There are few areas of modern life as rife with hype, hoopla and hazy prognosticating as the Internet. Before the Web era, the Holy Grail was the “paperless office,” but since the mid-1990s it’s been all about how the Internet will revolutionize, well, everything. Total interconnectivity was to be the Road to Utopia, and all manner of centralizing forces were unleashed to corral all of the people who were rapidly decentralizing and creating small, niche communities. Not everything worked out quite as intended.
It wasn’t just “new” things that were hyped so heatedly, but “improved” ones, too – the better browser, the bigger auction site, the move to mobile – but it didn’t seem that the old rules of planning, research and development were in place. Ideas seemed to go straight from the drawing board into cyberspace. Fortunately, for the most part, global “netizens” didn’t waste any time, either, in rendering a verdict on a growing batch of losers. Five are especially instructive.
1. Just how many calendars does one person need?
Real Simple Syndication, RSS, had a pretty rapid growth and has become a browser staple. So some enterprising folks figured (apparently without doing any market research or due diligence) that RSSCalendar was a sure thing, letting people share their Outlook calendars with others. The catch? Calendars are built into Windows and Mac OS X, and a great Google calendar is available, too. By the summer of 2007 the company had auctioned itself off on eBay. RSS was not a huge hit to begin with, being used by about 1 out of 15 people, so the idea of a spin-off was little weird.
2. First things first
The trend toward “hyperlocal” content was perhaps best typified by MyKinda, an Eastern European-oriented blog network that started operating in September 2008. The site figured it would carry country-specific news, business, culture, tech, lifestyle and entertainment, in regional languages with some English thrown in. It drew fewer visitors and advertisers than writers (that’s hyperbole, but not far off) and MyKinda closed its virtual doors in February 2008. Good niche content is costly, and it you don’t already have enough visitors to draw advertisers, you’re doomed.
3. Craigslist is king
The trend toward friendly, community sites like Craigslist hasn’t completely died out, but it’s close. When Microsoft launched Windows Live Exp, it was to be a similar free listing service, allowing users to check out local happenings, find rental properties, get jobs, buy and sell stuff, and tie all of these things together with other MS products and services. Needless to say, it flopped. If you want to battle it out with an 800-lb. gorilla like Craigslist, it would be a good idea to bulk up – and come up with some new moves, too.
4. People don’t act the way you think
MingleNow was something of a “virtual nightclub” targeted at lonely hearts and wallflowers. The idea was to make them feel more at ease for online socializing, letting users connect with folks who liked the same clubs and nightspots. The site was produced by BlueLithium, first appeared in 2005 and was bought by Yahoo after it had established a viable advertising network – but without many advertisers or users. Yahoo has not had the best luck with social networks, however, and doesn’t have the time, money or inclination any longer to focus on this one. Yahoo is using the ad network stuff, though.
5. Photos don’t go in vaults
The trend toward specialized online backups – as opposed to using your 10 gigs for whatever you want – is hopefully dead now, with the failure of ProtectMyPhotos in late 2007. The site’s business model was having users back up just their photos online, to save local drive space as well as safeguard them in case of a fire, computer crash or alien invasion. What with Snapfish, Flickr and Picasa, online shutterbugs already had social sites, sharing, photo restoration and printing services a-plenty. The online media storage business was already formed, and already crowded, so a specialized storage site just for pics seemed just a bit underwhelming.
Every industry and infrastructure, like the Internet, is going to go through phases, see various trends come and go, and make any number of bad moves for every successful one. It takes trial and error, along with a lot of research and development, to make a new idea work anywhere, much less in the Wild West of the 21st century Internet. People will still try, but are advised to see trends as smoke signals – wispy, uncertain, hard to discern – rather than well-lit, smoothly paved roadways with a known destination just around the corner. With hit and miss methods like this, there are always more of the latter than the former – not that the inventive and ambitious won’t keep trying everything they can think of to find the Next Big Web Trend.
There are few areas of modern life as rife with hype, hoopla and hazy prognosticating as the Internet. Before the Web era, the Holy Grail was the “paperless office,” but since the mid-1990s it’s been all about how the Internet will revolutionize, well, everything. Total interconnectivity was to be the Road to Utopia, and all manner of centralizing forces were unleashed to corral all of the people who were rapidly decentralizing and creating small, niche communities. Not everything worked out quite as intended.
