Netizen

Monday, January 04, 2010

Twitter For The Masses

2009 was Twitter's year, no doubt. But towards the end of 2009 Twitter's growth had plateaued. What could Twitter do to reach the masses and end up with hundreds of millions of people using the service? Simplify, simplify, simplify. Right now it is so easy to get lost in the service when you are a new user. You first start out by not believing something worthwhile can be said in 140 characters. That is too brief. You may be do not desire to share with the world what you had for lunch. You might not know who to follow. The people you personally know are not necessarily the people with the most interesting tweets. What's a tweet anyway?

Twitter has to evolve as a service. A stangnant basic service that is hoping to only scale will not cut it. Twitter at once will have to become feature rich and simpler. The biggest bottleneck to Twitter's growth has been how primitive the search function at the site is. I can't even get it to deliver to me tweets I posted several months ago. And all those tweets reside on Twitter's servers.

SAN FRANCISCO - MARCH 10: Twitter co-founder ...

Twitter necessarily has to grow and eat into its ecosystem. That is how Windows grew. New, exciting, independent software programs found themselves eaten up in the next version of Windows. The Sun engulfed the nearby planets and grew.

Before they introduced the lists feature, Twitter had become unmanageable for me. The retweet feature I like, but I can see why it has generated much controversy. One big reason is the old way you could edit the tweet before retweeting it. To that I say, you can still choose to do it the old way.

Image via Wikipedia

But I have to keep coming back to search. Bing and Google are not doing it. When I first went to Bing's Twitter page weeks ago, I saw the mistake they were making. They were basically using Twitter to collect votes for the hottest news articles for that day. That is only one of many uses of Twitter. And I think Google News does a much better job of bringing me the news for the day. And it is not true Google is doing real time search now. Just because you display a few tweets on the topic I just conducted a search on does not quite cut it.

My Twitter account has to be the starting point for my Twitter experience. And one thing could add to that experience more than any other: the ability to search all tweets that might have ever been posted. I should not have to use Delicio.us. I should be able to store all links of interest to me right there on Twitter, and I used to do that. Then Twitter stopped delivering.

Just like PageRank is not going to be enough for Google, just like Google is going to have to make sense of webpages in their own right to see how much value they have, Twitter search is going to be able to read tweets, and make sense of a large number of tweets with the same keywords to give me a feel for what the masses are thinking and feeling. Right now I don't have that. Show me on one screen what the masses are saying in a million tweets. Where is that search and display function?

But real time is not just for now. Real time archives are also valuable. Tell me how Obama supporters felt about Obama in the summer of 2008. Collect all the tweets on the topic and make sense of them all for me.

Money talks, and Twitter does not have enough of it to truly get ambitious as a basic feature of the web experience. I still think Twitter should go for an IPO so it will have a billion dollars to become what email would be if it were designed today. Maybe it will not be Wave, it will be Twitter. It still can be.

Twitter has had a scalability problem because it has not had 300 million dollars to pour into its infrastructure. Twitter has to be always on if it can be part of the basic infrastructure of our web experience.

Image via Wikipedia

If email were invented today, it would not have a subject line. I would not need your email address to be able to send you an email. The email would always be short. I should be able to read a million such emails in less than a minute. A celebrity should not feel overwhelmed by all the emails she gets because the search feature is so good. Because Twitter makes sense of a million tweets on the same topic in as much time as Google takes to deliver search results. Well, Twitter does not, not now.

And Twitter DM is a joke. You have so little control over it. I get so much spam, I stopped reading DMs months ago.

The Twitter trending topics list is so feature poor, it is not even funny. I should be able to do time travel with that list. I should be able to do topics, and sub topics, and sub sub topics with that list. I should be able to have a trending topics list based only on my followers. The trending topics list needs to be a full blown creature.

Twitter today is not all it can be. If Twitter is going to end up with a billion users, it is not going to be the Twitter that we know today.

Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
Google Wave For The Masses

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Empire State Of Mind

Fallin'

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

DGDM: Digital Development Partners

Image by The Punch Pizza via Flickr

Digital Development Partners, Inc. (OTCBB: DGDM) has a flagship company: YuDeal.com, in beta. What does YuDeal do?

You own a restaurant. You see half your tables are empty. YuDeal would allow you to reach by text message potential customers to whom you might offer 20% off should they drop by within two hours. This is real time, social networking, and advertising in one package. YuDeal is a game changing proposition. The coupon industry will not be the same ever again.

DGDM came into the YuDeal game early.

123Print: Business Cards

Image by Thomas Rockstar via Flickr

If it is time for you get a new set of business cards, go to 123print.com. The site can be very helpful for your business card design.

Somethings don't go away, like business cards for example. The difference between making and not making a contact could be the difference between deal or no deal. Is your business card at hand?

Has Your Debt Run Amok?

WASHINGTON - MARCH 26: U.S. Secretary of the ...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Don't get embarrassed if it has. Get help. Get your debt under control through consolidation services. Get help from those who are good at the fine art of debt negotiation. Sometimes debt consolidation can be a slippery slope that makes things worse for you. Don't fall into that trap.

But it can be done right. And it is also the right thing to do to repair your credit. Otherwise you keep working for money instead of making the money work for you.

These are hard times. Take the effort to make the right choices.

Vegas Red: Online Casino

SAN FRANCISCO - DECEMBER 11: Democratic presi...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

For the past decade and a half we have watched pretty much everything go online. Casinos have ended up there too. Expect that trend to only accentuate. You can look forward to richer media experiences. A parallel universe that comes to mind is gaming. Gambling is like gaming. Online gambling is a sport of sorts.

I am aware of of the social baggage tied to that word gambling. But there was gambling before the web came along. The big news is not that gambling has moved online. I think those who intend to play watchdog roles should focus primarily on making it a safe experience for those who are going to indulge in it anyway.

So I like sites that offer to be portals to online casinos. They do the vetting for you. They make sure the safety standards are met. And they work hard to inform you just as they intend to entertain.

And if you don't want to lose money, play it for free. There are those kinds as well. Some really smart people like Warren Buffett are into poker. Poker games are one of the staples at casinos. Online poker, how about it?

I hope the experience is safe, regulated and fun. And I am excited about the technological underpinnings of what the online casino experience might be in a few years, just like I would like to imagine what companies like Google might be doing in a few years.

Image via Wikipedia

News this morning is YouTube wants to get into gaming. You should be able to interact with your YouTube videos: that is the idea. The online casino experience could benefit from such advances.

And the free, no deposit online casinos naturally would have global appeal. Can come online, can play. It is all in the mind. Throw some music in there, will you?

I was past 20 when I landed in America. I don't follow baseball, or basketball or football. Give me my World Cup Soccer. There are many online casino games that run tournaments. Legions of fans follow them. The best online casino sites help fans follow the tournaments of interest.

Have fun. Be safe. Win if you can. Don't lose too much.

Go to Vegas. If you can't, go to Vegas Red.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

OnlineGambling.net

Image via Wikipedia

There are a ton of casinos online. If you are one of those who has to gamble, it is best to play safe. OnlineGambling.net is a portal. It is a leading resource for online gambling. It lists casinos that accept players from the US. The site also features "multi language casinos, no deposit casinos, free casino games."

The site offers reviews of casinos and rates them based on various variable. In the process the scam online casinos get weeded out. And that is good for you. Have fun. Play it safe. Be an informed player.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

WildBlue Satellite Internet

The back panel of a satellite modem, with coax...

Image via Wikipedia

The importance of broadband in this day and age can not be exaggerated. Broadband is as basic as electricity today, for work, for pleasure, for life activities. With the satellite option, the rural urban divide goes out the window. Wild Blue Internet is available anywhere in the continental US. The price is affordable.

Dial up just does not cut it these days. If you don't have broadband speed, you are missing out. On productivity, on pleasure. You need WildBlue Internet. WildBlue Satellite Internet fills in where cable internet is not an option.

