Edmondo seems to be like another twitter site but this one is for educational purposes mostly, it seems that edmondo wants to build a social network site between teachers and students where the teachers update their students about the courses and the latest updates in class etc. So far alot of problems have been reported for edmondo regarding functionality but for the times it does work it has pleased most of its users.

The twitter trend is on a rise i won’t be surprised if more twitter-based sites come up on different niches such as night life, webmasters, gambling, geek etc..

A few weeks ago i covered a visual search engine by google and i knew there would be more who would follow in those footsteps in order to make an “even better” search engine and here we are, ManagedQ has released their visual search which is said to be the visual search engine experiment that actually works.

I ran a few queries at MQ and it seems to have a really great sorting system where it sorts the results of your query by Person, Place and Thing. I think that is what i am looking for mostly at google to find a certain person with a certain thing in a certain place..

Although MQ has its flaws such as query result page titles and various text problems on the main windows of results and the keywords on the place/person/thing area where the keywords are really irrelevant to what’s being talked about.

In my last post i talked about sponsored reviews being used to promote products so this was kinda interesting, this could be the next “free” reviews site, of course sooner or later someone is going to monetize it so much that the amount of natural/original reviews is going to be really small.

Blippr is one of the few 2.0 sites that i really like even though they are loosely based around twitter it still is quite interesting to me, i would assume that they will have alot more features soon, and product reviews on almost everything including ebooks,movies,songs,celebs..etc

Kinda like an all-in-one site for everything that costs money.. maybe?

The screenshots that i took below show that most of the things that blippr has are infact based on twitter, but still it doesn’t feel like they are copying anyone..odd..

So far so good, I’m still liking blippr!

Apparently microsoft made a 44 point something billion offer to yahoo, people are concentrating on what would happen to yahoo as a search engine but what about the adnetworks?

Yahoo has the highest payouts and Microsoft provides the hihgest ROI that i know of, if msft buys out yahoo and they form an ad network that would pay out like nothing else online, ppc wise and cpa wise. Personally i support msft to take over yahoo, as far as i can see:

Yahoo is a portal - more user oriented - more interactive and entertaining - its based on services for users like games, news..etc its main functions include mail,gaming and news not search.

Microsoft offers a number of services just like google and are really good at them too, at a seminar months ago they stated “Google is good at search we are good at everything else” i’ll post the source as soon as i find it. Msft is also doing amazing with its search engine most of the traffic to this blog is from MSN search anyway.

Above all that :

1. Yahoo has way too many failed projects in the past
2. Yahoo was never considered seo-able
3. It fluctuates more then google does
4. Its serps are really confusing, misleading and in some cases useless

I’m just waiting for the takeover to happen already so that i can milk their adnetwork ;p

After buying my daughter an iPod Nano for Christmas this last year and signing up at the iTunes site, I have been getting emails from Apple about their latest products so I thought I would share them with you here at Blueverse.

The fist one I got was an email about the new Apple MacBook Air.  It’s the thinnest notebook in the world so far.  Apple reports that they have streamlined everything about the way the MacBook works and then streamlined it again.  It is unlike any other laptop currently on the market today.

They did keep all the big benefits of the laptop though including the full sized keyboard with backlighting and added an oversized track pad with multi-touch technology similar to that of the iPhone and iPod.  The MacBook Air also has a 13.3 inch widescreen LED display area.

Built on a Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 GB of memory this notebook laptop is simply amazing.  It has full wireless capabilities that sets a new standard for mobile computing.   They are calling it “thinnovation”. With no other laptop coming close to being this thin, it’s easy to see why they can call it that.

Just look at how thin it really is:

There is a lot more to this MacBook Air from Apple but I’m afraid talking about it would only show my techno-challenged side so I’ll just give you the link to Apple’s MacBook Air and let you read about it yourself.

Watch the video at Gizmondo

This was quite unexpected, Reps from Gizmondo pulled an odd stunt at CES 2008 where they closed all the flat screen displays on all shows using a TV-B-Gone IR remote, which was kinda funny but mostly just mean and wasted so many people’s time and for this the CEA has banned them. For some reason all of this to me seems like a big publicity stunt for TV-B-Gone.

The conference was held by CEA and they took action against Gizmondo by banning them from further conferences and sent the following statement to the people at CNET:

We have been informed of inappropriate behavior on the show floor by a credentialed media attendee from the Web site Gizmodo, owned by Gawker Media. Specifically, the Gizmodo staffer interfered with the exhibitor booth operations of numerous companies, including disrupting at least one press event. The Gizmodo staffer violated the terms of CES media credentials and caused harm to CES exhibitors. This Gizmodo staffer has been identified and will be barred from attending any future CES events. Additional sanctions against Gizmodo and Gawker Media are under discussion.

More coverage on this:

• Bloggers behaving badly
• Gizmodo Gives Bloggers a Black Eye

On January 9, 2008 IZEARanks.com announced that they are now live to the public in general.  They are calling it RealRank and it is designed to measure the traffic and influence status on blogs.  RealRank is expected to replace the current ratings systems we use for our blogs today.

No longer do we have to wonder about the PR of a blog, it’s Alexa ranking and any other way that blogs have been rated by in the past.  It’s time for a new way of thinking and I think IZEA is on to something with their RealRank system.

Why should blogs be rated the same way other websites and directories are?  We are clearly a breed of unique people with websites more up-to-date on information than any static website who deserve a way to be measured based on the influence of our blog compared to others in our niche.  We no longer have to submit to being categorized with other websites who don’t have a blog type feel.  IZEA has set up a way for websites that are not a blog to be flagged and knocked out of the statistic rankings, which is only fair to each blogger and the potential advertisers who are seeking information about your blog.

