Friday, September 01, 2006

Confused of Calcutta: "There's been a lot of coverage on monetising blogs of late, partly catalysed by a Business 2.0 article titled Blogging for Dollars. So I thought I'd write about something else, something far removed from monetising. Things I have been able to do Because Of my blog, rather than With my blog." 

Ewan MacLeod: "I've been using Dave Winer's bbcriver.com for just over a week now on the Blackberry." 

Thanks to Amyloo for pages (NYT, BBC) that help desktop users visualize what the rivers look like on a Blackberry. 

Monkey Bites: Movie Downloads from Apple. 

Scoble had a good time at Google yesterday. 

Lesson learned: Most people's take-away on the "rivers" are that they're stripped-down versions of sites. I assume this is because they looked at them on their desktop or laptop; when you do that, that's the most striking thing about them. However, the experience is different when you look at them on a PDA, they look readable and useful. It's a hard thing to sell, I've learned. Not giving up yet, still have to figure it out. 

Michael Gartenberg may have figured it out. He begins: "I've been using mobile devices for years to consume all sorts of content. From email, to novels to newspapers. The experience for the most part doesn't work very well and you need to be motivated to go through the hoops to get something usable." Read the rest of it for a user's perspective on River of News on mobile devices.  

Fresh Mac and Windows builds for the OPML Editor. 

One sure sign of a bubble is the meta-ness of the excitement. How far removed from actual user experience is the euphoria? Is there any technology involved? To me, the peak of the dot-com bubble (as I've said many times) was the showdown between the pet food companies. And when people start getting excited about people getting excited, that's when it's time to think about putting the checkbook back in the pocket.  

I was surprised to learn, on Doc Searls's blog, that the TechCrunch party in August was a $50K money-maker. There's no link on Doc's post so it's not clear what the source is. No, I'm not against it, remember I said next time they had the party it would be at Moscone and it would be called a trade show. That's very much what it felt like. And then O'Reilly anounced that there would be a Web 2.0 Expo at Moscone. There you have it. So will Mike join up with O'Reilly or will he compete? Another ominous sign (a sell signal?) on TechMeme this morning -- a headline with Arrington's name in it. "Times Reader looks slick, but Arrington appears unimpressed." That's pretty darned meta. 

Muli Koppel illustrates the diff betw Web 1.0 and 2.0?