So Muxtape is down thanks to an apparent run-in with the RIAA. Sounds like bad news to me... but the company says it's just temporary.

http://www.dailydomainer.com/... http://www.webmasterworld.com/... If you buy a lot of domain names then you probably already knew that this was happening, but it's finally been confirmed- there are "leaks" in the whois search system. This means that if you search for a domain name sites can find out about it and buy it out from under you. This used to happen after a few days, sometimes, but now it can happen in as little as two minutes, according to some reports. Once they have your domain name, they will park it and then probably offer it up to you for sale or even to rent. I've seen some okay, not great, domain names renting out for $30 or a month. What should you do about it?  There is not a whole lot you can do, but you can be smart about things and prevent problems before they happen. Defensive domain buying tips:

1. Be careful where you search for names! The is the most important step. I'm not sure if someone gave me this advice or if I read it, but don't search anywhere besides a billion dollar registrar. This means absolutely no plugins, no small time whois sites, and don't ever just type the name into the address bar (ISPs sell this information, including the names of domains that do not exist).
2. Search to buy If you are searching and you see what you want- just pull the trigger. If it's just one or two domain names, it will be under $20 then you have a year to decide. If you only buy domain names for future projects than this system works well. For the average web worker, who just ones a few domains, maybe a dozen or two, it is better to pick up what they want and not use it than to lose out on something solid.
3. Don't be cheap with TLDs If you are going to use the .com domain, you might as well pick up the .net and .org as well. It hurts to have to spend three times as much as you wanted, but if you pick up one domain the chance than the other TLDs will be purchased by someone else increases exponentially. I've even heard about people buying the other TLD (or a domain like yours) soon after you do and offering to sell you the one they just picked up! Quick note- I don't really other with other TLDs like .tv, .us, .info, etc because of how rarely the average internet user bothers with them, aside from major destinations.
4. Consider the typos and mistakes If you are investing in a domain name set and you want to get really defensive, consider buying the mistakes people may make. For example, when I bought xyzcomputing.com and realized it was getting some attention, I quickly increased my portfolio from xyzcomputing (com/net/org) to include xyzcomputers, xyzcomputers, xyzcomp, and some more. For these I focused on the .com names as my losses to xyzcomputer.org could not be significant. As for typos- if your domain is common spelled wrong, buy the right way and forward with it so you don't lose those people.

So where should you be looking for domain names? Probably at the largest, most reputable organization you can find. I have used GoDaddy without any problems, but I have heard complaints about domains being "tasted" though they have strongly denied any claims of this. Any public company should be trustworthy, as any question of integrity would threaten their core business. I have always had luck with domaintools.com and would recommend them if you are looking for a great place to start. Finding the right domain name is only going to get harder in the future so you have to great creative about coming up with a name. Once you do you have to make sure you get it, as buying a domain name or having to rent one is a less than ideal way to start your site, especially if you don't expect it to generate any income. Buying the domain you have your heart set on is becoming more is becoming increasingly common, but the prices are so inflated that it is just not a possibility for most people. What this all comes down to if you need to be defensive about your research and name sure to expose yourself to the least amount of risk possible.

This is a really interesting article about the basics of creating and running a search engine. It is not very technical, but it is fascinating to look into how complex these things are and how much we take for granted when using them. The article goes point by point over some of the decisions you will need to face, from choosing your facilities to your storage and indexing. Very cool stuff, but light enough to stop the reader from getting bogged down in the tech talk.

http://upnext.com/ This is something I have been meaning to write about for a couple of weeks now. It's a new NYC-based startup that features a 3D mapping application. It' is basically a 3D map of Manhattan where each of the building can be clicked on for a description. You can find your favorite restaurant and some information about it or click it and then find bars (for example) in the area. Basically it is a database of the cities bars/stores/restaurants/subway stops with an extremely slick 3D interface. It's kind of Citysearch-meets-Google Earth. I found out about the site at the last Meetup.com NYC tech meetup (I went to talk to the Amazon AWS rep). I was pretty impressed at the time and have been playing with it on and off since then. The next day, at Widgetcon, I actually ran into a friend of the owner and we got to talk for a second, that was cool too. Anyway, I was impressed with it. You have to sign up to test it out, which is a bit of a hassle, but I thought it was worth the time (especially if you are fascinated with maps, like me).

