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  • sull 11:07 AM on November 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    The MacBook AirTouch 

    This is a comment I left on Coding Horror – Do You Wanna Touch.

    When I got the iPad2 (my first iPad), I had the same initial wow response as most. But I knew it would mostly wear off soon and it did. My 8 year old daughter was logging more time on it than me (and she was only allowed to use it for 20-60 minutes a day).

    Then I bought the Zagg Folio Keyboard/Case for it. It was suddenly as close as you can get to a traditional laptop and once I downloaded various productivity and writing/coding apps, the thing became incredibly more useful to me and I loved taking it places now… knowing that I could actually TYPE and WORK on it.

    I have since bought a MacBook Air since my old MBP was becoming problematic. The Air is probably my favorite computer, ever. But I have constantly speculated that Apple’s next significant product will be… needs to be…. the MacBook AirTouch. I see absolutely no downside to having the Air screen be a Touch screen and being able to toggle iOS and OSX. In fact, I believe thats what Microsoft has done (2 OS on Surface RT). I can see how having a 2 OS admits to an incomplete vision in a way. A perfectionist might cringe at the idea. But realistically, if UIs are tuned to different usage modes then it is an acceptable approach to dealing with Touch and Non-Touch experiences.

    The future will lead to a harmonious single OS core that handles a variety of experiences tuned to certain devices and form factors. Apple and Microsoft and Google are heading in that direction. They have to. The only problem will be in how much new restriction is built into this new era of computers…. Post-PCs or whatever. New walled gardens and app ecosystems that allow these companies to better leverage and monetize what is built for what they build. Pros and cons.

    Anyway… I seriously would love to own the MacBook AirTouch ;-)

     
  • sull 2:07 PM on October 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    In Reply To “Buck-passing bullshit” 

    Recently, Dave Winer wrote this blog post. I took the time to write a comment, not that Dave cares. In fact, i’m fairly sure i’m one of those commenters he prefers not to see write on “his space”. Their were other long-winded comments from OWSers and others.
    Dave later wrote about “Listening“. In his view, if your comment veers away from a precise point, then you are now someone who doesnt know how to listen… or didnt listen in the context of reading that post and replying to that post. I don’t agree. But hey, its his blog and his comment thread so he can do what he wants in reaction to the types of responses his posts get. He has rules and guidelines and they are not simply accessible and obvious but rather mixed in previous writings throughout the years of him blogging. And these rules and guidelines dont always apply. It depends on his mood and on the piece he wrote. So there’s that too.
    On one hand, Dave re-opened comments after having turned them off for a while and has even written new features to the OPML server to handle comments as outlines using the OPML Editor. So Dave clearly wants discussions to happen around his content. On the other hand, he gets disgusted with the conversations that often take place. Whether thats because of the aforementioned non-listening symptom or if he is challenged or called out on something… or any number of other reasons that will cause the commenter to get scolded, ridiculed or just plain deleted. And sometimes, the entire thread of comments are just removed as if they never existed. Again, that his his power and his choice.

    Dave deleted the discussion on the “Buck-passing bullshit” post.
    Before that happened, for some reason I decided to record my comment and turn it into a podcast. I’m thinking about releasing more of my voice memos (taken on my iphone). So this was a way to get started. A test. Anyway, here is my comment as a voice memo slash podcast.

     
  • sull 2:46 PM on September 17, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    NO NEGATIVE ADS 

    I originally wrot a petition and published it on the WhiteHouse.gov We The People site. I tweeted out a redirect domain (NONEGATIVEADS.COM) on Twitter. No votes. It has since expired. But I made this collage for a sample site I am building with NationBuilder. Figured I would post it up here.

     
  • sull 11:37 PM on September 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    In Reply To – “App.net’s crowdfunders: Taken for a ride?” 

    This is in reply to a post on InfoWorld -
    “App.net’s crowdfunders: Taken for a ride?” 

    It’s good to discuss the unknown future of app.net. Clearly, their has not been a stance against experimentation in the federated arena. In interviews when this has come up, Dalton has mentioned being open to releasing code (of alpha) and doing more thinking on how to approach federation social messaging. It’s so early that we really cannot be disappointed in any lackings.
    Business is business so they will need to make sustainable choices, and prob not all of them are going to fully embrace all aspects of open standards and decentralized networking. But the more stable and rock solid app.net becomes, the more likely they are to open up more… which could essentially allow for competitors to enter the market. Hey, i’ll take a strategy of getting a head start if it means a service will exists that is dire to the internet and not smothered with ad-based strategies.
    Regarding crowdfunders as investors… I’ve written a little about how a second round of crowdfunding that allows for micro-investments in the service would be highly interesting and daring. Some dev rev share is obviously important to get right to the app.net team. Best not to rush into these intricate agreements too early.
     
