Articles by JDA

What you first install on a new computer, I think, is very telling of how you work. My wife and I recently bought a mac book pro, my first mac. That alone swayed some of what I was able to install, but still the choices I made this time around, show a lot about how the way I work has changed from when I bought a new desktop pc in 2006. Back then, the first thing that I would have installed would have been FireFox (maybe Flock depending on how Web 2.0 I wanted to be that day), now I went for Chrome (which is not as nice on a mac) and eventually got around to downloading FireFox. Specific browser aside, the point is that the first thing that I always do is download a better browser than what’s natively included. Safari is actually not that bad, but still the first thing that I do is get a new browser. That, more than anything, seems to be a ringing endorsement for something like Chrome OS… if the browser is the most important piece of software, building around that seems to make a ton of sense.

After I got my browser, my next step was to get a word processor. This is also a big change from the past, but my big focus right now is writing, and not in the sense of writing code. If the word processor was less important, I would probably just use Google Docs (which I used in law school), but I need a more robust application (wait for the irony in my final choice) and so does my wife. So, my first choice was Open Office (which I used in my undergrad days) - which is good, but leaves a bit to be desired. Microsoft Office and iWork are both fine full featured choices and give us everything we need, and we will likely install one or the other eventually. However, somewhere along the way, I started to really get into the idea of full screen word processors, so, I’m now using WriteRoom which is far from feature rich, but a completely addicting way to write. WriteRoom seems to be a favorite for Macs for full screen editors, but I actually like a PC only version of a full screen writer better - Q10 - and it’s actually free… but has no mac version (even says that one will never be built). I’ve definitely noticed an immediate change in availability of free software when we switched to a mac. I think it’s easier to charge for mac software, because there’s less competition so it’s harder for mac users to find free alternatives… that’s probably been the worst thing about switching to a mac.

For code… I still love Aptana and I can get it free, even on a mac. And that’s really all I need at this point, and everything else for me will be done online or with some of Apple’s pre-installed, good enough, software.

Overall, I’m very happy with our mac, but it is a definite adjustment. There’s been a lot of talk recently about iPad and iPhone and support for flash, or support for how code is compiled (bizarre)… and there’s a general sense of outrage, but is it really anything new? As soon as you buy into Apple, you buy into the philosophy that things are going to be done a certain way, and that’s going to be dictated to you. I’ve always thought that it was strange how many of the people advocating an open web, were the same people advocating macs and iPhones. Now that I’m on the mac side of things, I can understand how easy it is to really enjoy working on a mac, the speed and aesthetics alone could win some over for sure. But aesthetics aside, I feel that much of what Apple stands for, in terms of forced approaches, goes completely against how I believe software should work. And maybe that’s just it… maybe the people that are advocating more for cloud computing, and open standards, are doing so, so that they can get around the stumbling blocks of working in an Apple world…

Back in the day, way back in 2005, when I started blogging (April of 2005 if you’re interested), I was much better about keeping up with things on the web. I was also better about keeping my blog up to date. Inevitably priorities shift, the web shifts (I’m not the only one that stopped blogging), and though I’m probably a lot smarter about the web now, I may not be as plugged in when it comes to new startups. I still do try though, even if I don’t keep the blog up to date.

With that in mind, I thought I might share a few things have popped up on my radar that I felt were worth sharing. Some may change the web, some may not, but they all at least deserve a spot on a small blog post of somewhat interesting items, that may or may not be read by somewhere between 6 and 30 people:

Drumbeat: Drumbeat is an interesting idea in that it seeks to leverage the power of the social web to better the web. There are some good ideas for projects already, but I think what’s more interesting is the potential of future projects. With initiatives like the current Privacy Icons and Video Subtitles campaigns, this could be a way that web standards get put into place. It’s not quite a crowd sourced W3C, but it certainly has potential.

Activity Streams and Salmon Protocol: Like microformats both of these are about standardizing data for interoperability sake. Activity Streams is an effort to standardize the way that (primarily) social sites publish data so that data from different sites can be understood and utilized by tools - like FriendFeed or Cliqset - or even the social networks themselves. A lot of the work is around defining verbs - e.g. like or follow - that are common to most social apps. It’s interesting work, and hopefully does a lot for interoperability - I can see where microformats would also come into play on this end. The salmon protocol is similar, but actually does something that I used to really want: it allows you to comment on a post regardless of where you are viewing the post. I used to think that it would make so much sense to add a comment from my rss reader rather than go to a blog post to make a comment. I don’t pull out the old rss reader as much anymore, but I can see this being immensely useful, especially if you think about activity streams. If the two could be combined, then I could use an aggregator to view content from various sites, and the aggregator would understand what it was presenting to me, and from the aggregator would be able to comment on some content - or otherwise interact with it. That’s a major change in the way that the web works - and pretty exciting.

Open Share Icons: After the previous two, this isn’t as exciting for me, but nonetheless, I enjoy the idea of the open share icon, and see it as an emerging standard.

mite: This isn’t really anything new, but I’ve been playing with this time tracking site recently and find it to be pretty useful and inventive. They also seem to have an actual business model, which is nice to see… except that may mean that I stop using it after a week.

Dishizzle: Review sites are a dime a dozen, which is why this one will probably fail. But before that happens, I think you should take a look at this dish review site (as opposed to reviewing the full restaurant, you just review the food). It’s limited to mostly San Diego posts at this point, but it interests me as someone that used to run a local review site. I think this could have been a cool feature - and one that I definitely thought about - but I don’t know that it has real power as a full site.

Well that took a while… no wonder everyone sticks to tweeting.

As someone immensely interested (and involved) in the digital landscape, my foray into a very old medium comes at a very interesting time. It would seem to me that in the digital age, and more importantly in the social age, that my forthcoming novel should not need to have a publisher at all. I should be able to define the business model, publicize like crazy using social tools, and hope to gain enough traction without ever having to use a business model that is forced upon most authors. Saying that, I know the difficult of working independently and not having funding.

But it seems like I could certainly try. If I start with a finished novel (a very difficult first step), then promote it online using social tools, I could drive traffic to a site where I offer the first few chapters (or even 50% of it) for free, as well as some opportunities to get the whole thing for free and the capability to buy a complete digital edition. I would also distribute it through the emerging channels for devices such as the Kindle. Depending on the success (and or failure) of these paths, I would then have it published in an actual tangible format, perhaps using some on-demand printing to not have to pay for unsold books… seems feasible, right?

I wrote some code for the first time in a long time today… well other than the occasional code I write at work. It was fun. I truly enjoyed it, and though it was never employed on a live version of Lopico I really like working with jquery. Today I was prototyping an interface for building out navigation, which I intend to use for something work related, though I probably can’t say much more than that. As I was writing code though, I started to think (naturally) about the unfinished version of Lopico that I started last year. So, I looked at it a little bit, and even took care of a bug. I’d love to get back to Lopico… but it’s probably never going to happen. I’ve decided to limit myself to one outside-of-work project at a time and right now that’s the novel that I’m working on. When that’s done (which feels close, but also really far), I’ll likely work on a new site, but not Lopico. It’s really a matter of finding the right opportunities at the right time. While I think Lopico could still work, I don’t think that at this time, it’s where I would best utilize my time and talents.

Maybe… One of the ideas that I have for a post-novel website is local focused… but it would mean completely scrapping all of the lopico architecture if I decided that was what Lopico would be about. Still local, but with a drastic (less-business) focus. I’m seeing a lot of opportunity in local, but not in the review space. I don’t think that there’s anything on the web that really does a good job of organizing people into geographic groups in the same way that we associate those geographies in real life. If I tell someone that I’m from Chicago, and they ask me about it, I’m not going to start mentioning reviews of restaurants… but there are a lot of other things that I could say and share about the city and specifically about my neighborhood. Hyperlocal, it’s called, but I’m thinking it stretches beyond what we commonly see. I think it stretches into people having a real need to access local information in better ways than what’s currently available.

And there’s something that I want to do with bookmarking that I think needs to be done. Delicious revolutionized the concept of bookmarking (and maybe kicked off web 2.0 in the process), but it’s been more or less at a standstill sense. The way that people interact with their bookmarks is fine, but it could be better.

But before I get to all that… I’ve got a novel to finish (more on that soon).

If it turns out - which is somewhat likely - that I don’t become a successful author I can see a huge opportunity in publishing industry websites. As much time as I’ve been spending on various websites related to the publishing industry lately, I can think of maybe one that has been done particularly well. Some of the large publishing companies have great websites, from a design standpoint, but they are all lacking usability in some way. The sites that seem to hold the most information are typically 1) not forthcoming with such information and 2) the worst in terms of design. I would think that a list of literary agents would not be something that a company would charge for, especially when the same information is available elsewhere for free by searching Google. If you are asking someone to pay for content on your site that can be found elsewhere, then what you are asking them to pay for is really the way you’ve organized the content. If the organization is poor, then what are you asking people to pay for?

I finished my novel! Now, I just have to rewrite it. It’s not really finished, I just reached the end. The novel has some fundamental flaws in structure and an imbalance in content that needs to be reconciled. On top of that, I started writing in 2007, wrote for about six months infrequently, then wrote maybe two or three thousand words in 2008. The balance of the book was written in the past couple of months. To say that my writing from 07 doesn’t exactly jive with my writing in 09 would be an understatement. So, right now I’m focused on rewriting the book so that it actually makes sense and feels like a connected novel. The novel totals about 65,000 words, which is a little shorter than what I’d like, but I’m guessing that the rewriting will take it up considerably. The chapters towards the start come in at about 4-8 pages, whereas the chapters at the end are 25+. That could simply be a matter of combining chapters… but that’s not where the real problem lies. The detail level is just not the same throughout the book. So… I’ve still got some work to do.

But then… in true JD Amer fashion… I started another story. Not sure if this one will be a novel, or end up simply as a short story, but as soon as the first was over the second began. We’ll see what happens.

I was hoping that I’d be writing mostly about the business of trying to get a novel published, but before that, I’ve got a long way to go.

It’s been awhile… I feel like I start nearly every blog that way anymore. I’ve been pretty busy with life these days, which has kept me from Lopico and kept me from blogging. But, that’s all okay with me. I’m really very excited about a couple of other things happening with me - first and foremost, I got married to a wonderful woman! August 29th, here in Chicago, I married the love of my life - who I happened to meet in Chicago, right before moving here. Secondly, my project that I’ve been working on in my free time has no longer been web based - I’m instead much more focused on completing my novel that I started in July of 2007. What this means for the future of Lopico is really pretty uncertain, I’m just not making it a priority right now. I’ve said that before a number of times, but this is the first time where I really feel like I’m letting go of it. There are many reasons, specific to the market and specific to me, that I really don’t feel that this is the best place for me to spend my time right now.

Though the market somewhat keeps me out of trying to force Lopico back to the web, it isn’t stopping me from writing. Writing a novel is actually somewhat similar to starting a web start-up. Each has a huge pool of people trying to make it, and typically starting out in their homes. From these masses, those that have the best connections and can pitch the gatekeepers - VCs for the web, publishing companies or agents for books - in the best manner will enjoy the most success. They are both huge markets with a few huge players and millions of smaller ones. It’s definitely going to be a new type of challenge for me - when I get to the point of being able to look for a publisher - but one that I am looking forward to. I really enjoy writing and think that this first work is actually pretty good.

If nothing else, I am really enjoying learning a new industry. Unlike the web, I’m not getting in at a hot time - like I did when Lopico’s launch coincided with the birth of Web 2.0 - so, I really have to produce a great product and manage my way into the right distribution channels. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe, I’ll take the self-publishing route, and use web as my spring board. Whatever happens, I do plan to use this blog to detail what happens as I go through the process, much the same way I used my first blog to draw attention to the process of building Lopico and the lessons I learned along the way. Of course, at that time having a blog held a little more novelty - maybe I should have written the novel entirely in 140 character tweets.

RSS used to be a hard sell, now most people seem to buy into the idea. Even though readers / aggregating homepages were around and people used them, no one seemed to think that the connection was being made between RSS and custom homepages. That fear seems to be gone, and RSS has won popular appeal… though it seems to have lost all buzz (no one really cared when google didn’t include a browser rss icon in Chrome). Now the hard sell seems to be semantic. People just don’t get that into structured data – and really it does sound pretty boring. Web2.0 was easier to sell, because it involved social networking and mass crowds. Semantic web is a harder sell because it involves primarily data organization. Eventually it should enhance interactions – but just telling someone that they need to have their data organized because at some point there may be tools that take advantage of the structure of data to enhance users ability to interact with your data, potentially in a way that takes advantage of the social graph… well, that’s nice, but who really cares? And why should people invest in something so early stage?

I love the theory of the semantic web, and microformats in particular – but semantic is not sexy… and it needs to be. Thoughts? How do you pitch the semantic web?

The iphone app store is the AOL (think AOL 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, etc) of the mobile web.

I hate the iPhone… no, really I hate the iPhone app platform. Why? Because it’s pushing the mobile web backwards and is a walled garden. It’s terrible.

The promise of the web, and the mobile web, as I see it, is the openness of building on a single platform accessible to all. You can - for the most part - access the same sites on Firefox as you can on Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

Imagine if I told you that you couldn’t read my blog unless you had a certain computer using a certain browser… and even then you potentially had to pay for it. It sounds archaic and idiotic, and it sounds like the iphone app store.

Building for closed platforms, and making programs that are not universally accessible, stifles innovation by limiting the number of participants. I can’t believe the amount of hype that the iPhone app store gets, when it’s terrible for the mobile web.

I’ve been against the premise of platforms since the Facebook platform started - that seems to have killed itself off, and I can only hope that the same happens to the iPhone app store. I’m hoping that more developers start to act like Google in the world of mobile, but even that strategy requires the right browser.

Mobile is still an odd animal, in that not all mobile phones can the same technologies and browsers do vary widely based on your phone. However, the problem of unequal capability does not go away by building for a closed platform… it goes away by building for open browsers that work on multiple platforms… like skyfire, or android’s browser (eventually, at least that’s what we’re told). You don’t have to look any further than Microsoft to see the problems that occur, and lack of innovation that happens, when everyone focuses on building for one closed platform.

I wrote recently about twitter and facebook as sort of minimalist social apps on the lopico blog. These two sites are a unique combination, because of the draw that they have ~ and not much else. But it is the draw of these two that I think could really give just about any company enough justification to drop their web presence anywhere else. Maybe LinkedIn too…

For most businesses, more people are on facebook, twitter, and linkedIn (FTL for the rest of this post) at this very moment than are likely to be on your site in the next year. Why not simply harness that power of that network and similar networks, and forget about trying to build up a site that will see low traffic?

Use Facebook as a storage for content, twitter as a thought provoking conversation tool, and LinkedIn to draw contacts and job applicants.

This is drastically different than what I said in the aforementioned Lopico post in which I said - build from scratch, don’t build off of existing networks. The difference is one of audience. If I am talking about building a web app - I think innovation is hurt by developing on top of platforms. However, if we are talking about traditional businesses looking to harness the power of the web (e.g. a bar, law firm, or even a band) then why not go where everyone else is, instead of asking them to come to you?

You don’t need a website, but you do need the web - and you need to know how to use it.

——-
I should at least partially credit this post to a quick conversation I had on twitter today with @kevinokeefe

A couple of big things happened on the web recently that might make you start thinking about data.

First, Ma.gnolia died. To be more precise, it had a catastrophic data loss and all user data seems to be lost forever.

Second, Facebook made a change to its TOS. You would think that a web service being wiped completely out and losing tons of user data would be the big story, but actually a little TOS change made the biggest headlines.

Facebook temporarily changed its TOS to imply that it had permanent right to your data, even if you leave the service. This created a panic as people began throwing out ridiculous scenarios of what this could mean. Facebook backtracked and the TOS was rolled back to a previous version.

These two happenings make me question a couple of things:
1. Who really owns your data?
2. What is the value of that data?

Who really owns your data?
This point is really still very unclear. I think users expect that they in some way “own” the data. But think about it, if you owned your data couldn’t you use it in any way you wanted to. Wouldn’t you be able to say to Facebook - give me a sql backup of my data?

So, you don’t really own the data. You create data for a site, you have a right to it and should have a right to remove it. You have no right to keep the data. Ma.gnolia proves that you have no right to keep the data. You can do all a lot in terms of managing and accessing your data, but if the data is lost it’s lost and there’s not much you can do about.

So what you really have is an agreement to allow a service to use your data. In exchange for this agreement you get the right to manage this data as long as the service remains. So, no - you don’t own your facebook photos. You own the originals, but no one really owns the version on Facebook. You have a right to that data, but so does Facebook. It’s a shared relationship.

But what if you did own your data? What if the data portability movement really takes off and somehow you own your data. What if we get to a point where either 1) you can demand that sql backup of your data? That brings me to my next question:

What is the value of your data?
Let’s start with this blog. I think that there is some value in this blog. It may be small, it doesn’t earn me any direct earnings, but it does provide some value to me. I tend to think that I own the data on this site. But this site is hosted. So, the sql box where the data from this blog is stored isn’t owned by me. If that server crashes and I lose all my data, and I don’t have a backup, and the hosting provider doesn’t have a backup… what’s my value loss, and what’s my recourse? I like to think that this scenario is unlikely, but I’m sure Ma.gnolia thought its crash was unlikely. If that actually happens can I sue my hosting provider for losing all of my data that I own? Or am I taking accepting a risk of data loss because the provider allows me to make as many backups as I want? In this example, I have much more access and right to my data, and I would think that the answer should be, no I can’t reclaim the value of the data, except to the extent that it would have been unreasonable for me to back it up (say the past 24 hours worth of data). That puts the onus much more on the consumer than most or nearly any person would want, but if that option is available and I don’t take advantage of it, then the value loss is at least partially my fault.

Jump back to the world of social networks. In a manner similar to the method in which I post data to this blog, I can post data to the countless number of social networks that exist. So, let’s say that I post to LinkedIn, and my profile on LinkedIn is actually a great source of referral business for me because I have a ton of contacts and great recommendations. Now, assume LinkedIn dies in the same way that Ma.gnolia died. You had no way to backup your data and now that it’s gone you are losing real economic value in the form of a drop in referral business. You couldn’t back up the data, it’s gone, it caused you to lose value. Does LinkedIn owe you for that? Or say it’s etsy that dies and your whole catalog of goods is wiped out. Does Etsy owe you for the loss of income potential? What about Github? What if I lose the code I have stored on Github and for some unknown reason I don’t have a local copy? Would these services have to pay for the value lost?

I hope the answer is no. Again, I think the onus is at least partially on the end user. If LinkedIn fails, and you lose your data and the accompanying referral business that’s upsetting, but there was never a guarantee that it would be there. LinkedIn is providing you with an organized method of accessing a network. The people on LinkedIn (most likely) also exist in the real world, it just takes a few more steps to make the same connections. In that sense when linkedin as a service fails, you are losing a method of organizing data. When linkedin as a data store fails, you are losing data that really only matters if that data organizing service exists. You have no right to have LinkedIn remain as an available service for eternity.

I don’t have all the answers and I think that it gets to be a little more complex when you add in things like payment to use a service. I do think that it’s something that will become more of an issue with the increased amount of data on the web, and the increased number of services shutting down. I don’t think we’ll get to a point where everyone owns their own data storage system and grants the services away to organize and display that data… but we might, and then people might actually own their data.

When I last posted, it was the first mention of Lopico on this blog since March of last year. You may have thought Lopico was done, dead, and over… but it may be making a comeback. I’ve been working on Lopico a lot lately, and it’s going pretty well. In the process of bringing it back, I’ve started to make a few observations.

1. I am a much better developer than I used to be. This wouldn’t seem that odd, except I’ve barely written any code in the past year. From time to time I would do little things, and I did create a delicious clone, but for the most part I haven’t be writing anything.

2. The database structure of old Lopico was easy to use, but it was bloated. I was storing way too much information in the old database structure. Now, I’m trying to make it as lean as I can. I think this is in turn helping my development, because I’m thinking about everything in terms of “the best way” instead of the “easiest way.”

3. I love Aptana. I started using Aptana when I was looking at ROR, but ultimately decided it’s a great editor for PHP - which is what Lopico was primarily written in and will be again.

4. Some of what Lopico used to do was crap. I’m getting rid of the crap, focusing, and making things easier on myself. It all gets back to thinking about the best way to do things. I need to remove some crap to avoid having to work around things that weren’t well-thought-out. Luckily, it’s a completely re-write, so there’s plenty of room for thought. For the last major iteration of Lopico, I created the site and then kept adding to it… looking back at it now, the new things I created didn’t exactly fit perfectly.

5. Some of what Lopico used to do was pretty cool. More than anything, I’m excited to bring the site back. It was pretty cool and personally a great accomplishment. It’s going to be different, but at the same time I expect it to be just as much fun and just as rewarding.

6. The local review market is even more condensed and more difficult to compete in. I have to think differently. I’ll have more than a few surprises for old users and hopefully many new users.

7. I’ve got nothing to lose. Lopico was what it was and will be what it will be. At the end of the day, if I am the only one using it, and I like using it, I am completely happy with that.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this, but I plan to do my Lopico blogging on the Lopico blog (if I can find my password). Even a post like this belongs there. I want to be as open and involved through the Lopico blog as I used to be on this one.

I’m always pleasantly surprised when I see Motask written up somewhere. The most recent that I’ve seen is a post titled “14 Superb Mobile To-Do Apps to Increase Your Productivity” from Pulse2. Motask was built in about 10 hours, and really I think I could now do it in about 4. I’ve updated it maybe twice since it launched in September 2006. Motask isn’t the feature of this post, but the fact that it made the list I think speaks highly of the power of simplicity.

As I am re-writing Lopico (more to come on that) I am often asking myself if I am trying to do too much. I hope the answer is no, but I know that I am including a lot. I think the thinking with most sites (Lopico included) is “what can I do that my competitors aren’t doing?” When really there should be more thinking along the lines of “what are my competitors doing that I don’t need.”

Many people and companies blog to position themselves as experts in a field, which is fine - but there’s something even easier that you can do that will establish you as being in touch and potentially turn you into a greater resource than a blog. This is especially true if you don’t write well. Share things you find interesting with others.

Sure plenty of individuals do this, but it’s extremely extremely rare to see this done by a company. If I run a consulting company, I not only want to show off my own news, I also want to position myself as being knowledgeable on current trends. The easiest way for me to do this is to link to articles that I consider valuable. By doing this i’m showing that I am up on current trends and at the same time building a resource that visitors will likely want to revisit.

All it takes is a little integration with the delicious api (or any other bookmarking service), a widget (see my Google reader shares in the sidebar), or a quick custom job. I built the basics of a social bookmarking site in just about 4 hours. After that just browse the internet as you otherwise would and share stories you find interesting or useful.

I’ve heard rumor that pandora isn’t looking too hot from a business standpoint. Heard that the model is one to make you broke. I’ve commented before on their commercial aspirations and revenue. I may even be partially to blame for some of the turmoil. If not for a few nagging bloggers would the commercials have survived? I suppose they may have - people may have acquiesced to the ads and taken them for granted.

But if ad revenue were enough I don’t think pandora would be in as much of a pinch. Pandora has done some of the more clever (and actually engaging) web advertising I’ve seen.

I think the real problem lies with the one thing pandora has never offered: on-demand music. Pandora can’t do this right? Wrong. It can’t do it alone. Pandora currently offers links to buy songs you’ve heard on itunes or amazon… But then what? Does pandora still pay to play the song I own? That doesn’t make business sense. Pandora helps you buy a song, then pays to play it. If pandora could integrate with itunes to 1) allow me to play songs i’ve purchased any time I want and 2) cut costs by playing from my hard drive rather than paying to stream songs I own, then they would save money and i’m guessing do a little better job of pushing the ability to buy the songs you hear. Did you know they have links to buy the songs you hear? I’m guessing many don’t know this. The availability of this feature is too hidden. Make it more prominent and give me some incentive (like on demand playback in pandora) and I might just help you make a few more bucks.

That may not solve everything, but it wouldn’t hurt.

I want a dual screen phone that flips out like the g1 keyboard, and a keyboard that pops out beneath the first screen. No camera, limited software and a powerful set of web apps. Doesn’t really exist, does it? And there’s a chance it never will. Not that I don’t think the technology is available or will be soon (we’ll see about the dual screen - but I think mobile web use demands it). The reason I don’t see it happening is not because of the things I want, it’s because of my inability to remove the things I don’t want.

I think the mobile device industry could use a few lessons from PC manufacturers. Mobile phones are quickly becoming more like computers than phones, and it seems like much of the same missteps from the early (and not so early) history of the PC are being repeated. We know how things will play out, so why not skip ahead?

For example, Dell lets you build custom PCs, so why can’t I build a custom smart phone? When will this become the model for mobile devices? I think it eventually will be, but it seems far away. You can’t even pick your phone and your network independently at this point. The road-map I see for the future of mobile devices looks a lot like the past of the PC, but hopefully without some of the missteps and few less steps to get to the end goal. A few things need to happen first.

1. Stop the nonsense of phone and network linkage. This will be tough. Right now networks give huge discounts on phones for locking into their service. Theoretically if you remove this link you remove the discounts, but that’s not necessarily true. If you removed at&t’s monopoly on the iPhone, let consumers buy the phone and then let them choose the carrier, carrier’s would need to offer even larger discounts for new users - derived from the fear of consumer choice and non-exclusive agreements leading to loss in customers. This would lead networks to compete on their true assets - network strength and pricing plans.

2. The field of operating systems needs to be slimmed down. Too many proprietary systems are hanging around that do nothing but frustrate users with quirky conventions. Unless the web is the platform then we need some interoperability and that’s really best done through limiting the number of OSes available. This will either be done through competition and demand for an OS - which is being created with blackberry, android, mac, and to a lesser extent winmo - or by removing the OS element altogether (see #4).

