Coming Soon

Having reviewed oddball sites, well-known sites, and obscure Squidoo lenses, I thought I might try reviewing business sites. I am starting an innovative business or two and I will report the ones that turn me down.

Here is my expectation: American venture capital is not interested in funding anything other than Rust Belt fossils and dinosaurs. Years ago, I was talking up electric vehicles and everyone looked at me as if I had three heads. Now everyone at the "cutting edge" is doing something regarding electric vehicles. China has passed the USA is such research. China has passed the USA is wind power installation. The USA let a major solar company and a major wind power company move to Europe. Why even waste time with the USA anymore. I am still the actual cutting edge but I am not stupid enough to put blueprints on this blog. However, I am quite willing to expose the morons who give bonuses to executives who deliberately ram companies into the ground. Isn't a bonus supposed to be conditional and given only for extraordinary good performance? And not automatically given to all executives for being white or male or gentile or from a certain prep school or in a specific age range or some irrelevant criteria? Too bad if you save the company and happen to be female or a member of a minority or Jewish or went to an American public school or are too old or too young.

Will my low expectations of the American investment community be met? Will I be pleasantly surprised? Or will it be worse than I imagined?

Stay tuned.

First stop, AIG. To some the letters stand for Arrogant, Incompetent and Greedy. To others, the I in AIG stands for Immoral. To still others, the I stands for Irrational. And the I means Ignorant to other people.

Whatever your analysis, the government stole from the poor taxpayers and gave to the rich -- as government always does. As it did with all the other bail-outs and corporate welfare. The name is supposed to change and the company is selling off subsidiaries to pay down debt.

Visit the wonderful people of AIG at --

http://www.aigcorporate.com/index.html

postscript - I did not ask for money. They are an insurance outfit. (Although insurance companies do invest in things)

Xanga

It's a blog, and it's also a social networking site. You have to invest time in this site.

There is a learning curve for navigating this site. I saw some types of groupsI have seen no where else on the web. This fact alone keeps me from canceling my account though my experience at Xanga has been a dud.

Xanga --

http://www.xanga.com/

Wink

Wink allows you to find people all over the world with almost any interest. Problem is, everytime I send a friend request, the site says they'll get my message when they join Wink.

Wink lists people from other social networks. I might as well join those other networks (and I have).

Frustrating site. If you could reach the people you want to reach on either business or pleasure, Wink might have something really great.

Wink --

http://wink.com/

tagfoot

tagfoot is more bookmarking and linking than social network. I am not much of a bookmarker but I found certain of its other features really useful.



Unlike other sites recently reviewed which take weeks or months to really start to gel (gain friends, get hits, get read, or whatever is your yardstick for measuring usefulness), tagfoot was useful and got results for me from day one. I was amazed.



Also, they assign an online mentor under the buddy-system to help you get your feet wet. If I have any problems at or with tagfoot, then it is entirely my fault. The people behind this site are great and I have no negative criticism of them whatsoever.



There is no but nor other shoe to drop.



Positive review all the way around.



tagfoot --



http://tagfoot.com/home

Plurk

Easy sing-up. If you haven't already guessed, it is another social network.


Disturbingly like Dipity. Dipity tracks everything you do on the web. While that does not disturb most people, I am not most people. If you value your privacy, you might want to avoid this site. I saw my location displayed on the screen. Shades of Minority Report, Big Brother (the George Orwell novel not the stupid TV show), and Enemy of the State.

I will have to re-review Plurk in the future because I have not used it long enough to give it a fair shake. That's all for now.



Plurk --



http://www.plurk.com/

Thanksgiving

If you want some meaning to your holiday, you could do worse than visit Thanks-Giving Square. The site however is marred by paying homage to the b*stard who pardoned Richard Nixon, the man who swore in CFR and other secret speeches to abolish the Constitution. During the Watergate investigation it was discovered that the crook nicknamed Tricky Dick nearly did kill the Bill of Rights. In case you are a diehard Nixon supporter, at least now you have a clue as to why the rest of us despise the man and why his own congregation excommunicated him (Quakers no less). We can be thankful this day that we don't have Nixon to kick around anymore. We can move on to the Antichrist Ronald Wilson Reagan (6 letters, 6 letters, 6 letters) and his divorced Scarlet Woman Nancy Reagan (practiced astrology and other occult things). Did you know he started his presidential campaign in Philadelphia Mississippi to appeal to the Ku Klux Klan? (so that's why black people don't like him!). Or to the worst president in human history (down there with Hitler, Stalin, and Mao in terms of bankrupting a once-rich nation) George Walker Bush Jr. Does Bush Jr count as six letters? Or the president who made sex sexy. Bill. Or president Robin Hood who steals from the poor to give to the rich. Dubya did this to excess but we expected better from Obama before he installed two of the crooks who caused this mess Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner.

