This coming Saturday - 07/07/07 - "The New 7 Wonders of the World" will be anointed in a ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal. Architecture: Could anything be any more 20th Century? Here at Buzzblog, we have enlisted the help of my e-mail list - the Buzzblog Brigade - and taken on a more modern assignment: "The 7 Wonders of the Internet." The only rule I offered our voters was that there would be no rules - and no real vote. The slides that follow are something of a Buzzblog community consensus influenced by my personal biases. Each slide has a link to a string of comments from the participants. And, of course, we want you to leave your thoughts.
When not blogging, I am a Network World news editor and write the 'Net Buzz column.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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google worship is getting old. Wikipedia is the "bet resolver"
To leave off wikipedia from your list, and wikis in general, is to do a great disservice. Especially with your statement about google being useful for resolving bets. Usually the most reliable and thorough search engine result for this kind of stuff is wikipedia. So why go thru google to get to wikipedia? Doesn't make sense to me. Don't get me wrong, I use google and love many of their services (igoogle, gmail, google maps). But they're not getting any $$ from me whatsoever since I am not ignorant enough to click the silly text ad links.
Also the statement about their "other ventures" not sullying the "core function of search" is patently false. They make the majority of their money off of sullying the search results w/ paid search results, something that used to be anathema to the goal of providing the best possible search results. (I recognize that the "actual" search results still appear in the lower left portion, but the fact that the top and whole right side is taken over with ads is my point.) All their other "ventures" aren't making them squat. The dollars all come from text ad clicks.
Why anyone clicks the sponsored links and then buys something is beyond me. There are much better sites for price comparison (e.g., nextag). If someone figures out how to tie actual dollars spent to the clicks that google is getting paid for, I predict that their seemingly endless fount of cash will slow greatly.
I do like the statement about email-bashers being reminiscent of TV-bashers. Definitely pretentious and probably disingenuous.
Good point about Wikipedia
Although I've written my fair share of criticisms of Wikipedia, I find myself being more and more impressed with it over time. I'm not sure it merits being one of only 7 "Wonders" -- certainly not at the expense of Google -- but I'm glad Erik has spoken up in its behalf.
7th Wonder
I disagree with the last wonder, once again - Google.
Really, Google is delivering the information that you want to see, and Google has done a good job at providing quality search. But Google is not the leader in other delivery services like RSS feeds (bloglines) or tagging (digg). I think the last wonder, is information delivery services - not Google.
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Max Bailey.
http://www.cmyblogs.com - Free Blogging
http://www.cmyos.com - Free Online Operating System
People finding new and better ways to waste time is #1
So many people have become addicted to the Internet and the myriad of ways it provides to waste time. You Tube and music downloads and IM, and e-mail and blogs (which should be bslogs cause they're mostly full of crap), and, and, and,... Like B-Movie SciFi, it's the electronic drug of the new Millennium.
There are a lot of very lonely people with wayyyy toooo much time on their hands.
There's about 5-10% accurate, useful information and services on the Internet, and the rest is a waste of time.
I actually agree ...
... when it comes to wasting time, which people have done since cavemen scribbled on walls, the Internet is both new and better. ... Wouldn't make that No. 1, though.