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Welcome the newest SciBlings! —

Go say Hello to Travis Saunders and Peter Janiszewski, the newest bloggers on the Scienceblogs.com network at Obesity Panacea.

They cover health, physiology, nutrition and exercise - something we did not have here on the network before, at least not in such a concentrated form. Check out the archives of their old blog and then bookmark the new Obesity Panacea.

Read the comments on this post...

Techmeme adds Mediagazer — With two announcements in just two days (see our piece yesterday), Gabe Rivera, founder of Techmeme, the popular online technology news aggregator, today launched yet another product dubbed Mediagazer.

In a brand new blog space, Megan McCarthy made the announcement to the Mediagazer blog as Rivera also posted information and background on the launch to the Techmeme blog.

Notably late yesterday, staffer Mahendra Palsule made a subtle post that he was resigning from another job to work full-time with the Techmeme team.  The mention was not made on Twitter.  It was made on Google Buzz (which could signal a sign of things to come):



McCarthy, who has been with the 5 person Techmeme team (which also produces 3 others aggregators) will edit Mediagazer.

Other staffers include Rich DeMuro and Lidija Davis.

Rivera took Techmeme from a bot-driven aggregator last year, to one than uses a few 'real people' to fine tune the results.

With the literal definition of 'media' and related delivery platforms changing at a very rapid pace, it should be an interesting challenge to watch as this project as it unfolds over the next few months.

DataXu raises $11M to serve the right ad, right now —

As the Internet is getting faster, with everything coming and going in real-time, advertising is playing catch-up. DataXu (said like “data zoo”), an advertising startup that optimizes ads in real time, today announced $11 million in funding to continue doing just that.

DataXu’s mission is to optimize the placement of ads on the Web, in real time. Its algorithm considers more than 100 factors for every single impression an ad gets, from time of day to context, and from buyer intent to ideal ad size. By selling individually optimized impressions, DataXu thinks it can create a higher return on investment for advertisers.

Whether advertisers are looking for buys, clicks, or some other action, DataXu optimizes ad placements for them. Companies provide information to DataXu to inform how DataXu places their ad initially, but the longer the ad runs, the more information DataXu gets to operate. If an ad for your shampoo gets more clicks on a women’s blog in mid-afternoon on a Sunday, DataXu starts to push your ad to similar sites in a similar way.

Pricing is similarly fluid: as an ad space becomes more valuable to you, you pay more for it. The flip side, of course, is that advertisers are no longer overpaying for the ads that bring no return, because DataXu filters those out. DataXu also provides reports for advertisers of the factors that most influenced the performance of their ad, which is potentially invaluable information for companies looking to continue to advertise on various media.

DataXu works with the biggest advertising platforms –- Google and Yahoo –- as well as a number of other providers. That means companies that already use one or more ad networks don’t have to switch, but can just plug DataXu into their existing stream. Other advertising startups have followed a similar model, like Clickable, but DataXu’s goal is more robust, working across the entire Web rather than just in search results.

The trouble with advertising, whether online or elsewhere, is that the effect is so hard to measure -– you spend millions to get a Super Bowl ad, and who knows if it worked or not? DataXu, newly flush with cash, is definitely trying to find out.

DataXu is based in Boston, MA, and launched at TechCrunch50 in 2009. The new round was led by Menlo Ventures.

Companies: Dataxu, Menlo Ventures

Fang Me, It's Really Happening — Fright Night Gets A Director [Fright Night] —

Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) is the new rumored director of the Fright Night reboot. So Who's going to sing "Good Man in a Bad Time" by Ian Hunter, in the club seduction scene? [LA Times Blog]

Report: Steve Jobs Says You Won't Be Able To Link Your WiFi iPad To Your iPhone —

Anyone who currently owns an iPhone and was hoping they would be able to use it as a mobile web access point for a WiFi iPad got some bad news today, as Apple's turtleneck-in-charge Steve Jobs has reportedly said this will not happen.

Swedish blog Slashat.se claims they e-mailed Job directly to ask him whether or not you'd be able to tether your iPad and iPhone and received a terse "No" in reply.

