So, this is a quick review, mostly because DropBox is getting Digged, TechCrunched and Redditted all at the same time — and I’m finally allowed to blog about it, as they’ve dropped their request they bloggers not do so. I’ve been in the private beta for almost two months now, and DropBox is pretty much as hyped: it is an awesome remote online “drive” solution.

While its features are not tremendously unique — you get gigabytes of storage, you can install a little program on your computer which auto-syncs so that a special folder “auto-syncs” with getdropbox, you can “share” different folders and files in a fairly granular fashion, and so on.

Rather, what really works for me is how simple and elegant it is.

{actually there is two other features that are also pretty nifty: how it keeps different versions of files every time they are changed, and its auto-gallery feature}

There are, in fact, many online solutions, but what sticks out about DropBox is that its interface is very clean, very fresh, very simple, and very fast. Unlike its competitors, the online interface isn’t trying to mimic your desktop, and as such, isn’t full of fancy AJAX (or Flash) tricks. It has a very simple interface, and its a joy to use.

This latter fact is important to me, because — and perhaps you’re like me — you bring data between computers of varying ages and processing speeds. AJAX and Flash are fine when you’ve got a relatively “new “machine, but in the places that I work (hospital), I’m often faced with old machines, or machines that have miniscule amounts of RAM, or computers that are just plain slow. Using other online storage solutions make no sense in this environment because they’re slow and cumbersome to use.

But this is where DropBox sails, as it requires very little of the host machine to work … which is just as it should be.

On the other hand, its not a perfect product by far. One thing about DropBox that needs work, for example, is the downloading interface. There is no easy way to download more than one file (if you’re at a remote machine and don’t want to install the remote “drive” on it), and obviously this is an important feature if DropBox is meant to be more than an archiving tool (which presupposes that you won’t be downloading much).

This feature can’t be all that difficult to implement, so I anticipate that its one of those things these guys are working on.

Bottom line: DropBox is pretty awesome and given its simple interface, very usable even in fairly primitive computing environments. I’ve been using it almost daily in the past two months, and its one of those services that goes above and beyond any superlatives that I’m going to use — and that you really just going to have to try for yourself.

Interesting debate today — for a small period of time — BubbleGeneration’s Umair Haque leveled some interesting assertions at Mikey A et al. over at TechCrunch, and subsequently took the post down … but was then put up again, in response to it getting mirrored over at Crunchnotes.

His own assertions aren’t really that interesting to me (TC is plateauing, its ongoing growth is vested in the conflict of others, love >>> hate, koooooo-m-baya), but his other thoughts about taking TC on *is*. More specifically, that its a tough thing to do, because TC is a multi-headed monster, and incurring said wrath is like inviting a multi-layered dogpiled beating.

I mean, I don’t have anything particularly profound other than saying that I *agree* — somewhat.

First of all, Mike A et al. rarely single out or take on small minows and bottom feeder blogs (points to self). Secondly if he does, it is usually because its in reaction to a shit blogstorm that has occurred secondary to that.

Having said that, Umair’s got a point.

If you have a beef against what TC has written about you, there’s very little recourse.

Oh, sure … in *principle* having a blog means that you also have the potential platform to millions. But come now. If you’re reading *this* blog, you *aren’t*.

Fact is, if you want to rebut something Miky A has said about you or your business, there’s not much you can do to refute it, even if you have your own blog, particularly if that blog isn’t known, and you have no juice in the business.

Is it unfair? Of course it is.

But that’s the dynamics and economics of attention.

And you can substitute TechCrunch for “Perez Hilton”, if you want (although its a poor analogy: there’s no reason why he would write about you unless you were a minor celebrity involved in some stage of humiliating personal distress), or a larger publication that isn’t blog-like.

Of course what makes this challenging from a strictly blogging-centric point of view, is that blogs are usually fairly flat structures (particularly if its a single author blog) — and because of the personal nature that blogs often demand their authors to take, personal beefs can come out.

We can debate about whether or not such beefs actually *make* the target of the beef successful (or, more succesful, rather, than someone who is the object of praise — see PayPerPost … er, Aizea, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days) … but at the end of the day, attention is like any other commodity.

There is a natural scarcity of it, and some destinations have bucketloads of it, while others have none. Do stewards of that resource have to guard it carefully? Somewhat. Do they have an ethical obligation not to be royal douchebags? Of course.