3. Don’t treat the mobile web differently. There is no mobile web in the future. There is only one web accessible through different mediums. This is why I want the second screen. While working on my samsung ace is acceptable, and the G1 and iPhone are better, there is still much to be done on the hardware side of things before we can reach a point of integration that doesn’t require development of mobile and non-mobile properties. And it’s not just a matter of zoom in / out. Skyfire, for example, is a fix not a solution. A solution will have to come in the form of hardware.

4. Forget the OS. Number 2 is sort of an interim step that seems unavoidable given the current players in the market. But how far are we from having an always connected phone that can run web apps and store everything in the cloud, leaving minimal need for android, apple, winmo or any other specific OS.

5. Let me build it. I started with this point and I don’t think i’m alone in wondering why this isn’t a reality. It may have something to do with number 1 and the unnecessary meddling of networks in the handset business. I feel that it is akin to promoters and musicians, a relationship which faces a similar fate. In today’s society of high demand for customization and access to information this relationship won’t take as long to die. On the other hand, there is a definite cost factor - one that even has Dell changing direction - but one that could be lucrative - as it was for Dell in previous years.

There’s more that need to be done - especially on points like mobile payment - but all of the pieces need to fall into place before the promise of the mobile web can be realized.

This might seem like a shock to some. I mean, it’s the first impression of a site, right? This is where you win or lose, right? Wrong. It’s time to accept the fact that home pages are not that important. The homepage really serves one purpose: getting people off of the homepage. That’s it. A website is about the content that is inside, not whatever meaningless information you’ve thrown on the homepage.

Sure it will be seen a lot, but rarely is it even the first impression. The trend in search behavior is always to add more terms to a search query. Over time, instead of using one word searches, we started to use four and six - and it’s increasing. What this means, is that searchers (which likely make up the bulk of your traffic) are almost never going to land on your homepage. People are looking for content, and that’s what their searches are going to take them to. Unless the majority of your content lives on your homepage, it’s not THAT important.

There is no single landing page. Every page is a landing page. Every page that can be found in a search, can be a landing page. Don’t spend too much time on your homepage - focus on the interior. It’s where your content lives and it’s where you are going to make your lasting impressions.

I was just on a page on a site that is completely accessible - but only if you know the url. I was using chrome to access this page, which made me wonder: would Google use the data of my page view history to expand its index? Granted, I didn’t select the check box to help Google make Chrome better (or in other words: hand over all my usage data) - but I can imagine some sort of overall web path tracking. If that ever happens, Google would have access to pages that it otherwise would have no way of finding. That’s great for expanding the world of information - but terrible for anyone that has content on the web that is only meant to be accessed directly and not meant to be indexed. Would Google ever do this? I think it’s certainly possible.

When android hits, we are going to see one of the first battles of apple and google. For the most part these two don’t really compete. Now they are going head to head in the battle of the mobile os.

Everyone knew about the iphone before it came out, but no one that I talk to outside the tech world knows what android is - most within don’t either. That’s a fundamental difference in google and apple. Apple is known for big build ups to releases and for big ad and pr campaigns. Google isn’t. Instead google is known for launching quietly and then crushing the competition with superior products. But apple is known for crushing competition too. The difference is really one of style.

So now, the question has to be what happens when two heavyweights colide? My guess is that the world won’t blink at android. My guess is that it won’t be half as asthetically appealing as the iphone. However, my guess is that over time it will crush the iphone.

Why? Not simply because it’s google. I know as well as anyone that google can’t win on name alone. If that were true a mass conversion to google docs would be underway. Google will win because its strategy is better and its better fit for this medium. Mobile isn’t about phones. It’s about the web and messaging. Right now apple’s biggest advantage is its ability to combine two devices into one. But as the way we use our phones evolves the google brand will be the one users are most drawn to. It may be a few years off, but in the long run I believe the mobile world belongs to google

I was in a meeting about seo Friday, and I was left pondering a question I’ve pondered before: where do brands belong in title tags?

There are really just two choices, the front and the back. If you put the brand name in the back, there is a chance a searcher might miss it. They might go to your site and never remember the name because it didn’t make that first impression. They remember the content, but not the brand.

On the other hand, putting the brand in front means giving up valuable keyword real estate. You are potentially sacrificing the only few words a user will ever see to get your brand name out. If it’s an unknown brand, there’s even a chance that will induce someone to skip your link.

So what’s worse? Well, I think our narcissistic and English basis makes us think that the name should come first. We read left to right, and from a hierarchical standpoint it make sense to use: site - section - page. It’s just the way we think. And we certainly don’t want to risk an opportunity to throw our brand in everyone’s face. Consider that and the fact that every uber brand in the world uses this structure (plus some very popular content management systems like wordpress) and you have a fairly compelling argument for placing your brand name first in your title.

But wait… you’re not an uber brand… at least most likely you’re not. So there’s a good chance you’ll benefit more from keywords first. Well… maybe. You don’t need to be Facebook SEOmoz to warrant the brand first title tag, but you also shouldn’t just go for it because that’s what SEOmoz does.

Unless you are well known in your target market, you really shouldn’t be putting your name up front. The key isn’t size, it’s brand awareness in your target market. If your name already means something throw it up front. If it doesn’t (which can be hard to admit) it gets the back seat to content.

Updated: I changed my example from Facebook to SEOmoz. I think this post is more relevant with this example, because SEOmoz is really using its brand recognition in the field to drive clicks.

The main reason I’ve ditched this blog is because I now moblog more than anything, and there is a very simple solution that I like for that. So now I have three options:

1. Continue using my “Stealth Blog” only
2. Use the same software as the stealth blog and create a new blog
3. Keep this wordpress blog and moblog on wordpress… and keep the stealth blog

The third option seems like the best though I have some good ideas for a new blog name which would be my reason for number 2… 2 or 3, I plan to try to get back into public blogging…. just hope some readers come back.

Cdm? Never heard of it you say? That’s because I just made it up. Seo, in reality, is a technical thing. It starts with the way a site is put together and includes things like title tag management. Cdm is often confused with seo, but I think it’s completely different. Cdm is content distribution management. Often thought of as seo, but the traditional thinking on seo really has two parts…and I don’t think it’s right to lump them together. Seo involves prepping a site to be search friendly - all of the on page aspects. Cdm is making sure someone notices. Your site can be technically perfect from a search engine’s point of view, but that really doesn’t matter unless someone thinks your site is worth their time. People think a site is worth their time if they’ve heard about it. You’ll rarely hear about a site unless it engages in some cdm. Furthermore, as search engines become more refined, thee on page stuff matters less. In the end cdm is more important than seo (though your seo should be nearly flawless) and it’s going to be the next big web service market (especially as seo moves in-house or dies).

I haven’t completely lost my mind, or changed my opinion on the value of web analytics. Instead, I just think you need to be careful. My warning is simple: Web Analytics can suck the life from your content.

If you have a combination of niche content and mainstream content (say you write a blog about music) if you only listen to analytics, you will kill your site. The web is built upon a foundation of availability of all types of content. Naturally mainstream content is searched for more than niche content, and you may see more pageviews for you mainstream content. It may not event be mainstream, it may just be your most popular content. The point is you can’t let the popular content become the only thing on your site.

Why not? Why not just make your site focused on the popular? A few reasons really, 1: niche content will be easier to win in the competition for traffic (even if it comes from a smaller pie) 2: Saturation makes the web dull - and 3: I don’t like it.

Lesson: don’t just blog about apple and google… it’s really boring.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not really using this blog again. There are really two reasons 1) this is too public, and I don’t really want a public forum right now - though I may again in the future. 2) Moblogging doesn’t seem to work well, if at all with wordpress. So, I now have a more private blog that allows me to moblog and not share everything with the world… but I will be posting here occassionally, when I feel the content is audience appropriate… in fact I might just post a few things now…

I think the lull is real, but I also think the lull exists in the realm of the trendy. Startups focused on current trends in the web aren’t going to stand out. What really stands out to me is a startup that is not focused on the trends… Right now that’s xobni, a startup that is focusing on the email client when everyone else is focusing on the browser. By bucking the trend xobni is completely avoiding the lull.

xobni didn’t take the same approach of trying to build a social network from the ground up - xobni built off a tool that was already social in nature, but that completely lacked social features. That’s the pitch anyway, but I could honestly care less about the social aspects of xobni - I love it because it makes outlook interesting and more useful. Improved search, conversational organization, easy file view and most importantly - intelligent presentation of information (which might just be where the ‘plug-in’ company turns into a business).

xobni’s not predictable, it has nothing to do with the semantic web or the mobile web, it’s not the next facebook or the next google, it’s not something anyone said would be the next big thing - it’s not trendy, it’s just brilliant (though the micorsoft move may have been stupid (even if I do like the company more for it)).

Web >> Lull >> Web 2.0 >> Lull 2.0? >> Web 3.0?

I think we’ve hit a wall. Not that I haven’t said this before, but I think my viewpoint has changed a little. Before when I complained about an innovation downturn it was based on a lack of independent startups that I found to be interesting (there are plenty of good independents - but I still haven’t seen a lot of great ones lately). The problem as I see it now, is with a general sense of contentment with the largest “Web 2.0″ sites.

The problem with moving from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 is that people just generally don’t care. They don’t think Google is broken, they don’t think Facebook is broken and generally they don’t care about the difference between machine readable and machine understandable. The difference between machine readable and machine understandable is the key difference in Web 2.0 and web 3.0 (well at least in one generally accepted understanding of 3.0) - if there isn’t demand, it’s tough to get supply. Most entrepreneurs, in my opinion, are focused on getting quick run away success with a quick exit. Tough to get quick run away success if people aren’t craving what you’re making.

I understand wanting to see some gain from the time put into your endeavor, but if we keep focusing on the same things we can’t move forward. It seems people have gotten used to using a certain set of web apps/sites and aren’t really looking for anything new. So, developers keep making the same things and making incremental gains. This has lead to an overall downturn - a downturn in innovation and not surprisingly a downturn in financial investment. We’re seeing small ideas, not big ideas. There’s a general sense of what people like and startups make copies and incremental changes.

I know I say this every five posts or so - but it’s not all gloom. There are some things that are exciting to me right now. Chief among them: mobile and microformats. The mobile web is really starting to take off - I honestly believe that personal web browsing (not business) will be conducted more on mobile devices than computers within 5 years. Microformats are exciting… or at least they could be. I’m excited about companies that are trying to interpret them, not those that are merely adding them to their sites (though that is important too). A downturn may even be good for the web. If the possibility of financial gain decreases, fewer people will try to create me-too startups and those that are creating truly innovative applications will once again stand out.

Of course, there is a chance that mobile and microformats really won’t take off. If you would have asked most people what they thought the next big wave in the web would be after the first crash my guess is most would not have said social applications.

What do you think? Is innovation slowing? Is it good?

I just read an article on wired about how Google is not doing very well monetizing social networks (synopsis: traditional Google ads don’t work on SNs). It’s a quick read and doesn’t say too much other than hinting that someone thinks there is an answer - but it’s a part of a very interesting problem. Despite the fact that social networks do a great job of getting users and keeping users on their sites for extended periods of time they haven’t really figured out the best way to turn users into dollars.

I won’t pretend to have the answer and I think it is different depending on the type of social network - a network that includes localized content obviously has different monetization opportunities than a network that has a more generalized focus. However, it seems to me that the focus really isn’t in the right place. Text ads work on search because they are almost the exact same thing a person is looking for when they do a search - if you’re searching you’re looking for links to relevant content, and that’s what text ads provide. When you’re on a social network you’re looking for information about people and things you care about. That’s not as easy to monetize - you can’t expect one of your “friends” to pay so that their photos are given priority over another one of your “friends.” It’s tough because you don’t care who views your content on most social networks that aren’t for businesses. This changes when you either have a social network that people are using for business, or when you let others develop on your platform. Let’s face it - I hate platforms - but I also think they might just be the best way to monetize social networks.

When facebook added the developer network and then the app platform they created something that they can get businesses to pay for. It’s all free now, but if Facebook charged fees for setting up apps, fees for premium placement of apps, a fee per user, or any other fee based on their apps platform - companies (and some people) would pay it. The true value of facebook NOW is it’s ability to expose new ideas to a large audience. You can’t monetize the content created by individuals for their “friend” individuals - you can monetize providing companies access to a huge network - and I won’t be surprised to see it.

But… what do you think?

When I think about the future of web apps, I think of remoteness. I think of being in one location and being able to both read and write to others. I want to setup a page of my own that allows me to interact with other sites in both for both retrieval and contribution. Imagine, a site where you can see your friends interactions with other sites and interact with those sites without leaving your current location. It’s not that hard to imagine… right now this type of ecosystem exists within the confines of Facebook, where, for example, I can update my twitter status and see others twitter updates without ever venturing to twitter itself. This is fine, but Facebook is not the internet… I’m essentially talking about a decentralized platform. So, what is Friend Feed? Well, probably a lot of people reading this already know, but for those that don’t… it’s the read part of the read write decentralized platform. We’ve reached a halfway point where I can read from other sites without having to visit them, but I can’t write to most of them unless they are contained somewhere. I want to be able to have a module that I control that allows me to post to Flickr, Facebook, or Delicious (not the best example) without having to visit the sites or go through an API. We’re at the point where we can read most content from nearly anywhere… next we need to be able to write. I might just do this with motask… enable people to take the site with them to anywhere else they want, even completely rebrand it… but contain the information within my database. I’m still working the details out… but with the simple nature of motask, it at least seems possible. There are many more examples where this is beginning to happen… but they are coming along slowly and all too often are left to the tech savvy. Somewhere between opensource and silo data lies the future of web interactivity, figuring out the right mix will determine the future of the web.

At the end of the line, there’s only one big decision left to make - how exactly do I end this? Admittedly, I’ve thought very little about exit strategy from the time I started Lopico. When I started in 2004 - or rather before I started - I thought about it a bit more. I thought there would be a quick exit, I knew it would be a runaway success. I was wrong. I was not very internet savvy, and beyond the things I’d read in print magazines, I didn’t know much about the true nature of the internet as a business. I had to learn quickly, and I did. Now, I’m coming to the end of this journey that produced a website, that though not a runaway billion dollar success, was in many ways a great triumph. It’s here that I find myself once again forced to think about exit strategies. There’s a good chance I could sell the site, but I’m not sold on the idea just yet. A part of me just wants to shut it down and move on. A part of me wants to keep everything and relaunch in a year. The only thing I know for sure is that there’s at most one month left of Lopico, and then the exit (at least publicly) will be complete.

I have decided that I am shutting down Lopico in the coming weeks. It was a tough decision, but ultimately the best decision for me. There are two primary reasons for this decision: time and a desire to pursue other opportunities. Lopico has been a great learning experience for me, but I can’t dedicate the amount of time I need to make it what I want it to be. When I visit the site now, I am bothered by its look and its current feature set. While, I was in the process of a redevelopment and redesign of the site, I do not have the time and resources to make it what I want it to be - this is the drawback of having a single-person operation. I have often said (and it’s true) that the site can run on auto-pilot, but that’s not what I want. I don’t want a desolate and static (in terms of features) site. I want something I can be actively involved in - as I was with Lopico in previous years. With my current schedule, it’s unlikely that I can make this commitment to any site - but having Lopico just makes this more difficult. Lopico was a great experience for me - but my heart hasn’t been in the local review space for awhile - I want to move to other projects and projects that are more on the cutting edge. As long as Lopico remains, I will dedicate the time I have to it - time that could be used for other projects. By ending Lopico, I will free up what time I do have to explore other projects - something that is pretty exciting for me. So… yes, it is a little sad for me to be shutting down Lopico, but there’s more excitement in the possibilities of what is next. Thanks to everyone that has supported Lopico, I will also be posting on the Lopcio blog shortly.

So.. I just got back from Vegas, which has me thinking about the usefulness of travel booking sites. Traditional travel booking sites just don’t seem to get it. There was probably a time when these sites were very helpful. Way back in the B.G. (before Google) era, when people weren’t as savvy about going to an actual airlines site, or a hotel site, it was probably helpful. Now, people go to these sites, look for what’s cheapest and then go to the actual airline site where the flight will be slightly cheaper. Now these sites are banking on adding extra services and packages to try to compensate for their general lack of usefulness for the non-internet-intelligent (a shrinking population)

Then there are the referral sites, these seem to be headed in the right direction - but I think they are merely a piece of the puzzle. The process of showing prices to customers, then sending them to the airline’s site for a referral fee - is much closer to actual user behavior so it makes for a more useful and rewarding experience. My question is, why don’t the bundler’s add the referral function into their site? Use the bundler to look for prices, but give me the option of how I want to purchase the flight - either from the bundling site directly or through the airline or hotel. This way all of the customers that would leave anyway count for at least some revenue.

Then there’s the second piece - the add-ons. There’s a certain company that is trying to build a social network around travel conditions. This seems a little foolish - and this isn’t a replication of how people normally travel. Again the companies are trying to force customers out of their norms. Worst of all the information that is provided via this service really isn’t that helpful. Sure I can see how long the security line is right before I walk up to it… but what choice do I have at that point? And if I check it earlier, what are the chances the condition will be the same? These companies would be better off giving customers helpful information tailored to their needs throughout their trip. I don’t care about using the web on my phone to find out about a security line, but I would like to know about a lot of other things while I’m actually at my destination. Give me recommendations and partner with business in top destinations to give me access to discounts and offers that I can only get if I book through your service. This is the type of information that is always going to be useful and enticing.

Unless there is a change to start providing useful information and services that actually mirror or enhance real life behavior, travelers will continue to make alternate plans.

I know… I’ve been a little harsh on Facebook in recent post on the book, but there’s something wrong with the whole apps concept. I think it benefits Facebok immensely, the app developers slightly, and overall hurts the web.

The future of the book.
Probably the best benefit to Facebook is that it no longer has to deal with the vicious cycles that come along with being trendy. Instead of putting out ‘cool’ products and new features on a regular basis it looks to the community for the work, and it reaps the ad revenue and traffic benefits. Nice work if you can get it. Eventually, it will likely make sense for Facebook to begin charging its largest developers a hosting fee for their apps and give them some sort of premium placement in exchange - essentially charging app developers to do the work for them. Pretty smart, right.

The future of the apps.
This picture isn’t as pretty for apps and their developers. For some app developers success will come, but those will really only be those that can put out a large number of apps, and add to their collection on a consistent basis. The one-off developers (the majority) are the ones that get lost in the shuffle. As I see it, the product cycle of a FB app compared to a web app looks something like this:

Crude, I know… but I think it illustrates my point. The hot-now apps are now the ones exposed to the ‘fate-of-a-trend’ life cycle. They are enticed by the early rush, but are left with little to show for it before long. Facebook has a huge user base to expose your app to, but really all that does is speed up your product life cycle. It’s quicker to start, but also quicker to die. The users don’t care about the individual apps, they care about a steady stream of ‘hot-now’ items. And as long as new apps come out to replace the dying apps, the book maintains its stance.

Should I care? Maybe not. But, I generally dislike this trend of large companies acting as lords over the smaller. It’s a strange re-ordering of web power that’s taking place right now, and I for one, will not be creating facebook apps.

I’ve been making a ton of progress (well, relatively) on Lopico lately, but I still have a long way to go. One thing that is pretty much set at this point is the new logo:

Let me know what you think.

Search engine optimization seems to always be done from a backwards-looking perspective. A client comes to an SEM firm and says “what can we do NOW to improve our search rankings?” The problem would be a lot easier to fix if the site had been built with SEO in mind. Yes, SEO starts with design; and if you’re lacking in smart design then you’re coming into the SEO process with at least one strike against you (probably more). The good news for those that start with smart design is that you’re already a few steps ahead. When you get to the heart of it, there are only so many things one can do to separate one site from another in terms of SEO. Search-minded design is a thing that so few sites have, that it really makes a difference after the keyword stuffing and link baiting is finished.

If it’s important why don’t more websites do this?

The problem in my opinion, is that design, development, and services (things like SEO) are usually very separate. In fact, I can only recall ever seeing one or two search marketing firms that also offer design services. Design on the web is different than design in print or anywhere else - design on the web has to be smarter. You start with a logical layout, without tables, user Header tags intelligently, include alt tags, and ensure that your site looks good naked. Naked websites? That’s right, you need to make sure your site makes sense when you look at it without any design elements. For this I like to use the web developer toolbar in firefox. Use the toolbar to disable css and images and you’ll get a much better picture of how Google, Yahoo, and other search engines will see your site. If it makes sense naked, then you’re on your way to better optimization.

That’s easy right? So, why isn’t it done? Because, for the most part, this is not taught to web designers. Web designers are designers, not search optimizers - so they think in terms of design not SEO. They need to become both. From header tags, to microformats, this stuff has to be done at the design level. If you’re designers aren’t doing this, they are hurting your site in the long run.

SEO is easy, if you start with it in mind. It’s not a matter of difficulty it’s a matter of consistency and of site-wide or company-wide efforts.

More on SEO:
JD Amer’s SEO bookmarks on del.icio.us

… but nobody wants it. I tried to completely program, design and launch a site a couple of weekends ago, when I realized a couple of things:

1. What’s the hurry?
2. I’m not following my mantra of “assume it’s being built, go after what you’d want next”
3. Building to quickly is a sure fire way to fail

Sure, there are exceptions - I did motask in a little over a week, it had about 1500 uniques in its first 5 hours of launch and it continues to do fairly well in terms of growth and usage - but on average, you’re better off building for quality not speed. I wanted to get the new site up quickly mainly for the novelty of doing it in a weekend - but when the novelty wears off, you’re left with a half-assed site and a bunch of unresolved/undiscovered issues that you half to go back and spend time on anyway.

So, what happens to the new site (Frisht) now? Well, before I started building it, I had set a yearly goal of launching at least two new sites (not counting blogs which I can set up in about an hour) - I suppose it will become one of the two. The longer I take to build it, the more likely it is to not be junk. The more thought that gets put in, the less junky it gets - so, I’m holding off and hopefully before the end of April, I’ll be telling you what Frisht is all about.

A comment by someone (hi lisa) on my last post, posed the question: “what happens to Lopico now?” That’s a good question. I have a new job, live in a new city, and don’t have much time available for it. I’m working on getting into a better routine for blogging / writing code, but I’m not there yet. My simple answer for Lopico is: it’s not dead, but it’s not at its peak either. I’m more or less putting development of Lopico on hold. It’s set up in such a way that my involvement can be fairly minuscule and it will run just fine, and at least cover costs. I can’t be completely dedicated, but when I have time I’ll work on new features / design. I’m not going to throw it away (I still have too much that I want to do) but I’m not as dedicated as I would ideally be.

This may work out for the best. If I make it more of a long term project, and worry less about getting new features rolled out every so often, then I will dedicate more time to getting the right mix of features… at least that’s one potential path. And if it takes me a couple years until I can back into it that’s fine. Letting it grow slowly and adding some years to the Lopico domain will give me a better place to resume when I do get a chance to put more effort into it. I can’t really say what the ultimate future is, but I will say that the whole experience has made me want to start more things… and if that’s the best thing to come out of Lopico I’ll consider it a success.

Things have been pretty dead on this blog lately… mainly because I started a new job. I am now working for a web / software company in Chicago and it’s taken up most of my time. Once I get into more of a routine, I promise to write more (feels like I’ve said that before). In the meantime… since I am always looking to promote my readers, leave a comment or send me an email and I will gladly link to / write about whatever it is that you’ve been up to.

First up: my brother-in-law. My brother-in-law recently authored a novel for teens that I told him I would link to. Check it out if you like (and no I did not set up the site): Writing on the wall.

I feel like I’ve been putting a lot of content on the web lately, and I’ve barely even written on this blog. A conversation with a friend / former co-worker today made me decide to list approximately all of the places that you can find content produced by me on the web. I’m sure I’ll forget things, but here’s my list:

Sites I’m actively working on:
1. Lopico
2. The Daily JDA
3. JDA’s Food Log Blog
4. Chicago Mustard (just starting… don’t judge it too harshly yet, please)
5. World’s Greatest Resume
6. motask
7. Amehigher (just restarted and I’m killing it in the next week)
8-11. New projects in varying stages.

Web 2.0(ish) sites I use through general membership & visit at least once a month:
1. Lopico (daily)
2. Facebook (daily)
3. Twitter (daily-weekly)
4. del.icio.us (weekly)
5. MySpace (monthly)
6. Highrise (daily)
7. Box.net (monthly)
8. Basecamp (daily-weekly)
9. motask (weekly)
10. Pandora (monthly)
11. Last.fm (monthly)
12. Google Reader / gmail / calendar (hourly) (no sure if these count)
13. Digg (monthly - but passively)
14. claimid (varies)
15. pbwiki (monthly and declining)

And I also use Flock and Skype.

Not sure if that’s more or less than you were expecting… but I’m 100% certain I am leaving things off this list. I may update it. And in case you don’t get the title: click here.

Web 2.0 is over… in case you weren’t aware… and I think Facebook killed it. Facebook has been the talk of the web since it launched the developer platform, and continues to steal headlines with its ridiculous valuations and ad network that is a little too perfect. These things have changed / are changing ways in which we use the web, and I’m pretty sure it is for the worse.

I was getting ready to write a post on Hulu and Facebook and how the tide has turned into a state in which we are seeing the potential of the web being realized… then I realized how far off I was. Facebook hasn’t revolutionized the web, it has stifled it. I remember not long ago always reading about new independent startups coming from all over the globe… now I hear about Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and efforts like Hulu that are born out of corporations not individuals. The swing hasn’t taken full effect yet, but while the world is applauding the brilliance of Facebook developer platform and Google’s “Open”Social, I’m a little scared. This is a serious detraction from innovation. Instead of trying to build the next great website the developer community seems to be focused on building the next great Facebook app. That’s a big problem. As a result of Facebook platform and the notion that, “you don’t have to build a network, you can just use Facebook’s,” I think we at the beginning of a downward spiral in terms of independent innovation.