The decision of whether or not to allow iPhone tethering or not has always been the decision of the mobile carrier, with several European carriers having allowed it. Stateside, AT&T has promised, but never delivered, on allowing users to tether their computers to their iPhones.

If Jobs' pronouncement is A) true and B) a permanent decision by Apple, then users the only way to get 3G web access on your iPad is by purchasing the significantly more expensive 3G version of the product.

This is just the latest of knocks against the iPad, which offers fewer capabilities and higher price tag than a comparable netbook.

Steve Jobs says 'No' to iPhone-to-iPad tether [The Register]

Make a Complete Dinner for Two On a Baking Sheet [Cooking] —

After a busy day at work, the only thing more daunting than preparing a full-fledged dinner is cleaning up a pile of dishes afterward. The Home Ec 101 blog offers a tasty meal idea that uses only a baking sheet.

Photo by ndrwfgg.

Although this meal comes together quickly, it's no slouch in the delicious department. Toss seasoned, cubed potatoes on a baking sheet, then stick them in the oven. While they're cooking, put together the main course: salmon with lemon and rosemary:

• salmon
• olive oil
• salt
• lemon, sliced thinly
• two sprigs of rosemary

Place the salmon in the center of a large square of aluminum foil. Drizzle with a scant amount of olive oil, then sprinkle lightly with kosher salt. Place the lemon slices on top of the salmon, and the rosemary sprigs on top of the lemon. Fold the sides of the aluminum foil over the salmon and pinch closed.

After that, you simply coat broccoli with olive oil, garlic, and parmesan cheese, then toss them onto the sheet 10 minutes later, and let it all cook for another 10 minutes. I cooked this up myself, substituting cauliflower for broccoli, and can attest to the results being yummy and the clean-up fast. Cover the baking sheet in aluminum foil before you start cooking, and clean up will be even quicker.

Got a quick go-to meal with minimum clean up that you rely on for busy days? Share it in the comments.

One Baking Sheet and Dinner for 2 [Home Ec 101]

Update: I’m reverting back to the old version. Unless they get their crap together, I don’t think I can press the upgrade button ever again. This business of changing the entire theming process every time you go up a tenth of a version is fscking stupid. And yes, I’m really that pissed about it.

I’m really disappointed with BuddyPress and Wordpress teams lately.  The last two or three versions of WPMU and BuddyPress have been absolute nightmares to upgrade.

I said this earlier today:

Check this out.

An upgrade should, you know, make things better.  It shouldn’t break things beyond recognition.

A little version control and testing before deployment would be nice, that’s all I’m saying.

If this crap keeps up for many more versions, I’m going to have to stop recommending WPMU+Buddypress to anyone.

And that sucks, since I like BP+WPMU, on the whole.

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3 Comments

At March 7, 2010, Andrea wrote: You didn't tweet which version you were upgrading *from*. There was significant changes (as you've seen) between 1.1.x and 1.2. The entire theme structure changed & there's a new default. in fact, Andy had added a nice link in red text right under the BuddyPress upgrade notice that there were things you needed to be aware of. Historically, there have been significant changes between version of BP, but with it now available on single WP, that shoudl elsson quite a bit. It always pays to do your homework though. At March 7, 2010, Rizzn wrote: Yeah. I did my homework, at least I thought. I read the upgrade instructions. 5 steps. It didn't say anything about destroying the layout of the blog, though. What's so difficult with picking a theme style and sticking with it? Every time we upgrade buddypress, we have to re-skin our site. This is NOT kosher. At March 7, 2010, Rizzn wrote: And for that matter, what difference does it make what I'm upgrading from? I went from the latest to the latest. There's a big difference between the two and an EVEN BIGGER ONE between that and the previous version. Many WP+BP people follow me on Twitter. My guess is most have stopped upgrading BP. I know I will. And I'll be looking for something better soon, too. This is ridiculous.