Do you see why I hate politics? And why I am thankful this Thanksgiving that "The People" are raising people like Sarah Palin to lead them over a cliff. She denies climate change while glaciers are melting in her own state and Alaska residents on the Arctic Ocean coast are seeing their villages washed out to sea and permafrost is melting. What planet is this woman from?

Oh yeah, before I started ranting and my editor hosed me down with ice water (from Alaska) to cool off my unreasonable hot head, I was supposed to be reviewing Thanks-Giving Square. I'm still not sure how letting US Presidents and Wall Street executives off scot-free while giving a poor man a life sentence for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family constitutes "healing our wounded nation" but it's yet another double standard.

Thanks-Giving Square

http://www.thanksgiving.org/

If you are a Republican and prefer something more commercial this holiday (and why not, Republicans worship money), this next site may be more to your liking. It has a nice photo but it is pure links.

So here is the link for Thanksgiving, the site for ALL your Thanksgiving needs. I need a million dollars. Can you provide that?

http://www.thanksgiving.com/

If I seem cynical, then you must understand that I am practicing for the next holiday. Christmas. Bah humbug! We've all been screwed, I mean, Scrooged.

MySpace

MySpace, which has a reputation as a booty call and requires loads of time to customize with skins and other do-dads, has a younger demographic than Facebook. MySpace may have been overtaken my Facebook in sheer size (membership). But if its freedom you want, then MySpace is the place.

MySpace --

http://www.myspace.com/

LiveJournal

Theoretically you can form a community here but it must require some real intense time commitment because I have tried and failed.

It is mostly a blog but also a social network.

LiveJournal --

http://www.livejournal.com/

Identica

Identica is a social network. My guess is that it has a low subscriber base and I picked groups to join within it that were dead on arrival. That is, little interest in it by members.

Since I joined Identica specifically for group activity, this translates to little interest by me. If I can't find like-minded people, why check in more often than once every other month?

When I checked in just now, I left a few posts. If I get a pulse, I will re-review Identica.

Identi.ca --

http://identi.ca/

Gather

I first heard about Gather on National Public Radio. I eventually signed up.

You can find people who share your interests here. Getting them to talk is another matter. This is probably true of any site. They ("they" meaning everybody who is not you) say that in most chatrooms, SecondLife worlds, forums, discussion boards and et cetera that the vast majority lurk. It stands to reason since in real life only one can talk at a time (excepting the political rhetoric shows where EVERYONE SCREAMS AT ONCE!

Sorry. Didn't mean to yell.

Anyway, Gather is visually nice-looking as are most social networks (except MySpace because kids lack taste). You know I'm easing up to it. Gather has been a waste of time for me but I'll keep my accocunt in case the one nibble I got amounts to something.

Gather --

http://www.gather.com/

Friendfeed

Friendfeed has a lot of potential if you know how to use it. My experience there has been pleasant which is generally not a word I use in association with any social network.

My personal interests tend to the obscure but I found both news (which I put to good use at another site I maintain) and people who shared my interests.

Can you tell that I like FriendFeed? Personal bias in its favor aside, it is easy to use.

FriendFeed --

http://friendfeed.com/

Faves

Exactly what it says, Faves wants to know your favorites. Your favorite this, your favorite that. [There are several social networks that take this tack.]

The system has a great memory. Most systems flush you out if you are not active for several months. I haven't been active at Faves for years.

Faves can be found at --

http://faves.com/home

Facebook

Facebook has the advantage of massive size. You can probably find friends if you are willing to put in the time. If you have real-life face-to-face family commitments and a busy career, good luck on finding the time. Of course, some people are good on time management.

Although my own experience on Facebook has been empty. I still give them high marks because the fault is with me not them. Privacy policy is a whole other review. I skip that aspect for now.

