Google's Sergey Brin gave a talk to students at Cal-Berkeley last October on "Search Engines, Technology and Business." The lecture is now available on Google Video.

This is one of those weeks where I've got more material than time.  So here are some quick thoughts on some things that have been floating around my browser this week.

(1) A new startup launched this week called Grand Central.  According to Life Hacker, Grand Central "lets you consolidate all of your phone numbers into one number, meaning someone can call you on your GrandCentral phone number and all of your phones (cell phone, work phone, home phone) will ring."  That's just sort of the starting point with this service too.  Sounds awesome.  Looking forward to giving it a try. 

(2) There is an interesting post on Forever Geek that debunks the Myspace claim to have 100 million users.  It puts the number of actual users at around 43 million.  Not sure about the methodology, but there is no doubt in my mind that that 100 million number is bogus.

(3) Saw an interesting post entitled 10 Things that will Make or Break Your Website.  Best advice comes in the first bullet: "EASY is the most important feature of any website, web app, or program."

(4) The Wall Street Journal published a fascinating article on the email overload problem that afflicts most of us.  Great read for anyone that feels like a slave to their inbox most days. 

(5) Michael Kinsley wrote a great article for Time Magazine this week called Do Newspapers Have a Future?  Money quote: "Newspapers on paper are on the way out. Whether newspaper companies are on the way out too depends."  IMO, the key to survival is figuring out how to use the Internet properly.  We'll continue to beat that particular drum. 

(6) Mark Warner got a lot of attention for appearing in Second Life a few months back.  We wrote about it.  The appearance was short and he didn't take any quesitons from the audience, saying he would come back for a full townhall in late September/early October.  Did they ever schedule this?  I haven't heard a peep about it since the initial burst of coverage.

It's no secret that I think that Consumerist does a huge favor to the general public in pointing out what's fishy about the latest bridge on the market. Editor Ben Popken has now taken Consumerist readers into a conversation Edelman PR's Wal-Mart advocate Mike Krempasky attempted to have with Ben.  

If Ben is being entirely truthful and transparent, then the question that was posed to Editor Ben by Krempasky will make your stomach sink. According to Consumerist, Krempasky, representing both Edelman and Wal-Mart, asked, "What can we do to get you to stop writing about our companies?"

Sort of Godfather, no? (more…)

I understand the appeal of the big online social networks (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, etc.) conceptually but have never really embraced them personally.  I just don't use them. 

Part of it is that I'm too old for most of them.  But mostly I find them  uninteresting. 

So I'm sort of surprised by my own interest in the social networking site Vox.   What makes Vox intriguing to me is that it isn't really a social networking site - it is a hybrid social networking site/ blogging platform.  Like Livejournal and MSN Spaces, the focus with Vox is on writing and sharing stuff (photos, videos, books) as opposed to creating some sort of oversized online persona.  It is refreshing.  So with that, here's a quick review of the service. (more…)

PoliticsOnline and World e-Gov Forum have announced this year's list of nominees who are competing for the title of Top Politics and Internet World Changer of 2006. I thought I'd just encourage you to cast a vote. I must admit that I don't know a lot of the nominees apart from what I've seen online, but I support the promotion of those who make it their mission to encourage civic engagement and participation in politics using the Internet as a major medium. The Internet represents a truly democratic venue for discussion (unless you think about all of the people who do not have access to the Internet and therefore are unable to participate) and the objectives of many of these nominees are pretty interesting.

The nominees are as follows*:

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Here's a riddle for you: What do the Internet and the real estate market have in common? 

Answer: they're both eking all they can out of "Web 2.0" hysteria. 

Recently, we've written many entries explaining the Web 2.0 craze and how it has affected everything from social groups to newspapers to politics.  What we haven't discussed yet is how the Web is affecting the US real estate market and the way everyday people buy their homes.

As in many other industries, the Web is helping home buyers and sellers alike cut out the filter of the media and other top-down information and marketing services.  With the emergence of real estate websites and blogs, home buyers and sellers can throw away the classified and real estate sections of their newspapers.  They can forget the phone number of the local real estate agent.  And most of all, they can take an active role in finding the home of their dreams by themselves. 

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Anyone conducting keyword ad campaigns on sites like Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Engine Marketing should check out these two recent articles on click fraud:

• Click Fraud is Growing on the Web - New York Times
• Click Fraud: The Dark Side of Online Advertising - Business Week

Via Rough Type and Micro Persuasion.

The last year has seen the rise of social news sites that give users editorial control of the sites' homepage by voting on their favorite stories.   Users submit stories which are then voted on by other users, with the most popular stories appearing most prominently on the sites.  The key to this concept is users spending time reading through submissions to find the most compelling stories.  The three most prominent social news sites that I know of are Digg, Reddit and Netscape.   

Recently, Erin's rant about Facebook was submitted to Digg by a random Digg user.  As an experiment (and in an effort to promote Erin's post), I then submitted the same story to Reddit and Netscape as well just to see what would happen. 

Erin's post failed to make it to the homepage of any of the three sites.  But what I found interesting was the number of people who visited our blog based on the submissions and the number of votes the story received on each site (I voted for each story myself).  Below is a breakdown:

Digg

• 13 diggs
• 20 visitors

Reddit

• 3 points
• 128 visitors

Netscape

• 1 vote
• 1 visitor

These results surprised me.  I was surprised that the Reddit submission produced more visitors than Digg even though Digg is the 800 pound guerilla in this site genre (see chart).  I was surprised by the lack of visitors from the Netscape submission.  Anyway, here's what I learned/think I learned: (more…)

The collaborative blogging project and contest started Darren Rowse, AKA Problogger, earlier this week has come to a close.  And unfortunately, neither Todd nor I were winners of any prizes.  Just to show that we're not bitter, I decided to give a shout out to some of my favorite posts that were entered in the contest.

