Three dollars off may not seem like much, but three dollars is three dollars I can save on stuff my cat’s going to shit on anyway.

Three minutes of my time for three dollars? Sure beats my usual pay. So, I click on the button to fill out the info, which was pretty painless: Name, birthday, email, and a few checkboxes. I’ve seen worse. I move on, expecting to be rewarded generously with kitty litter savings, but today is just not my day.

WHAT?

You’ve got to be kidding me. Chrome just surpassed Safari as the third most popular browser in the US, and has been in third globally for a while now. As the World’s Best Cat Litter, they should be in the know after all. I mean, what the hell, they allow printing in fucking Windows2k, Internet Explorer 5.5, and Netscape 7 — which hasn’t been supported for YEARS.

The fact is, Safari and Chrome can do practically the same things — they both use WebKit. These guys just won’t allow people to use their coupon thing with it. Chrome is my main browser, but I really wanted this coupon, so I erased that terrible sight from my mind and clicked on the Forward Offer button to email myself the link to open in Safari. But, I was directed to another page:

Wait, what does this have to do with anything? What is this? I just wanted a link sent to my email. I WANT THIS COUPON. I sighed, went back a few pages, and copied the initial sign up page link to paste into Safari.

I WANT TO STAB MY EYE OUT, WHAT IS THIS? I have to sign up to more stuff? By now, this has taken far more than three minutes of my time. Apparently they can’t send you an email link, so simply pasting the earlier sign up link into Safari brought me to the company that is behind World’s Best Cat Litter coupon shenanigans. Realizing this was all wrong, I simply started over in Safari, opening my original email there.

Did it bring me to a page for a downloadable PDF of the coupon? NO. It asked me to download coupon printing software. I don’t have a printer. I don’t need one really — Kinko’s is fine for when something does come up. I figured though, “okay, I can download this software to download a file I can bring elsewhere to print.” I know, I shouldn’t have downloaded it, but I did. I was trying to follow this through to see just how much a person had to go through to get this coupon.

Did this software allow me to simply save the coupon as some sort of file, like you’d expect? NO. It would only direct me to a Safari page denying me further:

I know I don’t have a printer! But no other options? This is bullshit. I went to open the application itself, to find some sort of configuration section, but it turns out the Coupon Printer wasn’t even there. I searched high and low for it, in my user directory — not there. Not in the Library, not anywhere. Where was it? Installed as an Internet Plug-In for all users. Which is just stupid.

I dragged that crappy file to the trash.

I’m pretty irked about not getting my stupid coupon after all that. Snail mail, I guess? Take note businesses of all sizes: Do not do this to your customers. Ever.

UPDATE

The very day I tweeted about this post, the World’s Best Cat Litter Twitter account @bestcatlitter replied to me!

Hi Kristin :) Wow, that was a helpful post–we appreciate the feedback! Can you write to us at custserv@worldsbestcatlitter.com?

I wrote to them, simply explaining the situation and linking to this post, and Customer Service Coordinator got back to me quickly.

Hi Kristin,

First of all, we would like to thank you for your support and repeat purchase of our product! We were flattered to learn your attitude towards the product itself when we read your post. As for your experience in trying to get the coupon–First, we are sorry that you had to go through all the loops, jumps and bumps that you did. We were really impressed when we saw your blog post, instead of getting downright catty (easy to do in the world of cat litter), you instead wrote a very informative post that not only explained your problem but actually has helped us identify things we can do to improve the user experience.

To be honest we had no idea that Chrome on the Macintosh wouldn’t be supported with the Coupons Inc. functionality. This is a major problem and we have already been in touch with the Coupons Inc. to see if they can work it out so it is supported. As for the other issues you experienced, we have already taken some next steps and are working on improving them. The only one we can’t really work around is the whole printing process as it is the default procedure through Coupons Inc. We will examine this closely during our next round of coupons when selecting a provider and take all your feedback into consideration.

And of course, the moment you have been waiting for… the coupon! Since you have helped us out and taken the time to not only try to write to get the coupon but write an informative blog post we would like to just go ahead and send you a free bag! Pending that is ok with you can you provide your mailing address so we can get one out to you? Also, can you please let us know what formula you currently purchase?

Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for any and all understanding!

Sincerely,
World’s Best Cat Litter™

This is how you should handle your unhappy customers. Not only did they address my problem personally, but they took to heart what I went through in order to improve the user experience in the future. Oh, and I got a 7lb bag of their awesome kitty litter! They’ll continue to get business from me for sure.

In honor of the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 releases, I created these 40 fabulous, high quality wallpapers for your enjoyment! Each is 960-by-640-pixel resolution at 326 ppi to be compatible with the new iPhone’s Retina display. The download includes all 40 wallpapers zipped up tightly for your convenience, with patterns and designs of all types and colors. There are wallpapers suited for the main lock screen as well as a few perfect for backing your home screen.

I even created one for the Star Trek fans out there. And one for the hipster haters. Cheers!

NOTE: If you still have an older iPhone model, these will still work for you. :)

Honestly, I’ve been lazy about keeping this blog fresh — and maybe a bit busy with work otherwise.

I wanted to (almost) start anew here, and get things rolling, so I figured a redesign was in order. In searching for a new theme, nothing fit the bill. Cookie cutter layouts, widgets competing with content for attention, crappy code, the list goes on. So, I decided to take a closer look at the LEFT5 theme, and it’s exactly what I wanted.

A WordPress theme built with clean, validated HTML5, and absolutely no widgets. Not only is it capable of both regular text posts and over-sized images, but the non-conformity it offers with its garrish left-align format will make hipsters jealous of your blog.

LEFT5 is currently in active use at both Loupe and EndofWeb. You can download the theme here. Short instructions are included, but you should really have a bit of experience with HTML and CSS to use this theme.

LEFT5 — Because widgets are making WordPress blogs look like MySpace.

Besides the theme facelift, I felt that a rename would complete the rebirth of this blog. It’s not that I didn’t like “Talk QWERTY to Me,” it was cute for sure. A little dirty, but cute. The real reason for “QWERTY Talk?”

Typography.

No, seriously, I like the way it looks. Is that bad? Okay, maybe it was a third for the typography and two thirds for simply liking the name better than the last. I kept a few old posts around, but I’m excited to pump out some fresh stuff again.

In this real-time world we’re living in, the speed at which information travels — and is shared — is mind-boggling, if you take a moment to reflect.

We’re no longer eager to wait to see results; we’re spoiled. Many publications are picking up on the infographic trend, making data very visually appealing, and even fun.

Most people tend to respond to visual representations very well, so it’s a ripe time to take advantage of the new visualization tools out there.

It’s Nothing New

The history of data visualization reaches very, very far back in time. In fact, we were creating visualizations as soon as we could draw on cave walls — think simplified maps of the landscape. Back in 1993, archaeologists recovered a tablet from a cave in Spain, and though it took them 15 years to decipher it, they concluded that it is man’s oldest map.

So, even 14,000 years ago, we were mapping the lay of the land and documenting herds of animals. We moved on to mapping the world, and celestial bodies — but think about what visualizations are based on.

Data, right? Easy enough, but my point here is to reflect upon the implications of how data is gathered.

There are many limitations in the human perception. We’re limited by what information can be gathered through our senses.

The World is Flat

Many ancient cultures had conceptions of a flat Earth, until the spherical Earth notion was adopted. I won’t get into a history lesson here, but some adopted the theory later than others — and some even refused to believe it. Point is, our perception of things can change with scientific paradigm shifts and the adoption of new technologies.

Geocentrism (the theory that the earth is the center of the universe) is another great example of how our perception and beliefs can affect visualizations. The geocentric theory wasn’t really challenged until 1543 when Copernicus decided to rock everyone’s world with his heliocentric theories.

Again, it’d be safe to say that our technology and education tends to help us in the right direction when it comes to drawing valid conclusions from observations. But would you believe that one adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth? A study in 2005 revealed some gaping holes in basic knowledge of Americans.

What the Hell Do You Know?

So, this got me thinking: How easy would it be to lead people to the conclusions I wanted them to come to? Even if someone has the knowledge on a certain subject, it can be simple to skew data in various ways in order to alter perception.

