big obstacle for me?  The price.

$400 is pretty expensive, even though the gadget is cool.  Amazon is footing the bill for their reader’s connectivity to the Amazon ebookstore, which is nice, but they are still charging for the books.  I would be much more likely to buy one of these if it came with some free downloads, at least 15 or 20.  Seth Godin wanted to give his books away with each reader, but Amazon balked at the idea.  For me, that could have been the justification I was looking for.

I’m still tempted, because something like this is perfect for me.  I’m always reading 4 or 5 different books at the same time, and it would be great to be able to take them all with me on one little device.  This one is billed as being able to hold 200 titles.  Also, it would be great to use when traveling for the holidays.  Nice features like reading blogs through RSS and a built in music player make it a little harder to resist.

I’ll probably end up waiting for the third generation of these things before I commit to buying one.  I’ve already been burned by first generation mp3 players and digital cameras.  The price will drop and the products will get better.  I’d also like to hold one in my hands befre I throw down the money.  Still, a really cool idea, and this is the direction everything is going anyway.

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Ask Not What Google Can Do For You

I’d wager that most of this blog’s regular readers fall into two main categories. The first group is those who know me IRL and like to see me make an ass of myself. Lately that has been happening online with a keyboard much more frequently than late at night with a debit card. Probably not as funny, but they have the convenience of seeing it whenever they want. It’s a trade off.

The other group is made up of other people who are part of the blogosphere and, like the first group, like to see me make an ass of myself. I see a pattern developing here. Based on what I’ve seen and read on their sites, a large majority of these people are in it solely for the fame and glory of blogging. They can actually write, and they aren’t as concerned with the piles of nickels and pennies that can be piled up slowly by spending countless hours working on their layout, optimizing for search engines, reading message boards about search engines, and on and on.

So for those people who aren’t keeping up with the technical end so much, I’ll give you the quick and dirty version of what’s been happening with Google over the last few months. Whether you actually care or not, this is going to affect you eventually.

* A site’s Google’s PageRank (site relevancy) is influenced by links from other sites
* Naturally, this created a market for links, and people bought links from other sites to boost the PageRank of their site
* Google didn’t like this and is now penalizing link sellers who did not report paid links.
* Some people will stop selling links. Some people will sell links and not get caught. Other people who have never sold links will be wrongly penalized.
* All of these people could become angry.

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again–creating good, original content is your best strategy in the long run. You can game the system for a little while, but remember that the search engine belongs to them–they make the rules of the game.

For those who don’t like Google’s latest tactics, your choices are pretty simple. You can play Google’s game by their rules, you can play Google’s game by your own rules, or you can support a different search engine whose rules you like better. My official stance is that of Switzerland. Although unofficially….

My guess is that we are about to see several new web ranking systems that do not belong to Google. They’ve basically rendered PageRank useless. Don’t be shocked if some big players in the game jump ship from Google and start using their influence with their users to thwart Google’s current dominance.

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Google Buys Jaiku

…and inches a little further towards critical mass. This is definitely going to change things–what will all you Twitter-ites do?

Google has bought Finnish start-up Jaiku, which offers a mobile phone application that locates users and allows them to post short messages to a social network.

The news comes as rumours reach fever pitch that Google could launch a mobile phone, or mobile phone operating system as early as February 2008.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the absolute death of Twitter. There are instances where Google’s product is being outdone–Picasa/Flickr, Blogger/Wordpress. But in general they are heavy hitter in any market they enter. I think the mobile phone arena could actually use a good Googling.

As for me, I have to draw the line at text messaging and Twitter. Those are two things that seem absolutely pointless to me.

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New Feed Subscriptions in September

Here are all of the new sites I added to my reader in September. When I say “new” I mean new to me in most cases.

Total Diatribe
If you were impressed with Billymacs ability to consume adult beverages, you’ll be even more impressed with his ability to find nutty stuff and add cleverly biting commentary. A new blog, and I’m expecting great things from it.

Donklephant
Here’s one I can’t believe I just found. A common sense moderate political blog. I don’t mean to imply that common sense can’t be found there, but usually only as it exists on the line between Democrat and Republican. Very pragmatic, as opposed to the, uh, idealism(?) you find here.