Me neither. Well apparently I signed up for their alpha program, so I'll be playing with it for a little while today. Hopefully it will be cool, it better be (given that they a have been developing it for months, or at least so long that I could read something about it, sign up, and then completely forget about it). I really don't know what's up with these super long beta periods. I signed up for for Foldera and it took them a few months to get back to me as well. I know development takes time but I'd like to see more announcements that are accompanied by a large-scale, or open, beta period. I don't want to read about something, get interested and then have to wait six months. If that's the case chances are I'm going to find another service that can do the same thing and not bother to move over to the one that originally caught my eye. Back to Freebase, it's an free database in which the information can be used for any purpose (commercial or non). It could be cool, or it could be another web 2.0 service that pops up make some headlines and then goes completely under the radar. We'll see... Edit: Apparently freebase is also a drug reference. Nice choice of a name there... This site deals with free databases about all sorts of topics, even blogs and bloggers.

It's no joke...

The first conference designed specifically for widget marketers. A full day of dialogue and productive networking. Case studies, examples, data, insight. An invite-only guest list comprised of the leading agencies, most innovative clients and widget-savvy publishers.

It's a convention, about widgets. You know, those embeddedable web applications that are popping up all over. Personally I think the whole widget thing is about 70% hype, 20% misguided hopes, and 10% actual substance, but I was hoping to attend the convention so that I could learn more, talk to some people, and reevaluate things. Well, I was wait-listed. For Widgetcon! Here is the email:

Thanks for requesting an invitation to WidgetCon 2007. We wish we could accommodate everyone who wants to attend, but unfortunately we can't. So for now, your name is on the waiting list. In the event that a spot opens up, we'll be moving people off the waiting list and into the event. All shuffling will end by Thursday July 5. We'll let you know definitively by then if we'll be able to find a spot for you.

Hopefully I'll hear from them before the 5th and be allowed in. Despite the initial turn-down and my shattered ego, I would still love to attend. They actually put together a pretty solid list of speakers including Steve Rubel, David Card (Jupiter Research), and Andrew C. Frank (Gartner). Somehow they stretched Widgetcon into an all day event, but I still think it would be worth the time. Edit- OK, it's confirmed. I'll be at Widgetcon. I was accepted!

Considering how new and unproven Mahalo is, there has been a lot of news about it. It's a cool idea, they apparently have a lot of money, and Jason Calacanis is a pretty well connected guy, so it's no surprise that it's looking very strong despite how new it is. If you are not familiar with the site, you can go there and figure things out pretty quickly. Basically it is a human-powered search engine based on a wiki. In retrospect the project should be no surprise since Calacanis (on his blog at least) has been extremely interested in Wikipedia and SEO, plus from what we saw of his work on Netscape, we know he likes to employ people-power when possible. Add up all of those, throw in some cheesy Hawaiian graphics, and you have Mahalo. Right now the site is still in alpha, which means that the editors have only been able to put together a limited number of SERPs. They seem to be using a top-down approach and getting the top search terms and filling in pages about those (I think I read that they have about 4000 right now with a goal of 100,000) and with 28 "guides" and user recommendations, this number should be increasing rapidly (I would not be surprised if they were doing a 1000 a week. 28 guides x 5 days x 10 pages/day/guide = 1400...). Even so, if you search for something that is not popular right now (Apple, Paris Hilton, etc) you probably won't find it. It is very interesting to see how they did the results pages. Here is one mentioned in their blog- Paris Hotels- that should give a good idea of what Mahalo's goals are. Going from the top down- we have:

• Top 7- the best search results. Basically what you want to get from Google once you filter out the crap...
• Specific hotels separated by price (luxury/moderate/affordable/hostel) with phone number, recommendation and Google maps link
• Related searches within Mahalo
• Also- you can recommend a link or email someone the page

So while you can get everything here by going to another search engine, Mahalo puts in all in one page, throws you some good links, and should save you some time because the results are pre-filtered by a (hopefully) capable human. What are the problems with this?

