Update: And like a swift judo chop to the groin for Microsoft, Google has announced a Twitter deal as well.

All Things D got the scoop this morning on two upcoming deals Microsoft has made to integrate real time updates from Twitter and Facebook into their Bing search engine. Their post was later confirmed by an official Microsoft announcement. The deal is a coup for Microsoft because it means they’ve successfully beat out Google from integrating real time updates into their search engine. The two have been trying to court Facebook and Twitter for some time now, with rumors of buyouts floating among all the various deals. While Google remains tops in traditional web searching, the value of real time searching is also becoming more apparent every day. For once, Microsoft has access to something Google doesnt.

Not surprisingly, the implementation of both services into Bing will be very different. All Twitter posts will appear automatically (and I assume private Twitter posts won’t), but Facebook users will have to opt in due to the closed nature of that social network. Strangely enough, the implementation of real time search into Bing seems to be directly at odds with their current marketing campaign, which heralds Bing as the cure for search overload. It’ll be some time before we see these services in action, but if Bing’s real time search results end up cluttering their other results, I’m going to have to call shenanigans.

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Bing Adds Twitter and Facebook Posts to Search Results, Should Google Worry?

• Do Verizon’s “iDon’t” Ads Miss the Point?
• The Android T-Mobile G1 is the Real Successor to the Helio Ocean
• Dear Digsby, Where’s the Group Chat and In Line Text Formatting?!
• 1080p Xbox Movie Streaming Works as Advertised
• Thoughts on the September 09 New York Tech Meetup

You’ve probably already heard about the Nanda Clocky alarm; it’s the alarm that has wheels so that it can race around your bedroom when it goes off in the morning, forcing you to get up and be more alert instead of just hitting snooze. I’ve followed the product since the creator, Guari Nanda, acquired a lot of press when she first showed off her idea as an MIT grad student. But while it seems that the product has found success, it also appears that the company has become a bit restrictive towards users who attempt to resell the product on eBay. Tech Dirt has the equally infuriating/hilarious tale of a family member who tried to sell their Clocky on eBay, only to be struck down by a trademark violation notice.

It sounds as if the user was trying to sell the Clocky as a new product, and perhaps Nanda was mistaken and thought he was trying to become some sort of unauthorized reseller. Ebay’s process for clearing up these misunderstandings isn’t easy: You have to get the “violated” company to approve your specific product listing. This user did that, but somehow still ended up getting another violation notice the next day.

I agree with Tech Dirt when they say that this sort of faulty trademark protection could conceivably harm the market for second-hand products. Ebay needs to find a way to handle faulty complaints–perhaps by punishing companies that make excessive incorrect violation requests? Until this is resolved, the user should just go ahead and sell it on Craigslist already.

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The Nanda Alarm Clock eBay Fail

• What nVidia’s Tegra Means for Mobile Devices, and Why You Should Care
• Windows Mobile 7 with Zune Integration Coming Soon?
• Did You Hear? I Think Apple’s Releasing a Tablet!
• Ubuntu’s Fiesty Fifth Birthday, And Linux As A Desktop Solution
• Why The Magic Mouse is the Most Important Apple Announcement Today

I’m about ready to give up on Digsby. I’ve been a faithful user for the past year and a half, and I’ve written about it positively as well, but it seems as if they have no desire to implement two of the biggest missing features since the beta: Group chat, and in-line text formatting (the ability to bold/italicize/etc. individual letters and words). Instead, they seem content to push forward with more complex social networking features (today, it’s URL shortening and better MySpace Newsfeed support), all the while ignoring what I consider basic features for any IM client.

I don’t think I’m being greedy by asking for these features. Group chat (and chat room) support was a part of AIM since the 90s, and it’s also a feature of every major IM platform that Digsby supports. It’s shocking to me that so long after Digsby’s release, I still need to open up another client or head to Meebo to participate in group chat.

Similarly, I have no idea what’s keeping them from implementing proper in-line text formatting. Currently, if you choose any formatting options in Digsby, it applies that formatting to the entire post. For example, writing a sentence like this would be impossible in Digsby because it would end up bolding, underlining, and italicizing the entire sentence. Somehow, this doesn’t seem like a feature that should be missing from any text-heavy program in the year 2009, let alone something focused on text communication.

This is what happened when I tried to format a single word in this post:

I initially started using Digsby as a replacement to Trillian Pro for aggregating all of my IM services (I was tired of waiting for Trillian Astra), and the fact that it also aggregated social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter was convenient at the time as well. Things are different today. I use TweetDeck to follow Twitter (and occasionally Facebook), and Trillian Astra is finally out in public beta. Trillian actually supports group chat and in-line formatting, and is aiming to compete with Digsby with social networking aggregation as well. And yes, I know about Miranda IM and Pidgin, but both are a bit too simple (not to mention fugly) for my tastes.

I can’t imagine I’m the only one annoyed by Digsby’s shortcomings, but I suppose most users are too dependent on its more advanced features to let these minor issues bother them. I honestly think the Digsby team has done great work on the client since beta as well, but that doesn’t excuse them from failing to implement two fairly basic features.

At this point, I’m going to switch over to Trillian Astra full time to see if it does everything else I need. After criticizing the Cerulean Studios team for so long on their delayed Astra release cycle, I owe them this much. If the Digsby team ever decides to fix these features, I may give it another shot.

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Dear Digsby, Where’s the Group Chat and In Line Text Formatting?!

• 1080p Xbox Movie Streaming Works as Advertised
• Thoughts on the September 09 New York Tech Meetup
• Ubuntu’s Fiesty Fifth Birthday, And Linux As A Desktop Solution
• The Lucid Hydra 200 Makes Multi-GPU Gaming Across Video Card Vendors a Reality
• What nVidia’s Tegra Means for Mobile Devices, and Why You Should Care

In an attempt to move in a different direction from the rest of the blogosphere, I was going to write something about how strange it was that the ill-fated search engine Cuil was covered so widely in mainstream press. Unfortunately, it looks like ReadWriteWeb beat me to it.

I encourage you to read their piece, because it pretty much covers everything I had in mind. But I will say this: Cuil was the first story I heard on NPR when I woke up Monday morning, and I was constantly asked about it throughout the day by non-tech folk who had read about it in other mainstream sources. That sort of coverage truly surprised me because, for the most part, Cuil seemed like many other geeky startups that the blogosphere adores, but average internet users generally ignore.

