Brief explanation: I was flirting with the idea of shutting the blog down or allowing it to simply wither on the vine. I even considered posting a message that all of my blogging will occur in a micro fashion either on Buzz or Twitter (@JonMallin).  However, I have decided to keep the blog live, allow guest bloggers to participate (Thanks Louis Parker and Nick Waye), and to personally update it on a infrequent basis. These are my thoughts on technology that I’ve had bottled up (get the joke?) for awhile with a focus on Google.

On to discuss Google’s game plan… TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter because it threatened Twitter. TweetDeck was and is the most-widely used third party vehicle and Twitter was the destination. The problem for Twitter is that TweetDeck was also a vehicle that drove people to Facebook and Buzz, though to a much lesser extent. If FaceMashSomething popped up tomorrow, a Twitter rival, TweetDeck could propel it to instant stardom. On the other hand, if Twitter acquires TweetDeck then it owns and controls a vehicle, an especially popular vehicle.

Today I had a somewhat similar random thought that might sound somewhat conspiracy-like. Google has created Chome browser and Chrome OS to move advertisements from the web and into the OS (banner at the bottom, pop-ups, etc.). Remember the fundamentals? Google is, at its core, an advertising company… plain and simple.  This would insure advertising revenue regardless of the websites people visit. Websites come and go. There was AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, MySpace, etc. Websites tend to be short-term trends. What is intelligent about Google’s plan is that it would be immune to these trends. Facebook could beat Buzz/Google Me, Bing could become popular, Twitter use could skyrocket and guess what? If Google owns the vehicle, the OS it gives away for free, it has the ability to sell advertisers access to your eyeballs (remember, your eyeballs are Google’s primary “product”).

This is precisely the Android model.

So, Android = huge success by all accounts based on insanely fast widespread adoption.

Google owns the vehicle and it serves up ads through third party apps (note: in fact, no native Google apps have advertising banners AFAIK).

If they can move from handsets to desktops to other ways of catching your eyeballs, Google makes boatloads of cash.

If I’m correct in my thinking, Google should be patenting the heck out of an OS that overlays ads over internet accessed content or otherwise interjects ads into the user experience (brief pauses with animated ads or boot-up ads… whatever, patent it all). Furthermore, Google should give away computers. I previous wrote, “Chrome OS Netbooks — Hell Yes, Google Will Give away computers” back in December of 2009.  What happened?  Google beta tested a computer giveaway, the CR-48. The goals isn’t to sell computers. It never was. Every pundit who declares Google’s hardware experiences “failures” is an idiot. Google TV is a way to sell your eyeballs when you look at your television. Google’s web properties sell your eyeballs when you look at the computer. Google Android, YouTube… you get the point. The amount of revenue Google receives directly from the sale of a physical product is immaterial to Google’s plans. The only thing that matters is that Google win the vehicle war.

My belief is that Google may think it has nearly saturated some of its existing customers and maximized the value they can extract out of existing eyeballs. They now need new eyeballs. People who don’t have computers, smartphones, etc. If they give away computers, they may harvest up new eyeballs. Senior citizens and the poor are likely audiences.

This is not to say Google isn’t diversifying. Sure, it wants to serve up its productivity suite. But, I contend that line of business will be immaterial to Google’s revenue stream for a long, long time.

Google’s “master plan” is to be the vehicle through which your eyeballs travel. They’re not looking to pull money from your wallet by selling you a product. Instead, our eyeballs are being sold as the product and Google wants to make sure it is the largest, best eyeball store around.

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Tech Bottle is adding new bloggers.  Expect more posts, greater diversity in views expressed and a wider range to topics to be covered. A handful of people, including Louis Parker, have volunteered to write for Tech Bottle. I thank them in advance.

If you have any interest in writing to this blog, whether or not you have any experience blogging, please contact me at jon@tbottle.com. You can write under your own name or an alias. You can write about anything tech related. There is no commitment. You can write as often or as infrequently as you want. I have a limited number of tbottle.com email addresses I can hand out to new bloggers.

Proceeds from Tech Bottle will first go towards blog expenses. If any profits remain, they will be donated to a charity that is agreed upon by the Tech Bottle contributors.

Please email me with any feedback you have (jon@tbottle.com) about Tech Bottle opening its doors to some new faces. I expect this experiment to be a smashing success and I hope you continue to enjoy the blog.

