Solar OP Technology Blog

Twitter made a lot of waves over the past few months. From a voyeuristic, “I’m eating”, “can’t sleep” kind of ‘lifestreamer’, it has become a news media sensation. Earlier on it was just early earthquake reports. But Twitter hit big with the Iran elections, leaving dust to most traditional news channels in terms of realtime coverage of event and popularity amongst readers . That’s one hell of a powerful medium.

Wag The Dog is a brilliant 1997 satire, starring some big names (de niro, Hoffman), about a U.S. president inventing a war to increase his chances to win the upcoming elections. The president’s staff calls in a famous Hollywood producer to create a non-existing war (see trailer below, it’s a great, smart, funny movie).
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We’ve been working hard to add new functionality to tFeeder, the technology news aggregator that uses Twitter to rank stories. We have added several new key features, which makes tFeeder truly unique in terms of usefulness. We have added more server power to handle many more blogs. We added a mobile version so that you could tFeed whenever you feel like it. We improved our algorithms to make tFeeder identify hot stories even faster than before. And we made tFeeder much more friendly with Google Friend Connect.
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It’s been a very busy technology news day, with Twitter’s stolen documents making most of the headlines (we reported the story earlier today). tFeeder, the realtime, Twitter-powered technology news aggregator, identified Techcrunch’s post on the subject as a Boiling story about 3 minutes after it was first posted by Michael Arrington .

• Twitter has become tech bloggers favorite punchbag. Everyone’s badmouthing them, for good reasons. Techcrunch were first to break the story, having received stolen Twitter documents from the alleged hacker. They are now in negotiation with Twitter lawyers about materials they are publishing. Other blogs and media outlets also received the docs, but TC promised they’ll publish some of those soon. Several docs are already published here and some financial forecast here.
• Mahsable also got their hands on the Twitter documents, but chose not to publish any of them.  They published two stories on the Twitter documents, taking it straight at Twitter.
• Security was the main topic of the day, as Firefox 3.5 (the browser I’m using) has a huge security hole in it. Mashable offers a workaround, and FF should release a patch soon. A great day for security companies.
• Facebook is also having a great day - not only a competitor (Twitter) seems unreliable and vulnerable, FB added 50 million new users in the past 3 months. Impressive.

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While we were trying out the new mobile version of tFeeder (it was actually our first tFeeder news we got on our mobile), we discovered a BOILING story - Techcrunch got a hold of confidential documents from Twitter.
Appearently, Twitter was hacked a few months ago, and the hacker sent the documents to Techcrunch. Techcrunch Michael Arrington did this numerous times in the past - publish documents that other bloggers would not dare publish. He states in the post that he will release some of the documents.
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I love reading technology blogs. Most stories on top tech blogs are insightful, but every now and then a blogger is caught off-guard and posts a Null post - a post about nothing. Null posts can be attributed to blog readers appetite for fresh,original information on one hand, and competition on the other, which creates a pressure to ‘publish or parish’. I will occasional write about the technology blogging industry, map the different players, and point different  trends as well as hiccups.

Mashabale gets all excited about…nothing

Mashable is one of the leading web 2.0 blogs, probably no. 2 after Techcrunch. Although these blogs title themselves as social media blogs, they post mostly about Twitter,Google,Microsoft,the iphone and sometimes the kindle - not all pure social media players.

Today Mashable writer Stan Schroeder does a very poor job being a tech blogger and writes about something that didn’t happen - his original post states that Amazon is releasing the Kindle’s source code. That is just not true, as he explains later in an update to the post.

That post is what I call a Null Post - you’re looking for something to write about, it’s early morning and you need to get those visitors coming, so you write about something without checking the facts.It can become embarrassing.

The funny thing is that I did the exact same mistake on my open source ERP blog - I reported that a certain software vendor released its product as open source, but it turned out that he didn’t - he just provided an easier access to the source - the source was available for free for a long time already. This type of mistakes tend to surface faster than you think! 

Techcrunch Vs. Wired

This have been going on for some time now - Techcrunch Michael Arrington taking it at Wired magazine. Techcrunch is my favorite technology blog, and about a month ago I got my hands (for the first time) on a printed Wired magazine, and I loved it (October 2008 issue).

The TC-Wired war started a couple of years ago, with Michael, in his own unique way, took a couple of low blows at Wired. You could tell there will be blood. Indeed, bloddy it became when Wired criticized the Washington Post for publishing technology news syndicated by Techcrunch.It became really dirty, and then it went into a coma, at least for  a while.

A couple of days ago Techrunch (Gears, which covers gadgets), posted this : Wired looks at junk that doesn’t work. Is Techcrunch wiping the dust off that old war? I sure hope so! I’ll keep you update, register to our RSS feed.

I just checked my blogs’ stats ( I use the Wordpress Firestat plugin ), and found a couple of very interesting ‘visits’ - visitors apparently coming from searches of  ’Twtitter’ and ‘Technology’ on search.live.com, which is Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine. That was somewhat suspicious - my blog is only about 2 weeks old. The chances of my blog appearing in top results for these two search terms is close to zero.