KTownLowDown
Another new blog authored by Little Bigfoot SVD. So far a lot of the lowdown that exists there is on a personal level, but he’s running a poll right now asking what you want him to blog about. One man, one vote. If you don’t like it, you had your chance to change it!

Ideas From Free Minds
I found out about Michelle’s blog after seeing her on Tucker Carlson’s show and wrote a post about her. My only complaint is that she doesn’t post enough–there was a huge opportunity to make this blog big when she appeared on TV. I hope she takes advantage of it!

Taylor the Teacher
As Taylor states on her site, she’s a philosophical anarchist who loves to help children learn. Sometimes the public education system even helps her in this endeavor.

TED
Technology, entertainment, and design videos. You’ll agree with some, you’ll disagree with others, but they are all pretty interesting.

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Free of DRM is Good Too

I’ve been talking about free here a lot over the past few days. Well, Amazon has launched an mp3 download site to compete with iTunes. Seems impossible, right? Not if you consider that Amazon’s downloads are DRM free. DRM is the code in songs downloaded through iTunes that allow you to only play the song through iTunes or on your iPod. Songs downloaded from Amazon can be played on any player.

I checked out their catalog last night, and it is pretty extensive. Not only that, but you can also download complete albums there at a discount, not to mention the fact that you don’t have to pay shipping and get the song immediately.

You’ll need to install Amazon’s download manager, but it’s quick and easy!

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BlogRush — Marketing and Syndication Mixed

There is a pretty cool widget I just installed called BlogRush. I saw some stuff about it over on Digg, where it has taken off and is starting to look spammy. I did a little investigating–it’s not. On top of that, BlogRush already looks to be uber-viral, so you’re going to be seeing a lot more of it. If not on your blog, everywhere else.

BlogRush is basically a free widget that syndicates its feeds based on subject to blogs all over the web. The marketing side comes in with pageviews. Every impression you register gets your post included on the syndication somewhere else on the network. Basically tit for tat syndication.

I’m not really expecting to get a rush of traffic, like the name would imply, but picking up a reader here and there isn’t a bad thing. The cool part is that BlogRush isn’t click dependent, so all of your impressions count. This can’t be said for most other marketing/social networking stuff.

You can pick up extra credits by using their referral program, sorta like MLM, but no investment required.

Check it out. At $0, BlogRush is at least priced right!

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Blog Numbers and the General Public

The Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik has another great column today, this time about the numbers of Americans who are blog-aware. According to a survey (conducted online),

…80% of Americans know what a blog is, nearly half have visited one and 8% maintain their own blog.

I think these numbers may be off by quite a bit. I would guess that far fewer than 80% of Americans know what a blog is (the study didn’t give parameters, just asked a yes or no question). Seriously, how many times have you answered “yes” when someone asked you if you knew what something was, just because you didn’t want to admit to them that you didn’t know.

Also, I’d bet that more than half of internet users have visited a blog, but they may not know that they were visiting a blog. I have a few other blogs that I run, and based on the search engine terms that lead people there and their click behavior after they arrive, most of them aren’t very web savvy. Of course, that is all demographic dependent. Most visitors to this blog are pretty savvy.

So what are the real numbers? My initial guess is that these numbers are reversed. I would guess that around 50% know what a blog is, and 80% (or more) have visited one. 8%of Americans maintaining thier own? That one I have a tough time believing. Holding a wet finger in the air, I’d say that could be off by as much as a factor of ten.

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Good Idea? Bad Idea!!!

Frantic Industries has a nice little piece on crowded market spaces on the web that you may want to avoid for a new startup.

Most of the spaces named here seem tough to break into at this point without either some very serious backing or a truly unique spin on the technology.  For instance, Younanimous is doing something a little differently by incorporating search engine results along with socially popular results.

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Younanimous

Only a month and a day after posting this, I come across younanimous.com, which bills itself as a social search engine.  Results are based not only on traditional search engine results that it retrieves, but also on user recommendations.  Check it out, pretty cool!!!

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USA Today is Catching On

They changed their look and feel today–very Web 2.0.
Look for more big media outlets to do the same, adding “digg” style recommendations for readers and giving them the opportunity to participate, not just read. They even have a “shutter speed” feature where “you can be part of covering the story.”