Enter the 2010 Pi Day Bake-off —

[Photograph: Robyn Lee]

Pull out the graph paper and forks, it's almost time to celebrate Pi Day! March 14 is a celebration of the math constant pi (3.14159..) and whether or not you can recite out to the fiftieth decimal place, you are allowed to eat lots of its homophone, pie.

This year we're joining forces with the folks at ScienceBlogs to host the 2010 Pi Day Pie Bake-off. (They share our pie-honoring values.) How does it work? You bake a delicious pie, upload a photo of it to Photograzing, then email your pie recipe to pi@scienceblogs.com before March 14. Please include your name, blog or website (if you have one), and a link to your Photograzing image in the email.

Why should you enter? For a chance to win the bake-off grand prize of $314 in cold, hard cash. Three runner-ups will also score these sweet "Simple as 3.141592" t-shirts from mental_floss. Now go forth and bake in honor of the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter!

10 Real Online Startups Founded By Real Offline Celebrities —

Celebrity entrepreneurs are nothing new.

But, in the 15-or-so years since the dot-com revolution, only a few famous faces have successfully ventured into the digital industry.

And some of them might surprise you.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• The 10 Best Restaurants For A Business Lunch In L.A.
• 11 Social Media Mistakes Your Company Must Avoid
• How To Make An Awesome Corporate Blog

Mortgage Principal Writedowns Won't Save Housing Market — Politicians want to keep borrowers in the homes because that's the compassionate thing to do. The big bad banks just want to cut their losses right? Well, maybe not, Diana Olick argues in her blog.

Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites — Every so often we hear about a random blog or website that freaks out and claims that ad blockers are "stealing" or somehow damaging websites. But it's quite a surprise to see a similar argument from a site like Ars Technica -- one of the top techie sites out there, which is now owned by Conde Nast. Over the weekend, Ars wrote an odd post claiming that ad blocking "is devastating to the sites you love." Ars decided to run an experiment where it blocked access to its content to any user using an ad blocker (with no warning or explanation). Not surprisingly, this pissed off a bunch of readers, and Ars now admits that it was a mistake in how it was handled -- but that it still believes ad blockers are harming sites.

Frankly, such a position is insulting (though, even more insulting was the way Ars staff responded to complaints in its comments, dismissing people who don't like their ads as not adding anything and actively telling them to go away). If you're reading Techdirt, and the ads we serve are not good, you have every right to use an ad blocker. It's your browser, do whatever you want with it. I, personally, do not use an ad blocker because I don't find most ads annoying -- but if you do, more power to you. You're absolutely welcome here on Techdirt.

If the ads are bad, it's bad for the advertisers

Back in December of last year, we signed an experimental ad deal to run a series of ads on the site, where a single advertiser would effectively have all the ads for a 24-hour period. As a part of that, there would be an ad at the top that temporarily "pushed down" the content for a few seconds, before pulling back up. Nothing was covered. Nothing prevented readers from getting the content. And the "pushdown" ad only showed once per visitor and never again. We went back and forth about it, but decided it was worth an experiment -- especially since no content was blocked or covered. I won't name the advertiser who was in the first test... but many of you did notice, and did not like it. We got a lot of complaints. So we killed the additional tests. I won't lie: these deals were for quite a bit of money -- a very large premium on the amount of money we typically make from advertising. But when we saw how annoyed our users were, we realized immediately what a bad idea this was and told the others who were scheduled to run similar campaigns, "sorry." We gave up a lot of money to do so, but what it came down to in our mind was that it wasn't worth it.

And when I say "wasn't worth it," I don't mean just to us or our community -- but to the advertiser. Most of the anger we saw over the original ad campaign wasn't directed at us -- it was directed at the company doing the advertising. So we told a bunch of companies willing to pay us a lot of money not that we didn't want their money -- but that they didn't want to buy that kind of advertising, because it would only damage their own brands.