  • sull 2:06 PM on August 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    reddit Donate and Pledgeboard 

    I have to say, I was caught off-guard by the awesome reddit Donate project. This is not a complaint or venting frustration… But more like a way to later avoid what could be deemed as a copycat project. The concept and prototype-code has existed for a project that I call Pledgeboard. I’m hoping to spend much more attention on it with the help of my partner/employer at Mark & Phil (markandphil.com). The launch of reddit Donate has caused some anxiety though. It has a lot in common right down to the payment partners, basic presentation and curated NPOs, community participation etc. Pledgeboard has some other ideas and features of course that would differentiate the service and of course some, maybe all, of this is just standard obvious stuff. Regardless, I would have much preferred to have shipped something before reddit Donate. Just being honest.

    Truth is, it’s good that fundraising campaigns have so many progressive options these days.  I’ve looked at the dinosaurs in this market (even been certified) and have been, to put it mildly, horrified. Disruption needs to happen now. A new breed of services and products have had success and their is room for much more innovation. I hope to be enabled to focus in this space in a significant way in the coming months. I dabbled in all of this stuff as far back as 2006 when I actually coined and defined the term “Crowdfunding” on my project blog  and Wikipedia. It became a passion of mine but I ventured into another world with a long long run at a startup company unrelated to this market. But man, i’ve been itching to get back in. I’ve watched Kickstarter and some other companies become phenomenal services enabling hundreds and thousands of projects and giving them a chance to evolve their vision through the generosity of a global crowdfunding culture. I would love to be a part of this again.

    I am keeping in mind that more services to cater to NPOs is better than less. They need choices and they need to move forward and away from legacy platforms that are more interested in taking their money rather than making them money for their causes. reddit Donate only justifies what we already know. People do care and do give. Especially when given trustworthy tools and networks.

    Congratualtions to (sub)reddit, dwolla, stripe and all the participating organizations. Be on the lookout for Pledgeboard too!

     
  • sull 11:56 PM on August 29, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Getting Dave on ADN – Part 1 of 1 

    I’m a good listener, Dave. Though I am full of my own original ideas, you are an inspirational source. Your writing is by far my favorite in the tech/media/journalism/hacking space. I don’t mind the politics either. I know that you want to be a good listener too. And of course you like when someone blogs rather than tweets at you. So to continue the conversation that I sparked on Twitter, here’s another blog post on vocal.ly.

    I’ll start by addressing the main point that you have already made previously regarding app.net. I agree with you. Another centralized service does not solve everything. Dalton Caldwell and his team had made a very good effort in setting expectations from the start. They never claimed to be the solution for everyone and everything, not now and maybe never. app.net (ADN) today is not another Twitter, though their alpha prototype that demonstrates the API uses the “Twitter Template”, and it’s not another Diaspora either. They are not, at least not initially, trying to proclaim to be the decentralized alternative to Twitter. That’s an important topic and it does bleed into this project but in this early stage, it is not at the forefront of the conversation. The message right now is simply…. Create infrastructure for a real-time communication pipeline that is and always will be ad-free and developer-friendly. The recent blog post over on blog.app.net ends with this reminder:

    So remember this: at its core, App.net is an ad-free, subscription-based platform, a backbone, a dialtone.

    I hate to come off as spelling this out to you because I know you know. But I have to write something here in reply to your question – “Why should I…” be interested?

    One of the most exciting things that was announced by Twitter over the years was the Annotations API. The ability to store namespaced key/value data inside tweets. Shortly after that and other ambitious developer-friendly announcements, Twitter internally decided to shift in the other direction…. towards being a Media Empire. I am ok with this. In fact, I am happy and thankful that it is happening this way. It allows for progression by other entities that are sincere about improving the Internet more so than bettering the advertisement and media industry. That is why app.net exists. It is at the very core and is a promise made by them. Once it is clear that they are failing to keep that promise, it ends. If it does not end, I am sure that at least the team that exists today will depart. Imagine if the core technology team at Twitter were to leave? That would make one hell of a story but I won’t go there ;-)

    So, the app.net API is looking great. The terms of service are looking great (many contributors to both). The company has enough money to sustain itself for at least 12-24 months based on current finances, not projected finances. Thats a long time to sort things out and become a truly legitimate Internet Utility Company. As a developer, this is all pie in the sky stuff but its here and its real. I for one admire the effort which is why I supported the crowdfunding campaign. This is refreshing, potentially revolutionary in its stance against advertising and selling user data etc etc. Down the road, I could even envision another round of financing, not from VC firms but again from people… the users. It could even leverage the accessibility for micro-investments via the Crowdfunding Bill that congress has voted on. Users as investors. It’s something I know you have written about in the past. Maybe it will happen that way in this case.  Why shouldn’t it?