When Tableau asked ReadWriteWeb readers to try out their visualization software, I jumped at the chance. I geek out to pie charts, and I have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with making infographics.

I wanted to demonstrate not only how neat the Tableau software is (though not being Mac compatible, I had to do this all on my netbook) but how powerful visualizations can be in shaping our conclusions.

The Visualizations

For the first data map, I wanted to prove how easy it is to show a simple correlation between adult obesity and fast food expenditures. With what we know today, one would assume that where the obesity rate is high, the fast food expenditures are up there with it. Well, overall it seemed to work out that way. At least there was no real outlier. It turned out to be something I made to fit the current general belief that fast food is a large cause of obesity. That’s the rub though: correlation does not imply causation.

Take a look at the last two: Number of Fast Food Restaurants vs. Percentage of Adults Meeting Activity Guidelines and Obesity vs. Vegetables per capita.

I purposely created these two in an attempt to provide a completely opposite perspective on obesity.

The second map focuses on the number of fast food restaurants versus the percentage of adults meeting their daily activity guidelines. Without looking, one might assume that the more fast food restaurants, the lower percentage of adults meet their activity guidelines. (Though that would be a large assumption, I’m just putting forth points as the average person would see them.)

The results are interesting. In fact, compare the data from Texas in the first two maps — they seem to point in opposite directions. There is a high obesity rate and fast food expenditure, in the other, a high number of fast food restaurants with about 64% of adults meeting their activity guidelines. Taken together, you may start to question how things even correlate. Separately, you may come to two separate conclusions.

In the last graph, I wanted to do this again — I compared the obesity rate with pounds of vegetables per capita (and even threw in soda tax stats).

Vegetables are good for you, right? Without looking at the graph, some might assume that the more vegetables there are, the lower the obesity rate is. That’d be quite a slippery slope, but it’s was a fun one to put into a visualization!

Take a look at the outlier: Texas. Lots of veggies per capita, with a high obesity rate — and even a high soda tax to boot. Although there are plenty of available vegetables, doesn’t mean people will eat them. Seems that the soda tax doesn’t discourage the obesity rate either.

Question Everything

I hope you feel unsure by now — that was my goal. You must question all the data you see! Don’t fall into the trap of confusing causation and correlation. Question the data gathering method, the conditions of the study; don’t let the visualization dictate everything.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love data visualizations; they are very powerful tools. Tableau makes it easier than ever to create beautiful, flexible, and interactive visualizations — so give them a try!

Just remember the power at your fingertips.

[Images via seriouseats, Telegraph, lhup, and Wikipedia.]

Seems Google doled out a ton of Wave invites to those already on the playground.

As of now I have 28 to hand out.

If you’d like one, tell me your favorite color in the comments below. I’m serious. Let’s see who is paying attention ;) Oh, and make sure you leave a valid email in the space provided, so I can get it to you!

Once you’re in, hit me up if you’d like, at kristinalise@googlewave.com. If you need a quick how-to, check out my EZ MODE poster. Have fun!

The prize: $5,000 awarded by station sponsor Miller Lite.

The contest consisted of three Challenges:

1. Blog — Update a station-run blog page and compete for pageviews.
2. Show Us Your Logo — Compete to get the most public exposure for the station/contest logo.
3. Grand Finale — Compete to attract the largest audience to a live concert.

I initially entered the contest because I was confident that I could promote the (mundane) blog-content for hits in a fair fashion, and tap into my resources for the final challenge — gathering as many free concert-goers as I could to represent me as votes. Keep in mind, each challenge was point-based, and scaled differently from each other challenge.

As the results rolled in for the first challenges, I was taken aback — especially with the Blog Challenge results. Something was very wrong, so I gathered my research and proceeded to contact the station:

[REDACTED],

It’s quickly coming time to kick concert-promotions up a notch for the contest, but I am hesitant to even continue.

When the results for the blog-traffic portion of the contest were released, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’ve been working on the web for years, and in the context of this contest, the results were no less than overwhelmingly ridiculous. Anyone with a background in web promotions or even site administration would concur. I know how this may appear, as I’m a competitor, but I’d really appreciate your time and consideration on this issue. It’s a very serious matter — especially with the reputations of all parties, as well as no small amount of money on the line.