Wildblue Satellite Internet might be the solution you are looking for.

Satellite Internet In CA

Sign up today.

USA Players Online

Image by geek7 via Flickr

USA Players Welcome is an online gambling portal that welcomes players from all states in the US. If you are looking for a casino online, take a look at this one. You can find free casinos, you can find big bonus casinos. What is it that you are looking for? All the casinos listed at the portal have been reviewed and thoroughly tested. If you are going to gamble online anyways, play it safe. Don't go straight to a gambling site. Go there through a portal like this one. Playing it safe is the more fun way.

Virgin Galactic

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

An Open Google

Google Public Policy Blog: The Meaning Of Open

A company that has become big needs a new ethos. Google as a company will stick around for a long, long time, but it is not at all a given that Google will continue to be on the bleeding edge. Will Google Wave end up being the last bleeding edge product Google gave to the world?

The advantage Google has is that search is at the core of the internet experience, and there Google is the one with the secret sauce. And this is the Internet century.

The Meaning Of Open Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don't have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won't.........understanding the fast-moving system better than anyone else and using that knowledge to generate better, more innovative products ........ a fast innovator and a thought leader ........ Open systems have the potential to spawn industries. ......... win based on the merits of their products and not just the brilliance of their business tactics ........... open systems allow innovation at all levels — from the operating system to the application layer — not just at the top. ........ good business, since an open Internet creates a steady stream of innovations that attracts users and usage and grows the entire industry. .......... Reward = (Total value added to the industry) * (Our share of industry value) ........... grow the web for everyone ......... When railroad tracks were first being laid across the U.S. in the early 19th century, there were seven different standards for track width. The network didn't flourish and expand west until the different railway companies agreed upon a standard width of 4' 8.5". ............ about 681 million hosts on the Internet. .......... In the early 1900s, the U.S. automobile industry instituted a cross-licensing agreement whereby patents were shared openly and freely amongst manufacturers. Prior to this agreement, the owners of the patent for the two-cycle gasoline engine had effectively bottled up the industry. ........... we are the largest open source contributor in the world ....... when traders in the Mediterranean region circa 3000 BC invented seals (called bullae) to ensure that their shipments reached their destinations tamper-free, they transformed commerce from local to long distance. ........ Trust is the most important currency online ........ Think that your product's value is so obvious that it doesn't need explaining? There's a good chance you're wrong. ............. the Google Dashboard ........ If they use our products and store content with us, it's their content, not ours. ........ we need to do whatever we can to make leaving Google as easy as possible ....... we make numerous platforms - video, maps, mobile, PCs, voice, enterprise - better, more competitive, and more innovative. We are often attacked for being too big, but sometimes being bigger allows us to take on the impossible. .......... Open up as much as you can as often as you can, and if anyone questions whether this is a good approach, explain to them why it's not just a good approach, but the best approach. .......... the chaos of open benefits everyone ........ The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet.

Staying open is Google's best bet to stay on the cutting edge for as long as possible. This is an important document to have come out.

