Archive for January, 2008
« Previous EntriesThe Pain of Being Down and Out
Thursday, January 31st, 2008A necessary evil for many online businesses is having service outages so they can perform scheduled maintenance. For most companies, this is pretty dull stuff that few, if anyone, notices.
There are times, however, when routine maintenance is far from routine. Twitter discovered this the hard way earlier this week when scheduled maintenance to upgrade its [...]
InstaPaper: A Stroke of Bookmarking Brilliance
Thursday, January 31st, 2008It’s not that often these days that an online service jumps out and demands to be embraced but Instapaper is a pleasant exception to the rule.
Instapaper is a simple tool that lets you “bookmark” articles, blog posts, etc. that you find interesting but want to read later. After dragging a booklet widget to your [...]
Taking Twitter Seriously
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008Twitter can be easily dismissed as IM-Lite or a tool for people with short attention spans but, interestingly enough, it is also starting to gain traction as a serious communications tool for people to communicate about serious stuff…like politics.
ReadWriteWrite’s Josh Catone has a great post looking at Twitter’s pros and cons, and how it is [...]
Would You Pay for Online Applications?
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008A few days ago, CenterNetworks asked whether anyone would pay $1/month to subscribe to an RSS feed or, perhaps, $4.95 for a package of 10 feeds.
Not surprisingly, the response was unenthusiastic. With so much content being pumped out every day, how many blogs are worth $1 - especially when many people are reluctant to pay [...]
DEMO, Alright Already
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008DEMO has barely started but the incessant coverage of every single development has already become aggravating - and there’s still another day to go.
It’s like the blogosphere feels compels to cover this conference the same way that reporters are covering the Super Bowl, which coincidently happens just 260 miles away this Sunday in Phoenix.
Don’t get [...]
Automattic’s Aggressive Ambitions
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008Hot on the heels of snagging $29.5-million in venture capital, Automattic made another announcement - this time unveiling a Twitter-like service called Prologue in which Wordpress users can exchange short, Twitter-like messages.
Matt Mullenweg claims Automattic isn’t going after Twitter but that’s just his Texas charm at work because it’s increasingly difficult not to get the [...]
Congrats, Standout Jobs!
Monday, January 28th, 2008A quick congratulations to Montreal-based Standout Jobs, which just unveiled a $2-million financing from iNovia Capital.
It’s great to see early-stage Canadian start-ups attract growth equity. Standout Jobs, which is developing a video-based recruiting tool, is having a big week as it’s also presenting at DEMO 08 on Wednesday.
Technorati Tags: Standout Jobs
The Twitter Ecosystem’s Spark
Monday, January 28th, 2008For those of you into Twitter, Tweetmeme might become another must-use tool.
Much like Techmeme analyzes and aggregates the most popular/active blog conversation, Tweetmeme does the same for Twitter.
If it lives up to its potential, Tweetmeme might just be the service that single-handedly sparks an explosion in the Twitter development community.
This isn’t to diss the growing [...]
How Important is Web Design?
Monday, January 28th, 2008Yet another way to ruin your productivity: Web Hot or Not - a place where you can judge the appearance of Web sites. If the concept sounds familiar, it’s similar to Hot or Not where you can vote on whether someone’s physical appearance appeals to your aesthetic criteria (or something like that).
WHON may be just [...]
Facebook’s Strategic Volatility
Sunday, January 27th, 2008Isn’t it strange that Facebook can do something so smart (releasing a JavaScript client so you can host a FB application on other Web sites) yet stumble so badly with a key strategic initiative (Beacon).
I can understand all the excitement (Mr. Blodget describes it as “another brilliant move”) about the Javascript announcement but, frankly, Beacon [...]