slamboard

I found an article that is a year and a half old expressing doubts as to whether YouTube can ever make money. A few points seem almost prophetic, and they were right about how much users would object to any major changes that would have to take place in order to turn the thing into a cash cow. I have to confess that I haven’t been paying close attention to all the little changes on YouTube. I saw a video title that seemed to indicate that a high profile user was upset about some kind of profit motivated change and I can’t figure out what that change was…

Ok, I did a little research “YouTube Becomes MoneyTube: Removes Non-partner Clips” is the gripe. Some people point to actions taken by YouTube as being commercially motivated. I think they decided to remove clips that their ‘Partners’ created before they became partners. I can understand YouTubes motivations and I can understand the users reactions.

This is a search cloud from Quintura. I haven’t developed an opinion about it, but I am posting one to show you anyway.

Ok, so now I have formed some opinions. I don’t think this style of search is useful for seriously researching a topic. I think this type of navigation could be convenient for hand held devices like the iPhone.

I have a confession to make. I have a full and rewarding life and I do not obsess about the continuing story of Kimkins and Heidi Diaz. In fact, I do not even lurk on some of the most active venues for news, opinion and speculation related to the woman, her diet and her website. I am in regular contact with a person who does look at the LCF almost everyday. I go to blogs like that of Jimmy Moore to find a sort of best of synopsis of what is going on. Sometimes there several days where the story does not cross my mind. If you are someone who is devoting too much time to tracking the minute details I would suggest that you make some kind of commitment to step away from it.

The only thing that I ever became engrossed in to the point where it was an unhealthy obsession was the Gulf War. I was a college RA and I spent many of my duty nights glued to CNN. When the physical and mental effects manifested themselves, I was shocked and scared to realize how unbalanced my life had been for those weeks. I made up my mind to avoid being sucked in to coverage of an event in that way ever again.

The Magic Chicken Diet has striking similarities to Kimkins and some key differences. The moderately priced lifetime membership model mirrors Kimkins to a T. A hike from an earlier amount to its present fee of just over $60 lags just behind a similar hike that occurred with Kimkins. There is an publicly available page where someone who is presumably now the webmaster of the site was asking for bids on site design. Here is one sentence from his description of the project:

I would like it to be a clone of www. kimkins.com with ability to change background color and easily edited on my end as a webmaster for editing, adding pictures .

I am not shocked by this. Web business, like every other kind of business involves attempting to replicate the success of others. One big difference here is that the founder and spokeswoman for this diet appears to be a genuine weight loss success story, with a progress slideshow and a first and last name. The question of whether this woman has a plan that involves healthy choices cannot be answered by the uninitiated. From the name, we have to assume that it involves chicken.

I do not know if this site has good information and support for weight loss. I do not know whether the owner is monetizing something with real value or just taking advantage of people. In any case, I would suggest that she change to a payment form that inspires more confidence. There are PayPal logos on the site, but the payment does not appear to be through PayPal. You fill in your credit card information on a very basic submit form.

A drawn out writers strike may become a catalyst for the implosion of American network television. Television is driven by advertisement and it is filled with as much advertisement as people can stomach. Once viewers tune out the ad money will dry up followed by a accelerated deterioration in program quality. I think this will happen. I also think that much like what happened with AM radio, television will not disappear. What will happen is that it will become something else. I don’t watch television and I haven’t for about 3 years. There are a few guilty pleasures that I view on YouTube now and then but I am mostly unaware of what is on television now.

Conrad Black may be more well known in Canada than in the US, where he has been convicted of fraud. He was the poster child for media monopoly in Canada for many years. He also made quite a stir when he renounced his Canadian citizenship so that he could accept a noble title from Great Britain.

I haven’t been following his trial at all because I knew that it would be an excruciatingly drawn out affair. The discussion in the media today is about whether his lack of remorse will be a factor in sentencing. I think the judge will must know that the sentence will be appealed and he will therefore aim for a sentence length that is long enough to make the judge look tough and short enough to make Conrad look girlier than Martha Stewart.

Blogging during a long flight may soon be commonplace. Several airlines are looking into the idea of offering wireless service to its passengers. At the moment it will be limited to email, instant messaging and Blackberry services. If the level of service that they are talking about becomes an industry standard, I would expect developers to create applications that piggyback on the enabled services and allow you to do more. You can already send blog posts through email with some services. I have never done that because I have never needed to do it.

I am glad that the Kimkins story has been the subject of several news segments on the local Fox news in LA. The most recent episode contained seemed to involve the news team taking a bit more credit for many of the discoveries that were actually made by people who had been working on exposing the fraud long before it came to the attention of TV news. I’m OK with that. I have seen a lot of incidents in the world of politics and business where information coming from the blogosphere is discounted simply because it is coming from bloggers. I would rather see KTLA run with the story than have it stay at a slow crawl on the Internet.

This truck would not be suitable for a lot of jobs. They are popular for city works departments, etc. in Europeans cities and from the photos that I have seen, they are almost ubiquitous in Asia.

I took the above picture myself while visiting Italy. I looked for these trucks on the web and I found a UK company that sells this model of truck completely outfitted for mobile coffee service. In North America, you will see a full size ‘half ton’ truck serving many of the same purposes that these little trucks serve elsewhere.

This little truck has a displacement of 50 cc.