The following guest post has been written by Ali J from EverybodyGoTo.

Ah, making money online - the topic that resurfaces every now and then - unsurprisingly, since money is the world’s number one attention grabber. Well, most of the time what’s offered is either unrealistic or just some easy scam. We’ve sifted through the options and found 20 web services that probably won’t turn you into a millionaire overnight, but they all offer a good clean and honest way to make some extra dough.

Online Shops

Zazzle - Zazzle combines innovative manufacturing, a robust community, the largest online collection of customizable digital images and unmatched personalization tools to empower you to create apparel, posters, cards, stamps and more.

SpreadShirt - SpreadShirt lets you open a free shop and start selling your creations. Spreadshirt will take care of the rest from payment processing, production, and shipping to after-sales service. As a shop partner, you can earn commission on every order through your Spreadshop.

Zlio - Start your own online shop in 5 minutes. Choose your products and earn commissions on each sale!Without needing any programming skills, you can start and manage your own shop.

iLetYou - Movie and game buffs are going to love this. If you have a huge library of DVDs and video games that you don’t watch or play too much why not rent them out for money to people looking for them. iLetYou sets your own prices and rental terms.

FlyingCart - The financial commitments required to open a store are enough to scare away even some of the most motivated entrepreneurs. Flying Cart makes the store setup process as simple as they can, making it possible to begin generating credit card sales from a custom domain name within about an hour.

Publishing - Video, Photo etc…

Cruxy - Cruxy provides powerful marketing, monetization and performance tools for digital creators, whether filmmakers, musicians or artists of any kind. Artists can sell just about any type of media file at the price they choose.

Citizen Image - Do you have a good eye behind a lens? Always walking around with your camera and know when to click for a great picture. Then why not sell it. Citizen Image can help you sell your images online.

Revver - Revver was probably the first video sharing site to split revenue with its users. Some people make enough to just do this and nothing else in their lives.

Qoof - Usermercialsâ„¢ is a consumer software application that leverages the power of broadband video content to enable users to finally generate solid revenue from their partnerships with online retail affiliate programs. Make a video of a product, upload it, insert affiliate code, profit???

ImageKind - Imagekind represents a new kind of marketplace where prospective customers can be reached across the globe. The service is always free to use and the artists set their own retail prices. It is one of the most powerful new platform for selling fine art prints from digital files.

Website, Blog and Widgets

Direct Media Exchange - Let’s be honest, advertising on your website isn’t making you as much money as it should and managing all of your ad networks isn’t as easy as you’d like. Direct Media Exchange is a simple solution for managing ad networks that allows publishers to make more money from their websites.

BlogLinkr - You select the categories that you want your readers to see, and instead of content-less sales pitches and discounted products, your readers will see links to blogs in the categories you’ve selected …and you’ll get paid for each click. Beta launching soon.

Tumri - Tumri combines offer intelligence and targeting to deliveraprecisely selected set of products and offers through an interactive ad unit that converts browsers into buyers. Publishers have a variety of choices from text-based to video ads to choose from.

PayPerWidget - Discover cool widgets and get paid for displaying them. Choose from the best widgets and offers.

WengoVisio - Wengovisio is a Free Flash-based widget that you can embed in your blog/webpage to allow readers to call you when you’re online. You can also make money with their pay-per-call services.

RSS Money

Feedburner - If you can maintain a sizable feed count for a set period of time, the boys over at Feedoogle will invite over into their FAN network and put some ads in your feeds.

Pheedo - Pheedo’s FeedPowered™ advertising platform converts your RSS feeds into rich, dynamically updating advertising that engages your audience.

Miscellaneous

Zecco - With 40 free trades per month on stock trades you can make some good money doing just that. Every trade above 40 costs $3.50. If you know what you’re doing with online stock trading this could help you maximize your online income.

ZotSpot - Google doesn’t pay you to use their search engine but ZotSpot will. The more you use it, and refer friends that use it, the more money you can make. They also encourage you to donate some, or all, of your earnings to charity - for that warm fuzzy feeling.

Flippid - Flippid matches people who want stuff with people who have stuff. Name your price, and let people sell it to you. Sellers can post their stuff in the sellers’ market for free and get lots of exposure on flippid.

The following guest post has been written by Ali J from EverybodyGoTo.