The Trouble with Tech Bloggers…

But enough has been said about Cuil’s fail whale of a launch. Instead, check out this recent post by Sarah Lacy, who uses the Cuil launch to discuss a problematic trend in the technology blogosphere. She believes that the obsessive rush to break news before other sites, coupled with the obcenely short hype-cycle of online tech journalism, is ultimately not very useful readers:

At some point, the tech blogosphere has to break itself from the junky-like addiction of having to get a story two seconds before the competitor. Can it really drive that much traffic when every other blogger got the same pre-brief? Isn’t it better to wait a bit, use the service and write something smarter?

If we’ve got a 20-second hype cycle in the Valley, that’s not Cuil’s fault. And I don’t think it’s serving readers well either. If we write something is amazing in the morning and then total junk in the afternoon, does anyone looking to tech blogs for analysis keep coming back?

Specifically, Lacy points to many bloggers (including herself) giving a generally favorable preview to Cuil without actually using it, and then having to turn around and be extra nasty when they realized how little it lived up to the hype they helped create.

…And how we can move forward

This isn’t an entirely original criticism, but I think the Cuil case is fairly indicative of these larger issues facing the tech blogosphere. To her first point, I certainly agree that the rush to be first has led to some shoddy work, but at the same time it appears to be a logical evolution of competitive print journalism. The problem is that with online journalism a story can break any second, whereas print journalism generally works on a monthly, weekly, daily (and sometimes twice daily), news cycle.

It would certainly be nice for tech bloggers to worry less about being first to post, but since being first tends to directly correlate to success on Digg, Reddit, and other social media sites, I don’t see that trend ending anytime soon. Sites like TechCrunch and Mashable aren’t ever going to get away from that grind, but it does leave the door open for bloggers of a different sort to offer more thoughtful analysis, a potential answer to her second criticism.

While these bloggers may initially miss out on the blink-and-you-miss-it relevancy cycle generated by the bigger tech blogs, social media sites, and Techmeme–I believe they could eventually prolong the cycle by daring to cover stories that are (gasp) several days old. Even more shocking, they could even cover content that’s sometimes routinely ignored by the bigger tech and social media sites. (Scoble has an interesting response to Lacy’s post that offers some similar thoughts.)

Of course, my feelings on this matter come from personal experience. With this blog, I know that I can’t always break news like the big sites, but I can still attempt to create interesting content that isn’t necessarily beholden to their manic relevancy cycle or the gods of social media. I know there are many other aspiring tech bloggers who are working towards similar goals as well, so whenever someone mentions the decline of tech blogging I can’t help but think they’re just not looking hard enough, and that may be the real problem.

Few are.

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Cuil and The Trouble with Tech Blogging

• Dear Digsby, Where’s the Group Chat and In Line Text Formatting?!
• Did You Hear? I Think Apple’s Releasing a Tablet!
• My Thoughts on the Palm Pre
• Looking Forward to the Android Takeover
• Do Verizon’s “iDon’t” Ads Miss the Point?

I realized then something I should have noticed long ago: I could never abandon Firefox. This isn’t out of some illogical fanboyism, or a naive belief in the almighty nature of open source code. No, I could never abandon Firefox because of one key feature that no other web browser can compete with: Extensions.

Yes folks, I’m a Firefox extension addict.

While I can certainly use other web browsers for light browsing while remaining clearheaded, when it comes to getting some actual work done I find myself going through some major extension withdrawal. My palms get sweaty when faced with the inefficiency of accomplishing certain tasks without extensions, not to mention when I remember that many things are impossible to do without extensions–like blocking an annoying flash ad, or completely integrating my del.icio.us bookmarks into Firefox.

Internet Explorer and Safari don’t have anything to compare, and Opera’s widgets serve another function entirely. While you could argue that Opera does a decent job of integrating many useful features into the browser itself, somewhat negating the need for added functionality via extensions, that still makes it incredibly difficult for Opera to cater to the needs of all users, not to mention the time it takes to add new features to the browser.

The modularity of extensions makes it easy for users to customize Firefox lego-like, and without much effort make the browser suit their needs. They’ve also spawned a massive user community who have created everything from generally useful extensions that appeal to many, to extensions that serve more esoteric niche functions. While niche extensions may not seem that important, it is somewhat heartening to know that whenever you run across an annoyance or missing feature in Firefox, there’s a good chance an extension exists that could help.

I know I’m not alone in my extension addiction–just look at all the Firefox users publicly complaining about extensions that don’t work in Firefox 3 yet. I just hope Mozilla realizes how effective extensions are at locking users into their browser. It’s an age old adage of marketing; create a special feature that your competitors don’t have to attract customers, and then lock them in by making them addicted to it.

Special editions of Firefox like their Campus Edition are a good way to ingratiate new and less tech-savvy Firefox users to extensions, but they honestly need to do much more publicity for these sorts of projects (and for extensions in general). I just learned about Campus Edition last week, and it would have been nice for me to hear about it when it was released last August seeing that I work in IT at a college. Unfortunately, it seems the Campus Edition has been discontinued as of Firefox 3’s release (though they may just working on upgrading it from Firefox 2).

Mozilla really needs to focus more on extensions if they intend to continue battling the browser wars against Internet Explorer, Opera, and yes, even Safari. They’ve practically saturated the techy market already, so now they need to work on grabbing general users away from other browsers. Extensions, being among the most visible and functional features Firefox has to offer, could certainly help them do that.

Update: I just ran across a review of Firefox 2 that I wrote in 2006, and found it a very interesting read now that Firefox 3 is out. I found this section in particular poignant, given that I think Mozilla needs to start marketing better to general users:

Given that many of the tweaks in Firefox 2 are under the hood, it probably won’t do much to encourage new users to move away from IE. Mozilla may have some new marketing in the works, but for now Firefox 2 seems to be a release made more for the loyal than anything else. We may even see fewer people jumping to Firefox with the release of IE7 because Microsoft’s new browser already sports many of Firefox’s trademark features. This latest browser war may end up being fought over subtleties rather than significant differences.

