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whos.amung.us, the site that let’s you track how many concurrent visitors you have on your site at any time, has launched a new visitor mapping service called maps.amung.us.

in just 4 easy steps, you can choose the kind of map you want (size and map style) and the kind of pins you want to use to represent the visitors (shape and color), and create your own visitor mapping widget. once you’re done customizing the widget, simply paste the code into your site and watch as the interactive map shows visitors and their locations in real-time.

simply click on the map and you will be taken to the amung.us site where you can see more detailed visitor data. for this and more widgets check out the service’s widget archive.

Technorati Tags: amung.us, whos.amung.us, maps.amung.us

a few days ago i expressed my frustration with the blogopshere for intentionally misinterpreting netscape’s re-branding as social suicide and today i want to tell all the detractors to chew on their hats. tom drapeau, director of netscape, clearly pointed out that the netscape social news site wasn’t being killed, rather that it was just being moved to a new location where it would be relaunched under a new brand and with additional features, but no one would believe it.

techcrunch for example, ever so audacious, remarked,

drapeau claims that the social news service will go on at a new site, but failed to name the site or when it would be launched; certainly not a good sign for the current netscape editorial team.

well he has delivered on the first of many promises by announcing where the new site would be (http://propeller.com) and the branding of the new site.

my first thoughts on the brand name and the logo are both great. here’s what ‘propeller’ means to me. by definition, to propel means to motivate, actuate, move, prompt, incite, impel, or to give incentive for action and cause to move forward with force. that said, what will we (at propeller, previously netscape social news) be propelling?

on a very basic level the name symbolizes socially driven news. interacting with content by submitting, voting, commenting, and sharing interesting, entertaining, and otherwise important news items. but more than that it symbolizes what netscape plans to do going forward, i.e. propel the social news model into the next generation through a mix of fixing the problems with the current generation and innovation.

so there you have it. the first step in the unveiling of the new home of netscape’s social news site.

disclaimer: i am a netscape scout

Technorati Tags: netscape, social news, propeller

iilwy (im in like with you), also known as hot or not for the web savvy (read this for a primer on the service), and the facebook of online dating sites, recently released a preview of their new interface for their beta users. here’s a look at what you can expect, and unlimited invites for all my loyal readers for the next 2 days so you can try out the site yourself.

with the new design, the site has said farewell to html and made a complete leap into flash. say goodbye to page refreshes and load-times as you seamlessly travel from one aspect of the site to the next. the main page (or your ‘home’) consists of 6 main panes and three menu bars. from here you can view a snapshot of the most important aspects of your profile and shortcuts to all the ways you can interact with the site.

the first pane displays news and updates from iilwy as well as other ‘breaking news’. clicking on any item from the small boxes will open it in the bigger box above and clicking a link from there will take you off the site and to the full story.

right underneath that you can see all the games (the playful mechanism through which you connect with other users) that you are currently bidding on and the bets you’ve made. clicking on the icon for a game will take you to that game’s page with additional information on the person who created the game, what the game is about, and a list of other bidders along with their comments on the game.

next to these to panes we have a user photo along with some quick statistics. clicking on these will take you to your profile page.

right underneath your profile is the latest addition to iilwy, called chatter. chatter is iilwy’s on-site messaging system that works similar to messaging on the micro-blogging site, pownce (i.e. messages can be public or private, and are threaded). along with chatter you also have ‘recent activity’, which indicates what your friends are up to, tells you who is bidding on you, if you’ve been outbid on a game, and so on.

in the last column, you have a box that displays the games you are running, your tagline for the games, the time left, who has bid on them and how much. clicking on a game will take you to your profile page where the game is displayed.

the last box on your main page displays the most popular games by users from across the site.

apart from these 6 main panes you have two menu bars at the top that give you quick access to your profile, other people’s profiles, chatter across your network, and the ability to view the site in full screen (you have to try full screen mode, it really allows you to enjoy the site and the new interface without any distractions). at the bottom, you have one more menu bar that shows you how many rubies (points you can use to bid on games) you have, which of your friends are online, let’s you edit/update your profile, and check the weather.

i was impressed by the design and the user interface when i first joined the iilwy beta some months back, but with the new design i was blown away. you can seamlessly jump from one part of the site to another without having to wait for pages to load, and every aspect of the site looks flawless.

so what’re you waiting for? click here or here to sign up using one of the two invite systems that charles foreman (founder of iilwy) set up for us. a special thanks to phil butler for making this happen.

p.s. check out some other private beta invites that i have.