    Another thing worth mentioning of course is that app.net will support RSS feeds in and out. I believe some of this will be ready within a week actually. And believe me, that’s important to me as well. I have built an entire platform with RSS at the core of it all. I am a huge supporter and evangelist of RSS (and OPML) and have dared to use it in untraditional ways, trying to push it more into the social realm. I’ve written many times about how a distributed version of Twitter just needs a smart network of RSS feeds with some extra sauce. And we have both written about how subscription handling and reading list management works best with at least some powerful centralized services in the mix. Why can’t app.net be one of these centralized services? Or if not them directly, their infrastructure can enable it. The API can be used to facilitate subscriptions to RSS feeds and storage of OPML reading lists. It is feasible. I plan on working on it.

    So, I build with RSS. But I support app.net for all that it is trying to do and all that is currently provides me and what it will provide in the future (hopefully). Dalton has spoken about plans for releasing code to their alpha prototype for example as well as the concept of decentralizing with multiple nodes using the same API structure. We’ll see if and when that happens. I do understand how that could disrupt some aspects of their profitability but at least they do not need to appease investors that inflate preposterous valuations. They don’t need to make billions a year. They seem humble enough to understand that a different kind of success is at stake here. Its a different game. Its not a play to make themselves super-rich. I don’t see it that way at least. The rewards are different. It feels very much like a movement. A rebellion. A revolution…. for geeks at least ;-)

    Cheers, Dave! Hope you join us some day. Either way, we’ll be interop’n with RSS.

    RSSFTW!

    @sull

     

     
    • Clint Sharp 12:51 AM on August 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Agreed, very well said. I’m excited for a system which would support RSS in and out, as I am a true believer in aligning on standards, especially ones with nearly a decade of rich library support.

    • Kosso 12:23 AM on August 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      WELL SAID!

      I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  • sull 10:53 AM on August 29, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    This is Twitter Today 

     
  • sull 11:23 PM on August 27, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Universal Hashtagging 

    Something that’s been on my mind for a while is the idea of evolving the hashtag. Hashtags are auto-linkable search words or phrases that bind and group together topical conversations, events, campaigns, brands, tv shows, social gestures and just about anything really.

    More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashtag

    Twitter has been the most prominent adopter of hashtags but other services also support them. It is now a standard in social media platforms. With this in mind, I have been thinking of setting up a simple service that handles hashtags in a universal way as opposed to forcing them to be intra-links only. In other words, a hashtag in Twitter links to just Twitter results, not Google+, Facebook, app.net, Instagram etc. As an advocate for open federated distributed interoperable social networking technology, I thought that this would be a fun little problem to tackle. It’s not complicated at all and some might find it super-useful. So a thought of the right domain to use and started with the most basic immediate feature, 301 redirects. Here’s some examples of how the redirect urls work for now:

    app.net: hashtag.to/appnet/something
    twitter: hashtag.to/twitter/something
    google+: hashtag.to/google/something
    bing: hashtag.to/bing/something

    (something = the hashtag to search/share)

    These urls are meant to be used as one would use a bitly url with a slug appended instead of an alpha-numerical string. They are meant for sharing and using in web sites as an easy to remember goto url instead of looking up the various url formats across multiple platforms. Their is no standard url structure so its basically a pain in the ass. Think of it as a hashtag version of those image placeholder url services such as placehold.it for example.

    The real dev work was going to come when building out the hashtag.to website where users could use it as a search engine, a trend tracker and a multi-network output of hashtag results. Seemed like an obvious little project to put out there and it was actually a piece to the puzzle that i’m building over on glea.ms which is a distributed platform for feed/blog publishing, aggregating and social networking with a lot of emphasis on cross-domain loosely connected interoperable components. Also, everything is minimalistic and simple.

