Social icons Nov 13, 2006
Amen, 37signals.  It's good to know I'm not the only one annoyed by social bookmarking icons. 
When I first saw these things, I was impressed by all the different sites that do similar things.  I would click on the icons of the sites I hadn't heard of to see if I was interested in using the site.  I suppose I found a few interesting things, but that completely misses the purpose:  To enable readers to submit your site to any of several social bookmarking or rating sites.  Even if I read something that was interesting or noteworthy, I wouldn't submit it to one of these sites.  Why?  I'm a passive user.  I'm not a submitter.  I'm the person everybody hates.  I just sit there and read things and ponder their interestingness.  I never pass anything along.  What can I say?  I'm a jerk. 

So anyway, my main argument against these stupid little icons is that every social bookmarking site produces their own bookmarklet which is easily embedded in every user's browser.  I occasionally use del.icio.us, so I have the bookmarklet that enables me to save things to my del.icio.us account.  Simple as that.  Why would I use somebody's icon that's on their site instead of using my own bookmarklet?  I just don't see the point. #technology
Keep a record Nov 13, 2006
One cool thing about writing stuff on this website is that most of the past 2 years of my life has been pretty well archived.  Not archived like a series of events, but archived more like a collection of thoughts.  The things I've written about have been more along the lines of "what's going on in my head" as opposed to "what I did yesterday".  But hey, whatever floats your boat. 

The first time I did something like this was when I was in college, but it was before the ease of online publishing.  I wrote all my thoughts and opinions, unfiltered and unedited, in a password-protected Word document.  It was great to be able to get stuff out of my head, and it was also interesting to look back on it to see what I was thinking the previous day, month, or year.  As of this moment, I don't remember the passwords for these password-protected documents, so I have no idea what I used to think.  This troubles me, but maybe I'll figure something out eventually.  (Update [2006-11-14 11:41am]:  I was using a trial version of some password recovering software, and the program was able to guess the password in just a few seconds, reminding me that the password was only a few characters long and that the password was the same for each of the documents.  Now I have access to all my memories!)

My biggest regret about this whole thing is that I didn't start it sooner.  It would be really cool to find out what I used to think when I was 16.  Or 11.  Or 7.  It would probably be naive and embarrassing, but that's how things go.  So my word of advice to anyone reading this:  Keep a record.  Call it a diary, a journal, a blog, whatever.  The name doesn't matter.  Just keep a record.  Write down what you do, what you think, what you like, what you hate, who you meet.  It's unbelievably beneficial. #psychology
ReviewMe Nov 13, 2006
ReviewMe is the new kid on the block in the pay-per-something game.  For now, it's competing with PayPerPost, the site that recently won the "Leaves Worst Taste In Mouth" award.  As TechCrunch points out, ReviewMe has two major advantages over PayPerPost:  Required disclosure and honest opinions.  Every post about a ReviewMe product/website needs to be announced as a paid post.  One of the biggest criticisms about PayPerPost was that posts could look like they were unbiased when they were in fact paid.  This wouldn't necessarily change the content of the post, but some people didn't like being left in the dark.  The other big criticism was that advertisers on PayPerPost could require that a post be positive.  This essentially amounts to bribery, and it obviously left many people with a negative view of PayPerPost.  The only real requirement for ReviewMe posts is that they're 200 words or more.  At first that sounds like kind of a lot (I didn't write papers in college; I did math problems), but it turns out that 200 words are pretty easy to come up with when you have a brain oozing with nonsense. 

Another interesting thing about ReviewMe is its payment model.  Different bloggers will get paid different amounts for doing the same thing, based on each blog's "importance" according to Alexa and Technorati.  So basically, it's a popularity contest.  But that's how it works in other venues as well:  A 30-second ad during the Super Bowl will obviously cost more than a 30-second ad during a late-night infomercial.  This means that somebody like zefrank will make around $1000 per post, while somebody like me will make a few soybean seeds and be told to sell the plants to make real money. 

A final interesting thing is that ReviewMe is owned by Text Link Ads, the somewhat elitist marketer with the beautiful website.  TLA is sort of a big force on the internet; it just keeps popping up everywhere. 

This is a sponsored post. #technology