Neomeme

Here’s a riddle for you: What’s invisible to those inside it but painfully obvious to outsiders?

Answer: The A-List of bloggers.

Recently, there’s been a lot of criticism coming from the likes of Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis, Steve Rubel and Loren Feldman of the concept of an “A-list” of top celebrity bloggers. They all agree that either there is no A-list, or the A-list is not important, and that A-listers are not special and that anyone can join at any time, if only the rest of us weren’t so damn lazy. They’re all wrong. Read more »

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve added a MyBlogLog widget to the right sidebar. So far, I’m extremely happy with it. There’s a good reason many top bloggers use it, and Yahoo recently bought it for a cool $10 mil. So far, I’m liking it. A lot. It adds a whole new dynamic to blogging and, if you excuse the cliche, pushes blogging the rest of the way into Web 2.0. MyBlogLog adds a whole new dimension of interactivity to blogging, because it lets the blogger connect with readers he probably didn’t know he had. Because all readers with MyBlogLog accounts have blogs of their own, a dialogue of comments can commence. Before I started blogging, I did not read any blogs regularly, and, like most Internet users, I restricted blog visits to happenstance Google search results. Now, I have discovered over a half-dozen blogs I frequent, mostly through comments and trackbacks on my own blog, as well as top posts from Wordpress.com. MyBlog Log greatly increases a blogger’s exposure to other bloggers with similar interests,blogging topics, and readers. Over time, MyBlogLog really does foster “community” as familiar faces, all with distinct personalities and opinions reappear each others’ blogs. The potential for MyBlogLog is amazing- I look forward to exploring the novel communites of interesting, real people it spontaneously creates.

I wish I got paid to write this post. But sadly I’m only genuinely enthusiastic,mostly because “celebrity” bloggers have at least briefly glimpsed my blog. Hooray!

Web Worker Daily has an interesting post about how new web services like Amazon S3 are redefining the web development landscape by providing easy-to-use, commoditized web services. Web Worker Daily hails this as a step towards a sunny future where ” a non-programmer with a regular-sized wallet can come up with an idea for a web-based business and put it together himself from pieces available on the web.” Fuck. Can you imagine the cesspool of shit the Web will become if every average Joe thinks himself a web developer? We will be overrun by hundreds, nay thousands of inferior clones, buggy applications and poorly executed concepts. Just look at all of the many hundreds of Digg clones out there. Do 99% of them contribute anything to the Internet community? Do they create any value for users? No, they don’t. We have already glimpsed the sheer horror(warning:don’t click if you have epilepsy) that Myspace created when it convinced average web surfers they were qualified to be web designers. Now imagine, if your mind can handle it, a thousand Gmails, a thousand Wordpresses, a thousand Flickrs, most with that same awful design not only on the frontend but also on the backend. An email service that loses all of your emails because the creator, an average Joe who is completely unfamiliar with the principles of good programming, forgot to drag in the “Backup” widget. Or a web service with broken links not in HTML, as many poorly coded, typo-ridden websites have now, but in relational databases. Read more »

Explaining the name of this blog(in response to multiple questions), and also stumbling upon its purpose. Not bad:

I came across this lengthy yet fascinating post about memes today. It’s very well-researched and thought provoking, and definitely worth a read. Coincidentally, the same day I completed Metal Gear Solid 2, which adresses much of the same topics and came across this in-depth analysis of its multilayered ending. The concept of the Internet meme, as the term is used in this blog, is nothing new. Even Scoble has written about memes. A meme, as used here, is simply a single intangible unit of information. Digital technology redefines memes because anyone can create and distribute one with unprecendeted ease.

Armed with all of this reading, I have finally come up with a single summary, a mission statement for this blog: The purpose of this blog is to explore the new kinds of memes the Internet and other emerging technologies create, and how they morph and travel in an increasingly social digital world.
The idea will be approached. Occasionally, unrelated content will slip in- this is my only blog, after all. But, overall, whether it’s instructions how to create a single piece of digital information(a password) or game a memetracker(digg), future posts will lie at least somewhat tangent to that topic, looking in at it through the lenses of tech, philosohy, psychology or, my favorite, social experiment. Quite a few interesting ideas I have yet to commit to (digital) paper, so stay tuned.

My last post was about how the value of social news sites, and social networks as a whole. Right now, all social networks are based on a democratic, almost communist model. Everyone is equal, everyone is worth the same. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside just thinking of my own value. Unfortunately, historically, pure democracy has never worked, what with the majority of the population being stupid, gullible sheep and whatnot.

So, how do we fix vote-driven site? Simple. Turn the democracy into a republic.

Read more »

At the turn of the 21st century, Internet Appliances, crippled computers to be used exclusively for web surfing were all the rage. They were supposed to appeal to women and old people and bring ubiquitous computing into the kitchen and the living room. Internet appliances failed miserably, because nobody wanted an underpowered computer that could only function for one single task. The market for these machines was composed of geeks, hackers, and early adopters, people who were much more likely to buy a full PC anyway, and, as computers became cheaper and more powerful, the concept of the appliance died a quiet death.

But now, in 2006, the appliance is making a comeback. In fact, appliance computers have stealthily installed themselves in millions of homes, hiding under TVs. I am talking, of course, about game consoles. Think about it- a modern game console like the Xbox 360 PS3 or Wii is a crippled computer, adapted for a single purpose- playing games. It has a hard drive, processor, memory, is Internet-connected, etc. The difference from the appliances of old, of course, is that game consoles have a killer app- the games. Any old computer can browse the Internet, but only Xbox 360 can play Gears of War. The game console, unlike a PC, remains crippled by design, and severely limited in its potential. Nonetheless, it does one task, and does it well.

Read more »