July 6, 2008
“Creative Capitalism”— The Great Web 2.0 Delusion

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and only recently found a comment that made me really want to expound on my opinion of Web 2.0 as a business concept. This comment was made on FriendFeed in response to a post by Veronica Belmont pointing out McCain’s comment about “hating bloggers”:

“A great divide in contemporary American culture: crony capitalists vs. creative capitalists. Crony capitalists hate creative capitalists and feel threatened by them. That’s the subtext here if you dig deeply. The Bush 43 administration (of which McCain is a part) is the last angry gasp of a particular class of crony capitalists who want to annihilate everything that they can’t understand or control. The Internet is full-throttle creative capitalism — it drives these people nuts. - Sean McBride

Putting aside the political commentary here (which I have very little interest in), I think the idea of “creative capitalism” is seriously flawed. Web 2.0 companies have this idea that if they build something, they’ll be able to live off of VC and advertising money indefinitely. Would Twitter continue to survive if it weren’t for the recent VC investment that is now allowing them to expand their architecture? Are other Web 2.0 properties such as Digg, Revision3, Mahalo and the like even turning a profit? Is there any prospect of them turning a profit in the next several years? I doubt it.

There is going to come a point when the Web 2.0 market matures. VCs will wisen up and realize that they aren’t going to get the kind of ROI they once did for Web 2.0 companies. VC money will become harder to get and unprofitable Web 2.0 companies will either die off or get gobbled up. The weakness of the dollar and our struggling economy are causing all sectors of business to tighten up their purse strings and evaluate much more carefully any spending they do.

I’m not saying that blogging will ever go away. But the idea that “creative capitalism” is a viable, long-term economic pattern is simply niave. This is Web Bubble 2.0, plain and simple.

Sidenote: I should add that I enjoy many of the Web 2.0 sites just as much as the next person. I just don’t expect them to be around long-term unless they make changes to become profitable.

1:22pm  |   URL: http://blog.jasonhuebel.name/post/41215822/creative-capitalism-the-great-web-2-0-delusion
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July 4, 2008
Stargate Continuum Review

Only minor spoilers here, so you’ll probably be okay reading through it.

Stargate Continuum is a new Stargate-universe movie revolving around time travel set to be released to video on July 29th. Here’s a one-liner description of the movie from IMDB:

“Ba’al travels back in time and prevents the Stargate program from being started. SG-1 must somehow restore history.”

I admit I haven’t watched many episodes of Stargate SG-1, but with some of the crossover of characters to Stargate Atlantis (which I watch frequently), I was familiar enough with the storyline to get the general gist of the movie.

The special effects are pretty good, as with most modern made-for-television Sci-Fi these days. There are the standard Stargate effects, some great gunfights and one scene in particular that was reminiscent of some scenes in Blade. I’ll let you figure out which scene I’m talking about.

The story is pretty well crafted, with a good premise (time travel is always a winner) and the competent acting you’ve come to expect from a Stargate installment.

Richard Dean Anderson has a role, which is always a treat. His role is fairly small, but who doesn’t like seeing MacGyver now and again.

My overall impression is that if you like Sci-Fi, have some familiarity with the Stargate series and enjoy a good time travel/time paradox plot, you’ll really enjoy this movie.

If rating on the made-for-television scale (which is more lenient), I’d give Stargate Continuum at 4 out of 5.

4:26pm  |   URL: http://blog.jasonhuebel.name/post/41008902/stargate-continuum-review
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June 30, 2008
Ping.fm: What’s Good And What Doesn’t Really Matter

I started using Ping.fm to update my various social network statuses, micro-blog entries and blogs. After spending a couple of days with it and getting used to the various features, I have to say I really love it.

What’s Good?

Practically everything. Ping.fm allows you to classify your social networks into three basic update categories: Blogs, Micro-blogs and Status Updates. So for instance, I consider Twitter (a supported service) a micro-blog and a place where I put status updates. So when I setup Twitter on Ping.fm, I included it in those categories. For Facebook, I only included it in the status updates category.

Now the cool part is the number of ways you can update your various social networks. My preferred way is via AOL Instant Messenger. For instance, sending this instant message to the pingfm AIMbot will send a status update to all the applicable social networks:

@s my status update

Notice the “@s” at the beginning of the command? That tells Ping.fm to send the message only to services I have in the “status updates” category. Similarly, you can use “@b” to send a message to your blog (really the syntax for blogging is “@b title^body”) or “@m” for micro-blogs. If you forget to leave off the @a part, then if will default to going to a predefined group of services. By default I have my updates go to the “status updates” category.

Other options for updating your social networks include email, an iGoogle widget, a Facebook app, a mobile web page and a desktop app (written by a ping.fm employee, but not officially supported by ping.fm).

One other feature that I find particularly useful is that ping.fm will automatically shorten URLs for you before sending them to your social networks. Now you don’t have to worry about doing this manually yourself.

What Doesn’t Really Matter?

Personally, I find Ping.fm pretty useless for posting to my regular blog (which you’re reading now). Why? Well, using instant messenger to post to my blog isn’t practical. Can you imagine trying to enter this post in AOL Instant Messenger? Yuck. I tried it once. Putting carraige returns in an instant messenger doesn’t work well. I ended up with a single-paragraph entry.

Perhaps sending a post via email would be okay, but if you’re connected enough to get to email you can probably get to your blog anyway. The only exception I could see is if you were behind a corporate web filter that prevents you from accessing your blog. Then using email may be a way to circumvent that filter.