    I was in no rush. And in fact had other components that I felt were more important, such as dollars.io (payments component). Then I stumbled on something called search.TagBoard.com from the app.net 3rd party developer
    directory. It looks fantastic so far, I have to admit. And outside of the simple 301 redirect service, it is exactly what I was planning to build. The team seems real cool too.

    So whats the next step then? I don’t know. I’m not a fan of duplication though sometimes it is justifiable to copy and iterate and improve. But it has to be the right project and timing and strategy. I could still whip something up and just keep it associated with my crazy little playground and tweak as needed. But it’s def lower priority now and I might see if I can partner with TagBoard instead. After all, loosely connected interoperability is my motto so why not hook into another project for this? I can offer up the domain for the redirect piece and all is good in the world.

    I see this has a justification of the need to do something open and useful with hashtags. It seems important. And the timing is right. So i’m glad that the team at TagBoard is tackling this and doing so with a quality demo. I’m curious what else they have planned.

    #out

     
  • sull 11:14 PM on August 25, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Thank You, Twitter. 

    Twitter was the first social network that I enjoyed as much as I enjoyed things like mailing lists (groups), irc, forums and rss readers. I never liked Facebook, though I use it for the local family/friend connection thing. I never used things like Friendster or Myspace or Orkut. I’ve certainly tried just about everything that resembled a social network. It’s not that I was not into these things, I was. I just did not like the experience. I much preferred the intimacy of smaller virtual communities. One of my favorite experiences was actually a Yahoo Group called “Videoblogging” back before their was a Youtube.

    I observed Twitter for awhile but it didn’t take too long for me to find a rhythm there and enjoy the short-form near-real-time blogging bursts as well as the developer community that formed around the API. It was clear that this was a remarkable evolution of the Internet’s communication value. We now had a global chat room. That was so obvious and needed and awesome.

    I have tweeted almost 9000 times since 2007. I have created a half dozen Twitter apps, one of which was the first service to assist in embedding tweets on tumblr and elsewhere on the web via automated screenshots and a bookmarklet (tweetshots.com). I also launched one of the first file sharing services on top of Twitter that leveraged FTP and (mostly private) Twitter accounts (tweetFTP). I deployed Twitter functionality on auxiliary websites for the film Avatar. I had fun with Twitter as a developer and a consuming user. It’s really been a great ride and i’ve done plenty of speculation on Twitter the business and company over the years. A few years ago, in a comment somewhere (RWW I believe) I tweeted the idea that Twitter could charge a small annual fee for usernames just like domain names as a way to add revenue and that it would be justifiable since Twitter handles have been used as often as domain names in print and tv marketing campaigns. I also talked a lot about how Twitter would eventually need to “be more like Facebook” to set itself in proper success trajectories. Not that i’m right or wrong, just that I have enjoyed speculating… Like predicting that Amazon would buy Twitter in 2010. Or that Twitter would eventually disallow RSS feeds in and out. And so on.

    I’m also thankful for Twitter’s recent follow-through on it’s warnings to the developer community and partners. The shutting down of APIs, the discouragement of copying core products and experiences, the exclusivity of content “card” partners, the advertisement techniques and everything else that clearly demonstrates which path Twitter has decided to take as a company. A company that we all know has taken hundreds of millions of dollars in investor money resulting in soaring valuations. All of this is fine, and in fact its great. Not great because I think Twitter’s future if bright (it may be, but thats another post) but rather its great because it is setting the tide for what is needed on the Internet right now and that is more focus and efforts on new distributed messaging networks and open protocols/standards that will emerge/evolve now. It’s been going on for some years now but these things tend to dull down and simmer (see Federated Social Web). This is not to say that distributed networks should all be geeks with laptops. It also means new companies/products that are inline with this developer-friendly ad-unfriendly culture should form and hopefully will prosper now that they can clearly stand-out as Twitter embraces itself as a controlling Media Company.

    Thank you, Twitter, for making this as clear as you have and giving ample time for the dev culture to adjust and adapt accordingly. It’s fair and as a company you deserve the right to make these critical decisions and any balanced observer can see that your options were few and the one chosen is no less viable than the one left on the table. Its OK that you chose not to be the utility company providing the pipes and monetizing around that structure. It’s OK that you instead want to cater to celebrities, fans and media and news partners. It does make sense. You are following the natural momentum that has occurred mostly on its own (MSM/TV and celeb adoption). To ignore all of the free exposure that you, Twitter, have received and the tone it has set for your brand… would likely be a mistake. Though I do feel that a certain level of high success could have been yours if you focused on being a new progressive Internet Utility Company and could have even chose to try to do both instead of clinging to just one path, i’m sure that you will be around for a decade doing your cute and friendly thing that you do. It’s OK.

