Reddit's influential 12 year old

Mike Arrington at TechCrunch highlights a recent Wall Street Journal article called “The Wizards of Buzz” which looks at the power of the top users on Digg, Netscape and other “social bookmarking” sites.

One of the top 'influencers' on Reddit, (bought in Ocober 2006 by Condé Nast, turned out to be a 12 year old boy called Adam Fuhrer who lives near Toronto. His father restricts Adam's access to sites such as YouTube, yet Adam has enough time on his hands and nous to reach the top users list on Reddit.

Adam tracks 100 sites searching for news about criminal justice, his local hockey team and software. Recently he focussed on the security vulnerabilities of Vista, Microsoft's much hyped new operating system, gaining approving votes from more than 500 users.

Microsoft having spent five years and an estimated $10bn developing Vista their first operating system since XP, must have concerns that the fruits of their massive investment can be shaped to some extent by someone who no matter how bright they are, is not yet a teenager. It is worth poiting out that Adam is merely linking to established sources such as Robert Vamosi, senior editor at CNet, whose credibility is less of an issue.

One outcome of the Wall Street Journal revealing the identities and ages of some of the top posters to user generated sites, is how regular users of these sites will now feel having been influenced by someone eight years below the lower end of the typical reddit/digg user demographic of 20-30 years old.

TechCrunch20 reignites conflict of interest row

Last December an enormous row erupted between Sam Sethi, publisher of newly setup TechCrunch UK and Mike Arrington the owner/editor of TechCrunch.com.

One of Arrington's gripes with Sethi was

"Sam's ethical lapse in trashing a competitor while simultaneously promoting his own events."

Fast forward six weeks with TechCrunch UK still on hold and Sam succesfully relocated to his own site Vecosys with co-editor Mike Butcher.
Today Arrington posts a curious announcement from DEMO outlining its deficiencies and high entry costs while promoting TechCrunch20, his zero cost startup launch conference in partnership with Jason Calacanis, founder of highly popular tech blog Engadget.

Guardian technology journalist Bobbie Johnson was one of the first to point out:

"wasn’t the reason you got irritated with TCUK because they criticised Le Web and announced a competing event at the same time? If so, so what’s with ragging DEMO and launching your own competitor in the same post here?"

Arrington is yet to respond to this observation, but replies to Robert Scoble's accusation of being 'tactless' hours after having lunch together today.

Sam Sethi magnanimously resists having too much of a dig writing:

"good luck Jason and Mike, we already know it’s a great idea! I look forward to reading more about the “original” ideas presented at TechCrunch20."

Shiny Media sells 50% for $4.5m funding

The UK's largest blog network Shiny Media, has secured $4.5m in funding from Dan Wagner's venture capital arm, Bright Station. Dan Wagner bought the tech remnants of ill-fated Boo.com and built e-commerce supplier Venda and search engine Locayta.

Shiny Media set up by Guardian technology contributor Ashley Norris, Chris Price and Katie Lee has grown from the initial Tech Digest to now 22 blogs with 3 million readers monthly.

Their blogs are grouped in four main sections. Shiny Tech including 'James Murdoch's favourite' HDTV, Shiny Sport featuring Who Ate All The Pies, Shiny Fashion with Shoewawa and Shiny Lifestyle with the exquisitely named Bayraider.

Commenting on their funding, Ashley answers the question why they need $4.5m at a cost of 50% of the company:

1) competing with mainstream media.

2) developing the commercial side of our business.
3) video is the future for blogging.
4) expanding our range of blogs.
5) eyeing up new horizons.

"Why Bright Station Ventures? Well we have worked really hard to develop Shiny and we wanted like-minded entrepreneurs who were prepared to ‘sweat’ with us, not just look over our shoulder. Shaa and Dan are both dynamos who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. They don’t just bring the backing of an exciting new fund to Shiny, they also bring experience, contacts and the kind of commercial nous Shiny needs to achieve its goals."

The significance of this deal is likely to be resonating around the blogosphere for some time to come.

Photo of Ashley Norris courtesy of ProBlogger

Ballerinas, Bigots, Bullies and Slavery

Three weeks in January '07 with three women publicly venting their extreme viewpoints

Tainted cookies from Downing Street

Like many people, part of their routine is running anti-spyware and adware programs to bolster their firewall and anti-virus defences.

So last night trawling through the usual suspects picked up by Ad-Aware, I found a couple of quarantined files from The Guardian and one from CNet plus a few clearly ad-related. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But lodged amongst them was a first appearance from "uk.stat.com/primeministersoffice/downingstreet."

Hunting down the cookie details shows it allegedly expiring at the end of the session as opposed to many that optimistically expire 35 years from now, such as Google's. (Show me a PC in regular use that will function and be active 35 years from now and I'll be impressed). As Simon Willison points out 'How many people are going to go a whole ten years without losing their browser’s cookies, through a browser upgrade, PC upgrade, change of job or just wiping the cookie directory?'

The question remains why would a cookie from Downing Street appear as spyware? and more generally 'when do cookies become spyware?' Stefanie Olsen at CNet looked at this way back in 2005. She defines 'Spyware as denying people reasonable control over the application -- the ability to easily uninstall it, for example. And, as its name implies, it typically spies on people while they're surfing the Web. It can collect passwords, bank statements and other personal data, down to the keystroke.'

Olsen reports that Richard Smith, a privacy and security consultant said "some anti-spyware audits are padding the potential threat to create the impression that they're doing more work than they really are to protect consumers."

It is curious that Ad-Aware picked up 'primeministersoffice/downingstreet' and makes one wonder why an 'innocuous cookie' would be quarantined as spyware. 10 Downing Street has a detailed Privacy Policy page that states 'Ned Stat, an independent measurement and research company gathers non-personal data regarding the visitors to our site on our behalf using cookies and code embedded in the site'.

Yet why the Prime Minister's Office's cookies and code appear as spyware is not clear.

Does the iPhone live up to the hype?

First impressions of the iPhone are pretty damn good. After years of speculation regarding the iPhone, endless rumours and plenty of creative visualisations, the big day arrived.

Steve Jobs at Macworld in San Francisco unveiled a credible touchscreen device, with a high degree of innovation. It has 200 patents including the intriguingly named 'Accelerometer', plus Proximity sensors and Visual Voicemail. Priced at $499 for the 4GB version and a very steep $599 for 8GB Flash storage capacity.

Thankfully Engadget blogged the keynote in real time, with enough galleries to satisfy Apple's most enthusiastic fanatics. (Engadget had 10 times normal traffic during Job's keynote peaking at nearly 10 million page impressions, although there is still some confusion whether or not this takes into account page refreshes).

Mike Butcher also has an easy to digest round-up of the iPhone's key features gleaned from TUAW, Paidcontent, Crunchgear and Engadget.

In a refreshing note of balance, Ben King at Channel 4 asks "Why are we so obssessed with Apple?"






Tech Paparazzi's Verdict: Without personally having used the the iPhone, this is mainly based on Steve's keynote: While there are always going to be detractors predicting failure it seems to exceed the hype, appearing to carry the iPod wow-factor and usability to the iPhone. Guy Kewney at the Reg thinks there will be a demand for the abandoned scroll wheel and reckons it will reappear in hardware version 1.5. But surely the scroll wheel could appear on the touchscreen in an upgrade.

Europe will have to wait until Christmas '07 or early 2008 until it ships this side of the pond.

on the way to Las Vegas for CES

There was no fog that day.
Originally uploaded by Tolka Rover.

from Flickr, tagged CES, originally uploaded by Tolka Rover