1. The lists are far from complete. For example, I stayed at a great hotel in Paris a few months ago, it's not listed, and just looking at the list I can see a lot more that are missing. [To be fair it says the page is 75% done, but all the pages are that way.]
2. The guide (Rupak) may not be an expert in Paris hotels. Sure he can get links from Google or read Frommer's online and get some recommendations, but what he is listing is nothing more than the site's he likes and filtered results from other sites.
3. How fresh is this page? Mahalo is brand new, so this page is probably just a few weeks old, but once Mahalo has thousands more pages, how will things stay updated. In fact check this out- the page has not been touched since 22 March. That's over two months...
4. The discussion page is dead, and the functionality here is limited.
5. This isn't a problem, but it's worth mentioning that I can't edit it- http://www.mahalo.com/Paris_hotel&action=edit, so we'll have to trust the guides.

Number three seems especially crucial to me. Wikipedia stays up to date because thousands of people are overseeing pages and put lots of time into making sure they are updated. Plus anyone can go in and make a quick change if they notice something that needs reworking. This is not the case with Mahalo and if all the resources are going to new pages I don't see how they can keep up with old ones. So, as a user, what can I get from Mahalo? I am fast and capable with other resources, so probably not much. It can save me time by aggregating popular links and showing recommended pages from other users, but is that it? If I was not as technically proficient (for example, "what could my parent's get from it?") then it would clearly be a bigger help. They would be able to get quality links without spam, but their search would be limited to the biggest sites. What about smaller blogs about Paris that could offer great firsthand experiences and recommendation? Those will probably never make it because Mahalo is all about getting us to the big resources and filtering out the rest. At this point it's hard to say whether Mahalo is optimizing or dumbing down web search, but it's clear that something had to be done. There is more than enough room for a few more players in the search engine business and even if a site is getting only a small percentage of search traffic they can still be highly successful.This is, if nothing else, a novel approach and one that will be a big hit with some people. It's like Cha-Cha done right and without having to directly deal with someone else (which is the whole reason we are on the internet in the first place, right?).

So I just got an email from Joost saying how they are up to version 0.9 of their software and have hooked me up with a few more invitations. I am going to take this chance to give them another try after initially not being thrilled with the service. Along with the upgraded software they also redesigned their web site. It looks great, clearly it is getting ready for a wider release, but there are a number of problems. Right now I can't seem to be able to added threads to the forum or to find the invites page! This means the new invites they sent me can't go out until they forward me a link. I submitted a support request to them when I got the email (on the 2nd) and have gotten no reply, so I just emailed them a few minutes ago. As for the Joost 0.9 I will be looking at it more closely later on this week, but it's looking good. The video quality is generally very good, the interface is extremely slick but still hard to control and unintuitive, and the content selection... well that is probably the weakest area. Right now there are 25 channels, most of which are not great, but there are two car racing channels (5th Gear and Indy) which I have been enjoying.

