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Listr 2.0

22 Jun 2006

Welcome to the Listr. This post will be updated every time I come across another new name that has an ‘r’ at the end. It seems that it’s really important to have a good and original name first, before you can launch a service in this era of the 2.0 interweb. Also don’t forget to be in beta for a rather long time. It really gives the users the impression that you’re actually trying to make it work.

attackr

backlinkr

bananahammr

bananr

bashr

befittr

beggr

bettr

blogr

bloggr

blufr

bookmarkr

boomr

bringr

browsr

bubblr

bullshitr

calcr

cleanr

coastr

colr

colrpickr

contactr

craprr

cyclr

delivr

designr

dialr

dotcomr

drivr

educatr

empressr

extortr

fastr

favr

feedblendr

feedmailr

feedr

findr

flagr

flickr

frappr

frimr

gabbr

gadgetr

gickr

gpokr

grabbr

grazr

greenr

groupr

gtalkr

happycodr

hitchhikr

hungrr

idgettr

isolatr

lingr

listr

loggr

lookr

mappr

messagr

mmmzr

moviemappr

musiclovr

nabbr

notifyr

numbr

phrasr

phonebackr

photocastr

pissr

plannr

posr

preloadr

razr

refferrr

rendr

reportr

resizr

retrievr

ripplrr

runnr aka (rnnr)

scanr

searchr

seeqr

skinnyr

smartr

smllr

snipplr

socializr

soonr

spillr

splashr

sponsr

stalkr

strikr

swipr

taggr

talkr

tickr

touristr

trackbackr

treadr

trezr

twttr

viewr

waggr

wankr

wankr (I kid you not, there’s two of them)

webcastr

waymarkr

websnapr

weekendr

wishlistr

workr

wrickr

zapr

zooomr

If you know of any others, feel free to drop’m in the comments.

To those start-ups that haven’t decided on a name yet: do something with an ‘A’, so you’ll end up on top of the list. It’s good for your own visibility. Anyone who makes a list will rank you high. It’ll be the only way to make a difference in the r, r, r-world.

Update [07-01-2006]: I think this is about the most complete ‘r’ archive on the web today! Thanks to everyone who helped me complete the list!

Update [08-22-2006]: 100th name added!

123 Comments

Posted in 2.0 +, Humor, Thoughts

Stress

22 Jun 2006

Okay. I failed one exam back in January. In the Belgian system, you can come a few points short, and the exam council can decide to let you pass anyway. Well, in my case it wasn’t quite possible, so I figured I had to redo it in August. But since I started working already, that would be a problem, because I can’t be employed full-time and at the same time be a student.

It would be great if I could sign up ‘for real’ at i-merge (where I work now, as a student) in July and still be graduated, instead of having to wait until the end of August or the beginning of September. So I sent an email to the exam council and asked if I could redo the test in June. I didn’t hear from them for a while, and I figured it’d be an August kind of thing.

Well today at at 4 PM while I was at work, I received a phone call and they said I could redo the exam. Saturday morning at 9 AM. That’s 36 hours from now, not counting any sleep. The book for this subject (governmental communication) is 280 pages. The course is about 80 or 90 pages. Ummm.

On the one hand I like it if they try to help me graduate in June instead of in August. Really. On the other hand I think they should’ve called me sooner.

This kind of means the blogging will be low. I’ll post something in the morning, and something when I take a break. I’ll be back on full speed somewhere on Saturday.

5 Comments

Posted in General, Thoughts

How Marlboro Became Marlboro

15 Jun 2006

The Digital Journalist published a teaser album of the 100 most famous pictures ever. These pictures are the landmarks of last century, they’ve changed the public opinion or influenced it in such a way that they triggered a social revolution. One picture is this one from Clarence Hailey Long (in 1949). This is the origin of the Marlboro cowboy.

Description from the gallery:

This is C.H. Long, a 39-year-old foreman at the JA ranch in the Texas panhandle, a place described as “320,000 acres of nothing much.” Once a week, Long would ride into town for a store-bought shave and a milk shake. Maybe he’d take in a movie if a western was playing. He said things like, “If it weren’t for a good horse, a woman would be the sweetest thing in the world.” He rolled his own smokes. When the cowboy’s face and story appeared in LIFE in 1949, advertising exec Leo Burnett had an inspiration. The company Philip Morris, which had introduced Marlboro as a woman’s cigarette in 1924, was seeking a new image for the brand, and the Marlboro Man based on Long boosted Marlboro to the top of the worldwide cigarette market.

All it takes is one good idea. I’m not going to lobby for the tobacco industry, but Leo Burnett made a brilliant decision when he thought this would save the brand. Look where the brand is now, and look at it’s image… all of that because of a simple farmer and a keen marketeer with one good idea.