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I’m a Firefox Extension Addict, and Why That’s Good for Mozilla

• Dear Digsby, Where’s the Group Chat and In Line Text Formatting?!
• Do Verizon’s “iDon’t” Ads Miss the Point?
• 1080p Xbox Movie Streaming Works as Advertised
• What nVidia’s Tegra Means for Mobile Devices, and Why You Should Care
• Why The Magic Mouse is the Most Important Apple Announcement Today

This latest release for public beta adds Twitter support, something which I’m going to take serious advantage of, support for video/voice chat, and an inline spell checker. You can find the rest of the updates for this release here.

Since I’ve started using Digsby I find that the only thing I truly miss from Trillian was the plentiful skins available at Deviant Art and other sites. Digsby advertises skins on their front page, but I suppose that we haven’t seen any yet because the product was hidden away in private beta. Now that it’s out in the open I suspect the skinning community to have a field day.

Unfortunately, judging from the screenshots, it appears that Digsby sticks with a fairly standard UI throughout different skins. Skinning seems only to affect the colors used in the application and the background image on the buddy list. I hope this is something that is improved upon eventually. For now, I’ll enjoy their Adium-styled conversation themes–something which I’ve been dying for on the PC side.

I was hoping that Digsby’s release would spur on the Trillian Folks to bust out with a private or public beta, but alas it’s still languishing in alpha hell. I have nothing but love for those folks, and being a former Trillian user for 7 years, I would totally love it if Astra came out and totally showed these young Digsby whippersnappers a thing or two.

Oh well.

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Digsby Opens Up with Public Beta, Adds Twitter & Voice/Video Support

• Dear Digsby, Where’s the Group Chat and In Line Text Formatting?!
• Did You Hear? I Think Apple’s Releasing a Tablet!
• Thoughts on the September 09 New York Tech Meetup
• Bing Adds Twitter and Facebook Posts to Search Results, Should Google Worry?
• Finally, Netflix Streaming is Coming to the PS3

I’ve been playing around with Digsby today by way of an invite from Ars Technica, and it has quickly become my new favorite IM client. The beauty of Digsby is that it combines the IM aggregation from the likes of Trillian and Pidgin with the social networking aggregation of 8Hands. Oh, and it lets you keep track of all your e-mail accounts as well. Simply put, it’s become my one stop for communicating online.

I’m running it in Vista and overall I’m finding it to be a much more enjoyable experience than Trillian 3 Pro. I’m not sure of the cause, but Trillian 3 has been overwhelmingly sluggish for me in Vista. I would see everything from increasingly long text input delays, to issues with Trillian having trouble with simple tasks like repainting the chat windows when switching between conversations. I’ve tried reinstalling and troubleshooting Trillian many times and nothing seems to have helped.

For me, Digsby certainly couldn’t have picked a better time to launch into beta. I’m tired of waiting for Trillian Astra, Cerulean Studio’s long-awaited upgrade to the Trillian platform which has been hyped up for its IM and social networking aggregation. Honestly, I’m tired of waiting because Astra’s development doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

We first caught word of Astra’s revamped interface and new social features back in November 2006, and its been in private alpha even prior to that announcement. Current word from the Cerulean Studio blog is that there is still no release date for Astra. And of course, the fact that they haven’t even gotten to beta yet is disheartening.

Currently, I’m using Digsby to connect to my AIM, Gtalk, Facebook, and multiple web mail accounts. I’ve been meaning to test it with my work IMAP account to double-check the error reported by Ars, but for some reason it won’t connect to that server. Otherwise, Digsby has been running stably for me and with far less slowdown and headache than Trillian. It doesn’t yet feature Twitter or video chat support, but I’m sure these will come in time.

Digsby also has one of the best auto-updating features of any Windows app I’ve seen. Just before I started writing this post, I launched Digsby and it instantly began fetching and installing an update without my intervention and then proceeded to sign me into my accounts as normal. It didn’t even require a restart of the app! I would describe the upgrade experience as thoroughly Mac-like in its simplicity–a trend Digsby carries over to some of its chat styles which seem to be lifted straight out of Adium.

Overall, I’m impressed with Digsby enough that I’m going to use it as my primary IM application. This marks a deviation from my 7+ year (!) devotion to Trillian. I’ll also start evangelizing it to all of my PC owning friends because, honestly, who wouldn’t want a single app to handle all of their web communication? There isn’t a Mac or Linux client yet, but they have a sign-up form up to let you know when they’ll be available. If you’d like to try Digsby, Ars Technica is sponsoring 5000 invites; just enter arstechnica as the invite code in their registration form.

I’m not sure what’s keeping Cerulean Studios from moving forward with Trillian Astra, but whatever it is I hope they get that sorted out soon. Digsby is here now and has already converted this Trillian devotee. I can only imagine how many more will follow…

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Digsby Gunning for Trillian Astra’s Social/IM Aggregation Throne

• Dear Digsby, Where’s the Group Chat and In Line Text Formatting?!
• Apple’s New Anti-Windows 7 Ads Hurt My Brain
• Asus Starts the USB 3.0 & SATA 6Gb Hype Train
• Windows Mobile 7 with Zune Integration Coming Soon?
• The Android T-Mobile G1 is the Real Successor to the Helio Ocean

Since Daily Bits is a technology blog, most of the work that I would have normally published here will be going there. I don’t see the need to abandon this blog entirely yet though. There are still many topics that I’m interested in that don’t quite fit the Daily Bits mold, so you can expect to see those here. Those include topics like the consumer technologies, the Singularity, and video games.

Here’s what I have at Daily Bits so far:

• Coming to Terms with Windows Vista
• The Dangers of the Blogging Rumor Mill
• Inbox 2.0 = Netvibes?
• The Failure of a la Carte Cable is a Boon for New Media

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Changes on the Horizon

• Apple’s New Anti-Windows 7 Ads Hurt My Brain
• Thoughts on the September 09 New York Tech Meetup
• Did You Hear? I Think Apple’s Releasing a Tablet!
• Cheap Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Coming to a Backpack Near You
• Ubuntu’s Fiesty Fifth Birthday, And Linux As A Desktop Solution

Of course their anti-DRM stance has ensured that they wouldn’t be able to offer some tracks from the big music labels (although this is changing slowly). But thus far their selection has been more than adequate for my needs. I have a fairly eclectic taste in music, just check out my Last.FM page to see for yourself, and I’ve been able to find most of what I’ve wanted on their site without much fuss.

So they have high-quality DRM-free MP3s along with a fairly wide selection–I technically shouldn’t have anything to complain about right? I thought as much myself, until I realized a crucial problem with their billing plans.