• For anyone who has ever gotten homesick while travelling, check out  "How to recognize it's time for Repat", by Sand Gets in my Eyes.
• Are you a traveller on a budget?  You might want to read "How to Travel", by Budget Globetrottin.
• For all our inner chefs, check out "How to Make the Perfect Chicken Soup", by Adornments by Lynn.
• Get every day grocercy shopping tips by reading "How to Save Money at the Grocery Store", by Foodphreak.
• Like Ebay? Here's some tips on how NOT to sell you stuff online: "How to be a Miserable Failure at Ebay", by Naked Ebay.
• For all you slightly old fashioned, or shall I say "vintage" music fans, this is a must-read for making your record collections more accessible: "How to Convert LPs to MP3s", by Newsome.
• Finally, some tips for selecting the perfect bottle of wine: "How to Buy Wines whose Labels Confuse You", by Cata Vino.

And here are some of Todd's favorites:

• For the evil geniuses in all of us: "How to Destroy the Earth with a Coffee Can", by Deep Astronomy.com
• Professional bloggers might want to check out "Integrating a Forum with WordPress", from Blog Helper.
• For some advice about increasing site traffic, read "How to Attract Links and Web Traffic–the Ultimate Guide", by Copyblogger.

The contest brought together lots of great bloggers with talents spread over a wide variety of topics, and proved that bloggers have extremely entertaining–and informative–things to say.  Problogger's collaborative writing project demonstrates the power of blogging and is a great example of how people can use blogs to reach the masses.  Overall, I give the project an A+.

You can see all the contest entries here.

Ever now and then something hits the Internet and spreads like wildfire.  Below are four such phenomena I've come across recently that I figured I'd share.

(1) Million Dollar Homepage

On August 26, 2005, English college student Alex Tew launched the Million Dollar Homepage as a way to fund his education. The site's homepage consists of a 1000 by 1000 pixel grid (one million pixels). Tew sold mini banner ads on his homepage for $1 per pixel with a minimum buy of a ten by ten pixel block (100 pixels = $100). The site quickly became an Internet phenomenon, getting passed around from person to person. On January 1, 2006, Tew sold the last of his site's pixels on eBay. The site grossed a total of $1,037,100.

View the Wikipedia entry for the full story on the Million Dollar Homepage.

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(1) Create a graphic design that says something about the candidate.  Most candidate websites are cookie cutter in terms of design.  Stand out by creating a graphic identity that actually speaks to who the candiate is.  The Kinky Friedman for Governor website is a good example of a site design with some personality.

(2) Give visitors stuff to do besides just give you money.  Ask them to knock on doors for you.  Ask them to plan their own campaign event.  Ask them to write letters to the editors at local papers.  Ask them to hold their own voter registration drives.  Use your site to invite people to participate in your campaign and give them tools they can use to do it. (more…)

Facebook, the popular social networking site, was the frontrunner and leader in the social networking for college students for a long time.  But, given the recent controversies over the Facebook news feed and the decision to make Facebook open to to everyone, not just to college students, it seems that the site might be losing its edge to MySpace and other networks.  The pattern of events in the Facebook world recently is such that it seems like Mark Zuckerberg is writing a "How To" book about ruining social networking sites. (more…)

By now, we all know about the popularity of YouTube and the dramatic effect the site has had on video creation and sharing.  However, despite its popularity and dominating position as the Web's most popular user-generated video site, it seems to me that YouTube could be in danger of going under.  "That's preposterous", you say.  "Millions of people are viewing the site on a daily basis! How could you  be so stupid to say that it's going under?"  Well, while we have plenty of reports citing the millions of page views and millions of videos generated on YouTube, what we don't have are reports citing YouTube's millions of dollars in profits.  And that is because YouTube profits are nonexistent, despite all the hype surrounding the website.  If the site fails to produce an effective business model complete with actual profits, as opposed to losses, in the near future, this ground-breaking Web dominator could be in serious trouble.

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You might have a large collection of thick classics sitting on your bookshelf at home right now. You bought them years ago but have yet to touch them. A fine layer of dust seems to have permanently attached itself to the cover. You were waiting for that rainy Saturday where you could curl up on the sofa with Wuthering Heights or The Art of War, or perhaps Alexander Hamilton's The Federalist Papers.

But come that rainy day and you don't feel hardy enough to take on that ominous layer of dust. Your allergies are pretty dreadful and you're pretty sure that it would take you three years of rainy Saturdays to get through Crime and Punishment. You have to go to work and you have things to do, and frankly, it's pretty silly to start something you know you can't finish. Plus, Crime and Punishment makes an excellent doorstop so why change what's already just fine? (more…)

The George Allen campaign has launched a blog.  Anything they do online is just more material for Wonkette at this point…Scott Baradell from Idea Grove has a great post on 101 Ways to Brew Up a Great Idea.  Going to Vegas is by far the best suggestion…Joe Lieberman's campaign has quietly disabled comments on their blog.  I can't blame them - the comments area was a complete train wreck…This video of some dude who has taken a picture of himself for six straight years is pretty cool.  The New Numa video is not - stick to the original.