These days, I'm a hobbyist web developer. That used to be a common thing people did; it was like having a crafting hobby, but with web pages. Over the last dec...

A dozen years ago, the web started to reshape itself around major companies like Google. We can understand the genesis of today’s algorithmic arms race against...

Today marks the launch of The Internet Association , a laudable effort from a number of prominent Internet technology companies to address our industry’s hist...

Noticing a pattern here? Paul Kedrosky, Dishwashers, and How Google Eats Its Own Tail : Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyw...

More great responses to some recent posts to recap, along with an interview I did a few weeks ago that seems to be pretty timely. eWeek’s Clint Boulton of...

Apple is justifiably revered in the worlds of technology and culture for creating one of the most powerful brands in the world based on the combination of some...

The two best quotes from Ina Fried’s interview with Bill Gates today: On advanced science: “That’s right. We’re going to make the cows that don’t fart. Y...

There have been a lot of great conversations around and about some of my recent posts; Here are some highlights. My post about Google’s Microsoft Moment seem...

I’m not sure Google’s new Chrome OS announcement is that big a deal, or that the eventual product that gets released will actually have that much impact, but...

Today, in a surprisingly botched announcement, Google announced Chrome, their upcoming open source web browser. The subject of a Google browser is something I’...

Almost five years ago, I got involved in a project that would eventually become Atom , a pair of matching standards functioning as a syndication format and a...

I’ve had friends ask why I have advertising on my site; After all, it’s not like I’m gonna pay the rent with the kind of traffic that a Snoop Dogg fansite driv...

Theory of mind is that thing that a two-year-old lacks, which makes her think that covering her eyes means you can’t see her. It’s the thing a chimpanzee has,...

Today’s Blog of the Year Picks: Some Bits: Nelson’s Weblog and RC3.org . These two are just for me, some real old-school-blogging nerd picks. Some B...

Google’s changed a lot in the past few years, going from underselling their efforts to shamelessly promoting themselves as leaders, even when it’s leadersh...

From eWeek’s “Upcoming” section, which I’d praised a few weeks ago , comes this interview with Java creator James Gosling . The key quote, for me: Of Goo...

I found some really interesting responses to the launch of Google Web History that are all well worth visiting. CNET’s Margaret Kane has a roundup of ne...

Many years ago, when the web was a simpler place, one of the scariest monsters conjured up to describe the privacy threats that lurked on the Internet was the...

A little while ago, my friend Michael Sippey, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing the other day , sent me a link to the new Google Voice Local Search ....

The exact thing you are looking for is out there on the Internet, if you just know where to look. So here are some hints. Making the connection between Gi...

The folks at Cranky Geeks have just put up a new episode of the show , though it was actually taped a while ago and was the first episode I ever participated...

A few years ago, I wrote a post called Portalization which showed a Yahoo homepage screenshot with certain services grayed-out, as an indicator of which corr...

Summary: In 2002, Google launched one of their few pay services, Google Answers . The service attracted only 800 responders in the past 4 years, and was sh...

I’ve been ruminating about radio a lot lately (more on that later), but one of the most pleasant radio discoveries of late has been XM Radio’s 80s and 90...

So maybe Gracenote (formerly CDDB) isn’t evil after all ? I love anything that challenges the conventional wisdom, especially when someone’s gotten a bad...

The first version of Google Apps for Your Domain has been released, offering hosted applications that provide free, ad-supported services including email, c...

In describing Google Apps for Your Domain as “Google Office”, I was somewhat deliberately making reference to all the conversations that have happened in the...

Just a little geek note, there’s now a box that will appear the first time you visit my site (it disappears after the first visit) that will let you subscribe...

Is FTP the worst web services interface ever? I’ve been publishing Froogle product lists (which I guess are now Google Base upload files ) with Movable Type j...

Or, “Yahoo bought everyone on my buddy list, and all I got was this t-shirt”. Following up on the discussion about Web 2.0 from last week, the only thing a...

We’re three (or more) years into the blogosphere’s love for GoogleBombs, and here’s another story on them. I’m glad I at least got to throw in a little quote...

Okay, enough talk about ugliness. Let’s try out Google’s new IM service before it launches tomorrow ! Yay for people figuring things out. I’d feel bad for G...

Just because I like to try new things out, I threw Google’s AdSense for Feeds on my Atom feed that lots of you are subscribed to. I’ll probably take it off,...