Technorati Tags: online dating, iminlikewithyou, iilwy, design, private, beta, invite

about two weeks ago, jordan mccollum reported on an interested study conducted by nielsen that found that online ad-blindness is worsening. if you look at the following heatmap from studies tracking the areas where most users focused on a webpage, you see that ads get little-to-no attention.

the reason for this is not that users hate all advertisement, it’s that users hate how you’re advertising your product. for example, ads with flashing colors, or animals jumping around, and those that are generally distracting or annoying will be noticed by users but will deter 90 percent of them from clicking on the ad or buying a product advertised therein.

no wonder the firefox plugin that wipes ads clean from websites - adblock plus - has garnered so much attention. most people are happy to block out these advertisements because not only do they range from intrusive to obnoxious, but they also take longer than the rest of the content on a page to load, causing you to wait unnecessarily. as noam cohen wrote in the nytimes, adblock plus may soon become an ‘extreme menace to the online-advertising business model’. in fact, the backlash has already begin, with some people blocking access to their content for people using the firefox browser (because it implicitly endorses adblock plus) and for communities whose members use firefox.

what comes as a surprise is that while other business dependent on the viability of the online advertising model are worried, google remains unshaken. in fact, rather than reacting against it, google (which probably has the most to lose) continues to support the development of, and work with the firefox team. perhaps it’s because google remains committed to providing ads that are truly useful and believes that if an ad is useful enough, the users will take it upon themselves to not unblock it.

while the adblock plugin has found millions of friends (and is adding hundreds of thousands as we speak), steve lambert is taking a different approach. unsatisfied with simply blocking the ads, lambert has decided to replace them with artwork from contemporary artists.

replacing annoying and obtrusive ads with some eye candy, turning them into their exact opposite, is a consequent continuation of what adblock started — making the web endurable and enjoyable.

but who says we cannot achieve a compromise between adblock’s goal of making the web ‘endurable and enjoyable’ and lambert’s goal to do so by replacing ads with art, without sending the entire online advertising industry into complete disarray? in fact, the gawker network of blogs has managed to do exactly that. they offer their unsold ad-space to artists (free of cost) to display their artwork.

their decision to do so, coupled with my desire to see this artwork (while i’m browsing their content) not only makes me keep my adblock plugin disabled while i browse some of their less popular blogs, but also gets me to click on the artwork to read more about it. if we were to take this model a few steps further, to the point where we’re not just advertising products, rather are ‘artvertising’ them, perhaps we can get more people to stop blocking the ads and start appreciating them.

Technorati Tags: online, advertising, adblock plus, firefox, steve lambert, artvertising, gawker

i’m happy to announce that i was just inducted into the digg.com 800 club. the group has a total of 4 members (including me). i want to thank all the content producers whose stories i have submitted (for creating the great content) and all the digg users (who have been reading and digging my submissions).

check out my profile, and the complete rankings.

compiler and epicenter, two of the blogs in the wired blog network, accused jason calacanis earlier, of stealing one of their images, erasing their logo from it, and using it without proper attribution.

image: jason calacanis

while they were mocking him by writing that his how-to series (for which the image was used) should be called ‘how to steal’, and were pointing out the alleged hypocrisy in his actions by referring to an earlier calacanis post on scraper sites and plagiarism, what the wired blogs didn’t know was that jason hadn’t stolen the image and erased the logo, rather he just picked it up from a flickr stream where the original has been posted (the original image didn’t have a logo) and the lack of attribution was mere oversight not malicious intent.