Not having internet access in the developed world today is much like not having a a telephone over a decade ago. Yes, the web is now in over a billion homes and offices and it’s growing more wider and mobile at the same time.

Having internet access is more or less being regarded a right for everybody who comes across a computer with one. Mind you there are still areas in the world where you cannot get internet access, in fact don’t be surprised if you come across people who have never heard about the internet let alone a computer. So when compared to them and the Ads we see today about finding a calamari restaurant on your “phone”, the internet and technology have progressed far beyond what anybody expected.

The top cell phone companies like Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony, LG and now Apple {this article is not an iPhone orgy} who gave people phone service in every nook and corner of their surroundings, save Apple, are now expected to give the internet too as it is, not a stripped down text version.

The Nokia N800, the Motorola Q, the Samsung BlackJack and now the iPhone are all heralding innovation for information on the web never before seen on this planet. The millions of dollars in VC capital going towards building mobile services for web startups like TellMe {recently acquired by Microsoft}, MyStrands which also has mobile delivery, Pickle, EQO and a host of others. Startups that integrate the mobile phone and the internet together to give users functionality that can actually benefit them while on the move.

The recent launch of the .mobi, a special domain TLD for mobile phones, only further signifies the growing importance of accessing the web through cell phones. Does this mean the days of the desktop and laptop computers are over? Hardly, in fact it’s going to lead to a convergence of both the mobile platform and the desktop/laptop to a new level. Syncing content from one to the other, the realization of a truly virtual office, sharing information and finding it by voice instead of typing {maybe Apple’s iPhone v2 will have Google voice search, who needs fingers?} and more such innovations that I can’t think of yet.

Information on the web is about to go outside the box and fly across wireless signals much much more than it presently does.

Several months have passed since I wrote my original review of 10 WebOS-type applications. Although Google hasn’t really made an (expected) move in this field yet, the topic still spurs a lot of interest, and many new applications have been launched. It’s time to review another 10 web operating systems.

Again, one must take into account that many, if not all, of these applications are in very early stages of development. Some promise to be real competition to desktop OS’s, while some don’t promise anything, standing out there as functional betas without even a word from the developers. Whatever your opinion on the WebOS phenomenon may be, keep in mind that the boundaries, categories and definitions for this article are set rather loosely. For the purpose of this article, just like the first one, a WebOS is defined as virtual operating system that runs in a web browser environement. Don’t like WebOS? Well, call it OnlineOS, or WebTop if you like.

So, here is a review of another 10 functional WebOS’, as well as some additional similar services which show promise but aren’t launched or fully realized yet.

DesktopOnDemand

DesktopOnDemand seems to be the most ambitious service on this list, which is why I was unpleasantly surprised with some very annoying login problems. Simply put, I was unable to login and it took some 10 tries to start the application at all. When it finally did start, it crashed immediately, and I had to restart.

All this is unfortunate, because DesktopOnDemand offers a lot. It is, simply put, Linux, in your web browser. Given the complexity of Linux as opposed to many other apps described here, I won’t go into details - just imagine one of those Live CD Linux distros inside a web browser window. Needless to say, the choice of applications is fantastic, and you can definitely use DOD to do real work, store data (you get 1 GB of storage), browse (anonymously) the Internet etc. The speed is not stellar but it’s bearable, and the stability and functionality is, well, pretty much the same of any light or Live CD Linux distro.

While DesktopOnDemand’s approach obviously offers much more than the competition, there are a couple of things we didn’t like. As opposed to most other services on this list, DOD requires you to download an install an application for it to operate (you can alternatively choose a Java-powered version of DOD which didn’t work for me). This means that it’s not something you can easily and quickly use from any computer, and in some ways it defeats the whole purpose of the concept of a WebOS. This said, I must say that DesktopOnDemand is impressive with some regards and is definitely one to keep an eye on in the future.

G.ho.st

This cryptically named offering (Ghost is short for Global Hosted Operating SysTem) is Flash-based, and it has come a long way since the first time I’ve tried it out. GUI-wise it resembles Windows, but it goes farther than just mimicking its look and feel, offering for examples, animations and fade in/out transitions. The available applications are numerous and quite standard for a WebOS: RSS reader, web browser, notes, clock, search, e-mail reader and instant messenger are some examples. G.ho.st lacks an office suite, but, as G.ho.st’s lead developer Zvi Schreiber told me, “Unlike the other “Web OSs” G.ho.st actually works with leading Web applications like Google docs and Flickr instead of being limited to our own Apps!…” “...G.ho.st actually provides a single sign-in and single file system to add value to those other apps.”

