Roadmaps This and That

So I am finally getting around to trying out Qumana. One too many posts in progress eaten by the "mystical keystroke combo" that closes all my open windows 🙂  And malformed HTML code because I forgot to save my Word doc as a text file before I copied the content.

Just a few things to highlight from this week’s blog reading.

Some more comments on the New York A-list article and resulting discussion of the Technorati 100:

A great post from Jory Des Jardins about Dropping the A-list Mentality

And from Evelyn Rodriguez, My Technorati Rank Plummets – And Why It Doesn’t Matter

Speaking of Technorati — Technorati Favorites. Not sure what I think yet, except that 50 seems like a small number of favorites when most folks track far more blogs. Who makes the favorites list?Is it therefore an honor to be on someone’s Technorati favorites?

How is this that terribly different in its result than a blogroll. Yeah, I get it that a blogroll just lists the blog, while this highlights the recent posts from someone’s favorite blogs, but in the end, not that different in its result –it is a way of finding new blogs based on a reference from a blog you already like or trust. In light of all the conversations about blogrolls, and utility thereof, with some bloggers getting rid of them altogether, I’m wondering what need this actually fills? If blogrolls are too hard to maintain, or even perhaps too political, why do we need ANOTHER favorites? Some other comments on this (by no means all, just the ones I bookmarked):

Frappr. I’m not sure how useful this is, but I can see how it can become addicting. I joined the group started by Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz in support of their excellent podcast For Immediate Release, and really haven’t done much with it. Well, this weekend, I got an email that Chris Locke wanted to be my friend on Frappr. I said to myself, "That Chris Locke???" so I felt I had to check it out. Sure enough, it was indeed that Chris Locke of Cluetrain and Gonzo Marketing fame (infamy??) Turns out, he was playing with it, and apparently inviting everyone in his address books. Well, I had exchanged a few emails with him about a year ago, and there you have it. I figured, what the hell, let’s see what happens, so said yes. And over the past few days, friend invites are dribbling in here and there. And I find myself checking people out way more than I did in boring old Linked In 🙂  I even "spammed" a few of my friends with invites!  Still haven’t figured out if how useful this is beyond the entertainment value, but it’s been fun, so thanks Rage Boy.

H&R Block. Miscalculated its own state income taxes, understating its liabilities by $32 million as of April 30, 2005. What can we say. What a PR nightmare. No matter how competent their tax preparers are, or how good their software is, they are going to have to deal with a perception that they screwed up their OWN taxes. Ouch. Seen on Threadwatch.

And to end the weekend, and start your week off with a chuckle, a great ad by HP (seen on Adrants) and a funny cartoon (thanks Neville)

Technorati Tags : a-list, Technorati, H&R Block, frappr