Very truly yours,

Jon Mallin

Founder of Tech Bottle

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Hello, I am a new writer here at Tech Bottle. My name is Louis Parker. I am a high school student who is very interested in technology. However, being a high school student, I do not wish to reveal my real name, and am instead using Louis Parker as my alias. I will begin with a little bit about myself. I especially love technologies that are open source, such as Linux, Arduino, Android and BSD. I am constantly trying out new operating systems and have two computers for that purpose. Currently, I am installing PC-BSD, my first BSD, on an old Dell computer, and running Fedora 14 on my primary computer. I am also in the process of learning Java and Python. The only other computer language I know is BASIC, which is fairly obsolete now, thus my learning of Java and Python. In addition to being an open source advocate amongst my friends, I am also an advocate of freedom on computers. I try to get as many of my friends as possible to call or write emails to our congresspersons in favor of Net Neutrality. I am also trying to get one of my friends to switch to Linux, trying to get them to use Ubuntu. As for my hardware, I have two desktop computers, a Kyocera Loft(which is a cheap pay-as-you-go phone on Virgin Mobile), a Barnes and Noble nook 3g, and a Microsoft Zune. I love all these devices, however I wish that I could have a better phone. I do, however, regularly use the Android Emulator included in the SDK to try out a few apps.

Because of the fact that this is an alias, I would like to know if people would recommend I use services such as Buzz and Twitter under this alias. I already use them, not to create content, but to consume others content, including Jon’s, but do not wish to use my existing accounts for my alias. So if you could leave a comment if you would be interested in following a Buzz or Twitter, or any other services, I would appreciate it. Also, if you have any recommendations for articles at all, I would appreciate those too.

I am very excited to begin writing here at Tech Bottle and I hope that you enjoy my work!

Update: Google profile is at: https://www.google.com/profiles/u/0/louis.parker.tb including my Buzz feed.

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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.

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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!

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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]

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

Google Analytics Data

2,304 visits (recent average of 89 visits per day) / 77 countries (70% U.S.) / 3,369 page views

Only 10% of visitors have visited the site more than once. (Yikes!)

Traffic Sources: 50% search engines, 32% referring sites (including Facebook and Twitter) and 18% direct traffic (recently search engine traffic surpassed referring traffic)

Top Browsers: 34% Firefox, 25% Internet Explorer, 16% Google Chrome, 15% Apple Safari and 10% other (including smartphones)

No post accounted for more than 15% of page views.

Why I Write the Blog

I recently renewed my interest in technology and I was talking people’s ears off about topics ranging from upcoming phones to linux variants. I decided it was easier to just post my babble online and people who want to read it can and others can tune it out. I’m also finding that many people I don’t know find some of what I write interesting (the mere 10% who have visited the site more than once, I suppose). I received some encouragement from friends who offered to contribute (and still haven’t *nudge, nudge*). It was relatively cheap to obtain the domain name (more on this later) and buy one year of hosting. Finally, I was always curious about WordPress, the software that powers most blogs and some significant publications like PC World.

I also started Tech Bottle to obtain access to beta apps and services like FourSquare and Google Wave. Lastly, and least important, one of the goals of entering the blogosphere was to generate revenue (through the advertisements on the site) to cover the cost of the domain name and hosting. Any additional revenue will be put towards a round of beers or whatnot. It’s not like anyone gets rich off a small blog like Tech Bottle.

Goals for 2010

I would like to find additional bloggers who are willing to contribute posts from time to time about any tech topics they find interesting. No prior blogging experience is required. I’m just looking for people who have unique ideas or opinions and want to share them. WordPress has a nice interface for typing and editing posts. It is easy to learn. If you have any interest, e-mail info@tbottle.com. Specifically, it would be nice to have an iPhone-wielding blogger.

I am trying to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. In the beginning I emphasized quantity over quality to generate a following. Presently, Tech Bottle has 267 followers on Twitter and 71 on Facebook. This is a relatively low number and I would like to generate more interest in the blog. I intend to do this by writing original content and aggregating only the best outside content, not by writing six bad posts a day.

The blog naming took place with only about 10 minutes of thought. Tech Bottle doesn’t mean anything in particular. I was looking for a short domain name and tbottle.com was available. I approached the people who own techbottle.com (which is dormant) and received no reply. So, for the time being, tbottle.com will be the domain name.

I also intend to write and edit posts better in 2010. I’m able to write much better than some of the posts demonstrate. I frequently find myself editing posts after I published them to clean up typos and other issues. In my opinion, blogs are more about ideas and information than style but I still want to improve the overall quality of the posts.

Generating comments on the blog isn’t a goal of mine. Some bloggers have contests that relate to picking comment posters to receive a prize or end every post with a question to the readers. Frankly, most comments, even on the major blogs, are simply flames or spam. It’s not that I don’t appreciate good comments; I simply don’t care that much one way or another.

I might reskin the site in 2010 with a different theme. The current aesthetics leave something to be desired.

Readers. If nobody read this site, I wouldn’t write. I’d use pencil and paper and call it a diary instead of a blog.

People who donated Google Wave invitations to help develop a following in mid-November. These all came from total strangers and were, accordingly, shared with total strangers who retweeted or otherwise provided me with feedback.

@TferThomas on Twitter, a social media and Blackberry guru, has generously retweeted many of my posts to his ~7,800 followers.

Finally

If you have ideas for Tech Bottle, please send them to me at info@tbottle.com.

Have a great year!

Jon Mallin

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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.

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