Registered users receive 3GB of free storage, and quite extensive help and support on every step. Instead of files, G.ho.st introduces objects. Here’s a quote from G.ho.st’s website explaining the concept:

“…instead of “Files” we have the more general concept of “Objects” - an Object can be a file hosted at G.ho.st or at a third part like Flickr® or Google®. An Object can also be a Service (like an App or Widget) or a real world object like a person, book, credit card. An Object can be anything really! Also you can put an Icon for the Object in many different Folders, not only one.”

G.ho.st works pretty well, but it’s not without the occasional weird bug with windows minimizing for no reason, or some graphical elements being slightly askew. Furthermore, many important and expected elements are missing: trash can, some context menus, or entire menus or confirmation dialogs in some cases. It’s enough to put off many a user from becoming a regular, but it’s obvious that a lot of effort has been invested into G.ho.st, and with some polishing, it could become a great service.

ODesktop

Odesktop comes with the following definition: “Using Ajax and PHP, it (ODesktop) mimics window-like applications behaviour in your web browser but also is designed to run multiple web applications at a time.” Besides this, they also offer the ability to install ODesktop on your own web host.

The first problem I’ve encountered with trying out ODesktop is the fact that the demo is in a language I do not understand (I would guess Malaysian). This, as you can imagine, made my life as a reviewer harder, but the icons and the info on the web site was straightforward enough to give it a quick glance (when I was already done with the review I’ve found the quite hidden option to switch to English language, after which I’ve gone and rereviewed Odesktop again). The GUI is nice and clean; it’s not the faster I’ve seen, but it’s fast enough; and, what’s even better, it doesn’t eat a lot of CPU time. The applications available are a file manager, music player, photo album, instant messenger, email client, a bunch of games and a cross between an RSS reader and a web browser. Solid, but not too impressive. As far as customization goes, some options are present, for example changing the wallpaper, but the options end as soon as they begin.

ODekstop offers 10 GB of storage - in theory - but its nifty way of uploading files by just dragging and dropping them on a toolbar didn’t work for me every time, sometimes causing the entire demo to freeze. All this makes ODekstop one of those applications that look good, and promise a lot, but there’s a small letdown at every corner. Verdict: more polishing, more applications, then we can talk.

AjaxWindows

AjaxWindows tries really hard to replicate your desktop environment. Thus, when you start the service, you’ll be presented with a wizard that can synchronize your music, pictures, and documents folder, as well as wallpaper and some other details, with the AjaxWindows online experience.

Main AjaxWindows features, besides the synchronization, are secure connection, and 1GB of FREE storage for your files (plus more for MP3 files). There’s also a decent number of applications, most of which are web apps which come from the same company that built AjaxWindows - Ajax13. There’s also a number of widgets, which include RSS feeds, weather info and the like.

As far as performance goes the entire experience is a bit slow, and the main window opens in a separate window, which can be annoying, but overall, it’s quite usable - unless you open too many applications which can cause a serious system slowdown.

AjaxWindows is the newest application in this roundup, but already it has quite a few things going for it - lots of applications, solid stability, and the synchronization feature which the competitors don’t have. However, the slowness of the entire experience could be enough to chase away many users, and it’s something they have to work on.

MyLGD

MyLGD is short for My Little Green Desktop, and that’s just about all the info I’ve found about the service. It’s a flash-based virtual OS environment which, surprisingly, works quite well. The applications open quite slowly, but the GUI is very fast, and takes little to no CPU time.

There’s quite a few applications available, including some games, calculator, calendar, photo browser, file browser, and several others. Many of them work quite well, sometimes better than the apps in some other similar products which initially look more polished.

Overall, no one will want to actually use MyLGD just yet because of lack of polish, absence of help and the general feel of an alpha product, but as a proof of concept it works quite well and it would be a shame if it were not developed further.

