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Yelp, a site I have praised before, is continuing to grow and gain traction.  Today, TechCrunch profiled them and spoke of their success and new-found hate sites.  You see, business owners who have been given bad reviews on Yelp are trying to fight back.  Sorry businesses, but if you want to fight back, respond to the criticism by fixing what was being complained about.  Yelp has reached out to give business owners a way to reply to reviewers.

Yelp is one of the social media sites that defines what user generated content is all about.  Real people talking frankly about businesses in a frank and open manner.  If businesses can’t take the heat - perhaps they should just stick their head in the sand and ignore the feedback.  However, the feedback is free and will allow them to easily improve their business.

If you want to see my activity on yelp, check out my profile page.

One key advantage that Apple computers have over their PC counterparts is the inclusion of iChat.  This pre-installed and drop dead easy to use chat and video chat application is ready to go the minute you get your new Apple computer on the Internet.

To accompany the launch of their sexy Studio line of laptops,  Dell is including a new utility on their Studio line computers called Dell Video Chat which is powered by SightSpeed, a proven video conferencing application I’ve written about before.  The inclusion of this application will bring simple video conferencing amongst the new Dell users and will allow them to interface with friends, family, and colleagues who are on Windows, Linux, or Apple computers.

One competitive advantage SightSpeed brings to the table is their inclusion of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the standard VoIP protocol used on the internet and enabling you to make VoIP calls to almost any VoiP user on the globe.

Just for Dell, SightSpeed has a new UI just for the Studio laptops that is redesigned and slick.  Dell Video Chat includes free unlimited video, voice, and text chats worldwide to anyone else on SightSpeed and video conferencing with up to 4 people.

Techmeme is, by and large, a fantastic way to stay up on the present buzz occurring in the tech blogosphere.  However, I’m confused at how the system works so I’m hoping to shed some light on the subject with this post and the conversation that ensues.  In talking to other blogging friends, I’m not the only one who is curious about this subject.

From their “About” box, TechMeme states:

At this moment, the hottest stories in technology are scattered across dozens of news sites and blogs.

That’s an awful lot of sites for anyone to check.

Fortunately, Techmeme arranges all of these links into a single, easy-to-scan page. It’s auto-generated through a news-picking software system, so updates occur around the clock.

So, how does Techmeme decide which post is most worth of the primary link?  For example:

Earlier this month, Om Malik interviewed and wrote a post about Jeff Bezos. Anyways, Om did the work, then RoughType links to the post and embeds the video.  Then I see the Nick gets the primary post on Techmeme!?

How does Techmeme’s algorithm work?  I’d assume in this case, Om’s post would get the Techmeme, love, not the RoughType coverage of Om’s interview. This, in my opinion, is an injustice to Om as he is the original content creator.

See the screenshot below:

Additionally, a while back I posted on GigaOm about Strands acquisition of NetworthIQ.  My post on GigaOm went up first, (my post ran at 4:37PDT, and TechCrunch’s ran at 8:26AM) however TechCrunch’s story got the primary link, with my post was placed in the Discussion category.  Here’s a screenshot from that day:

This post is not intended to complain about Techmeme - just to educate myself and the community about how the selection process is conducted by Techmeme’s bots.  Is Techmeme handcoded or dynamically driven? Inquiring minds want to know

In today’s segment of Breaking Silos: how to take get your contacts from mobile phone into Skype for Skype calling goodness.  SkypeSync makes it possible to call all your phone’s contacts via SkypeOut.  As Download Squad points out, the utility uses the SyncML standard which is used by most mobile phones these days.

To check out out, browse to zyb.com and upload your contacts to the web service.  Download, install, and open SkypeSync and use the wizard to export your contacts from Zyb and export them into Skype.  Your contacts will be visible in Skype for outgoing calls and SMS.

These types of utilities are fantastic and break down barriers of having silos of contacts in multiple places.