Check out the rest of the pictures

4 Comments

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Thoughts

The Eternal Sunset

11 Jun 2006

Ah. Now here’s a totally off-topic site I love deeply. If there’s one moment of the day that I totally adore, it’s the sunset. Today when the sun was setting, I went for an 8 mile run through the valley of the river that flows behind my house. There’s really no better way to empty your head, clear your mind and prepare for the next day than taking the time to enjoy the sun going under. I’m not going for a run every day. Mostly every three days, because the first day after the run my legs hurt like crazy and the second day after the run I’m happy the pain is gone. But I guess I’m addicted to endorphin (and running). And there’s nothing that satisfies me more than being on a natural high while running towards a setting sun. But, during the day when I’m at work, I can’t go for a run and the sun isn’t setting. So that’s why there’s this website called ‘Eternal Sunset‘.

Eternal Sunset endeavours to ensure you can enjoy the sunset live from any location, at any time. As the sunset moves westward, Eternal Sunset continuously tunes into different webcams, chasing the sunset around the globe. This service is currently provided through the use of 199 west-facing webcams across 41 countries.
Eternal Sunset is a virtual space where time is passing but where the daily cycle of day and night has come to a freeze at sunset; a space where the sun is always going down but never goes under.

Great isn’t it? No matter what time it is at your place, there’s always a sunset somewhere else. Thank you, inventor of the webcam and streaming video, whoever and wherever you are. :)

Enjoy the sunset, eternally!

No Comments

Posted in 2.0 +, Thoughts

The Suicide Scam

08 May 2006

Very recently, a Belgian newspaper apparently featured a story that was titled: “Every Week, Two Teens Commit Suicide”. That’s bad. I’m well aware of the fact that troubled minds don’t always seem to find a way out and opt for the (to them) easiest way: ending their life. In my humble opinion, suicide is a selfish way to go. If you think you can make the world a better place by punishing the ones you’ll leave behind, you’re not only stupid but you definitely lack respect for those who love you and are left behind with a load of questions and insecurities. And believe me, there’s always someone who loves you. They might not always show it or say it, but there’s always someone who cares.

Today, just a moment ago, my doorbell rang and some fugitive was standing there. The type of beggars you see in the ‘big’ cities, holding a plastic-wrapped sign in 4 languages that states they have 7 kids and no home, usually with a paper cup from a fastfood restaurant in the other hand. Only this time it was a plastic-wrapped newspaper article and a French and Dutch text that asked to sign the petition against teen suicide. This pissed me off. Not only didn’t the woman speak any of the languages mentioned above, she didn’t seem to be alone either. I looked out my door and saw another women on the other side of the street going door to door as well.

I refused to sign. I’ll tell you why.

Not only is this a lame form of begging, because signing the petition would mean you’d also have to pay â‚¬5 (5 Euros = $ 6.45), the woman clearly had no idea at all what she was walking around with. She didn’t understand Dutch, nor French, nor English. She just pointed to the article, the text and the price you’d have to pay. This is an outrage. Really. That ‘official petition’ she walk around with was a simple bundle of blank papers, which featured about a dozen of (fake?) signatures already. No heading, no columns, no nothing.

The other reason why I refused to sign is: I agree that there is a problem with teen suicide, if that article is real (I haven’t seen it myself in the papers I read). Heck, I know that there’s a problem, even without that article. But collecting signatures while going from door to door isn’t going to make the situation better. How can any troubled teen benefit from the fact that ‘x’ people are against teen suicide? That doesn’t help the teen, it doesn’t solve the problem and it sure doesn’t make things better. There was no official organization backing this up.

If it would have been a recognized organization that went door to door, then I’d have signed, but surely not paid. I wouldn’t have signed ‘against’ teen suicide. I’d only have signed if it was to help troubled teens. If they would have sold a calendar for their organization, stickers, anything… then it would have been different. But this was clearly an illegal scam where some imported women were dropped off by the dozen to go around and scam some citizens. I should have called the cops, come to think of it.

How can anyone fall for this? It’s so obviously fake. Even more: how can you go around exploiting a weakness like teen suicide? Dammit it’s stuff like this that makes you narrow-minded, I know. I’m not a racist. I agree that everybody should have a fair chance and that some rotten apples can spoil it for an entire community. That you have to look ‘around’ the rotten apples. But man, there sure are A LOT of rotten apples lately. And apparently a lot of naive people too.