Nivio

Nivio is similar to DesktopOnDemand, only on a different platform. It’s a Windows desktop environment in your browser, and for some reason, I didn’t particularly like this idea. Having Windows running in a Java window was painfully slow, and although many users will appreciate the fact that they can readily use this without having to learn anything new, I’m not really convinced that Windows is the best way to go for a WebOS - I’d prefer something simpler and built from the grounds up for this purpose; some may, of course, disagree.

With Nivio, you get a virtual Windows XP box, 5 GB of space for your data, backup options, virus and spam protection (and since this is Windows, you’ll probably need them), and of course, a big variety of applications - since this is Windows, the possibilities are endless. Nivio also offers some commercial software, like the Microsoft Office Suite, which is not to be neglected and is a huge advantage over other service on this list.

Nivio definitely has some things going for it, but having the WebOS run in a Java window has repeatedly turned out to be a bad option. The long waits and the overall sluggishness of the service, didn’t really make me want to try all that Nivio has to offer.

Schmedley

Webtop would probably be a more appropriate monicker for Schmedley than a WebOS. It’s a widget launchpad, similar to Goowy, but less ambitious. However, by not complicating things too much Schmedley manages to be what many other similar services are not: fast and useful.

Open the Schmedley homepage, and you’ll be greeted by a number of widgets (called schmidgets in Schmedley, go figure). They’re all fully functional and they work very fast. On the bottom there’s a OS X-like dock from which you can launch your schmidgets, while a similar dock for a bit more advanced applications sits on top. Of course, signing up means that settings will be kept from session to session.

Available schmidgets include a notepad, calendar, RSS reader, Gmail reader, Amazon search, image display, stock display, weather display, Instant Messaging and several others.

We have experienced exactly zero problems with Schmedley, which is admirable. However, one cannot notice that it’s trailing Goowy by far in the amount of widgets-schmidgets it supports, since Goowy users can choose from Yourminis respectable widget base. Still, for a lightweight widget launchpad, it fares quite well.

Dekoh

Dekoh is a very different beast from the other services in this roundup, some of its aspects being the exact opposite of a WebOS. Detailed information is available at the official Dekoh Wiki, but in short, it’s a cross-OS desktop platform which enables you to share your media online. The key word is platform: with some regards, Dekoh compares better with Adobe’s Apollo than with the other WebOS-style services, as it lets you deploy Java, Ajax, or Flash apps across multiple operating systems.

Focusing on the user experience and not the technicalities, Dekoh can be described as a way to share media from your web browser, but all the media you upload resides on your hard drive.

What’s the point of it, then? Well, the idea behind Dekoh is sharing: organize your data, then share it with others. For example, after installing one of the available applications, Dekoh Photos, I was able to create my own photo collection and then share it with other Dekoh users. If you’ve ever used Hamachi to let people access your network over the Internet, think of Dekoh as a simple way to do it with your media.

The Desktop Portal, the central place from which you can manage your applications, looks more like a CMS than an OS - it enables you to install and manage your applications, as well as communicate with your buddies from the Dekoh network. The applications themselves are quite advanced, but I’ve had quite a few speed issues (music importing), and a couple of weird glitches, where I had to reopen a dialog several times to make something work.

After spending quite some time figuring what Dekoh can and cannot do, I must admit I’m not too sure what to make of it. The developers should definitely do a better job separating the user experience from information aimed at developers. Users want to start it up and start playing with the cool stuff: make it simple for them to do that. Also, the Dekoh Desktop Portal doesn’t really cut it as a central place to start your applications: the whole experience feels more like opening and closing a bunch of separate services than running a set of apps in a common environment. The applications themselves, while not very numerous, are good, but I don’t see myself using them until the whole package is a bit more polished.

Ironbox

Ironbox greeted me with quite an unnerving message. It apperently works well only in IE6, IE7 to some extent, and Firefox 1.5. Fortunately, I’ve tried it out with Firefox 2.0 and I didn’t bump into any problems.

Ironbox is described by the developer as “a front-end platform to help build and deploy Web applications. It is also a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that hosts Web applications in a desktop environment entirely contained within and run by a browser. This is the Ironbox desktop.” This means that Ironbox is quite close to the definition of a true WebOS: a platform that enables you to develop and build applications, and a GUI to deploy them.

As far as actual functionality goes, Ironbox won’t help you do any everyday tasks, as the number of applications is currently very limited. But, this doesn’t mean that Ironbox is not interesting. In fact, it offers quite a few interesting options. It’s skinnable; it’s taskbar is draggable and can be placed on top or either side of the screen. The applications can work across several windows (called boxes in Ironbox), which can be seen in action when you start the Fungrid app, and the boxes themselves can be automatically tiled or stacked from the toolbar menu.

We won’t recommend Ironbox to everyday users, but developers should take a good look at it, as the code to deploy applications in it seems quite simple and straightforward, and the functionality is quite advanced.

Finally, let’s take a look at how the devs of Ironbox define a WebOS, or WOS as they call it: “What we call a WOS consists of Ironbox paired with an advanced, app-aware Server Component. As we see it, a WOS will go beyond the traditional website concept to become a server-based platform, a virtual operating system of sorts, accessible through one or more domain names. In this scenario, the Server Component fulfills requests from Ironbox apps, accesses databases, stores apps for distribution, keeps track of accounts such as who has what rights to what apps and data, and serves customized versions of Ironbox itself. A WOS implementation can target a specific industry or set of applications, or it can be for general purpose. Anyone with the right skills can build a WOS, either for their own use or to offer as a platform for others to deploy.”

GCOE X

GCOE X is in a very early alpha stage of development, but something tells me that it might be an interesting product in the future. It doesn’t have any other way of launching applications or creating/deleting new files than the command line utility, and the applications themselves are scarce: there’s a web browser, MP3 player, IM chat, and that’s pretty much it.

However, everything works very fast and seems to be quite stable. Flash hell website like Mtv.com didn’t cause any problems in the browser. The impression I get is that GCOE X would work great if only there was anything to actually do with it. Hopefully, the developers will add some useful features in the future.

A couple more to keep an eye on in the future:

Xindesk

Xindesk was featured in the original WebOS review, and its lead developer, Mikael Bergkvist, was one of the most vocal supporters of the idea of a WebOS. Xindesk is not available as a beta yet, but I was allowed to have a quick peek into the alpha version, and I’ve also had a look at Challenger, another WebOS-type aplications that Xindesk has recently acquired, planning to merge the two services. At this point in time, there’s no point reviewing Xindesk as it will change significantly in the future after the merge, however from what I’ve seen Xindesk will definitely be a serious competitor in the WebOS space.

Exo - Currently consists out of some quite technical explanations and a couple of screenshots which admittedly look very promising. You can also see a video here.

OOS - no live demo yet, website says “soon”

Jooce - Currently in closed beta, haven’t been able to get an invite.

Xcerion - Also in closed beta. Seems to be an ambitious project, but I’ve seen nothing to confirm their ambitions yet.

Startforce - described as “Japan’s best WebOS”, promises 15 applications, has an open API.

Widgetop is by their own words, a Webtop, not a WebOS, merely bringing Apple Dashboard widgets to the web. The service is fully functional.

Go.PC - a commercial WebOS available - for some weird reason - only to residents of New Zealand and Australia. Go check the website, there’s a funny video there.

Liked this post? Click here to subscribe to FranticIndustries’ RSS feed in your favorite RSS reader.

Steve Rubel has a good post on information overload and the web 2.0 bubble. He claims that humans have an attention capacity - it’s impossible to pay attention to all the info that’s thrown at us day after day; therefore, some of the thousands Web 2.0 startups and services will inevitably have to fail.

While I do agree that it’s becoming pretty much impossible to follow everything that happens on the Web 2.0 front, and I too have felt this personally, being unable to process the dozens of new startups that appear every day, I don’t think this is cause for concern.

In many ways, I see Web 2.0 as a second IT renaissance. Remember the time when computers were really young? Writing a good desktop application that solves some problems could get you far; unlike today, when it seems that everything has already been done to death.

Now, the same thing is happening - on the web. Thousands of ideas are being realized on the web because developers see new potential there; it’s a fresh new playground, and sometimes merely making a web version of a desktop application can be enough for (moderate) success.

So, why do we, the Web 2.0 followers, feel like it’s too much? Well, because we’ve been following it all. From online photo editors to Twitter tools to RSS mixers to online operating systems.

In many ways, following all this is like following all desktop software. Imagine a blog with the caption: a blog about software. Sounds a bit vague, right? A bit too broad in scope? Well, that’s what many of us who write about web startups are trying to do: report on every new service and application that uses web as a platform. There’s simply too many of them, and you can either hire more people and try to do a big comprehensive site that follows everything; find a niche, or focus on stuff that you find really valuable.

