I have been experimenting with Tumblr and Disqus, over at Silicon State.

Combining different services to power a blog has been on my mind lately.

This blog runs on Mephisto, a Rails application, and it actually manages a number of web sites in one install.

I love Mephisto!

But. (<- inevitable for a developer)

There are things I want to try without writing code.

For example, automatically pull Flickr, Del.icio.us and Twitter items in as blog posts, not sidebar items.

This experimentation lead me to Tumblr, which is mainly used for tumblelogs.

It lacks searching and comments, but has most everything else I want.

Search can be hacked in using Google’s customer search boxes.

Comments can be integrated through Disqus, using a simple javascript.

This has me thinking.

Is Disqus doomed to be a “feature” or will it thrive as a full blown service?

Should commenting be portable and searchable independent of a blog?

Would that encourage richer conversations?

Just thinking. Always thinking.

Having used Skype for a few years, I love it.

However, I recently tried the Skype for Mobile beta on a Nokia phone and was stunned to find a product so unlike the desktop version.

Initiating a call, something that can only be done over WiFi, Skype forces the phone to conduct the call over the regular cellular network after which it complete the route over the internet.

Epic failure!

Who want to use a VoIP client on a WiFi enabled phone only to be forced to make a cellular call and get double billed?

Hopefully they come to their senses and achieve the comparatively minor technical achievement that Gizmo and TruPhone have as a standard feature.

When will the clouds begin to partner in ways that accelerate adoption?

For example, if you use Amazon S3 for storage, unless you are running on EC2, the roundtrip to and from that cloud can be slow and costly.

If another cloud service were to create a direct connection into that cloud, it would be a huge value add when evaluating doing business with these “partner” services.

Why do I ask?

I have used Amazon EC2 and S3, am running hosting accounts, virtual servers and a complete rack of owned servers.

I get the bills, see the latency and believe there is a huge opportunity for middle tier vendors to differentiate their offerings.

Few other companies are going to build an S3 competitor. The rest of the infrastructure pie will be grabbed by making smart partnerships to connect efficiently and cost effectively to these cloud services.

This guys may be building the new social architecture I envision to compete with the walled services trend in social sites.

Chi.mp is building a flexible, permanent home for your online identity on your own domain. You own and are in control of the facets of your digital life, not any one service provider.

One place for your profile, your contacts & content, where you have control over who gets to see what.

Chi.mp is as open as you are.

They seem to be advancing the discussion in a constructive way at Ownyouridentity.com.

Comments on blogs are a foundational element for building a community.

With twitter-spawn friendfeed, adding comments to tweets, the question is, could friendfeed and something like Disqus merge to offer cross community comment streams?

Right now, some think comments on Disqus or friendfeed are heading for a black hole.

But, imagine if a blog post linked to in a tweet displayed the comment thread from disqus in the friendfeed stream, and if comments on friendfeed would show up in the Disqus thread on the blog post.

That would spawn some very very interesting communities and discussions.

A good sign in any emerging market, squatters.

It happened during the original gold rush for domain names and now Twitter is generating the same behavior.

While looking for streams of interest to follow, I ran across .

pcmag for sale. email me at twitterforsale@gmail.com

Will Twitter take a side on this behavior? Or allow the community or market for such practices handle it naturally?

It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.

The discussion about Google vs. Facebook and making user data portable validates my opinion.

Since the day MySpace was the place to be, it was obvious to me that MySpace and subsequent services were repeating the original AOL business model.

A carefully camouflaged wall has been under construction since the moment VCs smelled the payday in the social web.

Until Goggle made their play this week, it was a well kept secret. But Google’s move forced Facebook to publicly reveal the wall and their intentions.

Suddenly, people are noticing this issue.

The side affect of data portability is an all but guaranteed lower valuation for these service. If users come and go as they like, vendors have far less ability to protect shareholder value.

There is a new service architecture I can envision to solve the portability issue, one that turns the tables on the vendors of these walled services and give users full control, both in portability and privacy.

But that is for another post.

Dan Farber makes the following point.

