I was reading some things about web 2.0. It seems to be becoming more and more just fluff. A term that is getting slapped on everything and anything that is new, trendy, or something that a savvy marketer wants to become trendy.

An old article caught my attention, when this whole web 2.0 stuff was shiny and new. This bit is kind of funny considering the current changes going on for the internet…. You might just laugh a little bit.

Google doesn’t try to force things to happen their way. They try to figure out what’s going to happen, and arrange to be standing there when it does.

Particularly that first sentence might have current bloggers and internet marketers rolling in the aisles. That may be how things first started out for the big G, but it seems a new path is being taken, and forcibly at that. They’re the bully on the playground, the fly in your soup, and they keepers of the gate.

To use one of the most overused phrases of 2007, with great power comes great responsibility. Google is responsible for keeping people happy on both sides of the fence, they want internet surfers to be happy and use their search engine. They want internet marketers and advertisers to be happy so they’ll use advertising service. What they don’t want is for you to sell advertising… that’s their ball and they don’t want to share. Now, if you’d like to run a campaign through AdWords, they’d be happy to assist you with that.

Everyone wants their own little corner of the internet, and being the penny pinching society that we are we naturally want the best possible deal, the most space, and the tiniest cost. But, we also want it to work and function and do cool things … like install a blog with just one or two clicks of our mouse.

Top 10 has a list of what they have found to be the best web hosting services on the internet today. I took some time to look over the list and I was actually a little disappointed to see HostGator way down at number 7. In my opinion they are definitely in the top 3 and quickly becoming number 1 above any other service I’ve ever used. They’re fast, they’re up to date, and it’s easy to get help when you need it.

It is a good list though, and all the benefits of hosting with each company are listed right there to be compared and find the deal that will fit best with your plans for internet domination and webmastery. I noticed LunarPages, which ranked right above HostGator on the list is offering $700 CoffeeCup Software FREE, and I’ll admit that’s a pretty nice bonus because CoffeeCup has some great programs available. However LunarPages also has the smallest amount of space and transfer available in the top 10 … so it’s all about what you need and want for your hosting. It has to meet your needs. If you didn’t need much space and you were lacking in web design programs than LunarPages might be the way to go for you.

I recently started creating lenses on Squidoo. What’s a lens? Basically a lens is a web page that you create with information on a certain topic, that then becomes part of Squidoo. I guess it’s comparable to a large wiki of and about everything. It’s very social, you create information, join groups, “lensroll” other people’s pages etc. It’s Wiki meets Facebook!

So, I made this lens on horse care. Now what? Now I look for other related lenses on horses, equestrian riding apparel, and other related topics and I can lensroll them, which is pretty much the same as blogrolling and adds a link in the sidebar. I can also leave them comments if they have a comments or guestbook section on their lens. Then I can go look for groups on horses, join those and get more links and more traffic to my lens page.

The best part? You make money! It’s an adsharing community. You get a portion of the revenue from the Google Ads and earn an affiliate commission on any sales that are made through your pages with the modules you insert from places like Amazon and Ebay.

I do love to Stumble when I get the chance, and if I see an article I like I will give it the thumbs up in my Stumble Upon toolbar for Firefox. I’m surprised I only came out 50% on this one -lol-

How did I stumble upon this nifty little quzzical? Colleen took it first. And she’s way more addicted than I am, she got a 75% on hers. Yup, I am not an addict. But that Colleen and her famous sweet ass, they need to get into a Stumbling recovery program … stat!

50%Are You Addicted to Stumbleupon?

Seriously though, if you’re looking to find random new things on the web, Stumble can do that for you. And if you have random an interesting things and want other people to see them, Stumble can do that for you too. So go Stumble something.

: Stumble, StumbleUpon, random, Colleen, sweet ass

This morning Ask.com added the AskEraser that lets you completely erase your searches and related data from the search engine’s servers.

“Anywhere that you log into, anywhere where you put in personalized information, there should be a way - an easy way - to control how that information is used and retained,” said Doug Leeds, senior vice president at Ask.com, a unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp. “We are giving users the ability themselves to take control of their privacy.”

This is a huge step in internet privacy and security, and it will be curious to see if other SE’s follow this example in the near future. Ask.com may not be up in the same numbers as search engines like Google and Yahoo, but with the recent “slappings” from the G and people looking to use other engines, a benefit like added privacy might be just what Ask.com needs to push it into the running!

>> news link: article about it at the wall street journal <<

: ask.com, google, se, search engines, search engine news, ask, privacy, internet privacy

I finally gave in to the peer pressure and signed up for Twitter. I was avoiding it for fear that it would be addictive and I would want to follow the whole world! What convinced me to do such a crazy thing? Many of my blogging friends are going to Blog World and Postiecon this week and I want to stay up to date on what’s going on!! I really would like to be at the conferences in person, but it just wasn’t something I could do at this point for a million different reasons. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to go in person and meet everyone and get some of the great information first hand. In the mean time I will be watching from my Twitterfox plugin for Firefox browser, which makes this whole Twitter thing much, much easier.

I added a Twitter widget in the sidebar over there on the right, and if you’re on Twitter you can follow me. Then I’ll get an email letting me know you’re following me and I can follow you too! Then we’re all just a bunch of internet stalkers ~ woohoo! I promise not to twitter-spam you and tell you every time I get up to go pee or a get some tea …

: twitter, twittering, twitterfox

If you’ve done any Google searching this morning you surely noticed that Google turned 9 this morning. I actually got to see the banner change since I was awake in the wee hours of the morning staring blanky at my monitor trying to focus on work and having little luck. I actually had to think about it for a few minutes, because for some reason I thought Google was older.

Google has practically taken over the internet in less than 10 years. That seems like a well accomplished feat at first, but is it really? Don’t get me wrong, I use Google on a daily basis. It has definitely replaced Yahoo as my search engine of choice while doing research, shopping and just generally looking for things. Sometimes. Other times, not so much. I recently have found myself using both together to find what I’m looking for. The results are vastly different.

It’s hard to love Google at the moment, all the drama and the algorithms and all that stuff just jumble up to give me a giant headache. But, I can say that I do love Google Docs, they are the bomb for collaborating on projects with other people without having to have certain programs or upload big excel spreadsheets. It’s been a great tool to use and I’ve been using it quite a lot lately. Congrats Google, if nothing else you’ve done at least one truly wonderful thing this year. Of course there are the critics that say Google Docs is just for Google to spy on us like everything else they create. I like to think that’s not true, but I suppose we will always wonder how much of our data do they truly look at when it comes to Docs, Gmail, Analytics and their other web based solutions.

Now, let’s hope that the birthday cake is made of PR updates in some form or another. -lol-