Friedbeef’s Tech

It’s been called ‘like Twitter but better’, was picked as the top 5 hottest applications of 2007, and is taking the Internet by storm!

Kevin Rose, of TechTV fame, is trying to change the tech landscape once more.  His previous success of social news site Digg has arguably overtaken Slashdot as THE tech news hub on the net.  Now, he is now going head to head with the bigger boys of social networking, taking on the likes of Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster with his new creation - Pownce.

What is Pownce?

“Pownce is a way to send stuff to your friends. What kind of stuff?  You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more. You can do it all on the web site, or install a lightweight desktop software that lets you get out of the browser” - via Pownce website

After messing around quite a bit on Pownce, I’ll say that it lies somewhere in between Facebook and Twitter. The interface is gorgeous, and it works as advertised. 

It does everything you’d expect a social network to do, send messages, hook up with friends etc. My favourite feature?  File sharing! Pownce allows file transfers of up to 10MB with the free account (You can upgrade to 100MB for a small fee).  Aside from that, If you’ve ever wondered you can make the most out of Pownce, you can check out DoshDosh’s excellent post on this.

Will Pownce be a success?

 In my opinion, Pownce will either make or break based on 2 factors:

1. The quality of user generated applications.   Without an open API (Something they are working on now), the functionality of Pownce is sorely compromised.  (Case in point: What is Facebook without user-created Facebook apps?).
2. A clear breakaway in functionality to move it from it’s current “me-too” product offerings to it’s very own social networking niche.

The second point would arguably be the hardest but most important to accomplish.  Breaking away does not necessarily involve extra functionality. Tumblr and Twitter managed to make it big because they had less features, giving the world pure simplicity instead of a complex product.

Get a FREE Pownce Invite

 A Pownce closed beta invite is one of the hottest properties on the net these days. If you happen to be looking for one, it’s your lucky day!

This week I’m giving away 5 invites to Pownce as part of a blog contest!

The contest entry rules are simple:

#1 Drop me a comment in this post telling me what you think about Social Networks like Friendster, Myspace or Pownce - I’d love to hear your thoughts!

#2 Then - Join my community by doing ONE (or more) of the below:

1. Subscribe to my RSS feed or email newsletter
2. Join my MyBlogLog reader community
3. Add me to your StumbleUpon friends list
4. Link back to this post on your own blog

Winners are picked randomly, and will be notified both by email and announced on next week. (Make sure you use a valid email address in your comments). Please limit yourself to one entry. Good luck! 

Bonus tip:  Post to Pownce and Twitter at the same time!

[tags]pownce, social networking, facebook, twitter [/tags]

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Used by everyone from advertisers, trend spotters, webmasters, or even just curious individuals - Alexa is a resource where anyone can look up any website’s traffic patterns and make comparisons.  A good Alexa ranking is highly valued by many advertisers, and it is no wonder why many bloggers and webmasters try their very best to improve their Alexa rankings.

Here are 2 very popular ‘methods’ of increasing Alexa rank which I am bringing into question.

These are cited by many sites - even reputable ones as being quick fixes for Alexa:

1. Installing a widget which displays Alexa rank in your sidebar
2. Having a link to Alexa which redirects to your site

Let me emphasize this - They don’t work

Here are 3 pieces of evidence why:

1. Alexa official site only says that data gathered from toolbars and plugins matter

“Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day.

Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1″ - Alexa Help

The official Alexa site clearly states that the data comes from toolbars.  Also mentioned are Firefox plugins which work.

There is no mention of any other method of data collection in the Alexa official site.  Even the Alexa widget download page is deafeningly silent about any impact to Alexa ranking.

2. Projections will be skewed if the two methods in question are used

Alexa projects the sampled data based on a set of users who have the toolbar installed in an effort to represent Internet usage patterns.   

However, one thing to remember when looking at Alexa data, is that it captures ongoing Internet usage patterns from a pool of users.  This has several implications:

1. It is biased towards certain user-groups more likely to use the Alexa toolbar ( Alexa admits this). 
2. Whatever user-groups Alexa misses - it consistently misses, and whatever it covers well - it consistently covers well.  This is a very, very, very important point.  Bias towards user-groups do not swing wildly back and forth over time because Alexa is tracking more or less the same set of users over time. 
3. Allowing the two methods in question to count in Alexa rankings would completely spoil any meaningful comparisons between sites.  Alexa data is constantly thrown into question.  If Alexa implemented the two methods in question - you might as well throw the data out the window.

3. Alexa’s product manager says they don’t work

Although the two methods in question are mentioned in many places, Alexa for the most part is strangely silent about combating these myths.  In my research I have only come up with a single instance where someone from Alexa has categorically denied the two methods in question.

In April 2007, Matt608, a young blogger from England blogged about an Alexa experiment he had done, in which he concluded that redirecting links actually helped Alexa ranking.

A day later, a comment surfaced:

“Matt, don’t delude yourself or your readers. The redirect doesn’t do anything to your rank. The rank is based on one thing only: logs from toolbar usage. I should know, I am the product manager at Alexa.
Why did your rank improve? Your article prompted a lot of people with toolbars to visit your site. It is that simple.  Don’t use our redirect. It causes load on our machines for no purpose whatsoever” - Geoffrey Mack

A quick look at Geoffrey’s blogger profile confirms his identity.  He is also an author for awis.blogspot.com - Alexa’s official product blog.

Why is only one obscure comment in a blog, and not an active effort to combat these myths by Alexa?

My personal opinion is that these myths actually result in more exposure for Alexa, so while they don’t promote these methods, they don’t actively fight it also.

Bottomline:

Cheap tricks don’t work.  Focus on good content, and good design and good Alexa ranking will come your way.

[tags]alexa, traffic, alexa rankings [/tags]

What are your opinions on Alexa?  Do you make a conscious effort to improve it?  Tell us in the comments!

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You may not know his name, but you almost certainly know his work.  Michael Hart founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. 

Single minded in its mission ”encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks”, the official site currently houses more than 26,000 books with over 400 monthly and caters to a million books being downloaded every month.  This does not include sister sites like Gutenberg.cc which hosts more than 74,000 books at this point.

It’s not everyday I get the chance to pick the brain of an Internet pioneer, so here are some of the nuggets from my interview with Michael Hart. 

Thoughts on the evolution of eBooks

The greatest differences I see for the next five years will be the use of eBooks on cell phones, as the majority of the world will be using cell phones by the end of 2006. . .causing many changes, and the translation of eBooks to many different languages.

Thoughts on translating books to multiple languages

A “Machine Translation Era” is now beginning at about the point where OCR was less than 20 years ago.  [OCR = Optical Character Recognition] Eventually this will be good enough that most readers can get some idea of a book’s content without a human translator… but it has to take a while getting there, and human translators will be quite a bit busier with Machine Translation, rather than out of work. ”

Thoughts on the dropping price of storage and its impact on eBooks

In addition, I see the ability of public to carry entire libraries of books with them on a keychain or a necklace with the RAMsticks, USBdrives, Pendrves, Flashdrives, etc., as they are called. These now carry 1,000 times as much as they did when they were released, just 6 years ago!!!  I just bought some 8 gig versions for $60.  That’s 1,000 times as much for the same price as 6 years ago!!!  Not to mention the new terabyte hard drives for under $400 and the half terabyte drives for under $100. 

Each terabyte can hold 1 million plain text eBooks, uncompressed– or about 2.5 million using compression programs such as ZIP.  “The personal computer” becomes “the personal library.

Thoughts on having multiple sister sites rather than housing everything under the official site

The greatest benefit of the Internet is its multiplicity, the fact that there are lots of ways to get from one place to another, so if a normal gateway is down, you can get around it with no trouble. 

The same is true by having multiple sites for Project Gutenberg, or any other items that you want to be sure people can get.  There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of sites carrying the Gutenberg books, and thus if you can’t get to one, you can almost certainly do an engine search to find any number of other copies

Note: Here are some links to try.

100,000 eBooks easy to download at:

1. http://www.gutenberg.org Official site [coming up on 25,000 eBooks]
2. http://www.gutenberg.cc [already passed 75,000 eBooks]
3. http://gutenberg.net.au   Project Gutenberg of Australia 1500+
4. http://pge.rastko.net 65 languages  PG of Europe ~500
5. http://gutenberg.ca  Project Gutenberg of Canada

Bonus tip: Looking for for the ultimate guide to free books?  Look no more!

[tags] ebooks, project gutenberg, interview, michael hart [/tags]

What do you think about Project Gutenberg, or eBooks in general?  Tell us in the comments!

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