Web 2.0 In Depth

Secret Sauce for Successful Web Sites

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:00:00 EST

There are two secret sauces for making a web site successful: SEO and WPO. Ok, I guess everyone knows about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) now. SEO was a secret sauce 5-10 years ago. At that time, not everyone was aware of SEO. These who did SEO ended up being very successful. But have you heard of WPO? Are you doing WPO to your web site? Most people would answer "no". So WPO (Web Performance Optimization) remains as the one and only secret sauce.

Top 50 Bloggers on Cloud Computing

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 05:15:00 EDT

Ever since I first published here my tentative list of Top Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem - now expanded to a list of 250 and growing daily thanks to community feedback via my Twitter account (@jg21) and a very kind mention by ReadWriteWeb - there have been suggestions that another prism through which to view cloud computing might be that of people rather than companies.

The Future of Government Is Open

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:30:00 EDT

Open source software is perfectly positioned to facilitate the massive overhaul that will be necessary to open up government data to the public. As consumers, this technology is already changing the way in which we go about our day-to-day lives. It powers maps on our phones and provides us with information from organizations worldwide. Whether we realize it or not, open source is playing a substantial role in our everyday tasks.

Is 2010 the End of the Beginning for New Media?

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 05:15:00 EDT

If Tim Berners Lee had thought for a moment, back in 1990, that his invention at CERN of http + HTML + server + browser was going 20 years later to eliminate Newsweek from newsstands worldwide, he might have gone back to studying physics instead of ushering in the World Wide Web. But what's done is done, and what interests me in this Times piece by David Carr is not so much the End-of-Newsweek story as the meta message of the article which is the contention that we now live in an age where the periodicity of publications has become a potential showstopper.

The Next Chapter in the Virtualization Story Begins

Mon, 31 May 2010 06:45:00 EDT

Cloud Computing Journal recently caught up with Pete Malcolm, CEO of cloud management innovators Abiquo - a major new player in the fast-emerging Cloud ecosystem and Platinum Plus Sponsor of 6th Cloud Expo being held in Prague, the Czech Republic, 21-22 June 2010. Malcolm is keynoting at the event. His theme will be "An Open Cloud Ecosystem - the Gathering Storm."

Jobs to Adobe: ‘Yer Stinkin’ Flash is Over-the-Hill. Get Over It.’

Sun, 02 May 2010 08:45:00 EDT

As a diversion from its high-profile “who-knows-where-it-will-end” dogfight with Gizmodo over an errant iPhone prototype, Apple has posted a longish open letter on its web site over the signature of its CEO Steve Jobs reiterating all the reasons why Apple has no use for Adobe’s Flash technology. Steve – or his ghost writer – says Adobe mischaracterizes the Apple ban when it says it’s business-driven and only meant to protect the Apple App Store. He claims it’s technology-driven.

IT Fears Change...and Cloud Computing

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:00:00 EDT

We have a brittle system underpinning the data center: the network. It’s brittle, yes. But it works. Thanks to years of tweaking and tuning and troubleshooting, it works. We know where everything is, and how everything interacts, and it works. It works well, in fact, now that we’ve got it all figured out. Is it any surprise then that we might be resistant to change that might (probably will) upset that delicate balance?

More About HTML5 and Google Chrome

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:05:00 EDT

I am glad that I switched over to Chrome. Otherwise it would have taken me lot more effort to go through the site created by Marcin Wichary and modified by Ernest Delgado. If you want to get a feel of what is possible with HTML5 this is a good place to look at. Here is the link. (You can use left and right arrow key to navigate) It is one single page but it behaves like a presentation. It showcases enhancements in JS, HTML & CSS:

Cloud Computing Is Like No Other Technology Wave

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:15:00 EDT

As for the right name, what more need be said than that Cloud Computing has caught on in a way that "Grid Computing" or "Utility Computing" or "Elastic Computing" never did? As a metaphor is sums up perfectly the spirit of compute capacity that can be set up and torn down programatically, leaving someone else to take care of the networking and hardware. However there's no doubt that "Cloud fatigue" is in danger of setting in as almost every existing suite of software becomes not re-engineered but merely re-branded, and give the magic C-word. Which is why my own preference is now to move to a slightly more nuanced metaphor, that of the "Resource Cloud."

Cloud Computing Case Study Targets Monetization

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:15:00 EDT

As the adoption of cloud services grows and service offerings mature, business models must also evolve in order to fully capture revenue streams. However, most Cloud Service Providers today do not possess the required business support systems that enable them to easily create sophisticated bundles, dynamic pricing options and promotions to better monetize their services.

Cloudomania Widens Its Worldwide Footprint in 2010

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 07:00:00 EDT

Someone once asked Ernest Hemingway if it was difficult to write. He replied "Not at all, you just sit at the typewriter and bleed!" Hemingway must be turning these days in his grave, because if Cloud Computing has done anything it has shown once and for all that technology commentators, far from wrestling - as Hemingway did daily - with writer's block, are suffering from just the opposite: too much is being written, and too often, by too many for anyone to be able to make use of it. The world has gotten Cloudomania!

Innovation and Risk in the Clouds - II

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST

For others, that will build and support their own enterprise cloud environments, the dynamic nature of cloud computing – with servers, networks, and storage dynamically showing up and disappearing from the environment, it will be a difficult and challenging model to manage; particularly if the organization does not adapt its legacy business management culture and approach, for the new environment. Though by far, the greatest risk that I see is the failure to recognize the potential that lies within cloud computing to transform organizations.

Cloud Computing - The New Rock n' Roll

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

Two news items have caught the attention this week, and both brought the John Lennon and Paul McCartney penned Beatles classic “The Fool on the Hill” to mind (more specifically the line “Well on his way, his head in a cloud”). One piece compares data centers with rock stars and the second, globally reported, contained President Obama’s $3.8 trillion 2011 budget blueprint designed to pull the US economy’s deficit out of the danger zone. Although the headlines might appear unrelated, the actual content of both pieces reveal two sides of the same coin. The coin being Cloud computing. On one side we have the private sector investing heavily in the ‘sexy’ future of computing by plowing millions into new data centers (Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon etc) and on the other we have the public sector seeking to cut costs and balance the books by reducing its dependence on in-house IT infrastructure. A potentially heady mix of supply and demand or to put it another way: an opportunity for companies to make money and politicians to win votes.

Using Your Blog to Skip the First Meeting

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:00:00 EST

I was speaking with a few colleagues the other day about the different benefits of social media as a whole, and blogging in particular. The folks in the room had varying levels of social media involvement, from no involvement at all to heavy involvement. Each of us discussed what we hope to get out of social media, why we blog or might consider it, and how businesses can benefit from blogging. The discussion went on for some time, covering the wide ranging benefits from SEO opportunities to more frequent customer touch points and everything in between. After a while, it quieted down a bit and somebody asked me if they had missed anything on the list.

Infrastructure 2.0: Squishy Name for a Squishy Concept

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

There’s been increasing interest in Infrastructure 2.0 of late that’s encouraging to those of us who’ve been, well, pushing it uphill against the focus on cloud computing and virtualization for quite some time now. What’s been the most frustrating about bringing this concept to awareness has been that cloud computing is one of the most tangible examples of both what infrastructure 2.0 is and what it can do and virtualization is certainly one of the larger technological drivers of infrastructure 2.0 capable solutions today. So despite the frustration associated with cloud computing and virtualization stealing the stage, as it were, the spotlight is certainly helping to bring the issues which Infrastructure 2.0 is attempting to address into the fore. As it gains traction, one of the first challenges that must be addressed is to define what it is we mean when we say “Infrastructure 2.0.”increasing interest in Infrastructure 2.0 of late that’s encouraging to those of us who’ve been, well, pushing it uphill against the focus on cloud computing and virtualization for quite some time now. What’s been the most frustrating about bringing this concept to awareness has been that cloud computing is one of the most tangible examples of both what infrastructure 2.0 is and what it can do and virtualization is certainly one of the larger technological drivers of infrastructure 2.0 capable solutions today. So despite the frustration associated with cloud computing and virtualization stealing the stage, as it were, the spotlight is certainly helping to bring the issues which Infrastructure 2.0 is attempting to address into the fore. As it gains traction, one of the first challenges that must be addressed is to define what it is we mean when we say “Infrastructure 2.0.”