Although they’ve given up on their “all you can eat” pricing scheme from previous years , they’ve settled on some reasonable monthly and annual subscription ranges. I’ve chosen their low-end scheme since I wanted to test the service for a few months before committing serious funds to the site. Said low-end plan is $10 per month for 30 tracks.

I was quite happy with this plan until a month passed by when I hadn’t purchased anything from eMusic. Fully expecting to have an extra 30 credits waiting for me when I logged in the month afterwards, I was surprised to find that my credits still sat at 30. A quick glance at my credit statements showed that I did in fact pay for the previous month’s service, but apparently eMusic resets your download credits every month regardless of how much you’ve actually used.

Now all of this information is readily available so I don’t feel hoodwinked at all. I’ve accepted the fact that I’ve lost that month’s worth of credits. My question is simply this: Why?

It’s not as if eMusic will lose anything if they roll over extra credits every month instead of resetting them. (Sure their bandwidth costs may jump a bit, but any major online media outlet should be prepared for that.) If I pay for a month’s worth of credits I don’t see why any remaining credits should disappear. It’s not as if they’re offering a physical product or anything that justifies a monthly expiration date. All they’re doing is arbitrarily granting me access to download files based on how much I pay. So why can’t they just as easily roll over unused credits?

It just seems odd to me that customers can so easily pay for a service that they never actually receive.

I can’t really think of any other subscription-based services online that function similarly. The only other similarity that comes to mind are cell phone plans, and it’s not as if roll-over minutes are anything new there. Without rollover, eMusic will always be fatally flawed to me. It’s a shame too, because there’s just so much to like.

I’ve sent eMusic an inquiry regarding their lack of rollover, but I don’t exactly expect a response. My other big surprise upon discovering this is how easily eMusic users have accepted these terms of service. I’m not sure exactly why this is the case, but I welcome any reader thoughts on the subject.

Update: I should mention that an eMusic rep contacted me soon after posting this article with an apology and credited my account with 50 downloads for the lost month and trouble. I still maintain my love for eMusic, especially after a move like that, but I still hope they come around with some sort of roll over plan. As I mentioned in the comments below, they could just as well limit it to only roll over 2-3 months worth of credit. It’s still better than the situation right now.

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Why Doesn’t Emusic Carry Over Unused Tracks Every Month?

• Did You Hear? I Think Apple’s Releasing a Tablet!
• Finally, Netflix Streaming is Coming to the PS3
• Thoughts on the September 09 New York Tech Meetup
• My Thoughts on the Palm Pre
• 1080p Xbox Movie Streaming Works as Advertised

You might remember this site from the waves it made a few weeks ago at social news sites. It was a seemingly useful experiment meant to compare the uptime of several inexpensive hosting providers when faced with a flood of traffic. Dubbed the “Web 2.0 Effect: Which Host Will Survive?”, a term they invented to group the sort of traffic rush you get from being featured on sites like Slashdot and Digg, the experiment looked to be a useful reference for anyone getting started with paid website hosting. The experiment relied on being flooded with traffic, and that they were by Digg and Reddit. It garnered an impressive 1,812 Diggs and 838 Reddits at the time of this post.

I was first referred to the site from a friend who was looking for hosting of his own. I distinctly remember the first thought that went through my head when I saw the winner: “Who the hell is Burton Hosting?” That started a chain of events that made this post necessary. My friends and I thought there was a good chance that this entire project was just a marketing ploy, and we set out to do some research.

What we found confirmed our suspicions several times over: It appears that the Web 2.0 Effect was not a legitimate experiment in any way. We surmise that it was, in actuality, an elaborate viral marketing ploy meant to shovel sales into the hands of Burton Hosting.

Initial Suspicions

As I mentioned already, I found it curious that a relatively unknown hosting provider won out so clearly. There were several other peculiarities I noted upon first seeing the site:

• This wasn’t a very realistic experiment: The test was simply a paragraph of “Lorem ipsum” text on a colored background. If they really wanted to test real-world hosting capabilities they should have included post-1995 web features such as images, dynamic content through a database connection, and scripting of some sort.
• It wasn’t a controlled experiment: The crux of the project relied on seeing which hosts choked when flooded with traffic. The problem is that the site needs to be highly publicized to get that traffic in the first place. What’s to prevent any of the featured hosts from surreptitiously allocating more resources to the sites? Nothing, that’s what.
• Where are the better known hosting services?: Where’s the geek favorite, Dreamhost? And for that matter, where’s Bluehost, Lunarpages, Godaddy, or any other semi-popular hosting service?
  • Take note that the HostGator test subject is actually listed as a HostGator Reseller. Any potential problems with that listing could be attributed to the reseller allocating their allotted resources badly.
• Burton is the least popular by far of all of the providers being tested: A quick Alexa comparison showed us that Burton receives drastically less traffic than the competitors. Burton is the blue line trailing the bottom of the graph.

Digging Deeper

A more thorough investigation confirmed that we were right to be suspicious. We started by running a simple WhoIS search on the 0effect.org domain. That gave us two names: Russ Jones and Ronald Jaffre. Looking at the Reddit submission, we learned that rjonesx submitted the site to Reddit. That matched the gmail address listed in the WhoIs data, so it appeared that Russ had Reddited his own site. There isn’t anything wrong with that in general, so we looked to the Digg submission next.

Russvirante was the Digg user who submitted the story, and we assumed that this was Russ Jones as well. Googling for Russ Jones, we found that Virante.com is among the first few search results — specifically, as Virante High Potential Web Marketing. A quick glance at that site showed us that Russel Jones is actually the CTO of Virante. And unsurprisingly, one of their specialties is social media/viral marketing. Now the idea of the “Web 2.0 Effect” site being used as a viral marketing campaign for Burton Hosting begins to gain some substance.

A Super Smart Experiment?

We then found a blog that Jones writes for, which also looks to be directly affiliated with Virante. In this post, Jones links directly to the “Web 2.0 Effect” site but talks about it as if he just happened across it. Not only does he give it a fabulously self-serving title (”Super Smart Experiment: Surviving the Digg Effect”), he also can’t seem to help gushing all over his own project:

“Definitely one of the smarter experiments I have seen these days… I absolutely love this kind of attitude of bootstrap experimentation, especially when it is crafted in a way that makes it really accurate. I have seen stories before where they just pound 1 host, but not one where they can really compare multiple hosts at the same time. Kudos!”