It might be a little inconvenient for us bloggers, but it’s our problem. Web 2.0 is doing fine.

This is hardly news anymore, but this time I personally managed to spot an obvious attempt at gaming Digg.

A very fresh story in the upcoming list caught my attention because it had amassed a large number of Diggs very fast: 16 diggs in the first 20 minutes. The title of the story: MvixUSA 760-HD Hands on Review and everything else about it was very mediocre, however, the story is on fire in the first couple of minutes? Not likely.

So, simple investigation reveals that the story has been dugg by (besides the submitter, Jaybrewer) 15 other users, all without avatars, most of them very freshly created, and most of them digging only stories by that particular user. Bang: it’s a lame attempt at pushing a story that would never make it to the front page by registering dummy accounts.

As I’ve said, this is not really news: attempts like this happen on Digg every day. But, it’s really interesting to look at submission history from that user.

First of all, his success rate is zero. Although he has 15 dummy accounts, he didn’t manage to push a single story to the front page. This clearly shows that Digg isn’t that easy to game as many think.

Secondly, all the sites he’s submitting from have domains that reek of blackhat SEO and automated creation, with several keywords concatenated (links intentionally omitted): www.singleservecoffee.com, www.networkingaudiovideo.com, www.shavingstuff.com and the like. Sounds like an operation with a single goal: gain traffic by suspicious SEO methods, including gaming Digg. What’s interesting, this operation is not exactly hiding: the sites I’ve mentioned link to www.blogpire.com, which advertises itself as a blogging network.

Well, I hope the fact that their attempts at gaming Digg will once again clear the distinction between blogging and shameless spamming.

*update: the folks from Blogpire have contacted me both by e-mail and below in the comments, and tried to clear their name. They claim that Blogpire is a legitimate blogging network, and I have no reason to believe this is untrue.

This said, I haven’t been convinced that their Digg tactics are legitimate. The story mentioned in the article currently stands at 25 diggs, 9 of which come from users who have never dugg any other stories than those submitted by the user jaywalker. To me, getting people to sign up for Digg (who obviously wouldn’t be active users otherwise) and digg all the stories you submit, is at the very least, a shady tactic, and I don’t like it one bit.

Sometimes, expansion is not the right way to move forward. But, tell it to the shareholders, VCs, investors, and the new 30 people you’ve just hired. Hell, tell it to any business owner: expansion is simply the natural way to run any business. Digg, some might remember, started out as a purely technology-focused social news site.

Then, Digg expanded to cover a much wider variety of topics - politics, videos, sports, business, entertainment, gaming. A logical course of action? Perhaps. But somewhere along the way, the “news” part of the equasion - which, truth be told, was never explicitly written anywhere; officially, Digg is a social content, not a social news site - got lost. With the growth of Digg’s audience, hitting the right frequency and riding the wave became much more important than reporting on the latest news.

And, in spite of the common argument that Digg is not about news, I still think that delivering the news from the depths of the Internet is one of the most important aspects of Digg. I don’t really care about funny pictures: there are hundreds of sites which specialize in that sort of thing, for example, Madville and Linkswarm come to mind. I care, mostly, about news which only social media can deliver, picking it up from social networking profiles or smaller blogs: stories like the one about Flickr censoring its users.

Now, Digg’s Kevin Rose reveals plans to expand Digg even further, probably by adding product and restaurant reviews in the mix, as well as personalizing the site in such a way that actual popularity of a certain news item won’t have that much of an impact - whatever that means.

I’m not necessarily saying that all this is a bad thing, but we have to be honest here and admit that the Digg of old is going to vanish. A parallel with its huge old-school community-powered news competitor, Slashdot, is inevitable. 2 years ago, Slashdot delivered tech news, and Digg delivered tech news. Right now, Slashdot still delivers tech news. Digg…well, Digg offers a lot of fun stuff to browse through, acting like a huge lens of its community, but is it news? With product and restaurant reviews, the news factor is going to disappear altogether.

And, you know what? I happen to like Slashdot. It does one thing, and it does it well. I’m not saying that Digg should never expand - although I definitely prefer the old, tech-focused Digg to the new one - but maybe they should consider expanding in a different way.