And now Google has entered the game with its “Open”Social. A platform that masks itself as open when all it really does is steer developers away from developing for the web and into developing for large corporate sites. Developing for social networks rather than for the web does little to drive real innovation. What it really does is perpetuate the success of sites like Facebook and gives the developers of the insignificant parts of the whole a false sense of accomplishment.

When I think of what Web2.0 was, I think of big-eyed independent entrepreneurs out to change the way the web worked… not followers out to build a little piece of a big site. I think back to the early days of del.icio.us (before it was purchased and entered into the unfortunate life cycle of a corporate product) and the first time I used Digg (a product I openly hate, but did respect), and I wonder when we will see innovation like that again. I don’t know when it will be, but I do know that it won’t come from a Facebook app.

Facebook is not the internet, it’s a part of the internet. Your Facebook app is a part of a part, that seems pretty insignificant to me. The web needs innovation, challenge, and a ton of voices… if we just develop for a handful of large companies (and only use the services of those companies) the power of the internet is lessened. We need more independent developers and leaders, and less followers. Platform is not a buzz word it’s a death knell. Of course, I’ve been saying that web 2.0 was ending since January 06… so maybe I’m wrong.

Quick post today…

I used to always think “I wish x product/service was in existence” then I’d come up with an idea. Now I think “if x product/service was in existence, what would I want next.”

Continuing with my posts on the thoughts and concerns I have about Lopico, today’s post concerns the structure of reviews.

One of the biggest issues with any local review site is the content of the reviews. There are many issues involved, including among others: accountability, bias, saturation, and the reaction of reviewed businesses. Reviews on Lopico currently attempt to find balance through structure. When you review a business on Lopico, you’re asked to input both “what you like” and “what you would change” about the business. Lopico has always focused on the positive, as it is intended to be a directory of only favorite businesses, but the “what you would change” input also provides an outlet for constructive feedback to the businesses listed on Lopico. That’s the plan anyway. Things don’t always work out that way.

To this point my answer to the issues surrounding user reviews has always been providing structure, but that too has problems. I’ve been experimenting outside Lopico with a more free form method of writing reviews with my own Tumblr microblog. Truthfully, I like this method of reviewing better. I like that I can write as many reviews as I want about a business and I like that I dictate the structure. The challenge (and I think I have the solution) for Lopico is finding a happy medium.

I know I have some smart readers, even though comments have been slim lately, so tell me something you think about user generated local reviews and the best ways to tackle the problems

If you’re like me, you’ve been watching a ton of post-season baseball. Maybe not a ton, but certainly enough to have all of the lines from the Frank TV commercials memorized. Along with the humorous Frank Caliendo commercials, there are also the very annoying Dane Cook “There’s only one October” commercials. I don’t really think the Dane Cook spots ever really stood a chance of being enjoyable, but the most damage was perhaps done by TBS. One of the Caliendo spots takes a direct stab at the line “There’s only one October.” Now every time I see the Dane Cook spots I think to myself “that really is a stupid slogan.” Somehow TBS decided it was ok to use one commercial to belittle another, and then re-run the belittled ad thousands of times. The message gets mixed and the viewer gets annoyed. You cannot mix messages this way if you want your audience to attach meaning to the message or to buy into what you are trying to communicate. To me, this was a horrible marketing mistake, but also a good lesson.

Thoughts?

Last time, I talked about the challenge of conversions on Lopico, but there are other challenges as well. Recently, I revealed the top 25 most voted for businesses on Lopico; something I hope to repeat on a quarterly basis. The Top 25 represent perhaps the biggest challenge to Lopico - concentration. Of the Top 25, the majority are businesses that are in Akron or have a presence in Akron. So, I was able to get a strong amount of input in Akron, but I need to be outside the Akron market too. It’s a good list and a good start - but three years into Lopico I need to be doing more in more places.

The easiest way for me to get rid of this problem is with advertising. I rely (most of the time) exclusively on organic results. When I advertise, I see growth in the markets I advertise in. This is easy enough, but unless the money spent to advertise leads to quality conversions, I’d rather not spend the money. I am sort of at the point of “grow or die” with Lopico - and to grow it’s going to take a larger time and monetary investment that I can provide right now.

There is something to be said for concentrating growth, then expanding, but I don’t know that Akron is exactly the market that can fuel the sort of growth needed to expand to other areas. It hasn’t been thus far.

How would you guide Lopico into new markets?

Today, I’m going to take you through a my viewpoint on conversions on Lopico. That’s what it’s all about. Getting people to Lopico has never been a real problem for me. The problems lie in the conversions. The first person to comment with any suggestions related to this post gets a preview of the next version of Lopico, that has never been seen before, and a preview of the new site that I soft launched today.

There are essentially five types of Lopico users:

1. Info grabbers
2. Adders / Businesses
3. Reviewers
4. Voters
5. Rock stars (people that do it all).

The info grabbers are fine - they make up the majority of Lopico’s visitors and they are the people most likely to click on ads - but I want more from them. The info grabber is not someone that is leaving the site in any better condition than when they arrived. These are the hardest people to convert. Their mainly just trying to get the info and go. I’m working on a couple of features geared toward this set of users. More features that don’t require sign-up, like the recently launched Reliability Score, will help in this area.

Then there are the Adders. These visitors add businesses to the site, but too often do little more. Some never come back. I have a pretty good idea of how to fix this problem and it will likely go away before long. This is often where businesses tend to fall - they want their information listed, but have little desire to participate in any social aspects.

The next toughest group to convert are the reviewers. These users tend to only write reviews and rarely if ever vote. This is great, but I’d like the next step to be taken. Reviews make for interesting content and comprise a large portion of all page views on the site… but these people have accounts and I feel I could get more out of them. I have a couple of ideas here too.

Voters are usually pretty easy converts. Well, the heavy voters anyway. There are people that will go on Lopico everyday to vote, some stick around forever, some come for a month or a couple of weeks and then move on, but these people definitely add value to the site (in more ways than you might think). Best of all, the amount of time that these users spend on the site usually leads them to engaging in other activities such as writing reviews and commenting. I have ideas to boost this as well - and hopefully you’ll see all of these ideas come to light in the next version of Lopico.

Finally the Rock Stars. These users take advantage of all the features that Lopico offers, BUT… they need to be converted backwards. These are typically not the ones that generate any revenue for Lopico. So, they are my favorite users - but they do the least for me in terms of direct monetization.

That was a little long, and certainly could have been three times as long, but that’s a general run-down of my users. Comments = rewards; put your best foot forward and let me know what you think I could do to convert more users in any of these groups.

The “Quick Ideas” series that I’ve been doing is coming to an end… on this blog. I decided that I am going to move it to its own site. I really enjoy writing the Quick Ideas series, and it has been a favorite in terms of traffic - enough that I think the posts deserve their own space. I registered a new domain today, and while I would like to develop my own blogging platform, I am going to do a simple wordpress install and should have the new site up by the beginning of next week.

That’s my plan anyway. If anyone has any suggestions, or would like their ideas on the new site, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

For some time politics and the web have been quite good friends. But, the political web is somewhat unbound. Political bloggers are everywhere, espousing their opinions in their small piece of the web. This week’s quick idea brings them together. “Second Congress” (which would not fly as a name because it is derived from Second Life) would pull political bloggers / thinkers into a social network in which real debates take place, and the best thinkers shine.

Basics: Everyone gets a page / blog; you build a network of friends and supporters; compete for fake campaign currency and the best of the best are chosen to a simulated congress. Essentially simulate government, but let it be run by the unfunded, less-supporter-biased masses that spend their time online. And kick it all off with a big publicity stunt in which you actually fund the campaign of the highest rated user to run for office offline.

I would love to build this, but don’t have the time / resources (unless someone wants to help me make this a reality).

Quick Ideas is an ongoing series in which Josh Amer publishes one idea for a website or product each week.

Every week I receive an email from iTunes called “New Release Tuesday,” I’m sure many of you receive the same. I nearly never read it, but think it could be valuable with a little tweaking. I don’t read it because it is, for the most part, not relevant to me. The email includes listings of the most popular new releases for the week - the problem is, I don’t listen to most of the bands that make the email and I’ve gotten so used to it being irrelevant that I won’t open it even if it is relevant. So… tweak it. Make it more relevant, and deliver it to me in an RSS feed or any way I chose.

Here’s the idea: let me select a handful of bands, or look at my listening / purchasing history and do it for me, send this info to a database, when the selected bands - or related bands - release an album I receive a notification in my RSS reader or other medium of choice. Amazon does this with purchase history (in email), but I want it more customized and I want to be able to add things that I haven’t purchased. In fact, this would probably work better for a company like Pandora or Last.fm. Pandora could theoretically create a custom RSS feed for me that would notify me when bands I’ve liked - or that the service believes I would like - release new albums.

And it’s not just about new music - this type of system could be built around any type of product. The opportunity is there, it’s just a matter of time.

I’m happy to say that the blogger - Jason Therrien - that posted the post that caused my reaction in my last post, has replied in the comments. I have responded there as well… but I think more needs to be said.

First - I do hope that Northeast Ohio succeeds. I hope things happen that make me say… I should move back. At the same time, I am extremely happy in Chicago and not really sure what can be done to make me say that.

Second - Jason’s response is welcome, as all responses are, but there was one response that really gave me pause. It was George Nemeth’s. He didn’t write anything about it on BFD, but in his del.icio.us bookmarks he wrote - “Not sure what to say about this.” I don’t think he should be. Two reasons: 1. I probably don’t know enough about recruiting to make the type of statements I did; 2. more importantly, he’s not part of the problem. The NEO community needs more people like George, more that point out great things, more that drive the conversation about change - and they need to be louder. Is he one of the saviors that I said NEO has too many of? I don’t know, but he’s probably doing more than those that want to be.

Third - the response I would have liked to hear was “Josh, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe I can tell you some things that will change your mind.” If that happens, I will happily spread the word on my blog, and to those I know in NEO, about Indenti-fyi and why it is going to work.

I was working on a post that I realized might cost me every contact I have in Northeast Ohio. It was in response to this post: http://growcleveland.blogspot.com/2007/09/steering-herd.html - that says that those of us that leave NEO suffer from herd mentality and lack information.

I’ll skip the details and get to the meat of my argument: NEO has too many saviors, too many ideas of ways to reshape the region, and too many failed attempts. All this seems to be coupled with a fear to give up power at the top (think Arshinkoff) - which really doesn’t ever lead to change. There needs to be one concentrated effort and there needs to be large scale effort.

The post I pointed to earlier talks about a recruiting incident with 2 people - NEO needs to be talking about 1000s of individuals and about recruiting companies rather than college students. I don’t want to say anymore, because Cleveland doesn’t need anymore talking-head-would-be-saviors-without-real-actionable-plans… and I don’t even live in NEO anymore.

There’s a tremendous amount of talent in NEO - but that’s simply not enough.

I wasn’t using my regular IP address yesterday, so everything that I did yesterday went into my Google analytics data. That’s not a problem - that’s easy enough to fix and the data from one day from me is small enough to lack relevance. The problem was a search query that I did… and the number of times it showed up in my keywords from yesterday. I searched for something once, it showed up four times. All from the network I was on, all seemingly from me. It wasn’t something a standard searcher would query and I imagine it was one of the first times - if not the first - it has been searched for. So… one query, four queries, that’s not a big deal, right? No, not in isolation, but if it does in fact happen on a larger scale, then yes… it is a big deal. If I don’t have accurate data, then many of the decisions I make are based on incorrect beliefs.

So, what’s the moral of this story? Don’t just rely on Google Analytics - which I know many, many people do. Diversify your tracking methods and make sure you have solid data. I’m sure most of you already knew that.

And by the way…
Yesterday was the third birthday of Lopico - for more on the year that was, read this post.

This one comes solely from the high quantity of searches that have been getting people to my site since Facebook Apps launched. The queries in question are things like: “facebook gmail” or “get gmail in Facebook” - as many of these as I see a day, I think it’s fairly clear that people would like to read their email through a Facebook app. I haven’t looked enough at the Facebook platform documentation to know if this is possible, but I can’t really think of why it wouldn’t be - other than it would appear to have a point to it, and I think it may be a requirement for Facebook Apps that they all remain useless.

Thoughts? Is anyone doing this?

I am no longer the most popular Josh Amer in Google’s SERPs. This may have something to do with the fact that I haven’t called myself Josh Amer on this blog very many times. This may also have something to do with the fact that Google now recognizes Amer as the abbreviation for America and throws America into the SERPs. Or maybe it’s just about YouTube.

That’s right there’s a new Josh Amer in town… and he’s on YouTube. So, he’s now beating me in SERPs for Josh Amer. Sad. But I was actually trying to increase my ranking for JDA – which I did (and I imagine the people at JDA software hate me some days) – not Josh Amer. I didn’t think I’d lose Josh Amer at the same time. So, with the pending rebrand of this site I intend to change my post by name to Josh Amer. Finally me. No more JD Amer, no more JDA… just the Josh Amer people in real life know so well.

Will that be enough? I imagine I can work my way up to the top, but the lesson is the same. Video is extremely valuable and is only going to become more so… even for SEO, which may not be the first thing people think when they think about video.

Speaking of video:
I’m not really a full time resident of NEO anymore, but that’s no reason why I can’t give a shout or two to some of the best video producers (in my opinion) on the web. Sage Lewis does great informational SEO videos (and one great video about some site you may have heard me mention); Matt Dickman does some of my favorite video on the web – he actually turned me on to Mahalo after Jason Calacanis did so much to turn me off from it; and then there’s Jim Kukral who is an affiliate rock-star, and also on top of all things web, including many great videos. Check them all out: Sage | Matt | Jim

I’m often surfing the web and wish that I could copy a handful of things, paste them somewhere, or type a quick note - without leaving the browser and without signing in to a service. I’m sure there are some places that this can be done, but I most frequently find myself using Gmail and sending myself emails. Even that’s too cumbersome some times - I want speed, and Gmail can be mighty slow some days. I want to arrive on a page and have it just be an open text area, I start typing and then if I chose, I can login to save what I typed or send it to someone. It’s an extremely simple idea which is why I think it must exist. A good to alternative to having this as a website would be a firefox extension. I created a rough build of this idea (in about seven seconds) but without any of the saving or emailing features: you can click to check it out if you like. It’s literally four textareas, that’s it. What could be easier?

It’s been a busy week, I know this probably isn’t the best in this series, but I wanted to keep up my promise of keeping it weekly. Let me know what you think, or if this exists and I’ll give credit where it’s due.

Oapmeal.org is a new project that I’m working on that will be a sort of launch pad to reading blogs. When I talk to people about blogs, one of the first questions is always, “what are some good blogs about X topic/field/industry, etc.?” The best I can usually do is point someone to tagged posts on Technorati, or one of the hundreds of blog directories. For people that I’ve worked with on blogging I create a topic focused OPML file for them, to give them the user experience of reading blogs on a specific subject. What’s an OPML file? It’s a file that contains a list of blogs that you can import to most rss readers, that automatically subscribes you to the listed blogs - more to it than that, but that’s the general idea for how I will be using it. So… Oapmeal will be a directory of OPML files that I will manage, with some community support, that people will be able to take and use to get started reading blogs on a particular topic. That’s a pretty simplified version, and I’ll have more details as more progress is made.

If the only person that ever uses it is me to tell people where to go to find blogs, that’s enough for me - not setting the bar too high on this one.

Last week for my “Quick Idea” I did a post on sending a text message to find free wi-fi. Since then I’ve found a couple of ways that currently exist to attack the problem. These seem to be the best:

4Info
How it works: Register your cell phone number at www.4INFO.net, send a text message to 4INFO (44636) with the word “wifi”, a space, and then either a zip code or a city name. You will receive one or more text messages back with the locations listed with address.

Hotspotr.com or m.hotspotr.com on your phone
This is just a list of hotspots, both free and paid, that does have a mobile friendly version. No text messaging though.

ilovefreewifi
This one would be my favorite, if it delivered on what Lifehacker promised. It is a community driven site where people list places with free wifi. Lifehacker did a write up in which it depicts the service as almost exactly what I had hoped for in last weeks post. It claims that you can send it a text and get a list of places w/code back, that then you reply with for more info - the problem is, this doesn’t seem to be communicated anywhere on the site. Oh… and if you live in the Cleveland area (which I still kind of do for a few more days) then you only have 2 spots to choose from and the service is more or less pointless, unless you start adding wifi spots.

That’s a lot more than I knew last week, which is just one more reason for me to continue doing the “Quick Ideas” posts - but this weeks may be a little different in that I will likely take on the idea in the next week or so…

Recently, one of my best friends approached me with an idea for a scaled back laptop for Kids. Irrespective of the fact that it’s probably already been done, I think it has some merit. Where we differ is on what to include. He thinks it should have basic software for word processing, calculating, etc. I say all you need is a browser.

We are now to the point where everything the average user needs to do can be done online. The OS and the Hardware are nearly irrelevant. For the average user, they are (or could be) completely irrelevant. It no longer matters whether I run OSX on a Mac Book Pro, XP on an old Gateway, or Ubuntu on a Dell. If I have highspeed access on any of these, the differences are negligible - that is, if I know where to go when I’m online. The days of traditional hardware and software companies are coming to an end. If you’re a software company, and your focus is not on the web, you should probably look for a new job. If you’re a hardware company and you think you have any job other than getting me to the web in the fastest cheapest way possible, you too need to think about new employment. There will always be the high-end (machines for non-average users), and there will always be fashion (macs = trendy), but middle of the road hardware producers like Gateway, Toshiba, HP, and others that strictly appeal to the consumer set are gong to lose their place.

All you need is a connection and a browser, the rest is irrelevant.

Please, tell me why I’m wrong.

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Chicago with “nothing” to do from 1-5; so I go with the T-Mobile day pass, pony up the $9.99 and suddenly I’m connected again. Yay productivity! But… I hate Starbucks, with a passion. The reason I ended up here is because I didn’t know where else to go and couldn’t really find a hot spot without… a hot spot. I could browse the web on my phone, but that’s sort of a pain… that’s right I don’t have an iPhone… or even a cool enough substitute. Checking my Gmail ad nauseum is about the only thing my web connection on my phone is good for (that and my Lopico mobile marks, of course). So here’s what I want: I want to send a text of my zip code to some web service that will come back with a listing of nearby spots with free wifi (doesn’t have to be exclusively free, but that’s what I’d prefer). Each spot on the list comes with a unique ID next to it in the list. I text the ID back to the service and it responds with contact info.

Biggest fall back of this idea: not everyone knows their zip code, especially travelers (like me today… though I think it’s 60604 or something close) who would benefit the most from the service.

Does it exist? Thoughts?

Just kidding… but I am pretty proud of my online resume, which now shows up in the number 1 (or 2 depending on index) slot for the query: “world’s greatest resume” on google.

If only people actually searched for that…

worldsgreatestresume.com

My problem with wikipedia is not that anyone can edit it, it’s that I don’t know who edited it (most of the time). My proposed solution - Accapedia. Same basic concept except: the editors are identified by more than an IP address, you must have a .edu email address or be invited to be a part of the site (invite is probably better), you have a profile that demonstrates why you are an authority in this area, and you include a reputation system. Sort of Wikipedia with a social aspect, and less anonymity.

Thoughts?

A little while ago I subscribed to a free email tip of the week related to marketing. It’s valuable when it comes, but it makes me a little upset when I don’t see it in my inbox every week. If it were monthly and only came once a month, that would be fine… but it says it’s weekly so it had better come weekly. As the publisher of the Daily JDA - a semi-weekly if your lucky blog - this makes me quite the hypocrite. So, it’s time to rename the blog. I have some ideas, and would consider moving to a new domain, but I’d like to hear a few others first. If you have any ideas please comment or email. Thanks.

Who doesn’t hate an acronym? Corporations for one, they seem to love them. While I’m sort of in career limbo I’m working with a company on possibly developing a blog or six - to help in this task I came up with the RICE acronym of best uses for corporate blogs.

Reputation: building up your image, making sure you are proactive in make yourself look good before the press makes you look bad. This one is more important in some industries than others - but everyone could use it.
Information: this is the type of blog the Lopico blog is. It’s all about what your doing and explaining things to your customers.
Communication: really the heart of every blog, but my emphasis with this point is on letting people communicate with you; not just shoveling your info on them (for shoveling, see: I).
Expertise (or expertification if you need the consistent ending): That’s the type of blog I wish I could say that this is. Using your blog to establish yourself as an expert is a great way for a corporation to use a blog and usually the easiest answer when someone says, “why the hell should we blog?”

It’s quick, easy to remember and most importantly helps explain some of the most common uses of a blog - use it or don’t, but it works for me.

I’ve been thinking lately that the majority of SEO is accidental. Think about it, for all of the queries that you do, how many sites do think intended that they come up for that query? All of them want to come up for as many phrases / keywords as possible, but for the most part they don’t think of the query that you’re doing unless it is a popular one. The vast majority of search is for the uncommon query and increasingly for longer queries.
This makes the majority of SEO accidental.

What does this mean? To be honest, I’m not real sure. What I think it means is that most websites are beatable in the race for search rankings. If you focus on a greater number of queries with less competition, instead of a few queries with high competition, you should be able to match if not exceed the traffic you would get from the high volume queries. And for those big queries, you’re probably better off buying keywords via AdWords. Why? 1) cheaper than hiring an SEO firm (but you should do that anyway). 2) it makes you look reputable - you may disagree, but if you’re willing to pay to get someone to click that usually means you’ve invested in your business and you’re not just playing SEM games. Personally, I’ve sometimes found that paid links are more relevant for keywords with high SEM competition. 3) you don’t need to have perfect seo to pay more than the next guy for an ad. Easiest way to win a keyword: pay for it.

A while back, I mentioned a notebook I have where I write one new idea for a website (or improvement to a website) everyday (that’s the book on the left). I’ve sort of fallen off the everyday wagon, but still do a pretty good job.

I also talked about sharing some or all of them at some point and I think I’m ready to do that. There are a few I want to keep to myself, but I’m going to try to do at least one a week in a new series called: “Quick Ideas.” Since today is the first day I’m even going to throw in an extra idea (though the two ideas are related).

Making TinyURL Better
TinyURL, for those of you that don’t know, is an easy way to condense long URLs. Instead of a huge URL with a large number of variables, like an Amazon URL, you are given a very short (might even say tiny) URL (something like: http://tinyurl.com/3dwovf) that points to the long URL. The service has recently increased in popularity as Twitter implements it for messages that contain URLs. But, I have a problem with it: I want to know how many times people click on my TinyURLs, even if they go to a site that I’m not tracking. This would be a very easy implementation, and would give me a personal interest in TinyURL. By that I mean there would be a reason for me not to switch to a competitor like URLtea. If I have an account with TinyURL already and all of my tracking is in the TinyURL system, I’m less likely to leave for a competitor. Just a thought.

Bonus: EdURL
This is one I thought about a lot while I was writing my final paper in law school. Create a uniform system for citations of web documents based on a tinyurl style site. I used a lot of web resources for my final law paper, which meant a lot of space dedicate to URLs in my footnotes. Good for hitting your page requirement, bad for… everything else. This idea would be more about building a community and support for your standard… but it needs to be done.

Thoughts?

If this isn’t your mentality, it should be. To me there is nothing more exciting in business than a product launch. You’ve poured hours / weeks / months into something and you’re finally ready to unleash it to the world. It’s exciting, and if you’re like me you try to get as many people talking about it as possible on that first day. When I’ve launched web projects of mine, I’ve done it with thousands more visiting my site than the usual daily attendance. The day motask launched I had my first 1400 uniques in an hour - that doesn’t really happen with motask anymore. The problem is carrying that excitement over. But it shouldn’t be. For as many people as there are that have used any of my sites or your sites / products, there are millions more that haven’t. That’s why you need to launch your site / product everyday. Pack as much excitement as you would into introducing it to the world as you do introducing it to an individual. Your product can be brand new to someone or a group of people everyday, find these people and get them excited… and do it everyday.

I’m a great person to start with… tell me about your product and I’ll blog it.

Anyone as obsessed with all things internet as I am is going to use web services for nearly everything they do. Job search is of course no exception. Jobs searches comprise a huge chunk of all activity done online, so naturally there are tools to make job searching easier. I still find the whole online job search process a little “messy” to say the least - and that’s a big reason that online search and submit is not the biggest part of my job hunt, nor should it be yours. The general job search tools available aren’t really the best and those aren’t the tools that I’m finding most rewarding. Two online apps that I have been using a lot and having great results with are Box.net and 37signals’ Highrise.

Box.net
Box.net is simply an online storage space. Everyone can get 1 gig free space (with upgrades available) to store, with a few exceptions, whatever you’d like. Why is this helpful in my job search? Two reasons: 1) I use 3 different computers, always having the same files available without carrying them around is very helpful, and lets me know that I am looking at the most current version of my resume or any document. 2) Sharing. Box lets you share files with anyone and will even give you a link to your files to make them public if you’d like. This is great for the online version of my resume - rather than store my resume on my own server space I upload to box, link to it on my site and always have the newest version available. True, I could upload the newest version to my server every time I update, but why not use the convenience of Box.net? Further, I have my resume available to download in a few different versions including Microsoft Word - my resume site is on a linux server… rather than go through any trouble to try to get the linux and Microsoft components to work together, I use box and my downloads work perfectly.

Overall, Box.net is a very solid program - my only question is why larger companies - like Microsoft - aren’t doing this. **See update** With the majority of the world still using Microsoft as their office suite, offering storage just seems to make sense. If I’m uploading Word2003 documents because I don’t know that a newer version of Office is available, Microsoft can be right there to tell me. Of course, if you know enough to use a web storage service, you’re probably up to date on the newest version of office - but you get the point.

