DISQUS

It's close. I put it on my site, too, although since nobody goes there I haven't had much use for it. But there are a few problems:

1. Why is it so narrow? My status messages tend to be quite a bit longer. The chat badge's proportions should be customizable (there are numbers in the html it spits out, but I don't think they work to widen or heighten it).
2. It doesn't seem to work quite right with my browser--it tells me to install Flash version 8, which of course I have installed already. And anyway, if the google chat window in gmail doesn't necessitate Flash, why should this?
3. Like I said, I haven't had a chance to try out a full conversation, but I believe the way it works is that when someone IMs me through the widget I get a gtalk message prompting me to open a url. Why not just channel the visitor's messages into a standard gtalk message window?

Anyway, you're right that it's an improvement over Meebo--I don't want to keep a browser window open all the time on the off chance that somebody is going to IM me from my blog. But I don't think it's quite there yet.

Also, while I'm here--Disqus is cool, but I believe it doesn't work with co.mments.com, which is how I keep track of comments I leave in various places. I guess I should just get over it, though.

I couldn't believe anyone fell for this. The first couple of posts were written in a fairly sincere-sounding manner, but the SUBSTANCE was absurd from the start. Not to mention the timing, just a day or two after the think secret thing came to light. And it was truly horrifying to read the credulous, clueless comments in the successively-more-ridiculous posts (e.g., "I will never buy another Apple product after the way they treated you!!!!" or "take the money, Dave--this is just a joke blog"). I mean, seriously, how can you take a satirical blog at face value?

I weep for humanity.

Yep. There are plenty of things that Google Docs isn't great at, but there are also some uses that make desktop clients seem absurd. It's just a matter of time til people are using GD (or something similar) for collaboration on not-for-publishing docs and spreadsheets (and probably presentations, too). And it's a good way to have an always-available shopping list, too.

Why wouldn't Google be interested in bidding on the Canadian spectrum? Of course it's a smaller market, but I thought Google wanted to make the whole world better/profitable. And especially since Canada is cutting the incumbents out of the new spectrum auction, it seems like a nice proposition for Google (or any other newcomer).

Well my thinking is that a blog creates continuous, regular bandwidth use, whereas a book is a one-time (or maybe two- or three-time, but not many-time) bandwidth hit. Depending on how it works (like whether the user can manually check for updates or if it's automatic and occasional), a blog subscription could use up a lot more bandwidth than a book.

Amazon will have a better idea of how this works, money-wise, once people start using it. I would be surprised if they don't revise this position once the nerds start revolting.

The blog thing is super dumb, but I guess they're hoping to get some money for things that will require significant cell bandwidth use. That said, this will create a great niche for a web-based RSS reader made specifically to work on the Spindle web browser.

Oh, I guess you are right. I just saw this: http://www.slate.com/id/2177969/

"My other concern is that for people below the age of 25 or so, email is a virtually non-existent form of communication."

Is that really true? I mean, I know everyone uses facebook/myspace/etc, but I've never had the impression that the youngsters (I'm on the cusp of youngsterhood myself--barely) don't use email.

A problem I've experienced is that using bittorrent throttles my entire connection--in other words, it slows to a trickle http or email. Although I don't like the idea of slowing torrent traffic--TOS or not, I pay for unlimited bandwidth and if Comcast can't provide it they should adjust their pricing or their own bandwidth--I can understand it. But it seems like what they're doing is punitive--"if you use bittorrent you have to sit in the slow internet corner!"--rather than palliative.

And really, if you have to resort to the small print language in a contract you know that no one ever reads in order to prevail on a technicality, you're not being very consumer-friendly. In other words, just because the contract allows Comcast to act this way, that doesn't mean that they should. It's disingenuous to advertise an unlimited use service and then attach restrictions to it. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of all this is that while Comcast (and others) admit that their service isn't, truly, unlimited, they refuse to give any indication on exactly what amount of use is excessive.

And just for the record, I hardly ever use torrents and have never gotten in any trouble over my bandwidth use. I just find this whole issue to be Bad For Consumers.

Late followup:
Having now used the shared items thing, I think it is pretty good. I've had trouble getting it to work with Firefox for some reason, but the functionality is decent. I see now that I can, in fact, write a little descriptive/critical text to accompany the link.

If they could get a little bit better at picking what, if anything, to include as the preview (for example, they could allow you to select text and click on the linklet to use it as your preview), I'd be a big fan.

And like I said before, they MUST merge this with Google Reader's sharing function (including the option to add descriptive text). At that point this will be a pretty useful tool.

I really wish Google would a) integrate this service with the Google Reader sharing function (which is so obvious that I assume it must be on the way soon) and b) allow people to add a line or two of text when sharing a link/feed item. I often wish I could briefly comment on the stuff I want to share, without having to go to the trouble of actually posting it to my blog.

That's great. I've been screaming at Google to tie their various services together for a while now. I hope it's taken so long because they've been working on getting it right.

re: forced page reloads:

I wrote about this issue a few days ago, when the Washington Post's website finally drove me around the bend. I hate this behavior because, with the exception for rapidly-changing pages mentioned above, forced page reloads are a completely artificial way of increasing page view statistics. The practice doesn't actually improve readers' experience (in fact, it makes their experience much worse) and the higher page views don't actually reflect any additional viewership.

Anyway, the Post does it in a particularly annoying way, which I wrote about here.

This is huge for me. I have never considered buying music from the iTunes store, mostly because of the DRM but also because of the sound quality issue--I'm not an obsessive audiophile, but I don't like the idea that 128kbps is the best I'm ever going to do. Suffice it to say that this solution solves both problems in one stroke, and there's no question that it's worth the price premium for the added value. Not to mention the fact that it reduces the number of songs from an album you need to buy to make the album essentially free (if I understand how the recent announcement on applying purchases to full album purchases works). Point being, for the first time ever I'm willing to consider paying for music from iTMS. It's a big deal.

I'm pretty damn confident that this is the first step in a fairly quick process resulting in universal DRM-free paid downloads on iTMS and every other relevant online music store.

I think there's some value to buying entities like these and just letting them do their thing--I just don't know how much value that is. But I will say that Yahoo's acquisitions, and the fact that they haven't done anything bad with them once they acquired them, changed the way I viewed the company. I think they "get it," or at least I think they're a lot closer than the old days when they released mediocre web service after mediocre web service of their own design. I think Google benefits similarly from acquisitions like Blogger, Writely, etc--their corporate purchases have personality and whimsy, rather than pure profit-seeking. Or at least that's how it comes off. those in the know view Yahoo/Google (and maybe even Microsoft) as benevolent overlords (and, potentially, benevolent employers!).

I wouldn't have included the dedication to Radomir Kovacevic, but that's just me. And with all due respect to Mr. Maynard, I'm pretty sure that this guy will not be getting the last laugh here--although maybe the three muscled guys who were "spotting" for him can get some personal trainer work out of it.

But don't you think Yahoo! wishes that they hadn't blown $5.7 billion on Broadcast.com? I can't say I'm familiar with the little details but as far as I can tell that was a hilarious moment in the middle of a ridiculous bubble fueled by similarly-absurd acquisitions. I think Cuban would have advised Yahoo! that that money would have been better spent on creating actual content or actual infrastructure. But like I said, I don't know the details of the Broadcast.com acquisition--maybe Yahoo! did get its money's worth.

9/14, $699