Like Web 2.0 – go ahead and try to define it simply – Infrastructure 2.0 remains, as James Urquhart put it recently, a “squishy term.”

James Urquhart in “Understanding Infrastructure 2.0”:

Right now, Infrastructure 2.0 is one of those "squishy" terms that can potentially incorporate a lot of different network automation characteristics. As is hinted at in the introduction to Ness' interview, there is a working group of network luminaries trying to sort out the details and propose an architectural framework, but we are still very early in the game. [link to referenced interview added]

What complicates Infrastructure 2.0 is that not only is the term “squishy” but so is the very concept. After all, Infrastructure 2.0 is mostly about collaboration, about integration, about intelligence. These are not off the shelf “solutions” but rather enabling technologies that are designed to drive the flexibility and agility of enterprise networks forward in a such as way as to alleviate the pain points associated with the brittle, fragile network architectures of the past.

Greg Ness summed it the concept, at least, very well more than a year ago in “The beginning of the end of static infrastructure” when he said, “The issue comes down to static infrastructure incapable of keeping up with all of the new IP addresses and devices and initiatives and movement/change already taking place in large enterprises” and then noted that “the notion of application, endpoint and network intelligence thus far has been hamstrung by the lack of dynamic connectivity, or connectivity intelligence.”

What Greg noticed is missing is context, and perhaps even more importantly the ability to share that context across the entire infrastructure. I could, and have, gone on and on and on about this subject so for now I’ll just stop and offer up a few links to some of the insightful posts that shed more light on Infrastructure 2.0 – its drivers, its requirements, its breadth of applicability, and its goals - to date:

Greg Ness’ Virtualization, Clouds, and Meta Orchestration
Greg walks though where we are, how we got here ,and what we need for the future.
Christofer Hoff’s “Cloudanatomy” and subsequent Cloud Taxonomy
Hoff’s ontology and taxonomy clearly shows just how large the problem space for Infrastructure 2.0 really is.
James Urquhart’s Why virtualization is shaking up IT data centers
James offers a great analogy that illustrates well exactly why it is that virtualization is one of the primary drives of the need for Infrastructure 2.0.
And a few of my own offerings to the cause:

Infrastructure 2.0 Is the Beginning of the Story, Not the End
Understanding the means (Infrastructure 2.0) to the end (a dynamic infrastructure)
Pursuit of Intercloud is Practical not Premature
Fred Cummins of HP believes Intercloud is premature, but standards take time and much of the technology that will be applied using those standards already exists.
Cloud, Standards, and Pants
Why the creation of standards for Intercloud and Infrastructure 2.0 are so difficult
Cloud Balancing, Cloud Bursting, and Intercloud
How Intercloud and Infrastructure will move hybrid architectures that leverage cloud computing to achieve a variety of business goals
Intercloud: The Evolution of Global Application Delivery
The goal of Intercloud is essentially a dynamic infrastructure that comprises local and cloud-based services. It is an evolutionary process that relies heavily on global application delivery.

James believes "Infrastructure 2.0" will “evolve into a body of standards that will have the same impact as BGP or DNS” and I share that belief. The trick is going to be in developing standards that allow for the “squishiness” that is required to remain flexible and adaptable across myriad architectures and environments while being able to standardize how that happens.

Related blogs & articles:

Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,Infrastructure 2.0,Greg Ness,Christofer Hoff,James Urquhart,context-aware,dynamic infrastructure,virtualization,cloud computing,standards

Virtualization Expo New York Call for Papers to Expire January 15, 2010

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:15:00 EST

Delegates will leave Virtualization Expo with a full understanding of the interaction between virtual servers and the rest of the data center infrastructure. Indeed our overall aim is to ensure that all attendees leave the Jacob Javits Convention Center with abundant resources, ideas and examples they can apply immediately to leveraging Virtualization in their own corporate datacenter, on the desktop, and elsewhere. If you wish to submit a speaking proposal for the 8th Virtualization Expo, April 19–21, 2010, then you can do so right here

How to Architect For Web 2.0

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:00:00 EST

Web 2.0 may not have a clear-cut definition but irrespective of which way you look at it (there are 3 different ways of looking at web 2.0), it is about the behavior of complex system, it is about collective intelligence and it is about emergence. The fundamental principles governing such systems are that the whole is much more than the sum of its parts – the behavior of the system cannot be derived or understood by analyzing individual elements.