what’s worse is that the image they used to accompany their article accusing jason of image theft, was an image taken from a fast company article without permission/attribution. by not doing their research and jumping to their keyboards before contacting jason to hear his side of the story or just asking for a correction, and by showing hypocrisy while blaming someone else for the same, the otherwise-smart blogs have managed to make complete fools of themselves.

both blogs have issued apologies, but the damage has been done.

unfortunately, our attempt to give calacanis a good-natured ribbing came off as more vindictive and mean-spirited than we intended. adding irony to insult, our post on epicenter initially used an image of calacanis that was itself lifted from another magazine, fast company. as a result, no matter how justified our initial complaint, we totally undercut our own case, and in the process made ourselves into an illustration of the very error we were trying to point out.

p.s. i have made the same mistake in the past, and in fact for many bloggers it’s a part of maturing into the field (i.e. we all make this mistake at least once, and therefore it’s good to read/write about it every now and again) but to see such high-profile blogs make this mistake is quite surprising.

Technorati Tags: wired, blogs, compiler, epicenter, calacanis, research, plagiarism, scraping, theft, apology

do you blog in a bad neighborhood? do you think there are people who might have a grudge against your blog? or are simply worried that the competition doesn’t like to play fair? well if you’re concerned about people breaking and entering your blog, you don’t have to be anymore.

i got an email from michael vandemar pointing me to a rather useful wordpress plugin that he has developed, called login lockdown. the plugin records the ip address and timestamp of every failed attempt to log into your wordpress blog. if there are more than a certain number of failed attempts in quick succession from the same ip range, the plugin will automatically disable the login function for that range.

this helps to prevent brute force password discovery. currently the plugin defaults to a 1 hour lock out of an IP block after 3 failed login attempts within 5 minutes. this can be modified via the options panel. admisitrators can release locked out ip ranges manually from the panel.

check out the plugin: login lockdown v1.1 or learn more about the plugin from michael.

Technorati Tags: blogging, wordpress, plugin, security, login lockdown

this morning, tom drapeau, director of netscape, announced the upcoming changes at netscape on the netscape blog.

most importantly, we’ll be providing you the new location for the social news site.

we, as a company, remain committed to delivering a compelling social news experience for our users. this move is an effort to make both the former portal experience and the social news experience accessible so that you can decide which you prefer-or, even better, that you want to participate in both.

we look forward to unveiling a new social news site as soon as possible. the ability to post, comment, rate and share the news that’s most relevant to you is as important to us as it is to you. we will be maintaining an open dialogue with you, our users, so that you’ll be the first to know as soon as we’re ready to pull back the curtains.

[emphasis added]

and this is how the blogosphere reported it:

1. techcrunch - netscape digg clone is kaput
2. webware - netscape pulls plug on digg clone
3. cybernet - netscape’s “digg-clone” calling it quits
4. wikinomics - netscape social experiment (digg clone) is dead
5. epicenter - netscape ends digg-clone social news experiment

it is incredibly shameful to see how these generally credible sources have thrown both the facts and caution to the wind and gone ahead with stories and titles that express nothing more than their hate for the netscape brand. the true story, as you can see from tom’s statement (that sparked the entire conversation) is that netscape is simply moving the social news site to a new home with a new brand name. everything else about the site will either stay the same (or improve).

disclaimer: i am a netscape scout

Technorati Tags: netscape, social news, social media

did you hear that sound a couple days ago? well that was a few hundred thousand iphone early-adopters groaning in frustration and anger in response to steve jobs’ decision to reduce the price of the phone by $200. not only were the customers angry, but so were the investors, sending the stock price down around 10% since the announcement two days ago. while the investors and the analysts will have to wait to see if the move pays off, there are several ways for customers to get their money back.

1. apple’s price guarantee

should apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact apple sales support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. to receive the refund or credit you must contact apple within 14 business days of shipment.

2. steve jobs’ apology

after telling usatoday that the price drop was just how technology works and saying tough luck to the early-adopters, jobs’ did an about-face in an open letter to iphone customers.

therefore, we have decided to offer every iphone customer who purchased an iphone from either apple or at&t, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an apple retail store or the apple online store.

