Technology
« Older Entries |I Spy Something Red White & Blue
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on August 28, 2010 by admin in Technology
Saturday, August 28th, 2010Why spying on your fellow Americans is your duty as a patriot, and how to do it.
For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me until the other day that because the Bush administration made spying on citizens part of the American Way (an idea that in spite of all his talk of change, Obama wholeheartedly supports ), we’re actually obligated to spy on each other to show our patriotism. As always, if you want to know how to spy, there’s a retarded eHow article on the topic. I hope the author of “How to Use a Webcam to Spy on People” causes the content farm Demand Media to get their pants sued off; before you write a piece like that, you might want to ponder the legality of what you’re suggesting. That issue doesn’t seem to be stopping anyone though (including us); there are hundreds of articles like this. Although we’d hasten to point out that the content farm hack that wrote How to spy on people for Hubpages.com also authored Tips on how to get a girl to go out with you and How to invest in the nigerian stock market. So frankly, you might just improvise. There are plenty of tools available, so the only limits on what you can do these days would be a result of your own lack of moral decrepitude or ingenuity. In light of the legal decision handed down the other day that allows government agents to sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car, and keep track of everywhere you go, why not just do it yourself with an Always Find Mini Realtime Covert Vehicle Tracker
Facebook Like Button Alternatives
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on August 14, 2010 by admin in Technology
Saturday, August 14th, 2010I really hope you like this. Because if you don’t, I’m assuming you hate it.
Don’t you love the Like button? No longer must we pause, actually think about something and articulate a response; we can either just “like” it or not. Which sort of raises the question: if you don’t click the “Like” button, doesn’t that mean that you don’t like something? I mean, when life is distilled down to a binary set of responses, and you don’t engage in the simple action of clicking a little “Like” button, shouldn’t your inaction be perceived as an active dislike? I’m going to assume so from now on, and be forced to ask: WHY DO YOU HATE ME SO MUCH??? The fact is that although I personally find it frustrating that on Facebook I can only “Like” something or not, or be someone’s “Friend” or not, Facebook will probably always thrive on this kind of binary decision making process. But that won’t stop some of us from pondering the possibilities. Mark Cuban for instance, thinks the Like button would benefit from some color coding. And a BoingBoing.net reader has proposed a “meh” button. So, never wanting to miss a ride on the meme wagon, we’ve come up with a few of our own. See below. And remember: if you don’t “Like” this article, we’ll be assuming you hate it. Read the rest of this entry »
Google And The CIA Invest In “Temporal Analytics Engine”
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on July 31, 2010 by admin in Featured, Technology
Saturday, July 31st, 2010Google and the CIA may sound like strange bedfellows, but not in an era in which the ad industry is building “databases of intentions” based on your surfing habits. Learn how “harmless” sites like Dictionary.com are tracking where you surf, and what you type while you’re there. And how to prevent it.
Love it or hate it (and in spite of occasionally hilarious results) the Google auto-complete feature can be uncannily accurate when guessing the rest of what you’ll type. So wouldn’t it be great if in the future, Google would know what you’re searching before you even search for it? If this sounds more like the movie Minority Report
Who Actually Uses Social Bookmarking Sites?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on July 24, 2010 by admin in Featured, Technology
Saturday, July 24th, 2010Even though you’ve probably never used a social bookmarking site - and may not even know what they are - they have a tremendous impact on the sites you end up visiting.
There are two things that I find amusing about social bookmarking sites. One is that in spite of the fact that they can bring 10,000 new visitors to a site in a single day and leave the site with a durable increase in traffic from that day on, you rarely hear web “traffic experts” talking about the importance of them. The other thing I find amusing is that in spite of their awesome power and rabidly loyal users, no one seems to be using them! I asked exactly 10 friends if they used social bookmarking sites over the last two days, and exactly 10 of them said “no”, with seven of them saying “you mean like Facebook?”, two of them saying “yeah, I bookmark sites” (meaning in their browser) and one saying, in his typically paranoid fashion “are you kidding? I NEVER click on those things!” Which highlights another interesting fact: For many people, being on the web is like using their new home entertainment system - in spite of all the amazing buttons and features they could be messing with, they mostly just watch and change channels a lot. I’m convinced that all those little rows of bookmarking icons you see all over the web remain a mystery to the average user, and largely unused by people who actually use those sites. So for those of you who aren’t familiar with social bookmarking, we have a quick roundup of the most popular services below, and for those who are familiar with them, we have a very interesting data table that lets you sort them by Google pagerank, incoming links, or estimated dollar value as web properties. Do you use a social bookmarking site? If so, feel free to share some thoughts. Or better yet, bookmark us! Read the rest of this entry »
How SEO, Google, and Facebook Are Ruining The Web, And Ruining You
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 9, 2010 by admin in Featured, Technology
Friday, July 9th, 2010Has the web become a big Wordpress linkfarm driven by social networking?
I loved it the other day when Prince said “the internet’s completely over”. Like that statement, and the headline above, much of what I’m about to say will be hyperbole, opinion, and oversimplification. Which is ironic, because that’s kind of what the web has become as a result of some of what I’ll be talking about. Do you remember when there were more than three search engines? When grandma didn’t have a blog, and your mom didn’t ask you “how do I set up a Facebook?” Or when small business owners who can barely use e-mail didn’t ask their web developer questions like “we’ll be be implementing SEO and social media tools when you build my website, right?” I would argue that Google’s domination of search and the ease of installation of Wordpress blogs have done nearly irreversible damage to the web. How? Back when there were a half dozen or so competing search engines - Lycos, Hotbot, Excite, MSN, Yahoo, Altavista, etc. -they would have ups and downs and shortcomings, but competition would drive their evolution. And perhaps more importantly, an interesting cycle would drive part of that evolution: a popular search engine would attract SEO experts, which would slowly erode the engine’s organic results, which would cause a migration to a new search engine, which would inspire the top dog to clean up their index, or fail. Then Google came along. They did so many things so well in the beginning that it was almost magical. And slowly their competitors faded into oblivion, so that now, according to stats like this, Google has about 70% of the market, Yahoo 15%, and Bing 9%. So why is that bad? Although a disruptive technology could always come along, for now, there’s little incentive for developers and VC’s to say “hey, let’s start a search engine“. And with Google as basically the only portal to the web for most people, their search results have become so “spammed out” and infested with Wordpress-driven linkfarms in general results, and Yelp-like listings in local results, that random searches can often be utterly useless. And Google can care less about that for awhile, because where will you go? It’s sort of like if you were frustrated with your cable TV service. What are you gonna do, call the other cable company? Add to this mix an attempt to cash in on the myth of the wisdom of the crowd, and you get a real mess. Rather quickly, any site that is based on natural networks of user trust will fall apart. Think of something like Yelp. Who bothers to offer up reviews on sites like Yelp? Mostly either opinionated egoists, or angry people. Real experts are too busy doing whatever they do as experts. Which is an idea summed up nicely in this piece by Amber Naslund, which talks about “confusing ego with influence”. And when Facebook becomes the second most visited site on the web, you get an interesting new phase. Google vs Facebook. Google keeps going after Facebook, while Facebook enters the search market. I can’t wait ’til all my search results are based on “Like” buttons that were clicked in e-mail spam campaigns. How about you? Oh I don’t need to ask. Facebook’s Edgerank will keep me informed of what you’re thinking and doing if I need to know. Which is another piece of this e-pocalypse. We already know that Google is making us stupid, but once we’re stupid, is it really such a good idea to make Facebook the very first thing we do each day?