Technically Speaking

* In the right hand corner after you hit start - you will see “1/11″ - click the right arrow to get to Episode 11!

Episode 11 notes:

Mugglenet

Emerson Spartz, the 20-year-old creator of the popular Harry Potter fan site Mugglenet (mugglenet.com), experienced a similar run-of-the-mill adolescence. “I wasn’t an entrepreneur when I started,” says Spartz, who now tallies more than 1 million hits per day at Mugglenet. “I became one after I realized the Web site’s potential.”

Although worried that his image as a businessman could tarnish his Potterhead status, Spartz tells BusinessWeek he pulls in “a six-figure income.” To angry fans who accuse him of financially exploiting their Potter passions, he simply cites server costs: Once a minor fiscal drain, they now run $125,000 annually. “If I can meet Harry Potter fans’ needs and make money at the same time, why shouldn’t I?” he asks.

Business and web 2.0

We’re now at the busy crossroads where globalization meets Web 2.0. This presents both a challenge to the old ways of doing business and an opportunity to gain tremendous leverage via the right goods and services. To thrive in this era, companies will have to figure out how to engage young people from all over the world when they conceive of products and services. Businesses need their help in turning concepts into finished products and, especially, in marketing them. Another angle: Companies can follow the trail of blogs and social networking sites to find and recruit young employees all over the world.

Better get used to it. Flying blind is the unavoidable consequence of coming to terms with today’s most important demographic group: the tens of millions of digital elite who are in the vanguard of a fast-emerging global youth culture. Because of smartphones, blogs, instant messaging, Flickr, MySpace, Skype, YouTube, digg, and de.lic.ious, young people scattered all over are instantly aware of what’s happening to others like them everywhere else. This highly influential group, many of whom are also well-heeled, is sharing ideas and information across borders and driving demand for consumer electronics, entertainment, autos, food, and fashion. Think of it as a virtual melting pot. As the population of the young and Web-savvy grows into the hundreds of millions, the pot is going to boil.

Plaxo re-launch

Plaxo, the contacts updating service, was popular briefly a few years ago but then started irritating people — it would constantly ping you with update requests from friends and solicitations to join Plaxo.

In short, it got a reputation of being “evil,” and then turned quiet, and we wondered if we’d ever hear from it again.

But tomorrow, the company launches with a promising new release. It’s a complete overhaul, and extremely ambitious. In some ways, it looks like it wants to target Facebook.

GigaOm spin on Plaxo

Now you can sync your Google Calendar and Address Book with your corporate calendar and address book Exchange/Outlook, Apple Apps, LinkedIn, and any other web service or software you prefer to use. (I say almost because there are still some platforms that are not supported, and the beta release isn’t quite bug free.) The Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up has just executed a reboot as a web-based service, and is now focusing on syncing. The company is also making all the information available via its mobile page: m.plaxo.com.

Google-Grand Central

Big rumor of the day: Google is buying GrandCentral. We checked with GrandCentral and they declined to comment. If it indeed does happen, it would be delicious irony: Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet were with DialPad, which got sold to Yahoo. So this would even the score. GrandCentral has raised about $4 million from Minor Ventures and has been looking to raise more cash. Google dollars might be an easier option.

Via - TechCrunch post - Google-GrandCentral

Spotplex

The web offers more than a few sites with variations on the Digg theme, but Spotplex, which has designed a potentially more democratic ranking system, is different.

Instead of the submit-and-vote system used by Digg and its clones, Spotplex ranks articles based on the number of impressions they get. Bloggers insert a line of code into their blogs, and Spotplex works in the background, tallying each time someone lands on an article’s page.

Mashable spin on Spotplex

The good thing about this service is that it’s rather hands off for bloggers; no need to go back to the site to re-distribute content or bookmark it. Of course the downfall of this model is that only items submitted by bloggers can be searched. In order for it to become an ideally useful tool for both bloggers and readers alike,

Google Reader down

Michael Arrington

MySpace vs Facebook

Over the last six months, i’ve noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That’s only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it’s not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Which go where gets kinda sticky, because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.

More on Yahoo management shuffle

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo Inc. said Sunday that its chief domestic sales officer had resigned and that the company would merge its search and display advertising departments in the U.S. as the Internet powerhouse fights to catch up with online search leader Google Inc.

Yahoo said it hoped the latest shake-up would streamline the way it sold advertising to customers who increasingly want to buy ads across a variety of formats, including being linked to search terms, popping up as a graphical display and being shown as video.

The reshuffling comes after a major executive overhaul announced last week, with co-founder Jerry Yang replacing Terry Semel as chief executive. In the latest organizational change, Yahoo said Wenda Millard, chief sales officer in the U.S., was leaving the company effective immediately.

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What a way to end up a Friday afternoon right?

Spotplex - I talked about them the other night. If you have a blog, did your blog get in on their first 1,000 blogs? Technically Speaking did. TechCrunch had a great write up that turned me on to them. You can see my Spotplex image to the right under the sponsors ads.

Speaking of sponsors - be sure to visit - Collarity, How to Play Business Golf, DigitalRon, Planypus, yourminis and askitonline. In no particular order, and they are all great sponsors with great services or products to offer you! 

SplashCast - They had a nice write up by Allen today over on Centernetworks. While I was still consumed with Charter Communications, Allen was doing his job this morning!

Translate to Chinese - Because that is where the business is going to all be soon! I think we will all be YeeYan very soon! Great idea.

Technically Speaking, that’s it for a bit. I’m going to Link Blog Lock n’ Load!