Overall Impressions

I love ping.fm. I became addicated to micro-blogging about a month ago when I joined Twitter. Twitter, of course, is a gateway drug to other services like Plurk, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Pownce, etc. I’m a member of all of them now (yes, I’m sick). Ping.fm let’s me update all of them quickly and easily.

7:12pm  |   URL: http://blog.jasonhuebel.name/post/40480488/ping-fm-whats-good-and-what-doesnt-really-matter
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Filed under: ping.fm social network twitter blog 
June 23, 2008
SETXLUG Meeting: Picture I took at the SETXLUG Meeting tonight. Pictured are (from left) Matt Horton and Lonnie Netnay.

SETXLUG Meeting: Picture I took at the SETXLUG Meeting tonight. Pictured are (from left) Matt Horton and Lonnie Netnay.

10:14pm  |   URL: http://blog.jasonhuebel.name/post/39592530/setxlug-meeting-picture-i-took-at-the-setxlug
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June 19, 2008
Owen’s Rubber Boots

Owen’s Rubber Boots

6:48pm  |   URL: http://blog.jasonhuebel.name/post/39087134/owens-rubber-boots
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June 17, 2008
Review: Fringe (Pilot, FOX)

I had the opportunity to view the pilot episode of the new FOX series called Fringe. It’s guaranteed to be compared against shows like the X-Files (for the content) and Lost (because it’s by JJ Abrams).

**SPOILER ALERT**

Based on the pilot, this is going to be an excellent series. The characters are truly engaging. There’s the beautiful, intelligent agent with a past. There are the FBI agents who are secret lovers. There’s a conspiracy to experiment on mankind called “The Pattern”. There’s an evil, highly advanced, multi-national defense company. There’s a mad scientist.

I don’t have anything bad to say about the pilot, to be honest. It had excellent acting, a great plot and amazing special effects. In particular, the effect the “chemical agent” creates on it’s victims was really impressive.

The pilot is two-hours of action, suspense, plot twists and gooey (it’s a tad graphic here and there) fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will be tuning in when the show finally premieres this fall.

7:23pm  |   URL: http://blog.jasonhuebel.name/post/38818300/review-fringe-pilot-fox
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June 13, 2008
My sister sent me this interesting picture. If you look at it up close, it’s a picture of Albert Einstein. But if you back away (say 10 feet or so), it changes into Marilyn Monroe. Of course, this is a trick with how your eyes focus on things. Not sure what the effect is called, but it’s really cool.

My sister sent me this interesting picture. If you look at it up close, it’s a picture of Albert Einstein. But if you back away (say 10 feet or so), it changes into Marilyn Monroe. Of course, this is a trick with how your eyes focus on things. Not sure what the effect is called, but it’s really cool.

2:44pm  |   URL: http://blog.jasonhuebel.name/post/38306310/my-sister-sent-me-this-interesting-picture-if-you
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June 12, 2008
Memorial Lunch Today

It’s going to be a rough day today, I think. A good friend of mine— Bobby Oliver— passed away at the beginning of last week. He was only in his mid- to late-30’s. The family had a funeral in Houston last Saturday, but I wasn’t able to attend because they moved the date a couple of times. Anyway, Christus Hospital in Beaumont is having a memorial lunch for Bobby today to “celebrate his life”. I appreciate that they’re having this lunch, since so many people from this area weren’t able to attend his funeral.

UPDATE: I just wanted to add that the memorial lunch was really nice. Many people who attended got up and talked about experiences they had with Bobby. Mine was about riding motorcycles to Jasper Memorial Hospital when we had to do work there. I had the chance to sit and talk with Bobby’s mom for about 30 minutes. She’s a really nice person and it’s obvious why Bobby turned out to be such a great guy.

10:45am  |   URL: http://blog.jasonhuebel.name/post/38151454/memorial-lunch-today
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June 5, 2008
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

OK, so I know this is really old, but I found myself feeling a tad nostalgic today and decided I’d post about it on my blog. Jonathan Coulton wrote a song called Code Monkey that is everything that is right and good about being a geek and programmer. Since I’ve gone back into business for myself again, I’m going to be programming a lot more. So this seemed pretty fitting.

6:14pm  |   URL: http://blog.jasonhuebel.name/post/37329312/ok-so-i-know-this-is-really-old-but-i-found
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June 5, 2008
First Week Of Self-Employment

Well, my first week of (re-)self-employment is almost over and it’s already been a great week. I’ve done a few small projects and have a full week of work lined up for next week. I’m also getting back into programming now, with a cool project to create a social community around the products that one of my client’s sells. It’s not a retail/consumer oriented site. It’s a site for collectors. It’s going to be written entirely in ASP.NET/VB.NET. I may also take the opportunity to learn AJAX.NET as well. We’ll see how that goes.

I’m also working on setting up an honest-to-goodness workshop for my business. Since I also do technical work like computer repair, server and workstation installation, etc. So I need some good workspace to do all that. Really, I’ve already got most of what I need. The only thing I need is an A/C window unit to cool the place down.

I’ve also started getting work shirts made. I have a CafePress account that I use to have the shirts printed at cost. If you’re interested in helping out a newly self-employed person by donating a couple of shirts to the cause, you can make the purchase here and have the items (XL Polo Shirts are preferred) sent to:

Technical Care
ATTN: Jason Huebel
9326 Terri Lane
Orange, TX 77632

Anyway, looks like self-employment is already a resounding success and I’ve only been doing it for four days (well, in another two hours).

3:12pm  |   URL: http://blog.jasonhuebel.name/post/37314113/first-week-of-self-employment
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