Advertising that works, not annoys

Now, compare that to another "project" that we did late last year. As you may recall, UPS sponsored me doing a series of "whiteboard videos" about topics that we regularly talk about here -- one on the economics of abundance, one on the innovator's dilemma and one on the difference between innovation and invention. Before releasing these, I was actually a bit nervous about how people would respond. But these videos, which were clearly labeled as being sponsored by UPS, actually were a huge hit, and we received lots of compliments about them. Even more interesting? Numerous comments on the videos thanked UPS for sponsoring them and making them happen.

A similar thing happened when we launched our IT Innovation website, sponsored by Sun and Intel. In that case, those two companies were sponsoring us to develop more general content around a topic that we (and many of you) found interesting. The editorial control was still entirely our own, but Sun and Intel received branding on the website, and the ability to offer up some whitepapers to download in the sidebar. The end result has been wonderful, and we'll likely do similar projects in the future. Rather than annoying readers, we lined up everything in a way that benefited everyone. It really was a win-win-win sort of setup.

Those types of projects are the kinds that we love to do, and which add real value to the community and to the sponsors. Those are the types of things that we think all media publications should be looking at doing. Things that add value, not take it away. Oh, and if you're a company that wants to do a project like this that gets people excited, rather than annoyed by your brand, feel free to contact us.

Don't blame others for your failures

Mike Markson recently wrote up a blog post for entrepreneurs, talking about how every entrepreneur needs to learn the lesson that, whatever doesn't go right is your fault. It's a tough lesson for people (especially entrepreneurs) to learn. If you can't raise money, don't blame the investors. You were the one who failed to convince them. If you can't make sales, don't blame the sales people. You either hired the wrong sales people or didn't put together a compelling enough pitch or didn't have a good enough product. It's your responsibility as an entrepreneur to fix things. And I'm not saying this as a third party: I've been in both of the experiences discussed in this paragraph, and had to learn not to blame others, because that is the natural tendency. But it's not productive at all.

Along those lines, if you are running a media site, if you're having trouble making money, it's your fault. Don't blame your readers. Don't blame your community by telling them they're "devastating" a site by blocking ads or failing to pay for a paywall. As the producers of that site, it's your responsibility to do things to get that site paid for. If you don't like what we're doing on Techdirt, go ahead and block our ads. Sure, just like Ars, many of our ads are paid for based on impressions and we may make less money from those ads, but that's our problem and the problem of advertisers who aren't willing to do more unique, creative and compelling projects that benefit the community rather than annoy it. We want the advertisers, sponsors and partners we work with to get the best results possible in a way that everyone wins. And that's not by forcing people who don't want to see their ads to see them, or by pissing off our readers by blocking them if they use ad blocking. It's by taking on the responsibility ourselves to put together compelling programs that make everything more valuable for all participants.

There's lots of ways to value a community

And we value you as readers even if you're not seeing any ads at all. That's because you take part in the community. You share links to our posts. You comment. You tell others about what we've written -- and that's all incredibly valuable to us and the rest of the community -- much more than any CPM value we'd get from a few extra ad impressions. If you don't see an ad, that doesn't mean you have no value. Quite the opposite.

Claiming that ad blocking is harming sites is like the recording industry claiming that piracy (or home taping) is killing music. Or it's like the newspaper industry claiming that aggregators are killing them. It's passing the blame. If you run a company, it's your responsibility to put together a business model that works. And if people are somehow figuring out ways to do what they want where you don't get paid, then it means you're doing something that needs to change. A good business model is one where everyone is happy with the transaction, not one where one party feels forced or coerced into accepting something they don't want.

So, let's get past this idea of blaming others, and focus on building business models where everyone benefits.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Female Illustrators of the Mid-20th Century —

"Female Illustrators of the Mid-20th Century" is a blog about famous Chess endgames. (Not really. It's a blog about female illustrators of the mid-20th century.) Above, an advertisement by Marion Larson.

Duke3D Headed to webOS —

Palm loyalists out there will undoubtedly remember the name MetaView. Back in the days of PalmOS, he rose to fame with apps like PalmPDF (now named PDFmob), 2PlayMe, and notably Duke3D, a PalmOS Duke Nukem 3D port that won the Zodiac France Contest 2006.

