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Best/worst gadget: Carnival elongation till 31st of January

6fireAbout two weeks ago I started a blog carnival on the Best and worst gadget of 2008. Since a couple of bloggers didn't yet have time to finish their entries, I'm extending the deadline: the carnival now ends on the 31st of January. So if you want to come aboard, you can enter your posting until next Saturday. Obviously, not everything that glitters is gold – or even silver. But let's face it: the web 2.0 revolution has turned us all into beta-testers. But geeks usually love do-it-yourself attitudes anyways :mrgreen:

Thanks to everybody who has already entered a posting – I'm looking forward to the rest of the entries, next week I'm going to publish the results. This blog carnival will be held yearly in the month of January; after all, gadgets are geeks' favorite toys. And since first-generation-users are very likely to become beta-testers, there'll be plenty stories to tell.

Blog-Carnival: Best and worst gadget 2008

6fireA new year has just started and I'm happy to invite all my readers to datadirt's first blog carnival: I'm curious about the new hardware you bought during the last year. Which shiny piece of technology is your favorite gadget, and which not-so-shiny one disappointed you? Feed the inner geek, write about satisfaction and disappointment. I'm sure that most of my readers experienced both scenarios, so let's just share them and spread the knowledge :mrgreen:

Note: This carnival is also available in German on datenschmutz.net

This blog has received a nice 5 during the recent page rank update, so I'm more than happy to give some link juice back. The entrance is wide open: chose anything that might qualify as a “gadget”.

Rules: There are no rules – except for the fact that I will list all entries on this blog when the carnival is over, so please keep me updated about your entries either via trackback or via comment. The best/worst gadget 2008 blog carnival starts today, 12th of January, and ends in two weeks on Sunday the 25th of January.

I'm really looking forward to your entries – here's my best and worst gadget selection:

My favorite gadget of 2008: Terratec 6fire USB

I'm quite satisfied with my new Samsung syncmaster screens, I love my Energy CB20 speakers and there's plenty more gadgets that come to my mind. But there's definitely a highlight: my new external soundcard Terratec 6fire USB is perfectly equipped for my needs and offers excellent sound quality. 6 analogue ins plus 6 outs in combination with the XLR microphone plug (including a switch for 48V phantom voltage for studio mics) guarantee versatility for all home-studio and podcasting needs.

The driver is stable (I'm running Vista64), the ASIO-latency is extremely low and the simple yet powerful software allows free routing of all available channels. Very good value for money – at Amazon, the soundcard ships for about 200 Euros. I don't dub my vinyl, but thanks to the routing-per-channel features the 6Fire easily qualifies for digital djs and home-producers. Cinema freaks don't need to switch soundcards, there's a digital 5.1 out as well.

My worst gadget of 2008: Logitech Z-10 speaker system

z10Combining amplified speakers with a slick and elegant touch-screen display sounds like a brilliant idea – in theory. But I do not even want to know about the fun Logitech's engineers had when declaring this piece of unfinished work: “Hey, we know that the touch-screen is not working well – who cares? There is not API or software anyways.” But that's not even the worst part: the speakers use USB to transmit music, which is not such a bad idea after all for laptop use, but the big big problem is this: as soon as the speakers are connected, every kind of internal or external soundcard is deactivated. Now ain't that great? I tried using the line-in, which renders all the additional touch screen functions useless and decreases the sound quality quite much. Since the product is way too heavy to qualify as a mobile laptop speaker, there's not much us for the Z-10 in my opinion. The sound is not that bad for speakers of this size – but the money is much better spent on a pair of JBL control speakers.

But now for your gadget-stories of 2008. Looking forward to your postings!

Weekly Blogistan Round-Up no. 01/2009

bewerbungHow you're doing? I hope you had a great start into the new year, and believe me: 2k9 is gonna be a wicked year for web 2.0 folks, and I mean “wicked” in the good, old-school jungle way. I do have the impression that the European commercial community is just waking up, and I'm seriously looking forward to bigger budgets being spent on web 2.0 advertising as this will boost the whole scene. My personal 1st of January had a very nice surprise in stall for me: datadirt received a Pagerank update and is now proudly sporting a 5.

My German blog datenschmutz is now a member of the quite exclusive PR6 blogs club – this did not come totally unexpected though, yet I'm still really happy about it. Now I know that good ole PR neither reflects a real-time value nor is it the most relevant SEO factor: but I like to think like some kind of nice, expensive watch: no added value, but it looks nice and gives a great first impression :mrgreen:

So, what's a super-affiliate again?

Super Affiliate is a stupid buzzword used in the affiliate marketing blogging community by bloggers who want to make you think they make more money or are somehow better than you. When I had my first $1000 week at one of the very well known affiliate networks, they said I was now a “Super Affiliate,” which showed me that it means absolutely nothing. Anyone using the term “Super Affiliate” in a non-joking manner, especially when referring to themselves, has no credibility, and is an idiot.