Sorry Russ, I don’t believe you can give kudos to yourself, especially not when you’re possibly revealing your connection to a “secret” marketing plot by doing so.

So here’s the rub–why did Jones disassociate himself with this project at all? The likeliest solution, of course, is that he didn’t want the “Web 2.0 Effect” project to be tied directly to his blog or Virante. A quick glance at the Virante.com main page shows us that posts from the “Google Cache” blog show up in a highlighted section. They couldn’t very well admit to creating this experiment on the blog if it’s in actuality something they’re doing for a paying client.

Social Spin

Still, I suppose he reserves the right to call this a “super smart” experiment. He successfully fooled the vast majority of the online community, save for a few insightful Reddit and Digg users. I found more evidence of marketing misinformation by sifting through Russ’s responses to the Reddit and Digg submissions. When pressed that this looks like marketing spam on Reddit, Russ replies:

“If you notice, there are no affiliate links for any of the domains and the data is displayed as clearly and openly as possible.

I am sorry that I can’t prove it to you that it is not advertising, it is simply impossible to do that. All I can say is that, to me, it would be very valuable to know which hosting company can survive this kind of traffic on a $5/month account. Unfortunately, i can’t figure that out without something like this, and I could only afford to try 9 hosting accounts (many require multi-month sign ups which are expensive!)”

The site definitely has an air of transparency. At first, it doesn’t look like they are trying to make any money from gathering so much traffic. Then again, if I were pulling a massive marketing stunt like this, that’s exactly what I’d want the audience to think as well.

Also, I find it hilarious that he says they couldn’t afford to test other hosting providers because it gets expensive. In that case, wouldn’t it make more sense to make the most of your funds and efficiently test hosting providers that people actually use?

Jones also reveals a sliver of truth in a later Reddit comment:

“I am a CTO at a small web design / development company. This information we need to know for our clients, and the only way we could figure it out was open it up to the community (how else are we going to get the traffic to really figure out which ones are the best?)

So, we can pretend its altruistic :), but really it was a question I needed answered, but I needed everyone else to make it happen.”

First off, he tells us he’s a CTO (and we know for a fact that he is), and yet he couldn’t afford to have his company pump more funds into this experiment? It’s hard to imagine that even a small company couldn’t shell out for a more thorough survey of hosting options, especially given all the free publicity they would have gotten for providing such a useful service to budding website owners.

Also, I find it extremely telling that he mentioned he needed this information for his clients. It’s clear that this experiment didn’t really provide much in the way of useful information, but it would be useful for a client looking to garner some publicity. Saying that this experiment is meant for his clients is somewhat of a half-truth then, as it’s certainly a boon for Burton Hosting.

Other Points of Interest

We also gathered some other random facts during our investigation which make the “Web 2.0 Effect” appear suspect:

• Burton Hosting is the only provider in this experiment not based on the U.S. They’re actually based out of the United Kingdom. This makes it seem all the stranger that they would be chosen for this test.
• Ronald Jaffre, the other name in the WhoIS lookup for 0effect.org, has an address listed for Alvaston in Derby UK. Of course this is more circumstantial than most of the other evidence, but it does seem strange that Jaffre supposedly lives a mere 118 miles from Burton Hosting. (The Burton address was gleamed from the WhoIS lookup for their domain.)
• Both the Burton.com and 0effect.org IPs resolve in Georgia. Could be just a coincidence, but then again there have been too many of those already.

Summing Up

So it appears that something is not quite right with the “Web 2.0 Effect.” You don’t have to be a conspiracy nut to notice that there are simply too many problems with the experiment, among other coincidences and revelations, that lead us to believe that it wasn’t legitimate. While we couldn’t find any direct link between Virante and Burton Hosting, the implication gathered from all of this evidence is clear: Virante fooled the web good.

If anything, I hope that shedding light on this covert marketing ploy will make us warier of similar viral plots in the future. It stinks that we have to worry about marketing being pranced about as legitimate data, but it appears to be an unavoidable situation.

As technology makes it easier for users to connect and collaborate, it makes it even easier for advertisers to take advantage of our good will. We are not powerless against such tactics. Learn about and preach media literacy, never take any information for granted, and always ask questions.

Update 1: 7/6/07 – 6:19pm

Thanks for all the support everyone! Also, I knew more evidence would pop up once this story hit the wild. Digg user Dhalgren points out the following:

“What’s with the hidden links on the 0effect.org site?
From the HTML:
< div style='display:none;' >
< a href="http://concertmaps.wetpaint.com">concertmaps< /a >
< a href="http://concertmaps.wikispaces.com">concertmaps< /a >
< a href="http://digg.com/users/concertmaps/news/dugg" >concertmaps< /a >
< a href="http://www.myspace.com/concertmaps">concertmaps< /a >
< a href="http://concertmaps.wordpress.com">concertmaps< /a >
< a href="http://concertmaps.icontact.com/" >concertmaps< /a >
< /div >
< div style='display:none' >< a href='http://www.leisurelandscapes.com' >Leisure Landscapes< /a >< /div >
Also, it looks like he had a tracker with Burton:
< img src='track.php?host=burton&url=http://207.210.100.214' height=1 width=1 style='visibility:hidden;' >

Why only have a tracker with Burton? Looks suspicious to me. Like he wanted his client to know how much traffic was generated for their viral advertising…”

Although it looks like the page was edited after he posted this revealation:

“Since I’ve posted this he’s removed the links and is making the track.php dynamic. It wasn’t before…”

Not only were there hidden links, but it was quite obvious that Burton was tracking the hits to the “Web 2.0 Effect” site!

In addition, Digg users mmmooo and eviljim found a very interesting reference to a “viranteviral” project through the Apache server signature. Mmmooo notes:

“all this research, and for what…

Russ, you forgot to have bruton change the apache server sig for your ‘test’.

Apache/1.3.37 Server at www.viranteviral.burtondns.org Port 80

(just hit http://207.210.100.214/foobar)

ooops!

sounds marketing-ish.”

That probably wasn’t the best name for a secret viral project server, no?

Both of these new pieces of evidence further cement the relationship between Virante and Burton hosting. Russ has spent quite some time in the Digg and Reddit comments trying to convince us of the legitimacy of the experiment. I wonder what he would have to say about this new evidence…

Update 2: 7/8/2007 10:16pm

A few more quick updates. First off, in the interest of full disclosure, I changed the title of the story (but not the permalink) to include “Burton” and “Virante” to give this article a boost when people search for those terms. I think these tactics should be known to anyone who deals with Virante or Burton in the future.