MetaView has been developing for webOS for a while now, with releases like Match This!, MapTool, and ÜberRadio. Now, he's returning to an old favourite and is bringing Duke3D to webOS.

Posted on his blog, Henk "MetaView" Jonas shares the above video of Duke3D working smoothly on his Pre. According to his post, the controls can be used all in the keyboard or alternatively use the screen as a virtual d-pad and have the rest of the controls in the keyboard (similar to Quake).

Interestingly, MetaView has told PreCentral that:

"The porting was really easy. Just some small source and makefile adjustments and both jfbuild and jfduke did compile and link. Not at all comparable with the old Palm OS where I needed several days just to get it compiled and another couple of days to have it running without crashes."

Seems the boasts of quick app porting to the webOS holds some weight. That certainly raises my spirits for the webOS platform as a whole.

Duke3D is now available for the Palm Pre and Pre Plus in the WebOS-Internals testing feed for those brave enough to try it while it's still in-testing.

“IBM research shows that about 80 percent of those who begin a corporate blog never post more than five entries,” journalist and heavy-duty blogger Mathew Ingram wrote on GigaOm on Friday.

IBM is hawking a solution to blogger’s block. It’s called Blog Muse, and IBM claims it raised bloggers pageviews, comments and “likes” — those one-click votes for a post some sites allow.

Here’s how it works:

In order to inspire bloggers, our system suggests topics they can write about. The audience is given a voice by letting blog readers share topics they would like to read about with the blogging community. Our system then suggests these topics to potential blog writers who can decide whether or not they would like to address the topic requested. The underlying intuition is that users are more likely to blog if they know about their potential audience and the topics of interest.

Blog Muse replaces the function traditionally performed by editors: Assigning topics to writers based on what they believe readers will go for. It also outs a human trait not always discussed in conversations about blogging: Many writers will cover a topic they’re iffy about, if they believe more people will read about it. And sometimes, they just need a prod from someone else. Even if that someone is an IBM bot.

[Photo: BlogComics.net]

People: IBM

How to Get Your Free ‘Underground Guide to the iPhone’ and ‘Mac Manual’ —

photo credit: Tiago Rïbeiro

Have I mentioned … [visit site to read more]

Related posts:

1. HanDBase Mac OS X Sync Conduit for iPhone Now Available
2. Fanboys…friend or foe?
3. The Slow Absorption of the Independent Blog: MacFixIt and CNET

Tags: Apple iPhone, Mac

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Big In Japan Buys Barcode-Scanning Competitor Snappr —

Big In Japan, the company responsible for the popular ShopSavvy barcode-scanning app for Android and iPhone, has acquired Snappr. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition revives Snappr after it shut down in late 2009, reports TechCrunch, which broke the news of the acquisition. Big in Japan has already been busy integrating Snappr’s 2D barcode scanning technology into its ShopSavvy app. Snappr’s Founder Philip Stehlik will join Big In Japan’s board of advisors, according to the Big in Japan blog. With the acquisition, Big In Japan will attempt to raise American’s awareness of QR Codes, which is based on the open standard Quick Response. It’s free to generate a two-dimensional QR Code. The QR code can point any smartphone, with an app like ShopSavvy installed, to a website.

Comcast's Latest iPhone App Manages Your DVR From Anywhere [Comcast] —

Comcast is fairly evil, to be sure. But if they're doing one thing right, it's the latest version of their free iPhone app, Comcast Mobile App 2.0.

In this walkthrough, you'll see that not only can you set recordings from your iPhone, but you can do so over the multiple DVRs that you may have in your house. (Note: so far, this function is only available in select areas.) Meanwhile, everyone receives new push notifications reminding you to watch or record your favorite shows...which admittedly sounds a bit useless in the DVR era.