    Now we all know and things will fall into place nicely. Other efforts, like app.net, will instead move ahead with a fortitude to pave the roads that we need as developers and content creators/consumers.

    Onward! Godspeed! Tweet Tweet!

    @sull

    *I choose not to proofread this ;-)

     
  • sull 3:47 PM on August 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    It’s the API, stupid. alpha.app.net and api.app.net 

    Important snippets from world of app.net:

    Just a reminder that alpha.app.net is just that: an early prototype. It was launched as a test and to provide a proof of concept for our fundraising campaign. It is not yet an operational service, and we ask that you please be mindful of that and be respectful of one another.

    Please understand that we built a functional web application and working API to demonstrate that App.net is not “vaporware”. We have a great deal of work to do. One of the most important things we need to do is put together a Terms of Service for the operating site. I will be spending a great deal of time in the coming days creating a draft of our ToS, and our forward plan is to host it on github. This way, folks can see it, offer feedback (even pull requests), and will be kept abreast of any future changes. Along these lines, there are still a great many questions that need to be answered before App.net should be thought of as an operating service, rather than just an alpha prototype.

    The App.net Stream API Spec project is just one part of the App.net movement. If this project is interesting to you, we’d appreciate your support. You can provide support by backing the project or just by participating in the process to help define it.

    As we’ve started to open up the API to people as part of our early alpha program, it’s important to note that this documentation is imperfect in many ways. In particular, we’re not done implementing all of the endpoints that you see here, and sometimes what we have written differs from this documentation. If you’re running in to issues, drop us a line and we’ll try to help.

    Wait, I wanted a syndication protocol that can do X, Y and Z!
    We’re thinking about the best way to do this. It’s something we’re interested in providing, but since we’ve gotta start somewhere, we decided it would be best to start with an API defined in terms of things that the majority of developers are already familiar with.
    We want to think big with you. What would you like to see?

     
  • sull 11:08 AM on July 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Being Busy 

    [inreplyTo] http://threads.scripting.com/72312ByDw/areYouBusy

    Most are busy, even if that means being busy thinking, consuming media, creating stuff, going places, talking, listening, watching, dwelling, job hunting, working, pretending to be working, fighting, loving, playing, eating and even busy sleeping ;-)

    Sometimes, we need a different kind of busy to replace a kind we no longer want or need or enjoy. Commonly, this relates to unfulfilling jobs and the desire to replace it with more time with family/children or a more meaningful job.

    Being busy, in whatever way, is important to human health. otherwise, we start to shutdown and become not busy… Not busy at all.

     
  • sull 11:13 PM on July 18, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    RSS FTW! 

    via http://rssftw.com/?place=msg%2Frssftw%2FHKFxzzOmD7M%2FLfojSJQ7AgsJ

    Hello.

    I love RSS. I have used all flavors of it for all sorts of reasons since the beginning. RSS can also be an umbrella term to encompass general cyborg-readable data feeds. Needless to say, it is an important aspect of the datasphere that we inhabit. Especially in context of Internet freedoms and the open web. Though a simple technical thing that it is, RSS is one of the core expressions of openness on the web. Independent of the corporation machine. Sustained by nothing more than the massive adoption by the Internet tech industry and by those who are touched in many ways by it (often unknowingly).

    Yet, a trend began that de-valued RSS in certain narrow-minded contexts. The most common observation of failure is RSS as a mainstream consumer-facing product (i.e. RSS Reader software market). The rise of realtime social news and status streams provided by Facebook and Twitter is also use as a comparative angle and concludes that the death of RSS is upon us. I disagree.

    I have been associated with RSS in many ways. Whether it was me embedding an RSS widget from moreover.com on some of my first websites from 1999, participating in the RSS Media module sponsored by Yahoo, pioneering videoblogging and the related rise of podcasting or creating more recent software that demonstrates RSS as a core front and back-end component of a content publishing and aggregation platform.

    The RSSFTW group is for people like me who love RSS and all that it stands for. Atom included! ;-)

    Cheers,
    Michael Sullivan
    RSSFTW.com

     
  • sull 3:03 PM on June 24, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Making Chrome Use “I’m Feeling Lucky” Search 

    Was just poking around after my last blog post here and discovered how to enable the functionality that lets you jump right to the first google search result after submitting keywords in the Chrome address bar.

