Techcrunch has an interesting post about a new service called Payperpost. This service is a marketplace that will connect bloggers with advertisers that want to promote their products throught blog entries. This will obviously bring a lot more “noise” in the blogosphere which is already swamped by splogs and because of that there are quite a few reactions from bloggers. However, this is already happening, it’s just that until now there wasn’t a site or a company dedicated to it.

I just took a look at Payperpost.com and some first observations that will make this a failure in my opinion are:
1. They have to approve your post in order to get paid, that means that you could blog about something and not get paid at all.
2. There are no requirements for PR, traffic, age of blog etc That might lead a lot of people to create splogs just for using to promote payperpost’s advertisers.
3. The payout is extremely low 5-10$ per post? That’s a joke

Anyway this is something that has be happening and that will continue to happen in the future but to be honest I don’t see how payperpost could be succesful if they don’t change their business plan

According to this article Google will launch it’s new service, a payment system that most people currently call GBuy on June 28. GBuy looks to be a direct competitor to eBay, however until it is released no one can say for sure what kind of features it will have and how much similar to eBay it will be. To be honest I wouldn’t mind eBay getting a bit of competition, some serious competition I mean.

The article closes:

“Short term, GBuy is more negative for eBay than it is positive for Google,” Rohan said. “Longer-term, it could be a game-changer.”

BackupMyBlog isn’t exactly a Web2.0 site or application but I found the idea behind it really interesting. What it does is exactly what the name says, it backsup your blog. For experienced web site owners it’s a rather useless feature since backing up a database is not a hard thing to do, however let’s not forget that a lot of the bloggers don’t have the slightest idea what MySQL or PHPMyAdmin is so for them it might be a handy solution. BackupMyBlog is currently in beta and while in beta it is free, however there is a limit of 10MB.

So I was looking through my server logs and noticed a lot of referrers coming from “p202.ezboard.com/fheartsofgold7297frm106″ and a few variations of that. I didn’t however notice this forum referring traffic on my sitemeter counters, this probably meant someone was hot-linking an image from me.

I wanted to check it out though and see what they were using so I tried visiting the url, turns out you have to register with ezboard to view their forums, not my cup of tea, but ok sure.

So I quickly ran though the registration, it asked for more info than I preferred but no big deal, then I hit submit. Here is where things got really bad, they showed me some free offers, such us info from Nokia, or Cooking tips, I of course just wanted to register as quickly as possible so I checked NO to all four offers then hit submit. But wait, a javascript notice, “Please select “Yes” to at least one of the following offers to continue”… are you kidding me? Well whatever the curiosity was killing me I selected the Nokia newsletter, and hit submit. But wait, I need to give them my birthday city and zip… Well I’m Canadian, I made up a zip and picked a state sadly they checked and the zip didn’t match the state. After that I hit the little “X” to close their tab.

They could have had me as a user, a member, I could have offered value to their forums, imagine someone who was interested in a forum but had no real drive, they wouldn’t have gone nearly as far as me (probably not ever to the registration page).

I am literally appalled by how EzBoard has chosen to do business, it is, as far as I’m concerned a money grab for web1.0, but not effective at that. Besides the forced leads generated are probably worthless to advertisers (because of the forced nature). Me (or someone else) would be much more valuable to them as a customer than not. Thank god this kind of incompetence is not tolerated on web2.0.

Technorati Tags: 1.0, web1.0, web2.0, web 2.0, forums, bulletin boards, bad business, business, ezboard, statistics, nokia

Business 2.0 is my favorite magazine (actually, the only one I subscribe to) and in this month’s issue they have an excellent article about “25 Startups Reinventing The Web”

Driven by ubiquitous broadband, cheap hardware, and open-source software, the Web is mutating into a radically different beast than it has been. And that is leading to the creation of entirely new kinds of companies, new business models, and oceans of new opportunity.

We are in the early stages of what might be better thought of as the Next Net. The Next Net will encompass all digital devices, from PC to cell phone to television. Its defining characteristics include the ability to interact instantaneously with any of the more than 1 billion Web users across the globe — not by, say, instant messaging, but by evolving instant-voice-messaging and instant-video-messaging apps that will make today’s e-mail and IM seem crude.

It’s a very good read at the least take a look at some of the companies on the list, they are doing some neat stuff.

web2.0, web2, web 2.0, ajax, business2, business2.0, business 2.0

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Lucky for me that’s not something I need to go over because ZDnet posted an excellent article on the subject.

