new technorati design … is it an improvement?

the other day, and i have to admit i am a bit late here, i went to technorati to check my favorite blogs and when the side loaded the picture above is what i saw. first i thought it was the wrong site and i had clicked on the wrong link on my favorites bar, but then i saw the technorati logo in the top left corner, which seems to be the only thing left from the old design, and i realized the site got an redesign. now after having used the new site for a bit, i unfortunately have to say i am not that impressed.

first of all the overall look and feel has gotten worse in my opinion. where it used to be quite professional with few links, it is now a bit cluttered and the icons and colors make it look more like a kids page than a serious site for news gathering.

focusing only on the heads/icons of featured bloggers is also not that useful, in the past you would get to know at least what the featured blogs would write about but what am i to learn just from a picture or icon? not that much to be honest.

i know how much time, effort, and work goes into redesigning a site and i love technorati, so it kind of pains me to write this, but to be honest i wish they would go back to the old design.

one of the things i like though about the new design is that tags have become more prominent now, they were a bit hidden in the old design.

branded mobile phone service is the wrong way to test mobile consumption market

according to mediaweek a merrill lynch analyst is asking disney to discontinue the espn mobile phone service.

Merill Lynch: Time to Pull Plug on Mobile ESPN

the analyst argues that:
“Analysts Jessica Reif Cohen and Michael Kopelman on Wednesday wrote that “it is time for Disney to pull the plug on Mobile ESPN,” charging that since Disney launched the service with much fanfare during Super Bowl XL, the company has had little luck landing paying subscribers. … Cohen and Kopelman now estimate that ESPN Mobile will lure a mere 30,000 subscribers over the course of this financial year, well below their original estimate of 240,000. “
… “ML expects that the Mouse will lose $135 million on its experiment in FY06.”

i don’t know if the report adds more information about why disney should discontinue the product or what they should do instead, but to only take the numbers is a bit shortsighted. the service clearly has not been a success and that is no surprise. anyone who thought that disney could reach more than 200,000 users willing to pay for a service like this that requires a special phone, plan, and carrier doesn’t understand the content business.

what is most interesting about the article is this line at the very end of the article:
“Disney may have also looked to use the initiative as a means to analyse consumer consumption of wireless content.”
now if this is really the case, those disney people are dumber than i thought they could be. if you want to test consumer consumption of wireless services and content why do you limit the reach? that would be like making a movie for which you have to buy a subscription first then have to go to a specific movie theater (which is not even that great) and then on top of the subscription charge more than the average fee to let people into the theater. based on the results you then decide if people like movies. probably not.

while espn is a great brand and certainly has content that a lot of people are willing to pay for, that content is not so important that people will change their behavior for. why espn doesn’t work with existing carriers in making their content easier accessible through existing channels is beyond my understanding. right now using cingular it takes me more than a minute to find any sporting result if i want to know it, to offer a cross platform solution that works via the internet and the mobile phone, or some application widget for my phone most of this could be taken care of without espn having to create a whole new branded phone distribution channel.

omni web 5.5 goes beta

the omni group, probably the best mac application developer out there, posted the first beta version of omni web 5.5. first of all the new version uses an updated version of the web kit which ensures that sites like the new yahoo home page now also work with omni web.

i have been using omni web on and off over the last couple of years, but in the last year site compatibility issues have made me use safari more and more, up to the point where i ended up using only safari. but the new beta version seems to address all the site compatibility issues and i am back taking advantage of the site preferences and workspaces that omni web offers as well as having tabed browsing with site previews.