Highrise
I tend to like products from 37signals, which is why I was so disappointed when Highrise launched. When it launched all I could think of were the ways in which it could be better and how messed up the purchasing plans were. I still think both of those things, and actually have what I consider to be a great idea for a competitor, but for now Highrise does just enough right to keep me using it every day. Highrise is billed as a simple CRM service - which means you can track your conversation with your contacts and add tasks related to them. I’ve used it since the day it launched for both personal and business connections. Now I’m using it even more as I track who I’ve talked to at what companies, what was said, what I need to do next, and any notes on my overall feeling about a job. It works very well for this, the only problem for me is that with only 250 contacts available in the free version it’s only a matter of time before I need to start deleting people, upgrade, or build my own service. Not really looking forward to any of those options.

My favorite way to use Highrise is for personal use. These are the relationships that really matter most, so we should pay as much attention to them as we do business relationships - I don’t always do this, but Highrise has helped. At first it’s weird to take notes about conversations with your friends, but they never seem to mind when you ask them about something a few months later that they expected you to forget.

Summary: Box.net rocks, Highrise is as good as it gets for now - use them both, thank me later.

I’ve more or less given up blogging. I think you all knew that. It’s a matter of time and phase in my life. I’m actively pursuing a new job in Chicago, IL at this point and don’t really have time for blogging. Ironically, I always tell people blogging really isn’t a big time commitment and they can do it easily. If you read my last post, you know that I’m also writing a novel. At the time of that last post I was at 10K words, now I’m at about 20K - so that’s been a time consumer as well. Then there’s my full time job, my renewed dedication to working out at least 3x a week, the Lopico redesign, and of course my personal life. Job search has been the biggest time consumption and I’m pretty happy with the progress (I’ve had some great opportunities come up, but none really seemed perfect) - but if anyone knows anyone in Chicago that can help me even more, I’m always looking to make new contacts.

So, for now blogging is taking a back seat… but I wanted to check in and let any of my readers comment on this post with anything exciting they are up to and if you’d like I’ll post about it. Also, for those that are into my posts on Facebook, I think you’ll enjoy this article on Publishing 2.0, which I came across this morning as I was trying to catch up on my blog reading. I do miss blogging, but I’m not at a point where I can get back into it… or am I?

I started a new project this weekend. I’m writing a novel. I wrote the first 10,000 words this weekend which means I have between 50-90,000 left to write. I’ll do it. It was a lot easier to get where I am than I anticipated, but I know the hardest parts are ahead. The book is a work of fiction about life and relationships. When I tell people some of the details the typical reaction is to ask me if I’m dying. No, I’m not dying. The main character is in a situation very similar to mine, with the exception that he is dying. I don’t want to get into to much more detail than that (I know, that’s not much to go on) but I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it later. Am I at all qualified for this? No. But then again I wasn’t qualified to start my first website either. Everyone has to start somewhere, for me it’s just a matter of fitting this into my schedule. Somewhere between work, looking for a job, trying to get back in shape, web stuff, and life, I need to write another 65,000(ish) words. Ideally, I’ll have the first draft finished by September 1, realistically it will be much later.

Since I like my readers - especially the ones that comment - I thought I’d give you a sneak peak at the next version of Lopico. I am speculating getting out of the local reviews game - but that doesn’t mean I can’t play with the css a little before I go. And please, let me know what you think…

What I think is most brilliant about Facebook’s openness is the branding behind it. Really. I haven’t heard this mentioned and maybe it’s an unintended consequence, but this move really switches Facebook from being a “Cool” brand to a “reliance” brand. The sustainability of the brand greatly increased through this initiative… and Facebook didn’t have to do that much.

If you’re not familiar with FB apps the elevator pitch goes something like: people build applications that run completely within facebook. This exposes the app to a huge number of users and takes advantage of the viral nature of facebook. It’s working very well for some - for example, iLike has more people using the site on FB than on the iLike site.

So I know what you’re thinking - if it’s all about the third party apps how does that boost FB’s brand? I’d say that there are two ways. First, the creators of the apps will be pushing big time for them to spread on the site. This is what I mean by switching to a reliance brand. It’s no longer just cool. If I develop an app strictly for FB I have to rely on that brand being around and the site working flawlessly. Essentially, the third parties will be promoting their own apps, which in turn promotes increased usage of Faceebook. It’s one thing to promote FB because you like it, an entirely different thing to promote because the success of your business (yes some of the apps have business models) depends on it. If I tell someone to use Facebook because I like it, and they don’t sign up, there’s no real loss. If I tell them to sign up because I depend on having people use the site to grow my web apps, and they don’t sign up, then there is a real loss.

Second, Facebook no longer has to create the next big thing - they just have to have the next big thing created for Facebook. Has Facebook added anything new since the launch of Apps? I really don’t know. But, I can tell you about a ton of new features that have been created by companies not called Facebook. So all these great new things are happening, but since they are created on Facebook, FB gets the most recognition all while doing the least work. That’s a pretty sweet deal.

So maybe $2 billion would have been a good deal.

Google’s appears headed down the, well, tubes. I think we could see that coming. Well maybe not, but think about it - how long could it last. Ignoring the ‘every giant must fall,’ logic there are a number of reasons I think a Google downturn is in the works.

Purely speculation but… With the success of Google, Web 2.0 was born. A couple of years ago when the whole web2.0 thing was just getting started (and a term I could stand) it lacked credibility. It was just a bunch of guys that were trying to chase the same success that only Google was having with the web. Now that people have realized that this isn’t just another bust and actually has some concepts that have real world application (and we can use them on always-on connections) the mainstream (to a disgusting point) has accepted them. What does this mean for Google? It means it’s not alone. With more success everywhere more advertisers are diversifying their web marketing opportunities. And that makes sense. I can advertise on Google and that’s cool - but people use Google (most people) in a very quick fashion. I go, I look for info, and I leave. Now think about Facebook - people are on their for ever - thus increasing the chance that your ad will actually be noticed. Their is, of course, a substantial difference in cost to advertise, but for larger companies it is worth it. Yes, Google has made its bread and butter on charging small amounts millions of times, but it still hurts to lose the large chunks that come in all at once.

Then, there is the nature of the ads. Quick one liners that are off to the right. Which you are only clicked when the “real” results aren’t good enough. Enter the SEM (search engine marketer). For years they been portrayed as the snake-oil salesmen (and there are some scammers) but they’re doing well. They’re making progress, which is actually making search results better. And not only are the SEMs themselves getting better, but the general knowledge base they contributed to has increased. It’s much easier to learn the basics of SEO and thus make your website more attractive to search engines than it was a few years ago. In general - results are just getting better, which decreases the value of PPC ads. And it’s not just the SEMs, the algorithms are getting better too - making “free” results more relevant and therefore the paid results less.

This just skims the surface of all the potential reasons that Google is down (though still doing very well) - but this is the core of Google’s business and I don’t think it is perpetually sustainable as many think.

I’m going to Lollapalooza this year in Chicago (which just might be my next home) and I’m pretty excited about it, because I like a lot of the bands that will there. I know this isn’t an exciting post for some of my readers - but for those that are into trying out new bands, here are my picks for best acts to see this year at Lollapalooza:

Ordered by start time of performance:

Day 1:

• The Fratellis
• Illinois
• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
• Silversun Pickups
• The Black Keys (Akron’s Finest Rock Band)
• LCD Soundsystem

Day 2:

• Dear and the Headlights
• Tokyo Police Club (Must See)
• Cold War Kids
• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Spoon
• Interpol

Day 3:

• The Cribs (Must See)
• Los Campesinos
• Kings of Leon
• Pete Bjorn and John
• Yo La Tengo
• Modest Mouse
• And a band I used to love: Pearl Jam

So these are my feelings today, and I will update all after I’ve been to what I’m predicting will be a great event.

The Cribs:

I’m working on a longish post on Microformats to go along with my recently updated contact info - but I want to know: do any of my readers care about Microformats?

It’s not my project. I had someone email me to say that it sure seems to be lacking in content, to which I replied “it’s not my project, it’s for everyone.” It’s a $9 investment (only because I bought the domain neo20.com and have it forwarded) - if it fails I’m not real upset. I want it to work, I want to be involved in it; but it’s not my project. Could it be one day - maybe. And then only if I really wanted to change the nature of it - which I’ve considered. If it becomes my project there would be a lot of changes, and then you can blame me if it sucks - until then it’s on the few 100 people that saw my post, or the many more that saw the BFD post, said “that’s a good idea” and then did nothing. I will help get it started, but it’s a community editable wiki - it’s not a one man show.

I may be giving up Lopico. I’m not 100% sure, but I think it’s time for another project (or two). I’ve had a lot of fun with Lopico and learned a lot - it has been an incredibly valuable experience - I just don’t know that my heart is still in it. This current month has been the worst since Lopico relaunched, and I’m apathetic. Things were going well for a while - for a long time - but I don’t know, I think it’s nearing the end. The local niche / vertical just doesn’t do it for me anymore. There are so many other ideas I’d like to try out and other things I’d like to do… I think some time away from Lopico will do me good. I’m not going to close the site, I don’t even know that I won’t finish the redesign - I’m just saying I need to try some other projects.

NEO2.0 is my newest project - I think it has potential, but needs a LOT of work. For NEO2.0 to really work I need to have more time for it, and I only have so much time to work on my own projects. Cutting back time from Lopico will help. I also registered a new domain for another new site today that I think has a lot of potential. It’s focused on something that interests me more right now than the local vertical.

So… what do you think?

I had an informal meeting last week with my good friend Jeff, who has an e-commerce website. He reads this blog and during the meeting we talked about one of the posts - this one in which I ramble on about my possible future. Anyway, while we were talking about it I mentioned Brewed Fresh Daily, Knotice, Sage Rock, and probably some other bloggers / people / companies that he hadn’t heard of that are based in Northeast Ohio. I thought about doing a post about these bloggers / people / companies, but then I thought it’s probably better as a stand alone, not a post that will disappear from the homepage in a week or so. So… I’d like to introduce NEO2.0.

NEO2.0 is a wiki to help promote all of the great things happening in Northeast Ohio. I feel that the people that are working hard to push our community forward don’t get enough recognition - especially in the early stages of their projects - I’m hoping this wiki can help a little in that regard. (The password is ohio.)

For now I’m just using a free hosted wiki (from pbwiki which I highly recommend) - but if it gains a little traction I’ll consider hosting it or doing something other than a wiki. Ideally, I’d create a social network for the type of people interested in this site that allows the people that I’m trying to promote to connect, exchange ideas, and maybe plan some interesting events. We’ll see - that’s a long way from where this is right now.

Try it out and please add as much stuff as you’d like. Remember the password is ohio.

I’m as big of a fan of social media as anyone you’ll meet… but the Diggiots have gone too far. Business 2.0 has an online poll of “Who matters now?” With the tag:

Business 2.0 Magazine invites you to vote for the businesspeople who inspire, inform and infuriate you, from CEOs to entrepreneurs to media stars.

I keep Digg’s top headlines in RSS on my homepage and once in a while I click through - that’s how I found out about the story. Good that’s the Digg purpose - to deliver news that is interesting. What shouldn’t happen is what has happened to the results of this poll. When I saw it earlier Kevin Rose - founder of Digg (who has 3x the number of ratings of anyone else on the list) - was #2 on the list behind only Justin Kan - the kid who wears a video camera 24/7 - and dead last was Jason Calacanis - an entrepreneur that I may not always agree with, but one that is as important in the web arena as Kevin Rose if not more so. So - here we have a serious magazine attempting to intelligently use the democratic/social aspects of the web and ending up with a list that was built out of ignorance and immaturity.

What does this mean? I think it’s bad for social media. The more social media appears to be gamed the less likely it is to be adopted and respected by a larger audience. Sure, social media has gotten a lot more respect as of late… but how many contests does Kevin Rose have to win before people decide they can no longer use the web as a method of obtaining objective results.

Gaming is something I think about a lot. Mainly in terms of pattern recognition and how to slow things down or stop them. Others take a more lax approach - knowing that if they let people game their sites they’ll keep coming back. It’s a tough choice to make and one that may ultimately determine how social media is viewed.

Has anything happened? At the end of law school I stopped reading blogs. I did it for the last three weeks of school and it helped me focus somewhat…. though that was also when my twitter addiction was at its peak. After that I went to Hawaii, came back, got sick for about 2 weeks, and never really got back into reading blogs. I’m all caught up with my reading for now, but the number of unread posts I have usually balloons to about 400 if I miss a day. Of those I’ll skim the titles, skim 50-100 posts and read about 30 (maybe). But… I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything. Maybe it’s just the timing… or maybe things are slowing down. There was the big Google Universal Search news and the new version of analytics - both of which I’m not happy about and very much in the minority on both points - but other than that… meh… nothing has really grabbed me. Maybe that’s because I’m skimming so much… so tell me… what have I missed?

This is my first ever post from Safari. And no, I did not get a Mac. (But I still want one.) This is big news: Safari is now available on Windows. Though I’m having quite a few issues with it right now it’s still very cool. Not because it’s a great browser, but because I hate putting out content without knowing what it looks like on a Mac. So far the experience seems to be near identical in terms of rendering to what I’ve experienced with actual Macs… so I’m pretty happy. It certainly can’t replace Firefox, but it’s cool for the design aspect. I’m having big problems with it… I can’t seem to post a link… but it’s still very useful.

I know this post was weak… but I’ve got it to get started again somewhere.

So…. I think I can start blogging again… at least for a while. It’s pretty exciting for me, because there have been a lot of things that have happened that I would have liked to blog about. Before I get back into it, here’s a quick rundown of what’s been going on with me:

1. I finished law school. I don’t know if I’ve ever been happier to end something.
2. I took a job, but it’s not permanent. I took it as a way to make some money while I look for a job.
3. I went to Hawaii with my girlfriend and had a great time.
4. I am 25 now.
5. I’m working on the next version of Lopico. Lots of new stuff coming if I can find the time.
6. I’ve done some other things with Lopico which you can read about here.
7. I now have what I call the “real daily JDA” - it’s a journal that I write one new website idea in everyday.
8. I have a bunch of new ideas for start-ups (see #7) that I plan to write about.
9. I’ve probably lost all of my readers.
10. I may have inadvertently discovered a business model for motask.
11. I’m a big twitter fan.
12. I don’t plan on writing daily. The less I blog the more work I get done on Lopico.
13. I’ve missed you. You can still tell me what to write about here.
14. I have a bunch of emails to write.
15. I have a new ipod (full size, no more mini) and have found a lot of great new bands, some of which I plan to write about.
16. My best friend from High School, who I used to meet with weekly to discuss web ideas, is in Afghanistan.
17. I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting. Law school has really been all I’ve had time for lately.

18. I plan on having more photos/images in the blog - this one is from a luau in Maui.

That’s about it - look for the real blogging to start again soon.

The New York Times has an article today about Twitter. The author, Jason Pontin, doesn’t really seem to get it, and from that he concludes that it won’t succeed. He puts more stock in his own skepticism, saying “I wasn’t sure that it was good for my intimate circle to know so much about my daily rounds,” than he does in the exponentially increasing user base.

But what really bothers me about the article is the discussion of the lack of a business model. This early in the game, Twitter shouldn’t be concerned with a business model. It’s still very early for Twitter, at this point it’s more important to watch how the service is being used and grow the user base. From these two activities the best way to monetize the site will emerge. In fact, the NYT hints at what I believe will be the eventual business model in its discussion of John Edwards. There are two types of twitters emerging 1) the casual user and 2) the purposeful twitter. Some, like Edwards, are using the service to get a message across - these people / companies represent a strong possibility for Twitter to monetize. It’s simple 1) let companies / politicians pay to be featured Twitterers 2) show me a suggested Twitter user on my homepage based on my activity 3) I add that person/company as a friend and start receiving their messages - each of which is paid for or otherwise limited to limit the number of paid messages I receive (it can’t be just an advertising site).

It won’t be long before companies begin Twittering (some already have) - they will gladly pay for reach and visibility - and Twitter should gladly accept payment.

No, I am not blogging again. But I recently took a job that may allow me to return to blogging - at least for a while. However, I am now on Twitter if you feel the need to see what I’m up to. It is strangely addicting… I’m also on a three week break from reading any blogs, the break just happens to be during my exams. When that’s over I’ll be a law school graduate - eh, I’m not too impressed. Then I’m off to Hawaii for a week, and then my new job starts.

What have you been up to?

Twitter. MyBlogLog. MySpace. These sites all have a few things in common, but the one I’m concerned with is the ability of allowing users to link their own sites. Allowing users to link to their sites seems relatively unimportant (sometimes irrelevant) until you think about how the web has changed. Now nearly everyone has a website, and nearly everyone thinks people should go to their website. For people to get to your site, you generally need links to the site. That’s the basic rule of SEM. A smart user of a site that allows you to link to your website won’t just link to their website, they feverishly add friends to their account. The more friends they have, the more pages there are linking to their user page on the site. The more links to their user page, the more important search engines think the page is, and thus the more valuable the link back to the users own site becomes. My guess is that this easy type of linking is greatly facilitating the ability of a number of sites to “be viral.” This is just one of the numerous things one should consider when developing a social networking site (or any type of site requiring an account) and one that I’m considering as I prepare to redo and redefine how social aspects are handled on Lopico.

i’m not blogging anymore. but i may return to it. i wanted to do one last post, but it wasn’t until a meeting i had today that i really decided how to do it. i had a great meeting this morning with a local entrepreneur; i wish i did more of these. i’m going to have to if i stay in northeast ohio. if i stay in NEO i want to have an impact. i want to get involved. i want there to be a higher profile tech community. this will take some effort, but i’m willing to help the effort. there’s a lot of great talent in the area… but it’s an area that isn’t connected well. the way we work in NEO is wrong. the community owes it to itself to do more. it wouldn’t be hard to make this a blossoming area - it would just take openness to ideas and the right people to implement the ideas. when i see things about NEO for the most part i think ’stone age.’ NEO is a community with good ideas that lack implementation and bad ideas with implementation. it’s a community with the wrong leaders listening to the wrong things. what do i mean by that? we have numerous efforts to revitalize or fund technologies - but the effort is put in the wrong places. it’s a community where people say things that they heard without any substance behind them. for example, i used to work for a company that recently decided they’d like to consider blogging. how did this come about? someone high in the company said, ‘ i heard blogs are good for marketing, we should do that if we’re not.’ what a perfect illustration of NEO - late action with little substance or reasoning. so how is this problem fixed? action. the problem with communities (and politics) is that it is only those that act that get to determine what happens. if you sit back and watch and complain about bad ideas you’re not doing anything to advance the good ideas that you have. if anything you’re perpetuating the implementation of bad ideas. it’s not about having prominent figures and ideas it’s about the right figures and ideas. i believe i’m one of the people that should be more prominent in the community. my problem has been inaction. this has largely come from the fact that i’ve been in law school for the past three years and haven’t had much opportunity for anything other than law school… but if i stay in the area i’m going to do my best to change that. what’s confusing to me about the state of affairs in NEO is all the talk about how bad it is that NEO is loosing all of its young talent… yet their is little done to promote the efforts of the young that remain. so… what will it take for me to stay in the area? first let’s think of why i’d want to leave. there are a number of reasons: 1. Attitude. the attitude of the region is wrong. it’s self loathing and only serves to perpetuate its negative image. 2. Opportunity. i don’t know if i will be able to stay in the area. i’d like to, but the field i want to be involved in isn’t prominent enough in the area. that’s not to say that there aren’t great companies in the area… it’s just that they don’t get the attention they deserve, which in turn makes them less successful than they could be. 3. Age. i’d like to leave the area now, because i’m 25. there really won’t be a better time for me to try to pick up and leave. i recently ended a 4 year relationship, which left family as more or less my only tie to the area (ok there is a new girlfriend now… but that will work itself out). 4. Age. not only am i 25, but the region is old. old in the sense that i don’t feel like i can get the respect i feel i deserve because the area, despite its claims, doesn’t respect its youth. 5. weather. ok nothing can be done to change this, but it’s april and there’s snow on the ground. so what will it take for me to stay? opportunity for impact. is this available to me? i don’t know, and i don’t know if i’ll be here long enough to find out.

this has been sort of a stream of consciousness post, and if it was someone that i was helping with their blog i’d tell them that it was too long… but hey this is the end… i’m not worried about trying to drive traffic, i’m not worried about click-throughs to Lopico, i just want to write. of course, the whole point of the first part was to say that there are a lot of things i’m considering right now… and i’d like to blog them.. but i’m not going to. not until i figure out what’s next for Josh Amer will i blog again.

it’s an interesting time in the web, obviously that’s where i’d like to continue my career, it’s just a matter of opportunity. the web is great right now. web2.0 is just about over. web3.0 will never be (if we’re lucky). there will just be the continual connectivity and the full integration (content anywhere, structure irrelevant) that web2.0 has been hinting at. we’re about to reach the point in which we are connected at every point in every way from whichever source we choose. is that scary? is that exiting? will it be a good thing? i’m not sure yet. but i’m glad that i was a small part of it at least for awhile, and i hope i can be a bigger part of it for years to come.

thanks for reading. - JDA.

I set out to do start-up review week with 5 companies in mind and 5 days to do it. But, there just didn’t seem to be any interest, so I’m killing it, just as I will soon be killing this blog. I don’t have the time to write a struggling blog. When I could write daily I really enjoyed it… the chance that I may be able to do that again some day is what keeps this blog alive. Between what is arguably my most demanding semester of school ever (at least it’s my last), my pursuit of a career after school, and all of my other web projects (I think it was 9 last count) this blog just can’t get much attention. March may just be my last month of blogging.

side note: this morning I woke up thinking I could cut the code that serves up reviews on Lopico in half, I did that and then made a couple other changes - you can read about it here. It’s the first time in a while I’ve had a chance to do any programming on Lopico, and a reminder as to why last summer - when I didn’t have a “real” job and worked on Lopico for about 12-20 hours a day - was perhaps the best of my life.

Daylife is a lot cooler than one its own financial backers says it is. It has plenty of problems, but the interface is nice enough and the majority of the site is so well put together that missing a few things like RSS on every page can be overlooked.

Daylife at its most basic level is a cleverly designed news aggregator, and viewing it in that way it may not be the most impressive thing on the web. What I love about it is the ability to really narrow down topics and follow specific issues. For example, I’m working on a large research project about Russia and the WTO - I’ve been using Daylife to keep up on current Russia / WTO news with this saved search. Can I do this with other services? Maybe, but do they provide the ease and style of Daylife, no. For a great example of the wonder of the daylife style check out the highlights page.

I believe it will get even better. I imagine I will be able to have RSS for all searches before long. I imagine the blog won’t be so ugly in the near future. I know it has some room to grow, but as good as it is in its current state - after navigating around the site for a few minutes you’ll understand what I’m saying - I think it’s going to be a great site before long.

A new standard in office apps? I don’t know about that, but there are a lot of things I like about Scrybe. Scrybe is an online calendar / task manager / web clipboard (called ThoughtPad) that also works when you’re offline. You can open the site offline, and next time you’re on the web it will sync your changes. That’s a pretty cool thing for a web app to do but… when am I offline and using my computer? Certainly not often, maybe when traveling and I’m sure many people do spend time with their computers offline…right?.. So yes, I’m sure this feature is something many will love, even if it is lost on me. But forget about that feature, the product as a whole has to be great for a feature to mean anything, and it is pretty nice… but it’s just another calendar, and right now I don’t really need a new calendar.

I use Google Calendar, which is great because I also use Google’s custom start page, and Gmail - all of which integrate with each other. My calendar shows up on my homepage, and when there are events in my emails I can quickly add them to my calendar. Google also attempts to integrate Google maps into my calendar which has on occasion been very helpful. This type of integration will only come from a company that offers more than just a calendar — Scrybe can’t do that right now. It’s better than 30boxes, it may even be better than Google Calendar when you take away the integration, but Google’s integration is likely too much for me to give up. However, I’m going to try to switch, just as I did with Megite and Techmeme (I use Megite more than Techmeme nowadays). I like to root for the underdog, I’d like to see Scrybe succeed, because as a pure Calendar I think it’s better.

Try it for yourself…Scrybe. It is currently closed beta, sign up and you’ll see what I’m talking about soon enough, or watch the video below.

First, if it were up to me she’d never be news, but the AP’s recent decision to block Paris Hilton from the news is a great illustration of why social news gathering and blogging is important. Old media is really making the best arguments for new media, by saying, “we have power, look how we can manipulate the news.” But people don’t want manipulated news, they want the truth, and they want to read about what interests them - and they want to decide what that is. So, while we have many newspapers trying to discredit blogs, the AP is doing a better job than any great blogger could do providing us with an argument for why maybe we need blogs…

This is the new age of media where the consumer decides what is important on services like Reddit, Bumpzee, and (in the case of 8 year olds) Digg. I hope someone at AP got fired forgetting that.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/02/ignoring.parishilton.ap/

My plan for next week is to write 4-5 posts about different start-ups that you may or may not know of. My list is currently at 4, but if any reader would like their site reviewed, I will gladly make changes to the list. If you don’t have a site and just want to make a suggestion that’s fine too.

This question occupies much of my time. What Next? I graduate law school in May and I’m spending a lot of time lately on my job search. I think the job search process is way too formal and not as indicative of performance as it should be.

I do not want to be a lawyer. I am willing to move anywhere in the world. I’m sort of a minimalist. I don’t really want to work for a large corporation. What would you do if you were me?

I worked with Ray Bethea to set up his blog, Greenback Chronicles, the site and first post are now up. The blog is about personal finance, from the perspective of the middle class American. Ray is an excellent writer and if you’re interested in this field I think his blog will be one you’ll want to read. The first few posts are going to be a little longer, as they serve primarily as introductory material. After the first four are up, I’m going to package them as an e-book that you can download and pass along if you’d like.