If you're watching the clip, skip about 20 seconds in to get to the meat of it. (Not that Scott the Comcast guy doesn't seem very nice.) [iTunes via Comcast Blog]

Ida Maria, "Oh My God" (Greatest Song of All Time of the Day) — Regular visitors to my blog are likely sick of my outsize enthusiasm for the songwriter, singer, and guitarist Ida Maria; now it's time for you to suffer. I've written about the excitement of discovering her debut album, trying to get my then-12-year-old daughter into a 21+ club to see her (I received some hilarious help from the Internets on this front), succeeding at getting said daughter into a show, and my sadness at Maria's apparent genuine breakdown onstage one night. If you haven't heard Ida Maria, start here. "Oh My God" is ferocious in every way a great rock'n'roll song can be ferocious, climaxing with a scream as frightening as Johnny Rotten's and as powerful as Roger Daltrey's. There are few better ways to start the week.

What Do You Do When You Run Out of Knowledge? —

Bloggers have a distinct disadvantage.

When someone hires an expert in — oh, let’s say marketing — that expert can dispense the same information she did for the last client.

And the client before that one. And the one before that.

Not bloggers. Blogging is about breaking down everything you know into bite-sized chunks so that people can learn it all over a period of time. If they look back through the archives, they can often see the entire breadth of your knowledge.

Then one day, your well runs dry.

This is a scary moment for any blogger. It’s not like running out of inspiration or having writer’s block. This is when you’ve said it all. Your blog contains absolutely everything you know.

And let’s be fair — it’s a lot of knowledge. But you simply don’t have anything new to say.

What do you do?

Go get yourself some new knowledge

I’m always amazed by how few people continue to educate themselves on their topic after they’ve become an acknowledged expert in it.

Hey, everyone knows me as the number one guy on naked mole rats! Clearly, I know everything there is to know!

But as an old coach of mine used to say, you’ll never know everything there is to know in your field of expertise, and there’s always something new to learn. People make new discoveries and innovations every day. You have opinions about those innovations. You agree or disagree with them. You try them or manage to take them a step further.

Of course, if you don’t find out what those discoveries and innovations are, you don’t have anything to say about it. No wonder you’re stuck for posts.

Actively pursuing new knowledge about your area of expertise has a side benefit: it provides more value for your clients. You may find the inspiration for a new ebook or web course to help newcomers understand and benefit.

New knowledge could be the next big thing for your business — if you go out and find it.

Doctors are one of the few professions actually required to update their knowledge of their field of expertise continually. If a doctor doesn’t know the latest innovation in surgery, his next patient might die from the lack of that knowledge. That’s a huge incentive for the doctor to always be learning and for the patient — and the medical board — to insist on that continual education.

No one is going to force you to attend conferences or read books or take courses, but you’ll be much more respected as an expert if you continually update your knowledge. Your client’s life may not be on the line, but their business, their financial goals, and their happiness probably is — at least, their happiness with your products and services.

Where can you find new knowledge?

Well, you may not have heard about this gizmo called the internet, but it’s pretty handy for that sort of thing. It seems silly to mention using the internet to upgrade your knowledge on an online blog, but shocking numbers of people don’t use it for this particular purpose — even those who practically live online.

Libraries are an awesome (and free) resource for new knowledge too, and so is your local bookstore. Go pick up some new literature and get someone else’s perspective on what you do.

Magazines and trade journals, of course, are terrific for more recent innovations and information. Find ones that focus on your area of expertise and stay on the lookout for new ideas that sound interesting or innovative. Once an article grabs your attention, go do some independent research on that topic and find new resources to pursue.

Actively pursuing new knowledge won’t just make you a better businessperson — though that’s reason enough right there. It’ll also pretty much guarantee that you’ll never run out of blog topics ever again.

About the Author: For new knowledge that makes you a better businessperson — and that helps you hit the bullseye of success for your freelancing career, check out Men with Pens — or better yet, grab the RSS feed here.

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SSL Certificate trouble —

We have a little bug regarding the renew of our SSL Certificate that is taking way more time that it should have been. We’re working hard to have the website back to normal as soon as possible and we will an update both on this blog and on our Twitter feed when it will happened.

We are really sorry for any in trouble that is causing and thank you for your understanding