The Official Google Blog: From The Height Of This Place

the worst economic situation of our lifetimes...... Eric Schmidt has called these times 'uncharted waters': none of us has been here before. ........ the Internet, which is the most powerful and comprehensive information system ever invented. ........ from the most remote villages on the planet, you can reach as much information as is held in thousands of libraries .......... the secular shift of information, communications, and commerce to the Internet ......... over 1.4 billion people, nearly a quarter of the world's population, use the Internet, with more than 200 million new people coming online every year. ......... More than three billion people have mobile phones ......... search will remain the killer application ....... Our ongoing challenge is to create the perfect search engine ....... to actually make search smarter, our index and infrastructure need to grow at a pace FASTER than the web. ........... "Democracy of information alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action." .......... 120K blogs are created daily — most of them with an audience of one. Over half of them are created by people under the age of nineteen. In the US, nearly 40 percent of Internet users upload videos ........... about one of every six minutes that people spend online is spent in a social network of some type. ........... the vast majority of stuff we find on the web is useless. The clamor of junk threatens to drown out voices of quality. ........... news has largely shifted from thoughtful to spontaneous ...... the best of both worlds: thoughtful and spontaneous, long form and short, of the ages and in the moment. ....... With facts, negotiations can become less about who yells louder ......... The Internet allows for deeper and more informed participation and representation than has ever been possible. .......... Oil fueled the Industrial Revolution, but data will fuel the next generation of growth. ......... making decisions based on facts, not opinions ......... Data is the sword of the 21st century, those who wield it well, the Samurai. ........ devices will proliferate in many directions, but all of them will converge on the cloud. That's where our stuff, not to mention civilization's knowledge, will live. ............ abundant APIs, open source software, and low-cost, pay-as-you-go application services like our own App Engine and Amazon's EC2. The components are abundant and available to anyone who can get online. ............. Cloud computing levels that playing field so that the small business has access to the same systems that large businesses do. Given that small businesses generate most of the jobs in the economy, this is no small trend. ............ The real potential of cloud computing lies not in taking stuff that used to live on PCs and putting it online, but in doing things online that were previously simply impossible. ........... Translation will get a tiny bit smarter with each iteration.

Google Docs And Mathematical Formula

News came out weeks and weeks ago that on Google Docs now you can insert mathematical formula. That is one of the first things I talked about when I launched this blog years ago. I am glad Google Docs is finally doing it.

Google Voice Acquisitions And Phone Number

Some recent Google Voice acquisitions beg the question, so will now Google Voice allow us to get our own Google Voice number? So you could use Google Voice without having another number at all?

Google: An IC Software Company?

I'd like to believe my fascination with the Google blogs is healthy. My startup's IC vision chimes in. I might be wanting to do the ISP and the hardware parts, but Google has already been doing the software part for the better part of a decade.

Marissa Mayer: An Omnivorous Google Is Coming a tool built into the search engine which translated my search query into every language and then searched the entire world’s websites ...... the ‘omnivorous’ search engine –i.e. one which is able to take a user’s total context – where they are, what they were just reading, which direction their mobile phone is pointed and so on. .... An omniscient, omnivorous Google is coming and it knows what you want, even if you don't.
Why Net Neutrality Is Important an Internet that encourages innovation and startups is one that supports net neutrality — and unless such neutrality is enforced, capitalism on the Internet is in serious jeopardy. .....Service providers need to accept the fact that net neutrality is the only way that capitalism on the Internet will survive.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Paul Carr: Bringing Nothing To The Party

Paul Carr - Bringing Nothing To The Party -

TechCrunch article.

Avatar

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Her Morning Elegance

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Volcanic Eruption 4,000 Feet Below Sea Level

Captured by undersea robot.

"Since the water pressure at that depth suppresses the violence of the volcano's explosions, we could get the underwater robot within feet of the active eruption. On land, or even in shallow water, you could never hope to get this close and see such great detail."

Panic Attack: $300 To $30 Million

"Man makes YouTube video. Goes to Hollywood. Gets pots of money and a movie deal."

Friday, December 18, 2009

Whuffie: Vamsi Sistla

Earlier I was at the first ever Whuffie MeetUp in New York City. If you are like me, you are also new to the word and concept.

Several months back I met an Indian from Canada at the NY Tech MeetUp. We exchanged cards. Recently he emailed me and introduced to Vamsi Sistla over email. I was to meet Vamsi on Wednesday. But instead he invited me to come to his first ever Whuffie MeetUp. I am glad.

Whuffie is an interesting concept. Measuring it could be grand business. Whuffie is like search, news, email. It is a basic web concept. A company that could figure out a way to really, truly measure your whuffie could make big bucks.

Whuffie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Whuffie is the ephemeral, reputation-based currency of Cory Doctorow's science fiction novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. ...
The Whuffie Bank - Reputation is Wealth
TC50: Meet The Whuffie, A New Currency That's Based On Your Online ...
Making Whuffie

Vamsi Sistla - LinkedIn
Vamsi Sistla | Facebook
BABC 2007: Meet Vamsi Sislta

Vamsi Sistla On The Coming Convergence of IM and VoIP. Get Real ...