I should mention that the main reason I invested so much in this article is that I really hate it when people take advantage of growing social media trends. I know there isn’t much we can do to avoid it. Whenever something popular appears, people will figure out a way to game it for their own benefit. In this case though, at least I was able to make a bit of a difference.

A couple hours ago, I e-mailed Russ Jones to see if he had any explanation for the evidence in the first update above. Seeing as how those two bits were pretty much the last nail in the coffin for this project, I was curious to see if he had any reasonable response to them. I’ll let you guys know if anything comes about from that.

Unsurprised to say the least.
I’ve caught Burton Hosting posting fake reviews to a number of web hosting review sites previously as well — including our own. They’ve been spamming on digg for awhile under a few different aliases.. a number have reached the frontpage.

So it appears that Burton is not new to sketchy marketing tactics, this project was just their biggest attempt to date. To be fair, tons of hosting companies do the same, but it’s especially relevant that we know Burton isn’t afraid to engage in these activities. You can find some of their fake reviews over here, along with one that ranks them as “Poor.”

Update 3: 7/20/07 11:11pm

Is Virante and co. pwned? Well according to Google, it looks like they are. Honestly I never expected this article to be awarded with such a lofty geek title, but it looks like you readers made it happen. Take note that before this update, I never once used the term “pwned” in this post, and honestly I don’t think in my site either.

Since this moment of victory is sure to be short, I’ve captured this moment in history for all eternity. Click the thumbnail below for the full picture:

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Uncovering The Web2.0Effect.org Hoax: How Virante Marketing Solutions & Burton Hosting Fooled the Web

• Sony’s Idea of Corporate Synergy: Smashing PS3s into Bravia TVs at 50mph
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Welcome to another leisurely stroll through my recently collected del.icio.us links. As always, feel free to add me (”Tenken” on del.icio.us) to your network if you’d like to share your own links with me. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed of my del.icio.us findings.

• How Google Gears Could Foreshadow Death for Microsoft: I’ve recently rediscovered Slate after spending most of my time over at Salon these past few months, and it’s articles like this that make me kick myself for ignoring Slate for so long. Here, Slate’s Harry McCracken argues that Google Gears introduces functionality that will be key to dominating the web application market. Chiefly, with the integration of online content with offline functionality. It’s a really interesting thought that I had never considered until now. Expect this theme to pop up in a future post.
• Google Explains Net Neutrality in Simple Terms: Google’s Public Policy Blog is quickly becoming one of the best sources for easy-to-read public policy discussion online. Here they offer a clear definition of what net neutrality proponents are fighting for, and makes the case about what exactly they feel ISP’s have a right to do with their networks. Perhaps if some politicians understood the issue as clearly as this there would be much less support for telco’s and net neutrality opponents in Washington.
• Judge Says Students Can Respond to RIAA “John Doe” Lawsuits: A federal judge in New Mexico has declared that RIAA must allow alleged copyright infringers in that state to be notified before receiving settlement letters in the mail. These letters are of the recent breed that the RIAA has been sending out wherein they basically tell the recipient to cough up a settlement fee or face a full-on lawsuit.

  They are, in actuality, a way for the RIAA to overstep the legal system altogether since most of the recipients decide to settle. This has been saving the RIAA a tremendous amount in legal fees, but with this new ruling they are going to have a much harder time pulling the same stunt in New Mexico–hopefully others will follow suit.

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Del.icio.us Link Stroll: How Google Gears Could Kill Microsoft, Google Elucidates “Net Neutrality”, Judge Makes Life Difficult for the RIAA

• Bing Adds Twitter and Facebook Posts to Search Results, Should Google Worry?
• Dear Digsby, Where’s the Group Chat and In Line Text Formatting?!
• Ubuntu’s Fiesty Fifth Birthday, And Linux As A Desktop Solution
• The Android T-Mobile G1 is the Real Successor to the Helio Ocean
• Thoughts on the September 09 New York Tech Meetup

I thought it would be interesting to do a bit more with my random assortment of cool links, most of which are gathered from Reddit, friends, and a variety of other places online. To this end, I will start a series of posts where I share useful links and why I found them worthwhile.

• Getting Buried in Digg, Not as Bad as it Sounds: If you hadn’t noticed, my last post on Al Gore’s contributions to the start of the internet was unceremoniously buried when it approached 70 diggs. I’m sad that there are those on digg close-minded enough that they would seek to silence such an important story, because it could have easily made the front page and have been read by thousands more. This article goes analyzes digg traffic and shows that getting buried doesn’t necessarily kill the traffic coming to your post.
• Harry Knowles chooses HD-DVD: After remaining fairly quiet on the topic of HD discs, Harry Knowles, the founder of Aint It Cool News has officially thrown down the gauntlet and declared favor for HD-DVD over Bluray. This news is significant because Sony has been declaring that Bluray has won the HD-disc war for some time now. Personally, I still think HD-DVD is the more logical choice for the successor to DVD. You can read more about the war between Bluray and HD-DVD in this Amherst Bytes article.
• 17 Firefox Extensions to Make Blogging Easy: I’m really becoming fond of life hacking sites for great articles like this. To be honest, I had never heard of many of the extensions listed, but now I’m going to work to make them a part of my workflow.
• Speed Up File Copying with Teracopy: I often have to move large files around at work, and I find the single most annoying thing about file-copying in Windows is that it’s incredibly dumb when faced with a corrupted file. For example, if I’m moving 5GB of data and there happens to be a corrupted MP3 in there, Windows will throw an error and cancel the copy job. When this happens you have to sift through each individual folder and sub-folder among the files you want to copy, and figure out which files are actually salvageable. Teracopy prevents stupidity like this and also offers faster copying as well.

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Del.icio.us Link Stroll: Getting Buried is OK, Harry Chooses HD-DVD…

• Apple’s New Anti-Windows 7 Ads Hurt My Brain
• Windows Mobile 7 with Zune Integration Coming Soon?
• Ubuntu’s Fiesty Fifth Birthday, And Linux As A Desktop Solution
• Looking Forward to the Android Takeover
• 1080p Xbox Movie Streaming Works as Advertised

How many times have you heard someone joke about Al Gore “inventing” the internet? It’s amazing how pervasive this myth is as it’s practically folklore by now. Even Engadget’s Ryan Block, one of the most commonly associated names with well-informed technology news, perpetuated the myth in this recent post. That post in particular angered me because I normally expect better from Engadget.