Here’s the screenshot of the two visits, who’s source are the keywords : ‘Twitter’ and ‘Technology’, from Bing search engine:

I tried to find out who are the visitors who were referred to my blog from Bing. I was surprised to find that they came from within Microsoft Corp network!! ( I used MaxMind IP geocoding services to find details of IP address 65.55.165.102, which is one of the visitors’ IP).

See screenshot below:

As far as I’m concerned, there are two possibilities here:

1.A real person working for Microsoft searched Bing for ‘Twitter’ and ‘Technology’, and my blog appeared high enough in the search results, and that visitor click on my link from Bing.

2. A robot identified my site as a blog (perhaps as a technology blog), and generated a spoof visit, knowing I will look through my stats (what bloggers do several times a day), and then follow the link that apparently brought a visitor, thus generating a Bing hit. Spoofing this kind of visit is pretty simple (you can pragmatically generate an HTTP request and set HTTP_Referrer to whatever you want).  As a matter of fact, I get several such spoofed visit to all of my blogs, but I never got one from a major website.

Keep in mind that there are millions of bloggers out there checking their stats to see who visited their website and where did they come from. If you can get only half of them to click on a spoof visit to check the visits’ referrer, you can generate a considerable amount of traffic.

So which is it, a real visit or a spoof? You decide for yourselves, but just try to search on Bing for Twitter or technology and see if you get a result from this blog (Solar OverPower). It might be that Microsoft is loosing it.

It seems like this days our world needs to be defined in 140 characters (we are trying to fight this). Google is a great company and any product it offers is worth at least a blog post. One of the latest released products is Google Wave. You must have already heard or read about it, but still, I couldn’t find anywhere a good definition, in less than 140 characters, of  where Google Wave innovates.

Google defines wave as :

.. a tool for communication and collaboration on the web

but that sounds so late 90’s - communication? collaboration?? that’s web1.0 stuff.
Google sure got a lot of hype around Wave, some calling it an MS office killer, some Twitter buster, and some claiming it will become the ultimate project management tool. I’m not sure yet if I see the added value in using Wave. As a stand-alone product, which adds real-time features to email and lets you easily share pictures using drag-and-drop, it seems to me as a natural evolution of Gmail, no more.

I believe what can make Wave a true game-changer will come from a 3rd party developer, someone who will leverage Google Wave’s API to create a new type of web service, possibly mashing Wave up with other web services.

And the truth is, I think I might have a killer idea, the next Twitter. And that’s why I need your help - I requested a user for the development sandbox and still waiting for confirmation. If you happen to have a sandbox user, I’d love to get an invite!

To understand Google Wave with minimal effrot, read this great Google Wave F.A.Q.
If you have more time to spear, here’s the Google Wave live demo.

Look for furture post on the Wave app I plan on building, register to t our RSS feed.

Doing research for the Techcrunch story (Michael Arrington liked that post), I unintentionally found a real gem - Techcrunch introduction of a new web 2.0 service - Twttr (the original name, they later changed it to Twitter). The service was a side-project of the Odeo team, a startup that created a podcast search engine.

It’s truly amazing to see, in retrospect, how far an idea, which very few people could initially understand, can go. Even Michael (TC) lacked the foresight to identify the real strength of the service - people sharing trivial daily activities publicly.  . He says:

There is also a privacy issue with Twttr. Every user has a public page that shows all of their messages. Messages from that person’s extended network are also public. I imagine most users are not going to want to have all of their Twttr messages published on a public website.

There are some very interesting (and somewhat funny) comments on that post:

I do not understand the utility of adding the SMS messages to a public webpage or making messages from my network public. I would have to pass on that type of offering. The ability to make messages private should be added asap.

i do not want to be woken up at 4 a.m. because my friend got drunk and decided to text Twttr with “asdl im at barasdf sooo drunksalkfjs”

I think this is the dumbest thing ever! Who would want all their personal text messages on a public website for anyone to read and track?

Odeo was a failure from the get go. No revenue model. I asked their VC - CRV - what the revenue model was a year ago and he said “to sell to someone bigger.” Okay, that was a web 1.0 answer, and now we get Twttr - an even dumber idea with no revenue model, but a 2.0 concept

Not innovative and not focused. Twttr sounds like a disaster in the making

You’d have to agree that some of these comments are still relevant, despite Twitter’s amazing success.

You can read the original post here.

One of Twitter’s first homepage designs - go get a barf bag. It’s ugly!

I’m a noob tech blogger and the purpose of this post is to show you the differences between a noob and a pro tech blog. Also, It’s Techcrunch’s 4th birthday, so it’s a good time to  compare my blog to two instances of Techcrunch - the early days Techcrunch (2005-2006) and the current Techcrunch. I hope that one day I can compare the noob Solar OP to the pro Solar OP.

