Neomeme

I found a great post by Alex Krupp about assumption-based entrepreneurship. In it he basically argues that while solving a problem based on theories about the future is fine for investors, who have the luxury of choosing between multiple solutions to a problem, this strategy may not work as well for entrepreneurs. In others words, it’s often, it’s a lot easier for second movers than for those who are first to the market. First movers have to go through the trouble of convincing the public that there is a problem, and that they need a solution, and that the solution they need is yours.

Alex Krupp argues that instead of predicting the future, entrepreneurs should try to make assumptions about human nature. How true
. An, in our current society, and in all of entrepreneurship, the most important assumption about human nature marketers make is that the general public has unsolved problems. They just don’t know about them yet, and, if you’re a marketer, it’s your job to enlighten them about the problems in their lives. Just as it is the goal of advertisements to convince us to want things we don’t really need, it is often to goal of web applications to convince us to use services we may not have realized we needed, even if the convincing is done subconsciously. Read more »

Update: Looks like the malicious code on the comments is now being replaced with “i am a terrible person”. But it is still possible to submit malformed URLs, and it remains to be seen whether the exploit is completely fixed.

Digg this story if you want to read the comments of gloating Diggers- Digg does not allow any markup(or markdown) in its comments, so there is no risk of such an exploit.

reddit, one of the most popular social news sites, has just been hacked with a pretty bad exploit. As a story making its way up reddit’s front page demonstrates, reddit’s programmers have made a major mistake in designing the site- they did not validate input in any text boxes on the site. From a security standpoint, this is a massive flaw. Read more »

The folks at WOM World have kindly hooked me up with a Nokia N95, Nokia’s flagship smartphone multimedia computer, and I’ve been playing with it almost nonstop for the past few days. Although the N95 software is a bit rough around the edges(there were moments when the phone froze up or experienced severe visual tearing and “Out of memory” errors occasionally popped up), the hyper-connected N95 shone as an excellent hardware platform for the next generation of mobile computing. And, with a few free applications, I was able to make the N95 do some pretty amazing things. Read more »

Since it is, after all, politics season, in the interest of fair coverage, I turn now to the other darling of the Internet long shot presidential candidate, Republican-but-really-a-libertarian Ron Paul. Despite polling under 2% in traditional polls, Ron Paul has won every major Internet poll. His supporters have dominated the Internet- they may not be the most numerous, but they sure scream the loudest. Ron Paul has a monstrous amount of blog mentions, dwarfing even Barack Obama on some days, and dominates all other “Web 2.0″ social media sites. And did I mention that he has the most YouTube subscribers in what may be becoming a surprisingly YouTube-centric election. Read more »

For the past few months, I have been working with these guys on Avanoo. In a nutshell, Avanoo lets you get knowledge and information from communities that are important to you, instead of the whole crowd of everyone on the Internet.

The theory and practice of the Wisdom of Communities have already been well described, so I won’t give another description. Check out this review on DownloadSquad and this explanation of the theory behind Avanoo. Or read about the Wisdom of Communities in more detail.

We’re now officially in private beta. Leave a comment here or e-mail me if you would like an invite to try out Avanoo.

Microsoft has made a claim that open-source software like Linux violates a mind-boggling 235 of its patents. This, if anything, is the biggest sign that Microsoft finally sees open source as a credible threat, which means that open source is making a significant dent in its marketshare. With Ubuntu Linux taking off and Firefox breaking 15% of marketshare, they have a reason to be worried. Read more »

Panoptic means all-seeing. And that, increasingly, is what our web is becoming. Every single thing we do online, every post, comment, and registered account has been indexed and catalogued. Google your name. Google the username you used on a forum five years ago. I bet you’ll be surprised at how many results you find, going back years and years. The web can see into every corner of your digital life- and so can anyone else who cares to look. Read more »

Problogger has a group writing project up, and I’m participating. I love group writing projects because they allow a group of bloggers to focus in on a single idea and apply their own unique perspectives to it. The result is a perfect example of how we all have much in common and are also so completely unique. And the fact that it lets me discover new quality blogs is another big plus. The theme is Top 5, and one of the rules is that the post must be somehow relevant to the theme of your blog. Since this blog is about the ways Web 2.0 connects us in new and unprecendented ways, here are the top 5 ways the Internet has changed the way we see other people: Read more »

TED is an annual conference attracting some of the most brilliant and innovative speakers in the world. It’s very exclusive, but for about a year and half they have been posting some of the best talks online, free. They’ve just posted a few new ones, including one by the founders of Google. If you have 20 minutes and a desire for inspiration or a change in perspective, watching a TED talk is a great way to spend the time. They’re all excellent, but here are a few of the best ones, in chronological order: Read more »

Every single front-page story on Digg is about that number-that-shall-not-be-named. It looks something like this . But guess what? For every time you go to a page to Digg up more *that number* related stories, Digg makes ad revenue.

Kevin Rose doesn’t need to shut down Digg to stop the mayhem. He’s sitting back, counting the money all of those extra ad impressions are bringing in.