I only mentioned this in passing in my post about accountability the other day, but the choices all of us make when creating software, or when finding new wa...

eBay’s just launched eBay Pulse , kinda similar to Google’s Zeitgeist, but listing what particular kinds of crap eBay buyers are inflicting on their loved one...

Well, one more barrier to me using gmail just fell away… they’ve added free POP support to their mail service. I still don’t use gmail, but they’re making it h...

Congrats to Ev on finishing his tenure at Google . Ev’s work, and the talent of the people he’s had working with him over the past decade, have both been big...

I don’t use gmail, but if I did, I’d route the Atom feed of new messages to my inbox....

How come Slashdot talks about Google launching a browser when the New York Post writes about it when the Post story itself quotes Jason himself ? For all...

A few months ago, two companies in the search optimization space teamed up to start a contest , based on a challenge to see who could be the first result for...

Well, thanks to the help of an amazingly generous community, I came pretty darn close to getting to the top of the results for the Nigritude Ultramarine se...

Update: The contest is over, and this entry did pretty well but didn’t win the initial prize. So the best purpose this page can serve is to direct you to Th...

Do links detected in messages sent to Gmail accounts affect PageRank? Should they? Does PageRank even matter anymore?...

Sure, personal ads are one of the biggest money-makers on the web, with everyone from InterActiveCorp to Friendster being involved in the space, and of course...

So, Google’s own CEO has stated that Google is a media company , maybe it’s worth observing whether the world’s most successful Internet companies are media c...

So we’ve got the Deskbar and the Google Toolbar and they’re great. I’m assuming one of you geniuses can probably fill me in on a larger question, though: Can G...

Did you know: books.burri.to mostly does what Paul said the Google Marketplace Manager should do?...

Google’s AdSense program is fantastic, a category killer. A good way to make money, a tasteful way to do ads, and a dramatic new way to turn hobbyist or pers...

I’m kind of creeped out by how pervasive the weblog influence is in some circles… I had just hopped on a plane the other morning and was settling in when the g...

Now that Netscape’s more or less officially dead, it occurs to me that it might be worthwhile for Google to bankroll the Mozilla Foundation , either by donati...

You know, back when AltaVista was a big deal for DEC, I figured it was going to kill Yahoo, since Yahoo only had a directory and AV had full-text indexes of hu...

One of the small pleasures of having one’s own weblog is that it’s easy to add context or background information when you’re quoted in a press story that you f...

Google’s new text-based microad service looks really, really interesting, but why do the Program Policies specifically state "AdWords ads may not appear...

Update: Read the comments. Dan and Joshua, who know way more about this stuff than I do, explain why I’m wrong and help me clarify what I’m really asking for...

You know, Bill Gates had a public appearance next to a giant inflated condom more than 24 hours ago, presumably with a dot on his forehead as he’s been wearing...

Cameron’s bet against Google . In the long term, he’s right. Google depends on the web staying as broken as it is, with no semantics assigned to content, and...

Let’s consider. Amazon has all of our attention, for getting it , for having our one-click accounts all ready to be one-clicked. For getting the UI right and...

I will just give you the links: PHP code to access the Google API . Incidentally, WSDL is amazing. And, in keeping with the programmer’s rule that lazin...

Before it shut down, useless shopping portal/browser toolbar dotcom dash.com sawed through about forty million dollars in funding . I even considered a job...

More discussion on weblogs vs. journalism over at Jason’s site, but that topic bores me. More interesting is where the content and networked nature of weblog...

Hey, cool! Looks like my Pardon Me For Being Forward got me picked as alt.gossip.celebrities ‘ site of the day . I like when individuals in a community pic...

With one last bit of linky help from Dinah , I have reclaimed my Google lock on my name. Thanks to all you nutso people who helped me get back my birthrig...

Now that ‘s more like it....

Of course, my true love, as always, are AIM bots, so I was pleased to find out that there is an AIM Googlebot . His name is Googlematic, and he was made by...

So, lots of updates to my portal , which is still a lousy representation of my real surfing patterns, despite the addition of the Google Zeitgeist and NY T...

So Google has an image search now, which, if it was announced, I had forgotten about. It’s great for finding pet pictures on the web, too....

To Raging Search and Google, add ExcitePrecision Search . Looks crappy....

I guess raging search is supposed to be like " AltaVista, Google Edition ". Interesting concept, I haven’t had time to do a full test yet…...

All the search engines I know of ( let me know if I’m wrong) parse out the scripting and comments in a site’s HTML when they spider it, but I was thinking t...

Somehow I find these results satisfying....