To put this in perspective: In order to get the claimed number of hits (reportedly 28,894 and 21,653) [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] would have needed to seriously push the content and links. They did not do this to any extent that could possibly account for their alleged traffic results, nor do they possess the resources or ability to do so. I work with people whose job is promoting sites, pushing links, and I know that it requires considerable online-resources to do so. Put simply, posting signs outside a building won’t translate to even a fraction of that kind of web traffic. The two contestants with these outlandish numbers, [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], both started their Twitter accounts when the contest began. They made no attempt to learn to use the service, or even to reach out and gather a following. They have 10 and 11 followers, respectively. Those followers include employees from the station. Pushing their links on Twitter would not even reach an audience. As as for Facebook; neither have accounts large enough to create any significant amount of traffic. It simply doesn’t work that way.

Anyone looking at the reported traffic numbers, alongside the online resources of the contestants, would logically deduce something just doesn’t add up. In case that’s not enough for you to get your IT people to seriously look at the pageview metrics, then I’ll explain further:

My first thoughts, since I don’t have access to the actual page metrics, was to see what Alexa’s (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/1077theend.com) rankings had showing for 1077theend.com – I narrowed the search to the timeframe of the contest.

What I saw did not surprise me. The small amount of data available to me is enough to strongly suggest that these obscenely high numbers are the result of bots. The much more extensive results available to your own site-administrator or IT team would only prove this suspicion beyond any reasonable doubt. While I’m confident that any business would quickly look with harsh scrutiny upon any contestant that showed numbers these high, while having no previous disposition toward web-based promotions, I realize that two of such contestants having these results can throw off the passive observer. This seems to be the case.

At this point, I’d like to draw your attention to the screenshots attached. They represent the freely available Alexa data. First, I’d like you to note in the image named “spike in traffic.jpg” that there is a sizable burst in traffic to the site in the second half of September, during the blog-promotions portion of the contest. Next, in “time on site.jpg,” you’ll note that at the precise same time that traffic spiked, time spent on site dropped to the lowest point in 1077theend.com’s history, at at just three seconds per visit. That, in and of itself, is a dead-ringer for bot activity — but it’s not all the data available.

Also from the afore mentioned data: Almost 68% of 1077theend.com’s recent web traffic came from China. I tracked down the Chinese sites that were clicked-through to 1077theend.com — two of them leading to the site and four of them leaving the site were automated Chinese systems, with each group having the exact same traffic percentages. These numbers and sites can be viewed in “gameman users.jpg” and “gameman clickthrus.jpg.” Just for a quick background, many bot-nets originate in China. When sites like gameman.cn — which doesn’t actually exist — have identical percentages clustered the way this one does, it means they’re automated and likely part of a bot-net. These sort of perfect mathematical patterns simply don’t happen in human-driven metrics.

Sixty-eight percent of the site’s traffic is NOT a number to be taken lightly, especially connected with this contest. These numbers aren’t biased, they’re simply numbers, and they tell a story. I find it impossible to ignore these key facts.

I’d also like to point out that while the rules did not specifically state that a contestant could not simply employ friends to revisit his blog in the old “human sweatshop clicking” ad nauseum fashion, that it is obviously against the spirit of the rules. Your third place contestant, [REDACTED], while attaining nowhere near the purported traffic numbers of [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], has almost surely done exactly that. If that is indeed the case, then the metrics for his blog page will show it. As I stated before, while it may not be written in the rules, his actions will become evident when he fails to show the same success in providing the concert with any remarkable exposure.

With that, I leave you to your own research, and I hope and urge all of you to look further into this. I do have wide resources in Seattle (and beyond) when it comes to online reach and PR; I was very much hoping to go forth full steam with the last challenge in this contest. The portion of the contest in question, to put it bluntly, simply didn’t offer web-viewers with anything interesting to the point that heavy pushing would pay off. The concert portion does. If the station chooses to ignore this issue, I will NOT continue. I will NOT waste my time, resources, or my good name with my contacts to promote this contest and radio station. You will lose great exposure as well as a long-time listener.

