Why The New SUL Is A Massively Positive Change

Posted on January 23, 2010 by Alex Wilhelm

It is hardly perfect, in fact some are calling it a mere baby step in the right direction, but the new Twitter SUL is going to make Twitter better. Much better.

The old system was a fake kingmaker. Hordes of worthless followers were added to a handful of accounts, creating masses of new Twitter users wondering why they were seeing celebrity mixed with tech news and science tweets.

Predictably, the new users hated it. Also, the accounts that were on the SUL that were growing by handfuls of thousands of “followers” hardly noticed any difference. Ask people on the list. It made little difference for Anil Dash, Starbucks, Tristan Walker and others. New users that did not want to follow you either ignored you, or unfollowed your account. Not so good. Your account with hundreds of thousands of followers was worse than a real account with twenty thousand.

The SUL should have been a temporary fix, but it was continued for far too long. Now there are dozens of accounts with a bloated, fake follower count. If it were not for lists, we might actually think that Heidi Montag was worth something on Twitter. One million followers and four thousand lists? You just failed. Robert Scoble? One hundred and eleven thousand followers and nearly eight thousand lists.

The old Twitter SUL bent the fabric in the Twitter universe, and an unfair system hardly helps a fragile user run community.

Now, the new SUL is not that good, but it is a step in the right direction. Assisting new users to find people is much better than finding them for them. Also, it is going to pop a huge number of egos on Twitter. That is the main reason why myself and every other Twitter devotee who never made it onto the old list is giddy today. We watched our good friends have following counts that exploded into the hundreds of thousands, while we ground it out 20 a day. The bastards.

Now, the fluffed puff is now fucked fluff. If you were on the SUL, grabbed a pile of followers, but were still boring as shit, you are in hot water now. You are going to start shrinking, showing the whole world that you never desvered that have that many followers. Ever.

All you half-wit celebrity types with your vapid “omg luv u all 2!!!!!!!11!” are screwed. Wait two weeks, then go poke around accounts that were on the old SUL. I bet you that 25% begin to lose followers even if they stay on the new list.

I write for TheNextWeb, and we are still growing after the change. Why? We write the best content on the web. I think so at least. That is why every day we add followers, subscribers, and on and on. Am I bothered that we went from one SUL to the other? No, not really. We still get a free chance to meet and connect with new people.

As a final note, the new list of fairer in that it will rotate more often, and will give more people a shot to be on it. Better for new users, better for Twitter, better for the ecosystem. Just better.

Not great, not even a B+, but a step in the right direction. Now Twitter, finally, please, por favor, bitte, S’il vous plaît, put me on it.

tl;dr the new Twitter SUL is going to expose that many account holders are dull frauds, and it will help Twitter.

Posted in Featured, Headline, TL;DR | Leave a comment

Hey Cheapskates, Time For You To Pay!

Posted on January 21, 2010 by Holden Page

Thank the lord and the heavens above, we have to pay.

This past week has been full of lovely announcements, announcements that have me ringing bells and opening my wallet. Here are a few of the headlines that have made my heart sing:

Now to most of you, this might burn a hole in your heart and I can hear the rants now, ”CONTENT NEEDS TO BE FREE!!!! IT WANTS TO BE FREE, rah, rah, rah.”

Feel free to keep shoutin’, because it ain’t happenin’.

Here’s the problem with providing content for free, in very rare cases is it a viable business model and most people aren’t stupid like me. A lot of people are simply not willing to provide this superb (ha) commentary on a regular basis for the paycheck of 0$ a week.  Not to mention, ad dollars are few and far between and the only company that really can pull of significant revenues solely based off of advertisements is Google. Funny enough though, Google can’t even monetize Youtube good enough to make the labels happy, hence the reason they are now charging for content.

We are (in my lovely opinion) reaching a point where startups and even large companies are realizing that no matter how pissed off the customer gets, free simply doesn’t work. Sure, consumers might yell, moan and groan, but guess what? As long as enough people pay, there hissy fits don’t mean a damn thing. It has been proven in the past that if you have a great product that provides value, consumers are willing to pay. Just take a look at Netflix and their streaming service.

It’s time we start accepting the fact that if you want it, you have to pay for it. Of course, you could always torrent what  you want but keep in mind that is illegal, whether you like it or not.

Cheers,

holden@layeredbyte.com

Posted in Pages Are Social | 3 Comments

Teens In Tech, What Are You Doing For Teens?

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Holden Page

Today, Teens In Tech, a much hyped blogging network for teens is finally open to the public with some “goodies” to boot.

According to TechCrunch, Teens In Tech (which Daniel Brusilovsky, CEO of TIT writes for) has made an acquisition at around $15,000 for a Twitter/FriendFeed clone, Yazzem. The public release also came with a site redesign and future plans for premium features.

