Toluu

The Last Podcast

Opinionated Web 2.0 News and Commentary

Testing Wordpress on the iPhoneJuly 22

So Wordpress has finally released a native iPhone application. Not only do you get to try out how good you can type on the virtual keyboard, but you can also check which version of WP you are using, as it need at least version 2.5.1.

Update: cool - worked just like advertised.

To Pay or Not to Pay for iPhone Apps?July 1

Here is an exceedingly dumb article from the Time Magazine website. You might want to read it in all its glory, but I will just give you the last paragraph:

If Apple ever does decide to let all iPhone apps be free, it would be a radical departure from its typical way of doing business. To switch to an ad-supported model, it would have to partner with a company that already has a huge inventory of interactive ads. Google would be the most obvious choice, but the search giant is already poised to be Apple’s top rival in the mobile arena once its Android handsets go on sale this fall. Such an alliance might be a little too close for comfort.

So - dear Time writer – in the time you researched this article, where did you miss the part where developers could chose the price of their iPhone apps (including FREE!)?

Technorati tags: iphone 3g, apple, time

Twitter Ain’t Worth Anything Right NowJuly 1

Silicon Alley Insider argued that Twitter might be worth over a billion dollars in a year. Sure – and I might be worth over a billion dollars by the end of this year as well…

Let’s face it – Twitter hasn’t worked at all lately. Every time you want to log in, it kicks you back the Fail Whale, a white page, or if you are really lucky, your login page – just don’t expect the next page to load up.

More and more folks are moving away from Twitter over to Friendfeed now. Some people are still holding on, arguing that all their followers are worth oh so much to them… But those followers are worth absolutely nothing right now, because Twitter simply doesn’t work anymore.

I give Twitter another week or two – after that, I think it will have reached its point of no return…

Moving Along and Posting on RWWJune 23

As some of you might have noticed already, updates here have been a bit sparse lately. There is a good reason for that. After a whirlwind of activity last week, I started posting on ReadWriteWeb today and officially joined the most dangerous profession of all.

This will keep me busy and off the streets for a while. My responsibility over at RWW is to post news and reviews during the weekday mornings and with doing my graduate work during the afternoons, my spare time has suddenly become a bit more limited (in a very good way!).

While my friend Steven Hodson has been saying that I would sooner or later start writing for one of the bigger blogs, I didn’t really think that was going to happen, and I sure didn’t think it was a blog I respect as much as ReadWriteWeb. However, when I saw that ReadWriteWeb’s editor Richard MacManus post saying that they were looking for writers last Monday, I jumped on the chance and send him my application. The rest, as the old cliche says, is history.

One of the greatest things about RWW is that I get to work with great bloggers like Richard MacManus, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Sarah Perez, Alex Iskold, Bernard Lunn, and Corvida. Everybody over at RWW has been extremely supportive as I stumble with RWW’s publishing system and try to adapt to the RWW style of doing things. With Marshall also being here in Portland, I guess RWW is now indeed a bit of a Portland blog as some have been pointing out.

This is definitely a case of turning your hobby in a job – and even though that can often be dangerous, I can already see how the crew over at RWW will keep me grounded and provide a great support network.

So what’s next for the Last Podcast?

Things will be a bit quiet here over the next few weeks. Once I get into a bit more of a rhythm, I will start posting here more often again. As RWW has a very specific focus as to what kind of news and reviews I will post there, there will be plenty of material left for me to write about. Also, as I focus on news and reviews there, all my rants will still appear here for the foreseeable future.

Until then, my future looks something like this (just kidding!):

Google Adds Website Traffic Comparison to TrendsJune 20

Google has decided to jump into the Web Traffic comparison business by releasing a new layer to Google Trends names Google Trends for Websites.

Very few people these days take the data from publicly available website traffic comparison tools like Alexa and Compete too seriously. At best, both can be used to analyze trends, as their exact numbers for traffic often vary widely. The major problem with any traffic comparison tool is that there are very few trustworthy sources for that data. Alexa uses data from a toolbar plugin, while Compete relies on data from 2 Million Internet users it gathers from ISPs, ASPs, Opt-in Panels and the Compete toolbar.

How is Google Trends different?

Google of course sits on a wellspring of data and they are using it to power Google Trends for Websites. According to the FAQ, Google gets its data from,

“aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research.”

With this, Google might be able to get a slight edge on both Alexa and Compete in terms of quality of data, th