Personally I use Google, but my favorite is probably Net Vibes I just haven’t got around to changing. But really I’m not to into traditional homepages, I’m actually thinking of changing my homepage to Bloglines.

web2.0, web2, web 2.0, homepage, ajax, google, net vibes

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It is here. 30 Boxes is here. From the creative minds and talents of 83 Degrees. For anyone who has been looking for a sturdy and comprehensive 2.0 Web Calendar than this is definitely for you. 30 Boxes comes complete with all the basic features of adding events to a calendar, but it also incorporates a lot of more functionality. And it just released yesterday!

You can share your calendars with other people. You can incorporate a buddy list of people and keep tabs on where others are and what they are up to (great for team management). The interface also allows you to continue tagging your events in order to keep everything organized.

One of the things that I am very happy to see comes by way of the developers blog. They talk a lot about how they want to keep it “hackable” and allow people to modify 30 Boxes to suit their needs. Whether it’s just a theme or going through and utilizing the full third party developer’s API you should be able to make 30 Boxes do almost anything you could want your calendar to do.

Even if you think you’ve found your perfect fit for an online calendar solution, please jump on over and sign up. It’s free! Just give it a try and see if you don’t fall in love with it.

30 Boxes | It’s Your Life

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Technorati Tags: web2.0, web2, web 2.0, Time Management, AJAX, Calender, 30 Boxes, 30Boxes

Chalksite is a new creation looking to facilitate the needs of teachers and students, or anyone in an educational environment, through the web. The application is still in development and we did not get to test it just quite yet, but from the sounds and looks of things this might make a big push towards improving the efficiency of the classroom.

Teachers can organize their students by class and by period. They are able to maintain messages for the class, assignments, and their gradebook all online. So students who want to check something do not have to wait till class to question the teacher. With Chalksite they now have the ability to check online what their status is.

This appears to take a lot of the basic features of project management, which is common among the 2.0 apps, and putting it into a specific realm for the school and class management environment. I look forward to seeing Chalksite once it releases, and hopefully we’ll see schools start moving over to the system.

I guess it’s time for laptops to replace books.

web2.0, web2, web 2.0, AJAX, Chalksite, Education, School, Project Management

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One of the big powerhouse application developers for the Web 2.0 era is 37 Signals. Powered by a skillful team of professionals and a lot of great ideas they really helped kick start the Web 2.0. 37 Signals has produced what I consider and excellent “suite” of applications that everyone should utilize, or at least try. For those who are not aware of 37 Signals I’ve comprised a brief review of all of the applications in their suite.

Ta-Da Lists
The simplest of ideas, but very well implemented. I know a lot of people who wish they had a to-do list that they could take with them no matter where they went. Ta-Da Lists provided them with this tool. Users are able to create and manage a number of to-do lists, or lists of any content. 37 Signals took the idea behind the old fashioned hand written to-do list and put that same functionality on the web. You are able to actively manage your lists right on the page and get so much more power than you ever could before from a to-do list.

Writeboards
A big part of Web 2.0 is online document publications. Writeboards provide users with a way to collaborate on developing documents and monitor the changes that are made. A number of users are allowed access to contribute to content of a document live on the web. This also removes the issue of cross platforms in a team environment because it takes full advantage of the web as a platform independent of the computer accessing it.

Backpack
Backpack started as a note-taking interface that let you make pages and notes on the web so you can always have access to them. But with excellent usability in mind they combined the lists from Ta-Da List and Writeboards into one package so that Backpack is really an illustration of a lot of the 37 Signals products. Bringing notes, lists, images, files, and writeboards all together in one interface for users of Backpack.

Basecamp
The flagship of the 37 Signals suite is their project management application, Basecamp. Basecamp utilizes all of the technologies of Web 2.0 in order to beef up what you would expect from a usual project management application. But again utilizing the web as a platform to avoid the issues of cross platform compatibility across a team. And, just like Backpack, Basecamp makes use of all of the functions from the other products in the suite in order to better assist users of Basecamp.

It’s amazing what the creative minds behind 37 Signals have put out for the Web 2.0 savvy people. I, personally, am very excited to see what else will come out of the 37 Signals camp in the near future as we progress with the development of web technologies.

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With all the latest craze of the Web 2.0 era of the internet you may be curious to see who is really owning up to all that they claim. Now this may be hard to tell just from looking at sites, because it is easy enough to make things look 2.0. Now there is a new way to find out if someone is really using Web 2.0 technologies. Also, a nice added feature of the validator is it will not only check if the page is in fact using Web 2.0 technologies but it will also check if there are valid technologies.

Web 2.0 Validator

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