Twitter; private, public, and controlled

For a couple of weeks now I’ve been testing the online microblog-service called Twitter. It is a site where you put little messages with a maximum of 140 characters, for your followers to see. Or as the site claims: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

Wikipedia Entry

Last week I made a Wikipedia entry. Two actually… I added some (vital) information to an article on the English Wikipedia, and translated an article from English into dutch. They’re both still there, and I must say; this is exciting!

In the first article, on Steps Ahead, a fusion-music group from the late seventies/early eighties, I added the second paragraph. It was checked almost a week later, on the 5th of October and some minor edits were made.

The second article, which is in Dutch, is an explanation of the rudiments, the basic building blocks, of our modern drumming. Being a drummer myself, I thought it was vital that this information is available in my mother-language so kids can get easy access to it and learn their chops. This article immediately got noticed by peers, and within a matter of hours three people had checked it and made minor edits.

The whole experiece was quite fun, and certainly tastes like more…;-)

Ning – Web 3.0? review/analysis

Analysis of Ning.com

Founders:
Marc Andreessen – chairman (built Netscape)
Gina Bianchini – company’s HQ in Palo Alto

Marc Andreesen is what you call a man with a vison: he built netscape and sold it to AOL in 1999 for $4.2 billion. Then, last year, he sold his second company Opsware, an automated network and server company, to HP for $1.6 billion. He is an investor in social news website Digg and several other early-stage technology startups, like Plazes, Netvibes and Twitter. In the mean while serves on the board of Facebook, and now runs Ning, together with co-founder Gina Bianchini (CEO) who holds a MBA from Stanford Business School.

Ning
Launched a while ago in October 2005, Ning.com is an online platform for users to create their own social websites and social networks. It is free and easy to use even if you don’t have programming skills. The idea behind Ning was, and I quote their ‘about’ page, they

“…wanted to see what would happen if everyone had the freedom to create their own social network for anything. We thought the results would be amazing, but hey have truly surpassed our expectations. From artists to musicians, athletes, bloggers, video channels, journalists, students, educators, parents, craft hobbyists, alumni, and interest groups, the range and dicersity of the social networks on Ning are profound.” http://about.ning.com/index.php

So it’s like ‘myspace for the masses’; start your own facebook today! No programming skills needed, just sign up, login and start building your own social network, for free!

Well…not entirely: in it’s effort to compete with myspace and facebook (check them on alexa, they’re not doing so well traffic wise) they are making money by the use of two business models. The first one is free for it’s users but comes with ‘price’; they can create a network without charge but with links and ads that Ning puts on the user pages. These ads can be removed but, and this is the second model, cost the users a monthly fee depending on the level of freedom/control they want over ‘their’ pages (yes, freedom can be bought, also at ning’s). These ‘premium services’ vary starting from $7,95 a month for removing Ning’s promotional links, to $42,80 for the total package which includes (next to the removal of the Ning Promotion Links) control over the ads, the usage of your own domain name, and more storage and bandwidth (latter is per unit). This seems expensive, but if you have quite a populair network set up, and you control the ads it will pay for itself actually. Maybe you can even make some money out of it.

Building my network

So how does this work for Ning.com?

….

PROblogger: book review

PROblogger: Secrets for Blogging your way to a six-figure income [REVIEW]

INTRODUCION
For some time now I’ve been interested in the eBooks phenomenon for a couple of reasons: the business model that lies beneath it (how to make money by selling information…internet marketing is a fascinating hobby), and the information that is being shared by the rapidly growing number of writers. Especially the “selling dreams” books (or “self help” if you will) have caught my attention, from the useful “how to quit smoking in seven days“, the always good around the holidays “lose x pounds in x weeks“, to the wishful “make 1000 dollars a day: 99% automated!“-guides. The first two, examples of the “health” or “fitness” category, can be useful, healthy (although losing 40 pounds in 6 weeks can’t be good for your body) and at the very least pleasant to skim, but the latter, well, … it just makes your heart pump faster and you definitely want to read the rest of the story. After all, who doesn’t want to sit back, relax and see his income automatically increase with $30k a month? (This should be your first clue that it’s probably a scam…or is it?;-) So, naturally, when my eye caught the title PROblogger: secrets for blogging your way to a six-figure income, my hopes were up, expectations high; I had to read it.

Netbooks

I’ve had my macbook pro for approximately 1,5 years now. So far my hd crashed, my screen got replaced due to a lot of dead pixels, and my battery has died a not so slow death (only 12% health after 86 cycles…but apple refused to replace it). This seems to me as a good excuse to look for a new toy, and I recently discovered the new and shiny netbooks made by several companies. The Acer Aspire One has caught my eye, even though the MSI Wind has better specs, but the blue one simply looks fantastic. In October/November the new One’s are being shipped with 6cell batteries, giving it an estimate working time of 7 hours (!).

Privacy Issues

Since it’s introduction earlier this week, google chrome has had lots of attention in the media. Praises here and there, but mostly critiques were heard with ‘the privacy issue’ being the most talked about ‘problem’. Not a really new problem, that is…