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Today this blog hit 25,000 visits since it launched in November. While an established blog might pull 25,000 visits on its worst post of the day, for a one-man-show hobbyist like me, I’m happy to hit the 25,000 mark. Another minor milestone was reached last week. I received my first payment from Google for the advertisements on the site. That check will cover my annual hosting expenses.
Thanks for visiting and supporting the blog.
I sure picked the wrong week to be busy with non-tech stuff. Much has happened in the past week and my Google Reader is still readlined at 1000+ new articles to read. These are some of the stories from the past week that look the most interesting:
- Android 2.2 “FroYo” debuted at Google I/O. Many people have it up and running on rooted Nexus Ones. It supports the creation of mobile hotspots which basically turns a FroYo device into a wireless router. IntoMobile has been providing good coverage. It recently reported that the “leaked” version is not the final version, according to Googler Romain Guy, but it is apparently very stable.
- Google I/O attendees found HTC Evo 4Gs in their goodie bags, Oprah style. I’ve written about the Evo 4G before (which should have stayed with the codename “Supersonic” but, anyhow…). What happens when you give an hot Android phone to hundreds of developers? Well, someone figures out how to gain superuser access by rooting the device (video). Robert Scoble started a high traffic Buzz comparing the Evo to the iPhone platform. Many newly minted Android fans weighed in and dueled with Apple fanatics. The iPhone 4G (or HD or whatever they decide to call it) has a fierce competitor comprised of Google and virtually every major device manufacturer.
- Mark Zuckerberg conceded by email (which he agreed to make public): “I know we’ve made a bunch of mistakes….” Captain Obvious? I wonder, however, whether they did as big a land grab as possible with a slight retreat in mind from the onset. Don’t know. In any event, it remains to be seen what Facebook intends to do about the mistakes. I suggest that they include a lockdown button in the privacy settings which basically toggles off all information sharing except with friends. In my opinion, that would be a step in the right direction for Facebook.
- Gizmodo found or stole another prototype, depending on your perspective. This one appears to be the Motorola Shadow which runs Android. The story goes that a gym employee found one laying around and Gizmodo got ahold of it (follow link for pics). This phone looks great and it’s almost certainly Verizon bound. It could be branded as the “Droid 2.”
- The Google Orkut experiment is still ongoing. A number of Google Buzz users are playing around with Orkut and enjoying it. If you’re at all interested, check out my post about it.
- Finally, this blog has been getting very heavy traffic lately compared to historical numbers. I attribute that primarily to my posts about the HTC Incredible which is still back ordered at Verizon. I’ve loaded up on apps and if you don’t know where to start, check out my AppBrain page. Also, I redid the TechBottle logo in the header of the blog. Do you like it? Be honest. I’m on the fence about it but I’d rather read and write to the blog than tinker with the logo more.
P.S. I have something brewing with a major carrier. Expect good but very honest hands-on cellphone reviews. It’s also possible I’ll have some leaked info about upcoming phones soon. Stay tuned!
You might be thinking, “what the hell is this about?” Well, the Salmon Protocol is a solution to a problem. The problem is we have fragmented conversations across the web on multiple platforms. I blast out TechBottle on Twitter, Facebook and Buzz. I have personal accounts on all three too and sometimes cross-post to my personal accounts. So, although my blog shows very few comments, many of my posts have sparked full-fledged conversations, particularly on Buzz. Sometimes they even spark comments that do not come to my attention. Well, the Salmon Protocol is the solution to this problem.
While it is not yet deployed, the Salmon Protocol will use PubSubHubBub (which stands for something but I don’t know what). PubSubHubBub is used for, among other things, pushing out TechBottle’s RSS feed to Google on a real-time basis. My blog signals to Google that it has new content to syndicate. Google does not need to crawl my blog at predetermined intervals to check for new content.
So why is this a problem worth solving or worth reading about? The Salmon Protocol will unify conversations. We will be able to choose any platform we like but participate in a broader discussion with a wider circle of people. The internet will be more connected and less disjointed when the Salmon Protocol is deployed. It will be quite interesting.
