March 2011
3 posts
6 tags
Facebook: stepping away from itself
I like Facebook, and have no complaint with its imperialism. It has identified and leveraged the most crucial founding fact of the mainstream internet: It’s about people. People connecting to other people. That’s why email was the killer app for years. If Facebook is the killer app of the 2010’s, it deserves its reach and revenue.
But entering into the movie rental business is...
3 tags
Top ten ways to spell "Qaddafi"
…(in response to @chookooloonks: “Exactly HOW many ways does one spell Qaddafi?”)
10) Qaddafi
9) Gaddafi
8) Khadaffy
7) Quataffy
6) Godawful
5) Gandalf
4) Gesundheit
3) Halvah
2) Voldemordafi
1) Sheen
4 tags
Crappy how-to still dominating search results
Perhaps Google’s recent algorithm change has done some good, but ridiculously poor how-to articles still soar to the top. Here’s an example from eHow: How to play a xylophone. The following quotes represent the article’s basic instructions.
“Find a xylophone to play.”
“Understand the keys of your xylophone and what note each bar represents.”
...
November 2010
4 posts
3 tags
Why StatSheet might succeed
Sports coverage extends to both extremes of the journalistic spectrum: stats, and color. Even TV coverage of live games is separated into two roles that represent those extremes: play-by-play, and “color commentary.”
On the text side, there are sites like FanHouse whose writing stable is stocked with high-profile columnists whose heavily voiced coverage is supplemented with...
6 tags
Whither NASA? Rebrand it.
NASA is on the cusp of its most serous identity crisis. Moon missions canceled. Mars missions canceled. More than half the staff laid off by end of 2011. The space station and its shuttles have over-proven that low-orbit living is doable. Serious reinvention is called for.
Here’s the thing: it’s not just budgetary, though it does cost $1.7B to build a shuttle and $450mm to launch one....
5 tags
The purpose of web/TV convergence
It’s natural for a new industry to try everything in the quest for what will eventually work. The quest for what people really want. In the early days of web/TV convergence, the industry assumption was that people would want to bring the computer-internet experience into the living room, onto the couch, displayed on the TV. That was the use-case model for Steve Perlman’s WebTV. I...
5 tags
Will RockMelt get a second chance to make a first...
Did RockMelt release its new socialized browser to a wide audience too soon? Possibly.
Despite an infestation of first-day bugs, does RockMelt shine a light into the future, or mark a milestone toward a browser revolution? Possibly.
Enough equivocations. My own first day with RockMelt was skewered with frustrations and false starts. The “Edges” (left and right persistent sidebars...