Technically Speaking

Statsaholic, which was a great site looks to be pretty much being killed off now by the lawsuit from Amazon/Alexa. This is quite a shame, as I didn’t see what wrong Statsaholic was really doing. What really irks me to no end is that Alexa thinks they provide a great service.

A great service would go out and see if they can actually certify their statistics. I mean, so many sites go off of the Alexa rankings of your web site. You live or die by them, especially where advertisors are concerned. You would think instead of trying to make more money by placing more 125 x 125 ads, they would be seeing about securing some credentials.

To the offline world, Alexa has no real pull. I’m not talking about the fast money, but I’m talking about long term investors. They see Alexa as “a service” that does statistics. One of many you can point people to look at. When you dig a little deeper, they are nothing more then “first one, long time screw you” company. In other words, they got their first, but first isn’t always certifiable.

I have been talking about these web sites, being uncertified for one reason and one reason only. Statistics online are just an illusion at best. In fact, more then likely you can game any statistical system, Alexa being the worst.

How do you get a higher Alexa ranking? Just do that “referrer” game that every SEO will tell you to do. In fact, it’s not a secret, as my good friend Kittymama plays that game.

Technically Speaking, any service that says they are the statistical “king” needs to think about being certified offline as well to be taken seriously. I for one, don’t take any of the sites seriously. To be quite honest, unless you can show me statistics that match up all the way around, then you are doing nothing more then pulling a curtain in front of the man behind it.

I’m not talking “close“, because that is for hand grenades and horseshoes. I’m talking dead on number for number statistics. Show me Alexa and show me another service, pick one, and I can bet the numbers do not match. Remember, this isn’t rocket science, either you received a hit, unique, or page view. Period, end of story. You did or you didn’t. There should be absolutely no variation, zero, zip, none.

It is a beautiful day here in the STL. The BBQ grills will be going, and that includes mine. With that being said, here is what I have found that deems a good read today:

Boston Censorship - Boing Boing is being blocked on public WiFI networks in Boston. By order of the Mayor’s office. Wow! Censorship in Boston.

Statsaholic-Alexa - A widget to track the ongoing support or the slamming of.

Vertagio - Now this one is sort of cool. CenterNetworks reposted my post from the other day. Thanks Allen! This validates what I write to be reposted in such a high profile blog. Much appreciated, as when you blog daily, sometimes you start to wonder if it is worth it.

Not Always - About the money. Sometimes the location does matter. Seattle or Silicon Valley. Which would you choose are your companies new home?

Techinline - A company that one of my favorite bloggers, Ali of everybodygoto, supports. He explains the service well in this article.

Eight New Google Apps - Coming to a browser near you soon!

twitter gets real - This gets human. Sad to see someone with so much promise die suddenly. Even sadder if you had this person as a twitter friend.

Technically Speaking, as I sit here and blog daily living outside of the SV or the tech triangle I also wonder to myself quietly, “Is This Really Worth It?” I think there are many benefits, and even though the money isn’t coming in boat loads, as we see above, it is not always about the money.

Never thought I would say that, did you? One last thing on this Sunday until later on, as I have a BBQ to get ready to produce today - if you have not done so - please give your 10 answers and let my sponsor know if it is really worth it - ANSWER THE SURVEY!

Lastly — Please visit all of my sponsors today; you know them - and I’m not talking just the affiliate ads (do appreciate the outbound links I am seeing) or the Google AdSense (ditto!) stuff - but the for real people -

such as - Collarity, Planypus, HTPBG, DigitalRon, yourminis, and askitonline. These are the real deal sponsors of this blog! Please visit them at least once a week if you get a minute. They appreciate it, and you can never tell when something new is going on there. Oh.. feel free to buy a t-shirt, do a video or take a picture wearing it - I’ll promo it!

I’m quite busy today, but it seems that news has caught up in mass today. I feel guilty, because I don’t have the time to write further on any of these:

Google Profits - They are through the roof. I mentioned the 1st Qtr earning news earlier, but apparently they are like pushing 70%! Wow! They are taking over, and doing it piece by piece. Maybe it will be 2017 by the time they just take over totally?

Startup blogging - It seems to be quite popular these days. This is a company called Ballhype, and the link is to a blog they keep. Very interesting, and you may find Jimmy’s blog also interesting.

Viddyou - Another YouTube clone; may as well capitalize on the collapse of one the biggest collapses of 2007.

Amazon vs Statsaholic - This is totally lame. Not the article(s), but the whole Amazon suing Statsaholic. I’m glad that Mashable started this campaign. I hope the judge hands Amazon their A$$ on a platter. This is quite lame of them to do this, and it’s quite lame of Alexa to steal the ideas that Statsaholic provided them!

Ali you gotta - Let loose man! haha! J/K! I went overboard, but the consensus is pretty much the same everywhere about MySpace News.

Bloggers Have Influence? - Great points raised by Marshall in this post. Did the blogosphere contribute or influence the Hitwise buy out?

SAP - The news is not as good this morning. AMD isn’t smiling either.

Joost - Ten good channels to watch. Joost was not given much of a look in the get go; times have changed since YouTube started to walk to tall, too fast.

Circuit City/Napster - This is an interesting partnership.

Revolution - Without limits according to godfather Bill Gates.

Patent sells - For $2.6 million, the patent on Mobile Social Networking.

A day without SplashCast, well that just isn’t right!

Pop Tech - A conference overview, and of course a SplashCast to view:

It gets better. I didn’t know that Frank had a video on SplashCast - for his Tech Cocktail events; here it is:

SimpleWeather - I like this concept; the stripped down concept we are seeing a lot of these days. Nice site guys.

Google buys Marratech - They bought Swedish company Marratech and quietly announced it via their blog. More information also right here.

Technically Speaking, busy day today - there probably won’t be another update until later this evening. Enjoy, and Happy Friday to all!

I think it’s a shame and a black eye on Amazon to be pulling such a bully stunt. It would be quite different if they would have yelled and screamed from the get go, but letting this go for as long as it was alive; well this is just plain stupid.

I see nothing wrong with what they were doing. They were providing a great service. If Amazon is in the mode of shutting it all down, then they may possibly want to look at how bad of service Alexa really is. That is the issue here. It’s not that Alexa(Stats)aholic was doing anything wrong. It’s that they did it BETTER.

Technically Speaking, it’s more about jealousy then anything else.