My suggestion? Instead of adding more bloat to Digg, leave Digg as it is, and build a platform - call it DiggWorld or something - and experiment with the new stuff there. Or transfer the Digg concept to new sites, focused on something else. Consider the possibility that maybe Digg users simply like Digg as it is.

Sorry for breaking the embargo on this one, but it has already been broken.

We’ve got our hands on a neat desktop application called Particls. The idea behind it is to bring the news to you, right on your desktop, and Particls does this in several ways: through desktop alerts, a news ticker, and pebbles, which is a fancy word for creating an RSS stream out of Particls’ alerts.

Unfortunately, the ticker cannot be moved to the bottom of the screen.

Particls is designed to automate the process of finding news for you, but you can also go very in-depth. For example, you can only enter some tags and get news based on that. I’ve chosen several Web 2.0 related terms, and was satisfied - to an extent - with the results. However, if you like, you can customize every detail of the way Particls brings you new items; you can set individual feeds and import OPML files.

Generally, Particls offers a lot of options - almost everything is customizable. You can set levels of interruption, you can rate various news sources (Particls will make them more or less important based on your ratings); you can even see a very detailed history of Particls’ actions. Unfortunately, we were unable (obviously because the product is in early beta) to modify some important settings; for example, the news ticker was, by default, on top of the screen, and this didn’t work well for me at all; the option to change this exists, but it’s not modifiable.

How’s that for an in-depth set of options?

As far as Particls’ different ways of delivering the news go, they work quite well and replace several other tools I normally use. For example, you can submit stories to social media sites like Digg or Reddit directly from the news ticker, or copy the item URL with a single click. I’m not a big fan of scrollers, tickers and popups, but Particls has done everything to make them exactly as annoying as you would like, and the whole experience with it was quite enjoyable.

Whenever I see a product with lots of attention to detail, and lots of effort put into it, I think it’s worth trying. If you’re an RSS/information junkie, Particls might be right up your alley; even if you’re not a big fan of tickers. It’s also worth mentioning that Particls supports 3rd party skins and plugins, which will probably make it even better in the future.

If you’re bored with the same old social media / web 2.0 buttons and badges, you might want to try out our new collection. They’re absolutely free and available in two sizes: 150×150 pixel and 75×75 pixel PNGs. If you like cute little 3D boxes, these will be right up your alley.

You may have noticed that FranticIndustries has a new logo (there in the upper left corner), and in the process of making it, I figured, why not create several more for some popular social media sites (plus RSS)? So, here they are: 8 buttons. RSS, Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Firefox, Netscape, Newsvine, and FranticIndustries. Download, enjoy, and let me know if you have an idea for a new one (although I cannot promise anything, these take a lot of my time). To download, just right click on the one you like, and choose “save image as”.

*All trademarks and logos used are properties of their respective owners.

In one of the best posts I’ve read at TechCrunch, Mike Arrington writes about Silicon Valley and its descent into greed-ridden PR hell. The Web 2.0 bubble, so positive and cute in its humble beginnings, is now turning into a money machine, and money machines are never pretty.

However, there’s this one thing about Silicon Valley that may be hard to understand when you’re an insider.

The thing is, nobody cares about Silicon Valley. Sure, the people who work there or trying to push some project there are probably deeply connected to it. But, those people comprise a very small percentage of the overall Internet population; or even the overall population of users of various Web 2.0 services.

What the majority of people cares about - and what I’ve always focused on here at FranticIndustries - is how to use Web 2.0 to do something useful. To improve their work, and their life. To get something for free. To find out about a cool new tool.

Who’s buying who; whose PR agent is pestering who, and who has more connections in the Valley - those things are irrelevant to the average reader, or even a reader with deep interest in IT technology.

That doesn’t mean that the Web 2.0 bubble is problem-free. The biggest problem is too much stuff. It’s hard to follow it all; it’s hard to choose what’s good and what sucks; it’s hard to determine how much of that stuff you really need. That’s why I’ve been really selective in choosing what I write about. If I don’t see real use for it, I don’t write about it: it doesn’t matter how much VC dollars have been invested in it.

It all depends on what you really want to write about. If you want to cover Valley gossip; great. There’s an audience for that. But if you want to cover cool new web products and services, you can also do it from a distance.