Freedom-wise, Facebook can be restrictive. No funny business like on MySpace.

Ease of use? Not so much. I gave up trying to correct incorrect information the Facebook system decided about me.

Facebook --

http://www.facebook.com/

Bebo

Bebo is a social website with a whiteboard. That is pretty much the only feature I don't see at other social websites. The problem with most social website is that you need to bring friends with you or else you are alone. Joining groups is a way to make friends but if the groups are defunct or full of members who don't welcome new members, well you're screwed again.

Bebo --

http://www.bebo.com

Urgent!

This Squidoo lens contains useful emergency information alongside stuff that makes you think and stuff that makes you laugh.

Urgent! --

http://www.squidoo.com/Urgent

Guide to Aerobic Exercise

This site is purely meant to be watched from across the room as you exercise --

http://www.squidoo.com/aerobicexercise

Guide to Earning Money

This Squidoo lens is intended for people who want ideas for earning money. A nice feature (we'll see how long it lasts) is an offer to do research if a visitor doesn't see the idea they want.

Guide to Earning Money --

http://www.squidoo.com/earning-more-money

Guide to George Meredith

These folks are George Meredith fans. In case you don't know, the Victorian Age produced more great novelists other than Dickens and Austen (really more Regency than Victorian) and Thackeray. I guess the appeal here is snob appeal. If you are a Meredith fan, then you have something no one else has discovered. Not even PBS or the late Merchant-Ivory team that made art films. This is ironic since Meredith himself skewered snobs while doing them (and other character types) better than anybody else.

Guide to George Meredith at --

http://www.squidoo.com/George_Meredith

Urban Farming

I am informed that this lens will be doubling in size soon. It already is large for an average lens.

Urban Farming, that's right, means farms in the middle of cities --

http://www.squidoo.com/Urban_Farming

Guide to Emerson, Lake and Palmer

This is a dinosaur group that has broken up twice and in the process of looking over this Squidoo lens, I discovered that they are reuniting next year assuming Keith Emerson's hands are healed up from surgery and he has his manual dexterity back. Carl Palmer is still fast. If I had the money, I'd go see them in concert. They used to sell out the biggest stadiums.

Check out this lens at --

http://www.squidoo.com/Emerson_Lake_and_Palmer

Veterans Day

Veterans Day dot org is one of those holder site until somebody buys it. The links turn back on themselves instead of taking you to the Department of Veterans Affairs for example.

Visitors Center

Another thematic and inexplicable site. However, while visiting I learned about the new ABC series 'V' (not to be confused with the old series). I think they are still lizards eating humans. Crossing light-years for a snack seems a waste of interstellar travel technology, that is, they should have re-thought the premise of the show and had the aliens after something other than food. Assuming I have the facts straight. I have not seen the show V only a short clip of their leggy leader.

Anyway, as usual, I'm off on a tangent and Visitors Center is not solely about that series. It is supposed to be about Visitors or Visitors Center and is therefore a work very much still in progress. They need to feature more visitors centers. Or welcome centers. Or information centers (IC's). Believe it or not those are industries with their own trade associations and trade journals. I know, I once had (I forget why) a free subscription to Information Center magazine.

Visit the Visitors Center at --

http://www.squidoo.com/visitor

Inside Edition

Navigation for this TV show's site is a lot better than the last time I visited. And anything is better than the dead ends it had before.


http://www.insideedition.com

Guide to Getting Off the Planet

All I want to know is:

1. Can you make it affordable so that people (other than the millionaires that Virgin Galactic is catering to) can go?
2. Can you make it safe enough for my children and my parents?
3. Can you do it now? Not a million years from now like NASA's snail pace?

http://www.squidoo.com/offworld

Guide to the Health Care Debate

This is obviously a hasty job as are many Squidoo lenses but the makers might have something if they featured more of the nuts who show up at Town Hall meetings with guns and racist effigies of President Obama. You know the Republican extremists who claim Obama is not an American because he's black (he was born in the good ole U.S. of A while McCain was born in Panama and should not have even been allowed to run for President), the ones who think the Earth is flat and think there is no climate change and no overpopulation, tea droppers, tea parties, whatever the pundits call them.

Anyway I hate politics so I appreciate any attempt to make fun of the monsters in DC and in the provinces.