Lessons from Being Listed in Wikipedia

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

A Nov. 30 article in the Business Journal covered some of our experiences with being a company listed on Wikipedia, and with that listing being challenged. I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the lessons we learned and provide some simple advice for those of you who would like your organizations listed on Wikipedia.

It's Maybe Time to Consider Crowdsourcing

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:45:00 EST

We all know about outsourcing, the ability to farm out work to people, often overseas, that will work for less, and sometimes for a lot less. But a not-so-new trend is changing the way that outsourcing happens, called crowdsourcing. The idea is to take a job and divide it into small enough pieces that someone can do it quickly in their spare time. Think about transcribing an audio recording. Or Photoshopping a series of photographs. The difference between regular outsourcing and crowdsourcing is that you don’t necessarily know your contractors, and they mostly are here in the good ole U S of A. Think of it as stimulus package for our troubled times, but based entirely on the private sector.

Diffusing Technology into Generation Z

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:00:00 EST

Us “Baby Boomers” tend to believe we have accomplished a lot in the years ranging from our roots of hard rock, to the birth of basic internet technologies in the early 1970s. We started our generation with black and white television, experiencing everything from the assassination of President Kennedy to absorbing the wonders of man walking on the moon.

A Doctrine for Change - Lawrence Lessig Again

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST

I was again reading and reviewing Lawrence Lessig's work tonight. The man is so very articulate and his observations so compelling. If you haven't become a student of his work, please take my advice and give it a try here.

At the 2002 Open Source Convention Lessig challenged the audience to get involved in the political process. A tireless advocate for open source, Lessig shared some basic concepts that are a solution to most of the barriers preventing our soceity from overcoming the major challenges of the time. A complete transcript of Lawrence's keynote presentation made on July 24, 2002 is available here. In summation his logical findings were as follows.

Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.

The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.

Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.

Ours is less and less a free society.

Watch the video from Big Thinkers wherein Lessig explains his views on freedom our culture and creativity.

Citizen Journalism as a Catalyst for Transforming Media

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST

Another incident on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) hits YouTube, and the world is once again asking the question if BART Police are using too much force, the police acted appropriately, or if BART passengers simply recorded a snapshot in time that could be interpreted at a later date. In the recent past, to find out what happened during an incident such as the most recent BART scuffle, you would be dependent on a newspaper’s beat journalist to hang around a police station. He’d get a copy of the official police report, perhaps talk with one of his friends on the force, and transcribe what he gathered.

What Does Internet Routing in Space Mean for the CTO?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST

Yesterday, 23 November 2009, an Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance successfully launched the Intelsat 14 satellite (IS-14). Liftoff of the Atlas V occurred at 1:55am ET. The satellite separated successfully two hours later. Today we received word that the satellite’s solar panels have deployed and all is well. Great launch! There is something [...] Related posts:

When the Crowd is Racist at Google

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:30:00 EST

If you search Google Images for "Michelle Obama" (no quotes), the first image you'll see is a poorly photoshopped picture of her as an ape. You'll also see a Google Ad on that page that links to Google's explanation of why such a blatantly racist photo is the top-ranked one at ...

How Economic Challenges Help Enterprise 2.0

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:30:00 EST

Enterprise 2.0 is described by Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen as, "a system of web based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise." It is basically social networking for businesses. This article explores how the recent economic challenges are promoting the growth of Enterprise 2.0 in businesses.

A Swift Kick to the IPv6 Backside

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:00:00 EST

The institutional horror stories continue, the old Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) address space is nearly gone, and if we do not transition to IPv6 with its nearly unlimited address space the Internet will grind to a halt.

Cloud, The New Taste of the Internet

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:45:00 EST

Lately there seems to be a minor debate among the clouderati about the semantic differences between the term "the cloud" versus the use of "cloud computing". So I thought I'd jump into the fray.