Vamsi Sistla - NYC Masterminds (New York, NY) - Meetup.com

Time, Facebook Connect, And Comments

Image via CrunchBase

I just noticed now I can sign in with Facebook Connect and leave comments at the bottom of Time articles. This is quite a moment. This must be a new thing because I don't see too many comments. I must be one of the early ones.

Time: Tiger Woods' Sponsors: Will Any Stick by Him?

Now I can leave comments at Time like I have been leaving at TechCrunch. Time has been saved. Time "gets" social media. The New York Times could learn from Time. Leave social networking to Facebook. You just use Facebook Connect.

People signing in with their Facebook comments are less likely to leave comments that might need to be moderated.

Sites and blogs where I can't sign in with Twitter, Facebook or Disqus, I don't even bothering leaving comments. That is extra true of Wordpress blogs.

[WordPress #336657]: Not Being Able To Leave Comments

Tiger

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

John Chow

My Blog Business Model from John Chow on Vimeo.

Friday, December 11, 2009

WildBlue Satellite Internet

Image via Wikipedia

The importance of broadband in this day and age can not be exaggerated. Broadband is as basic as electricity today, for work, for pleasure, for life activities. With the satellite option, the rural urban divide goes out the window. WildBlue Internet is available anywhere in the continental US. The price is affordable.

Dial up just does not cut it these days. If you don't have broadband speed, you are missing out. On productivity, on pleasure. You need WildBlue Internet. WildBlue Satellite Internet fills in where cable internet is not an option.

Wildblue Satellite Internet might be the solution you are looking for.

Online Casino Bluebook

Image via Wikipedia

Online Casino Bluebook is your free guide to online casinos. Right on the front page are the top 10 gambling sites as measured by "bonus size, payout percentage, customer service, game features, # of games, software graphics, and ease-of-use." You can go straight to one of them, or you can read detailed reviews of them and then proceed to visit their online destinations. Online gambling churns a lot of money. That attracts scamsters as much as legitimate players. It is best to play safe and go through a site like Online Casino Bluebook.

The site also takes you straight to some of the more popular games. One of them is baccarat. Another is the slots game.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Pete Cashmore

Gold Coins Gain

Image by Denis Collette...!!! via Flickr

Physical gold is back in vogue, thanks to the global economy being in bad shape. It is time to have gold IRA and gold 401k thoughts. If you want to know how to put gold in an IRA visit Gold Coins Gain.

401k gold, IRA gold is back in vogue for a reason. Don't get left out. Physical gold might be one way out of the ongoing economic turbulence.

What are your other options?

Ride out the storm the smart way.

Dennis Crowley: I Underestimated Him

Image representing Dennis Crowley as depicted ...

Image via CrunchBase

Dennis Crowley and his gang presented FourSquare at the New York Tech MeetUp many many months back. I was not that impressed. Actually the app felt cheesy to me. But now I can see why it is being touted as the next Twitter. I met Crowley at a recent New York Tech MeetUp and told him about my initial reaction and congratulated him on his recent buzz.

You have to notice Fred Wilson is an investor in both Twitter and FourSquare. That guy can sure see trends. He spots.(Fred Wilson) Google obviously was not able to see what Fred Wilson was able to.

Om Malik: Why I Love FourSquare

And it is not just Dennis, it is also Naveen. I talked to him after their first demo at the NYTM.

People have asked this question: If Twitter came after Facebook, what will come after Twitter? There were comics who suggested we might end up with a service that allows for only 40 characters maybe.

Ends up it is not what you can say in 140 characters. Your current location is interesting enough information.

FourSquare

Pages

Monday, January 04, 2010

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Monday, December 21, 2009

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Friday, December 18, 2009

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Friday, December 11, 2009

Thursday, December 10, 2009