Wow, I love this quote from Garret Rogers at Googling Google, a zdnet blog:
” Even great companies like Ask have been spinning their wheels for years while spending millions on advertising — and in some ways, you can argue that they even have superior search technology. ”
I’m biased though - I work at Ask (and I love it) .
Breaking news this morning, by the way of Valleywag, was that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg cashed out on $40 million dollars worth of Facebook stock. Turns out that wasn’t true. It was a rumor, but because Valleywag covered it, it quickly spread to other notable blogs like Silicon Alley Insider, Mashable!, and many many others. It’s because they all basically read each other and the moment something breaks nobody wants to be the last person to talk about it.
This might spell trouble for robot aggregators (which I personally love) like Techmeme and Blogrunner. They just automatically pick up on the latest discussions. By early this afternoon Blog Runner had changed its headline and removed the other (editors?), Techmeme had not (I don’t see a way to link to a Techmeme discussion). I’m always checking these sources several times a day (mostly because I’m bored), but for some they may only check it once and get the wrong info. Despite having the backing of the authority of The New York Times Company, Blog Runner basically lent its credibility to what turned out to be a false rumor. How could a robot know what’s a rumor or not? This wont lead to me not using such sites, I think they have tremendous value, but it is something to keep in mind.
You’ve probably read about this already. It’s covered in the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, also top on the lists of Techmeme and Blog Runner.
Where did CompUSA go wrong? It’s hard to tell. I have a few nostalgic recollections of buying my first PC game from a CompuUSA in Hawaii’i. When the original Diablo and Half Life, and StarCraft were new games, CompUSA was the place to go. That was long before I had ever heard of a Best Buy.
In my mind CompUSA sits somewhere in between a BestBuy or CircuitCity and your local small business computer store. That’s not bringing Fry’s into picture, but not many places have a Fry’s. CompUSA sells motherboards and CPU’s, which a store like BestBuy does not. But unlike a small computer store, they have big box store return policies. For me it was the best of worlds. Their prices weren’t always the best, and the stores weren’t always the best looking, but it had (and still has until the final stores are closed) a special niche for me.
I suppose Fry’s is the closest thing to a CompUSA. Those places are dumps, but you can’t ignore that they have a lot greater options when it comes to esoteric pc parts and cables. I suppose I’ll do most of my computer shopping online now.
Read More:
Gizmodo: CompUSA Throws in the Towel, Sells to a Liquidator.
Engadget: RIP, CompUSA: 1984 - 2008
CruchGear: CompUSA closing, assets to be sold
I kind of want to start blogging, just because I enjoy it and I started up this new blog and I paid for the hosting. I thought I would maybe go and take a comprehensive look at different online social network sites. I’m not really sure yet what kinds of sites I’ll include, it certaintly wont be every site under the sun, just those I find interesting. Easy targets are MySpace and Facebook, but I also want to look at places like Vox and Wordpress and Blogger. This will be a bit of a fluid thing, not very consistent as I’ll learn more as I progress from one site to the next and will be able to evaluate subsequent sites better than previous ones. I don’t know how long or often I will post on this topic. One thing of interest is how networks enable sharing. Sharing of ideas, files, pictures, whatever.
I was at Barnes & Nobles at the Pruneyard the other day looking through their collection of books on Linux. None of them seemed to fit me because they were all heavy on the GUI side of things. The distro specific books were also guilty of this. They were all focused on making Linux accessible to the new guy. It makes sense because the more advanced users will probably use the man or know where to look online for excellent information about Linux, or from a co-worker or friend online. But what I wanted was a book. And I found one! It’s called “A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming” and it’s by Mark Sobell.
It totally avoids the whole GUI thing and gets right into the meat of things. I think it makes a great companion to Linux In a Nutshell, which is basically the man with examples and a reference section (which make it worth it). I’ve already learned a great deal such as the less command, using CNTRL+U to clear a line, pausing, resuming and killing jobs. It’s just the various little things you might not pick up online but that really make Linux so much easier to use. For instance if you’re using a Virtual Terminal and doing an LS on a directory full of stuff I might in the past have LS >’ed into a file and then would have checked out the file (because you can’t scroll up in the VT), but with less there’s no need: LS | less does the trick.
If you haven’t tried it, The New York Time’s Blogrunner is pretty fricken sweet. I don’t know too much about it, it seems to be sort of generated sort of editorialized. It’s basically like Techmeme (which is also awesome) but more categories and more content. Techmeme is completely algorithm based I believe. Sometimes I think The New York Times is one of the very very few old media types that “get’s it.” They removed TimesSelect, they’ve started some very excellent blogs like bits (I wish David Pogue was a blog and not a column, but alas someone out there is still reading a paper). Now they need to get rid of that stupid registration requirement. Los Angeles Times recently had a redesign that I think is pretty wonderful. These newspapers are finally realizing what we knew about 5 years ago: they’re in for the fight of their lives. I hope NYT, the WSJ, and some other top notch publications survive. I love blogs, I do, but sometimes that rational tone and professional editorialized content retains some of that authority and integrity that’s hard to come by (and also easy to lose).
Yessir, sharewonders is gone, now there’s just bjorn.tipling.com. If you were subscribed to my feedburner feed for sharewonders, I have redirected it to this new blog. Need to get around to redesigning this thing.