So with iBegin Share v2 coming out soon (stat tracking), we thought we would go ahead and support the Open Share Icon project. But one thing is off - the official website.

The Feed Icon has the pretty feedicons.com site, OPML has an equally purty opmlicons.com, and even the Geotag Icon has a functional geotagicons.com site. And I am quite sure that Sharing is a far more common activity than using OPML or geotags.

If you guys want, we can gladly make a website for it

Yesterday, I was out and about doing some chores, when I got hit with a hankering for a grilled chicken sandwich. Heading on over to the nearest fastfood joint, I opted to park and go inside instead of going through the ridiculously long drive-through.

When I got out I looked at the line and realized I would still have been #4 if I had gone through the drive-in.

But it got me thinking - there are all these articles on reducing pollution and being smarter about using gas - isn’t the idling in a drive-through a lot of wasted gas? At lunch time those lines become long - cars just idling with their AC on (hey its hot) must not be the greatest use of gas.

So am I onto something? If everyone parked and went inside, would there be a noticeable impact on pollution?

And please I don’t want to hear about global warming in the comments. Pollution is disgusting, and cutting back on it is just good for our lungs, plain and simple.

So finally - after months and months of slogging, writing, re-writing, and whole lot of annoying, we get to release the latest version of Blog Flux.

There were two main things we were targeting - bringing more cohesiveness to our separate ‘parts’, and to start building a proper community. With over 150,000 registered users, we should have been doing more than we were.

One of the most time-consuming elements of this was the design. There are almost a hundred ‘unique’ pages in terms of design, structure, and appearance. All of these pages still need to keep a cohesive look to keep the user experience simple.

So what is actually new?

Blog Flux Talk - custom built message board system from the ground up.

Blog Flux Articles - name says it all.

Quizzes - always a favorite with bloggers, about time we launched our own

Still more to come (as always), including a hosted version of iBegin Share, but right now I think we are on the right track.

I constantly run into an obviously stupid design element - the lanyard.

Too often you see someone and you have no clue what their name is or who they work for because their damn name tag has flipped around. The two solutions are: 1) Ensure the name tag doesn’t flip around [impossible] or 2) Have the name on both sides of the damn lanyard [the stupidly obvious solution].

It absolutely stuns me how an obvious $5 solution (double sided plastic, or just tape the damn name on the other side) eludes the otherwise-brilliant people who run some of these conferences.

Come on organizers …

So I’m at the tail end of LeadsCon, getting ready to go home.

To me, the best two sessions were ‘Keynote Address: Lessons From the Leaders’ and ‘Uncovering Local Lead Generation’

The first was an interesting story - how things were done, how much FreeCreditReport.com cost (hand regged!), and so forth. Personal stories of success and development are always good.

The second was interesting in the sense of mechanics - the background work required to make local lead generation work. What is expect from businesses, and what is expected from consumers, and match the two.

The rest in the middle, while executed well (I much prefer talk sessions than podium preaching), was boiled down to two core issues:

1. Teeth gnashing at what meanies the FTC are and how they hate us
2. Teeth gnashing at the mortgage industry explosion, and looking forward to the housing market coming back

It was, in my opinion, far too retrospective, when it should have been more forward-thinking. What I got (and remember, this is my perspective), was that the only new thing was lead scoring.

My intent in coming was of course locally-oriented - local lead gen, while a tougher nut to crack than the traditional ‘financial’ categories (mortgage, debt, loans, financing), is also potentially far more lucrative (higher margins, repeat customers, word of mouth effectiveness). Yet every single established company I talked to had the same boiler plate answer - we think it’s great, it’s on our list of things to do, but not in the year 2008.

It reminded me a lot of the domainer industry. All those PPC companies are basically the same (their ads come via Google or Yahoo), and they all sell the same services. Instead of trying to evolve the market in new ways, it seems like everyone is content sitting on their laurels fighting each other for the same leads, instead of trying to work on new areas where there is no competition.

Yes there were most definitely some individuals who want to try new things, who are looking at new types of leads. But the local space requires scale and operations - a one man operation won’t make much of a dent in local lead gen.

At the end of the day, this just elucidates the level of disconnect happening between some of the major industries I travel. Local companies should be interested in domains (readymade traffic - just look at Marchex), and should be interested in getting the most money out of a consumer (lead gen!). Yet I saw almost zero local-oriented companies. Domainers should love local (’unlocking’ the potential of their domains) and lead gen (leaving the Google/Yahoo duopoly) … but again, few domainers. Lead gen should love domainers (source of traffic) and local (higher margins, new areas) - but again, little interaction.

I almost feel like a trailblazer trying to connect the three - anyone else actively participating in these three areas?

In my last post on blogging and social responsibility, I outlined how blogs are going the way of tabloid rags by option for sensationalist headlines (to get more links, to get more pageviews, to get more money). My two examples were related to Muslims.

As expected, the vitriol came out - I got a few angry emails, and a few insane comments (including one claiming I must be a pedophile - *shrug*). But what was astounding is that one individual keeps on manually posting comments to my blog. What is hilarious is this person is now resorting to whining that my blog hates “freedom of speech” - missing the obvious connection that as this is my blog, I can do whatever I please to do with it. Even more astounding is that this has been going on for three days. And I know this is manual because I sometimes leave a comment, and he replies - before I go ahead and delete them both.

So to ‘prove’ to me that I hate freedom of speech and that I am a dirty Muslim pedophile, he resorts to spamming my blog, insisting I have to follow his rules.

It goes without saying that he doesn’t have the guts to use his real name and/or email.

I read the latest post on TechCrunch re - Fitna, and could only shake my head.

I am the product of many countries. My grandparents/parents were all from Kashmir, the piece of land that India and Pakistan have gone to war over. Before I settled in Canada, I had the pleasure of living in half a dozen cities in four (very) different countries. In Japan I learned what respect meant. In Pakistan I learned what family meant (imagine having 30+ people all jammed in a house). In Saudi Arabia I learned what security meant (not being afraid). In the US I learned what spirit meant. And in Canada I learned what acceptance meant.

Each country gave a lot to me. It helped me appreciate things in subtle ways that I could not have understood when growing up. In each country I would hear things about the other country that I knew simply was not true. I would end up defending one country in another simply because I had been there while others would speak on hearsay.

In all countries I saw despair and I saw prosperity, often times next to each other. I read stories of awful cruelty and greed, and I read stories of amazing giving and strength. Good and evil are not exclusive to any one country - it simply happens wherever people are.

My own foray into blogging was a mismatch of random coincidences. I have found that many people who have organically built up their web presence often had a single topical hit that they worked on before they could expand further. Mine was top sites, and I entered the blogging space with Blog Top Sites. The first of its kind, it was a giant hit, gaining links and traffic up the wazoo. Seeing that success, I bought EatonWeb, and re-created it as Blog Flux. With more success in the blogging space, I ended up creating Bloggy Network with Jacob (who runs it day to day). I’ll be honest - I had been suspicious of how long blogging would last.

And then I truly appreciated what blogging could do. Back when I was still active over at Digg (I was a top 200 … or top 300 user for a while), I saw a story that screamed at me: Muslims offended by 5th Avenue Apple Store, “Because the building resembles the Ka’ba in Mecca, is called “Apple Mecca,” is open 24 hours a day like the Ka’ba, and “contains bars selling alcoholic beverages.” The title was as incendiary as possible - how dare the Muslims hate what the geeks loved!

The vitriol in the comments had already started, and when I actually read the article, I couldn’t believe it. If one was to actually read the article, it cited another website which said “some Islamic website doesn’t like the cube.” The problem of course was that there was no source. Some random website was claiming that another random website found the Apple store to be offensive. This somehow escalated into “Muslims offended by 5th Avenue Apple Store.”

To deviate for a second, part of Islam’s strength and weakness (to me), is that there is no central authority. Catholics have the Pope (for example). Muslims have no one. I could step up right now and say “Hey! I’m a Muslim leader and expert” and no one could really argue with me. So part of the problem of lumping a billion people as ‘Muslims’ is that there is no one recognized (other than self-appointed people) as the voice of Muslims.

Of course when the information did finally come to light, the ’source’ of this outrage was a message posted on some forum. I hope you can take the time to appreciate the lunacy that had occurred here. A random forum post saying “Hey that cube is insulting!” was somehow parlayed into “Muslims offended.” Even more twisted was that the forum post was over three months old!

And here we have uncovered ‘The Truth.’ Except it didn’t matter what the truth was. The story had spread. It was in print media. It was all over popular Apple blogs and Digg and so forth. Without bothering to actually check a single fact, this ’story’ (which we now know was a complete non-starter) must have appeared in front of a couple hundred thousand people.

So I decided to do what I do best - poke fun at the entire stupid premise. We wrote a tongue-in-cheek article called Muslim Community Responds: We love the Apple NYC Cube. We decided to quote one random un-sourced ‘muslim’ who said he loved the Apple store, and decided to extrapolate it to the entire Muslim community. So while 24 hours ago ‘The Muslims’ hated the cube, now ‘The Muslims’ loved it. What an interesting turn of events!

And thus I appreciated what blogs could do. While previously we could write an angry letter to The Editor (and hope it would get published), anyone had the chance to speak out and say what they felt. New Media had dawned!

Everywhere you go, you read about how ‘old media’ doesn’t get it. How ‘new media’ gets it. How ‘new media’ will crush ‘old media.’ TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, Mashable, etc - they will lead us to the promise land.

People complain that CNN and Fox News only focus on entertainment and not real news. I fail to see why this is shocking. These compares are in the business of making money. At the end of the day, they have to go to their bosses and answer the question of “did you make us more money than last year?” It is unfortunate people fall for stupidity like Paris Hilton leaving jail or Eliot Spitzer’s 20 minute ride in his black SUV. But that is reality. Those stories get people tuned in. The more that tune in, the more money they make.

And alas ‘new media’ has become the same. Linkbait (that word seems to have fallen out of disfavor) is a great way to get traffic. The more traffic you get, the more money you make! While decrying the old, nothing has changed. TUAW and ZDNet were more than happy to run that faux-story on the Apple NYC cube - it got them traffic! It got them links (yay for SEO). It made them money! And the the latest story on TechCrunch is just another example.

I have to take on more side step and say that I’ve been a fan of Duncan for a long time. I read Blog Herald, and read his blog after b5 split up. Two months before TechCrunch picked him up, I specifically told Jacob that we should talk to Duncan about having him join the team. He writes well, he writes interesting posts, and he writes his mind.

But the latest story on TechCrunch is a ploy from the old days - take a relatively non-story, sensationalize it (ala Muslims hating the Apple Cube), and watch the dough roll in! Hell nothing is easier to sensationalize than ‘The Muslims’ stomping on freedom of speech.

So lets analyze this latest story. Fitna, for those that don’t know, is an anti-Islam video created by a Dutch politician. It was heavily hyped, and before it was released, their web host (NSI) pulled it. The Muslims accusations started flying. The video was released very recently (one or two days ago), and the leaked version was on LiveLeak.com. Hit by a huge amount of traffic, they strained to stay up. Then they were hit with threats and some unspecified British media reporting, they took it down. In their video explaining this, they said it was an ugly thing to do, and that they didn’t want to do it, and that they thanked supporters from all religions.

After that, someone uploaded it to Google.

LiveLeak itself doesn’t blame ‘The Muslims’, nor have they claimed that there was any boycott or backlash. LiveLeak was responsible enough to know that acts by anonymous people (which I admit were likely to be Muslims - though there are definitely people who gain when others dislike Muslims, but to suggest that would be ‘a conspiracy’) and the British media meant they could no longer host it. They were responsible enough to not blame ‘The Muslims.’ But Duncan took it upon himself to say “uhoh, Google is hosting it, ‘The Muslims’ are going to go nuts” His proof? The LiveLeak video.

Just like the Apple NYC Cube story, the content does not match the headlines. There were threats. There was some media stupidity. LiveLeak couldn’t keep up, and had to take it down. Someone uploaded it to Google. And according to Duncan, that means Google is about to face a backlash from ‘The Muslims.’

To bring more credibility to my claim that this is all about traffic and money - while ‘Live Leak’ is mentioned three times, they can’t be bothered to actually link to the site. The site they are covering that was supposedly the victim of ‘Muslim backlash’ wasn’t even linked to!

People have been recently complaining that TechMeme has become an echo-chamber of uncritical thinking, and I can only ask where they have been for the last couple of years. The Apple story I cited was linked to over a hundred times before we wrote our article, and not a single person took the time to question how that headline matched the content. Same thing with the TechCrunch Fitna story - the comments are full of trolls saying how ‘The Muslims’ are either awful/great. Not a single person has asked how the hell that headline matches the story.

Where is the social responsibility that blogs were supposed to herald? There is such a mad rush to commercialize and make money from blogs that people are scrambling ways to get traffic. Stories are written and duplicated a hundred times over and no one bothers to actually critically think and say “Hey - this doesn’t make sense.” Take the LiveLeak Fitna story - what I want to know is what did the British media do that upset them so greatly? But everywhere you turn you read how ‘The Muslims’ shut down LiveLeak. LiveLeak themselves do not even claim that!

Just like in Animal Farm, things seem to always stay the same. In the chase of ad dollars critical thinking seems to have fallen to the wayside.

Just some anecdotal evidence.

We released a site some three years ago. It sat on our oldest server for the first 18 months, and it didn’t do so well in the search engines. Did around 8000 pageviews a day, with revenue at a partly $25-35 a day. Nothing impressive.

Then when we finally got our new server configuration up a while ago, we moved it. Instantly traffic went up a little bit - the site was faster, the search was faster, etc etc. Google also went crazy, crawling a *lot* heavier, and also sending more traffic.

Yesterday the site did 22,000+ pageviews, and over $170 in revenue (admittedly a little bit high, usually with that many pageviews it does roughly $125 on average).

Just as interesting is that (now) three of the top five (and the top two) are searches for the brand itself. That was not the case when it was on the older server.

Its taken me roughly four months to get here, but three days ago my notebook finally arrived.

I looked for a long time for a notebook with the following:
1. SSD
2. 13.3″ max screen / < 4 lb (basically not too bulky).
3. Docking station
4. A powerful enough gfx card that wouldn't choke on powering dual 20"+ (1600 res) monitors.

Lots of notebooks came close, but unfortunately none sealed the deal. Turns out to make the notebook under 4 pounds requires removing the circuitry that allows you to dock - oh dear. And USB docks are horrible - never get them.

So the specs (click):

So now its all nicely tied in. I can undock my notebook, and all my work is with me. I come home, pop it in, close the screen, and I have a 21″ + 22″ widescreen, with my speakers, printer, mouse, keyboard, keyboard (yes I have two connected, don’t ask why heh) all connected and ready for use. Pop the phone into the cradle and voila contacts notes all synched (I do have bluetooth I just haven’t tried using it yet). I’m not even using a wired connection into the dock - Wireless N powers me here - so bringing it with me into the living room is absolutely cake.

Oh and if you travel, definitely get the ’slim-adapter’ (if they over it). So much less bulky and (with Dell at least) a lot more connection options (airplane, car, etc).

I’m also trying to get used to Office 2007, odd little creature it is.

I am not a fan of technology. I appreciate what it can do (and does!), but I am far from an unbridled fan. Things like social networks and instant messaging, while I can appreciate, also make me angry. People talk about being ’so connected’ and about ‘becoming a source’ but I see it as ‘disconnecting the vital face to face connection.’ Multiple studies have shown that in a conversation, less than 10% of your meaning is conveyed in the actual words spoken. The rest are conveyed in tone and in body language. You can try to replicate tone via emoticons ( *giggles* /sarcasm etc ) but body language is nigh impossible. To make a true connection (one of the top over-abused words in social networking) you must meet face to face. Instant messaging can also be great - but also a curse. Chatting with multiple people, distracted by the ‘next’ conversation - if you want filler talk, sure it works. If you want to direct employees - sure it works. If you want a real conversation - an absolute failure.

Recently, I was talking to a friend, and he gave me a book. He told me to read it - that it was a “fun little book” that waxed between imaginative and philosophical at the same time. I read it pretty quickly (two days, it was indeed a light book), and I felt inspired.

I love books. I am sure print is going down, and newspapers and book publishers are ’struggling’ as their margins decrease. But money is still there. Profit is still there. Nothing beats a nice solid book - the smell of the pages, the texture of the cover, the excitement of turning over a page.

So I read that book, I felt inspired, and then I sat down and thought. I wanted my wife to read this book (she is currently in Argentina for six more weeks). But I didn’t want her to bring back the book. Instead I wanted the book to continue on its own journey. Just like I have my journey, and my wife has hers, so should the book! So I scribbled a little note in the book. The gist was simple:

By chance, this book fell into my lap. I read it, I learned from it, and I loved it. But a book just sitting idly on a bookstand is a sad book indeed. So - I will mark that I’ve read this book, and I will pass it on. And I ask that you, whoever is reading it, do the same. Mark your name, read it, and pass it on. Do not include personal information - reading the book and having passed it on will be our link.

And so tomorrow the book will be on her way. There she will give it to one of her new friends, who will then travel around the world with it. And they will continue this cycle. And the book will continue its journey, connecting people in ways they could not imagine.

I try to read two books a month - one fiction, one non-fiction. But I will only pass on books that deserve to be read again and again. And I hope others can follow this. I have no grand illusions of everyone doing this - in fact, if everyone did do it, it would ruin the magic.

My ultimate goal of course would be one day, 10 years from hence, when meeting someone new, we would share that we once had a book and due to the force of a little inscription, had passed it on. That would be a grand ‘connection’ indeed.