funny or not

Check out my new web site... funny or not

bookit.com sux

I recently used bookit.com because the price was $10 less per day than the same listing on hotels.com. That proved to be a huge mistake. The total sale price was misleading and it ended up being over $50 more for two nights. Don't ever use bookit.com, my advice is to stick with better known brands, like IAC's hotels.com. Also a friend of mine swears by the site skyauction. He says it is like ebay for travel deals.

Building Community

here are some tips on building community...
http://fortuito.us/2007/05/some_community_tips_for_2007
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/10/12/10-techniques-to-get-more-comments-on-your-blog/

as an example of getting users to comment, here is a great post where the author shares his recollections and at the end asks the readers to "Share you Apple recollections in the comments." This got far more than average comments.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/05/30-years-of-apple/

stocklinkr

stocklinkr is a web site that I created. It has several features like digg or some other stock web sites, but it also has configurable dynamic links sharing. I wanted a way to check out mad money, navallier, etc. without typing in the ticker repeatedly.

Apple and Google competitors closing the gap

Apple Mac sales have been gaining ground. This is largely attributed to the "halo effect", ie increased interest in macs due to success of the ipod. I agree the halo effect is driving interest however macs have had a competitive advantage over windows xp. Mac OS X is more current, and looks better. Apple is likely to loose some of that competitive edge with release of Windows Vista.

Regarding Google and Yahoo, Yahoo is finally rolling out Panama, their new system for advertising that replaces the system put in place with the acquisition of Overture. It is more or less a copy of Google's Adwords system and is likely to dramatically increase their revenues.

I am still bullish on Apple and Google long term, but in the short term their competitors are likely to close the gap slightly.

cringley on craiglist

bob cringley writes about how craigslist owns the community for local advertising.

prosper.com

prosper.com is a really great idea... connecting lenders and borrowers, eliminating the banks. Here is an article, it was started by a guy at e-loan.

Windows Vista

I agree with the recent criticism I have read about Microsoft offering too many versions of Windows Vista.

Jeff Bezos and Amazon

Recent article in business week discusses how Jeff Bezos wants to make Amazon into an internet platform company. It mentions a9 which was a case of google envy and a waste of shareholders money. The main point is it's web services like S3 service, which appears to be basically pay as you go web hosting, and mechanical turk, a crowdsourcing application. I think they are on the right track about the future of the net, but I just don't see them being the ones that pull it off.

I think the main problem is that they charge really small amounts for their services. Charging small amounts prevents people from using them. Conversely google lets people use their services for free and monetizes them through advertising. For instance they charge $.15/thousand requests for access to the alexa web services

techcruch rocks

TechCrunch is fast becoming one of my favorite blogs. I saw two interesting articles about acquisitions. Reddit was bought by Conde Nast, and digg is in talks with news corp.