A few days ago I got an email from Jott.com telling me that my beta request had been answered. I don't even remember emailing them so either they got hold of my email or (more likely) I signed up a long time ago and forgot about it until the message turned up in my inbox. Anyway, Jott is a service that you call from your cell phone and leave a message for yourself or someone else. After leaving the message the system converts it to text, saves the audio message, and then emails you an alert. Wow- pretty pretty awesome idea. I mean, not world changing, but if you remember to use it Jott could be a great tool. Of course, this is supposing you can't email yourself from your cell phone, that your cell phone does not have voice notes, and that you are either too lazy to text yourself or you don't have the discpline to text yourself and then not read the text (thus making it useless as an alert). If you fall into any of these categories all you have to do is register, save Jott to your phone, and call the 1-800 number when you have a note that needs to be taken. I have been really impressed with the transcription- it has been almost error-free in a number of messages, even when dealing with tough things like the time and website names. After leaving your message on their phone system (you have about 30 seconds to talk) the system immediately saves it and then it takes a little while to transcribe it. I generally leave messages when I am away from my desk and I had not been able to time it until, so I just tested it out. I left a full message (I was cut off at the end) of a long paragraph I read and then a string of domain names to test it out. The transcriptions were usually done in less than two minutes (but sometimes took as much as 5 minutes, though one got stuck and never finished), but for long messages it tended to cut them off at 100 or less characters, (though this seemed to vary) which is disappointing, but if they did not cut it Jott would be a free transcription service which would be awesome, but not profitable. The backend works pretty smoothly, but I accidently deleted a few messages, by hitting the X button, which I thought would simply archive them. No big deal, not a mistake I will make again. Past that it is a pretty cool service and one that works remarkably well. Be sure not to hit the speaker button multiple times, it will play your message each time your press it, even if that means playing the same message four times at once.

I am a Joost beta user and you can be too! I just got two invitations so if you want one just comment with the name and email you want me to send it to. The first two takers get them... I installed Joost a few weeks ago (right about the time they changed the name from Venice project and while I liked it then there was not a lot of content so I gave up in it. There has been a fair amount of press since then and things are really looking up for it, so I am going to have to give it another try soon...

I have put off posting on this for a long time, because of my mixed feelings on the subject, but it came up in a conversation today and it refreshed my interest in the subject. So here goes... What is Agloco? Ever hear of AllAdvantage? These where the original "get paid to surf" people, a 1999 startup whose goal was to split part of its advertising revenues with users in return for their running a toolbar on their internet browser. Users would be paid for their own browsing, but the real money would come as a result of referrals after they signed up other people. The site quickly went viral and exploded into one of the largest sites on the internet with over 10 million members in under two years. Eventually the bubble burst, online advertising revenue dried up, and the company went under. It ended up paying out over $120 million to its members and almost went to IPO, but collapsed before that could happen. As for Agloco: same thing, different bubble. Everything is summed up nicely in their About page, but basically: the members are the owners, you get paid for surfing, and you get paid even more if you sign up people who will surf. This all hinges on a toolbar (which has not been released yet) and will run advertisements on your browser and probably have some sort of tracking involved for targeting/data collection purposes. The FAQ goes over almost everything else. Can I Make Any Money From It? This is the big question. Theoretically you can make a lot of money from something like this. The secret is to sign up a few people who are going to sign up a lot of people. This limits the work on your end and maximizes the payout. This all hinges on if the people you sign up (and the people they sign up) eventually install the Viewbar and use it on their browser (hopefully for the maximum time, 5 hours a month). Just because you have 1000 (or 100 or 10) people signed up does not mean you will make any money at all- people will have to install the Viewbar and use it. Many tech savvy people are planning on joining Agloco, signing up a number of people, and never installing the software on their own system (the thinking being: hey, it's spyware, right?). If you aren't doing it you will lose of on the money from your own hours, plus what's the chance others will do it? The Viewbar is still a few weeks away so there is no word on how intrusive it will be or how the company will remind people to install it. I am sure it will there will be a huge email blast to every member. The referral network goes five degrees so there is chance for your network to really explode if somewhere down the line you aquire an industrious user or two. The question then becomes how much is each referral worth and how much are those 5 hours a month worth, and how long will it last? There has been rampant speculation and a number of studies on the subject but nothing is for sure until you get that first check. The hours your earn can be racked up as shares or cash, but it seems like if the company implodes there will be no payout because "As AGLOCO grows and the company generates positive cash flow, we will be distributing the excess cash to Members and shareholders of the company. " Honestly, it none of it is very clear and there are not many promises. Required Reading: Venture Beat, TechCrunch, GigaOm In case you are wondering, I did sign up and am going to test it out (mainly for academic purposes, but if I make some beer money I won't complain). I am not going to post my referral link at this time because this is not an advertisment, but if you want to sign up and you want to use me as the referral just comment or email me. I will be disclosing how much I make from the program so it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