It wasn’t just “new” things that were hyped so heatedly, but “improved” ones, too — the better browser, the bigger auction site, the move to mobile — but it didn’t seem that the old rules of planning, research and development were in place. Ideas seemed to go straight from the drawing board into cyberspace. Fortunately, for the most part, global “netizens” didn’t waste any time, either, in rendering a verdict on a growing batch of losers. Five are especially instructive.
1. Just how many calendars does one person need?
Real Simple Syndication, RSS, had a pretty rapid growth and has become a browser staple. So some enterprising folks figured (apparently without doing any market research or due diligence) that RSSCalendar was a sure thing, letting people share their Outlook calendars with others. The catch? Calendars are built into Windows and Mac OS X, and a great Google calendar is available, too. By the summer of 2007 the company had auctioned itself off on eBay. RSS was not a huge hit to begin with, being used by about 1 out of 15 people, so the idea of a spin-off was little weird.
2. First things first
The trend toward “hyperlocal” content was perhaps best typified by MyKinda, an Eastern European-oriented blog network that started operating in September 2008. The site figured it would carry country-specific news, business, culture, tech, lifestyle and entertainment, in regional languages with some English thrown in. It drew fewer visitors and advertisers than writers (that’s hyperbole, but not far off) and MyKinda closed its virtual doors in February 2008. Good niche content is costly, and it you don’t already have enough visitors to draw advertisers, you’re doomed.
3. Craigslist is king
The trend toward friendly, community sites like Craigslist hasn’t completely died out, but it’s close. When Microsoft launched Windows Live Exp, it was to be a similar free listing service, allowing users to check out local happenings, find rental properties, get jobs, buy and sell stuff, and tie all of these things together with other MS products and services. Needless to say, it flopped. If you want to battle it out with an 800-lb. gorilla like Craigslist, it would be a good idea to bulk up — and come up with some new moves, too.
4. People don’t act the way you think
MingleNow was something of a “virtual nightclub” targeted at lonely hearts and wallflowers. The idea was to make them feel more at ease for online socializing, letting users connect with folks who liked the same clubs and nightspots. The site was produced by BlueLithium, first appeared in 2005 and was bought by Yahoo after it had established a viable advertising network — but without many advertisers or users. Yahoo has not had the best luck with social networks, however, and doesn’t have the time, money or inclination any longer to focus on this one. Yahoo is using the ad network stuff, though.
5. Photos don’t go in vaults
The trend toward specialized online backups — as opposed to using your 10 gigs for whatever you want — is hopefully dead now, with the failure of ProtectMyPhotos in late 2007. The site’s business model was having users back up just their photos online, to save local drive space as well as safeguard them in case of a fire, computer crash or alien invasion. What with Snapfish, Flickr and Picasa, online shutterbugs already had social sites, sharing, photo restoration and printing services a-plenty. The online media storage business was already formed, and already crowded, so a specialized storage site just for pics seemed just a bit underwhelming.
Every industry and infrastructure, like the Internet, is going to go through phases, see various trends come and go, and make any number of bad moves for every successful one. It takes trial and error, along with a lot of research and development, to make a new idea work anywhere, much less in the Wild West of the 21st century Internet. People will still try, but are advised to see trends as smoke signals — wispy, uncertain, hard to discern — rather than well-lit, smoothly paved roadways with a known destination just around the corner. With hit and miss methods like this, there are always more of the latter than the former — not that the inventive and ambitious won’t keep trying everything they can think of to find the Next Big Web Trend.
There are few areas of modern life as rife with hype, hoopla and hazy prognosticating as the Internet. Before the Web era, the Holy Grail was the “paperless office,” but since the mid-1990s it’s been all about how the Internet will revolutionize, well, everything. Total interconnectivity was to be the Road to Utopia, and all manner of centralizing forces were unleashed to corral all of the people who were rapidly decentralizing and creating small, niche communities. Not everything worked out quite as intended.
It wasn’t just “new” things that were hyped so heatedly, but “improved” ones, too — the better browser, the bigger auction site, the move to mobile — but it didn’t seem that the old rules of planning, research and development were in place. Ideas seemed to go straight from the drawing board into cyberspace. Fortunately, for the most part, global “netizens” didn’t waste any time, either, in rendering a verdict on a growing batch of losers. Five are especially instructive.
