Rev2.org

As you might have noticed, VOIS.com recently acquired Rev2.org, and Craig Agranoff, who has been filling in for me for the last year or so, has now taken on the blog full-time as Editor.

The decision to sell Rev2 came as a difficult one seeing it has been a part of my life for the last five or so years, but given my lack of time and neglect for it, it was either a case of watching it die a slow death with the lack of content and missed hosting bills, or hand it over to Craig who would attempt to resurrect it with fresh, regular content, with the freedom for me to move on freely with other projects.

Rev2’s history has been an unconventional one, and there have been too many ups and downs to count over its existence. In 2005, I decided to evolve my personal blog at the time, The Daily Rundown, to review web apps and services and cover note-worthy web news. Something I found after I started my personal blog was that I was much more in touch with particular happenings when I got to write about it, so having it evolve to Rev2 was my own way of saying to myself, “this web 2.0 thing is going to be big, and I need to start keeping up with it.”

I wrote around 3 posts a week throughout 2005, reviewing some of the apps that released over the week. While there were other, better blogs such as ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch budding at that time, I could never find myself doing what I did full-time, so I was happy with learning a thing or two by covering something I was passionate about, and informing a couple readers along the way.

As things got serious through 2005 with services like MySpace and YouTube just getting traction, I noticed TechCrunch and some of the big blogs at the time putting out 125×125 ad inventories on their websites and having it full within days. First reluctant about putting advertising on the blog (this was a big point of debate back then), I decided to offer a couple myself and was able to attract a couple of sponsors within the following weeks.

The financial support allowed me to look for writers, as some of the other blogs started to do at the time, and by 2007, Rev2 had around five to six part-time writers posting fantastic content, with a traffic graph relatively small but up-hilling (at our peak, we were close to doing 260,000 pageviews for a month, FWIW.) Through the writers I hired for Rev2, I got to meet and work with exciting and fascinating people, most of whom I’m still in touch with and one of whom is my business partner on a startup I’m working on.

Obviously, great things don’t last forever, so by the end of 2007, things started to get a little hectic on the financial side, with me having to let-go writers and the flow of content coming to a halt. After my one month-long trip to U.S. at the end of the year, I found it difficult to return to blogging having little or no chance to do so in that couple of months. After some months of writing on-and-off, Craig stepped in, and he’s been at it since then.

If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you would have noticed Craig’s writing style grow in the past year or so, and with the content he’s been putting out lately, I have no doubt in believing that Rev2 is in capable hands and here to stay. There’s no question that Craig has taken the blog much more seriously than I have in the last year, so his taking over only reflects what has been true all this time.

This is my final official post on Rev2, but I have always found the blog a fantastic place to talk about my achievements, or scramble out a 2,000-word essay on a topic I know little about, so as long as Craig allows me, I’ll hopefully be able to step in once in a while and give the Rev2 audience their much-missed (or much-loathed) words of wisdom.

Meanwhile, you can check out my personal blog, follow me on Twitter, use my micro-diary service Memiary, and keep up with my startup-in-stealth Nincha (we’ll be launching soon, I promise.)

To keep up with updates from this blog, I also recommend you follow @Rev2 and @Vois.

History book editors are already changing the text for this year’s top news stories.  Obama getting elected?  Chrysler going into bankruptcy?  Brittney Spears on tour?  Pbbbt Those topics aren’t news.

Google dropping off the Internet for two hours and taking 5% of total Internet traffic with them?  HEADLINES!

While the exact time of the Great Google Outage is unclear (Google says 7:48am PST, others say 7:15 or 7:20), the fact that many U.S. and Asian users suddenly lost access to all Google services for a couple of hours nearly took Twitter and Facebook with it.

The two sites were a flurry of “Is Google down?” “Google is down?!” and the like.  Then speculation about what was the cause started burning up keyboards and the already-fragile Twitter network.  “Definitely a DDoS attack” and “Semantec says there’s a worm.”

What was the reality?

Someone at Google (who’s probably now polishing his or her resume) goofed and sent most of Google’s U.S. traffic through Asia.  This caused a virtual traffic jam, slowing and shutting down many services with the funneled overload.

Yep, that’s it.  During routine maintenance on a server group, somebody re-directed traffic in the wrong direction and Google fell to its knees.

This graph from Arbor Networks shows the down time.  See that big post-hole?  That’s Google falling off the Internet for a while.  Many of us found ourselves in that deep valley trying to figure out how we were going to get back out. “You mean there’s other search engines?  Since when?“

That’s why this was the Great Google Depression of 2009.  It will be remembered forever.

Yesterday might have been worth writing on the Twitter calendar as the worst day in Twitstory.  So far, anyway.  With the way this company faux’s like Biden at a press conference, it’s only a matter of time and opportunity for it to happen again.

Here’s the run-down on events: Twitter takes away a feature, the Twitterverse goes ballistic and hashes like #bringbacktheat and #fixittwit get popular, then Twitter brings a halfway solution for the feature back, the press has a field day ripping Twitter apart, and then Twitter posts a blog to make it all better.  All while the service has its usual up-and-down time throughout the day.

Honestly, we’re getting used to spotty service connections from Twitter now–it’s part of the little app’s ambiance. Nothing says “Twitaholic” like sending a Tweet to say that Twitter is down.  Really, the lag and spotty down-time is sort of like Twitter’s Marilyn Monroe beauty mark.  Think about it.