You and your station should also consider the very same repercussions should you choose to move forward with these unsavory characters as your public face. People don’t like hearing about money being given to cheaters simply because it was easier to pay them than to police them. I personally will not allow the cheating to go unnoticed, I assure you.

Regards,

Kristin Marshall

http://kristin.fm

You understand my frustration, I’m sure. I had gathered research and sent the e-mail about two weeks after the results were released, just to be absolutely positive that I had valid proof. Surely the station would have their IT guys take just a small amount of time out of their busy day to rectify the situation, and reprimand (ahem, throw out) the dishonest parties.

Their response:

Hi Kristin,

Based on your research on these page metrics it’s clear you put a lot of time and effort into finding why those blog numbers were unusually high. However we anticipated that such a tool might be used to a contestants advantage and it was properly addressed in the contest rules. Under “Other Rules” number 21, you’ll find “…use of robotic, mechanical, or other forms of pre-programmed internet visit methods is NOT prohibited in this contest. Station does not intend to monitor or disqualify any web hits in The Blog portion of this contest on the basis of the use of such manipulation tools.”

I’m sorry you missed this portion of the Endfluencer rules. If you have any other questions regarding the contest please let me know, email or by cell. And I hope to see you at Deck the Hall Ball in December.

Best,

[REDACTED]

Are you kidding me? So, they’d rather not double-check the metrics of the website and do what’s right, much less what’s legal? Take a look at the complete rule that was cited:

21. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the Station’s general contest rules, use of robotic, mechanical or other forms of pre-programmed internet visit methods are NOT prohibited in this contest. Station does not intend to monitor or disqualify any web hits in The Blog portion of this contest on the basis of the use of such manipulation tools.

That’s right, NOT prohibited. It’s about to make even less sense, too — lets take a look at a rule earlier in the document:

b. v. Any finalist who Station determines has or may have broken any Federal, State, and/or Local law as part of participating in this contest (including, without limitation, tresspassing, destruction of private or public property) or exhibits any nudity or engages in any indecent or lewd conduct, or harms or endangers themselves or any other person or property or may have created a public hazard, cause interference with or destruction of property or utilizes public safety resources in connection with this content will be disqualified by Station, in its sole and absolute discretion. Station is not responsible in any way for the acts of contestants.

So they’re attempting to circumvent their own rules, and brush aside CLICK FRAUD and the solicitation and/or use of bot-nets, both very illegal activities. The word felony comes to mind. Let’s not forget to note that the act of simply stating a disclaimer doesn’t make it true. Printing that the station is not responsible for actions of the contestants doesn’t magically remove culpability; a scorned wife who hires a hit-man to murder her husband is still brought up on charges alongside her hired gun.

After several minutes of staring blankly at my screen, reeling from the passive-aggressive nature of the station manager’s response, I quickly responded with a final retort:

[REDACTED],

I’m sorry you don’t seem to have taken my last email seriously. I did notice the clause you cited from the contest rules, but I had mistakenly thought that your station could not possibly have meant that it cover illicit activity. I cannot allow my good name to be attached to this contest or your station any longer; please remove my name and likeness from your website immediately. You’d do well to have whoever was initially responsible for writing that clause look up click fraud, because it’s likely what you are implicitly allowing by your inaction.

I regret that it’s come to this.

Kristin Marshall

I’ll be contacting Entercom‘s Board of Directors with the matter, as well as the contest’s sponsor, MillerCoors. Due to the size of the MillerCoors Corp., it’s sure to be a little difficult to reach out to them, so if anyone has the sort of connections that could expedite this process, it would be greatly appreciated :) I’m sure they wouldn’t want to be connected with an incident like this, especially since it’s financial involvement.

I’ve also filed complaints with the Washington State Attorney General and the Internet Crime Complaint Center. I’ll take comfort in the fact that our state is one of the top in the country to pursue cyber-crime.

Now, if some strange, bizarro-universe turn of events leads to the discovery that fraud is not the case, the fact still remains that the station openly, and officially promoted not just cheating, but illicit acts.

Don’t get me wrong — these aren’t sour grapes. I couldn’t care less about the outcome of the contest itself at this point, I’ve walked away with my dignity and respect. What I DO care about at this point is justice. They shouldn’t get away with this kind of behavior, there’s just nothing more to it.

With work picking up, I decided I needed something more mobile than my desktop computer and iPhone. I’ve been working from home for about five months, and it’s all new to me. I’ve learned a few things along the way, especially the fact that I need to be able to bring my work with me wherever I go. My desktop is pretty powerful, so I opted to look into netbooks. They’re ultra-portable and are perfect for my needs.

In shopping around, I noticed that the same model may come with various operating systems — usually Windows XP Home, Linux, or Windows 7 Starter. The netbooks with Windows 7 Starter were about $50 pricier than their counterparts. I thought, “why not? It’s a new OS, I could try it out.”

Before I made my decision though, I wanted to find out exactly what I was getting with Windows 7 Starter. That turned out to be very little, actually. It’s barely an operating system.

As shown, there is a lot of red. Everywhere. A lot of no. I understand that Microsoft’s initial idea was to provide a more compact OS for netbooks for performance reasons, but they can hold their own easily with Home Premium — which is the standard for laptop and desktop retailers anyway — and even Ultimate. In beta, they limited the Starter Edition to running only three applications at a time. At least they were smart enough to change that.

For those that want a quick rundown of what may be important to you, Windows 7 Starter does not include:

• Aero Glass, meaning you can only use the “Windows Basic” or other opaque themes. It also means you do not get Taskbar Previews or Aero Peek.
• Personalization features for changing desktop backgrounds, window colors, or sound schemes.
• The ability to switch between users without having to log off.
• Multi-monitor support.
• DVD playback.
• Windows Media Center for watching recorded TV or other media.
• Remote Media Streaming for streaming your music, videos, and recorded TV from your home computer.
• Domain support for business customers.
• XP Mode for those that want the ability to run older Windows XP programs on Windows 7.

Let’s get this straight: you don’t get the pretty Aero look, nor the highly touted Aero taskbar features, you can’t watch DVDs and best of all — no customization of WALLPAPER, WINDOW COLORS, or SOUND SCHEMES. Microsoft won’t even let OEMs change the wallpapers either. It’s funny, Aero is an acronym that stands for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective and Open. It’s disgusting.

It’s getting tiring, the extent to which Microsoft will tier their operating systems. Anyone remember the XP editions? Home and Professional. The main differences being in networking features. Every edition should have the basics that Home Premium offers, PLUS XP mode, remote desktop and file encryption — while not used too often — are all still extremely useful.

Now, if you have your eyes set on Windows 7, and you have the Starter Edition on your netbook, you will have to pay $119.99 for the upgrade to Home Premium. If you really want to go all out, Ultimate will cost you $219.99 for the upgrade.

I decided against the netbook with Windows 7 Starter Edition, to say the least. If there was no other OS option for the specific model I chose, it would have been a deal breaker, honestly. I’ll be running it with Windows XP and I may one day consider dual booting Ubuntu.

In the end, I’m a happy camper with my decision on netbook — it will arrive in a couple days. But for those out there shopping around, let this open your eyes to your choices. My desktop is currently running Vista Ultimate, and I may just go back to good old XP Pro there as well. Unless an iMac falls out of the sky.

Image source

I rarely read TechCrunch anymore, and if I do, it’s due to some ridiculous headline that I see linked in my Twitter stream. It’s like passing a car wreck — you can’t help but stare. I spotted another one today.

It’s the last day of the Web 2.0 Summit, and apparently Sean Parker had some interesting things to say. Basically he thinks that Facebook, eBay, Twitter and Apple will “dominate the web” from here on out. And the one notable company that won’t? Google.

I will admit that Apple and Twitter are doing very well, and I’m quite fond of these companies. I guess I can begrudgingly admit that Facebook is doing well, when it comes down to numbers, not that there isn’t any hate going on. But Google? Not dominating in the future? I call bullshit.

To be fair, let’s take a look at a few other things Parker touched on. Maybe I misunderstood. According to his hair, he must be taken seriously.