These recurring problems once again demonstrate that the much loved Web 2.0, consisting of many start-ups lacking adequate infrastructure and stable code, is unreliable.

(Via News flash: Web 2.0 is unreliable | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com.)

I almost let this go, but on further thought, I have to call bullshit.

Yes. Many internet services do not deliver 100% availability.

Scratch that - MOST internet services do NOT deliver 100% availability.

Here is a news flash:

That makes them like is every other business on the planet!

Twitters down! So is power in New York.

Seesmic locked up! Hmm. So has my mobile phone, computer, car and washing machine.

Every single system in our society, from the plumbing to the computers on the space shuttle, will and do fail - some of the time. It is a certainty.

Just like you or I getting up tomorrow and not going to work.

Get over it, move on or do something more than whining.

Dan Farber makes the following point.

These recurring problems once again demonstrate that the much loved Web 2.0, consisting of many start-ups lacking adequate infrastructure and stable code, is unreliable.

(Via News flash: Web 2.0 is unreliable | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com.)

I almost let this go, but on further thought, I have to call bullshit.

Yes. Many internet services do not deliver 100% availability.

Scratch that - MOST internet services do NOT deliver 100% availability.

Here is a news flash:

That makes them like is every other business on the planet!

Twitters down! So is power in New York.

Seesmic locked up! Hmm. So has my mobile phone, computer, car and washing machine.

Every single system in our society, from the plumbing to the computers on the space shuttle, will and do fail - some of the time. It is a certainty.

Just like you or I getting up tomorrow and not going to work.

Get over it, move on or do something more than whining.

Repurposed radio programs and a number of innovative niche audio and video podcasts such as TWiT have loyal followings. But these are exceptions. Tellingly, 22 of the 25 “Top Podcasts” on the front page of iTunes podcast directory are established brands from the mainstream media world, including HBO, NPR, the BBC, ESPN, The Onion, and Oprah Winfrey. In this environment, most new and smaller podcasts have to struggle to be heard. Until the technologies surrounding podcasting are able to improve the user experience and better serve advertisers, podcasting will remain on the fringes.

(Via Why podcasting is failing | The Industry Standard.)

I have been listening to podcasts since I ran across Adam Curry’s original applescript for downloading them and still listen to them daily.

The points this article makes may be valid from author’s perspective, but I think he is missing the point.

First, just because you make a podcast, no matter how well produced or content rich, doesn’t mean anyone will find or listen to it.

Second, the barrier to entry for podcasting is so low, more of them are produced. This means more of them fail.

I think old school media people, coming from print, radio or television will be disappointed. They are used to a built-in success factor those established mediums offer and trapped to some extent by their habits.

Only five percent of those surveyed said that they watch video on a TV or other video-playing device regularly. Downloading from places like the iTunes Store or Xbox Live Video to the Apple TV or an Xbox 360 make this possible without having to use an HTPC. Still, even though these solutions make it easier to watch downloaded content on the big(ger) screen, they clearly have yet to hit it big with the general public.

(Via Report: 95% of Internet video stuck looking longingly at TV.)

I always wonder about reports like these. What us the real agenda behind this one?

After all, 5 years ago it would have read “100% of Internet video stuck looking longingly at TV” or “0% of those surveyed said they watched video on a TV or other video-playing device”.

In my case, Amy and I watch the vast majority of our video using a $500 video projector in our living room. In the neighborhood of 75-85% of our video content comes from online sources, including iTunes, Hulu.com, ABC.com and Podcasts.

5% penetration in the 2-3 years that online video content has really taken off is not bad.

Was going to post about how odd it seemed to hear that e-mail is dead and Twitter, Pownce or Facebooks are the solution to everything.

At least that came out of the Future of Web Applications conference.

Why not post the thought it triggered?

In its place a brainstorm erupted that is worth millions.

Seriously.

Time to hunker down in the bat cave to prototype the idea.

Should take 90 days with any luck.

Send water, food and angle funding.

This morning I got a phone call from Hostmysite.com whom read about my experience with Peer1 and Rackspace.