Says NickyCakes of Reformed Blackhat on Jeremy's Blog That's a short yet very concise way to put it – I have nothing to add :mrgreen:

Look back (in no anger)

Jeremy took the time to do a proper all-year review which is also a very smart idea in terms of internal pagerank distribution by the way.

TechCrunch und Twitter

TechCrunch publishes an article on a mash-up that forwards tweets to e-mail adresses. Asks Babou:

I really enjoy your blog for your insights and the posts of your team of writers but there is one thing: you really speak a lot about twitter.
Now I understand Twitter has become an important medium of communication but does it really deserve so much attention?

Well… that depends: I guess that twitter deserves all the attention that fits into 140 characters – a couple of times per day.

Video of the week

You don't want to get that job? By all means, watch and learn from this brilliant job interview video by Ben Schwartz:

So much for the first weekly blogosphere review of the new year – as always, comments and feedback are highly appreciated. See you next week!

Input for weekly round-upGot any news you'd like to read about in my weekly round-up of current blogosphere events?
Don't hesitate to contact me! Of course I'll include a backlink to your original story.

So don't hesitate – just click here for the contact form and give me an update on your issues: Give me input!.

Weekly Blogistan Round-Up no. 47/2008

Blogistan-PanoptikumThe last election parties have ended by now, the USA are looking forward to a new era of fairness and social improvement. Will the new president be able to live up to his promises in times of an economic crisis? Looks like Barrack Obama has got to deal with a difficult situation, as the crisis is now spreading from the finance sector to old economy and car manufacturers start facing serious troubles. Of course advertising budgets will be cut, which will eventually lead to more and more online-money being spent for performance based marketing. A rather bleak scenario for traditional advertiser, but definitely not the worst news for affiliates.

Going against Wikipedia: In Germany, left-wing politician Lutz Heilmann started a massive discussion among bloggers: the genius sued Wikipedia and had them remove the German article which contained among other biographical data on his history with the infamous Stasi. This is the perfect example of new media misunderstood: while Heilmann obviously tried to obfuscate facts, he provoked a flood of articles that give him a worse name than any Wikipedia page ever could have. The net is changing politics faster than anybody expected ten years ago…

Movement vs. Change: I love Seth Godins simple yet very illustrative examples of “the power of the net”. And I'm not a fan of Starbucks:

Simple example: the Starbucks in Larchmont, NY keeps their thermostat at 64 degrees. And the stores in Breckenridge, Colorado keep their doors wide open all winter. If you're raging mad about energy waste, you could say something. And nothing would happen. But if customers organized and ten people said something or a hundred people said something… boom, new rules. The system doesn't know what to do with a movement.

The ugliest thing of the week: it's a mixture between a car and motorcycle, and it combines the disadvantages of both concepts in perfection. I have no clue why Time Magazine has voted the Peravces Monotracer one of the best inventions of 2008. C'mon guys, you can't be serious – even the description sounds like a joke, but it's not:

You really need the mind of a Swiss engineer to come up with a vehicle that combines the lithe maneuverability of a motorcycle with the not-getting-rained-on-ability of a conventional automobile.

This week in Online Marketing: Google started rolling out a Digg-like feature where users can “like” or “dislike” search results. It seems they are currently running a few tests – I'm wondering if this social component will be used for the general index or for tailoring SERPs to the logged-in user's needs. And Twitter still is the new hot sh*t – even though the fail-whale returned today and SMS functionality is not avaible in most European countries, users still love their microblogging service #1. One of the reasons is the large number of mash-ups: the latest one even allows you to tweet from beyond: using twuffer.com, it's possbible to schedule tweets – so if you already know what you're going to do next week or next year, twuffer might be just for you. And if not you might still be able to use the service for marketing purposes :mrgreen:

Video of the week

How do you visualize a car that doesn't even exist yet? Infinity has invested a great deal of time and money to build a flexible and impressive 3D surroundig – this video explains the whole idea:

So much for this week – I wish you great Sunday, see you soon.

Blog Action Day 2k8: Against poverty

blog action day 2008Blog action day 2008 is fighting global poverty by raising collective awareness in the blogosphere: Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world

Video: Here & There by Eoghan Kidney

Here and there is not a music video in the strict sense and definitely not your average youtube short movie: the result of the collaboration between Eoghan Kidney and musician Simon Cullen is a very interesting hybrid with hypnotic qualities – watch for yourself:

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The State of the Web, Summer 2008

Matthew Inman has taken over the extremely difficult task of reducing all current web trends into one simple page that says it all: and indeed it does. Mr. Screwturner pointed me to this great and all-so-well fitting masterpiece: The State of the Web, Summer 2k8.