Unfortunately, I have to unsubscribe to the Dilbert Blog

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/thisisgoingtobebig/~3/219974611/unfortunately-i.html

A while back, Scott Adams wrote how blogging wasn't really boosting his bottom line the way he thought it would, so he decided to make some changes.  He has decided not only to blog less, but also to go to partial RSS feeds. 

His reasoning is that, unless you were coming to the site, he couldn't monetize you as well.  It wasn't clear that he had ever heard of Feedburner ads for RSS.

So, he made the calculation that he could force those reading his RSS feed to come to the site to read full feeds.  In my case, he can't, because I read a lot of my RSS feeds offline, when I'm on the subway reading through my phone, though Newsgator Mobile.  When I like a post, I clip it, and often send it to others or tag it in del.icio.us for later, meaning the link winds up on my blog and I send some traffic his way.

Either way, as an RSS reader, I'm still net positive on total pageviews.  Moving me to partial feeds doesn't make me add pageviews, it makes me completely disappear.  This is the case for a lot of RSS readers...  going to partial feeds will make your RSS audience dry up, engage less, and certainly never pass the site to others.

I kept the feed in my reader hoping it would change back, but he seems pretty set in his ways, so I'm unsubscribing.  I read RSS feeds and if you're not going to publish a full feed, then I'm not going to read you.  It's a shame, b/c the Dilbert Blog was one of my favorites.

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Photo Sharing Server Photwo Launches - Easiest I've Seen To-Date

Source: http://www.centernetworks.com/photwo-photo-sharing-launches

Look, we all know that Flickr is great and not everyone wants something as robust as Flickr. Enter Photwo. It's the quickest, simplest photo sharing service I've seen so far. From account creation to gallery URL created for sharing was about two minutes. It reminds me of the "Gallery" app that's been circulating around the Web for years.

Account creation is simple - no email confirmation required. After login, a box appears on the right (uses Java) to drag and drop photos from your computer. The photos then scale accordingly and show up in your folder. You can see my test gallery here. Registered users can comment on photos and create friend links. Galleries can be made public or private.

From there, you send out the link to the gallery (they need to add sharing buttons) and Photwo offers two embed options - a simple photo viewer which I've emedded below and a funky photobox looking embed.

The site is based out of Norway and founder Magnus K S Andersen tells me that their business model is to sell prints and premium features which will be coming soon.

Some of the options I'd like to see is the ability for friends to add photos to sets, sharing buttons, Facebook/Myspace app, more size options on the embed, watermarking, and the ability to embed a single image with a link back to the image but more importantly a link to the content creator's site.  I do like how simple Photwo is currently and wouldn't want them to build another Flickr.

powered by Photwo.com

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Metaplace: tiny personal virtual worlds like homepages

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/220224038/metaplace-tiny-perso.html

The Technology Review has a great feature on Metaplace, a virtual world startup that aims to allow users to create tiny, individual multiplayer worlds that they can link together like homepages. I'm a huge fan of the founder, Raph Koster, who previously created Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, and I love the idea of letting players shape their worlds in simple, easy-to-understand ways.

With Metaplace, designers can build worlds using a markup language, style sheets, modules, and a scripting language. Every world acts like a Web server, Koster says, and every object in a world has a URL. What this means for users of these worlds is that they can move seamlessly from the rest of the Web into the virtual world and back again, he says. A user can browse to any object in a Metaplace world from outside, and every object can be linked to the rest of the Web and exchange information with Web services. With this architecture, Koster says, he plans for users to be able to build worlds with games as simple as a two-dimensional Tetris game, or as complex as the World of Warcraft, a massive, multiplayer, online role-playing game. Users might also build widgets, such as a virtual weatherman who could deliver the latest news from weather.com, or a Coke machine that gives them a real-world coupon whenever they drink a virtual Coke. Koster says that users should be able to stage up a basic world with chat functionality and a map within about five minutes.

Koster envisions users coming to a Metaplace world by clicking on a link in a Web page. That link launches a page where the user finds herself inside a world, perhaps using a default avatar, but no log-in or registration is immediately required. "They don't make you log in to play a YouTube video," Koster points out.

The Metaplace client is basically a Flash application, he says, and, consequently, is available to nearly everyone who uses the Internet. Currently, Metaplace does not allow users to build 3-D worlds, but Koster says that he expects Flash to add 3-D capabilities in the near future. The client will work anywhere on the Web, and Koster adds that he hopes to see user-generated clients built for mobile devices such as iPhones.

Link (via Wonderland)

(Disclosure: I'm a proud member of the advisory board for Areae, Inc, the company that makes Metaplace)

See also: Metaplace: open DIY virtual worlds for everyone

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Google Offers OpenID Logins Via Blogger

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/219228203/

After testing OpenID’s as logins to Google’s Blogger in Draft program in November, Google has become an OpenID provider itself. The news confirms TechCrunch UK’s story of January 9, which also predicted that IBM and VeriSign would soon be joining the OpenID train.