The design isn’t the greatest yet - the logo comes courtesy of me - but we have a great designer working on a new template that should be ready to go soon. Hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think.

Build a community.
Don’t listen to them.
You are smarter than your community.
Your community doesn’t know what they want.
It’s all about the community; give them what they want.
Use SEO.
Don’t be an SEM.
Use Digg and others for viral marketing.
Digg is gamed and pointless.
Build links.
Don’t pay for links.
Don’t be conventional.
Stick to the rules.
Paying for press is bad.
Indirectly paying for press is good.
Form relationships.
Take advantage of relationships.
Evaluate products for what’s behind them not who is.
Promote your friends products, even if they’re lame.
Start a fight to gain notoriety.
Be extremely positive about all products and people will like what you have to say.
Build a product and a business will follow.
Don’t launch without a business model.
Be concise.
Explain everything.

Or… don’t listen to anyone. With all of the people blogging you’re going to find at least one person taking nearly every position. Don’t listen, find out what works on your own.

Random Thought: At some point I decided productivity was more important than sleep. I started sleeping less and shortly thereafter became less productive.

Or maybe I’m just taking on more than I should be. I’m going to be blogging lighter for a while. A new blogger / blog I worked on is starting soon, I’ll let you know when.

Yesterday TC ran a story about how diggers were upset about yahoo using digg like features to enhance customer feedback. Today on Digg I saw a link to a cNet article about Microsoft creating digg like sites in other countries.

Of course diggers (or as I call them Diggiots) are overreacting, because that’s what they do. But really, I hope Digg does get pushed out of the market, or at least out of the mainstream. Not because of the service it offers, but because of its user base. I guess if you’re looking for someone to correct your spelling because they don’t have a valid argument to make, you can always go with Digg. But if you’re looking for an actual meaningful online conversation / intelligent debate, stay the hell away from Digg.

Digg’s downfall this year won’t be completely from gamers, it will also be from the users. How do you prevent this? Cater to a different user base, I think that’s what MSFT and other companies that are supposedly creating Digg clones are doing… and in the end I think they’ll be better for it.

My first 5 words post drifted into SEM discussion, that was probably misplaced. Not because I don’t agree with it, but because I don’t want you to miss the larger point. Perhaps that post is a good example of what not to do. The point is, get to the point, don’t waste my time, stay focused. If you’re not communicating one clear concise message, you’re losing potential users/customers/people.

I consider myself reasonably well connected to information. Yet lately I’ve somehow missed out on a few things I would like to have known about. They happen to be album releases. First was Beck’s: The Information, and now Clap You Hands Say Yeah’s: Some Loud Thunder. I use pandora all the time, and while I haven’t listened to my Beck station in a while, I’ve given enough thumbs up to both Beck and CYHSY that Pandora knows I am a fan. So, why not somehow tell me they have new albums coming out? I’d prefer RSS, but I’ll even let you email me that info with links containing your affiliate codes. Go ahead.. do it, I dare you, and then maybe we won’t have this conversation anymore. [and if you already do this and i just don't know about it, I apologize... but I should know about it.]

But it’s not just music, this idea should apply to all sorts of products. People want to know when new stuff comes out. Especially stuff they’ve told you countless times that they like. The choice is simple, it doesn’t take much to set up this type of feed and I’m fairly certain you’ll be happy with the return (which will also be easy to measure).

Imagine you could only say 5 words about your product. What would they be?

Guess what, online you may have less. If someone doesn’t “get” your product at first glance, they’re on to the next site.

Why can’t the world understand this? This is another one of the problems of SEO. SEMs want to write pages full of text to pack in the keywords. Too much text leads to people leaving your site. SEMs who you hired to market your site are getting people to your site, but also making them leave. Which is really more important, getting them there or keeping them? I think we all know.

I finally got around to reading Jason C’s post on SEO / SMO as crap, and largely I agree. This may seem strange as I 1) strongly focus on SEO for my sites and 2) have been hired by a handful of sites to do SEO. That said, Jason is primarily right; for every 20 seo sites I see at least 19 are doing something wrong. A while ago I posted about this.

Now we have people arguing for social media optimization, and telling you how hard it is and how you need them. This is the essential problem with SEO/SMO it’s not that hard. SEO will only last as long as there is a learning curve. This leads SEOs try to make things sound complex and tell you how much of a difference they’re going to make, but that’s all bound to change. As the next generation of marketers begin learning this stuff as just one of the handful of tricks that they have, the SEO specific firm will begin to disappear.

So enjoy the SEO business while it lasts, because it won’t be around forever, at least not as it currently exists. Sure, there are other areas of marketing that companies could do but choose to outsource - such as advertising - but the difference with SEO is that it is so easy that it cannot possibly last forever. I’m sure a number of companies will still choose to outsource SEO - they do outsource other easy things - but the pie will certainly begin to shrink, and the bad SEOs will find themselves where they belong: unemployed.

Over time I’ve seen a number of posts about what people use to get things done on the internet. They’re usually 90/10 posts - 90 percent useless 10 percent helpful, though I haven’t found any great tools in a while. Today I had some real problems with my laptop and had to resort to some old tools that I used to use… this reminded me of how Lopico used to be coded (it was ugly) and how it actually became more sophisticated as my tools became less sophisticated. In the latest version of Lopico I used notepad about 30% of the time. I have dreamweaver on my desktop, but not on my laptop. When I use my laptop (in Windows) I just use wordpad. I think it’s actually one of the best ways to code, it really forces you to 1) be perfect and 2) really understand the inner-workings of your site. I read a lot about people that use various cms systems for their sites (I’m using WordPress right now), and while I don’t have a problem with that, you can’t beat the feeling of making something from scratch.

Last week Om Malik mentioned that Facebook and Jobster appear to be hooking up to provide job search on Facebook. My initial reaction was, that makes sense, but now I’m not so sure. Yes, in terms of being a utility it makes sense, but in terms of being a social network it does not.

I think a lot of the success of Facebook comes from its closed door / walled garden status. If Facebook was more open, I’d probably be reading about how it, rather than MySpace, is destroying the morals of America’s youth. It’s too closed off for most journalists to realize the things on FB are just as bad as those on MySpace… or any other Social Network. So, many use it because they feel it is a little more private and they don’t have to be as conservative or restrained as they are on other sites.

But jobs seems to take some of that away. If you know an employer is watching you’re going to censor yourself in some way. The more conservative and restrained the users feel they must be, the less interesting the site becomes.

This leads me to believe that the best social network will be one where no one can see anything about you unless they are your friend. However, most SNs have a constant desire to add more features and make more money. Those desires will ultimately lead to some sacrifices of privacy. So, I have two questions:

1. Will we ever see the craigslist of social networks? Sacrificing profit to give people what they want.
2. Is job search on FaceBook a good idea?

Email Received moments ago:

“The University’s LEAP authentication, which is required to access the secure wireless network, does not work with the new Windows operating system Vista. If your personal computer is running Vista, you will not be able to access the wireless network. “

… now if only I could get it to work on ubuntu. And yes, I am bored today.

I have officially ditched K2. I know very few of my readers actually make it to the site on a daily basis, but it was slow. I tried displaying only the 4 most recent posts on the site to see if that would help, but it was still a little slow. I think I may have an answer with my newly implemented theme: Tarski. And… with my recent modifications, the site was probably at its ugliest since I started using WordPress… it was really time for a change.

I’ve also added my photo to the blog… what a narcissist.

Judy’s Book founder Andy Sack, is doing what bloggers should do. His blog has been great lately, it’s open, it’s honest, it’s self critical, and above all it’s really interesting. If you have a corporate blog, or you want to become a corporate blogger take a look at his blog. The problem is you probably won’t want to / be allowed to take the risks he does, but if you want your blog to work he’s giving free lessons.
http://asack.typepad.com/a_sack_of_seattle/

Should is the second ugliest word in the English language. I’m tired of hearing about things that cities should do to revitalize. Or projects would-be-entrepreneurs should start. Conferences we should have. Posts you should have written. Features you should add. I’m tired of the attitude of you/we/I should be doing something. Stop Blogging about what you should do. Stop Talking about what you should do. Just do what you CAN do. The only thing holding you back is you.

[Maybe this is this why people suggest taking emotion out of blogging??]

My brother bought a PS3 about a week ago, and every game I’ve seen has been littered with ads… so why do the games cost more than ever? I don’t play as many video games as I used to (about 30 mins a day while I ride an excercise bike) so I’m not really an expert on the subject, but it seems to me that some of the cost should be coming out of the games.

I’m sure the answer is either: people pay so they charge OR OEMs are losing money on the systems and have to make it up on the games. But the ads are getting a little overboard for the lack of cost savings to the end user. Add to that, I’ve noticed some games have gotten rid of their celebrity announcers, which undoubtedly saves a good chunk of change - most notably the Madden Franchise no longer has Madden calling the games (sure he hasn’t said anything coherent in a few years, but the game is named after him). So tell me, why are the games still so expensive?

Has anyone else noticed that my beloved cleveland cavaliers have the second best record in the east (though they would be 5th if the playoffs started today)? yes, the east is lousy. yes, they were first not long ago. no, they’re not playing up to their potential. but give them a break. this is what i don’t get about northeast ohio: we hang on to every browns victory as if it were the superbowl, yet we criticize the one good team the city has. the plain dealer had an article this weekend comparing the cavs to the browns, and mike brown to romeo crennel, come on. you can’t compare a playoff team to a laughing stock. i don’t think mike brown is an excellent coach. i think he does what too many of the other cavs do… watch lebron and get lethargic unless you really have to care (ie LeBron is out of the lineup). i do think the cavs would be great if they had an amazing coach (think Don Nelson) but romeo crennel is a joke, the browns were a joke, and the cavs don’t deserve that comparison.

I relaunched Lopico on July 24, here’s a look at some of what’s worked and what hasn’t in the 6 months since relaunch.

Working
Search:
Search continues to be my number one strength. The majority of Lopico traffic comes from search engines, with Google accounting for just over 50% of all traffic (see Top Referrers below).

inFAQs:
I posted about this recently on the Lopico blog. Getting rid of the FAQs has had a fairly positive effect on the site. I answer more questions than I did in the past, but they tend to be questions I would not have put in an FAQ. This has also enabled me to make some connections with users that otherwise would not have happened.

New Design:
I’m basing this one solely on the amount of time spent on site, but it seems to be working and I certainly like it better (though I certainly have some planned changes).

Remember my location:
This one should have been in the old version, but remembering location has been a nice addition.

This blog:
Not listed below but, jdamer.com comes in as my number 8 referrer. Though I plan on getting rid of it by the end of the year, the blog certainly has been valuable.

Maps:
Not long after I added maps, they started appearing near the top of my most popular content.

Akron:
I’ve listed the top cities by Page Views below, but that doesn’t capture the fact that Akron has about 15x the number of page views as number 2 Milwaukee and about 50x number 6 Manhattan.

Costs:
I’m spending next to nothing on the site. I haven’t advertised in a long time but traffic (despite my tanking alexa ranking) is way up. When I first started I relied heavily on AdWords, more heavily than I could probably afford to do at the time, it worked well but I’m pretty happy with not spending money.

Unpopular cities:
This was one of my homepage experiments, I added links to unpopular cities directly on the homepage. I’ve been through a few of these because linking to the cities from the homepage gave them a search boost which in turn pushed them higher on the popularity rankings within the site (though the current group has been up for quite some time).

Not Working
Jobs:
This one I don’t take the blame for. I had a partner lined up to supply job listings and it completely fell through. I’m now considering other options or I may just remove the section from Lopico.

Social features:
The lopico social features haven’t really taken off the way I would have liked. I know I need to work on this side of the site, and I know it’s not the main draw, but I still think it should be further along than where it is.

Bookmarks:
I love the bookmarking feature, as well as the mobile bookmarks, but I’m a rare user. In fact the average number of bookmarks per user is less than 1.

Monetization:
This one I’m surprisingly not upset about. Of course, I don’t have anyone to answer to other than myself. I’d rather see the other features of the site develop than be making gobs of cash from the site. Long term it’s more important for me to have a great product than to have financial success now. I’ve come to terms with the fact that Lopico is not going to be a large enough direct source of income for me to live off of, and that’s okay. I’ve even thought about completely removing all ads from the site. If/when I do the next version that will probably be a reality.

Register on the homepage:
This homepage experiment did not go well. Going with the philosophy that more people aren’t using my site than are, I thought it wise to put a quick registration form on the homepage. It was scary (that’s what I heard anyway) and eventually I switched to a sign in form with a link to register - shortly afterward registrations increased.

Some Stats:

Top Referrers

1. Google
2. Direct
3. CNet
4. Yahoo
5. MSN

Most popular cities (by Page Views):

1. Akron
2. Milwaukee
3. Columbus
4. San Diego
5. Los Angeles
6. Manhattan

…looking back at my goals for the new version, I’d say I’m doing alright, but I’m certainly looking for more improvement. It’s really all about time, which is just one more reason I need to quit blogging.

It has been a while, but you should look forward to tomorrow’s post if you’re interested in Lopico. I’ll be dual-blogging some highlights and low points both from the first six months of the new Lopico here and on the official Lopico blog (not sure if the official will go out tomorrow); and I think you’ll get a better less edited version here.

Random notes:

• I’ve been very busy with school lately. For example today I had my first class at 8:30am and my last class finished at 9:30pm. I only left the school once, for lunch.
• I hate the new look Google Homepage. All G did was add a plus button to all links, and now the page looks 100x more cluttered
• I’m working with a guy that wants to blog, but sent me a first draft of a post that is 14 pages long. This one’s going to be interesting. My initial thought is “Tasters Choice” {Tasters choice, used to air commercials that were always to be continued. I think blogging is a medium, like the commercial, where you only get a small window in which to convey your message, so I may try to replicate that with him.} I’ll let you know how it plays out.
• I think I know what I’m going to do with ohpj.com (four letter domain name I bought last year)
• I’m almost ready to launch amehigher.com (which will be my online business card + marketing blog); design is the main hold up right now
• and I’ve added a sidebar widget to my blog that you can only see if you come to the site.

a little band by the name of Cold War Kids has a free song available on iTunes this week. If you haven’t heard of them or checked them out I highly recommend downloading the song from iTunes.

Oh and I’m starting a new blog in the near future dedicated to books, music, and movies - any interested writers?

Greetings Mashable, Wired, and Digital Music readers. I’ve been getting some nice linkage from this post, but really I love Pandora, and I admire the way the situation has been handled. It’s strange that I get quoted most often for negative posts, because I love the web and I do a lot of posts about the great sites that are out there, like this one.

While you’re here I recommend these other posts by me:

Getting Started
It pays to suck.
Eliminating the FAQ
Corporate Blogging Part 1
User Generated Headaches - not by me, but a smart guest poster.
Publicize your blog in every email you write
Almost doesn’t count in web2.0 awards

And if you like what you see be sure to grab the RSS feed.

Best - JDA

Nothing upsets me more than search engine optimization sites with poorly optimized sites. Today I read a blurb about a recently relaunched search firm’s site, so I clicked through and was disgusted. These people want to optimize your site for search, yet they don’t do basic things like using alt text for images. They want to design your site yet their code has 160 warnings, and they use tables with thick borders. They have a blog that doesn’t have an RSS feed. Worst of all they’re from Akron. Sites like this, more than anything, drive me crazy. Why can’t they all be like SEOmoz? I’ll save the site the embarrassment, but if you want to know the name of it, it’s pretty east to contact me.

On a related note I’m thinking of concentrating my own Search / Web consulting into a more focused effort. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, today’s site viewing just increases my desire to do it. It will be called amehigher - a play on my last name.

Fresh off of naming Techmeme my favorite site of ‘06, I’m switching to a competing service. After a few emails with Megite’s Matthew Chen, I’ve decided to at least give Megite the rest of January. From the looks of things so far, it seems like there is more content, a better design, some interesting features in the way of personalization, and you can license the software. I like Matthew’s proactive style, it’s worth at least a month of my pageviews.

On the topic of switching, I’ve also switched to Google Reader from Bloglines. I’m not sure why, but ever since I upgraded to FF 2.0 I’ve been having a lot of problems with bloglines. Unfortunately this makes me even more of a Google slave, as I now use Google personalized, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and I’ve even set up a Google Custom Search. I believe the term is Gbitch.

While we’re on the topic of music discovery, I thought I’d take this opportunity to point you to a new concept in music discovery that I think has definite potential after a little refinement. Family Band is a new concept in music discovery that allows you to explore bands that are in some way related to the band you enter into the service. It breaks bands down into band members, and then you can see other bands the members are affiliated with in some way. As you can see in the screenshot below, this creates a visual map of related bands. In my search I started with Wolf Parade which led me to Frog Eyes and Swan Lake (both pretty good bands), based on the affiliations of members of Wolf Parade. It’s a really cool concept, that I hope gets developed further.

Family Band gets bonus points for being started by one of my family members, you can see more of Tom’s work at WorkingIdea.

Everyone needs to eat, but Pandora has officially upset me with its newest revenue source: pre-roll commercials. I loaded a station on pandora expecting to hear music and instead heard a commercial for McDonald’s Dollar menu. One of Pandora’s big selling points is that it does not have commercials, the more commercials that find their way into the service, the less likely I am to use it. Pandora already makes money off sales of songs that people discover on the site and click through to buy on itunes or amazon. I did this last week, I had an itunes gift card and chose to buy some songs I had bookmarked on Pandora, I used the links on Pandora to make the purchases. That’s one Pandora revenue stream, but they’ve also sold out their site design in the past turning it into an ad. Now they need another revenue stream? I understand that this is guaranteed revenue compared to the click-throughs which I’m sure most users rarely use, but this goes completely against what the service is supposed to be about. So, should I switch back to last.fm?

Update: Because I love when companies do this, I’d like to point out that Tom, Pandora’s CTO, has left a comment on this post.

Today I decided to map out my entire 2007. I drew up a month by month calendar of objectives, and goals as well as things and contacts I’ll need to help me achieve these goals. It was pretty intense. I will graduate from law school this year and I will most likely move out of Ohio for the first time in my life. I think moving really hit me the hardest. I know that moving is not a huge deal, and something I’m sure I’ll ultimately be better off for doing, but it’s still a little strange to think about (and there is a chance I will remain in Ohio).

Back to the point…
I made two calendars, one for everything non-web related and one for web related things. Where I am right now in my life, the web related things have to come after the non-web things are finished. That’s how I came to the conclusion that this blog is coming to an end.

I’m going to end the blog either because my future employer will not let me blog, or (more likely) because the benefit of this blog is running out. I first started blogging as a way to drive traffic to my sites, that went okay, but not enough to justify my time. Now, I blog more just for fun, and have probably benefited more. This blog has opened up the door to some new relationships, it’s helped me establish myself by getting quoted in different places, it’s helped with my sites (if you ever need some help with php just look through the wordpress source and you’ll find a lot of great ideas), and it’s helped me in some ways in the consulting I’ve done. So why give it up? Time. That’s really the only answer I can give. The blog doesn’t produce enough results for me to justify the time put in. So, starting today the phase out begins. The daily jda will go back to the old style of posting when the mood strikes me and I’ll be able to get more done. A full phase out will probably come around April (which coincidentally is when I turn 25) unless something changes and the benefit really starts to increases.

Until next time. Happy New Year.

Despite the fact that I have a site that always gets listed in the ecommerce category, I don’t really have much experience with selling physical goods online. I have however, talked and worked with some people that have. This sets me up as something less than an expert, but I can tell you the 5 core things I would do if I were to create an ecommerce site:

1. Build a great looking site. Nothing is less trustworthy to me than a bad looking site. And, make it stupidly simple to be able to buy products.
2. Distribute content with RSS. All new products you add to your site should go into an RSS feed so your customers know when something new comes out. Not to mention the fact that distributed content gives you more opportunities to gain visitors from more sources. This can be done either by creating an rss feed yourself or starting a blog - which costs next to nothing, or nothing.
3. Use SEO. Every page for every product should be unique, every page should use titles and descriptions, every page should use descriptive links… and on and on. It all starts with a search, if you want to succeed that search better end at your site.
4. Use Edgeio. Sure, it doesn’t have the biggest following, but if you’re pushing your products in RSS, there’s no reason not to add the simple “listing” tag and have your products show up in one more place.
5. Establish Community. If you have a product that has a following, give back to your followers. Let the community be visible in you site. Perhaps even let them dictate what goes on the homepage of your site.
Bonus - Don’t forget about ebay, people go there to buy, you should be there selling.

The bottom line: It’s about distribution, and taking advantage of the channels available on the web.

And I’m sure there are many other things, which you should feel free to leave in the comments.

It takes a lot for a website to impress me. It’s not about user generated content, in fact my favorite site has been criticized for not letting everyone play. It’s not about doing something that no one else does, my favorite site of the year has two very solid competitors. It’s just about delivering, and this site does it better than nearly any other and does it every day. My favorite site of the year is Techmeme.

I won’t claim that it’s perfect or for everyone, and I won’t say that there aren’t things I’d like to see added, but no site has had a bigger impact on me this year (excluding my own) than Techmeme.

Some wondered about the business model for Techmeme, and Gabe (site founder) delivered in a way uniquely fit to his business by creating an entirely new model based on blog posts. I was annoyed with the display of the site on my cell phone, and again Gabe delivered with a mobile version (I even checked it out in line at Chipotle today). Some have criticized the lack of international sources, and called it a blog country club, but don’t we want that for some things? I don’t think techmeme should include every blog linking to every story on the site, just give me what’s relevant - and that, more than anything, Techmeme has delivered.

Techmeme is not perfect, I’d like it to be opened so that more memes could be created. We know that Gabe can do the verticals of his choice (Ballbug, We Smirch, and the original memeorandum), but what if I want an Akron-meme? I doubt that’s in the pipeline, even if a Silicon Valley local meme is (not that I’m saying it is). I’d also like a plug in for my blog that shows related posts from across the web. But those things can wait, for now I’m just enjoying the brilliance that comes from the relevance of my favorite site of the year.

Techmeme

I just lost a post that took me about an hour to create. Rather than recreate it, I’ve decided to give you my top ten fake Tech News Headlines from 10 years in the future:

10. Google changes moto from “Don’t be evil,” to “Don’t be evil, be super-evil.”
9. Facebook tells Yahoo! $100 billion dollars is not enough.
8. Mike Arrington comes out of blogging retirement to announce Web 8.0 as the greatest web version ever.
7. Del.icio.us hits record profits of $28.32.
6. Microsoft releases a new OS named Windows Hasselhoff which it claims not even Chuck Norris can hack. Two days later it’s hacked.
5. The U.S. Government ditches the color terror warning system and begins using Technorati’s authority rankings.
4. Yahoo! drops the exclamation point after 10 disappointing years in a row.
3. MySpace officially becomes a social network exclusively for ex-convicts.
2. Apple releases a pen and pad of paper called the ipen and ipaper, it is instantly heralded as the greatest tech invention ever.
and finally…
1. Wikipedia becomes an all out porn site.

Happy Holidays.

Hawaiian Shirt Day
What to write about today?
Haiku would be nice.

In case somehow you missed it, it’s national haiku day. Perhaps the best holiday in December, and one we can all celebrate.

Personally, this is my favorite haiku (via threadless):

Please only leave comments in haiku form.

So yesterday I said I had a big bag of new sites to blog about after my little hiatus, and today I give you a site that has its focus elsewhere. In fact the focus is reaching people when they’re not online. TextMarks, launched not that long ago and it has received some attention, but not enough. The concept is simple, people subscribe to a keyword by sending a text message with the keyword to 41411. After that, the owner of the keyword can send out a mass message to all of the people that have subscribed.

I like the service because it is amazingly easy to sign up for and use, and delivers an extremely clear message. I’m pretty sure Mozes is competing in this space, but I’m never really sure what Mozes is all about. Mozes really should have the edge, it is well designed (though I hear slanted stripes are on their way out) and has a musical slant with plenty of influencers on board. But, I’m still not sure what it’s about.

I guess there are two ways to view these services. 1 - they’re for people that are always connected to a group and want updates all the time or 2 - they’re for people in groups that don’t associate with each other all that often. I’m using TextMarks for purpose number 2 - at least in my first usage of it. I’ve been delegated the task of updating my old high school class website, and to me that’s pointless because no one ever goes to the thing. All we want are the occasional messages to tell us what’s going on. For that TextMarks will work great - so would a blog, but my guess is a lot more people would want this info to come from a text rather than an RSS feed (and I don’t have to explain that your MyYahoo page is made of RSS feeds).

Update: Dorrian from Mozes posted a couple of comments that are worth reading if you’re interested in this area.

Sorry for the delay, I’m still trying to recover from Finals. I’m skipping Tech News Tuesday for the week while I try to get back into the swing of things. The good news is, I have four or five new sites I’d like to talk about for Website Wednesday and a couple of other posts ready to go.

It’s kind of tough to do a MyStuff Monday when I’ve taken a couple of weeks off from the web. I don’t have any real announcements today, but should starting next week (though I doubt I’ll post on the 25th) - and they’ll likely be motask related. I didn’t want motask to be a distraction, but it seems like I will be adding a couple of new features in the next couple of days.

sidenote: I’m using IE 6.0 right now, I don’t how people do this. I can’t stand not having Firefox @ work.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best web designer, but I’d also say that I’ve come a very long way from where I was a couple years ago. But I really enjoy design, I used to be a fairly good artist and still try do a few things every now and then, I’ve even done a couple of paintings in the past couple of years (I’ll post photos some other day).

Anyway, my current design outlet seems to be destruction of the Lopico header. I now have a large number of redesigns and different themed designs for the Lopico header. You may remember that I put up a different logo for the week the Buckeyes played michigan:

Now I’m working on a holiday header, and want your thoughts.