But whether they are or not is immaterial, and much like gravity, the deathspiraling career of Britney Spears, and the inexplicable never-ending success of American Idol, these are things I take as givens now, and now worth wasting my time over the why’s and wherefore’s.

Mostly because I know that asking such questions, beating my chest, and woefully lamenting my poor lot in life (if I were ever the target of an injustice) {not that Umair *is* though} really accomplishes little.

Now, that’s not to say that as time turns and the wheels of change move on, sites like TC will not continue to lose their status as chief gorilla pimps of “new media”. I mean it might. But I don’t envision any one of us being agents of that change, necessarily, because of (another) nerd / blog / geek fight.

I think :)

Over at TechCrunch a guest poster, Dan Acker Greenburg, has revealed how the company he works for creates viral videos on YouTube. Go and read the details, but it basically boils down to marketing tricks, and less to do with the content itself.

Wait — that doesn’t do it justice.

It basically boils down to manipulating structures within a social system to promote videos that are seemingly popular through an organic (i.e. “real”) sense of popularity.

Wait — that doesn’t really do it justice, either.

What it *really* boils down to is creating multiple puppet accounts, creating fake controversy to pump up the pageviews, and under-the-table renting of popular bloggers opinions on given videos, and / or the bribery of certain email list owners to pimp said videos.

Yeah, that’s about it.

Right now, the post is absolutely burning up TechCrunch with almost 200 comments, and you can bet there will probably be more. Mike Arrington himself seems a bit taken aback by how honest the post is, but is anyone *really* shocked?

Are your (or anyone’s) sensibilities *really* that delicate?

I mean, its been a year now since the Edelman Wal-Mart fake-blogger fiasco. And around the same time I was posting / ranting regularly about how Digg might or might not be manipulated.

In fact, one of my last thoughts on the topic was that the best marketers are going to be gaming Digg in a way that is not visible to most people; that Jay Adelson’s rhetoric about not having any submissions being manipulated were total hubris as well.

Bottom line is that this post pulls the curtain back on a phenomenon that any rational thinking individual would already suspect.

That is, when there is financial incentive and opportunity to game a system — even when that system has the appearance of being “open”, “transparent”, and built upon the goodwill and trust of its users (how typically quaint!) — someone will do it.

And the best of them will do it in such a way that no one else will even *know*.

At times like this I almost feel bad for Ted Murphy, one of the guys behind PayPerPost. Not just because I met him and he seems like a nice guy. But rather that he tried to build a business that was attempting to do something in a fairly open and transparent way, and with the new Google PageRank adjustment is getting burned for it.

Whereas guys like Dan Greenburg? They’re paying bloggers and list owners under the table where Google will _never_, *ever* be able to tell, and they’re making out like bandits. And that’s besides the practice of creating puppet accounts to pimp their “viral” marketing tactics.

Again, am I surprised and shocked? Not really.

But I think we should all take anything that seems viral and organic with a grain of salt these days. Because no matter how “real” something popular seems, there just might be a marketing or PR firm behind it.

There’s nothing intrinsically good or bad about it (but, really, mostly bad), but clearly in an age of “social media” and “user generated” content, there’s a strong case to be made for new media literacy.

And guys like Dan Greenburg, and this post in particular, need to be made case example number one.

Even though the Google top secret conference had its members sign NDAs, that hasn’t stopped at least three of them from blabbing to Mike “Mr. Access” Arrington about it.  Details of course at TechCrunch, but it sounds like Google is secretly rallying its resources to build a social network that is going to “100%” open.

Again, I’m not going to regurgitate the details, save that from the sounds of it, the really geeky minds behind Google are going to out-geek Facebook on the “open” issue.  Whatever their social network is going to be like, its going to be so open, everyone and their mama is going to be able to push and pull data right from Google applications.  Look for November 5th to be the date that a whole bunch of API’s will be published so that folks can get right into it.

Now, I think that a whole lot more is going to come out of the wash — and there are going to be a whole lot more opinions on this the entire weekend.

But, I think there’s one thing that doesn’t quite add up with Google’s efforts.  While yes, its one thing to be able to drag out Google’s social graph information by being 100% open, and yes, Google is Google — their user base is pretty large — the *only* way that *any* of the “we’re going to out-facebook by being more open” strategy is ever going to *matter* is if people actually use Google’s social network.