They wanted to offer their services, because they felt they stacked up favorably. The quote I received does stack up nicely and definitely merits consideration.

This happened before, I posted about my experience with Media Temple hosting, and received a flurry of recommendations in the comments.

I think its time to consider using the blogs as the first step in the process of finding solutions to business needs.

Perhaps a RFQ/RFP category or sub-blog that pings the various trackers like Technorati.

Or, should we have a microformat for RFQs and RFPs?

I have been using Slicehost.com for several months now.

To cut to the chase, these guys rock!

They are responsive, offer a solid service and are building a great community around their business.

They have a growing array of OS choices including CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch and Fedora.

The best news is that they are testing large VPS slices, up to 15GB!

If you need a great Virtual Private Server solution, sign up here to be up and running in a couple minutes.

Be sure not to miss their podcast for news about this stellar hosting service.

As my main project, MailTank, continues to grow and evolve we are faced with the challenge of scaling.

We faced the decision, either expand our data center footprint or move elsewhere.

After some research, I found the top managed hosting companies to be Rackspace.com and Peer1.com

In the last week I have gotten quotes from each, but the experience was considerably different.

I contacted both companies through their web sites, within a few minutes of each other.

A sale rep for Peer1 was immediately available via chat, which I took advantage of. Jeff, a very knowledgeable guy, answered my questions via chat.

After determining that I was not some “hosting” customer looking for something a step above shared hosting and he got on the phone with me.

20 minutes later, all my questions were answered and a few hours later I had a quote for managing our infrastructure.

Rackspace was a different experience.

I sent my request and hours later got a call from a sale rep whom gauged my needs, then scheduled a conference call through Webex a few days later.

During the Webex presentation I got a Powerpoint presentation about the company and then spent a few minutes talking to a technical lead about requirements.

At the end of the meeting, he scheduled follow-up conference call to discuss the proposal.

A couple hours after the initial conference call I got their quote.

As I sit comparing the quotes, before the final call with Rackspace, I realize that Peer1 just “feels” more like a place I would like to do business.

Jeff was on top of things, didn’t need a technician to ask me the basic questions, and didn’t waste my time building the value proposition based on his company’s historical track record.

Jeff is winning in my mind for one reason. He is selling me “a solution” not his “company”.

Besides, Rackspace is considerably more expensive and the proposed configurations that don’t stack up favorably with Peer1.

For example, Rackspace is offering a database server with RAID1, while Peer1 is offering RAID 10 storage.

In the end we are probably staying in-house until this summer.

But it is quite educational seeing how they each sell.

“2008. There’s something in the air.” What does that slogan mean? On Tuesday, Steve Jobs will introduce whatever it is they have lurking in Cupertino.

Could it be movie rentals through iTunes? A revamped Apple TV with DVR? Yet another, better and cooler iPod?

Or perhaps, something innovative and game changing (yeah lame phrase, but bear with me).

With laptop sales eclipsing desktops, and iPods and iPhones leading to a perpetually mobile generation, wouldn’t it make sense for Apple to push connectivity everywhere?

What if Apple released a sub-notebook with the usual suspects and “one more thing” - WiMAX.

Paired with the 3G iPhone we will see in 2008 and Back to my Mac, it would be a powerful product to accelerate their growth in this powerful market segment.

What tea leaves am I reading to think this? A curious announcement timed for this coming Tuesday.

Sprint recently announced that the company is on track to begin offering their Xohm WiMax service in April of this year…the New York Times reported that the soft launch is set for this Tuesday.

(Via Sprint to Soft-Launch Xohm on Tuesday - dslreports.com.)

Sprint did a deal with Amazon for EVDO in the Kindle, why not Apple for a WiMAX enabled laptop?

Apple’s deal with AT&T certainly said nothing about WiFI or WiMAX, but may have locked them out of embedding EVDO.

With AT&T’s CEO blowing the lid on Apple’s 2008 iPhone plans it would be sweet revenge for Apple to work with Sprint.

Apple could build a strong relationship with Sprint, while fulfilling their obligations to AT&T.

One can dream and speculate. We will know on Tuesday.