As you can see I have 4 areas of concern on this header. Clicking on the image above will take you to a larger version of the image without the circles. If I don’t get any responses to this I know the changes I’ll make, but I want to let you have an impact. So please, tell me what you’d do.

I got a coupon for a discount from godaddy and used it to buy the domain ohpj.com. I bought it for the sole reason that it is a four letter dot com domain name. Now what should I use it for? It does have the letters OH so perhaps it could be something Ohio based. I don’t know, any ideas? I’m too engrossed in finals to think about anything other than the law.

I have a bad habit of buying domain names during finals; I don’t know why. I’ve only ever sold one domain, I bought it for $4 and sold it for $50. It had the word “Google” in it, so it could have been a copyright infringement issue. I was anxious to drop it, so I put it on the market for $25 and someone offered $50, not a bad profit.

I’m in the heart of exams now, I turned in a 24 hour take home this morning and my next exam is tomorrow night, then 3 more next week. After I turned in my final I took a small break to catch up with the world. I found this interview with Fred Wilson to be pretty interesting, mainly because he’s right. Fred is a VC and blogger, and as a blogger he offers some great tips in the interview. One of them is blogging everyday, this really works best for me as well. When I blog daily I increase my readers, when I take breaks readership falls. The trick is even when I blog everyday, I don’t. I usually rattle off two or three posts at a time, publish one and save the others for later. So… while I’m not blogging for a while, thanks for holding. I promise more good stuff to come.

Hopefully you enjoyed my last post and checked out at least one of the bands on the list. Which brings me to my next tip for bloggers: let your readers see a little of who you are. Most people that read my blog probably come here for the web stuff that I write, but if you’re a regular reader you know that I’m in law school, that I live in Akron and now you know what’s on my ipod - hopefully knowing those things will help you feel more of a connection to my blog.

Speaking of that last post, I wouldn’t call it the most popular post of all time, but I’m also not going to talk bad about it. I used to listen to the TWiT podcast weekly. I stopped listening when the people on the podcast started talking about how bad older shows were or even how the current episode wasn’t working well… eventually I bought into it. They convinced me it was bad and I stopped listening. Third tip: be confident in everything you do.

And if that’s not enough, I’m working on my choice for website of the year and blog of the year feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments.

I don’t know who suggested that I blog “what’s on my ipod” but I do have a pretty good idea of who requested that I not blog that. So, to spite said person, here is the list of bands currently occupying my ipod:

A Roman Holiday
Andrew Bird
Asian Kung Fu Generation
At The Drive-in
Beck
The Black Keys
Bloc Party
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
The Decemberists
Eddie Vedder
Franz Ferdinand
Interpol
Jay-Z
The Killers
The Kinks
The Mars Volta
Mike Doughty
The Mountain Goats
Oh No! Oh My!
Phoenix
The Pixies
The Rakes
The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Shout Out Louds
Son, Ambulance
Sparta
Spoon
The Stranglers
The Strokes
Swan Lake
The White Stripes
Wolf Parade
Volcano, I’m still excited
and some podcasts

It’s really a pretty short list, I’m not even using half of my ipod right now. We’ll see if any of them are around next year as well.

You can download a free movie today from AOL. http://video.aol.com/

Has anyone seen Nacho Libre? I’m thinking it will be the one I download when I get home from the library.

Other titles include:
School of Rock
Patriot Games
Men in Black
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Mission Impossible 3 (which I hear was quite awful)
The Perfect Storm
Jackass
The Natural
Analyze This
Zoolander
and many more…

These aren’t really movies I’d buy otherwise, but you can’t beat free.

While I’m on this three week hiatus (and in the future) if you have a topic that you’d like me to write about you can add it to the custom to-do list that I set up on motask. Unlike the main motask site, you don’t need a password, you can just go ahead and tell me anything. If anyone else wants a to-do list like this let me know… of course you can have your own personal mobile to-do list now, but if you want a public to-do list leave a comment.

Try it out.

I’m taking the next three weeks off from the daily blog and will instead post periodically as I did in the past. Sorry, Law School finals win out.

My brother is currently snickering at my nerdiness, but I really like watching CNBC on Black Friday. A few interesting points from the morning:

1. More men are shopping than before, which means more money is being spent. Supposedly, the men are coming out because of some women are scared after the recent violence surrounding PS3.
2. It’s going to be a big year for electronics, and large purchases rather than multiple small purchases are the trend of the day.
3. Columbus based Limited Brands seems to be leading the way in the apparel sector
4. On vacation, Europeans spend 8% of their time shopping, US citizens spend 21% shopping
5. Paypal / Ebay continue to get better press coverage than almost anyone online.
6. Fair Indigo was mentioned as a hot online retailer. I’d never heard of the site, it has a page rank of 0 and an alexa rank of 287,796 - strange choice but one to watch.
7. and, unrelated but interesting, the Cubs are probably not for sale.

While I’m on the subject of retailers, here are a few I think are worth your time. Some have Ohio connections and others are just cool:

• Threadless
• Shamplade
• Sports Art
• American Apparel
• Apple

Proving that I am listening, even at 3:30 in the morning after a night out, this week’s Hawaiian Shirt Day is a special request to take you back to the Oregon Trail. A classic educational game, that was all the rage of indoor recess, you can now relive a small part of your childhood by playing Oregon Trail online. For some unknown reason, the Virtual Apple II only works in Internet Explorer, sorry.

Virtual Apple 2: Oregon Trail

Update: This has been corrected.

Welcome to Akron, where spelling doesn’t count. This week for website Wednesday and Marketing Thursday (I have to take the day off for Turkey Day) I’m going to point you to the Downtown Akron website and its glaring spelling error. The Homepage if fine, but for the “Do Downtown” portion of the site Downtown is spelled Downtow in all of the Title Tags - yikes. That may seem like a small mistake to you (though I wouldn’t stand for it, ever) but it becomes more important when you consider that the “Do Downtown” portion of the site is the likely the main draw. Many downtown businesses are listed on that part of the site, and the pages do fairly well in Search Results… so it’s not just in the title of the page that shows at the top of the browser - it’s in the search results (I know my technical readers will be familiar with that concept, that’s for the less techno-savvy readers). Googling Downtow Akron will give you a good idea of the real problem.

Worse, today the Akron Beacon Journal is promoting this website as the first step in the plan of the new head of the Downtown Akron Partnership.

I like a lot of what the city has done to revitalize itself, I like the “Do Downtown” concept - but you have to hit on all cylinders if you want to earn respect.

1. It doesn’t exist
2. It never should
3. It’s time to stop naming the web
4. People won’t like it

Background Reading: NYT + Fortune

What are your thoughts??

I think this may have been the worst week yet on the daily j.d.a. - I’m sorry and I’ll gladly refund your money. I’ve been sick this week but I really just didn’t care about blogging this week… but I still did it. Part of the reason I haven’t really cared is because I’m focused on a lot of other things right now, including the Buckeyes:

Guy Kawasaki recently did a write an interview with Michael Arrington in which he asked him how exactly you get on TechCrunch. The answer was essentially ‘be great or be google’ but I believe that there are plenty of great new start-ups not on TC as well as a bunch of average start-ups on TC. The thing to remember is that just because you didn’t make it doesn’t mean it’s over. There are a bunch of bloggers out there like me who would love to write about your start-up. And if enough of us write about you, eventually everyone else will start to notice.

Blogging, like most businesses, can be thought of in terms of ‘earn’ and ‘turn’ - In this case TechCrunch is the earn, you get a bunch of visits form one spot. But if that doesn’t work there’s still the turn, getting the same number of visits but in smaller batches from lesser known bloggers.

So if you have a start-up, or know of one that’s not getting enough attention, let me know.

Lopico has taken sides. I went to OSU, I will be there this weekend, and all week Lopico is rooting for the Buckeyes.

I guess Valleywag was too edgy and relevant. Nick Denton, head of Gawker Media, decided to change the focus of the wag, apparently lame is the new black. This new Valleywag won’t cost him any deals, but it will cost him readers. First, the ‘new’ design looks like it’s 1999 all over again - it’s horrible. Second, getting rid of Nick Douglas was the single biggest mistake Gawker could have made. The great wit of the valley’s best humorist (not to mention one of the smartest writers in the valley) is lost. Instead we have to deal with such great one liners as: “You linked — What a day! — to the photo gallery and exposed the poor woman to every vicious troll on the internet.”

At least this move helps my decision to cut back on blog reading.

More often than not I read about scale in terms of scaling up an operation, but I’m thinking about scaling back. Looking at the numbers for that directory project of mine, it seems that there may be some definite advantages to reducing the size of the site.

The fact is, I need to take my own advice. The things I say to people often conflict with what I am myself doing with Lopico. If I tell someone that’s starting something new I say ‘just do it small scale and see where it goes.’ But for Lopico I’ve tried to cast the biggest net I can (almost) and the results are exactly what I’d expect. My problem has been thinking more in terms of page views and SEO and less in terms of the user - something I need to stop.

I really shouldn’t be blogging this, but it’s time for a change. A smart kid once told me to do this same thing and I didn’t listen, instead I kept going on the same track. The problem with staying on the same track is that nothing changes. And while things may be alright on Lopico, they’re nowhere near where I’d like them to be.

So this is what it means to try to get bigger by getting smaller and we’ll see if it works. No time table on the change, school, work, and life are sort of in the way - but you’ll be the first to know when things change.

I’ve been thinking, and talking, about starting sports noise again. Maybe it’s because I’m a big NBA fan (yes they do exist) but I miss blogging about sports. Luckily it’s Hawaiian Shirt Day so for today I’m bringing back the noise.

Last night I went to the Cavs-Bulls game and came away with two conclusions. 1. The Cavs will reach the NBA finals this year and 2. Ben Wallace isn’t going to have a good first year in Chicago. I know, it was only one game, but remembering how Big Ben used to love to beat up on the Cavs when he was with Detroit, last nights unmotivated performance was enough for me to jump to a quick conclusion.

As for the Cavs, they played a deep Chicago team and, with little effort, blew them out. It wasn’t a very fun win to watch, but the Cavs just didn’t make many mistakes - and they’re nowhere near mid-season form.

It’s early, but here is my prediction for the NBA’s Eastern Conference:

1. Cleveland
2. Detroit
3. New Jersey
4. Miami
5. Washington
6. Toronto
7. Indiana
8. Chicago
9. Boston
10. Philadelphia
11. Orlando
12. Milwaukee
13. Atlanta
14. New York
15. Charlotte

The typical Sports Noise post was a little more exciting than that, but I guess I’m out of practice.

Instead of the regular marketing thursday, I’m going to have a guest post up momentarily. What does this have to do with marketing? It’s simple - for me: I expand the number of contributors which will hopefully expand the reach of the blog to some people in the new contributors blog. For the poster: he’ll get the benefit of reaching my network, which may attract new customers/users/readers.

I asked the first guest poster to contribute and I’m glad he did, he was a commenter on my blog and I really respected his opinions. He is, however, insane as he believes the Suns will win the NBA championship.

If you’d like to do a guest post just email me - jda at jdamer.com.

Thinkature is a new app that combines collaborative productivity tools with instant messaging. It’s really pretty cool, I’m just trying to figure out who will use it.

Thinkature gives you an open workspace on which you can use the mouse to draw on screen, upload photos, and attach notes in a style very similar to how MyStickies works. Since you can share the workspace and simultaneously work there’s also a very useful built in instant messaging feature (something more sites should have). The focus on images and drawing would seem to imply that this will make its inroads with designers - but the potential is way beyond that.

I like the combination of elements, but to really be successful I’d like to see it do even more. I can add photos and little notes, but I’d also like to be able to add a table. Drawing on screen is cool, but I’d like to be able to erase parts of what I’ve drawn (you can delete an entire section, but not parts) and I’d like to draw in different colors.

It’s actually really an amazing product and things seem to be working very smoothly, I just want to see a few more things added so that Thinkature doesn’t get swept away as a feature rather than a company. Right now it seems to have a few things that other online collaboration tools are missing, but it’s missing some that the others have.

Grade: This will change how I use the web, though it might not be with this particular site.

Back from my week off of blogging and reading blogs - well okay I cheated a little, I looked at TechMeme a couple of times but didn’t read any posts just checked the titles. I know that Google bought JotSpot and Microsoft is doing something with Linux, but I’m not as informed as I would otherwise be. So that’s the bad end of it, I did miss out on some interesting events, but I saved a lot of time. I had around 900 unread posts from a mere 95 feeds - I cut back a while ago, but I think I can make some more cuts. Taking this week off from reading really helped me evaluate which blogs were really time wasters and which are really adding to my life. For example, I read Chicagoist because I’m thinking about moving to Chicago next year, but over 80 posts in a week is more time than I want to spend reading up on the wind city. My new goal is to cut the number of blogs I read to 30 of my choice, plus blogs of any readers that comment on my blog. Ultimately it’s about balance and time management, making this cut will really help me with that objective.

I’m taking the week off from blogging and reading blogs. I just need a break to think about things outside the web.

Things to think about while you await the return of the daily j.d.a.:

1. What’s the difference between HD-DVD and Blue Ray and which will fail?
2. When has a blog post ever changed your life?
3. How much time do you waste compared to the knowledge you gain by reading blogs?
4. Should I try to sell motask given this data and the fact that it cost me $0 to maintain?
5. Why is the US 1 of only 2 countries that has refused to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child?
6. If you live in Ohio, why should we not ban smoking next Tuesday? Is your reason one you feel good about?
7. Who will win the NBA championship this year?
8. Why does everyone want a blog anyway?
9. Did I just waste too much time reading this?

I can’t believe it either, but the Washington Post suggests that maybe teenagers aren’t a real stable audience. Wow!

Supposedly teenagers are moving to Facebook because they’re sick of MySpace stalkers. The article is based on the opinions of one high school English class, which tells us that teens travel in packs (more shock). I have a few problems with the article:

1. Article relies on too small of a sample.
2. Creeps don’t ruin MySpace, spam ruins MySpace.
3. Things won’t be much better at Facebook.
3a. I still don’t think the two work very well in direct comparison, and I have a whole new round of issues with FB that I’ll discuss later.
4. Article mentions YouTube but not the MySapce downturn effect on YouTube.
5. Failure to cite Josh Amer for all of his insight into this coming problem.
6. 320,000 new profiles a day is still pretty damn good growth.
6a. The real problem is that of those 320,000 many are either one time users or businesses (that use spam and call it viral marketing) not real people.

Best line of the article: She routinely heard from people who complained they weren’t designated as one of her top eight friends. “People would be like, ‘why am I not in your top eight?’ ” – that’s the type of insightful journalism that separates blogs from print.

Sorry this isn’t on schedule - we’ll call it the Sunday Special.

It’s Hawaiian shirt day, so today I attempt a little Musical critique. I recently acquired Beck’s newest album: The Information. In a way this collection of ‘didn’t make it to Guero or Sea Change’ songs reminds me of Beck’s Mutations - his leftovers from Odelay. But this is better than Mutations, it hits more often than it misses and has enough unique and diverse content that it could almost be thought of as a summary of Beck’s major label career (I don’t think we’ll ever hear another Satan Gave me a Taco out of Beck).

Like Guero’s Geurolito, I have to believe the information will be opened to the interpretation of others. The album ranges from the softly melodic “New Round” to the highly experimental “1000BPM” a song that already sounds like a remix. If the album misses anywhere I think it’s Beck’s tendency to over do it with the experiments - I’d have to believe he’ll let others try out their experiments as well.

If you like anything by Beck you’ll likely find something to enjoy about The Information - Movie Theme feels like it was plucked from Sea Change, while Think I’m in Love feels like it could have easily come off any album since Odelay, there even seem to be elements of Midnight Vultures in We Dance Alone.

I recommend the album, but then again I’m a huge Beck fan. I can’t say it’s his best work but if you’ve enjoyed any of his work you’ll find a song or two to like on The Information.

In my last post I talked about using MySpace as a source of viral marketing, but really success on MySpace has very little to do with viral marketing. It has to do with Real Estate. I’m meeting with someone tonight who has an ecommerce website and I’m going to tell him what I always do: “sell your stuff on ebay.” People go to ebay to buy, if you sell you should be there. Similar logic applies to MySpace. People go to MySpace to … look at profiles and communicate, if you have a message that you want to communicate put your message on MySpace. You have to go where your message will be heard.

For the same reasons that you’ll sell more products in the mall than in a stand alone store in the middle of nowhere, you’ll get more traffic from Google and MySpace than you will from HotBot and Geocities. You have to go where your customers are you can’t force them to go where you want them to go.

Two articles I’ve seen today and one website have one thing in common - they misuse the word viral. Calling something viral before it happens is just wrong.

The examples I’ve seen today (sarcasm in italics):

1. website says ‘just posted viral videos’ - hmmm…. just posted and viral? that’s amazing.
2. blogger says ‘it’s a good idea to put your videos on youtube for some viral marketing’ - oh, as soon as they’re on youtube they’re viral? Awesome.
3. newspaper says ‘local businesses are using MySpace for viral marketing’ - Wow, I’m on MySpace, I must be viral too. That must be why everyone is talking about the daily j.d.a.

Things aren’t viral because they’re on YouTube or Digg or because your business is on MySpace - at some point someone looked at how these services spread and how they let some things spread and said ‘that’s what viral marketing is.’ But it’s not. Viral marketing refers to the ways in which ideas spread - no service can guarantee viral marketing. You can use these things (and others including real life human interaction) to increase the chance that your idea will become viral, but things aren’t viral from the start - they have to spread first.

If you really want to know what viral marketing is, read Unleashing the idea virus - it’s free.

I didn’t want to miss two website Wednesdays in a row - so here’s a quick look at a service I recently started using. Warning: I have no idea if this works in ie, though I imagine it does. Warning 2: If you’re using ie, stop.

MyStickies is a newish service that lets you put sticky notes all over the web. When you hear that it may seem kind of boring, but it’s really helpful. I’m using it to help critique both my own sites and sites that I’m helping people with. It’s a great on the fly way to make notes of things you would (or need to) change on a page without having to actually do the editing - very helpful if you need a client’s approval first. I’m sure there are other uses, but I’d bet this would be the most helpful, and where MyStickies will find its niche. I don’t know if MyStickies knows or thinks that - the site itself says ’say goodbye to bookmarks’ - but I have no intent of using this as a bookmarking system.

So far I really like it and if you’re in the business of web consulting or SEO/SEM I think it’s a must have.

Grade: This will change the way I use the web.

Both Microsoft and Mozilla launched new browsers in what is likely the most important battle on the web. Some would contend the mobile space or the web office race are more important - but without the browser none of it happens, so this is really what matters. I’d say Mozilla won round one of the new browser wars - Firefox had superior technology and innovation compared to ie 6, the proof of that can be seen in ie’s new version, most of which is just an attempt to get up to speed with mozilla.

So who will win this round? If you’re talking about number of users I think it will be ie, I hate to say it because it won’t win me over and it won’t win the tech community over - but many average users (read businesses in non-high tech) will likely stick with ie. With version 7 ie has eliminated a number of distinctions that have won firefox fans - most notably tabbed browsing. I just went back to work in an office that uses ie6, and by far the most annoying thing about it is the 4-10 browsers I have open all the time. Eliminating this will eliminate the need to switch for a large percentage of users. ie also has some add-ons that do exactly what a lot of the most popular firefox extensions do, further showing that ie is an attempt to catch up, and further reducing the chances of a non-firefox user switching.

But, forget about what ie does right. It is slow, it doesn’t have all the extensions that firefox has and never will, it charges for some add-ons, and can’t match the branding of firefox. - all it’s doing is playing defense there’s very little innovation in this release that didn’t come from mozilla. Not too mention FF has come with some new features as well - it wasn’t just a ui update. Perhaps my favorite and the most useful (that I’ve seen so far) is the built in spell-check. In the age of user generated content, we’re constantly filling in forms - whether they’re reviews or comments I’m faced with forms everyday - having a spell check that runs in real time is great.

My diagnosis - stick with Firefox (new version here). I don’t like the new ie, it was a headache to deal with some new css issues (still dealing with one) - but I’ll be extremely happy to see it in the office.

Interesting note - I just checked my stats for Lopico from the last 3 months, I still have visitors using ie 4 - I wonder what Lopico looks like in ie4?

I started working again today, so far so good. I will likely be leading the charge on putting content into RSS and or blogging so that should be interesting – can’t really say too much more.

The new format of the blog seems to be working well. Readership is increasing and it’s easier for me to blog everyday. I probably prefer a less structured approach, but there certainly are advantages to the structure – and I will tweak the structure if need be.

Not much to say from the Motask, Lopico, or BCO front. I’ve made some minor design changes to Lopico but haven’t added anything new in a few weeks (I also found an error that I’m fixing right now, but I don’t really want to brag about that). I’m thinking I might try to sell motask in the coming weeks – I don’t have to time to do with it what I’d like but I don’t just want to shut everyone out that uses it. BCO needs some momentum – interestingly more people have bookmarked the event in del.icio.us than have signed up. I haven’t done much with BCO yet, other than getting it blogged on Brewed Fresh Daily – one of Ohio’s most popular blogs. If you’re interested pleas sign the wiki.

Newbs and Exes - blogs/feeds I have started reading or have stopped reading this week
In:
Mike Davidson
Threadless Weekly

Out:
AU Blog
Riding Rails
Marketing Vox

All that with 33 minutes left before Tech News Tuesday.

It’s Hawaiian shirt day, I know you’ve been waiting all week for this, but really you shouldn’t read on. This post may ruin your life.

There’s a site called vNES - it’s an NES emulator that is available online without anything to download. 275 (and growing) original nintendo games are available to play in seconds. If you’re like me this site will ruin your productivity for at least five hours the first time you visit. Afterwards you’ll decide this site is not ever to be seen again if you ever want to get anything done. But - it’s Hawaiian shirt day - so enjoy!

The best blogs have a unique voice. The first thing you need to do when you start a blog is pick your voice. Is it going to be serious, light-hearted, witty, comical? You decide, but decide and stick to it. You’ll be better off for it.

Good Examples: Valleywag and Trizle

By choosing a voice your blog will stand out from the millions of others on the same topic. This isn’t anything new, if you want to have a successful product it needs to reflect a certain personality. There’s no real reason to think that you should be marketing your blog any differently.

I don’t believe that everyone should blog, but if you’re going to, make it worth reading. Have I done the best job of this? I’m not entirely sure, but I think I’m getting there.

Yes it’s interesting that so many new sites have come from former PayPal employees, but would it hurt to do an article like this about non-sillicon valley companies? It could be summed up as follows:

1. You need a strong network to succeed.
2. People that used to work at PayPal have a strong network.
3. People that used to work at PayPal are succeeding.

Shocking I know. Haven’t we heard enough about these overly hyped ex-PayPalers. With the exception of YouTube, none of them have really rocked the world in any noteworthy ways. The others have built great networks not great technologies. I’ve heard enough of this, I’m ready to hear what’s coming from places not called silicon valley.

The lesson this piece seems to send is that it matters less what the product is and more who’s behind it. A sad state, but that’s reality. And that lesson is part of the reason I’m trying to help get the Ohio tech community to come together. I may not like the lesson, but it’s one that people outside the valley need to learn.

—————————————
NYT - It pays to have firends in the valley
GigaOm - The PayPal Mafia
Valleywag - By our powers combined, we are Captain PayPal!

Hooray, it’s Tech News Tuesday. This is the last of the first posting for my new daily categories, so the feeds for each day will be up by the end of the week (day?). So here’s how Tech News Tuesday (TNT) works, first I point to a couple stories I found interesting in the past week, then if I feel like it I’ll post re: things happening today. Ready?

1. I don’t really listen to Howard Stern but for those that do: Howard’s going to stream his show to the internet for free for a couple days. I don’t know how I feel about this, seems to be another instance of Sirius saying ‘this howard thing isn’t working out.’ A little bit desperate and an attempt to get people to care about Howard again when really we don’t need him.
2. Not really news, but you’re not the only one that thinks LinkedIn Sucks. Coding Horror has a nice write up of the frustrations of LinkedIn. I’ve been on LinkedIn for just over a week and from a user stand point I really don’t think it’s the best (but I’ll save that for website wednesday).
3. Judy’s Book made a bit of a switch from primarily local reviews focused to increased local deals focus, and at first the users got angry. It reminded me of the Digg and FaceBook threatened user revolts of earlier this year. However, JB’s damage control was pretty great.
4. And I think Google bought some sort of Tube company.

More to come…

Starting off with BarCampOhio - the wiki is at least up, I haven’t done anything for this yet. Still trying to feel this one out. I’m reading up on best practices and we’ll see what happens. Anyone that would like to participate should go to barcamp.org/BarCampOhio

First Posts on BCO: Web 2.O-H-I-O | Wake up 2.0

On Commenting
Most of my blog readers are, well, readers, not participants and not commenters. That’s fine, but if you’re also a blogger you should comment. I have a new policy on the site: anyone who comments and links to their blog gains me as a reader. I upgraded WordPress and K2 the other day, which led to me loosing some style info and then eventually changing all of the style and updating some options - while I was at it I put my new blog reading policy in place. I’m only one reader, but if you write well enough I may just throw some links your way.

Speaking of me reading blogs…
I decided that part of MyStuff monday (still playing with the format) will be me linking to new blogs I’ve subscribed to or ones I’ve stopped reading. For this week:

In:
A Sack of Seattle
Center Networks
David Beach’s blog
Korea Crunch
Marketing Profs
Somewhat Frank
Tell Ten Friends

Out:
GigaOm

Actually an unusual week, I don’t normally add this many blogs in a week. I’m guessing some of these won’t be around long.

Today’s Friday, my new day off from posting about anything serious nerdy. Today, my Girlfriend’s dog, Lucy, turns 1. She is an adorable puggle (pug beagle mix) and a lot of fun but not exactly well behaved. We were going to have a party for her but then we’d be those people that throw parties for their dogs; I don’t know if I could deal with that.