It took four months to release this?

To be quite honest, I expected more out of Daniel and his team. The public release offers nothing more for teens that are involved in tech than any other blogging network does. You don’t even get a subdomain, according to a comment by Daniel himself on TC, that is going to be a “premium” feature as well. From the sounds of it, you can get more out WordPress/Blogger and completely for free. On top of that, TIT is poorly designed.

The redesign is not complete and unlike their PR screenshots (smart) here is what the site actually looks like:

You cannot click over on the tabs as of this current writing

No sidebar? come on...

Currently the team page...

In all honesty, this is a pretty poorly conceived public release and is quite embarrassing, especially when you are being covered by many major tech blogs, which some startups would go nuts over (and put to good use).

Teens In Tech is in no way, form or fashion benefiting teen bloggers. It is simply a poorly designed WordPress MU install that requires some CSS edits and very basic knowledge on how to work with PHP/MySQL.

I have been a supporter of the network since the get go and I am sure many others expected a lot more, and all we got was this? Come on now, Daniel, according to the people I have talked to. You’re better than this.

Posted in Pages Are Social | 5 Comments

Handy Tools for Travelers

Posted on January 20, 2010 by mistygirlph

Do you travel a lot? Majority of people I know loves to travel, either on business or pleasure.

But some really hate the idea of traveling because of the many hassles that come with making your travel plans.  I enjoy traveling to different countries and even places in my own country.  I like seeing new places and experiencing their lifestyle, meeting new people and just plain exploring.

Thank goodness for technology, there are so many tools on the world wide web to help in making your trip truly productive and enjoyable one.  Here are some that we hope can help:

1.  ArrivedOk – is a mobile tool that instantly notify your friends, office mates, business associates and even family that you have arrived at your destination.  All you need is to sign up and enter your recipient’s list, when you turn on your cellphone after landing, a notification will be sent to your recipients via sms, or thru email or even Twitter.

2.  On the Road -  The tool allows you to have an online travel book. Wherever you go, wherever you are.  Create your travel diary “on the go” using your iPhone, Android, simple SMS, email or our web application.   Enjoy your travel, stay connected with your friends and share your stories, photos, videos with the rest of the world!

3.  VidMap – The tool allows a person to upload a geo-map video.  Videos are played side by side with a google map which synchronously shows the progress of the playing clip. It’s predestinated for videos filmed from vehicles like bikes, cars and trains but also videos taken by walkers and hikers.

4.  Everlater – is a site that allows you to record and share your travel experience with friends.  What is great about this tool is that it allows you to find similar interest with people you connect with in your social networking circle and share ideas and tips on the best places to go.

5. Raveable -  What is the next step after you have decided on taking a trip? Well, that would be where to stay in.  Raveable allows you to scan through the raves and rants of people who have already stayed on your next hotel choice.  This allows you to save on time and money.

6.  TaxiMe – This application is a cost generator.  It allows you to know how much cash you will need to bring with you if you are planning on using taxi as a mode of transportation.  All one needs to do is enter the starting address and the final destination.  So easy to use.

Now may I also give some tips to those who are first time travelers:

1.  Read up a little on the place you intend to visit.  Know some of their customs and traditions.  A bit of what to expect, food they eat, mode of transport, climate.  Always good to be prepared.

2.  Carry your passport at all times.

3.  Bring only the amount of clothes you would need for the trip.  And leave a little room for some items you might want to buy.  This helps you save on extra baggage costs. Label your luggage properly  as well.

4.  Avoid bringing too much valuable item with you, bring only when necessary.  Use the safety deposit box in your hotel room or the front desk when you plan to go exploring.

5.  Have fun and record your experiences!

There maybe other tools that you might know and want to share with us here, if you do, please leave a comment.  Or email me @ mistygirlph@layeredbytes.com.  Bon Voyage!

Main Image Source

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The Weak Start For Nexus And The Road Ahead

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Hunter Clarke

Google’s superphone has not been so super in the first couple of weeks of sales. Only 20,000 in the first week barely grazed the first week’s sales of the Droid and wasn’t even a blip on the radar if you are the iPhone. So what does this mean for the future of the superphone and the superphones to follow?

There is obviously a reason for the low selling numbers and that is in the marketing by Google. You don’t see any fancy T.V. commercials where the Nexus One flies to space or something like that. But you do see it plastered over technology blogs that run adsense (which is a hefty majority). In a way that is genius because they are targeting the only people that really care about yet another smartphone. But, they have limited themselves to a small audience rather than trying to hit the mainstream.

The second reason behind the low sales is the marketplace. While this is a good stab at replacing retail stores, no one outside of the tech community really knows about it. There are no posters about the Nexus in T-Mobile stores, or sales people pitching the device to every person who walks in the store. The majority of average cell-phone users walk in their closest retail store, and walk out with the shiniest object on the shelf. With the Nexus One only available online, how are any of these users really going to know about it?