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/download/beta/

and yet again, microsoft does not get it

microsoft is trying yet again to break apple’s dominace in the online music download and mp3 player market by introducing the Argo, Microsoft’s iPod killer.

the player which is expected to hit stores for the christmas season is “… will be part of the XBox brand and feature, along with all the routine media playback options, a wireless net connection and a social aspect along the lines of the XBox online experience.”

microsoft usually gets things wrong the first couple of tries (look at the initial xbox as well as most of their other products especially the explorer). looking at this device i wouldn’t be surprised if they get it wrong with this device too.

first, why does microsoft care? judging from their late entry into the mp3 player market, they don’t want to be in it. they pretty much tried everything to stay out of it. but after five years there is still no real competitor to the ipod in sight. and that means that the more apple corners the digital music space with their aac, apple lossless and quicktime formats which would in the long term render the wmv based files useless and microsoft losing a standards battle. and if there is something microsoft really hates then it is not owning a standard. they don’t care if others make money of their products (like dell or sap) as long as they own the platform. and microsoft is loosing the digital music platform battle. so after trying several times by working with hardware manufacturers and content players to no avail, they are now starting their own player business. and unlike apple they are no in the business of selling hardware to make money off the hardware but to push the microsoft digital music platform. what that means is that while everyone, including microsoft, is complaining that apple is locking users in, that is exactly what microsoft wants to do. so the players will be dirt cheap, microsoft will be ok with losing money on selling them (just as they are with selling their xboxes). they won’t care if they make money off selling music either (already there is news that microsoft will be willing to pay users for transferring the music they bought at the itunes store to a microsoft based store. this is all about the long term platform dominance. and all those users who now complain about apple should really worry once microsoft is able to corner the music platform market, because that usually means no more innovation (just look at the explorer) and crappy service.

but in order for microsoft to corner the market they first have to convince users to buy those new devices. and that i think should be a hard sell. first of all the device is a cheap copy of the ipod. second, more importantly microsoft doesn’t seem to have learned from the ipod success. nearly all mp3 players that tried to outsell the ipod came up with all kinds of additional functionality while the ipod kept it simple. and here comes the argo with gaming, media playback, community stuff… anything but simple. in addition the player is supposed to be part of the xbox brand. a brand which is focused on gamers and the ipod outsells easily outsells the xbox (”Nintendo’s portable was tops in the hardware scene as well. The DS won the hardware sales race with 4.32 million units sold, destroying the PlayStation Portable, which took 2nd place at 2.07 million units. PS2 managed 1.77 million units, followed by Game Boy Advance SP (600,000), Game Boy Micro (460,000), the extremely sold-out DS Lite (380,000), GameCube (240,000) and Xbox 360 (120,000).” — Xbox 360 Sales Last). by linking the two devices it will be much harder for microsoft to sell the device to non xbox users and there are way more people who listen to music than people who play electronic games. for the community feature? well it is one thing to have a community feature on a stationary device and a another thing to have it on a mobile device. what good does wifi do me when i bike in rock creek park? nothing. ok i don’t have to use a cable when i synch my device, but the power it will use, i would rather have bluetooth — or maybe just a cable since it doesn’t add as much weight and size.

the gambling paradox … only online gambling is addictive

House Moves to Rein In Online Gambling. the law would “… clarify and update current law to spell out that most gambling is illegal online. But there would be exceptions — for state-run lotteries and horse racing — and passage isn’t a safe bet in the Senate, where Republican leaders have not considered the measure a high priority.”

“Supporters of the measure argued that Internet betting can be addictive and can lead people to lose their savings.

Leach said the problem is particularly acute for young people who are frequently on the Internet. ”Never before has it been so easy to lose so much money so quickly at such a young age,” he said.”

amazing to see that it is not only ok to bet on horse races and buy the state run lottery, but also to keep on playing in las vegas or atlantic city or any of the other casino cities, while smaller companies running online gambling sites and are mostly not even located in the US are going to be illegal, because of the addictivity of the online gambling.

if those republican congress men would be honest to the people they represent they would not make deals about this and allow horse betting, or they would be consequent enough to ban any kind of gambling, because if you just have to spend a couple of minutes in any casino to realize that gambling is addictive and not only online gambling. but no it is only the small, off-shore guys that have to take the blame to cater to the conservative religious right.