Update: I’m not sure blogging about it is any less lame than having a party.

Just because something worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. In fact, it probably means that it won’t work.

Think about why “hot” marketing tactics work. They work because they haven’t been seen before. The amount of time it takes to write a book about hot marketing tactics is probably about the amount of time it takes for that tactic to become mainstream and thus just more noise. The more things that are thrown at consumers the less time it will take for good ideas to become noise.

Example: “I can use MySpace to attract thousands of users for my new website.”

If you were the first person to do this congratulations; if you’re going to try it now - forget about it. MySpace has so much spam that I’ll never read anything from anyone trying to send out a message about their business.

Example 2: “I’ll put my site on Digg and get thousands of visitors to my site.”

Not anymore, unless you have enough people to help you kick off the digg. There are so many sites being put on Digg that the majority of sites are viewed as noise, even if they are much better than the stuff that actually makes it on the home page.

What should you do?

1. Come up with the next trend - the toughest option
2. Use timeless tactics not trends - such as interacting with your community of users
3. Use timeless tactics in modern ways - Blogging is trendy, but to me it’s not a trend it’s just a new way to do things you should have already been doing.
4. Stop relying on what other people say. I love to read marketing books, but if that’s all you rely on your already one step behind.
5. Don’t be afraid to fail - some of your ideas won’t work but that’s okay as long as you keep trying.
6. You tell me, add your advice in the comments and I’ll add it to this post

Smalltown.com launched the other day, and I’ll call it Yalp! Yalp, is an acronym for “yet another local player” - but unlike some of the good local players I don’t really like what Smalltown is doing.

To me it just doesn’t make sense. Smalltown is built in Flash and can be an intense page load. Yet it’s targeted at small towns. Sure small towns are coming around to this whole broadband thing, but in general people in small towns spend less time online and are more likely to have dial-up connections. Furthermore, flash is a tricky issue for search engines. Smalltown seems to have some of that figured out, but with such a heavy amount of local traffic coming from search I don’t think it makes sense to risk the search optimization.

My website wednesdays can only get one of two grades either “this will change how I use the web” or “fail”

Grade: Fail.

I’m making a change to my blog and you will likely either hate it or love it - I’m putting my blog on a schedule. Here’s the schedule:

Monday……. My Stuff (Lopico, etc.)
Tuesday…… Tech News
Wednesday.. Websites (not created by me)
Thursday….. Thoughts on Marketing
Friday……… Hawaiian shirt day

This is part of my continued focus on clarity, simplicity, and time management. I imagine this will lead me to write more which may make you happy - and you’ll know what to expect which should make you happy.

I’ll also make feeds available for each day of the week so you can get just what you like.

Look for the first Website Wednesday to come soon.

You may have noticed in that last post, written seconds ago, that I signed it Josh. No one really calls me J.D. except people I know from the web. It’s time to change that. I initially started the J.D. thing when I started Lopico as a way to keep my personal and professional lives separate, but now when I meet people they look for Josh Amer on the web and come up with nothing. So from now on it’s Josh or Joshua only please.

I almost started a new business today, but stopped myself. Instead I took a job. Part-time marketing very flexible, with a great company that I worked for before. I just need to focus. In all that I do. Right now I’m:

• In law school full time
• Running Lopico - though I do less than in previous years
• Running Motask - though I do very little
• Doing some search consulting
• Blogging
• Hopefully helping out with BarCampOhio
• Going back to work in an office
• Trying to find a job for next year
• and trying to live a normal life

It’s a lot to do (especially the whole law school thing) but it’s manageable as long as I focus.

I’m going to write a couple of posts in the near future about things that I do to stay on top of things, but for now let’s just go with one shameless plug:

Motask - simple mobile to-do lists. It really is a great tool for me. I add things to my to-do list on the go and then check them out when I’m at home or school and can do something about it. It’s not the most complex to-do list (in fact it’s probably the least) but that’s all I need - simplicity.

- Josh (who you may know as J.D. or possibly Joshua)

Update: I am now fully back to bloglines, but to be fair Google Reader does have a mobile version which I said that it did not.

A great weekend in Chicago has brought a decision in the new reader contest - I’m switching back to Bloglines. In the end the “m” was the the difference - as in m.bloglines.com. I don’t think any of the other contestants have a mobile version. I wasn’t in Chicago for any business or school purpose, I didn’t really want to think about web stuff for one weekend, so I left my laptop at home; having mobile bloglines, mobile gmail, lopico mobile marks (though I never got to go to the place I bookmarked), and motask I could get pretty much everything done that I needed to - and those that I couldn’t I put on motask. Mobile is becoming more and more essential for me as the way I work evolves. In mobile things need to be simple, quick, and they have to work. Rojo has a nice feature set but all I really want is a way to read when ever and where ever, for that Bloglines seems to be the clear winner.

Sidenote on Chicago: I don’t know what number trip this was to Chicago, but I finally tried a Chicago Style hot dog, though I couldn’t get the GF to have one I found it delicious. The city is one of my favorites, and a place I’d like to call home someday - just need one of those ‘real job’ things.

If you read my blog regularly you’ll know that I’m a big Rojo fan, even after the first round of problems following the acquisition I still praised the reader. But now I’m just unhappy with Rojo, it’s down too much and some of the changes don’t really work for me. So savvy readers of jdamer.com which feed reader should I move to? I used Bloglines in the past and I like it because it just works, but I’m also a fan of the underdog. I don’t think the poll will show up in most readers (any?) so please come to the site and vote. Thanks.

I’ve been playing on the FeedBurner site a bit more as of late and found a very useful feature that lets you put your feed headlines in your email signature. That’s genius. I know of at least one of my readers that will love that. And yeah it’s cool for bloggers, but that’s not how I’m going to use it. You may remember that I recently started publishing all Lopico reviews in RSS - now I have a FeedBurner feed for those reviews, so now I can stick them in my email. It’s something different that will stand out in my emails and help spread the word about Lopico. I’m pretty happy about that.

One problem, it doesn’t work in Gmail (as far as I can tell).

Interesting comment on my last post. To summarize I’m not the only Ohioan who thinks about web 2.0. The commenter, Bob from Fuzzy Content, talked about (perhaps in jest) BarCamp Ohio. I’m into the idea and I’d really like to see it happen.

According to the Web 2.0 innovation map, some Ohio sites include:
Blogcritics
NewsMob
MyEmail
WebNote
BlogPulse
PodDater
Lopico

I also believe that the Web2.0 Show (is there a new name yet?) has a Cincinnati connection.

There are also a number of prominent bloggers from Ohio. I think it could happen and if you’re interested in making it happen email me at jda{at}jdamer{dot}com.

Great podcast from Om Malik and Niall Kennedy about the reality of Web 2.0. It’s a must listen if you live in California. As I live in Akron Ohio I can say that the podcast is very accurate. You may believe that everyone knows about Skype or del.icio.us or even FireFox and the fact is you are very wrong. I’m always telling people about one service or another and most often the reaction is interest but most don’t use the internet enough to turn interest into active usage. Yes I am the only one of my friends checking his email on his cell phone at a party - maybe that’s strange to those that live in Bubbleville, CA but that’s how life is in the majority of the country.

Granted there are large variations - especially with college students - but from what I see the majority use the well known services not the ones covered on TechCrunch (of course I find myself using the ones covered on TC less and less as the incremental value of services offered seems to be dropping - but that’s a different post). If I have time I think I’d like to interview people from Akron about their knowledge about different web sites, I think it would be beneficial to my readers, and very interesting for me as well.

Web 2.0 Reality Check

Is anyone really surprised by ESPN Mobile’s failure?? Think about it, to whom was this targeted? A very small niche to be sure. You might say that it is targeted to men - a very large niche, but you can’t just target men when it comes to mobile phones. Lets take me for example, I use Sprint my girlfriend uses Sprint therefore we get to call each other anytime without any effect to either plan. If I switched to ESPN mobile.. no such luck. So, unless you can get the female to switch to a new network that allows free calling to ESPN the male won’t switch either.

I’ve been in this relationship for over 4 years so maybe the target is men that are not married or in serious relationships - the niche gets smaller, it becomes single guys. It feels like a long time since I could call myself a truly single guy but I think I remember the things I did back then - most of which did not involve surfing the internet on my cell phone. More importantly I look at my friends that are about my age and single, and I don’t see them surfing the web on their phones. Most of the time they are at work (where they have computers), at their apartments (where they have computers), or out with their friends (and if there’s an important enough sporting event, they are at bars, where ESPN is on TV). So when, would these guys enjoy mobile ESPN? I suppose the ones that don’t have to drive to work could enjoy it when they are on their walk or ride to work, but is that enough to justify the switch?? Most Americans don’t use the mobile internet or really even know about it, and some that have find the experience very limiting.

Now the niche again gets limited to single guys that love sports and use the internet on their phones. That’s pretty small but maybe there are some that would go for it. But there’s one more qualification: they have to be in the market for a new phone and new provider. Most everyone I know gets sucked in to a two year contract, myself included, so I’m not really looking for a new provider just because a new provider came out.

The niche keeps getting smaller and I haven’t really gotten to the worst flaw. What does ESPN know about being a mobile provider?? If I’m in that group that is in the market for a “new” provider I’m going to go with one that I know I can rely on. I’m going to chose the provider with the best service - what does anyone know about ESPN mobile in terms of service?? Nothing.

So now we have a complete look at who the typical Mobile ESPN niche customer was:

• A sports fan that
• uses the mobile internet
• Is in the market for a new phone
• Is most likely single, and
• Is willing to take a chance on an unproven network

And somehow it failed.

BusinessWeek has recently released the results of its best of the web poll. The results are not exactly what I’d expect especially Become.com taking first in the buying and selling category. I’ve never really checked out become before, perhaps I should take a look at it.

- JDA

Lopico turns two-ish today. This is the 2 yr anniversary of my registering of the domain, however the site did not actually come online until December. A lot has changed since then, and more continues to change. In fact since the relaunch of Lopico in July I’ve even changed a handful of things; I added search in some cities, RSS feeds for reviews, mobile bookmarks, and there are two more announcements today which you can read about on the Lopico Blog.

Oh yeah, it’s Google’s birthday too. Happy b-day Google. Lopico relies on a couple google services including one you’ll read about in the Lopico Blog - so I’m happy to share the birthday. I just hope Lopico makes it to year 8.

I recently signed up for a new social bookmarking service thinking that maybe I could use some of the other features that it offered that del.icio.us doesn’t. This service also has a nice UI and seemingly easy integration with del.icio.us. But, it didn’t work. Here’s the run down of events:

1. I sign up for new service
2. I try to activate and get an error. It looks like a misspelling in a line code.
3. I email someone at the company to tell them, which is what I’d want if it happened on one of my sites.
4. I get an email back telling me what I thought happened didn’t happen and that my account is now active. No sign of appreciation of my effort to bring this to their attention.
5. Despite better judgment, I start using the service.
6. MySql errors continually pop up as I try to use the service. This time I don’t bother trying to help.
7. 2 days later I get an email asking why I haven’t yet activated the service even though I had previously received an email telling me my account was activated.
8. I decide to stick with del.icio.us.

Do we really need anything special with bookmarks? Isn’t the point of a bookmarking site to get you to the information you want as quickly as possible? If that’s the point then the UI should be simple and the features shouldn’t be overwhelming. A little work on the UI will be inviting to some, but the bottom line is: It just has to work.

I’m big into data, a numberphile perhaps, that’s just part of the reason Screenwerk may just be my favorite blog. Why aren’t you reading it? Bloglines says that there are 41 bloglines readers - assuming that’s nearly half (though personally I have more Rojo subscribers than anything) that’s not enough.

– Speaking of Rojo - the new version is great and worth the downtime over the weekend. I recommend signing up for it if you need a better reader.

I wouldn’t have called it that but, check out this article from Wharton if you’re interested in the business of social networks. I agree with most of this article, and would add that it makes for a more difficult media buy the more you change your audience.

Forgive me, I know I’m posting like crazy today, but…

I’m looking for a blog search engine to partner with me on a project. I’m sending out emails, but sometimes I get the best response if I just blog what I’m looking for. Any companies interested email jda[at]jdamer[dot]com. Thanks.

First : Part 1

I came out of the ‘blogging for business’ event with more or less the same view as I had going into it. I suppose it was a good basic introduction to blogging, but didn’t really get into blogging for business if you ask me. Overall I thought it was great to see the interest in blogging coming from the business community, but I still have the fear that too many blogs will miss the point.

Sorry this wasn’t a better post, my views were unswayed.

Why does everyone in tech think that myspace is doomed to fail?

The answers tend to have something to do with either 1) the design or 2) the purpose.

This leads me to one of three conclusions:
1. Yes, it will fail
2. Design doesn’t really matter
3. Those that question it don’t understand it

It may fail but not for a while

If myspace fails it will be because something else came along that was exactly like myspace, but has a better network. I didn’t say better design and didn’t say better (read: more professional) purpose. I’ve criticized MySpace in the past, but the fact is I now use it more than any other Social site (except my own). It succeeds because it has the right network of people. I’ve never once used the site to flirt with someone and I don’t stalk people, but yes I like it. It simply helps me stay in touch with some of my friends - what’s wrong with that purpose? The problem is that the criticizers of the site seem to have the negative opinion before they ever even try it.

It doesn’t have to look good, it doesn’t have to be the best, it just has to work.

And that MySpace does very well. Working in a social context means having the members to allow socialization, no one does this better than MySpace (at least not yet).

see also:

del.icio.us - compared to other social bookmarking sites del.icio.us is probably the ugliest and compared to some lacks features (though it is very close and exceeds most) - but del.icio.us has the strength of the network. I’ve been trying out a new social bookmarking service, but unlike del.icio.us I can’t explore other bookmarks based on what I’ve tagged nearly as well - the network just isn’t there.

What does this mean for good design??

Nothing, good design will still be a great asset to any site - but it won’t take you very far if you don’t have the network.

Why did I blog this: I’m tired of stories like this from Wired and all of the others on the web that just don’t get it.

I’m going to attend a corporate blogging presentation/dinner tonight, and thought that I’d share my ideas about corporate blogging pre-event and then do a recap after the event.

Here’s how I feel about corporate blogging now:

1. Blogging won’t work for most companies.

Most companies that choose to blog will do it incorrectly. Blogging incorrectly for a corporate blog means making your corporate blog little more than another place to dump your press releases. There has to be some value added. I imagine many of the companies that blog will try it (incorrectly) not have any success and then say that blogging is just hype and doesn’t actually work.

2. Corporate blogs will be overly cautious and underly (that can’t be a word) valuable.

The secret to success of blogs is that they start conversations. Too many Corporations seem to fear conversation - they don’t want to just let people say stuff, what if they say something bad? Unfortunately, if you don’t let the conversation take place your blog falls into the ‘just another place to dump press releases’ category and no one will read it. This level of caution leads to only safe topics being addressed and in the end nothing is gained.

3. Listening to other bloggers is more important than what your own blog says

I cannot stress this point enough. Reading a blog by someone within a company is probably going to be borring, dull, safe material. Others will not hold back in what they say about your or your company. These are the posts to embrace. By addessing a blogger on their blog you will 1) make them feel special and 2) find out where your problems are and perhaps how to coreect them.

4. Most companies will miss out on the fact that blogs are supposed to be interactive.

Again, if you don’t let them talk you’re just pushing more content without the value added of customer input.

5. The best corporate blogs will rarely mention the company to which they belong, instead they will offer insight into the industry as a whole.

Companies are supposed to help people aren’t they? Every succesful company can say we help people do X… even if that X is “look good.” So tell people how it is that they can better do X on their own, and when the time comes for them to buy something to help them do X, you can be sure that they will go to the company that has always been there helping them.

Recap: Listen, take risks, and above all provide some type of value.

- J.D. Amer

Way back, before I even had a wordpress blog, I blogged about the Pontiac ad that ends with Google Pontiac to find out more. I thought that it made sense, but…it doesn’t seem to work. Looking at Google trends, it doesn’t appear that the ad has made any impact on the search volume. The fluctuation in search volume seems to be consistent with all prior search data. So, what’s point??

It generated some buzz, but apparently not enough to change customer behavior. As I said in the earlier post, it seems to be more of a recognition of the new norm, rather than a really inspiring move. The problem as I see it, is the Pontiac site. If Googling pontiac took me to some really great site (not the same old car site that every brand has) then the campaign would be exciting. The campaign needs to hit all aspects of web presence, from the initial search to the eventual site interaction, and even interaction on other sites (youtube, myspace, etc) - otherwise don’t expect anything to change.

I actually was a little excited that Jason commented on my last post, not necessarily OMG excited (since I would never say that in real life) but it says a lot about the guy. A lot more than can be said for many business leaders. The majority of sites that I’ve raved about or criticized have never gotten a response from anyone inside the site. Whether you like Jason or hate him, you should take a couple of lesson from him - 1) listen to what is being said and 2) fight for your product.

Regarding the actual comment, I responded, but it did get me thinking about whether I blindly accept that Netscape is backwards because of all the bad press or whether it actually is flawed. As far as his opinion on Sanger, he may be right - he may not be the right man for the job. I liked Sanger’s class, but I was one of the few. More than anything I think that he had trouble communicating with the average student. In one session he went as far as to tell the class that we wouldn’t be able to understand the reading that he assigned. If you’re going to build a product for the masses make sure that is accessible to them.

- J.D. Amer

My two cents on Wikipeda co-founder (and my former ethics professor) Larry Sanger getting back in to the web:

1. It reminds me a lot of Netscape - some backwards thinking in what should be a freely controlled space.
2. I distinctly remember one class in which Sanger said that he left Wikipedia because there was no money in it - I expect this to have more of a business purpose.

—
Side Note: Why isn’t anyone talking about Rojo being offline? - Hope it’s back soon, I’m sure it has something to do with the six apart acquisition.

What better to do on a friday than make RSS feeds. Today I added RSS to motask and Lopico.

Motask’s RSS is limted because of privacy regarding to-do lists, you can only get the feed to work properly as a live bookmark. Perhaps more importantly, I also added RSS to Lopico Reviews. I did this to make it easier for businesses owners to find out when their business has been reviewed.

Motask day 1 was pretty successful. Certainly the most succesful launch that I’ve done.

The day started with Motask on eHub (thanks Emily!) and later it was picked up on Download Squad and Genbeta (which seems to be a very popular Spanish Tech Blog).

Overall a good first day, and hopefully it will only get better from here. The only bad note from Day 1, was that my decision to make the lowest possible investment in this site led one person on del.icio.us to comment that it was slow (and it was slow in the middle of the day yesterday). I may have to upgrade in the near future.

What seems to help motask more than anything is that it’s just simple. A lesson for all, and one that we should already know.

- J.D. Amer - of Lopico and motask

Last time I said that I had just passed post number 100, now I’m wondering if that’s enough. At least enough in the way that I currently blog. Honestly, blogging makes little sense to me in the traditional format of 1 person 1 blog. That’s simply not enough. It works for some but for some people working together with others will just work better. I enjoy this blog, but when I did SportsNoise I 1) had more fun 2) had more readers 3) had more fresh original content and 4) had a lot more comments and better conversations. By leveraging the power of 7-8 bloggers with 7-8 different networks I was able to pull more people into that blog; the conversations were better and the experience was better. So here are my proposals for my continuation of blogging:

1. Ditch jdamer.com and form a new blog with at least one other person.
2. Create a mega-feed of my blog plus other blogs
3. Get another writer or 2 for this blog (but then the name doesn’t really make sense)
4. Do more to reach out to my readers and let them blog on my blog
5. Same as number 1, but keep this for purely personal purposes
6. Join another blogger’s blog - anyone looking for a writer??
7. Status Quo

What happens next? I’m not sure, I’m just starting to think about tjis. Anyone that is interested in pursuing any of these ideas let me know.

- J.D. Amer

It seems like I’ve been blogging for a while, but this actually marks post number 100 for me on this blog (at least according to wordpress - which I think counts other pages such as this one). Anyway, let’s celebrate. As I did with the new Lopico, I’m going to give my loyal readers a sneak peak at my new site which will launch within the next week (the latest it will be is the 18th). Motask, which I’ve been hinting at since I started creating it on Aug 28th, is a very simple mobile task manager. You may be thinking that 2 weeks is not a very long time to work on an app before pushing it out, but actually my total work time is something more like 10 hours, it’s just that simple of a program.

I use it all of the time, and for me it just makes sense. I tend to split my work between 2 computers (more like 3 since I run linux and windows on one of them) and spend a lot of time away from my computers as well, having a task management solution that is everywhere that I am has been a great experience. After I started writing the program I did come across one pretty good alternative, but found it too complex for the small screen - hence the focus on simplicity. I really like it and hope that you will too. I have a few more things to do (mainly emails) before I can go ahead with a full launch, but for now if you’d like to try it out you can start at http://www.motask.com/demo.php from there you can just play with it or follow the links to create an account.

What about a business model you ask? I’m pretty new to the mobile game so I really think that I need to get a better feel for the market before rushing to the business model. I can imagine one or two models emerging from this, if it gains any traction, but for now just enjoy it… I also wouldn’t be opposed to selling it.

- J.D. Amer

It’s no secret that Digg and Facebook - two of the most publicized social sites - have faced backlash from some users as of late. Digg is angering only a few, while facebook has angered the masses. The problem is that Digg gets it strength from a few and FB gets its strength from those mind-numb masses. We’ve all seen the numbers of FB users joining the ‘new FB sucks’ groups, I was invited to join one myself (and no I didn’t join), and it seems that most of the users are joining the groups the same way that they joined FB… without any real thought.

The FB situation is bleak, many say that 400,000 is just a drop in the bucket, but enough wrong drops and 100’s of thousands turn into millions. And I don’t care who you are, no one likes to lose 100s of thousands of users. [Palopia are you listening - launch NOW!] To make matters worse, the Facebook blog has essentially told users, ‘you don’t like it, and we don’t care.’ That may not be what the blog post was going for but that’s certainly how it comes off. Starting the post with Calm Down, is enough to turn most users off - turn down the arrogance or lose your base. Remember you’re trying to flip a site for $2B based on the strength of the network, lose the network and you lose everything. Am I overreacting, yes, but so are all of the users that are joining the anti-FB groups. Who wants to buy a product that has an ever growing chunk of users pledging their hatred for the product? Either look confident and lose your users or look like you care about those users and re-gain their loyalty. I don’t know how long I’ve been hearing about how loyal of a user base the FB users are (based on how often they visit the site) - that loyalty only lasts as long as you give them what they want. Sure the numbers have been good in the past few days - but that’s similar to the Digg effect, people are going just to see what the buzz is about. Speaking of Digg effect…

Digg on the other hand is in great shape. Get rid of the users that are gaming the system and the system gets better. I applaud the efforts. I’ve recently had to put in some extra security that prevents users from gaming Lopico and I couldn’t be happier with the results. Digg is for the masses, when it starts being about a few you have to change. The confusion is with the power users that thought that they could game Digg forever, and that think that there aren’t users #20-30 who would love to take their spot as the highest ranked Digg users. This is probably the first positive Digg post I’ve done in a while, because this is the first move I’ve seen from Digg in a while that gets them closer to what they claim to be - socially driven news made by the masses.

Digg Blog: Digg Friends
Facebook Blog: Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.

- J.D. Amer is guy from akron who is about to launch motask.com

Am I missing it? Google Analytics is my analytics program of choice, but I don’t think that I’ll be able to use it for my new web app. Why? Becuase it’s mobile and Google doesn’t seem to address the mobile analytics market. I use my new program at least 10 times per day on my phone, yet Google doesn’t track this. I’ve found one option, but it’s not free. Damn Google’s got me used to everything being free. I would be inclined to think that it has more to do with the mobile browser than the analytics tool, but with the claim of the one company that I was able to find, I’m guessing that I’m wrong.

I’m a big believer that the true strength in corporate blogging comes less from having a corporate blog and more from watching what others blog - I’ve been lucky enough to have some companies reach out to me because of what I’ve blogged, it would be great if an analytics company could help me out here.

- J.D. Amer is a guy that needs a better mobile analytics program.

Little Blogging time leads to lists of interesting topics, do with them what you will.

1. ZapTXT - Site allows you to track RSS via sms. I blogged a different way to do this, but my way (yahoo! sms alerts + Technorati Watchlists) requires a few steps. This is an all in one resource, and probably works better. Anytime you can eliminate steps in a process your users will be happier and more likely to use your product. I’m going to give ZapTXT a shot.

2. Seo Keyword Intro Videos (1)(2) - I’m always happy to plug an Akronite (and to be clear this Akronite has no idea that I’m going to blog this) - I came across a couple of great SEO intro videos from a local Akron SEM firm. If your interested in refining your search engine optimization process (or more likely you don’t have one) check out these two videos. This is an almost identical process to one that I used at an Akron Law Firm, and it works.

3. My new app - I’m building a new mobile app, anyone interested in testing email jda[at]jdamer[dot]com. The initial feedback from my current tester (singular) is very positive, as is the feedback from those that I’ve shown it to. I’m using it all of the time and it’s really helping my productivity - planning to publicly launch the first extremely simple version sometime next week - I really only need about 3 more hours of coding and then it should be ready, just a matter of finding those hours.

- J.D. Amer

I created a new app this morning in about an hour. I really wanted it when I was about to go to bed last night. My computer was turned off but there was something I wanted to do online…I wanted to get some sleep and new that if I turned my PC back on I would be up at least another hour. If there was a mobile solution to my problem I wasn’t aware of it… so I created one this morning. For now it’s only accessible to me, and I’m not going into any details, but if you want to try it out just email me [jda at jdamer dot com]. As I said I created it in one hour, it’s very simple, but very helpful to a certain niche.

