Google Gears

David Sacks // It's the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter

David Sacks, the founder and CEO of Geni, wrote an interesting post for TechCrunch today titled The New Portals: It's the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter. David writes about the evolution of the "Portal" site and theorizes that Facebook and sites like it, where your social network provides you with relevant information, are the next step in the evolution of the "Portal" site. Interesting theory.

For the last several years, Yahoo, MSN and AOL have all suffered a declining share of pageviews, but that does not mean the portal is going out of style. Rather it has been redefined, first by Google, and now by Facebook in potentially even more profound ways.

Nissan Robot Takes Japan

A robot ,developed by Nissan and Shoji Kawamori in Japan, apparently is loose in Tokyo - Ginza, last know location. Picture and video appear below. More at PinkTentacle.

Google Trends

Google buys Feedburner for $100M

Valleywag - Arrington = Mickey Mouse

Arrington is like Mickey Mouse, in Fantasia: as did the cartoon character in the Disney movie, the Techcrunch founder has cast a spell that's gone wrong; and it's too late to put the magic back in the bottle.

H2 Bling

H2 Bling, originally uploaded by Cale Bruckner.

I love taking pictures of my kid's toys. H2 Bling Bling.

NOTE: I think the H2 is a terrible vehicle for a lot of different reasons - still, this mini H2 looks pretty cool. It's electric ; )

Matt Mullenweg Interview - Webware

Al Gore's Office

Check out Al Gore's office setup - 3 wide-screen Apple displays! -- source

Is my blog boring? The cute kittens don't think so.

Hi, originally uploaded by Cale Bruckner.

According to Scoble your blog is boring if you resort to posting cute pictures of cats for traffic. Is he right?

This is a picture of a couple kittens I took at the Green Hill Humane Society.

Cute? Or, boring?

Cory Doctorow writes about dealing with jerks in your community

How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community by Cory Doctorow

Related to my previous post, Death Threat Shutters "Creating Passionate Users" Blog, that discussed Kathy Sierra's unfortunate decision to leave blogging because hostile jerks invaded her community. A good read for any blogger.

In extreme cases, you end up with the kind of notorious mess that Kathy Sierra found herself in, in which trolls directed such bilious, threatening noise towards a harmless advocate for "passionate users" in web-applications that she withdrew from speaking at O'Reilly's Emerging Tech conference. - Cory Doctorow

Related Posts: 

Seth's Blog: The Troll Whisperer 

iPhone - I'll wait until they get the worms out of it

Craislist's Jim Buckmaster Interviewed // Refreshing

Jim Buckmaster, CEO of craigslist, did a fireside chat interview with BusinessWeek editor Jessi Hempel, at The Nantucket Conference. - Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing

Craigslist's approach to doing business on-line is refreshing. For example I loved Jim's response to this question.

Craigslist could generate hundreds of millions in revenue and be a public company. Why haven't you done this? "You can't serve two masters. You either have to serve Wall Street or customers. We chose customers. Sure, we could generate more revenue, but we have enough to support the things we need to do."

Unfortunately, Craigslist shines the way it does because their approach to business is rare.

Apple iPhone receives FCC approval

Apple Inc. on Thursday received the official go-ahead on its first ever mobile handset, as regulators for the Federal Communications Commission gave the iPod maker the green light to commence sales of the device in the United States.

Worst album art covers ever!

Google Reader - Just "Slick"

I spend a lot of time In Google Reader, probably too much, and I've got to tell you - it's just plain slick. You can't define "slick" software but you know when you're sitting in front of it. It feels slick. A specific feature addition motivated me to type this up.

Google Reader (as far as I can remember) has always supported an Email feature that lets you e-mail a feed item. Until recently however, it wasn't slick. Clicking Email below a feed item would pop-up a new window that just didn't feel right. It worked and did what it was supposed to do but it wasn't the best user experience. Recently, the Google Reader team improved the Email feature. They didn't add new functionality - they just improved the user experience. Now, clicking Email below a feed item (the link is still in the same place) drops a nice little frame in below the feed item and before the next feed item. It's simple, it features fields for your recipients, a subject, a short note to go along with the item, a send button, and a cancel button. And more importantly, it feels slick.

Google Reader is "slick" because the team spends time working on the finer points of usability. They didn't have to improve the Email feature, it worked fine before, but they did and in the long-run it pays off. Google Reader is quickly becoming the preferred web-based feed reader.

Some other "slick" Google Reader features include:

• Short-cut ? displays excellent Keyboard Short-cut overlay
• When you Email a feed item to someone a copy is put in your Gmail "Sent Items" folder
• The "To" field is connected to Gmail so "auto-complete" functionality works

(screen grab: clicking Email below a feed item drops a nice little frame in below the feed item and before the next feed item)

New York Post Reports Microsoft and Yahoo! Talking

BILL'S HARD DRIVE By PETER LAURIA and ZACHERY KOUWE - Business - New York Post Online Edition

May 4, 2007 -- Stung by the loss of Internet advertising firm DoubleClick to Google last month, Microsoft has intensified its pursuit of a deal with Yahoo!, asking the company to re-enter formal negotiations, The Post has learned.

Good or bad? I'm still forming my thoughts. I have friends that work for Right Media, recently acquired by Yahoo!, I wonder what they think of this? I'll update this post as more news flows in.

Update 05/07/07:

The Wall Street Journal reports that the talks are no longer active. [ Source ] Maybe this was just a press play on Microsoft's part to test the waters and the market. A deal of this size ( excess of 50 billion for Yahoo! ) requires a scouting mission or two. After all, a deal like this is a lot about public perception.

Death Threat Shutters "Creating Passionate Users" Blog

Business 2.0 Backup Strategy

Wow. A Business 2.0 employee apparently deleted the June issue of the magazine from the editorial server before it could go to print. Worse, the backup server wasn't working so they pretty much lost the whole thing. Expect to see an article of the importance of a good backup strategy in the July issue ; ) Did somebody loose a job over this? Ouch.

Source: TechCrunch - June issue of Business 2.0 deleted before it could go to print

Silverlight

Mix07 started yesterday, Microsoft's developer oriented conference, so the pipes are pushing a lot of Microsoft bits this week. Silverlight, Microsoft's Flash/Flex/Apollo competitor, is capturing the bulk of the attention. Trying to figure out what Silverlight is all about? Check out these links.

The Universal Desktop - The how and when of Adobe and Microsoft's Rich Internet Application Technologies

TechCrunch - The Web Just Got Richer

The Universal Desktop - My lunch with Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie 

Tim Sneath's Blog - Microsoft Developer Evangelist 

Updated 05/03 

Knowledge @ Wharton -  The Man Who Would Change Microsoft: Ray Ozzie's Vision for Connected Software

CNET News.com - Ozzie's Quiet Revolution at Microsoft 

Ed Burnette's Dev Connection - Dissecting  Silverlight

Scoble -  Microsoft "rebooted the Web" yesterday

Scott Hanelman's Computerzen.com -  Hanselminutes Podcast 63 - Scott Guthrie and Jason Zander on Silverlight

SmugBlog: Don MacAskill - Thoughts on Silverlight 

Channel9 - Scott Guthrie: Silverlight and Cross-Platform CLR (video) 

Updated 05 / 08

ScottGu's Blog - Silverlight ** probably one of the best overviews **