Advertisement

Thousands of wannabe tech bloggers start blogging because they want to be rich, hoping to make billions of $ serving ads on their blog. The holey grail of making money off technology blogs are sponsorships. You’ll notice that all major tech blogs have a sponsorship section, usually found in the top-right hand side of each page. Other than that, most bloggers - noob and pros alike - use Google’s AdSense program, as it is very simple and reliable.

Techcrunch early days - no ads whatsoever. I wonder how Michael (Arrington, TC founder) was making a leaving back then (from being a lawyer?)

Techcrunch current - tons of sponsors, most of them are startup companies looking for a bulletproof way to get relevant exposure. Techcrunch also uses AdSense (top bar banner and text or image unit under the first post, a prime ad position), as well other ad networks. TC also makes tons of money off their annual TC50 conference.

Solar OP - I only use Google Adsense, a true mark of noobiness. . Also, you’ll notice that currently, the ads running on my blog are for solar energy, while my blog focuses on Internet and technology. That means no one will click my ads.  The solar energy ads are there because Google didn’t learn enough about my blog to decide what’s its focus (more backlinks to my blogs will help here). Until Google pulls their act together - no clicks for Solar OP, no $$$ for me.

RSS Subscribers Count

Technology blogs are on a  constant race to publish new content, posting up to ten times a day. For most tech readers, using RSS is the only sane option to keep track on new posts (I know, Twitter is also an option).

Techcrunch early days - Michael’s so proud of his readership, he places the RSS subscribers count on top of each page. He had about 6000 subscribers after being in business for only 6 months. Cool!!

Techcrunch current - TC has an amazing 2.3M RSS subscribers base. From some reason, they hide that figure at the bottom of their homepage, maybe because they believe RSS is dead.

Solar OP -  I currently have 8 RSS subscribers, nothing to brag about, yet. Register to our RSS here.

Blog Design

Wordpress is the most popular blogging platform out there. It’s free and highly extensible. One of the most important things in a blog (and any website) is the user experience. Wordpress offers a themes engine that allows you to easily change the look and feel of your blog. Both TC and Solar OP run on Wordpress.

Techcrunch early days - TC credits WeBreakStuff with the design of their early theme - not sure if it was a free download theme, or custom a design for Techcrunch. If the latter is true, I bet Michael agreed to exchange a link to WeBreakStuff for the theme design. Anyway, a link from every page on current Techcrunch to your website (like the WeBreakStuff credit) worth a lot more than what it costs to design a blog theme.

Techcrunch current - have their own trademark green-white design. No credits to the theme designer - they either designed it in-house, or paid a design company.

Solar OP - I love the theme I’m using (By NeoEase). Only problem is that it’s highly overused.

Writers

When you need to update your blog 10 times a day, you need a lot of typepower. Most major tech blogs began as one-man-gang. As the pressure to post more frequently became too heavy, the founders had to build a team of writers to keep those impatient,Ritalin-induced tech readers happy.

Techcrunch early days - only Michael Arrington.

Techcrunch current - about one in every 5 posts are Arrington’s. He has a team of writers doing all the dirty work for him (covering startup companies), while Michael does mostly brawl and about brawl posts.

Solar OP - Only myself. If you want to contribute, send me a note.

Controversy

Michael invented the tech-blogger-brawler archetype. He posted confidential emails people sent him, causing major headaches to startups top management. He uploaded threatening letters from lawyers. And he does all these things with a wink.

Techcrunch early days - Reading Michael’s early posts, you’d think he’d be the perfect match for your sister. The guy was a real charm. Believe it or not, he even used smileys back then:

Techcunrch current - The pussycat turned tiger. One of the main reasons for the 2M+ RSS subscribers is Michael unique instinct for creating controversy. There are many examples - Michael takes it at then Yahoo CEO Jerry Young, at Twitter’s first system architect and at the man who invented RSS, to name a few.

Solar OP - As a newcomer to the scene, you have to stand out to get some traction. I can’t afford the lawyers, so it must be within certain boundaries. Still a work in progress.

I must admit, I love to read Techcrunch and I comment there often. You should pay them a visit, and I hope that one day I’ll be able to get a traction close to the one TC gained over the past 4 years. Happy Birthday TC!!.

Over the past year I’ve uploaded several video clips to Youtube. Today, logging into Youtube’s “My videos’ section, I noticed a new, shocking button - ‘Download mp4‘. When I clicked the button, the movie downloaded to my desktop in an mp4 format.

It doesn’t make any sense - why would I want to download movies I uploaded myself? Although the downloaded movies are mp4 - and you can upload a verity of formats, I doubt it if Youtube  wants to become a movie format conversion service.

I could see the download button only under movies I uploaded myself. I believe the day Youtube will allow us to download any movie (with ads embedded, of course), as it might lower streaming costs. Youtube traffic bills are in the billions, and Google is yet to find a reasonable way to monetize Youtube’s huge audience.

Here’s the screenshot with the new button: