AlexaDex is still keeping a firm grasp on my attention for about an hour each day. Here’s my picks for the day:

• Edgeio.com obtained more available stock, so I sold my 10 in campfirenow.com and bought 14 in Edgeio.com
• Stickam.com was mentioned in Mashable! - officially opening tomorrow - and earned 16 purchases from me, I think it will be a big performer with the MySpace crowd
• Ning.com will be releasing an update tomorrow - I took 3
• Squeet.com was mentioned on Techcrunch - I’ll flip this stock quickly.
• uconnhuskies.com is the website for the UConn Huskies, currently the number 1 team in NCAA Men’s Basketball. With March Madness coming up I hope this will pay off in a few weeks.
• I have a watch on betaflow.com (just to see what happens with it, it doubled yesterday), and daytonaintlspeedway.com - Daytona’s coming up and I intend to snatch stock in this asap.

I’m keeping cocomment.com and performancing.com for the moment, just cause I think they will pay off in the long run.

• 0 Comments

I discovered an entirely new realm of Yahoo I had never knew existed today: the Yahoo Developers Network. Today, YDN released their Yahoo! Design Pattern Library - a series of design patterns that Yahoo places into practice across their network and could be of use to other websites.

Another item I discovered that Yahoo is sharing with the world is their UI library - complete with AJAX and UI controls (not to be confused with the Konfabulator Widgets). I have yet to use Yahoo’s UI Library, but I’ll be sure to give it a test run and a full review shortly. The UI controls, such as the Calendar, are sure to be a welcome addition to an upcoming project of mine if they prove user friendly and intuitive.

With all of the recent bad press Yahoo is receiving, it’s nice to see some good news and innovation coming out of this leader. Yahoo is truly showing they understand the Web 2.0 mentality and they are not simply buying into the movement.

• 0 Comments

I’ve always been a fan of web-based games - I’ve even developed a few myself. I’ve tried to play the virtual stock market variations, but they rarely catch my interests and I quickly move back to the strategy / war games.

AlexaDex is a bit different though - you purchase stock in websites, based on it’s Alexa rankings. I’ve decided to take the blogosphere route, and purchase the following stocks (for the time being) for the following reasons:

• cocomment.com - Excellent service and I see them only growing in popularity soon.
• performancing.com - Their main software release for this year is sometime this month - massive traffic.
• betaflow.com - Best site ever! Actually, I’m hoping on a few inbounds and increase in traffic from my last post.
• techcrunch.com - Web 2.0 defined - will only continue to grow in popularity.

I’m also watching 3bubbles.com and edgeio.com, and will be snatching up stock in those as soon as it’s available. I’m definitely going to stay on top of the AlexaDex game, I’ll report some of the occurences here. I encourage you all to check it out and give it a whirl!

• 0 Comments

Few people have a grasp on Web 2.0 as Mike Arrington (of TechCrunch fame) does. His development of Edgeio has honestly opened my eyes to what the term is truly about and it took Pete Cashmore’s look at Edgeio for me to realize this.

Edgeio is best described as eBay with a twist - rather than going to Edgeio’s website and placing your classified, you simply post it on your blog and Edgeio will find it and display it for you. Is this a foreshadowing of what is to come, will blogs be the gateway to not only producing but also receiving content in the future? In 20 years, could you really only interface with thousands of companies through your blog alone?

When the Internet was first developed, no one would have predicted images, games, and even programs would be distributed over the network. When the World Wide Web was finalized, commercialization was expressly forbidden. Ten years ago it took months, even years, of practice and self-teaching to develop a website worth visiting. Today, I can have a domain name, host, and blog with content within the hour. Is it really so outlandish to believe that a blog will soon become a standard portion of your grandmother’s ISP package, and in the years to come it will become the Internet’s command line?

Within the 15 minutes since I read Pete Cashmore’s post (and it all made sense to me) I have thought of the following uses:

Travel
“I need 1 ticket from King Salmon, AK, to Atlanta, GA, then on to Tallahassee, FL, the next day. I also need 1 ticket from Baltimore, MD, to Atlanta, GA, then on to Tallahassee, FL, the next day. Both flight should land within 3 hours of one another in Atlanta, GA, and we would like to share a hotel room.”

I post that to my blog, tag it appropriately, and an aggregator finds it and begins contacting travel agencies. Within a few hours I’m given my options and prices, via trackbacks, which I notice quickly thanks to an RSS feed.

Gifts
“I need 2 dozen red roses delivered to my house for my wife, between the hours of 1PM and 5PM on Valentine’s Day. My Google Wallet ID is XXX, please bill me.”

I post that to my blog, tag it appropriately, and an aggregator finds it, contacts a local florist and places my order. When the flowers are delivered I am notified via a trackback and a bill is waiting for me.

I could continue with more examples, but it’s quite clear where I am going with this. Of course, the examples I state above would require a nice staff of humans watching the aggregator (or very developed human language software). I would be interested in learning how Edgeio approaches the human language barrier - is there a specific syntax in which a listing must be formatted?

What are your thoughts on the blog as the Internet’s command line? Can you think of any further uses? Feel free to share! Also, check out Edgeio’s Blog and Mashable! Thanks to Mike and Pete, for inadvertedly opening my eyes to the greatness ahead.

• 0 Comments