Thanks to Flickr user joTape85

I hate disinformation, so to correct this all-too-often myth I present to you a quick overview of Gore’s contribution to the net (culled from the Gore’s Wikipedia entry):

• He drafted the “High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991″ as a response to the 1988 report “Toward a National Research Network” by a former ARPANET creator. (ARPANET was basically the predecessor of the internet)
• The bill passed in December of 1991 and led to the development of the National Information Infrastructure which Gore wisely dubbed the “Information Superhighway”.
• The bill also led to the development of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser. Mosaic is often credited as one of the most crucial elements to the rising popularity of the web in the early 90’s.
• As Vice-President, he worked together with President Clinton to craft the reports “Technology for America’s Economic Growth” and “Science in the National Interest“.

Further research into this topic basically reveals that Gore has always been a huge geek. Here is the synopsis from his biography on his early-internet contributions (Originally posted by JesseGordon at OnTheIssues):

In 1989, Gore introduced the National High-Performance Computer Technology Act, a five-year, $1.7 billion program to expand the capacity of the information highway to connect government, industry, and academic institutions. Signed by President Bush in 1991, the bill supported research and development for an improved national computer system, and assisted colleges and libraries in connecting to the new network.

While Gore is not, as he suggested in 1999, the father of the Internet, he can credibly claim credit as the wealthy uncle who stepped up to provide funds at an important moment. In 1989, when few public officials grasped the profound changes that new information technology would bring, Gore saw them plainly. “I genuinely believe that the creation of this nationwide network will create an environment where work stations are common in homes and even small businesses,” he told a House committee in the spring of 1989.

(Inventing Al Gore, p.217)

Keep in mind that in the 80’s the closest thing private individuals had to network access was the closed networks of AOL, Compuserve, and the like. Gore saw the potential of the internet, a widely accessible and public information network, fully a decade before it became hip. For that , I believe he deserves credit.

The controversy around Gore “inventing” the internet started with this particularly harsh Wired News response to a ‘99 interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. (Note: At that point Wired News was a completely separate entity from Wired Magazine.)

Gore actually said: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Poor wording for sure, but the Wired News response took the worst possible interpretation and ran with it. Eventually, conservative media personalities warped the quote to sound as if he declared he “invented” the net, and the rest is sadly familiar history.

Just recently, Huffington Post writer Eric Boehlert declared that Wired News owes Gore an apology for the transgression. Sadly, Wired News declined, stating that the writer who wrote the original story was long gone.

It’s a shame that this myth still exists, but Gore’s recent time in the limelight has probably eroded much of its negative connotations. Now that he’s recognized as one of those rare forward-thinking politicians I assume he’ll eventually receive some sort of recognition for helping to spur on the Internet’s growth. At the very least, it’s something he can use to poke fun at himself.

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Why We Owe Al Gore for the Internet

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• Thoughts on the September 09 New York Tech Meetup
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• The Android T-Mobile G1 is the Real Successor to the Helio Ocean

For those unfamiliar with DMCA takedown notices, you can see an example from Youtube here. Written in typical copyright legalese, notices of this sort are the proper method of reporting DMCA violations by content owners. For standard peer-to-peer (P2P) software violations, i.e., downloading a film over Bittorrent, users receive these notices from their ISP. For schools that manage their own networks, like Stanford, they are usually considered the ISP and are the ones to hand out these notices.

As a recent college graduate, I’m well versed in the many methods that the various media outfits have used to criminalize and extort students. And since I’ve worked in IT support with my school since 2001, I’m also quite familiar with the ways that schools have dealt with the piracy phenomenon. Stanford’s new policy, while certainly groundbreaking, is something I’m sure many in higher education have been mulling over these past few years. After all, it’s a widely held (if somewhat flawed) belief that taxation is a useful deterrent for unwanted behavior. It was simply inevitable that someone in higher education would eventually go down this path.

Does that, however, necessarily make it a good decision? Or is it merely a simple solution to a complex and multi-layered issue? While I usually adore simple solutions, in this case I’m not certain that it’s the best move here, especially when it’s obvious that it was made with only the school’s interests at heart.

This new policy is not the same as fining students for an illegal beer keg or dorm damage. Rather, Stanford’s new policy seems to be an extreme reaction to their being placed on the RIAA and MPAA’s top 25 campuses for piracy. Is shame really the best motivator for dictating school policy? And shouldn’t the school that houses cyberlaw guru Lawrence Lessig show a little more backbone when dealing with DMCA affairs?

The RIAA has already begun to transform their whole “copyright protection” methods into downright extortion. As of February they’ve simply started sending notices to ISPs (again, including schools) asking them to find potential copyright infringers based on their IP address. Once the user is identified, the ISP then passes along a settlement notice from the RIAA asking them to kindly pay $1,000 for their piracy sins. It should be noted that these notices have absolutely no legal basis and are basically an easy way for the RIAA to siphon money from consumers for free. It’s only after the user refuses to settle that they actually take the legal route.

Of course, consumer rights groups did not take to this new tactic too well. And rightly so–it’s the beginning of a slippery slope for the RIAA, one which the MPAA may follow, and which may eventually snowball into an entirely new business model for them. (Don’t laugh, their new website for settling these lawsuits, www.p2plawsuits.com, is as streamlined as any modern online store.) Given this ruthless new anti-piracy model, I don’t think now is necessarily the best time for Stanford to start finding better ways to fine their students.

This comment by Slashdot user kscguru, apparently a recent Stanford grad, puts things in perspective somewhat:

Stanford’s networking folks do look carefully at the notices, protect student privacy unless faced with a court order, and a student can contest the DMCA takedown notice without penalty with the eager assistence of Student Legal Affairs – although doing so waives your privacy. As of two years ago, no student had ever contested a notice – they were all clear-cut DMCA violations. And only well-documented violations ever got passed to students…

It’s certainly good to hear that Stanford’s IT department is more than competent in handling DMCA complaints. Still, that still doesn’t really excuse the adoption of a policy that basically supports the media industry in their abuse of an already unjust law. This article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) covers many of the issues with the DMCA by listing some prime examples of how it was used against innocents, not pirates. From interfering with fair use, to getting in the way of scientific studies, the DMCA has been used for much more than merely catching kids pirating movies on Bittorrent.