3. most credit card companies

The following is quoted from the additional citicard disclosures but most credit cards have a similar offering.

if you buy an item with your mastercard or visa card, and if within 60 days after your purchase you see a printed advertisement for the same item (same model number and same model year) by the same manufacturer for lower price, we will refund you the price difference, up to $250 per item (up to a maximum of $1,000 per cardmember per year) provided the printed advertisement was published on the same day as or within 60 days after your purchase. no registration is necessary.

4. american express

american express also has an offering similar to the one mentioned above, but in spite of the 60-day limit on the offering and regardless of whether you are enrolled in it, american express is offering to adjust the price difference to all members. I called american express return protection at 1 (800) 297-8019 yesterday and was told that even though this was out of my coverage, in this case american express was making exceptions for all members.

after confirming my account and billing address, the lady on the phone simply asked for transaction date, location, price (with sales tax because you also get a refund on that), and the adjustment requested, and told me that the change would be reflected on my account within 24-48 hours.

note: i bought my iphone on launch-day and it was out of the 60-day window but i amex gave me the refund anyway.+

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, american express

peter is 22 years old. he is studying physics and loves mathematics but his real passion is computer science. he has recently become famous for developing reddit media and digpicz.

hi peter. thanks for taking out the time to answer some questions.

let’s start with some background.

Sure. I got into programming around 1996. It was hard to get internet access here in Latvia at that time so I befriended a unix sysadmin who was like my teacher at that time. anyway, from there, i met this friend on irc, who helped me with various computer-related things and introduced me to linux and programming.

my first experience with programming was creating an irc client. it was fun exploring this protocol. since then I have been programming both for fun and work in many various languages. at one point I even wrote an intrusion prevention system when i worked as an white-hat (ethical) hacker.

so how did you end up creating reddit media?

i have been an active reddit user for a while, since the content there is relatively better than other social sites. when they added the programming subreddit, it became my number one source of information. as for why i created reddit media, it was mostly so that people would have an easy way to access all the media (pictures and videos) that is submitted to Reddit.

It was so easy to create it, that i just did it.

and how about diggpicz?

well, as i’m sure you know, digg users have been asking for a pictures section on the site for a long time. i saw that the digg developers kept saying that they would create the section but haven’t done it yet so I decided to do it for digg users. i have had so much programming experiences that this is easy for me and allows me to help such a large community with relatively little effort on my part.

it was just a few hours of work to reuse code that I had written for reddit media to create digg picz.

so where do you go from here? it seems that digg’s official pictures section is coming. is there any chance that they will seek help from you or would you consider working for/with them?

well, even when digg releases their own version, i won’t feel that my efforts are wasted. creating the site was fun and I enjoyed helping thousands of users in the meantime. again, the site took only 7 hours to make. that said, i doubt that they will use my site, because i wrote it entirely in perl and optimized it for a shared hosting server, meaning that all the pages are pre-generated and there is no interaction with database in real time. and digg runs php, so it would be a complete re-write. my intention was never ‘build-to-flip’

working for digg would be cool, but there is a problem with that. I am last year theoretical physics student and i graduate only in June 2008. i am applying for mit this november and if i get accepted then i will put all the effort in studying there and not working. if i don’t get in, then i will definitely consider working for digg.

now that you have created a version of the site for reddit and a version for digg and seen how successful both of them have become, have you thought about releasing a pligg-like cms to let people create their own media sites?

yes i have thought about it, but first i would like to finish picurls.com (same idea as popurls.com but focused on pictures) which will be in perl again. in an upcoming version of picurls.com you will be able to choose from a variety of sources, which ones you want to see pictures from.

hopefully this site will launch by this sunday.

and you are funding all these projects out of your own pocket?

yes, I am funding all of this -literally- out of my own pocket, hence I am looking for someone who would sponsor me a dedicated linux server.

thanks for your time and I hope somebody will generously gift you a linux server.

for more, please check out peter’s website: good coders code, great reuse.

Technorati Tags: digg, reddit, digpicz, reddit media, peteris krumins, social media