Note: SkypeSync is currently only available for Windows.

Michael Masnick of Techdirt recently pointed to a study that shows Americans are utilizing the Internet to gain in depth knowledge during this election cycle.

In my opinion, this is the greatest power the Internet is granting to us “common-folk”.

I have been so disappointed this election cycle because of the lack content in the conventional media of information about the issues.  I’m tired of hearing about pastors and other distractions the mainstream press is trying to feed us on the 5 o’clock news.  I want to know stances, messages, and cold hard facts.

In an era where the some say the Internet feeds our short attention spans, it’s ironic that this study shows just the opposite.  The Internet fuels our desire for information exchange while cutting out the middle man.  No wonder why CBS’ ratings are down for their nightly news.

(photo credit: Flickr user Boeke)

As I posted on GigaOM Strands.com is trying to get into the social aggregation space.  Currently the market dominated by FriendFeed which has gained an amazing among popularity amongst the web 2.0 crowd.  Today’s news follows the NetworthIQ news from earlier this month.

The service aims to take the social media aggregation FriendFeed offers to the next level by offering social recommendations on top of it.  The company aims to use your friends as a filter to “hot” content you’ll be interested in.

Along with giving you pointers to content you might be interested in, the new Strands.com will allow you to build a ‘taste profle’ to enable you to take your profile with you to other sites to further personalize those other services.

To highlight social media items to you, Strands.com has “Hot Posts” that will allow you to see what’s hot within your social group and allow you to see new things based on what your friends are suggesting.  Also, you can set groups and have granularity to which groups see what materials in your Strands.com stream.  To additionally filter out content, users can show content based on content type.  That is, if you only want to see your friends’ music items, you can have just this filtered data shown to you.

Does this type of service interest you, or is it just ANOTHER site to sign up for and adopt?

Om just posted a review on a fabulous product for sharing files between your computers.  DropBox is a service that allows you to easily move documents and files between your different machines.  If you have ever used .Mac, this service feels a lot like iDisk.

Available for Mac and Windows, DropBox integrates with your finder or Windows Explorer.  All the files in your dropbox are saved in online folders.  Even if you save a file from your home machine and try to access it at work with your home computer offline, the files are still available.  Also, files are kept in version control, meaning you can see all changes to a file over time.

DropBox is an excellent alternative to carrying around a USB data key or emailing your files back and forth.  Right now the service is in private beta.

Nerdy note: DropBox feels like your own personal subversion being hosted by a service.  I understand they use Amazon’s S3 and EC2 service on the back-end.

(photo courtesy: getdropbox.com)

Just a quick public announcement that I have a new writing gig.  I’m now writing at one of my favorite blogs, Web Worker Daily.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, Web Worker Daily is a fantastic blog that focuses on tech news and productivity for those who work on the web.  It’s one of Om Malik’s blogs and is part of the Giga Om Network.

I’ll primarily be writing at Web Worker Daily and I will also get the opportunity to contribute to the other blogs on the network, namely the flagship GigaOm.com.

To see my articles on WWD, check out my page on the site.  Also, if you want an RSS feed of my articles, check out feed://feeds.feedburner.com/jasonswritings.

Just wanted to announce that I’m now writing for  Download Squad.

Download Squad is an amazing blog that I’ve been a long time reader of.   They are part of Weblogs Inc (owned by AOL) and are a sister blog of Engadget and TV Squad.

If you want to just check out my stories, follow this link.  As you can see, I have about 9 stories under my belt.

If you want an RSS feed of just my writings, subscribe to feeds.feedburner.com/jasonswritings

Don’t worry, this won’t cause my blogging here at techcraver.com to subside at all.  You’ll just have one more place to find me.

Netscape Navigator will be discontinued as of February 1, 2008, according to Netscape’s blog.

It’s a sad day.  I remember first using Netscape on a Macintosh SE back in 1994.

I also wrote about this on Download Squad, feel free to check it out.