I understand Stanford’s unwillingness to appear as a safe house for for their unlawful, low-down, pirate students–but at the same time they have the prestige and capability to make a difference in fighting against this sad excuse for a law. Honestly, they don’t even have to put up a huge fight, they could take the same stance they’ve been holding the past few years by refusing network access until the student removes the offending material. This is the same stance that many other higher ed. institutions are taking, and it’s simply the bare minimum that they have to follow to adhere to the DMCA.

Stanford’s new plan is, on the other hand, much more than the bare minimum. It’s a scheme to reduce the amount of pirates on their campus by fostering the questionable tactics of the media groups. I’m sure Stanford intends to protect its reputation doing so, but do they really need to sacrifice their integrity?

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Why Stanford’s New DMCA Handling Policy Protects Their Reputation, Not Their Students

• The Nanda Alarm Clock eBay Fail
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Ask yourselves this, when last have you been able to find a decent tech review on Google? Sure, sometimes you may come across one or two reviews from major sites, but in my experience it seems that every time I try and Google for a tech product review I get inundated by dozens of search results from price comparison sites. Pricegrabber, Bizrate, Shopbot–how many of these things do we need?! Even Reseller Ratings, a site which originally served to review online stores, has dedicated much of their site to price comparisons. I’m not at all against consumers empowering themselves by making well-informed purchases, but after a certain point it seems that these sites have become more of a hindrance to consumers than a benefit by making it harder to find legitimate reviews.

You can see the problem for yourself by looking at this search for the Samsung 906BW monitor. My search string was simple: “Samsung 906BW Review”. The search may have changed since I ran it at the time of this post, so I’ve provided a screen shot just in case. As you can see, the entirety of the first results page points to stores and price comparison sites. You can also see why those results rose to the top; many of the links plaster “Review” across their title even if they contain no reviews.

This is especially disheartening for the results from CNET and ZDNET. These are sites I normally trust for product reviews, but when I click on one of their links and end up with price comparisons and a few user reviews, I end up feeling somewhat cheated. They are gaming Google, but it seems that no one has complained about it yet.

So what is a consumer to do? Initially, I thought up the idea for a review aggregator site that would compile expert reviews in a social format. This was to be my Web 2.0 cash cow until I realized that Viewscore and Wize already beat me to it. Both sites seem to be doing basically the same thing by compiling expert and user reviews and bestowing an aggregated rank on the product. Thankfully, they seperate the user and expert reviews, which is another one of my problems with running a Google search for reviews.

I prefer Viewscore’s granulated approach to review scoring compared to Wize’s pass/fail system which seems often to oversimplify many reviews. Review aggregators have existed for a while now in other mediums (Rotten Tomatoes, for example), but I’m glad to see that tech reviews are finally getting the same treatment. My only worry is that the average user will not pick up on these sites and will be stuck with awful search results until Google and other search providers step up. They may be under a professional banner, but most are just as much spam as that Viagra email waiting in your inbox.

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How Price Comparison Site Results in Google Hurt Consumers

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• Cheap Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Coming to a Backpack Near You

What is there to say? These students obviously can’t deal with the fact that they were caught red-handed, and they’re now playing ignorant as a way to distance themselves from their responsibility. Given the litigious frenzy of the RIAA these past few years, I think it would be extremely unlikely that these college-aged students were completely unaware of the legality of their actions.

From comments I gather around my campus, which is just down the street from UMASS, students are more interested in knowing how to download safely. This leads me to believe that many students are well aware of what they’re doing, they just don’t want to get caught. These i2Hub users probably deluded themselves into thinking they were completely safe by sharing on Internet 2, which is a seperate network from the general internet and pretty much inaccessible for people outside of academia. In their shock at actually being targeted by the RIAA, they decided to go after the creator of i2Hub instead of accepting that they were at fault. Somehow, I find this scenario far more likely than plain ignorance.

Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. I still don’t agree at all with the RIAA’s sue-happy campaign, I’m just more annoyed that these students are trying to blame someone else by playing dumb instead of owning up. There were times when sharing data used to be completely safe, but those days are gone. I’m not a stranger to the world of file-sharing, neither are most of the people I know, but it is certainly a more dangerous game now than it used to be. Until the MPAA and the RIAA stop their blindly ineffective lawsuit campaign, anyone using P2P will just have to be careful; you’re still technically at fault, even if the lawsuit is unfair.

WSJ.com – Students Want File-Sharing Site To Pay for RIAA Settlements

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Students Suing i2Hub for RIAA Settlements

• My Thoughts on the Palm Pre
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On the issue at hand, I’ve been reading about the internet access in other countries for a while now, and it always struck me as odd how backwards America is concerning broadband. I don’t buy the “population density” arguments, I think the main problem is that the government has given too much control of this market to the corporations, and I’m glad atleast someone agrees with me. To some, this isn’t a big issue like fixing our educational system, but it is a topic that deserves attention. Many countries offer residential 100Mbps access, here fiber to the home is taking ages to roll out.

If the U.S. wants control of the internet so badly, why can’t we devote some resources to keeping our infrastructure up to date? This isn’t a free market like the government wants to believe, there is no reason for telco companies to look out for their users. All they need to do is maintain the status quo, which is alarmingly low in America when it comes to broadband. I can’t believe DSL is still around 300k in some places. Yah that was broadband, in the 90s.

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Broadband in America

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I’ll start things off with a company that can do no wrong, Google. Everytime these guys are mentioned lately it’s always in relation to some amazing product. For what it’s worth, I think Google is important to take note of because it harkens back to the success of the (now seemingly mythological) internet tech-bubble. Google just released a beta version of their new map service and (unsurprisingly) it completely blows away everything that came before.

The map setup is so very intuitive it makes me wonder why no one has attempted this already. It’s fully draggable, and the zoom goes all the way down to street level. The quality of their maps seem to stem from their recent purchase of a sattellite imaging company (Keyhole). Finding directions has never been easier; of particular usefullness is the ability to zoom in on every step of the directions. With Google consistently churning out quality products like this it’s only a matter of time before we start to see weaknesses in the perfect facade. Honestly, I hope that day is a long way off –

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Hello World! & Google Maps

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