Posts in category "Technology"

The Book That Will Make Any Blogger Want To Take A Shower

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 244 days ago

I’ve never hidden the fact that I don’t think very much of social media or social networks (the social web is another matter) and that for the most part it is nothing more than just another way for marketers to get all slimey and make you believe that social media is the great social changer.

Ya, okay.

With this in mind I came across a book by Ryan Holiday titled “Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator” and if there ever was an insider book to read this is it, especially when it comes to social media and blogging. It’s an honest look at just how easily the whole blogging industry can be manipulated and a thoroughly enjoyable book to read; even if you do feel like taking a shower afterwards.

You can pick it up on Amazon in print, Kindle, or audio book format; and I don’t very often recommend books but if you are a blogger, or even someone interested in social media, you should maybe give this a good read.

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The news about the hacking of an FBI laptop and the subsequent harvesting of 12 million Apple IDs is blowing up all over the web but here is the most import question about the whole thing:

What the hell was the FBI doing with a list of 12 million Apple iPhone and iPad user IDs; and how did they get them?

This crossed a line plain and simple, now we need some real answers and not some spin doctoring.

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  • Posted 257 days ago

Windows 8 “Might” Share Your Stuff With Microsoft

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 268 days ago

I love this .. people getting upset about possible security (?) problems when it comes to Windows 8

Using the recent RTM build of Windows 8, Kobeissi found something odd with Windows SmartScreen, an application that, turned on by default, screens everything one installs from the Internet in order to tell the user if it’s safe or not. When you tell Windows 8 to download something, it gathers information about the application, then sends the data off to Microsoft. Microsoft (obviously automated) checks out the credentials, then lets you know whether or not the application is signed with an official certificate. Pretty standard stuff. However, Kobeissi finds that Windows 8 is “configured to immediately tell Microsoft about every app you download and install.”

via Geekosystem

This in a world where people share their dumps and other mindless minutia on places like Facebook and Twitter.

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Lazy OEMs equal crap systems – thanks for nothing

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 494 days ago

For those of you paying attention to the happenings at CES this year you will have noticed all the really, and I mean sweet hardware coming out for Windows users. From laptops err ultrabooks to tablets everything is sporting sweet lines of designs.

Alex Wilhelm over at The Next Web had a good observation about this.

Here’s the real kicker: they are coming from the same people who have sold us utter crud for so long. Dang. They just, I don’t know, tried harder all of a sudden. It’s as if the engeineering teams at the various PC OEMs woke up one morning, and actually drank coffee for a change. “You know Ted, instead of shipping another round of crap, why don’t we make something that people will actually want to use?” I’m annoyed by this. I’m frustrated that we’ve been underserved and charged full price for so long. At least the drought is mostly over. As Microsoft crows here, the current crop of these ‘Ultrabooks’ are sexy and capable and, for the most part, competitively priced.

As I said on Google+ – nicely said Alex, nicely said.

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If you are using Canada as an example please try to base your reasoning on facts

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 666 days ago

Don’t get me wrong, I like it when I see Canada make it into the tech news but what I don’t like is when a writer takes a situation in this country and uses to validate some line of thinking in a post – without checking some simple facts.

The latest incident of this is a post at ReadWriteWeb by Dan Rowinski where he was talking about the sale of Hulu and the implication of that sale on the future of the web. In the post he points to Canada as an indicator of what his fellow American can expect.

To be fair he is partly right but really for all the wrong reasoning.

Dan is right that if Americans want to see what their Internet future is like just look north; but it has nothing to do with Hulu but something that has already happened in the US. I am talking of course about the purchase of NBC by Comcast and the dangers of a carrier owning a major content producer.

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So, Blippy is no more. Well color me surprised

  • Category: Opinion, Technology
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  • Posted 730 days ago

I just finished reading a long winded post over at TechCrunch about the waving good-bye to Blippy – the service that let you share your purchases with anyone who cared.

Things eventually quieted down as they are wont to do in media hype land. And then we kind of stopped writing about it, caught up in the hockey stick growth of Groupon and Facebook and Quora. We stopped writing about it so much so that we missed the fact that it pivoted from a purchase sharing site to a user reviews site, starting with the introduction of user reviews on July 23rd 2010 and then moving of the platform fully on to reviews by October of the same year.

“One of the reasons we switched to reviews was to increase user engagement, but that hasn’t really increased either, “ Kumar told me resigned, revealing that Blippy has 100K registered users and that 30% have shared a purchase — Numbers that are not spectacular. The service never had a clear business model, just an attitude of “get user adoption and we’ll figure it out later.” But later never came.

What did come was the sense (and the whispers and the TechCrunch tips) that Blippy was over and that it was time to move on. For co-founder Philip Kaplan this meant stepping down as CEO to go make a bunch of silly iPhone apps at the end of March, telling PE Hub’s Connie Loizos that Blippy was “doing better than most people could do … But it hasn’t, like, exploded into something huge yet.” Which basically meant that traffic had leveled off. And the loss of its figurehead left many, ourselves included, concerned about the service’s future.

Well the truth is it doesn’t have much of one.

Well gee, I seem to recall suggesting at one point that this had to be one of the stupidest ideas (at the time) and regardless of how many millions were poured into it there was no way that Blippy would succeed.

I’m sorry but there is nothing interesting or fun about this idea. Just as it is nobody’s business as to what goes on in my bedroom, my purchasing habits are just as private and personal. The idea that wrapping it up in a bunch of social media mumbo-jumbo makes sharing that kind of information any better is fundamentally screwed.

Blippy is currently in private beta and this is one person who thinks it should stay there or be prematurely thrown into the deadpool.

Chalk one up for the cranky guy.

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Pimping a new book Vaynerchuk says 99.5 percent of social media experts are clowns

  • Category: Opinion, Technology
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  • Posted 737 days ago

Over at TechCrunch Gary Vaynerchuk who is considered to be one of the social media rock stars came out with a pointed observation about the whole social media expert space

In essence, businesses need to better understand how to use social media and how to apply an authentic human touch while doing so. Vaynerchuk thinks current efforts are abysmal. “”99.5 percent of the people that walk around and say they are a social media expert or guru are clowns,” he says, continuing with “we are going to live through a devastating social media bubble.”

Well DUH!, I’ve only been saying the same thing for the past couple of years.

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