That is to say, it runs into the thinking (my thinking, maybe your thinking) that social networks are sort of zero-sum game.  Most people don’t have the time or attention to cultivate identities on more than a few social networks.  And that’s *besides* the fact that there’s the locked-in part where social networks only work if your friends are in the same social network.

In this preliminary-half-baked-information-that-still-needs-to-be-verified-bordering-on-sheer-speculation …

… I mean if its half true, Google’s putting the cart *way* in front of the horse.

There’s a reason why Facebook only introduced opening its social network years after it started.  Hey, you’re right, maybe they didn’t think of it.  But I suspect that the powers that be probably *did*, but realized that it won’t work if you don’t have a robust social network in the first place.

Who *cares*, wants to write applications for, develop products that access a social network if there isn’t a critical mass of users to begin with?

Now, yes, I will remind myself that it *is* still Google.

But on the other hand, yes, they are *still* Google, who have had failures in the past too, who is still really only king of one thing: serving ads.

In a bit of blogging-centric news, TechCrunch has recently hired Erick Schonfeld as its co-editor, Mr. Schonfeld being the former editor of the late Business 2.0 magazine. It does beg the question with the hiring earlier this year of Heather Harde, who was then the SVP of Mergers and Acquisitions at Fox Interactive, how “mainstream” TechCrunch is really getting — and perhaps more to the point, if TechCrunch is really still a “blog”.

I think the answer is still a definite “yes”, as in my mind as TechCrunch still sticks to a blogging structure in the way it organizes its news and commentary — with a reverse chronological order, comments, feeds and so on.

But will TechCrunch still maintain the spirit of a blog over time? Highly opinioned, shooting from the hip, breaking-the-news-first-everything-else-be-damned, still acknowledging and participating in the blogosphere (and not be above it), pull-no-punches kind of spirit?

Hey, I hope so.

Clearly, however, as TechCrunch continues to grow and solidify itself as amongst the super-tiered blogs, it has in its own right become a mini-media empire. Its responsible to its readers, its reputation, and just as importantly, its sponsors and advertisers.

And over time, I think its natural for complacency and inertia to set in, to find safety in the absence of risk, and above all, avoid biting the hand that feeds you.

I have no idea if this is what’s in store for a super-blog like TechCrunch, but watching things evolve is proving to be a fascinating case study in how a new media giant has grown and evolved. And I think it remains to be seen if it falls to the same kind of content and editorial doldrums as it becomes increasingly perceived *as* the “mainstream” publication for “web2.0″ news.

So, I’m not at TechCrunch40, although it seems like a great time.  I like Allen Stern’s coverage of the event, which is over here, and what’s interesting is the observation that none of the experts were all that critical.  Now, if anyone else ponied up $2500 a ticket and wants to correct this observation, please go ahead.  But I’m not all that surprised, to be honest.

Its difficult to be critical — or rather, its easy to be “easy” — when you know that your reputation is on the line; there is huge audience in front of you; and, that what you say could determine the potential to be invited back as a speaker.  I mean, what if you say something colossally stupid?  What then?  I suppose the safe thing is to clap your hands and say “That was a great job — you took that song and made it your *own*.”

In what has to be either the most: a) insulting b) drug-induced c) stupidest d) all of the above … statement of the year on Firefox, Mozilla President (of Europe) in a recent interview with TechCrunch UK has gone on — amongst other things — to deny that there is any bloat in Firefox. In fact, its getting “speedier and speedier”.

Ugh.

I have claimed a great many things to be absurd, ludicrous, and just plain ol’ stupid. Hearing that Firefox *isn’t* bloated, when it regularly eats up 200-300+ megs of RAM for *me* (and I’m not the only one) while using minimal plugins (and other settings) is simply beyond the pale.

What’s more outrageous is that Tristan Nitot goes on to champion the user by using DRM as a foil (and a rather cheap and easy one at that), by going on to say

“I don’t think DRM has a future. Treating your customers like thieves is bad business practice. Today the customer is not ‘king’, they are considered thief first.”

Mssr. Nitot, you know what else is bad business practice? Treating your customers like puerile idiots.

Firefox has had problems with bloat and memory leak for a long time and its the one thing that successive iterations never seem to address properly. Its almost like Mozilla is saying “well, its your fault for not optimizing Firefox and not having enough RAM — fools.”

I have no idea when Firefox will fix this issue, or if Firefox will get its comeuppance for this ongoing sin. But its just sad when the chiefs at the top won’t even acknowledge this issue, which has been plaguing an otherwise fine product for ages.