Daily Mail.UK:

Facebook fans trash award-winning garden. Alas, nimrodus facebookius is not an isolated disease.  Hike anywhere picturesque in the American backcountry, you’ll find folks choose the loveliest spots to perform their wilderness toilet.

Why does everything suck?

I am so sick of “Social”. Oh, I agree.  I agree so much I’m bashing my keyboard as I type this.  As I’ve mentioned before, as a small business, I’m competing now with firms who wish to market ‘social networking’ to everyone and their unborn children ... whether it is appropriate for their audience demographic or not.  Bloody waste of time for most.  Apparently some feel I should be martyred for being a heretic ...

Remembering the stink

over Yahoo!’s acquisition of Flickr ... can you imagine the bloviation over a Microsoft purchase of Facebook?

Extreme Tech seems

to like the beta of DropBox for file sharing and syncing.

News.com.AU:

For 30 years now, you’ve been getting spam.

Ed Bilodeau

expands on some of my thoughts on social networking for small organizations.

Dr. Dobbs Portal:

“Languages without automated garbage collection are getting out of fashion. The chance of running into all kinds of memory problems is gradually outweighing the performance penalty you have to pay for garbage collection. Another language that has had its day is Perl ...”

Acquia …

commercially-supported Drupal.

Shared code snippets …

Snipplr. Some EE and other weblog stuff in here.

Yahoo News/AP:

Scanning world’s every book means turning many, many pages.

CNN:

Student ‘Twitters’ his way out of Egyptian jail.

The US Copyright Office

is experiencing delays. But you can help beta-test their new electronic system in the meantime.

Extreme Tech:

Five tips for podcasters. Oh, I’ve run across some doozies, almost as execrable as the Powerpoint presentations I’ve encountered of late.  As an old A/V dude, audio quality is really important to me.  Record under a thick blanket or terrycloth bathrobe, if you don’t have a soundproof room.  Cheesy intro music ... you’ll see NPR does without.  Duration, I like 20 minutes to 30 minutes.  If you have an interviewee who’s particularly monotone, break it up with some humor or other ‘lighteners’.  Smooth edits, if you please. If you’re stuck doing the Baba-Wawa thing, remember you can’t edit in new speech from a different microphone or room (unless you want to spend hours in post).  Re-do the entire phrase with consistent mic’ing and sound dampening.  And never, ever split channels with interviewer/interviewee. 

Coding Horror:

Behold WordPress, Destroyer of CPUs. As the man says, if you’re using WP, consider yourself warned.

37 Signals:

Great video ... The secret to making money online. The top vid didn’t work for me ... try the bottom one. You can find more of these “startup school” presents on Omnisio (lower left).  Thnx, korf420.

BBC:

“When Facebook came along I was one of the developers at the launch and what struck me was how there was this new form of persuasion. This mass interpersonal persuasion.”

ReadWriteWeb:

Real people don’t have time for social media. This is a timely article.  I’ve been asked by various outfits (especially nonprofits) about how many hours it takes to maintain a beneficial existence on social media services. Ones that generate more value in awareness and donations than the cost of social media upkeep. I remain skeptical, except for outfits who can afford to dedicate an employee to maintaining the accounts full time. Even then, value must be measurable, results quantified.  For large nonprofits, this is likely not an issue.  But for small ones, social media is becoming a black hole.  The demographics don’t necessarily fit every business’ or nonprofit’s goals.  Median age for charitable donors tends to be somewhere in the age group of 40-somethings.  Via vowe.

The Economist:

I like the term ”techno-bedouins.”

Washington Post:

Bethesda Start-Up Makes Writing a Little Less Lonely. “WEbook, which launched last week, invites writers, editors, topic experts and anyone else who has something to say to put their virtual pens together to work on literary projects.”

Flickr video:

Uploaded a quick 320x240 video from my Canon G5. The snow as it began to fall last evening.  Flickr ‘automagically’ resized it up to their default.  That should be an option, clearly.

I tend to believe that video belongs on other services.  Unfortunately, every time I’ve dug in my bootheels, innovations like this take off and leave my predilections behind.  We as webloggers have little influence anymore ... question is, will the cellphone-video-camera-toting-teens adopt it?

NY Times Business, DealBook:

Yahoogle? Yoogle?  Gahoo?  Goohoo?

Why does everything suck?

The Money Losing Conundrum of Twitter and Other Communications Apps. I’ve been wondering myself when the metaphoric yachts of the big players will lose interest in purchasing such little outboard motors. They use fuel but don’t necessarily add to the major thrust of the ship.  Eventually they’ll stop buying ‘em, because they’re pure drag and no revenue. How many times have we heard that ad revenue will drive these neat little apps?  More and more, ad revenue seems like a house of cards waiting to collapse.  It can’t support every keen idea out there.

Guardian.UK:

“For somebody who has spent 30 years in the music industry, you instinctively know this stuff is going on. But when you actually sit looking at your computer and see a number that says 95% of people are copying music at home, you suddenly go, ‘Bloody hell’ ...”

Of interest.

Theory.  I believe I can plot various Twitter peaks against a loss of readership on dangerousmeta!.  Sharp in the beginning of ‘07.  I’ll bet other webloggers can, too.  Attention span shorter?  Less time?  More personal?  Lower barrier to posting?  The danger of becoming cloying or dull hovers, and the clever soundbite beckons. Since joining a few days ago, I’ve been surprised at how popular it is ... I’m a very late adopter, obviously.  It is more immediate - but not more compelling.  I suppose I need more time to ‘get it’.  But this solves my ‘mystery loss’ of readership pretty conclusively, along with possibly explaining the lower posting frequencies I’ve seen in other weblogs I follow over this same time period.

CNN:

“You got a Facebook and it’s not on there, then it’s not official.” Underwhelmed, am I.  What easier place to create a fictional character?