However, RealRank will only include your blog if you sign up on the site and install the IZEAToolkit and claim your blog.  You have to embed a code on your web pages in order for them to track your statistics.  They are figuring your rank with the following formula and pride themselves in sharing this formula with you.  It 70% visitors per day, 20% on active inbound links to your blog, and the other 10% is based on the amount of page views you receive each day.

 Here is IZEA’s announcement.

This should be beneficial for those who are looking to advertise on blogs.  They give you a tool to be able to compare the statistics of 10 different blogs all at one time, as seen below.

Second Life (no thanks, it already feels like I’m trying to live more than my fair share of lives) suffers from the credit crunch. OK the global economy is in trouble, money is pouring out of the investing markets and the banks have stopped lending to each other, on top of all this the US sub-prime mortgage sector is collapsing having massive knock on effects around the world (The collapse and subsequent underwriting of the Northern Rock group in the UK, by the government has cost each man woman and child in the UK £1000, around $1900 dollars, so far.) And as a great man once said ‘As Above, So Below.’ Second Life has been in the news a great deal for everything from taking the sensible action of banning virtual bestiality (there is a joke about a Trojan Horse here somewhere) but now it seems as if the bottom has dropped out of the Linden Dollar.

Writing on the second life blog (http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/01/08/new-policy-regarding-in-world-banks), Ken Linden states that Linden labs is unable to protect users of virtual banking services in Second Life, and that there are serious questions about the legality of such institutions. Institutions providing banking services on Second Life have braced for a run on funds as the ban comes into place, the above screen shot is of financier, JT Financial virtual bank on second life, brings a whole new meaning to the phrase virtually bankrupt.

Unless of course you are living in a cave, in the middle of nowhere, with no media, not even a newspaper (in which case you’re not reading this Blog), you cannot have missed the news that we are on the brink of a global credit crunch (the new, sexed up term for a depression.) So what? I’ll probably still have a Job/House/Computer etc and I’ll still be able to read TimK’s wonderful blogs? Right? You’re probably saying to yourself, things can’t be that bad. Well, you’re right, things are never as bad as the Financial Press make it seem, they are just as desperate for things to write about as all of us, and Doom and Gloom sells like hotdogs at a ballgame. Yet there are some surprising consequences of the Global Credit Crunch that are going to significantly affect the way all of us access and utilise technology. This current crisis is because of the long period of sustained growth that most mature western economies have experienced in the last ten years, fuelled by the emerging markets of India, China and Russia, amongst other things. Much of the funding for new and existing web based technology is based on share issues and venture capitalism. These are two areas which have benefited with large amounts of surplus cash washing into the investment markets from generally good economic conditions, and as such investors were willing to take a higher than average risk. Now the money is being choked off, the investment community will be less likely, or have more stringent conditions for prospective stat ups. In an economic downturn there will be less investment, especially in high risk areas such as the dot com industry. Moreover the big players in the market will start to both rationalise and consolidate their positions (read about the business brains behind Vivendi and Activision here)

This could lead to a reduction in the number of products hitting the markets (there is unconfirmed speculation that the iPhone was rushed to market in the last half of last year as Apple knew the midden was about to hit the windmill.) Companies looking to prop up their Balance Sheets may begin to cut R&D back, as there will be less consumer cash for the new products anyway, and existing products may fair better or worse depending on how bad things get (for example the Wii V PS3 battle will become one not of game play, but of price, as the Wii is significantly cheaper than its rival, an economic downturn will actually benefit Nintendo.) The fact is that it effects us all, sometimes in positive, but mainly in negative ways, so buckle up for a bumpy 2008.

Anyone wanting an introduction to finance and investing can read my blog, same user name TimK, happy trails everyone.

Image by Jacobvillegas

Social networking site pushes girl group toward date with the Superbowl. It’s the run up to the Biggest Sporting event in the US of A (although we Brits still don’t know why they wear all that armour, are they pansies?). Of course with the Superbowl comes the entertainment, and the marketing. Forget Virals, this is the sure-fire, one off, event that every alpha male, with his big disposable income, will be watching, probably with a few light ales (that’s beer to you guys) inside of him. In the middle of all this excitement and corporate whoredom are the vignettes of entertainment which have included in the past the infamous ‘Jackson Nipple’ (I remember one source at the time referring to it as nipplegate, how Nixon must have laughed.) This year, however, one social networking site may have found the perfect Viral, without even trying or spending any money whatsoever.

Kina Grannis, an American Singer Songwriter has penned a ditty entitled ‘Cute girls sing awesome song about Digg’ which she has entered into the Crash the Superbowl competition, since user votes formed a part of the selection process for the winner the song made the Digg front-page in an almost record 1hr 22m. If this makes it to the Superbowl the song, lyrics of which include ‘I always Digg up Apple, and bury Microsoft’ (well that’ll please Bill G.) will be watched by everybody and their grannies, in all known languages, in all time zones around the world (probably). Whilst this blogger may have issue with the term ‘cute’ or even ‘girl’ (she is definitely a grown up) it is hard to argue that she has hit gold in terms of bigging up Digg, Apple and herself (I’d never heard of her before reading about the competition, but then I have a narrow taste in music, I only like good stuff you see) Who needs to pay a firm of terribly expensive Viral Marketing Experts when a down and dirty genuine American Singer Songstress can get product placement in the middle of the Superbowl for nothing. Genius.