Of course, the Nexus One is not for everyone, and is really attractive to those tech-heads that like the “latest and greatest” and generally the users that support Android. And to be honest, the power of an Android device with a 1 ghz processor will not be optimized by a person who has been using a flip phone for the past 5 years.

With rumors of the next Google phone already flying around, the future of the superphones is still blurry. But Google has the money to try and fail until it wipes out every other phone manufacturer if it has to.


And this concept art shows that they are well on their way to doing so. At least if this is anything like the actual device.

My recommendation to Google? Well they should invest in a proper T.V. marketing campaign. At least containing the link to the online store. That would do wonders for exposure and let people actually know there is a competitor to the look and feel of the iPhone. But for now, I would expect Google to be their same stubborn selves and go about getting sales the hard way.

Agree or disagree? Drop a comment below.

Contact: hunterclarke [at] layeredbyte [dot] com

Posted in Gadgeteer | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

How to AJAX

Posted on January 16, 2010 by Tyler

I began thinking to myself today, “What should I write about?”. The best thing to normally write about on a blog is something that people might have questions to. So, I spent most of today trying to figure out what question some people might want answered.

I spend a lot of time on a Question/Answer site called StackOverflow. I’ve answered 370 questions to date, and answer probably 2-5 questions everyday. So, it dawned on me: I should write a blog post about questions other people just asked me on StackOverflow, so that people reading this blog might not have the same problem. Brilliant!

The first question I am going to write about came from ‘JQman’ on StackOverflow. “What are the basic steps to get AJAX working?”.

You’ll find on many websites nowadays that AJAX is used for all sorts of things, such as displaying images, loading content, refreshing the page without refreshing the page, etc.  But what are the basic steps to doing it? Well, that is what we are going to learn today.

Step 1: The Regular Page

The first thing you need to think about is the page you are starting on. This is the page where everything will happen, things will be updated, and the user will be visiting. For our example, it will look something like this:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="content"></div>
</body>
</html>

Notice that we have included the Google-Hosted Version of jQuery. jQuery is a popular javascript library that makes it dead simple to create things like AJAX requests and other similar javascript functions.

Next, we are going to put in the AJAX request. What were wanted the page to do, is when we click on a link, we are going to grab the data from another page and display it in the content div.

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="content"></div>
<a onClick="$('#content').load('refresh.html');">Click Me!</a>
</body>
</html>

What this will do is create a button, that when pressed will activate jQuery’s load function. First, we select the div box with the ID of content:

$('#content')

Then, we will tell jQuery to go load the page ‘refresh.html’, and put whatever it sends into the content div:

load('refresh.html');

Step 2: The Refresh Page

The second step is to create a page that will give us the content to put into the content div. In this case, it can be really simple, such as:

Hello World! This is AJAX Loaded Text!

When we press the button, we will expect to see those words in the content div box.

Step 3: Testing it out.

Now, because I’m not doing a screencast, I can’t show you that the page works. But, most likely it is going to work. If it doesn’t, check that you are typing everything correctly. If you are still having problems, head over to StackOverflow.com and see if they can help you. They are good at this kind of stuff.

Step 4: Use it!

Now that you can use AJAX in your pages, what other things can you think of to try? Leave any ideas in the comments.

Posted in RTFM | Leave a comment

Google Should Name Names In China – Enough Beating Around The Bush

Posted on January 16, 2010 by Alex Wilhelm

Who hacked Google? If you look around the news of the last few days, it’s becoming obvious that we all know who was behind the “sophisticated” attacks: China. China hacked Google

That, to practice my some British understatement, is bad. And it is a big damn deal. A sovereign nation has attacked, and compromised, one of the most important companies in the world. Data was stolen, accounts ripped open, and China so far is not in any hot water at all.

They have just broken fistfulls of national accords, and international laws. So far the tech worlds response: to write about it. Google, let’s do something more.

If you are willing to leave the country, and you are probably going to anyway, why not name names? I mean, if you are willing to pull the plug on the possible future profits, you can make up for censoring data in the past, and give us even more information now. Tell us how, when, who, and why. Give us the full story; expose them. This sort of skullduggery must not be allowed anywhere, anytime, by anyone.

The Chinese government is being given far, far too much freedom here, ironically. Where is the outrage? Where is the anger? China attacked Google, did you know?

If China wants to have stultifying internet rules, that is their prerogative. That does not allow blatant flagrant abuse and abandonment of international and US laws. Bring the pain Google. They broke the law and deserve the repercussions that that entails. All of them, in full, right now.