.. one more thing, law School resumes today. You can expect either a lot more posts or a lot less depending on how the semester goes.

J.D. Amer - just another akronite.

Original Signal is the latest site to pool a large number of popular web 2.0 blogs in one place - it looks nice and it’s a decent gateway, but I already subscribe to most of these feeds so it’s lost on me (and personally I wouldn’t count 37signals as a web2 blog).

What I want is a mass feed of all the blogs from all of the ‘web2.0′ sites. Almost every site on this list has a blog, take all of these feeds mash them into one and I’ll get my news that way. The bloggers on Original Signal are all great bloggers/podcasters but there’s no way that they’ll get all of the news from all of the web2 sites, in fact they’ll probably miss something great from one of the lesser known sites.

…and I’d call it FeedRita.

J.D. Amer

Great post by Eric Sink on what I’ll call ‘the difference between marketing and being loud.’ The problem with it as I see it, is the problem that Digg may run into. The gist of the post is that if you build a great product for a small group the group will talk, and before long you’ll have more buzz than you know what to do with - that’s pretty much what happened to Digg / Del.icio.us / etc.

The problem with Digg (relating to the post I pointed to yesterday) is that the group has gotten too defensive. It’s nearly impossible to get into the Digg Elite. If I wanted to become a Digg fanatic I don’t know that I could… it would take far too much effort to become one of the Digg elite (a digger that can get a 5 digg story on the homepage). To me Digg is almost a closed network.

Designing for a few is great, but make sure that the community is open to newcomers. Maybe this is part of the reason that Digg expanded beyond tech. Unfortunately, the same going to keep happening with each topic.

It’s an interesting problem and one that I don’t think has a perfect answer yet… Make it easy for newbies, but reward the long time users - someone will figure it out.

J.D. Amer is a guy that dreams bigger and thinks smaller everyday. — I’m going to start adding a signature to every post, here’s why.

For the past two days I’ve been working on search integration for Lopico, and it’s good enough… in fact it could be up, but it’s not perfect. I’m having some design problems (ie of course) and there is at least one feature I’d like to add, so it will have to wait. It’s too easy to go with good enough. If Lopico is going to be as succesful as I’d like it to be, I can’t settle (like I used to) for good enough. Of course, I’m very serioulsy considering selling lopico - so who knows.

Solicit me. I’m looking for something to blog. No I haven’t run out of topics, and I have about 10 draft posts, but who cares? Tell me what’s important to you. This can be as self-interested as you’d like. Anything. (Yes, this is an experiment for a bigger idea, and if it works I’ll go into it more)

Bored? Try these:
Downfall of Digg
The top five mistakes entrepreneurs make when they market

Some may hate this style, but I like writing in random unconnected thoughts…

1. I watched a great presentation today by Walter Sabo of Sabo Media. I should really watch more c-span. A lot of what he said in his talk about radio was very applicable to blogging. I hope that he monitors RSS feeds for Sabo because I’d love to get a hold of his power point slides from that presentation. The presentation was mainly about how radio creates engaging content, much of it is applicable to the blogosphere. I found it interesting that the conference discussing radio was called the “New Media Conference.” This post probably breaks all of the rules of engaging content, sorry. If I can’t get the slides I’ll try to do a rehash in a future post.

2. Facebook Notes is nearly unacceptable. Its very confusing that it is called notes for the sake of avoiding being called a blog, yet allows you to import blogs from other places on the web. However, since there are no RSS feeds for your notes I would have to agree that it’s not a blog. MySpace does lose any of its edge from callings its blogs blogs, or from having RSS. Either go all the way on blogs or don’t waste your users time.

3. The other day I visited Edgeio for the first time in a while. I’m still pretty unimpressed. However, I have been impressed with Mike Arrington’s lack of posts on Edgeio and any new features that it may have, he’s become very good with conflicts (he is a lawyer after all). What I’d like to see with Edgeio is an expansion into other areas. Use the same technology to do a Yahoo Answers type service — I want to tag something question and have someone give me an answer. I often see people blogging looking for an answer from their readers - the market exist, the technology exists, it’s time they met.

4. Very cool moment the other day when I heard that the Grotto on Merriman had its Lopico ranking posted in the restaurant. Gave me an interesting idea… more on that someday.

5. No one reads comments, but if you were wondering if I was an idiot after my last post on Sold Signs, I think that the comments are worth a read.

Maybe 5 short posts would have been better… I’ll catch up soon.

I haven’t blogged or done much of anything online lately, because I’m in transition. There are a lot of things that I would have blogged had I been in a less transitional phase… so here is the quick version:

1. Scoble is 100% correct. It’s weird but bad fonts really hurt the linux experience. I’m still using Ubuntu, but that little extra would make a huge difference.

2. 355 is okay. Seth Godin has a web 2.0 traffic list and Lopico comes in at 355, I’m okay with this but only because my rank tanked when I took the site offline. Needless to say this wasn’t the best time for these results to come out. Lately the traffic rank has been top 30K, which would put me up in the 230 range. Of course, I don’t believe in Alexa data too much.

3. SocialMeter. I wanted something like this a while ago, glad to see it has arrived.

4. I will release a new version of Lopico Mobile in a couple of days, this one is called Mobile Marks. It’s a way to access your Lopico bookmarks on your phone. m.lopico.com

5.Random Thought: What good are sold signs? Don’t they prevent people that are looking to buy a house from calling you? I guess getting sellers must be more important than buyers.

hope that holds you until next time…

I’ve been using Ubuntu almost exclusively on my laptop, and it’s good, but it’s still Linux. What’s wrong with being Linux? Nothing, unless you’re in the 99% of the population that believes that everything should just work automatically and you shouldn’t have to compile any code on your OS. It’s very close to being as easy to use as a Windows or Mac OS, but that little barrier will be too much for most. This is not a mainstream product.

Despite its minor flaws Ubuntu is a very nice and easy to use Linux distribution. The installation could not have been easier, and to make the transition even more seamless, you can run the OS off a CD before you decide to install it. The installer does everything for you, it makes a partition and installs with very little action required from the user. Once the system is installed, it continues to be very easy.

Easy is good and all, but what really matters is speed an reliability. It boots faster than XP and thus far I have had no problems running it. Firefox runs quickly, which is perhaps the most important aspect, since it is far and away my most frequently used app. In fact, it seems to load and run faster than it does in XP, as does openoffice. Aside from FF, it comes preloaded with all the necessary replacement apps, from office productivity to instant messaging and even a few games. Better still, if something is missing it is very easy to browse and add applications (all free of course).

The only real downside is Gimp. It’s an alright image editing app, but it is by no means as good or as easy as photoshop. Other than Gimp, I don’t feel limited in anyway by using Ubuntu, and that’s what really matters. There’s been a lot of talk about Ubuntu lately, but really best way to find out about is to try it.

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time lately in places without internet access, but I want to be informed if anyone blogs anything about Lopico. Granted, I am the person that blogs the most about Lopico, I see other posts from time to time and with all of the recent changes I’d just like to stay on top of things. Combining Yahoo Alerts and a Technorati Watchlist, I can do just that. This is great for me and even better for someone with more press - but probably not great for an extremely large amount.

First set up your technorati watchlist for the topic you’d like to have monitored. This will track all blogs that are included in the technorati index for your topic. You can get an RSS feed for the watchlist, which you’ll need for Yahoo Alerts. The link for the feed is at the bottom of the page. Alternatively you could use Google Blog search, but I’m more of a technorati fan.

Next set up a yahoo alert to go to your mobile phone. The instructions are very easy, you just need the RSS address from the first step. That’s it. Now anytime someone mentions your business in a blog, or other RSS feed, you will be notified instantly. Very easy and very useful.

Unless you are on the Technorati top 100, you need an introduction. A major reason blogs don’t get the credit that they deserve is because they lack credentials. Traditional media is regarded as credible because there are barriers to entering the market. New media does not have that barrier, at least not to the same extent. New media needs a different source of credentials, if it is going to get the credit that it deserves. So why not do what new media does and let people rate the blogs? I’m sure that there are services like this, but I can’t really recall ever seeing a reputation icon on a blog with a link to a profile of the blog, with reviews of the blog and user ratings. The closest I can think of would have to be Amazon reviews that are on Alexa - but that applies to any site. I’m considering creating a site for this purpose, but I’m currently working on 3 sites, two for other people and of course Lopico. If I don’t find out about such a service I may just try to find time to create one.

Found via Screenwerk.

The New York Times ran an article yesterday on local search. It’s interesting to me because of what it says is missing from local search: quantity. Not quantity in the number of competitors, but quantity in the number of reviews. The thinking is that it takes a large number of reviews to generate a trustworthy opinion. I would have to agree and disagree with that. Even if there are a large number of reviews, what are the chances that these reviews represent the average opinion of a customer of these businesses? I’ve accounted for that exact problem in two ways on Lopico.

First, reviews are not the core of the site. The core of the site is the listings and the votes. Before a business is even listed, someone has to take the effort to add it to the site; essentially giving the first endorsement that this is a quality business. Then the businesses are voted for, this is what really separates Lopico. It is very easy to see with one look what the best places in a city are (really only in Akron right now and a little in the other popular cities), at least much easier than other sites make it. To me reviews are an after thought, not the focus. If you want more info, check the reviews, but if you just want the mass of opinions, you don’t have to read anything. Voting is a lot easier to do than writing a review and also a lot easier for the information seeker to decipher.

Secondly, I’ve accepted the fact that reviews are going to be either really strong for or against, and have created a review system that requires a reviewer to think about both sides. I’m gong to do even more in the future in terms of user ratings but for now, the combination of votes, user experience ranking and balanced reviews is working just fine.

The Lopico account system just launched, so I don’t have a large enough user base yet (anymore?) to really compete on mass, but as it grows I believe Lopico will emerge as one of the most, if not the most, valuable resource for finding local businesses. I’ll add to that, that since Lopico relaunched on the 24th (almost two weeks ago), the site has not yet been fully reindexed on all Search Engines, in fact only about 6 cities (3%) are indexed right now (and only on Google), yet I’ve ranked first for almost 700 keywords or phrases, and close enough to the top to generate clicks on even more queries. And, these aren’t just one page view clicks, the average number of page views is around 5, with the top ranking query producing over 200 page views. That may not seem like that much, but without being indexed, search really isn’t that big of a factor right now. I’m not as bold as Barry Diller, but I think that’s a decent start.

I’m leaving Portage Lakes. Sad, and not only because I will now have to change the title of my blog. I will still be in Akron, but the owner of my house has decided to sell it. It’s been a great time living on the lake. Other than the obvious great lake location, I’ve gained a new appreciation for this part of Akron. I’ll only be about 20 minutes away but I doubt I’ll make the trip back very often… although I may make an exception for Pav’s.

In my last post I was praising yahoo answers as a place to meet potential customers, but what I really want is yabe. Yabe does not exist as far as I know, yabe is ebay backwards. I want to tell companies that I want something and then I want them to rush to tell me how low they’ll go to sell it to me (instead of selling something and seeing how much someone will pay for it). Sure it’s reverse economics, but it is the exact conversation that takes place in a b-to-b world. Not sure if it would work for b-to-c or c-to-c commerce, but it’d be an interesting concept and something I may pursue. No one is more willing to listen to your ads than the person that asks for them, that’s part of why Adwords works so well.

The real reason I want this service is because I need a new web host. My host is too bogged down, and Lopico has been moving too slowly for my taste since I relaunched. I don’t think that I need dedicated hosting yet, and I certainly can’t buy a server, so I’m just looking to move to a more powerful and less crowded shared network. There are hundreds if not thousands of hosting companies that can meet my need, so I want them to fight for my business - which they should.

Maybe I’ve missed it, enlighten me if “yabe” exists.

I’ve been playing with Yahoo! Answers a little lately, and it’s probably the best site I’ve used in a while. I’m a little late on the Yahoo! answers meme, but it’s simple and useful enough (with a large enough group of answerers) that it really is a great resource.

Sure it’s great for people with questions, but it’s even better for people with answers. The main users are people with problems, if you can solve their problems you’ve made a connection, or better yet a sale. The difference between old media and new media is the ability to reach the individual, Y! Answers is perhaps the best forum for that opportunity. You have to know what you’re talking about and you have to really give someone something that they want, but if you can do that you’ve got a better connection than you’d get from any ad.

Better still, and this is where I think Yahoo! will come in, if you see a reoccurring problem without a great answer you’ve just been handed market research for a new business. If 3000 people ask a question, then a better, more apparent, solution needs to be created. I don’t think it will be long before Yahoo creates services based on the most common questions.

The real danger with this is that it will be abused, it will become as spam ridden as a modern chat room. For now, however, it’s mainly just a great place to find anything you can’t find through Y! search or Google, and that’s more than enough.

A large number of College graduates are faced with a common problem right now: which email service should I switch to? Most universities that I know of, don’t allow students to use their .edu account forever. Instead, they ask you to set up a forwarding address within a few months of graduating. This makes sense for them in terms of storage, and it makes sense for the student in terms of no longer appearing to be a college student. Doesn’t this present a great opportunity for an email provider? And since these students are also on Facebook, wouldn’t it make sense to publicize your email solution on Facebook?

From the other side, Facebook has walls and you can leave messages, but having an embedded chat application on the site similar to what gmail offers could give Facebook something that other SNs lack - a live social interaction.

To me it seems obvious for an email provider to work with a compnay that has a large number of users in need of an email solution, but maybe I’m missing something, because I certainly haven’t seen any Gmail or other solicitations when I log in to Facebook.

DOPA, is yet another example of foolish law making restricting freedom in what is supposed to be the land of the free. First the gov’t seeks to ban online poker, now social networking sites in schools and libraries. Poker seemed to be driven by lack of tax revenue from offshore poker sites, but most popular SNs in the US are US based. So this seems to be based more on the governments desire to have Americans believe that we need the government to protect us. Banning the entire scope of SN sites is foolish. This would have been like banning all P-to-P technologies when Napster was the hot issue. The problem is that the Government cannot discriminate on an individual basis, so they either have to make the law fully applicable or the law cannot pass. This is a seriously overbroad law, it will impact all social networking sites that do not have sexual predators as well those that do. This means that a site like FaceBook (I’m assuming) would be banned from high schools, that’s pretty terrible. My Gf’s younger brother will be attending Duke this fall and thanks to FB he already has 50 or so friends at Duke. That’s pretty helpful (of course, he went to a private High School, and he probably never used FB at school, so this isn’t the best example). The gov’t however, only manages to see potential problems, and for some reason thinks that it is their responsibility to protect people from these problems even when people can do a perfectly fine job of protecting themselves. If individual schools want to restrict access to sites I don’t have a problem with that. If schools want to block things that will hinder their ability to push their academic agenda, that’s fine, but a wide-sweeping ban is irrational. The more the government restricts our ability to access the internet, the more we will fall behind in out technological advancement. I’m not sure why the government thinks restricting the internet is a good idea, when allowing full access will enable us to fully optimize the economics of the web, which will make our country richer, increase employment, and help strengthen our place in the global economy.

I really am not a big fan of talking politics (or law), but such extreme ignorance brings it out.

If you ask someone to reccomend a restaurant or a bar or a mechanic, most likely they won’t waste your time giving you the names of every possible place in your city. Instead they’ll tell you the best, they’ll direct you to where you’re going to have the best experience.

If you asked 100 people for the best place to go, you’ll most likely come out with one clear winner, and that answer will probably be better than the answer given to you by the one person in the first example.

Every city has 100s of businesses that no one would mention, they wouldn’t want to waste your time. That’s how I feel things would work in real life, so that’s how things work on Lopico. Lopico is never going to be a directory of every business in the united states or the world, it’s only going to be a directory of the ones that are worth your time - at least as long as I own it.

My initial though was to post on Ubuntu while using Ubuntu, but I can’t seem to get my wireless network set up properly. Ubuntu is pretty nice for a Linux Distribution, you can get by without using many commands which makes it very nice. Anyway, I’ll save ubuntu for some other time.

Instead, I present the greatest usage of an API of all time Hotcapcha. Finally a decent way to tell if users are really human. Source: Web2.0central.com

2 other cool sites I came across today - http://www.theweblogwire.com/ and http://www.kramkoob.com/

Web Blog wire seeks to distribute PR to Bloggers - I like this mainly because you can submit PR for free, I’ll try it out and blog if I see any sort of results.

Kramkoob is a 10 seconds of fame site, so it’s not that helpful, and certainly not sustainable long-term, but I managed a couple of visitors from it.

My side project SportsNoise has come to an end - at least for now. I plan to bring it back in football season when my writers will once again care. The writers that I had chosen for their baseball knowledge were removed for other reasons, so without any baseball posts, the summer was very slow. Football season will be better - I hope. I may need a new mix of writers but that’s okay. I really enjoyed it while it was working, but I need a little time to fix it.

Okay this will be the last on Lopico for at least 2 posts; here are a few of the new features of the site.

1. Design - completely redone, all css based, nearly table free (I’d say my design skil;s have improved, but I’m still getting better).
2. Picks - Adding places to your picks is like bookmarking them - I really like this feature, it allows me to keep all of the numbers of places that I call often on one page. Uses a little AJAX for this - see my picks.
3. Directory B - New feature that enables you to create custom categories.
4. Friends - This is sort of a social feature, and the last thing that I added - so it’s not quite perfect yet - this allows you to see reviews of people that you have added as friends.
5. hRev and hCard - Lopico now supports microformats.
6. Instant vote updating - old voting took time, this was first on my list to fix.
7. Now LAMP based - the old format wasn’t really working out, Lopico is now coded in PHP and much more functional and scalable. (I did all of the coding except AJAX code which is openly available).
8. Easier Reviews - old review used a content overlay and there was no direct link to review a business, new system is much easier and also updates automatically.
9. Homepage Experiments - I already blogged my theory on having the registration box on Lopico’s homepage, my other experiment is the “unpopular cities” - hopefully I’ll draw some attention to these cities and people will add more stuff.
10. Accounts - this may hurt more than it helps, but I’ll be able to do much more now that Lopico requires registration.

———–
Things I need to work on:
1. Creating passionate users
2. Photo Handling
3. IE7 problems
4. Social Features
5. Lopromo - local offers via RSS (only avail in Akron right now)
6. Business - I have a self serve ad program that I’m working on that will be done soon (1 ad, 1 day, 1 dollar)
7. SEO - The worst part about taking down my site for so long was that my search traffic plummeted. Luckily I think it’s even better this time around, just need to get back into all of the indexes.
8. PR / Marketing - I need to be much more active, this probably isn’t the proper forum, but there’s a lot more that I can do now that Lopico has a stronger architecture.

Last note - I submitted Lopico to TechCrunch, but doubt it will be reviewed, I know longer fit the TechCrunch niche, and that’s okay with me. If it’s on TechCrunch great, if not I understand TechCrunch is a business and should only put on the stories that are going to be the best for its business.

… no Lopico posting is going to be tough I have a lot more to say.

I put Lopico on Digg today - Digg it if you like. Thanks!

I know this blog has been very slow lately, but that’s because I’ve been working very hard on Lopico. The new version is going to go live tomorrow, but since you read my blog, you can take a peak at demo.lopico.com - not all of the data has been moved to the new version but it’s about 99% finished, all of it will be there by the end of the night. Let me know what you think either by using the feedback form on the site or email jda[at]jdamer[dot]com. Thanks.

I don’t like giving out dates and projected plans, because they always change. However, I’ve set the date of July 18th for the Lopico relaunch on the new Lopico Blog. That’s only one week away - but I think I’ll make it. I work better with a tight deadline anyway.

Too often homepages are built with the current user in mind. You build a homepage that has a place to login but registerring is on a different page. Why? Unless you are Yahoo, Google or Microsoft this doesn’t make sense. Or as Jason Fried said: unless you’re Microsoft there are always more people that aren’t using your product than people that are.

Del.icio.us does this right. There is no login on the del.icio.us homepage, but there is a place to sign up. This is something that most start-ups don’t seem to consider, and it probably hurts them. If the service is so great, the user that has already signed up won’t mind the extra click, or will check ‘remember me’ and won’t have to log in. However, the new user won’t know about your sites greatness and will be less willing to take that extra step.

My guess is that most sites don’t do it this way because that’s not what we’re used to. And the reason we’re not used to it is because the majority of us do use services from Google, yahoo, and MSFT - and for those companies it makes sense to have the login on the homepage, but only for those companies. Can you guess what will be on the new version of Lopico?

Aren’t FAQs just failures? If this question is asked so frequently I must be failing in my communication somehow. If it was immediately clear to the user I wouldn’t need the FAQ. On the old version of Lopico I not only had an FAQ page, but also a page called ‘the five thigns you need to know about Lopico.’ These five things I knew I wasn’t communicating well, but rather than change them I stuck everything in an FAQ page.

One of my goals for the next version of lopico is to eliminate the FAQ. Everything should be clear, you shouldn’t need to go for help (not that the help page was all that popular anyway), if all else fails you’ll be able to fill out a form and email it to me and I promise to answer your questions. I don’t need an FAQ page, what could have been FAQs will be explained outside of the FAQ, I’m concerned only with the unFAQ, the things that only a few don’t understand. If I can communicate clearly and concisely I will not need an FAQ. It’s just an experiment, and I may have to go back on this one, but I don’t think the FAQ is necessary.

Sorry that these have been all about Lopico lately, but I just stopped lopico for the first time in about 18 months. The content is still online (that’s coming down Friday) but when you vote or add a favorite or review you get a screen saying that Lopico is closed.  Sorry… it was just getting to be too much of a hassle, since the database that current info is sent to is not the same database that info will be sent to on the new version, I kept having to go back and update the new database… and well it’s just one less thing for me to do right now.  

After Lopico closes on Friday I expect anywhere between 1 and 3 weeks before the relaunch depending on how the beta group does.   Taking it off line sucks, but it will be well worth it.

Blogged with Flock

I’m getting extremely close to being finished with the next version of Lopico. So close that I didn’t really realize that it’s a Friday until just now. Anyway… I’m looking for a few more preview testers — looking for both casual users and people familiar with LAMP technologies, web design, microformats or AJAX (I may have just given away too much about the new site). There will be more announcements about this coming soon. If you’re interested email jda[at]jdamer[dot]com - or comment.

Not long ago I was talking to a friend about a possible web start-up that he was thinking of pursuing. I couldn’t get into the project for a couple of reasons, but I did give him some ideas and a list of sites that I felt would be useful to him. The list of sites is geared towards the type of start up that he was/is pursuing, but I thought that I’d post it for all to share.

1. Instant Domain Search (http://www.instantdomainsearch.com): His proposed site name was taken so I sent this link as a way to try to find a new name. This is one tool that I can’t get enough of.
2. TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com): If you’re going to be in an industry you need to stay on top of what’s happening in that industry. TC was an obvious choice.
3. Base Camp (http://www.basecamphq.com): Great free project management software - essential for web developers.
4. del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us): You may not think of del.icio.us as a web start-up must have, but I do. del.icio.us led me to countless resources that helped further the progress of Lopico. Now, I mainly use it to tag great design examples or code examples - I wouldn’t waste the space on my browser favorites, but web bookmarks are perfect for these types of sites.
5. Cool Site of the Day (http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com): A very 1.0 choice in my mainly 2.0 list, but this site can be very helpful. I did CSOTD and it worked very well for me. $27 to get 5000 visitors that want to see your site. I think that’s a pretty good deal. No, it’s not the best deal ever, but it will introduce your site to an audience that may not otherwise have found out about it.
6. Seth’s Blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com): An essential read for marketing on the web. I also threw in the idea virus e-book.
7. Okdork.com (http://www.okdork.com): This one was driven by the college focus of his proposed site. Noah, the blog’s author, has a lot of good insight into the college market having worked at facebook. Aside from that it’s just a good read for a young person wishing to get into the web business.
8. Techmeme (http://www.techmeme.com): I thought this one might be a little beyond what he was looking for, but like TechCrunch this is a great way to stay on top of what’s happening in the industry - okay the best way, but the scope was probably beyond what he needed (for now).

The only other suggestion that I had for him was a feed reader - which if I had to pick one, I’d go with Rojo.

Let me know what I missed. What sites would you tell someone to visit if they were trying to get into the internet business?

Maybe it’s because Lopico has been getting a large number of visitors from Japan lately, or maybe it’s because I just really like this band. Anyway, I just felt like posting something from one of my new favorite bands - which I of course found on Pandora. This is Asian Kung-Fu Generation and the song is called Loop & Loop.

Now back to the usual dorkery…

I’ve started moving my feeds over to Rojo from Bloglines.  There’s nothing wrong with Bloglines, it’s just not as good for the publisher as Rojo is. Rojo is just a more complete platform than Bloglines.  By combining tagging and Rojo Mojo it’s much easier for readers to explore and find feeds outside of those that they are already reading.  Will I spend my day digging through Rojo?  Probably not, but what I will do is give all of my blog posts Mojo (works like Digg) so that others will make their way to my blog.  By combining the rss reader (which is good on its own) with the promotional tool, Rojo is really doing more for Bloggers than any other rss reader that I’ve tried (certainly more than bloglines).  That’s a pretty solid strategy for inducing self-promoting bloggers to switch from a stand alone rss reader. For anyone trying to promote anything in the “web2.0″ realm it would be foolish not to add to readership with usage of Rojo’s technologies.  Hopefully growth continues, but I really don’t think that should be a problem.

Technorati has just released a microformats search and it couldn’t have come at a better time for me.  As I am rewriting Lopico I’ve decided to implement some microformats (I won’t say which but it should be fairly obvious).  I was planning on doing this despite not really being sold on the benefit of microformats.  The potential was always there, but I really think that the people behind microformats have done a fairly bad job of selling the concept.   I listened to a podcast not long ago with Tantek Celik and Dan Rohit, and it was sort of a waste of my time.  They ta