1. Just how many calendars does one person need?
Real Simple Syndication, RSS, had a pretty rapid growth and has become a browser staple. So some enterprising folks figured (apparently without doing any market research or due diligence) that RSSCalendar was a sure thing, letting people share their Outlook calendars with others. The catch? Calendars are built into Windows and Mac OS X, and a great Google calendar is available, too. By the summer of 2007 the company had auctioned itself off on eBay. RSS was not a huge hit to begin with, being used by about 1 out of 15 people, so the idea of a spin-off was little weird.
2. First things first
The trend toward “hyperlocal” content was perhaps best typified by MyKinda, an Eastern European-oriented blog network that started operating in September 2008. The site figured it would carry country-specific news, business, culture, tech, lifestyle and entertainment, in regional languages with some English thrown in. It drew fewer visitors and advertisers than writers (that’s hyperbole, but not far off) and MyKinda closed its virtual doors in February 2008. Good niche content is costly, and it you don’t already have enough visitors to draw advertisers, you’re doomed.
3. Craigslist is king
The trend toward friendly, community sites like Craigslist hasn’t completely died out, but it’s close. When Microsoft launched Windows Live Exp, it was to be a similar free listing service, allowing users to check out local happenings, find rental properties, get jobs, buy and sell stuff, and tie all of these things together with other MS products and services. Needless to say, it flopped. If you want to battle it out with an 800-lb. gorilla like Craigslist, it would be a good idea to bulk up — and come up with some new moves, too.
4. People don’t act the way you think
MingleNow was something of a “virtual nightclub” targeted at lonely hearts and wallflowers. The idea was to make them feel more at ease for online socializing, letting users connect with folks who liked the same clubs and nightspots. The site was produced by BlueLithium, first appeared in 2005 and was bought by Yahoo after it had established a viable advertising network — but without many advertisers or users. Yahoo has not had the best luck with social networks, however, and doesn’t have the time, money or inclination any longer to focus on this one. Yahoo is using the ad network stuff, though.
5. Photos don’t go in vaults
The trend toward specialized online backups — as opposed to using your 10 gigs for whatever you want — is hopefully dead now, with the failure of ProtectMyPhotos in late 2007. The site’s business model was having users back up just their photos online, to save local drive space as well as safeguard them in case of a fire, computer crash or alien invasion. What with Snapfish, Flickr and Picasa, online shutterbugs already had social sites, sharing, photo restoration and printing services a-plenty. The online media storage business was already formed, and already crowded, so a specialized storage site just for pics seemed just a bit underwhelming.
Every industry and infrastructure, like the Internet, is going to go through phases, see various trends come and go, and make any number of bad moves for every successful one. It takes trial and error, along with a lot of research and development, to make a new idea work anywhere, much less in the Wild West of the 21st century Internet. People will still try, but are advised to see trends as smoke signals — wispy, uncertain, hard to discern — rather than well-lit, smoothly paved roadways with a known destination just around the corner. With hit and miss methods like this, there are always more of the latter than the former — not that the inventive and ambitious won’t keep trying everything they can think of to find the Next Big Web Trend.
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Can a harddrive work efficiently when placed diagonally?
Hi,
I’m putting together a render farm and using a drawer as a case (cheap ik), and the only way the hdd will fit is diagonally. It’s an old IDE hdd, if it dies I dont care lol, just wanna make sure it’s usable
There will not be a difference which way the HD is facing. But let me warn you about using a drawer as a case. It is large misconception to thing that a computer case is simply there as an aesthetic item. It plays a VERY important role in the performance of the system. What it does is a) disperse the heat in the most efficient manner 2) keeps items from coming in contact with each other. Ignoring one of these two rules present very big problems. There have been many tests performed to compare the performance of system within a case and a system that is simply exposed to air. If I remember correctly both the processor and the graphics card went over 100 C in a matter of about 30 min. These are very dangerous temps for the hardware and it WILL cause damage and major software glitches. As for avoiding contact of parts, that self explanatory. Any contact between any part of a PSU casing and any other component of a motherboard will result in an immediate short circuit frying all the components instantaneously. If you are building a render farm these warnings should be heeded, as your comp will stay on for weeks and your processor will be under constant pressure.
P.S
As a side note, trying to save money on render farms is not really that effective. If your farm is not that big and computers are not that powerful, you will not see a major improvement. A better investment is to get a modern multi core processor, and plenty of ram. If you could afford it through in an old Quadro as well. That will definitely give you a lead in performance.