As someone who spends his days eating, breathing and sometimes drinking cloud computing, it's fun to see how the debate has recently devolved into a debate purely focused upon the finer semantic nuances of the various terminologies. The debate seems to generally focus on the varied usages within the companies that are attempting to "cloud-ify" themselves & their products/services. This cloudification seems to be the trend du'jour within the technology industry, an attempt to augment marketing materials and or product positioning to include cloud related buzz words, whether they make sense or not.

Actually one of the better stated criticism comes from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison who observes that cloud computing has been defined as "everything". It's everything and nothing in particular, a trendy word that is used more to impress than explain a particular problem. I for one completely agree.

As a marketing term, cloud has enabled us to broadly define the movement away from the desktop / server centric past to the cloud [Internet] enabled future. Wikipedia's cloud definition says it well, "it is a paradigm shift where technological details are abstracted from the users who no longer need knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them". Yup, enough said.

This message is to of you -- the ones who are jumping on the cloud bandwagon, let me say this as plainly as possible. Regardless of whether it's "the cloud" or "cloud computing" it all comes back to the fact that it's a buzzword. A way to say we're cool, we're now, we're new, with out saying it directly (a neologism). It's the New Coke of Computing / the new taste of the Internet.

So what is The Cloud? It's the Internet. And what is Cloud Computing? It's the next big thing in computing, it's using the Internet.

Businesses Need to Capture Web Data for BI to Work Better

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:22:00 EST

For businesses looking to do even more commerce and community building across the Web, text access and analytics forms a new mother lode of valuable insights to mine. Text-based content and information from across the Web are growing in importance to businesses. The need to analyze web-based text in real-time is rising to where structured data was in importance just several years ago. Indeed, for businesses looking to do even more commerce and community building across the Web, text access and analytics forms a new mother lode of valuable insights to mine. As the recession forces the need to identify and evaluate new revenue sources, businesse need to capture such web data services for their business intelligence (BI) to work better, deeper, and faster.

Crowdsourcing: Testing the Limits with John Winsor

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:00:00 EDT

Having grilled some of the top minds in the software business, this installment of Testing the Limits will deviate slightly from the norm. With us this month is John Winsor – author, entrepreneur and crowdsourcing expert. After a successful career as a journalist and magazine publisher, John founded Radar Communications in 1998, where he implemented a [...]

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Cloud Executives Feature on Cloud Computing Expo Power Panel

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:30:00 EDT

Before the New York version of its International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, which is about to be held again in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara Convention Center, 2-4 November, 2009), SYS-CON.TV invited four leading industry thought leaders to discuss how Cloud Computing brings the economics of the Web to Enterprise IT and where the move to the cloud will take the industry overall. The participants were Amazon.com VP & CTO, Werner Vogels; Rackspace CTO, John Engates; Booz Allen Hamilton Principal, Rod Fontecilla; and Sun's CTO of Global Sales & Services, Hal Stern.

My Thoughts on Ulitzer

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:45:00 EDT

Ok, so, here are my thoughts on Ulitzer... As a blogger, I focus on traffic and I spend quite a lot of time optimizing my SEO. Since the target audience of my articles is much greater than the reach of my blog, Ulitzer is actually helping me increase my content reach. Moreover, Ulitzer does it in a very fair way since links back to my posts or other locations are without the evil "nofollow" providing a nice SEO boost. It also gives me some good metrics that are very useful data point on the effectiveness of my blog article. And last but not least, it allows my article to appears in news.google.com, which is a very nice channel extension. So, all of these to say that while Utilizer might be seen as a competing channel to bloggers, I think that bloggers should realize the tremendous value it could bring to their blog. I think to materialize this value to bloggers, some sort of WordPress plugin would be very useful. I think that allowing bloggers to show and combined Ulitzer/SYS-CON stats, comments, Tweets/ReTweets with their blog posts would be a killer feature. Another approach would be to expose a simple REST API (just HTTP JSON gets) and do a sample Wordpress plugin showing developers how to integrate Wordpress with Ulitzer. Anyway, just some random thoughts.

MLB.com: Ignoring Requests for Removal from Email List

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:45:00 EDT

A few months ago I purchased Giants tickets through MLB.com to take my mom, nephew and boyfriend to a game. It was the first time I’d personally purchased tickets to a Giants game, so understandable that I would now be on their email list. Right away I started receiving emails from MLB.com. I like baseball, but not enough to want emails about it, so I scrolled to the bottom of the email and clicked to unsubscribe. A confirmation page came up confirming that I had indeed unsubscribed. But apparently, it didn’t take on their end.