I have put off posting on this for a long time, because of my mixed feelings on the subject, but it came up in a conversation today and it refreshed my interest in the subject. So here goes... What is Agloco? Ever hear of AllAdvantage? These where the original "get paid to surf" people, a 1999 startup whose goal was to split part of its advertising revenues with users in return for their running a toolbar on their internet browser. Users would be paid for their own browsing, but the real money would come as a result of referrals after they signed up other people. The site quickly went viral and exploded into one of the largest sites on the internet with over 10 million members in under two years. Eventually the bubble burst, online advertising revenue dried up, and the company went under. It ended up paying out over $120 million to its members and almost went to IPO, but collapsed before that could happen. As for Agloco: same thing, different bubble. Everything is summed up nicely in their About page, but basically: the members are the owners, you get paid for surfing, and you get paid even more if you sign up people who will surf. This all hinges on a toolbar (which has not been released yet) and will run advertisements on your browser and probably have some sort of tracking involved for targeting/data collection purposes. The FAQ goes over almost everything else. Can I Make Any Money From It? This is the big question. Theoretically you can make a lot of money from something like this. The secret is to sign up a few people who are going to sign up a lot of people. This limits the work on your end and maximizes the payout. This all hinges on if the people you sign up (and the people they sign up) eventually install the Viewbar and use it on their browser (hopefully for the maximum time, 5 hours a month). Just because you have 1000 (or 100 or 10) people signed up does not mean you will make any money at all- people will have to install the Viewbar and use it. Many tech savvy people are planning on joining Agloco, signing up a number of people, and never installing the software on their own system (the thinking being: hey, it's spyware, right?). If you aren't doing it you will lose of on the money from your own hours, plus what's the chance others will do it? The Viewbar is still a few weeks away so there is no word on how intrusive it will be or how the company will remind people to install it. I am sure it will there will be a huge email blast to every member. The referral network goes five degrees so there is chance for your network to really explode if somewhere down the line you aquire an industrious user or two. The question then becomes how much is each referral worth and how much are those 5 hours a month worth, and how long will it last? There has been rampant speculation and a number of studies on the subject but nothing is for sure until you get that first check. The hours your earn can be racked up as shares or cash, but it seems like if the company implodes there will be no payout because "As AGLOCO grows and the company generates positive cash flow, we will be distributing the excess cash to Members and shareholders of the company. " Honestly, it none of it is very clear and there are not many promises. Required Reading: Venture Beat, TechCrunch, GigaOm In case you are wondering, I did sign up and am going to test it out (mainly for academic purposes, but if I make some beer money I won't complain). I am not going to post my referral link at this time because this is not an advertisment, but if you want to sign up and you want to use me as the referral just comment or email me. I will be disclosing how much I make from the program so it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