For More Information: http://www.salmon-protocol.org/
[via Buzz via John Hardy's comment on my Buzz Question]
I started Tech Bottle six months ago and I find myself now blogging about blogging. I did a quick Google search for reasons to write a blog and it returned 44.2 million hits. I’ve opted to write about my own experience and not parrot back what others have suggested.
Blogging was once seen as a “look at me!” activity involving only the most self-absorbed people. I think that subset, like nearly the rest of world, has moved to Facebook. It’s definitely become the preferred platform for narcissists (but not all Facebookers are narcissists, of course). I considered blogging anonymously back in November and decided against it. I never intended to write anything controversial on Tech Bottle and I didn’t see a need to pretend to be someone else. Although I write under my own name, I blog for the reasons given below (not to draw extreme attention to myself) and I think they’re compelling reasons for people to consider writing a blog.
There are probably around 200 million blogs in the world covering virtually every topic imaginable. I chose technology as my primary theme but some people blog restaurant reviews, photography, travel, karate, knitting (5.6 million Google hits for “knitting blog”), etc. Last year, I found myself renewing my interest in technology. I like tinkering with computers, mobile phones and other gadgets. Right out of the gate, I knew I’d have fun playing with WordPress and creating the infrastructure for a blog. I’m frequently tinkering with the blog. Also, I found myself talking people’s ears off in “real life” about technology. I was more interested in these topics than some of the people with whom I associate. I decided to blog to find other people with similar interests (geeks, I suppose) and share my thoughts. I also “mashup” or repost items that I find interesting from other sources with attribution. Between the various social networks, primarily Twitter and Buzz, I have been able to meet people throughout the blogosphere who also share some of my interests. I discovered new blogs to read and we don’t talk each other’s ears off. Blogs are entirely on-demand; you can tune into things that interest you and tune out to things that don’t. The blogosphere is something like the world’s largest newspaper with every blogger serving as his or her own editor-in-chief.
Blogging is a good recession activity. WordPress (start at WordPress.org, not WordPress.com) and other blogging platforms are completely free. Domain names and hosting are cheap. If you’re willing to allocate a little bit of space to advertisers (Google AdSense is pretty easy to set up), you’ll come out ahead even with a modest following. In my first few months of blogging, I’ve covered my annual expenses.
I’ve enjoyed blogging more than I thought I would. If you’re passionate about something or willing to become passionate about something, you’ll likely enjoy blogging too.
I re-themed Tech Bottle because many of the newer WordPress themes are more versatile and visually appealing than the Constructor theme I previously used. I went with Suffusion which is designed by Sayontan. If Tech Bottle looks somewhat like another site you visit, don’t be surprised. The Suffusion theme has been downloaded nearly 5,000 times from WordPress.org.
Click around, take a look and let me know what you think either in the comments or by email – JON at TBOTTLE.COM.
Milestone announcement… I’ve officially deleted 500 spam comments from Tech Bottle. So you’ll know what you missed… cheap auto insurance, viagra, cheap health insurance, cialis, free vacations and a bunch of stuff in other languages. I’m thinking of disabling the comment system on Tech Bottle because almost all of the legitimate comments I have received on the blog were posted to Twitter, Facebook or Google Buzz.
In other Tech Bottle news, readership is on the rise, especially after the Google Buzz launch and on days when I write new posts. The average number of daily readers is approximately 150 which excludes RSS and email subscribers. Across all of the social networks, the blog has around 600 followers, which may include some duplicates.
Beneath each post you will now find a list of all of the methods of reposting or rebroadcasting any post on Tech Bottle. Kudos of WordPress plugin “Light Social” for making this easy.
I decided to share some of our 2009 Google Analytics data with the readers of Tech Bottle. The data is not overly-impressive but show that this site has some potential to generate a following, especially considering it took to the blogosphere on November 10, 2009. I’ll also share with you why I write the blog and Tech Bottle’s 2010 goals (including that I’m seeking additional bloggers).
Recognizing that Facebook has a significantly greater user-base than Twitter (Zynga’s FarmVille alone has more users than Twitter, reportedly), we have added a Facebook fan page. Please consider becoming a fan of Tech Bottle on Facebook. We also will continue to push our content to @techbottle on Twitter.
All of the methods of following Tech Bottle are now listed on our Contacts page.
