Don’t get me wrong, despite today’s public display of immaturity, I have nothing against EntreCard.  They are pretty damn useful for people who have some spare time and don’t mind exploring lots of blogs.  And right now, that’s just not me.

So how did my EntreCard experiment go?  Here’s a screenshot of my stats:

I visited 151 sites, received 161 clicks (18 of which were from my paid ads), and sent out 45 clicks to other sites.  I have seen an increase in comments, but mostly on my EntreCard related posts.  My EC worth has been going up faster after moving from the more densely populated Internet category to Fashion (making tech "look good"…hey, it could work), but I don’t want to position myself that way other than experimentally.

Verdict:  You get out what you put in, and my time is now more scarce than my money.

Think about it…after receiving a notification that you’ve uploaded new photos, people only have so much attention before they’re forced to focus on other tasks.  No matter how awesome each shot is in your 500 image set, most contacts will be overwhelmed by the amount of content you just threw at them.  Uploading fewer images at once gives people more time to actually notice and absorb your work, which will increase the number of individual views and comments. 

So what’s the "magic upload number"?  I’ve got my photostream set up for small images + sets, which puts 16 images per page.  Right now I’m aiming for 20-25, which gives me plenty of leeway to experiment in the 1 – 2 pages range. 

The concept is essentially a  link exchange based on a click economy.  When you visit other blogs in the Entrecard network, you’re exposed to another blog’s ad, leave your card, and both blogger and visitor earn a point.  The owner of the site can browse through who has left cards and make an offer to advertise on them or other sites in the directory.  The more cards you get (therefore the more popular you are), the more credits it takes to purchase a link on your blog.  I’ve already got advertisements for other blogs displayed in the sidebar, and my ad should get in rotation for other blogs in a few days. 

I’m trying this service for about the same reason I joined MyBlogLog…to establish a network and bring in new readers.  But unlike MyBlogLog, one of my biggest complaints about Entrecard so far are that leaving cards is a manual process which will lose opportunities to connect (todo:  write a greasemonkey script to fix this).  This kind of traffic isn’t as high quality as one would get from linking and contributing comments to websites on similar yet non-competing topics, but Entrecard is like a blog dating service…sometimes you just gotta meet someone somewhere.

Ok, I confess I didn’t want to lay down this much insight into Entrecard until I’d had some time to see if they really work, but my thoughts are still complicated with the need to justify my decision to start serving ads.  Part of this whole system that fascinates me is the similarity between EC’s (Entrecard credits) and Cory Doctorow’s whuffie economy.  Entrecard certainly isn’t post-scarcity, though…since EC’s are a new currency that doesn’t take into account my existing uniques, Page Rank, or RSS readers, it takes a lot of effort to build up enough capital to invest into associating my brand with a quality site, all while suffering in the lower class and selling 125 x 125 pixels of my soul for a mere 4 EC. 

I’m giving the service two weeks before I make up my mind to either stick with the service or go back to devoting that extra mental bandwidth to creating good old fashioned quality content. 

This is such a shame since it ruins the flow their almost perfect text messaging application and makes it hell for developers to work with their system.  C’mon Sprint, stop forcing your monetization scheme on users as a value add and give us a system that just works.

PS:  See?  Potato.

A small list of what has me seething: 
Disclaimer:  May not actually be related to beta software.

* Microsoft Exchange
* Firefox randomly deciding to clear all my stored usernames and passwords
* Websites without contact information
* Vista’s finely tuned ability to activate a new window right when I’m typing/clicking somewhere else
* My obsessive-compulsive perspective on managing RSS feeds
* Sprint Connection Manager’s recent preference for 1xRTT
* Paragraph tags
* Trillian Astra

  Before                                                                      After
     

PS: The image behind the debug code is of some stone carved penguins in Ensenada. I’ve never uploaded it to Flickr, so don’t try looking for it. =]

They’re still in private beta and are regularly adding new features, but what I see so far looks like a fun mashup of Exchange functionality and the existing but underutilized social email network.  It’s nice to see somebody tackling the multiple platform challenge to innovate for those of us who still prefer desktop applications.

Human beings, technology, and nature are now all part of a congruous system of existence that is becoming more and more visible in our landscape.  Formatting Gaia depicts this world, where there is a physical connection between the three and all work in unison with one another.

And I only chose about a 10th of what was available!  With that level of information to work with, I’m not impressed with the bluetooth headset, hands-free car kit, stylus pen, and pink headset that showed up in my "10 Products You Need to See" section.  Still, I have no doubt that I’d be able to entertain myself for a few days if I end up in Vegas next week.

I’d say it takes about 100 points to get followed.  Once I hit -100, you’re out.   But what I find so amazing is that I go through all these levels of scrutiny before I really consider the quality of the actual content someone’s generating.  The twitter posts themselves are LAST.  I think I do this because since twitter can be so interrupting, I want to make sure I really trust and value the people I give that kind of 24/7 power to.

And yes…even though I just whipped the logic behind this in a few minutes, I do realize that I’m giving the same amount of points to San Diegans as I am to people who make smart posts.  There’s never going to be a shortage of interesting people on the Internet, and I decided several barcamps ago that one of my new platforms is to cultivate a stronger and more cultural community in this city.  Giving locals higher priority in social networking services helps me shed that pesky Valley Envy and devote more time  to hyping up what’s happening right under my nose.

They’ve curiously also set up both opt-in and opt-out policies regarding channel inclusion based on the desires of various networks’ IRCops.  Freenode demanded a strictly opt-in service (yay!), but the OSX86 network preferred to have all channels indexed who didn’t opt-out.

The one section of the new policies that I disagree with is that opt-in or opt-out authority isn’t limited to channel operators.  Presumably any user (the site uses the term "channel contacts") can submit the necessary forms, which is inviting chaos.  IRSeek also mentions that they will confirm the validity of the contact, but doesn’t mention exactly how this will be accomplished.  A more reasonable policy would be to allow non-ops to submit channels, but provide the name of an operator to verify the request.

My advice to channel operators is to set the indexing status of your channel now.  IRSeek looks like they’re trying to do right by the desires of the IRC community, but save yourself from future heartache and make the choice yourself.

Fortunately I do have sophistechate@gmail.com and skeleton-in-my-closet techslut@gmail.com tucked away somewhere, but I’m still embracing the idea that using my full name on the intarwebs ain’t all that scary.  But because of my delay in the matter my coveted firstname.lastname is already taken.  I debated for a full and intense 5 minutes before deciding on the similar but less aesthetically pleasing Lisa.R.Brewster@gmail.com.  Go forth…email, message, and enjoy.

This brings up an interesting conversation starter, though…what are the worst screen names you’ve ever used?  My absolute worst is my (still current) AIM name of Leeeeeeeesuh.  Count ‘em…that’s 8 e’s.  Why so many?  Because Leesuh through Leeeeeeesuh (7) were already taken.

PS:  I need friggin’ headshots.
PPS:  I need to start doing friggin’ video.  All the top girls are vloggers.

Wired’s Sexiest Geeks 2007 via kwout

Yeah, I don’t see myself getting much done today.

I think IRSeek is a wonderful service to bring to the neglected niche of IRC, but the concept does raise concerns from IRC users who assume a certain contract of privacy.  How can a user tell if a channel is being indexed by IRSeek?  How are channels chosen to be included in the index?  What is the procedure to have content removed from the database?  I want to see the service succeed, but so far it sounds like they’re committing a major faux pas by starting out on a Wild West grab for content without respecting existing user expectations.

I guarantee I will post on this topic again once I’ve learned more about the methods and policies IRSeek employs.