Pito’s Blog

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Scoble writes about the Zune. Also check out the video of the demo and detailed briefing about Zune. Here’s another interesting article about the Zune from Geek News Central!

Technorati Tags: zune ipod scoble

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Well it’s over and I am getting ready to head back to real life. Pop!Tech remains my favorite conference (and not just because I can drive here from my house.) It’s hard to capture what it’s like but if you are interested, here are some links that could give you a flavor. Thanks to all the diligent bloggers (most especially Ethan Zuckerman) who did all this writing so I didn’t have to!

• You had me at “erinaeous” - Erin McKean
• Kidnap and release in Iraq  - Micah Garen
• “It’s about time we start criticizing faith” - Richard Dawkins
• Untying America - Juan Enriquez
• Blogger Blither - Bruce Sterling
• Two Hours of Tom Barnett in twenty - thirty? - minutes
• Pop!Tech Live!
• Jason Kottke - Pop!Tech Wrap ups
• Conferenza also has some good summaries

Technorati Tags: poptech

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Ok, Pop!Tech is a wonderful conference, already, and I am learning and stimulated and all that.

But why, oh why, is everyone an author, thinker, serial entrepreneur, extraordinary, world renowned, and inimitable? Inventor, artist, composer, musician, educator, philosopher.

And these are not the speakers, these are the people sitting next to me and in line with me in the bathroom. Yikes!

Technorati Tags: poptech

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Bloggers and others are notoriously  obcessed with metrics: how many hits, what’s my rank etc. As a result there are numerous services which try to analyze sites and blogs etc, to help measure this. Not insignificantly, a site’s revenue potential is tied closely to this as well.  Seomoz.org has put together a pretty interesting study doing a somehwhat empirical analysis of this question.

“This project’s primary objective is to determine the relative levels of
accuracy for external metrics (from sites like Technorati, Alexa, Compete,
etc.) in comparison to actual visitor traffic data provided by analytics
programs.” (from Seomoz.org)

You should read it.  It turns out that they think that Technorati does the best of all of them, altothough tnone of them are especially accurate.

“Technorati is doing an admirable job of comparing link data and blog
popularity, given that it does not claim to measure traffic levels”   (from Seomoz.org)

but then:

“The sad conclusion is that right now, no publicly available competitive
analysis tool we’re aware of provides solid value. Let’s hope the next few
years provide better data.” ( fromSeomoz.org)

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Ok so I am getting ready to wrap up and came across this fun tool for your enjoyment..

powered by performancing firefox

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I recently was on a trip with United Airlines. It’s a long story, but basically the short form is that the pilot didn’t show up, our flight was about 2 hours late, and I was going to miss the connection, also on United.

A bunch of us were in the same boat (or plane) and so there was quite a buzz in the gate area, upon which a lawyer who knew something about air travel said, “Make sure you mention Rule 240″. Huh?

Rule 240 is like a magic code word. When you use it with airline personel they know exactly what you mean and they seem to act on it (a little bit scared of it, even.) Rule 240 states that, if you miss a connection and it’s the airlines fault (i.e. pilot doesn’t show up, but not a snowstorm) then the airline is obligated to put on the next flight they have to your destination (free of charge) and if that’s not possible, on another airline (free of charge.) Pretty amazing, eh?

Of course the rule is a little more complicated but that’s the key idea. Read more about it here: Welcome to MY Travel Rights.com

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For you Wifi junkies, here is a list of America’s Most Wired Cities - Forbes.com and another list of America’s most unwired cities.

Thank Jayne!

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• How to get people talking about your product
  Interesting article about how to build buzz
  (tags: buzz PR publicrelations geeknewscentral)

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• Dashalytics: A Google Analytics Widget For Your OSX Dashboard
  If you use Google analytics (like I do) this is WAY COOL!
  (tags: cooltools google analytics)
• Widsense - Adsense Widget for Apple Dashboard
  And if you use Adsense, this one is very cool too!
  (tags: cooltools google adsense)

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• Bad Astronomy Blog
  Looks like this might be interesting
  (tags: interesting astronomy)

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