One...Trillion Pages...Moah, Ha, Ha

Labels: dr_evil, google, internet

You've Got Micro-mail

Here's an interesting rumor. AOL execs are pursuing merger talks with Microsoft. What an amazing turn of events this would be for Microsoft...to go from courting Yahoo to being courted by AOL.

Now AOL is not anything close to what it used to be. Its transformation into an advertising supported business appears to be flat-lining. Its one "800 lb gorilla" - AOL Instant Messenger appears to have lost about 400 of those pounds with new social networking services like Twitter, Plurk, et al.

Could be an interesting combo. More to come.

Labels: aol, internet, microsoft

I'm Not Dead Yet

I just read the Fast Company article Dead Man Walking, depicting AOL's recent troubles and missteps. With a tip of the cap to Monty Python, I wonder if a king, queen, or pauper will be riding in to pick up the dead as speculated in the article? Not a pretty picture.

Labels: aol, internet

Internet People

This is a great video. And be sure to go to Morgan Webb's WebbAlert site to see the links to the actual videos, pages, and classic Internet stars.

Labels: internet, trends, viralvideo

Are Pigs Flying?

AOL for free? You can't be serious. I never thought I would see the day. It took them long enough! Its funny when you look at the twists and turns of the Internet portal space and how all the "big boys" have essentially taken different paths but are ending up in the same place. Yahoo, Google and MSN (plus other not so big sites like Lycos, Ask, etc.) have a big lead in the ad market, however the volume of users at AOL can't be denied.

From my perspective, AOL IM (disclosure: I used to work at AOL on the IM product) is now not the 800 lb. gorilla within AOL, but the 8 ton gorilla. With 35+Million users, this is an engaged audience that AOL needs to actively cross sell in order to get them to expand their usage of other AOL products and services.

I think the most pressing question is: what is everyone going to do with their AOL CD-ROMs?

Labels: internet

End of an Era

Wow, Lycos did not make too many friends this week. It started on Wednesday when Lycos Finally Sold back Wired.com to Wired Magazine and Conde Nast. Even when I worked at Lycos, I never understood how that relationship worked and why Wired.com was independent of the magazine. Then, as a result of that sale, it was released that Lycos will shutter Webmonkey, the classic web development site that influenced and helped out so many developers in the early stages of the Internet era.

The sale of Wired is something that should have happened years ago for the simple reason that the site should be alighed and owned by the magazine of the same name. I don't have too much of an issue with that. But the shutting down of Webmonkey is just a sad situation. Lycos never, ever gave it any resources whatsoever in all the years it owned it, and let it die a slow and painful death. It was only the resourcefulness of the folks out in the SF offices who kept it going as a labor of love and passion.

With Lycos's new focus on "customer generated content" (i.e.: lets scap money off bloggers and other users), you would think they would have kept WebMonkey and re-invigorated it. I mean, they could have used WebMonkey as an aggregator of developer articles and tips/tricks published all across the web via RSS feeds and such, kind of a combination of A List Apart and del.icio.us. They could have positioned it as a one stop shop for development articles.

But management at Lycos was never too visionary. At one time, they had Jeff Veen, Doug Bowman, and numerous other highly talented innovators and visionaries in the Interactive space under one roof and they failed to put them in positions to succeed. And you wonder why that company is now roadkill on the information superhighway!?!

Labels: internet, lycos

What?!? A Buggy Microsoft App?

I find it utterly hysterical and ironic that for some strange reason, I can not log onto Microsoft's Hotmail, via their "wonderful" Passport authentication system, from the version of Internet Explorer that is on my computer, yet I can successfully log on when using Netscape. My Hotmail account is a spam account anyway, and I rarely use it for anything but signing up for sites I have limited interest in, so its not a big deal. But it is humorous none the less.

Labels: internet, microsoft

RSS

i have discovered rss, as some people call real simple syndication, where you can have data feeds incorperated into your web site or blog. its pretty neat and enables you to add updated info and data to your site. ah, the power of xml.

Labels: internet