netzooid

Jon, you’re just a internet zooid :-P.

I think LinkedIn is a really cool tool. I like being able to view my network and how people connect. But, there are quite a few things that bug me and the launch of O’Reilly Connection seems to keep many of these same irritants:

• Its centralized
• It seems schmoozy – I always feel weird inviting people to LinkedIn, especially people without an interest in such technologies
• It doesn’t support varying degrees of trust and relationships (although endorsements help)
• Its not mobile – Cell phones are the basic unit of social networking and communication. I’m rarely in social situation with my computer. There must be some way to take advantage of the cell phone.
• It doesn’t have an API
• It doesn’t interoperate with all the other social networking tools

OC is positing itself as a place to connect to find developers. You can see this in their profile builder which is actually quite nice. Finding developers is Hard (capital H), especially with Google/Microsoft/Amazon/etc stealing anyone who is any good lately. I also realize that this is a niche, but I don’t think theres a big enough difference between it and LinkedIn for it to differentiate itself. I could be wrong though, as its beta.

I’m thinking about some possible solutions to my gripes. Hopefully I’ll post them soon, in the mean time, do others have ideas?

Also if you want to connect via Linked/OC just look me up as I’m now on both.

Will your feed reader work with a username and password?

I’ve take an approach in one of my applications where I generate a GUID and only allow HTTPS requests. So something like:

https://foo.com/rss?id=1230123012301230…

This of course should not be used with Bloglines – but its safe for desktop feed readers from what I understand since the url is encrypted.

In mental effort we are likely to go still more widely astray from some childish notion that it is laudable to exert that “slow, dead heave of the will” as often as possible. But in changing habits, you will find yourself getting your results far more quickly and with less “backwas” if you engage your imagination in the process instead of calling out the biggest gun of your character equipment first.

Becoming a Writer, Dorothea Brande

Alcholix seems like a neat way to meet people (via Chando Thota). However, living in a very midwesty place there don’t seem to be many nearby bloggers who have registered with feedmap. I put up a list of local bloggers on the left – there are only 22 registered. So if you live in Michigan, register!

• Has a ton of reverb
• Sounds like it could sometimes be from the ‘80s
• Is nothing revolutionary or new, but highly enjoyable none-the-less
• Lacks anything like their first album, Parachutes
• Has a lot of guitars
• Has some cool parts with an organ

As I’ve said before, Yahoo has a good thing going. People like to talk about Google and while Google is lovely (especially their maps), their one service that makes them real money is very very commoditizable (pssst – its ad revenue in case you didn’t know).

This is very related to what I observe on Slashdot and why I can barely stand to read it anymore. For instance, the post on Ballmer saying that Google might disappear in 5 years. Basically, he said what I just said above. Yet there is level of thinking there that falls way below “critical.” These guys don’t dominate the software world for no reason at all. Another prime example is the perception of the Slashdot “community” on Java.

Things come and things will go. Those who keep thinking critically and keep their egos out of the way will stay.

Perception is a powerful thing though…

Finally, I can order wine from outside Michigan. Wonder how long until California vineyards take this to heart…

With the release of Yahoo’s new music service it furthers my suspicion that Yahoo is not a search company. Yahoo is a media company and good one at that.

So, I downloaded the new Yahoo Music Engine. It looks pretty good – especially at $4.99/month. I was very happy to notice an iTunes like music browsing interface (minus the Genre pane). I think this is the only way to go for looking at your music collection.

Another one of the cool things in Yahoo’s new music offering is the ability to share music with friends on YIM for free. As someone who often wants to share music, this is ultra cool. I didn’t try it out though – because none of my friends whom I want to share music with are on YIM. And thats the catch. Damn those proprietary IM networks!

BUT the software noticably bogged down my computer. It took 80 MB of memory on a fresh startup! So it was removed and I am continuuing with Rhapsody for a little while longer.

In closing, I would like to reflect – at $5 a month, I just don’t see how $1 songs can appeal to anyone anymore. What is Apple going to do to counter this? And also, I’m selling my 20GB 4G iPod so I can use the PlayForSure stuff with Rhapsody. If you want to buy it contact me.

Update: Check out this post from the author YME.

I am the sunshine.