Why not? Why insinuate, why hide, why let a repressive government stuff the corpse into the back of the car and scurry away? No. Put the dead body in the center of town for everyone to see. Let’s get this in the open, now.

Given that it is Friday, I’ll stop repeating my point, and instead will share with two classic political cartoons on Google and China.

Posted in TL;DR | Leave a comment

Airband, Your Music In The Cloud (And iPhone)

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Holden Page

MP3Tunes, a cloud based music player resembling a less polished version of Lala, has released an iPhone app deemed Airband.

Airband is a free iPod Touch/iPhone app that allows you to stream your music stored in your MP3Tunes account “locker.” Through the MP3Tunes service, you can store up to 2GB’s worth of songs in the cloud and pay a monthly fee for more storage (up to 200GB’s). There are no limits on how much you can stream or how many times you can switch songs, unlike most streaming apps available on the iPhone platform.

After a thorough testing of the application, I must admit, the app worked surprisingly well. The sound quality was superb (of course, I am not an audio nut) and everything worked as expected. Some things could be more polished, such as the volume control. I have no idea why the hell I need that random circle to control the volume and it is very unintuitive. Otherwise, Airband sorts and searches through songs as it should and is relatively snappy.

Of course, my number one complaint (and is by no means the developers fault) is the lack of true background processing. As we all know, the iPhone does not allow such things and can be a real pain in the ass to sit inside of one application to listen to my music. One thing that really bothers me though is Apple’s latest acquisition of Lala.

Lala has reportedly been working on an iPhone application for a while now, and it would not shock me if we see within the next year a cloud based version of iTunes released. If such an app is released, undoubtedly background processing will be enabled and Airband is likely to be put on the chopping block due to the poor excuse of  ”duplicating functionality.”

My suggestion to solve this problem? Build an Android application. The experience would most likely be about ten times better for consumers due to the allowance of background processing and the lack of being dropped off the map at the whim of Apple. Also, it would be more convenient for me (Android whore up in here).

Check out the video below if you want to find out more about Airband:

Posted in Tips and Tools | Leave a comment

Hulu, Please Save Me From Vevo

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Holden Page

When I first heard of Vevo, I was unbelievably excited.

Finally! A place to view high quality music videos from nearly all the major labels. My hopes, dreams, prayers and desires had finally been fulfilled. No longer was I going to have to deal with low quality, illegally uploaded videos any longer! Damn it all, Youtube had done it.

Or not.

Vevo is the most horrid piece of crap I have laid eyes upon. The portal is full of crappy ads, horribly placed promotions and worst of all, crappy video streaming. No matter what connection I am on, whether it be a standard DSL line or a T1 line, the videos always f-ing stutters. I feel like stabbing the computer screen every time this happens. How hard can it be for the largest video site in the whole damn world to figure out how to stream music videos correctly, honestly.

So, Hulu, I need you to save me from Vevo and make my hopes and dreams come true. Please, I am begging you, come out with a music video portal of your own.

In my mind this makes complete and utter sense. Hulu’s value amongest people would grow ten fold if music videos were introduced to the selection and would boost numbers significantly. Not to mention that since y’all at Hulu went the legal route the first time around and are being deemed as a success, labels would not be afraid to embrace you with open arms. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had an orgy over y’all. 

Alright, Hulu, make me proud.

Posted in Pages Are Social | 2 Comments

Hey Startups, Get Your (Video) Act Together

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Holden Page

I get on average around three pitches a week from startups. I read every single email and check out every startup that sends me an email. I figure if you have taken time out of your day to get coverage from little ole’ me, you at least deserve a look.

Most of the time though, I do not bother to write about the startups that pitch me. Sadly, this is because they add no value to me or anyone else. Other times, it is simply because I don’t understand what they are trying to do and I don’t have the urge, desire or time to figure it out.

One of these two situations can be solved, and we all know which one.

Startups, its time you start embracing the basics of the web and make some damn videos and here is why.

1. You Control First Impression

First impressions are very important and you can’t give a much better first impression of the product when you make a video demo. If the video demo is impressive, there is a better chance that bloggers will be impressed and be more forgiving of errors when actually using the product.

2. Making The Blogger’s Job Easier

Blogger’s, especially ones that write for top 100 tech blogs, are hammered for time. Between covering breaking news and trying to land exclusives, taking the time to figure out how your product works is the least of their concern. By making a video demo of your product, you save them the time of signing up for an account and trying to figure out what exactly the purpose your products strives to fulfill.

3. Easy To Share

Sometimes bloggers don’t have the time to cover your startup but they know of someone else that can. By making a video demo, a quick link to your video with a subject line of “Check this out!” will be enough for another blogger to cover your startup.

So there you have it, Startups, why you should start embracing video demos.

Seriously, it is unbelievably helpful.

email the author: holden@LayeredByte.com


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