"Web as Platform" Has Been Replaced By “Cloud Computing“

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:00:00 EDT

First Web 2.0 conference was held October 5-7, 2004 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. Lot has happened in the last five years like the theme “Web as Platform” as a terminology is dead and has been replaced by “Cloud Computing“. In this year’s hype cycle for emerging technologies, Gartner has positioned Web 2.0 under [...]

Opinion: The Real Cost of Acquisitions - the Zimbra Story

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:00:00 EDT

There are reports that Yahoo has put Zimbra on the block. Honestly, this came as no surprise at all to us at Zoho. I remember scratching my head when the acquisition was made; I didn't see how an enterprise/business focused open source offering like Zimbra fit with Yahoo, as a technology, as a business or strategically. Zimbra is an open source installable product offering primarily intended to be installed within medium to large organizations. Yahoo has never made an installed product in its history and is mainly focused on consumers, with an occasional foray to sell those consumer-focused applications to small businesses. Zimbra's service provider offerings made no strategic sense to Yahoo either, because Yahoo, being a service provider itself, has no interest in selling technology to other service providers like Comcast. Finally, we have been on both sides of the product vs. web-service divide, and I can assert with confidence that it is not easy to take a product and make it into a scalable web service; in fact, the main reason Zoho Mail got delayed was that it was originally written as an installable product, much like Zimbra, and we essentially rewrote it to be a web service.

Positive Word of Mouth and Your Brand - Part 1

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:30:00 EDT

I was giving a seminar on the "18 People You Need To Connect with on Earth" which really focuses on crafting a strong social capital portfolio when one of the participants came up to me in tears during the first break. She didn't know if what she was doing right now in her life is what she really wanted to do. In fact, she was thinking of seriously leaving her job and doing something totally different. Out of fear of raising any doubts to her employer she continued with the seminar. During the lunch break, her workshop partner (who was not a co-worker) confided in me that he felt she did not want to work with him and that she might be racist because she avoided every conversation with him. I shared with him that she was dealing with other things that had nothing to do with him and assured him that nothing she was experiencing was directed at him.

Will Customers Nominate Themselves as Stories?

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:11:00 EDT

If asked, will customers submit themselves as possible case study or success story candidates? From consumer-products companies to B2B to nonprofit organizations, many now actively solicit stories with self-service “Share Your Story” links on their Web sites. Apple created a... Casey Hibbard

The Power of Social Media

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:00:00 EDT

This afternoon I was sitting in a meeting discussing a potential upcoming marketing campaign to target developers. It’s a great concept, and I am looking forward to seeing it come to fruition. However, during the course of the discussion, it became clear that ad buys would be the primary driver of traffic. My chief concern was that the developer audience uses ad blocker software at a higher rate than the general population. We don’t have data on it, and no one was sure how to get it. I asked the community at Hacker News, and was pointed to this posting about the downloads of AdBlock Plus. That was a good start, but to really get an answer about which we could feel happy I came up with this hack to get quick and dirty numbers.

Is Ulitzer a New Trend or the Ultimate Death of Journalism?

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:00:00 EDT

I must confess I am very new to Ulitzer as an online channel of social communication media. But I am delighted about its raison d'être. However, I cannot help but ask these questions: Is Ulitzer the beginning of a new trend or the ultimate death of journalism? Or is it the glorification of e-journalism? The realization of a new journalism practice in the age of Web services and Internet Technology? These series of questions are being answered everyday as the new social media moguls and barons and baronesses of the Internet Media launched another online media channel, one after another.

Limit Anchor SEO Text Links To 55 Characters?

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:30:00 EDT

This of course has an impact in writing your titles for pieces you want linked to – especially for those with a habit of taking the article title and linking it to the page. Most are aware a title should be under 70 characters to have maximum impact in Google. From a test I did, Google ignored words in a title after 70+ characters. But if Google only attributes the first 55 characters in a link, does this mean there’s at least a 10-20 character no-man’s land to consider when creating links & headlines?