Effective immediately, Blogger users are able to use their blogs URL as an OpenID login, after toggling the option via the draft.blogger.com admin menu. Google’s baby steps follow the announcement last week that over 250 million Yahoo users would be able to use their Yahoo logins as OpenID. Reports have put users of Blogger at somewhere between 10 million and 50 million, although the service is renowned as a haven for spam so how many legitimate bloggers will take up this service is unclear. It also isn’t being provided as yet via the regular Blogger quite yet, only via the Blogger in Draft service (although this is available to those who wish to use it), however this is the regular first step for new features in Blogger so it could be expected to become a standard option sometime later this year.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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2007 Crunchies: The Winners

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/219236705/

A great evening was had by all tonight as some of the leading startups gathered for the first annual Crunchies, a joint production between Read/Write Web, VentureBeat, GigaOm and TechCrunch.

The ceremony went (mostly) smoothly with a couple of surprises amongst the results. For a full list of nominees, visit the Crunchies 2007 portal here.

Best Overall: Facebook

Facebook revolutionized the idea of what social networking could be.

Best technology innovation / achievement: Earthmine

Earthmine picks up where Google Earth leaves off, bringing deep semantic data to 3D panoramas of the real world. Earthmine's system can keep track of the objects found in the real world and attribute information to each of them, such as latitude, longitude, elevation, and other attributes.

Best Clean Tech Startup: Tesla Motors

Tesla’s green sports car has captured the imagination of a public who had come to expect electric cars to be dull are boring. Due to be released this year, the company has pre-orders from some of the biggest names in Entertainment and Technology.

Best video startup: Hulu

Hulu put television online. Their broadcasting system was modeled on the success of social video sites and drawn the praise of its previous critics.

Best user-generated content site: Digg

Digg’s simple voting system defined the emerging social media revolution. Getting “dugg” quickly became a badge of honor and established a coveted place in the geek lexicon.

Best mobile start-up: Twitter

Twitter, the new addictive microblogging platform. It wasn’t until after the South by Southwest conference that people realized the value of the incredibly simple microblogging platform.

Best International startup: Netvibes
Based in London, Tariq Karim and Freddy Mini’s Netvibes has made waves in the U.S. as a top personalized web portal.

Best consumer startup: Meebo
Meebo made instant messaging ubiquitous by bringing it online. They then developed it into a platform where anyone could add chat to their applications.

Best enterprise startup: Zoho

Zoho’s comprehensive online suite of 14 business applications ranging from document editing to CRM continues to lead the way in the move away from desktop computing to working in the cloud.

Best design: SmugMug

SmugMug is professional photo site. SmugMug’s attention to detail and design can command as much as $150 per year from their users.

Best new gadget/ device: Apple iPhone. See the Apple acceptance speech here.

Best business model: Zazzle

Looking for a Star Wars hat or memorable mug? Zazzle is an on-demand factory of consumer goods for top brands. It also lets consumers become producers by uploading their own images onto that T-shirt, mug, or mousepad. . Consumers can also receive a commission on products that they sell and design themselves

Best bootstrapped startup: Techmeme.
Founded and developed solely by Gabe Rivera, Techmeme serves as the front page of the tech blogosphere. The site’s advanced algorithms identify the day’s top stories by making sense of conversations across the web’s best blogs.

Best Startup Founder: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Does this really need any explanation? At 23 Mark has built one of the world’s leading online destinations that has recently been valued at $15 billion. A remarkable achievement for anyone, let alone someone at the still relatively young 23. A well deserved award.

Best Startup CEO: Toni Schneider (Automattic)

Schnieder has lead the company from its roots as a open source alternative to Movable Type into a multi-million dollar enterprise that saves the world from blog spam and offers a free hosted blogging solution that competes with Google’s Blogger.

Best new startup: iMedix

iMedix combines search and social networking to change the way people find health information online. Users are encouraged to help each other by sharing health experiences and links from around the web.

Most likely to succeed: Automattic (WordPress)

The open source blogging platform that powers the long tale and turned into a multi-million dollar spam fighting and hosted blogging service.

Best use of viral marketing: StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon’s service lets users bookmark and discover new sites they love. With only a $1.5 million investment in 2005, StumbleUpon gew to over 4 million Stumblers and was bought by eBay in 2007 for $75 million

Best time sink site: Kongregate

CEO Jim Greer describes Kongregate as XBox live for casual games. This site hosts some of the webs most addictive casual games. Remember Desktop Tower Defense? Moreover, the games are not only played by users, but also created by them in exchange for a share of advertising revenue and other rewards.

Most likely to make the world a better place: DonorsChose

DonorsChoose.org is dedicated to connecting classrooms in need with individuals who want to help.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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