Neomeme

The Next Big Thing is most likely already here. It’s just waiting for someone to come along and execute on it. By the Next Big Thing, I mean the next paradigm-shifting Web application, the digital revolution of evolution, the “2.0″, the next killer app for the Web. You know what I’m talking about- Web 2.0 is built upon such explosive applications. Social networking, Peer to Peer, participatory communities like Wikipedia, online video, all of these are Big Things. But they are not at all new. And the Next Big Thing that is undoubtedly right around the corner won’t be either. Read more »

I just came across the brilliant fake trailer for Minesweeper: The Movie from CollegeHumor:

It’s only a small example of the wonderful storylines that lie dormant within our video games. Or, failing that, proof that a move trailer in that generic format (all movie trailers look fairly identical) can make anything look cool.

In-jokes in the trailer:

• Beginner and Expert are difficulty levels in Minesweeper.
• Minesweeper involves planting red flags on potential mine locations- so everyone is carrying red flags.
• The sweepers are playing Hearts, another game bundled with Windows
• An 8 represents mines all around the square
• The yellow guy represents the smiley face on top of the Minesweeper window, which changes when the game ends- hence he says “Game Over”
• As the screen goes black at the end of the trailer there is a sound of a mine exploding- he guessed wrong.

Introduction

Yahoo Publisher Network , Yahoo’s answer to AdSense, only pays for US clicks and impressions. Furthermore, they are banning publishers whose sites get too much international traffic. Therefore, if you are using YPN ads, it is absolutely critical that you target them so they display only to US visitors. Banner advertising programs often only pay well for US impresions, and show default or public
service ads for international visitors, so it is always a good idea to target your ads. Other geotargeting solutions include complicated
steps that involve installing an IP database, but there is a much simpler way to target your advertisements. I have written a PHP script that checks the visitor’s language, and serves ads accordingly. It is not 100% accurate, but it is easy to install, and, unlike an IP database, does not put a heavy load on your server. Read more »

Several people have asked me about it, so here is a workaround for that nasty bug/feature that may prevent the full text of your posts from showing up in your feeds. Read more »

When you’re trying to build a brand, make sure to grab similar domain names. Otherwise, someone with a similar domain name might tarnish your image. Case in point: Read more »

I’ve noticed that the More tags I have been using to keep my homepage tidy have been cutting off posts in feeds. That has now been fixed for all future posts.

The New York Times has a fawning article today about Pownce, Kevin Rose’s new startup. Pownce is called, among other things, “the hottest startup in Silicon Valley”, with “coveted” invitations- the author has clearly never heard of a private beta-

Digg was disruptive (though perpetually unprofitable). Google was disruptive. MySpace was disruptive. Pownce is a glorified Twitter clone with file sharing. If it did not have Kevin Rose behind it, it would have faded into obscurity, just like a Digg story that is not dugg by top Digg users. Let me restate that. The exact same “disruptive” and “coveted” technology would have certainly gone completely ignored without this: Read more »

Perpetually-in-private-beta online TV startup Joost has announced it has reached 1 million users. That’s a pretty impressive number for a product that still lacks much truly compelling content. But do these numbers matter? And are they even real?

One miiiiilion users!

Read more »

This is too funny- Digg today announced that Microsoft would be serving their ads. I opened Safari (I have AdBlock in Firefox) to see what the ads looked like, and was greeted by this:

(click image for full size)

1. The ads are mixed up- the leaderboard ad is on the right side, and the right side ad is on top. Thus both are cut off. This screenshot is not cropped on the sides- the ad was cut off.
2. That ad is the default Digg ad- meaning there are no advertisers.

I refreshed a couple times, and the ads were back to normal. I opened another story on Digg, and they were messed up again.

Not to reinforce any stereotypes about Microsoft…

This morning, many of the Internet’s most popular sites- Technorati, Archive.org, Netflix, Craiglist, LiveJournal, and others, went down. This was caused by a power outage at a single data center(or, some rumormongers say, a drunk employee accidentally hitting the off switch.) Coupled with the still-popular Onion video about the crash of the Internet, this serves as a stark reminder of just how fragile the Internet really is. Read more »