I am writing this post while re-watching Bill Gate's CES keynote, let me say sorry if advance it's a bit disjointed. I actually skipped the keynote on Sunday because I did not want to deal with the crowds, and I watched most of it after it was posted but I did not get to pay as much attention as I wanted, so I guess two half-hearted attempts are just as good as paying attention once. I've exchanged an email or two with someone from Spotback, apparently they saw my previous post and wanted to hear my thoughts. Since I like what their doing I am more than happy to weigh in.There are a few things I really like about the site- like that you can have full functionality without signing up and I think the little rating widget is cool (though I could see it as getting annoying over time). When you rate something above 0 (1-5) you automatically get another story in that category. This is cool at first, but actually ends up being quite random because it seems that the new story is only related to the first by the category. So when I rate up "AMD shares slump after sales forecast cut" a General Business story I get "Phone's Biggest Weakness: It's a Closed Sandbox" another General Business story. When I rate up a Telecom story in the Business section I get another Telecom story. This is pretty useful in theory, but like most people my daily reading is not about learning a lot about a broad category- it's not like I am doing general research on a filed- I am coming to the site because I want to know what important happened today. By opening up a new story related by section and category only the site fosters learning about the events of one field, not more about the specific article/event, as it should. This is to say that I would like the spotback widget to open up another article which has more to do with the original one, basically because I want to read another article about the same thing, in this case AMD's stock. Spotback allows for general reading of important news with their customizable front page in which you pick what categories you would like news from. This is much like Google News but I don't yet know how stories are chosen to appear by default because there is no clear system of editors/Diggers/etc. doing the choosing, rather it is something automated behing the scenes. Also, I don't know how my ratings on the Spotback widget affect other users and what they read. This ultimate is going to decide how social of a news service Spotback is, not that is needs to be social to be good. As for that Spotback rating widget, it still needs some work. If I rate a story down, there is no useful reaction on the site- it does not disappear or fade, its background just turns gold. If I rate something up then I get a new story. What is strange is that there seems to be no difference between rating something as a 1 or a 5 because the reaction is the same. So why not just do a thumbs up/thumbs down? I am guessing the rates mean something else that I am not seeing, supposedly it affects my personal algorithm, but I don't see that actually making an effect so far. Maybe over long term use it will be more clear, but for now it seems like the ratings has no effect on the news I see. The widget can be reset over and over so if I rate something a 1 and then a 4 I will get two new stories. If I rate a story a -4 and then a -1 I will not get a new story, but if I move that -1 to a 3 I will get one. Oddly, if I rate a story a 5 and then downgrade it to a 3, I will get a new story, so it clearly needs some more fine-tuning. Something annoying I noticed a few times were items placed in the wrong category. For example "Whale shark's death a second blow to aquarium" from CNN.com was placed in the Space section of the Science category. This did not happen very often but it does sort of defeat the purpose of customizable categories. One feature I really liked was that the blurbs include images related to the story. When an image is clicked a new window appears (not a browser window, just a viewable pane above the site) and you can read the full contents. The "full contents" is really the full contents of the RSS feed so it is not necessarily the full story, but sometimes it is, and it is almost always enough to let you figure out if you want to read the entire article or not. When you are done reading the first page you can click "More Stories" and go on to another random smattering or stories from your chosen categories. If you want to read less you can drop sections from the 15 categories or you can choose not to read an entire section at all. Users are also able to block stories, which deletes them from the current page and block future articles from that web site. The final important thing about Spotback are the snacks and personalized alerts. Using Snacks you can either create your own page using RSS/OPML or view a set of predetermined popular RSS feeds (just like PopURLS.com or something along those lines). With the alerts you can get news straight to your email right after its published or in daily, twice daily, or weekly roundups. All told I like where Spotback is going with there service but I am not that impressed just yet. In theory this could be a great service for someone who wants to keep up on a few broad categories of news and is not picky about how the news gets to them- they don't mind that it is an algorithim they might have effected in some way, as opposed to an editor, a large group of voters, or something like more transparent. Personally I am not sure I trust myself to choose what is important and would rather go with a service that I have found to be reliable, like Techmeme, or a professional and well-trained editor, as found on NYtimes.com. I appreciate that Spotback is getting away from group-think news and allows personalization, but I still think it has a way to go before it pulls people away from Techmeme/Memeorandum, Rojo, or Newsvine. Further reading: Techcrunch, Ajaxian, Mashable, Web2.0List

I read the news today oh, boy About a lucky man who made the grade And though the news was rather sad Well, i just had to laugh I saw the photograph