    Here is what I did to enable this feature:

    • Right click the address bar and select “Edit search engines”
    • Under Other Search engines, add a new one
    • Name it and give it a keyword and enter this URL: {google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s&btnI=
    • Hover over it and choose “Make Default”

    That should do the trick and if you want to bypass the search results page and just jump right to the #1 result, then there ya go.

    Maybe this simple feature will one day be a big deal to the advertising market. We’ll see.

    UPDATE: I replaced the necessary “URL” value with a more reliable one:
    {google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s&btnI=

     
  • sull 2:21 PM on June 24, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Dominating Domain Names with Web Browser Keyword Ownership 

    Something that may be revealed in the future is a supplemental web browser centric system that correlates Keywords and URLs. The “I’m Feeling Lucky” feature, matured. Clearly, this is a lower-level system than DNS but I think we will see some experimentation here and the recent usage patterns of Hashtags on Twitter for large-scale events and brands support this speculation.

    After all, Many years ago it was the “AOL Keyword” that was promoted on TV and Print etc. as the means to reach your desired destination on the Internet, not domain names (or more rarely). Though ironic, it is quite possible that we will return to this one day as a way for the big web browser makers (Google, Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla) to capitalize on the search market in a more direct and streamlined way that can be monetizable.

    Web Browser Address Bars already are integrated with search engines so that when you enter keywords instead of a domain name or ip address you are usually taken to search results. At times, some browsers even automatically took you to the top result (cant recall if that was a default or optional behavior).

    So this is not new. But what would be new is monetizing this simple feature. Google could sell Keywords that would work the same as a domain name. They could sell these keywords as time-based registrations just like domain registrations except the time periods can be much less than 12 months or as long as domain registrations with options for up to 10 years or more. A Browser Keyword could be bought for 1 month or 1 day even. These are strictly tied to the web browser itself. Aspects of other ad services could blend into this offering as well.

    This is something I have expected for years but maybe it will be deemed as over-stepping implied boundaries and cause a vocal outcry among savvy users. Yet, if done as I described (where domain names work the same as always) then why would it matter? The only annoyance would be for those who prefer a search result listing when submitting keywords as opposed to a specific landing page/site that is associated with the keyword.

    As far as phrases and multiple keywords go, maybe they too can be bought and owned? Or maybe they are not allowed to be owned and instead revert to search results with related owned keywords listed on the side as is common today. Owning a tagline is an interesting extension to this though. For example “Just Do It” being bought by Nike, Inc. for 10 years . Or “Yes We Can” being bought and owned by the Obama campaign for 4 years. “Open Happiness” bought and owned by Coca-Cola etc etc.

    If companies have been willing to jump on owning the new ICANN TLD extensions for 6 figures per year licensing agreements (I consider this a gimmick and borderline scam), then you bet that a market for browser keywords can flourish as well.

    Twitter’s focus on the hashtag as a revenue generator is very interesting and obvious. When they recently announced the NASCAR campaign, it opened up the discourse about Hashtag marketing. And I bet this move will put more internal emphasis on web browser controls of destination URLs and the advertising marketplace that goes with that. It wouldn’t surprise me, even if initially an optional feature, to see the address bar enhanced. Who’s feeling lucky?

     
  • sull 4:02 PM on May 22, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    dogfooding 

    The most satisfying feeling as a software developer/hacker is when you use your own stuff and like it. Maybe its more rewarding if other people use your stuff and like it… but that being less common… i’m just taling about dogfooding here. The app[etite] in my life right now is called Apocalypto and I use it almost daily, mainly to save links (bookmarks) for reading later but also to share photos, video, audio and short text posts as well as subscribe to RSS feeds and generate curated “River of News” pages. You know… the stuff we all normally do today on the Interwebs.

    I don’t have too much time to build significant apps in my spare time so I tend to make slight enhancements to my main DIY app over time. Its a canvas for experimentation. An art project in data handling. And it probably will never be finished, despite it being a minimilist app for minimalist geeks like me.

    I wonder what other apps are out there that are not really intended for other people to be users beyond the author. Stuff that you don’t hear about because its not meant to be a talking point or marketed or bragged about. Its just a DIY utility that was built for one user, the creator. I bet that their are lots of gems out there. It would be interesting to have a thread started somewhere for people to briefly talk about their favorite DIY app. A nice contrast to all the noise about startup companies and buzzing mobile apps etc. A throwback to old school geeks who instead of signing up for this or that social service, you just cranked out some code and polish your prototypes.

     
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