Parker believes we’re shifting from the first phase of the Internet, which was dominated by what he calls “information services” — companies like Google and Yahoo. But next up to dominate the web will be the “network services” like Facebook and Twitter.

Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Mr. Parker, are you trapped in a five year timewarp? I won’t even mention Gmail and child, Gtalk, but what about this newfangled thing called Wave? I feel so embarrassed; I thought Google Wave was supposed to be a huge advancement in real-time communication, social networking and just possibly email’s replacement. My mistake.

To be clear, he thinks Google will stay huge and relevant, but it’s dominance will go down because collecting data is less valuable than connecting people, according to Parker that is.

Yes, I’m sure Google will stay huge, and even grow. I agree. After all, their acquisitions and investments are far and wide. But to merely consider them an “information service” is a bit insulting, don’t you think? I’m sure Parker’s own sizable investment in Facebook didn’t affect his comments. That’d just be silly.

I don’t know if Parker has been locked in a dungeon the past few days, or maybe just hasn’t been paying attention to the recent announcements at the Web 2.0 Summit he’s attending. Google penned a search deal with Twitter and announced a social search feature. Granted, Facebook made a deal with Microsoft for status updates a la Bing, but come on. It’s Bing.

Parker also talked a bit about why it’s not always the best products that win. Craigslist, MySpace, AIM and eBay all were poorly designed or executed, yet they did well. According to Parker, this was because their networks were strong enough to overcome their weak predispositions.

These are all bad products, yes. They all initially succeeded, but where are they now? MySpace is a shithole, AIM is seriously slacking in current active users, and Amazon is quickly catching up to eBay, who is stuck in Web 0.5. As for Craigslist, any complaints about the site have always been seen as largely subjective, at best. Its popularity seems to speak for itself.

People use the tools they have access to — even if they are poorly designed or executed, and this applies especially to new concepts. We quickly abandon and leave them to die as soon as light is shed on something far superior. The problem with these failures lie in the fact that they don’t adapt. It’s the simple concept of natural selection at work here.

Maybe Parker should spend a little less time looking pretty for the cameras, and a little more time brushing up on current events.

Image source and source.

I was just invited to Google Wave a couple days ago, and so far I think it has a lot of potential. It can be a bit laggy and buggy at times, but that’s to be expected. A lot of people that are invited early think it will be a big party and then walk away underwhelmed, but really, it will just take time for us to get used to this new communication tool. It is what you make it.

I won’t be going in depth about it right now, but I whipped up a quick visual aid for those just jumping in.

It obviously doesn’t cover everything, so I highly recommend you check out the intro video as well as the YouTube videos in the starter wave.

Direct image download here.

Also, if you fancy talking to rude bots or playing hangman, take a look at some great gadgets for Wave here.

P.S. – No, I don’t have any invites, my apologies.

Really. There’s an app for that. Well, there will be this week, so iPhone users get pumped.

Fwix is a year-old website that collects links to local news and blogs in 85 cities across the country. The iPhone application will allow users to file news updates, photos and videos, live from the field.

“We believe we are the real-time local newswire,” said Darian Shirazi, Fwix’s 22-year-old founder.

The media is relying more frequently on neighborhood bloggers and citizen journalist tweeters for up-to-date buzz, especially on the local front in the face of dwindling newspaper reporting. Some are skeptical that the site will blast off, with the concern that people just won’t contribute.

With the addition of an app, I think it will skyrocket though. We love submitting content in the moment with ease; the focus is shifting to real-time.

What about Twitter?

It’s a source of breaking stories, but things can get lost in the shuffle. Especially between tweets of cooking dinner and shaving the cat. Shirazi claims that Fwix will offer more relevant updates. The site ranks items based on whether other users submit articles that mention similar events and locations. Are you on the scene? Well the site will weigh that too, benefiting from information gathered by the iPhone’s GPS locator. 400,000 people visit the site monthly, but its feed is viewed by over eight-million people between all of the scattered Fwix widgets on the web. Apparently local media outlets have expressed the desire to run a Fwix “ticker” of sorts.

This is the key, really. If Fwix can jump into mainstream distribution, like the AP, it will succeed and become a fablous resource.