Anyway, back on subject.  So the change that caused all this grief was the way replies were handled.  Before the change, everything you typed into Twitter and sent went to everyone on your list (unless it was a direct message).  So if someone sent you something and you replied, your reply (along with that person’s @ddress) went out to all of your followers.

Twitter changed that so that those not following the person you replied to wouldn’t receive the reply.  In an obvious way, this makes sense.  Threaded conversations are already a problem on Twitter and seeing only half of one makes life difficult if you hope to keep up with what’s being said.  On the other hand, it turns out, a lot of people used those replies to click and check out the person they don’t know (the @name).  This lead to community networking.

Here’s the really strange part: you had the option in your Twitter settings to set this for yourself and the auto-seeing of replies to people you don’t follow was just the default.  Twitter was really removing an option.  Nobody likes that.

Any Web developer with any experience will tell you: people love options and if you take away their choices, they get angry.  Twitter has now learned that the hard way.

On Twitter’s side of the story, though, the questions get tougher.  First, they claim that the change was because of some technical reasons that the setting had to be rebuilt or scrapped.  This, after the company had waffled about the situation to start with.  The final blog post from Twitter on the subject was a capitulation to angry Tweeps.

TechCrunch makes a lot of good points on why this was handled badly, how it should have (probably) been handled, and what Twitter should have known from recent events involving Facebook and others.  I agree with them.

Definitely one of the worst 24 hours in Twitter’s history… so far.  One thing about Twitter is for sure: they’ve certainly proven themselves to be capable of dropping the bowling ball on their own foot repeatedly.  Usually in public too.

In seven days, the erotic services section as you know it on Craigslist will end.  No more listings are being accepted and all current listings will expire at or before that time.  This is due to pressure from state and local law enforcement over the legalities of the services often listed there.

The cost for posting to the “adult services” section will double.  While initially this money will be donated to charity, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has said that this is temporary.  The money will likely go to fund new human oversight of the adult services section to weed out and delist illegal services.

Buckmaster was not specific about how this would work, but I’m envisioning it being something like eBay’s “PI” system.  Legal adult services like massage and escorts will still be allowed on the site, but solicitations for more intimately illegal services will be rejected, says spokeswoman Susan Best according to an LA Times report this morning.

The full statement from Craigslist is available on CNET at this link.  It’s title “Striking a Balance” shows the attempt by the site to maintain an open marketplace while keeping within the law.  The statement also lightly attacks some of the sensationalistic media attention Craigslist has received thanks to this issue.

It’s my hope that Craigslist will remain an open and relatively free marketplace and won’t become bogged down by activists directing policy as other sites like eBay have.  Craigslist remains one of the few free and open marketplaces online and it would be a shame to see it go away from that.  You can always try one of my other sites www.jicka.com (shameless plug) in the mean time!

Yesterday was Google’s second-ever “Searchology” event. At the last one, Google unveiled Universal Search. At this one, they’ve expanded that further by refining it into what Google calls Search Options.

If you go to Google now and search, you’ll see an option at the top of the page called “Search Options.”  Clicking that will open a side bar with refining tools for narrowing the search by age, resource (blogs, forums, etc.), and allow expansion of the sample text shown so you can get a better idea of what’s on the page.

This is a good addition, I think, and definitely one that shows why Google is on top of the search game.  This video from the Google Blog gives more information on Search Options:

Google’s possible answer to Wolfram Alpha, which launches on Monday, might be Google Squared.  Currently in development in Google Labs, the search is slated to appear under the Labs option later this month.

According to TechCrunch, a teaser of how Squared works was given at Searchology.  Think of it as a spreadsheet of search results with various bits of informative data (based on search results) appearing in columns and rows.  So searching for pizza type, for instance, might give cooking styles across the top with condiments and so forth in individual data blocks.

The following video from TechCrunch gives a little more information on this and a demo of its current abilities:

There’s a lot of buzz about Microsoft’s latest ads aimed at iTunes.  Apparently, the four Laptop Hunter ads Microsoft ran to target the price difference between Macs and PCs have been well-received.  These new ads targeting iTunes (to promote Zune) are along the same vein.

What Microsoft is doing is finally standing up and getting aggressive in the advertising game.  Up to now, most of MS’ policy was to sit and wait.  I guess they got tired of that.  Apple has a lot to deal with all of the sudden, having had a relatively easy target up to now.

The new ad compares Zune Pass (an MS product) with iTunes (an Apple product) and features financial planner Wes Moss.  Basically, the ad compares the $0.99/song price of iTunes to the $15/month Zune Pass.  To fill an iPod (120GB) would cost about $30,000 on iTunes or $15 on Zune Pass.

While the ad, of course, isn’t 100% honest, it’s making the point.  Besides, as ars technica points out, it would take 166 years and 8 months for that $15/month to reach $30,000.  Other limits of Zune Pass aren’t mentioned in the ad either, like the 10 songs per month carry-over that limits what you can own for $15.

The point, though, is the ads themselves and the fact that Microsoft has stepped into the marketing realm with five new ads targeted directly at their largest competitor.  These ads are a direct response to the multiple Mac vs. PC ads that Apple has been running for quite some time.

As far as I’m concerned, you can attack MS and Apple all you want, but the ads themselves are entertaining and sitting on the sidelines watching the battle is fun.  Really.

Here are the four Laptop Hunter Ads. Enjoy: