Let's get this out of the way--I work on the internet and I consider myself a power user. I make no claims as to the efficiency of my methods, they are just what works for me. A problem that has been plaguing me for some time now is running Firefox with multiple tabs open. Given my workload and the number of ideas floating around in my head this may range anywhere from 20-90 tabs... it's not something I'm proud of but it's just how things turn out.

To me tabs are a staging area for work, a To Do list, a To Read list, and an account of what I'm interested in on a given day. I don't really like bookmarks--I've basically given up on Del.icio.us and while I do still drag bookmarks to my desktop they tend to accumulate into a huge mess, finding their way into folders which are dropped in other folders as the pile grows. This shouldn't be a problem since I am good about taking the time to manage and cull my tabs. It's just that when I get too busy to address them the number grows.

My problem is that Firefox crashes, something that has been occurring more and more lately. I used to think it was my old computer, but about a year ago I upgraded to a quad-core system with 4GB of RAM. It runs Windows Vista, but is otherwise a very capable machine. Quad-core, 4GB, 10K RPM hard drive, P45 chipset... should be able to handle a few webpages right? Not exactly. For me crashes happen every day, multiple times a day, but only in Firefox (3.5.3), my main browser. I also run Google Chrome, which practically never crashes and is also open all the time (though rarely with more than 8 tabs).

The problem with crashing with 80 tabs open, aside from the frustration, is that it takes at least 5 minutes to get everything loaded again, sometimes more, during which all my system's network bandwidth is being consumed by the browser. Sessions are logged out and occasionally work is lost.

The question I have is why? It's not the computer, even if Firefox is eating up 25% of the processor and 1GB of RAM, it's not that bad. It could be my OS, it could be Firefox. Or maybe a combination of the two. It's very hard to say.

I have examined my browser extensions, which can be a major source of instability. The active ones include: FireFTP, MenuEditor, Session Manager, and Tabs Mix Plus, all of which are up-to-date. I've removed a few that I found to impact stability (including Google Gears), but the crashes have continued. And they are rarely violent, surprising crashes, instead Firefox just seems to slow down, blip in and out, and then die. I get the crash manager, and then I can restore my session, and in a few minutes I'm back.

So far I have just figured that Firefox is the issue. The browser has had memory leakage issues in the past and it seems like they continue in one form or another. Running all those pages, include most of which have some sort of Flash and rich media on them, just takes a toll, the performance degrades, then a restart is needed, just like with a Windows computer after a week or two. This isn't exactly scientific but it seems to sums things up.

I need to investigate running my workload on Ubuntu and OS X, so I can see if the OS is the issue. If not, then I'll know it's Firefox. Or maybe today's computer just can't run 80 tabs at once consistently and I need to wait for some sort of future technology, a neural net processor or something like that. Got any fixes or ideas? Post them below.

After using Google's Picasa for a while, I've decided to (finally) start using Flickr. I've loved the site since day one, but I haven't used it much for sharing photos. I've preferred Picasa's integration into my Google contacts for very selective photosharing, and while that is still the case Flickr is just too good not to use. It's great for photos that are OK for public consumption (like cat photos) where I think Picasa is still the way to go for more private stuff (family gatherings, etc) just because so few people that I share images with are on Flickr while many of them have Gmail accounts. I'm still avoiding putting too many images on Facebook, because I (like most people) have too many non-friend contacts to make it a good place for photosharing. http://www.flickr.com/photos/salcangeloso/ Ping me if you know me. (Good litmus test--do you have my phone number). btw- That is my gf's new cat. Most of my Flickr photos at the moment are of her (the cat).

I have been, and still am, resistant to Twitter. Yes, it's a cool service and it let's you easily connect with all sorts of amazing people, but getting true value from my time investment in it has been difficult. [Just check out this post, it's not that far from the truth.] Twitter is about two things: who follows you and who you follow. Because you have control over the latter, let's start with that. There are basically four type of people that you can follow:

1. People you know (friends, family, coworkers, etc.)
2. People you have to follow (your boss, clients, etc.)
3. People who you find interesting that you don't know (often top Twitterers)
4. People you follow because they follow you

If you follow all four of these types, your Twitter feed is probably so full of posts that it is too overloaded to do anything aside from browse now and then. If you've spent any time analyzing your Twitter usage you've probably started to trim back on types 1 and 2, and ruled out 4 altogether. (Remember just because you like someone in real life does not mean that their Twitter feed is worth following.) This trimming probably helped cut down on the "Having lunch with @myfriend" and "dude, I hate Mondays" and "#myfirstjob" tweets, but it didn't stop them altogether. Those types of things are just a distraction. If you are using Twitter as a distraction, great, or if you want to use it to talk to buddies, that's cool too, but if you want it to be a professional tool what value are you getting (as a follower) or instilling (as a poster) from these? But Twitter would be boring without this stuff, right? And how else could we better get to know our associates without them telling us how awesome their last jog was or how cold it is outside? Before we get too far, I'd like to point out why I've been hesitant to get too involved in Twitter. It's about distractions (which should be kept to a minimum) and persistent tasks. For me, a persistent task (more accurately, a persistent tab) is anything that I keep open all the time and check in on frequently. These include email and RSS, but then all the other things that we check in on all day long, like web site comments, your work chatroom, Google chat, and so on. The more of these you have, the less you can concentrate on the task at hand, especially once you get into ones where you can spend lots of time using each day, like Friendfeed, Facebook, and MySpace. So is Twitter worth the time investment and the fact that using it means that you will have one more tab open all day long everyday (or a desktop client/iPhone app)? It must be to some people, but I'm guessing a lot of people just enjoy the distraction. So who is getting real value from Twitter right now?

1. Anyone with a large number of followers If you are kicking out your thoughts and links to, say, 5000 people multiple times a day, there is clear value in that for you.
2. People using it to gain access All of a sudden we have a way that is faster and less formal to get in touch with CEOs, thought leaders, (internet) celebrities, etc., and you have a better chance of getting a response than an email.
3. People expanding personal brands ... though you generally had to have one already- we aren't seeing Twitter celebrities
4. Brands looking to gain access to people NYtimes, CNNbreaking, NPR, Woot, etc

Are you on that list? If you are not, then you are really just using it to stay connected. I prefer my RSS reader for that sort of thing, but that's just my personal preference. So while there are undeniably ways to get value from Twitter, it's not clear to me that a whole lot of people are getting a good return on their time investment. I'm going to keep thinking things over, but it seems like that same time is better spent on something like Friendfeed or working on my blog  (which, like so many others, has gotten much quieter since Twitter and similar services became popular).

Anyone who runs a multi-author site knows that tracking of all the articles is a constant challenge. Keeping tabs on who is writing what is hard enough, but then trying to follow who is getting the job done is another thing altogether. Whether you want to track word counts, reads, comments, etc., there just isn't a good way to break things down by author. So here's what I'm looking for: a plugin that allows me to track a few very simple metrics, broken down by author. Specifically I'd like to know:

• number of articles posted over a given period
• average articles per day
• comments (total and average per article)
• pageviews (total over a time period, per article)
• some other ideas, though less important ones, could be: average word count per article, what categories are being written in, etc.

Basically it would just be a simple way to track who is writing and how successful their posts are. It wouldn't have to be a comprehensive package, just some insight into the performance of each of the authors. The hardest one of these would be tracking pageviews, but a rough estimate would be fine. Are their ways around a custom plugin? Possibly, but nothing great (at least that I can think of). You could possibly use Google Analytics for this, but you would have to have a unique code for each of the authors in the URL (or URI, whatever you want to call it). This requires some customization and adds to the length of your URL stucture, but could possibly be OK. The downside is that you are stuck using an analytics package that won't be able to track comments, calculate post totals, or other site specific metrics. From what I can tell, it really has to be done within Wordpress to be done well. All the data is readily available (if you know how to get it) so then it's just a matter of calculating the totals and presenting them in a friendly manner. Part of the challenge would be creating a slick UI and also not having the plugin be a resource hog (maybe it could update only once an hour or once on a day). Based on plugins like Wassup we know it's possible to do fairly extensive analytics packages within Wordpress. Any takers? Anyone know of a plugin that I haven't found? An easier way to get these results? I don't think its asking for a whole lot (and I'm surprised that it hasn't been done yet).

Right now I'm going through what I would imagine to be nightmare of every web worker. That's right: my internet connection is extremely slow. Just to clarify, it's been fine during the day but it's been insane slow at night (peak hours). My last speedtest (through speedtest.nyc.rr.com) put me at 509 kbps down and 403 kbps up. That's just a pitiful 63.6KB/sec down on a 10Mbit line! In other words... not good. So this all started about 10-14 days ago when I noticed that transfers after 7pm or so were abnormally slow. This is a problem for me because I regularly work late at night plus I do must of my television consumption through my computer so I'm am always downloading something. I have not been doing any Bittorrenting lately and I don't run a server from home, but I am a heavy internet user and I watch a lot of Hulu. After about 7pm video download would crawl along and downloading games through Steam would be extremely painful. Just as an example, my iPhone 2.1 update took me close to two hours to download. After about a week I called Time Warner, my internet service provider. I have high-speed access (a cable modem) through Time Warner's Road Runner service. It costs me $40.82 a month (just for internet) and it's the only option in my building. So after about an hour on the phone (unplug the modem, circumvent the router, unplug the modem again, run speedtest, etc) a problem could not be found. I was told that a new modem would probably do the trick so people would come at as soon as possible to make the switch. That was Thursday or Friday (September 11th or 12) and someone came yesterday (the 16th) between noon and 2pm. It seemed like an easy fix and obvious solution. Just at noon (I was impressed) on the 16th the a two man team came to make the fix. They were quick and professional, which I appreciated, and while here they confirmed that there was a problem (during the day I am getting about 6000-7000Kb down) and swapped the modem. They also did a quick check on the line, inside and outside (or at least they said they checked outside). They soon left and my internet was fine for they day. Of course, the problem came back at night, and now I can't even watch a streaming video on Hulu and the front page of Ebay take about 25 seconds to load. I was going to download Crysis from Steam (about 7GB) but that would probably take a few weeks at these speeds, so I'll wait for tomorrow. I spent another hour on the phone with Time Warner tonight and I was eventually escalated to Level Three (sounds impressive right?). We did a trace route, which people under Level Three don't do and the upper level support people clearly know a lot more about what's going on than the "unplug your router and turn your computer off" people that you have to spend the first 45 minutes with. This did not yield any solution, but I do have someone coming at the closest time (Monday the 22nd!) to do another line check. Apparently it's mandatory to have two visits within through days before they escalate your ticket to the infracture team or the networking geeks. I'll try to keep this post up-to-date as things develop. As it goes now things are insanely frustrating and I don't get the feeling that things are going to be fixed any time soon. Update: 9/25/08, 8:43am- The problems are still persisting. Since my original post I have gotten another new modem, with a few parts of the coax line changed. Additionally I updated the firmware on my router, just in case that was an issue. My test last night had my connection at about 600 Kbps down and 480 Kbps up. Speedtest.net just put me at 14601 down and 490 up, so there is a marked difference between peak hours and off hours. It's looking like I'll have to call Time Warner again...

I finally made the jump to Firefox 3 (actually 3.0.1) this morning after holding on to 2.0.1.16 for a long time. I started getting pretty frequent notices telling me to move to version 3, but I spent so much time in the browser that I didn't want to rock the boat. So far the upgrade has been working well. I have had 3.0 for weeks on my other systems, just not my main work computer, so there was no adjustment needed. The biggest thing was making sure that my plugins work. The one plugin that required a little bit of finesse to get to work on 3.0.1 was Tab Mix Plus, which I consider essential to Firefox. With a little searching I found this link which got me here. Grab the newest xpi and you are all set. It seems to be a prerelease, but it's been great so far. Past that 3.0.1 has been pretty solid. It's definitely faster than 2.0.0.16, but we'll see how it does with some of the things that has given Firefox trouble in the past (memory handling/leakage, dealing with a lot of tabs, new versions of Flash, etc.)

I just checked out a nightly of Wordpress 2.7 (officially 2.7-hemorrhage) and there are some pretty nice changed to it. Obviously you can see that the layout has been improved from the 2.5 style, plus there is an admin color scheme changer! The darker palette (top) is way better than the bottom one, and much easier on my exhausted, LCD-scorched eyes. The dashboard also has a fast-posting feature called QuickPress. No formatting or images, just text, tags and title. I can't seem to find the plugins and other important stuff, but all the things you use on a daily basis seem much easier to access. Now that I think about it, this is probably a permissions issue, since I am demoing it on someone's server (they have an automated nightly build).

Jason Calacanis gave up blogging and I couldn't resist joining his email list. He just sent out the first email today and Techcrunch has it posted in it's entirety (it's not like they can link to it). Honestly, not a bad job. This hit a little to close to home though (bold added):

In a word, intimacy. This message will go from my inbox to your inbox, perhaps from my Blackberry to your iPhone. From my sleepy garden office in Brentwood to your laptop perched on a desk in some high-rise hotel in Shanghai or your crummy little studio on the LES.

Kidding aside, it was a pretty thoughtful email. Ultimately not much of substance was said and while blogging is changing no one had yet to make a convincing argument that it's dead. Verdict: long, not very convincing, but worth the read. How about this theory: some people who have been doing blogging for the better part of a decade are tired of it and are blogging less and trying other things. Some bloggers are spending more time away from the computer, some are working with video, and Calacanis is taking the email route. The blog may have moved from the small, personal communication tool that it started out as to something much different, but it's still alive and well. And for every A-lister that is dropping out there are lots of new people gaining recognition and even more starting out. There is definitely one flaw with moving communications to email though- the only thing I need less than another RSS subscription is more email...

Just like everyone else I saw the "Scoble Sells Out" post over at TechCrunch. As someone who started their internet career with a hobbyist site that "turned pro" it's a topic that really resonated with me. First off, adding advertisements to your blog does not mean you are selling out. Blogs eat up a lot of time and they can cost money to run, so having a few ads on a personal blog is no big deal. Why not monetize your traffic? If you can do this without angering your users, then you are set. If your blog grows to get the sort or traffic that Scobleizer.com gets, then he is throwing away thousands of dollars a month by not putting up an ad or two- nothing major, even just a few 125x125 boxes could bring in a lot. If anyone is worried about conflicts of interest with that, I'd refer them to thousands of blogs, web sites, and other publications that run advertisements. Yes, on a personal blog there is no editorial separation but if you trust someone enough to read their blog regularly, you probably respect their opinion enough to know an advertisement is not going to make them pull any punches. It will probably make feel more pressure to call things as they see them in fact. The problem I see with Scoble's upcoming addition of 1) advertisements 2) a redesign by Fast Company and 3) other people blogging on his site is that now some lines are being blurred. First of all, this is his personal blog, not his Fast Company page, but are those going to be Fast Company's ads? He didn't say anything about selling the blog, but his new job takes advantage of Scobleizer as if it was part of the package when he was hired. Are Fast Company writers going to be posting there? This is taking his personal blog and turning it into something very different, seemingly a Fast Company property. Fine- that's Scoble's decision- but no one has come out and said that, so no one knows what to think. Or people just assume the worst- i.e. Scoble sold out. One thing that really interested me with all this is the redesign. One of my favorite Scoble posts was back in March 2006 (I'm not sure why I remember stuff like this) when he talked about the advantages of having an ugly web site. I guess the post hit a close to home with me, but what about Scoble's "ugly" and "anti-marketing" design? That's all out the window now that Fast Company is in charge? If I was Scoble I would be worried about the long term life of the blog. He was with Podtech about 18 months. Say he states at Fast Company that long, what then? Did all those years of work just go down the drain? Also, I would be concerned about why I was hired in the first place. Maybe this is just me being neurotic or lacking confidence, but I would be worried that I got my job just so they could leverage my site. From what I can tell Fast Company's web site does not get a whole lot of traffic--they are big, but not huge. The addition of Scobleizer.com's pageviews could be a big growth for them, maybe even as big as posting Scoble's videos on their own site. I'm really interested to see how the redesign turns out and what happens when/if someone besides Scoble posts on the site. It seems to me that he could have done the redesign by himself, hired a few writers, and start to run ads on the blog without Fast Company. Rather then let them borrow (rent? leverage?) Scobleizer.com, he could put a few of those Podtech paychecks to work and turn the blog into your own business. I don't blame him for not doing this- it would be stressful and the chance of failure would be higher- but given the success of some other site that have made the move, we know it can be done. As a side note- I can't wait to see if Fast Company puts meta refreshes on Scoble's site. They have them on Fastcompany.com and it's something I find to be really annoying. This i not something people do on personal blogs, so I see it as a bit of a litmus test.

* This is a post in progress. So I'll try to update it as developments happen. *

1/16/08 10:00a - I order a single item from Amazon.com. Nothing particularly large or bulky, in fact it's a handheld kitchen appliance. Total product price is about $13. I opt for second day shipping, an upgrade from the standard 3-5 day shipping, which is nearly the price of the product. Being Wednesday, this would have the product to me on Friday the 18th. 1/16/08 10:53a - Amazon's confirmation email has informed me that I should expect delivery on January 22, 2008. This would put the delivery time at 6 days, seemingly slower than the base shipping terms Amazon offers. To be fair, the weekend doesn't really count (although the trucks are still moving). Also, this is just an estimate, so maybe I will be presently surprised. 1/17/08 2:34p - My order has shipped. My estimated delivery date is now 21-January-2008 (Monday) on the email, though the site still says Tuesday. UPS.com still does not have a record of the tracking number. 1/18/08 11:00a - The blender has arrived! True two day shipping, almost to the minute in fact. Great job Amazon! Solid work UPS! So the estimates were off, but they came through in the end.

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.

I don't know if anyone is still playing Duels.com but the the site has been at a developmental standstill for some time now and it does not seem like any of the top users could still be enjoying themselves. I check in now and then, mainly because I am really interesting in internet gaming. The game is ready for a big update (the date was Nov 12, but it was pushed back) but who knows if that will help. The proposed changes seem overly complex and to rely less on strategy then just buying cool stuff. The game has a number of serious problems that the devs have only put band-aids on so far. These include the fact that players top out at level 40 and the the economy is a complete mess. Also, all the top players (by win percentage) use very similiar builds and all of them except for one use have the same item. The site may be growing but new users don't really have anywhere to go. The system of advancement heavily favors players who have been involved in the game for some time and have had the time to horde the best weapons and all the gold. The only way new users can catch up is to buy (with real money) certain stones which are a way to get around clicking for hours upon hours to advance your character.

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/ That's right- Boing Boing has a dedicated tech page now. It's going to be run the Joel Johnson (Gizmodo, Dethroner...) and it's a totally separate feed from the main site (which means it's basically a new site). I'll be subscribing and keeping an eye on it, they should have some very good content. Not that the tech blogging community needed any more competition...

Apparently it exists. I'm not a big analytics guy so I don't follow analytics news as closely as I should, but looks like MS has something in the works. It is covered here. The post and comments reveal some really interesting information, such as that the system could possibly give information on Google Adwords tracking and also have age and sex demographics. Don't ask me how Microsoft would pull that off, but it's all there. I think Google Analytics is an amazing tool and the more I use it the more impressed I am, but some competition is always good. At this point I think the Fear-of-Google movement has created enough of a stir that people would be happy to trust a company aside from "the Google", even if it is Microsoft.

This is just ridiculous.

Worth a listen though...

Robert X. has an interesting article on increasing internet speeds in the US while decreasing the price. Like so many other people I have eagerly been awaiting FIOS and despite being in the North East, it has not come to my area yet. I don't know why the transition is taking so long, or why the US is so far behind many other countries in this area, but it looks like things on going to be improving shortly. Definitely something to look forward to...

I have been pretty interested in Mahalo since it was first announced so a few days ago I finally signed up for the Greenhouse. This is their program where they are paying people, supposedly qualified people, to write search engine result pages (SERPs). All the result pages on Mahalo are generated by real people so in addition to full-timers, they are supplementing the results with part-time Greenhousers. The experience would, I thought, give me a unique insight into the workings of Mahalo and a I stood to make $10 from each SERP, so I figured it was worth the few minutes that one SERP would take. The sign-up process was very easy. It took about five minutes and I heard back a day or two later. From what I have seen they are not turning anyone down, but that could just be a matter of who I have talked to about it. I won't get into the boring process of picking a topic or learning their style guidelines or using wiki code, but what I did learn was the making a good SERP take a long time. I originally planned to finish the page in about 30 minutes, which seemed reasonable given that wiki code is easy and I am well-versed in using Google and other tools. Anyway, this wasn't even close. By the time I was done I had put about 2 hours of time into that one page. Why so long? Well part of it is my fault- I should have followed the style guidelines more closely. In my defense, the document is really long and is not laid out particularly well, plus many of their conventions seem strange (but I guess they have all been devised by an SEO team). The people at Mahalo that I emailed with had me revise the document three times before I could sent it in for the final quality control check! This was a bit annoying, but the people were extremely patient and courteous- if it wasn't for their pleasantness I would have quit when faced with the revisions. One minor annoyance was that after the page was up and approved the footer said, "This search result page was written by: Dave" when in fact all he did was edit it and adds some dates. Above this it does say that the page was created by me and curated by this Dave fellow, but that is in a special "Greenhouse" section. In actuality the SERP that is shown is Dave's final edit and mine still resides in the Greenhouse... Overall, the experience was not bad. If I attempt another SERP I am guessing it will take about half the time of the first one, but I still won't be blowing through them and I know I will get stucking doing a revision or two (which takes time because you have to wait a until the next day for an email if you are doing them late at night).  This is not a get-rich-quick scheme, or even a way to make anything more than pocket change, but that is no surprise. I am glad I gave it a shot and I feel that now I have a much better understanding of what goes into a site like Wikipedia or Mahalo. As for the $10, it will be probably going towards hosting. Or, if I can figure out how to change the setting (I was feeling greedy at the time), I will have them send it to Wikipedia....

There is another professional blogger article up, this time it's at Business Week. I thought these were over with, I mean, who is surprised at this point that a web site that people work on full time can generate income? The amount of income is often surprising, but given how much traffic some of these sites are getting some of the numbers actually seem low. The article, or rather 14 short posts, goes over site's like Boing Boing, Mashable, Tech Crunch, Perez Hilton, and some other high points. At the low end there is Kottke and Overheard In New York who make just a few grand a month, but for sites like Mashable are they claiming up to $166,000 a month! I am guessing that a some of the revenue numbers were gotten by going to something like Federated Media's site or open statistics links and extrapolating the number of pageviews per month (or maybe uniques) then multiplying it by the number of ads and then by the CPM. This does not factor in discount sales, the CPM rate of backfill ads, and sell-through rate (which is generally lower than 100%) but it's still interesting to see what the site's could be making. The list falls short because does not include a lot of sites, especially those with lower traffic numbers but that have gotten very good at monetizing their site but it will be an eye-opener for many people. For example, I had no idea that Talking Points Memo was so big (I don't believe that 550k pageviews a weekday number anyway)! So blogging is semi-big-business when you do it full time with smart people who would succeed in almost any position you put them in, many of whom not only have a great understanding of their field but also of the workings of the internet, who knew?

People love to argue over Techmeme. I don't know what is it about the site, but everyone has their own theory and a lot of people really get riled up when blogging about the site. Today a blogger wrote that he thinks the site must be paid by Microsoft because MS grabbed the top news spot with the announcement that Home Server was shipping. He also called the site the "worst news site EVER" (his emphasis) and accused the of being manually updated. Gabe Rivera from Techmeme was not above some good-natured chiding. I found this, of course, at Valleywag.

Earth2Tech is Gigaom's new site covering the greening of industry, carbon neutral initiatives, and green startups. This is an area that is already well covered by sites like Treehugger but with all the growth in the field there is always room for another site. Gigaom has done a great job with NewTeeVee and Web Worker Daily and though it fell short with GigaGamez, these offshoots are always interesting and well done. I am not sure who will be reading Earth2Tech on an regular basis, but it could be interesting to check in from time to time. I'll keep an eye on it despite it not really being an area that I am too knowledgeable, but green is something that is here to stay and it's getting to be very big business and it's something that affects all of us.