Tuesday

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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?

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…