So visit the site, write something hateful in their guest book, and everybody will be happy.

http://www.squidoo.com/healthcaredebate

Valleywag

A good site to keep up with business news from Silicon Valley.

Since I am not a techie, I generally avoid sites like PCWorld, Wired and CNet. I use technology. I am less interested in the technology itself. I figure that if it is important, then sooner or later I will hear about it in the general media.

Oddly enough, this strategy often means that I hear about cutting edge stuff before the techies. Not always of course but enough to make me think that I am not crazy.

I am more interested in the money end of high tech anyway. I'd like to own the next Google rather than be one of millions of users. But that's another story and, if you're interested in that journey, I'll be blogging about it on another venue. This blog is supposed to be about websites.

Wouldn't it be a laugh if someday I reviewed my own software company's site and gave it a bad review? Don't put it past me. I'm as hard on my own projects as I am on other people's work.

http://valleywag.gawker.com/

Technorati

I'm not enough of a techie to review this site.

My initial interest was the gimmick of getting a little gizmo but I don't really like being stalked on the web. LiveJournal has something similar but no one reads my LiveJournal so I was carrying that baggage. [Consider that a review of LiveJournal]

http://www.livejournal.com/

If I want an avatar, I can go to SecondLife but I don't know if I want to ignore real people a few inches away from me in order to have an affair with a virtual person and risk divorce in real life. The real utility of SecondLife is virtual conferencing and there are other VR (virtual reality) and holographic/3D telephony sites.

I'll give Second Life the real review it deserves in a future article. So ignore any criticisms in this articles until I've had a second look at SecondLife (I have to work in puns, I have a quota to meet).

As for Technorati, if you are a techie go here --
http://technorati.com/

I generally avoid sites that require me to download anything. I spend half my times getting spyware, worms, virues, Trojans, adware, and such out of my computer. Google says everything is supposed to be in the cloud. You know, that vaporware Microsoft sells.

Steve Rubel's blog

I was two independent things.
1. trying to find alternatives to blogging and
2. looking for websites to review

At Top Ten Reasons To Give Up Blogging,
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_ten_reasons.php
I hit the Steve Rubel link and found a link I had been looking for and had not saved.

I'll be reviewing Lifestream after I have used it awhile.

As for Steve Rubel's blog, it helped me find another site worth reviewing so thumbs up.

Alexa

I went to Alexa to see how bad this blog is. Pretty bad. Not even in the top 100,000 for some reason. They (meaning experts on blogging) say that it takes a while to gain a readership and following.

The easy thing to do is bash Alexa. I won't because I figure that they are an honest service.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fnetcompanies.blogspot.com

eBay

Another review of an established site (I promise I'll go back to the obscure sites soon).

I like eBay. I use them instead of Amazon because their vendors are fast, inexpensive, courteous (super-courteous, in fact, you can get into trouble if you don't take the time to give your thumbs up or down) and the merchandise is good.

I know, you're waiting for me to say something bad.

Well, they could probably increase their business tenfold if they had an interface that dummies could use. I'm computer literate enough that I can blog about tech, write a little html, yada yada yada. What I can't do is deal with auctions, PayPal, and shipping options. If you've seen all the "Dummies for Dummies" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Idiocy" books out there, then you might be thinking that these books are way too long and are written for engineers. [Is this guy stupid or what?]

I have actually paid a little more for some products by having a friend or a bricks & mortar store merchant go to eBay for me so that I wouldn't have to. Somebody local could do a healthy business with people and for people who don't feel like doing this or that online. And isn't a lot of business based on laziness? Most of us don't raise chickens. We go to the supermarket for eggs and chicken meat. Most of us don't raise cows. We buy milk and beef at the store.

Anyway, this is not criticism of eBay. (More like criticism of PayPal) And a suggestion to anyone sharp enough to see a business opportunity and maybe do some market research.

Amazon

What would possess me to review a site that is not obscure? Doesn't matter what I say, it will get traffic.

Actually, this is more personal. Just a comment. Last time I used it they dictated my payment options.

I figure that if a vendor wants to sell me something and I want to buy and my method of payment is acceptable then what difference does it make?

A personal check in this case. Couldn't use it. So I went to their competitor. {Nevermind who, suffice to say that they have plenty}

You know the moral of the story.