YouTube Video Advertising

It’s finally here. YouTube has started video advertising, allowing ads on the site that include video. It’s only natural, no big surprise here. They have, however, created something kind of cool in Brand Channels, wherein advertisers can have their own channel to push all their stuff down. The first such channel is…….The Paris Hilton Channel. Of course. Paris, remember, was also one of the first commercial podcasters when she was promoting her House of Wax movie. Let’s hope marketers don’t just shove the same old crap they serve us on tv and radio down this hot new medium.

More YouTube Validation

It’s funny when I read these “oh, look, people aren’t watching tv anymore. They’re on the Internet” stories. For those of us who have been living and breathing this stuff for a long time now, it’s like duh. A good article, nonetheless, on cnn.com about all of this. Mentions for The Long Tail as well.It amazes me the networks still bust a nut over schedule and time and day of the week. Things that are all meaningless for me. Most of the shows that I do watch, I couldn’t tell you when they are on. They are on when I want to watch them.

Microsoft Does Everyone a Favor

After trying to co-opt the standard RSS icon for theselves and getting a smackdown from the community, Microsoft has announced it will use the standard icon as used by Firefox. Thanks Microsoft, that’s very big of you. Remember when they tried to rename RSS feeds to Web Feeds?

I Dig digg.com

The new digg.com is out and it’s awesome. I love the new categories that take the site beyond just tech news. The entire site feels easier to use and I find myself using more of the features. I even blogged a story to this blog right from the digg site. Very cool. I don’t even know if that is a new feature or if it was there all along. Either way, I was not using it and now I am.

Jeremy Zawodny Is Brilliant

JZ makes some great observations about the nature of desktop/web/mobile computing and the lack of cohesiveness between them. All of this in light of the Bill Gates leaving Microsoft news. Jeremy thinks Microsoft may have the inside track to solving these issues, especially with their Live Clipboard technology. Let's hope somebody comes up with something soon because it's already getting pretty confusing. 

Netscape Reborn Again – AOL, Please Let It Go

For those of us old enough to remember living through the Internet boom we have fond memories of Netscape. A rebel company fearlessly taking on the sleeping giant Microsoft. They were crushed and sold to AOL who had no idea what to do with them. Poor Netscape has been trough several embarrassing redesigns and re-conceptions. Now AOL is bringing back Netscape yet again, this time as a poor copy of the very popular site digg.com.

Please AOL, there is no point to this. Let Netscape die a peaceful death. Let it rest it peace.

Google – Smell the Backlash

All of a sudden, several prominent bloggers are all over Google. Om Malik wonders if Google is wasting its genus cycles, Paul Kedrosky says "Google is beginning to bug me" and Michael (Tech Crunch) Arrington vents about Google fanboys. The Google motto may be "Do no evil" whatever the hell that means, but they have always been a very arrogant company and I think now pretty unfocused. All that extra time they give their employees to work on pet projects has produced many new and interesting things. But Google seems to have to have no other strategy than to release whatever they have and see what sticks. No one can find a coherent strategy. Google is great, but they aren't Gods gift to the Internet.

Actually, pound for pound, I think Yahoo has better stuff going on right now, and they are flying way under the radar. Yahoo mail is very good. Yahoo maps is great, better than Google by far. I find the My Yahoo custom homepage to be the best out there, again way better than Google. 

Google, the honeymoon is finally coming to an end. Now you're going to have to really prove yourself.  

My Yahoo Broken?

For the past few days my.yahoo.com has been not working for me. The weather does not show correctly and most of the news items say "no new items". I get most of my basic news and info from my yahoo and it's killing me being down like this. Anyone know what's going on?

Geek Speak – The Dreaded “2.0″

The newest trend from the tech trenches is to call everything "2.0". It all started with "web 2.0". I think I have heard "Advertising 2.0". More are sure to follow. Look at the categories for this blog, three of them with 2.0. Maybe Second Life should have been called "Life 2.0" instead. When do we cross over into blogging 2.0? podcasting 2.0? Yea, I have a blogging 2.5 app running on a web 3.0 platform. No wonder common folks have a hard time with the net sometimes. I just figured out my cell phone and now you want me to subscribe to an rss…a podcast. I already read a blog, I think.

Please, No More Widgets/Gadgets/Ect

Google announced this week a new version of it's desktop search app that now includes desktop gadgets. This is the same technology first made popular by Konfabulator, now owned by Yahoo. Apple does the same with their desktop widgets. Now Google, a day late and a dollar short. Google's gadgets are fine, but not anything better than what Yahoo and Apple already have. And Google's stuff only runs on a PC. At least Yahoo goes cross platform. How many gizmos do you need on your desktop anyway? I'm getting a little sick of these things. The only one that really helps me is the Gmail widget that can check multiple Gmail accounts at once. That's cool.