1 Comment

Posted in Spam & Scam, Thoughts

Screw YouTube

02 May 2006

Okay. I’m out of YouTube. I refuse to use the service any longer. Recent changes made it very obvious they don’t want users with large archives. The site is very very slow and I have over 30 pages of videos. Browsing to page 28 took me exactly 12 minutes, whereas before the interface update I could just click the page I wanted to see. Turns out a few of my uploaded videos were rejected due to inappropriate content, which I totally don’t get, because nobody got killed, no nudity was shown and no dirty language was in it. It didn’t feature any stolen music and I didn’t sing. Then why is it inappropriate? Because some puritan mind flagged the movie in the hopes it would make the world a better place? Well I’ve had it with these random rejections. I don’t take it anymore. There is totally no way to defend you against this, you get no warning at all if a clip has been flagged, you just have to come to the conclusion whilst browsing your video archive. This particular clip was uploaded in September last year. It’s been on there for months, and all of the sudden the content isn’t appropriate anymore?

I wanted to check out some archives from friends I made through YouTube, but when I opened my subscription list, only 5 people still had a video archive. Nathan got kicked, Professor Smile (who didn’t do anything but sing songs while he played on his guitar and videoblog his thoughts) started again under a new name because his account had been cancelled as well. And the list goes on. I can name you at least 10 other people on my subscription list that either said “screw YouTube” and left or silently took multiple other accounts in the hopes the content would last longer. Well, I’m not taking any more chances. Nathan got his account cancelled because of the Google commercial and some SNL sketches. I’ve had my two strikes with SNL too. The Google commercial is still there. Is it offensive? No. It’s boring as hell. Then why does it get you kicked? Nobody knows. SNL is tricky. YouTube did have a point there. But they warned me fair and square. So I took those videos down.

You can perform searches about almost anything you know from music or tv-shows. All you see are violations. Yet still. They’re allowed. Of course it would be denied if you asked YouTube, because in fact they’re not allowed. But it’s so much and so ubiquitous they can’t manage anymore. Aren’t there any rights on Manga videos? On cartoons? Sure there are. But if YouTube should really do what they state in their chapter, 2/3 of it’s users would be kicked out. And that threatens the business model. So what they do is put out little fires here and there.

It would be quite funny to create fake profiles and go around and flag every violation you see, and keep notes of the ones you’ve flagged. It would keep you busy for weeks. If everybody did this YouTube wouldn’t be as big anymore is it looks now. How come no lawyer collective actually threw itself on this?

I’m not going to upload anything anymore. The people I used to know on YouTube got banned, saw their accounts set to zero or just left by themselves. No matter how hard they try, YouTube isn’t the attractive videohoster it used to be. It became too corporate, too yadda yadda and far too bloathed with options, groups and whatever.

I see TinyPic just started to accept video uploads, and their player looks really slim. You can choose tags to add and the accepted formats: avi, mov, mpeg, asf, wmv, divx, 3gp, qt & dv. I’ll see if this turns out any good.

75 Comments

Posted in 2.0 +, Thoughts

YouTube, Why Web 2.0 Sucks

28 Apr 2006

It’s been over 5 hours that I can’t access any of the clips I’ve uploaded to YouTube. What’s up with this? The dotcom returns an error message too, and it’s not the first time this is happening. I think I’ll start looking around for alternatives because I now depend on the service of one provider, and that’s not a good thing. If anything goes wrong there, my entire blog is suffering from it. The eternal loading loop in the status bar is just one thing, the fact that they don’t even display a temporary thumb is another. Now it’s just a blank space. People keep waiting, and then nothing happens. That’s just ridiculous.

I think if you can’t scale a video streaming service in a way so it permits you to roll out updates without having to shut down the entire process and servers, you better stop delivering the service all together.

Too bad I don’t own my content anymore. 350 + commercials… that’s not a huge loss, but still. I don’t have all of them offline anymore and I certainly don’t have the time to start uploading them again to another host.

Really, I think I’m going to look for a new place and start uploading new stuff there, and then hope it keeps working. Or this update should turn out to be really really great.

Web 2.0 according to YouTube plainly sucks. You don’t have any rights on your content, you can’t collect your content and download it to go elsewhere. You’re totally depending on the goodwill of the company to keep your data alive and accessible. Once people realize this, 2.0 and user generated content will be slowing down in growth. If the first 2.0 companies will start to stop offering their services, a shockwave will run through the internet. For now it’s still sunshine and pretty flowers… most 2.0 companies are small, sell out in time or just quit existing because they were useless. Others like YouTube grow too fast, can’t scale and then cut back in the service.

Does Flickr have an ‘export all your pictures to a .zip’ feature? I know BubbleShare has it, but I haven’t seen it on my Flickr account. Before I engage into a new service, the first thing I’m going to check is if I can retrieve any data input.

3 Comments

Posted in 2.0 +, Social Networks, Thoughts

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