- Beatles, A Day In the Life

The hottest web news of the past few days have definitely been Daylife. This startup is a new aggregation site, which is not something that is particularly exciting, but it has had some big name investors, a lot of exposure, and help from some smart people. To abbreviate the FAQ page- basically the site gets its news "constantly from thousands of sources around the globe, including mainstream outlets (e.g. BBC, CNN, Times of India), blogs, peer-reviewed journals, and many others" then "analyzes the news to find connections among stories, to present their timelines, and to find new ways of looking at the news and how it’s being covered worldwide" and finally they "order articles through a combination of relevance to the subject at hand, timeliness, and the kind of publication it comes from". Pretty simple, right? One twist is that Daylife is not totally automated news like Google News, but rather has real editors making real decisions about what is important. Jeff Jarvis blogged that the only thing those editors are contributing is that they decide what's goes on the front page, the cover as it were. The cover is a large Flash graphic with an overlayed title that links to a story. If you don't like that story, there is a scrolling bar under it with more images that link to notable stories from today and few days before. Personally, this does nothing for me and rather than giving me a big overview of the days news, it highlights a few stories that someone else thinks are important. If you don't want to read them you have to go to the nav bar on top and move along. This is not a review, so I won't get into too many details, but the front page has a ranking of the ten top stories from seven categories, a quote, and then links to important people, places, and organizations. The 10 big stories route users to a secondary page where you think there would be a comments sections but there is none, rather there is just more links and related news. Related news is one of the main themes of Daylife, finding connections between stories and events. Not a bad idea, so long as you are supposing people are generally interested in topics, not just scanning so they know what is going on in the world. As many people have pointed out, there is no RSS functionality yet, but the word is that it is in the works. So for the cover think newspaper, without the massive layoffs or inky fingers, but once you get inside its a lot of internal links and pull-quotes. It is definitely an interesting take on news aggregation, but inside its confusing and the focus is not the story itself, but rather the connetions. Unlike Google News or Techmeme which send you right to the story you want, there is a lot of searching and clicking involved and I still don't really understand what Daylife is offering me that I can't get elsewhere. Their attempt at a news "ecosystem" is great, but I think they are long on ideas and short on implementation. For the record- I did laugh when I saw the photograph (cover page). It's a 1999 splash page that offers nothing except a pretty picture and it gets between me and the information I want.

I read the news today oh, boy About a lucky man who made the grade And though the news was rather sad Well, i just had to laugh I saw the photograph

- Beatles, A Day In the Life

The hottest web news of the past few days have definitely been Daylife. This startup is a new aggregation site, which is not something that is particularly exciting, but it has had some big name investors, a lot of exposure, and help from some smart people. To abbreviate the FAQ page- basically the site gets its news "constantly from thousands of sources around the globe, including mainstream outlets (e.g. BBC, CNN, Times of India), blogs, peer-reviewed journals, and many others" then "analyzes the news to find connections among stories, to present their timelines, and to find new ways of looking at the news and how it’s being covered worldwide" and finally they "order articles through a combination of relevance to the subject at hand, timeliness, and the kind of publication it comes from". Pretty simple, right? One twist is that Daylife is not totally automated news like Google News, but rather has real editors making real decisions about what is important. Jeff Jarvis blogged that the only thing those editors are contributing is that they decide what's goes on the front page, the cover as it were. The cover is a large Flash graphic with an overlayed title that links to a story. If you don't like that story, there is a scrolling bar under it with more images that link to notable stories from today and few days before. Personally, this does nothing for me and rather than giving me a big overview of the days news, it highlights a few stories that someone else thinks are important. If you don't want to read them you have to go to the nav bar on top and move along. This is not a review, so I won't get into too many details, but the front page has a ranking of the ten top stories from seven categories, a quote, and then links to important people, places, and organizations. The 10 big stories route users to a secondary page where you think there would be a comments sections but there is none, rather there is just more links and related news. Related news is one of the main themes of Daylife, finding connections between stories and events. Not a bad idea, so long as you are supposing people are generally interested in topics, not just scanning so they know what is going on in the world. As many people have pointed out, there is no RSS functionality yet, but the word is that it is in the works. So for the cover think newspaper, without the massive layoffs or inky fingers, but once you get inside its a lot of internal links and pull-quotes. It is definitely an interesting take on news aggregation, but inside its confusing and the focus is not the story itself, but rather the connetions. Unlike Google News or Techmeme which send you right to the story you want, there is a lot of searching and clicking involved and I still don't really understand what Daylife is offering me that I can't get elsewhere. Their attempt at a news "ecosystem" is great, but I think they are long on ideas and short on implementation. For the record- I did laugh when I saw the photograph (cover page). It's a 1999 splash page that offers nothing except a pretty picture and it gets between me and the information I want.