Techdirt is, as usual, spot on with the story about the consequences of Google caving in to the pressure of big newspapers in the Google News affair. Although Google News is doing little else besides fetching RSS feeds from various news sources, big media publications claim that they’re somehow stealing from them. Initially Google stood firm on this issue, claiming that what they do is covered by the “fair use” policy, but recently they’ve started paying content providers, and once you go that route, you can’t be selective about it: you have to pay everyone.

The consequences of this dispute are of huge importance for everyone who ever intends to link to anyone else on the web. If the view that links, excerpts, RSS feed aggregation and similar practices that involve the content of others should be paid for prevails, bloggers , smaller media houses, sites like Digg, Reddit, Techmeme - are all screwed. It means that merely linking to someone’s content, together with a short description, can be grounds for a lawsuit.

Words can’t explain how wrong, stupid, and contrary to the idea of the Internet this is. It’s very, very easy to forbid anyone to link to your content, and use your RSS feed: lock your content behind a registration, and don’t have an RSS feed. There, problems solved! But, when it comes to copyright issues, logic takes a deep breath, walks out and takes a day off.

But, I’ve also got some good news. The paper issue which currently gives the bragging rights to newspaper powerhouses will in 5 years become a budget-deflating thorn in their side. Their success will measure in pageviews. And if they don’t have enough of those, they will go out of business. Expecting that they can get money AND pageviews from Google is just ludicrous. Unfortunately, Google seems to be losing on this front, but everyone else will surely avoid linking to someone that can sue them for doing it. I, for sure, will link only to link-friendly publications. Those who can’t understand that linking to them gives them sweet search engine juice, will undoubtedly lose in the end. Therefore, I wholeheartedly agree with the witty subtitle on the Techdirt article:

Just cut them off.

This week can easily be labeled the corporate acquisition week. Microsoft has acquired the ad network company aQuantive for $6 billion; WPP Group spent $649 million to buy digital marketer 24/7 Real Media, and now a rumor goes on about Google acquiring the most popular RSS feed manager: FeedBurner.

Well, the fact that billions of dollars are passing hands among big companies is all nice and dandy, but what does it mean to the consumers, the everyday users? Is there some action they should undertake upon hearing such news? Let’s look at a couple of possible scenarios of what the big company can do with a smaller one after acquiring it.

Ruining it completely
Example: AOL and SingingFish
This is, unfortunately, a scenario that happens quite often. A bigger company buys a smaller company, puts it on ice, opens it up and picks up a couple of things it needs, and then lets it die out. In the example of SingingFish, it’s unknown how much of it AOL actually integrated into its own services, but it’s definitely clear that they didn’t care about the users, giving them absolutely no explanation or even notice as to why this multimedia search engine doesn’t exist anymore. The result is lack of users’ trust towards the mother company, which might not seem like much in the beginning, but it will inevitably rear its ugly head somewhere in the future.

Screwing it up
Example: Yahoo! and Konfabulator
Konfabulator was a cool little company that created desktop widgets for the PC, similar to those on the Mac, and now Vista. Immediately after buying it, Yahoo! released a new version which - at least from my experience - did nothing else besides changing the name (adding Yahoo! all over the place) and screwing up compatibility with a huge number of older modules. I’ve waited for another release, and when that didn’t help, either, I gave up on it completely - and I loved Konfabulator to begin with. It’s possible that this situation has gotten better with later versions, but what Yahoo! initially did was enough to kill the flare that surrounded this cool service, and made many users go elsewhere. Result of such behavior is a lot of users complains, and a big chance of losing many of them when you acquire another such service.

Letting it linger
Example: Yahoo! and Blo.gs
Once, Blo.gs was on the way to become Technorati. But after Yahoo! bought it in 2005, it stopped in its tracks, destined to fall into oblivion. Did Yahoo! screw it up? (well, perhaps yes, if you believe this blog post from the same year) Well, they simply did nothing with it. They’ve bought it and they let it linger. The service is still live, but is anyone still actually using it? I doubt it. It’s a matter of time before the Blo.gs domain simply starts redirecting to some of Yahoo!’s own services.

Integrating it into its own services
Example: Google and Urchin
This can be both good and bad. We could say that AOL “integrated” SingingFish into its own audio/video search engine, but just read the comments on our post about the event, and you’ll see what the users think about it. A good example would probably be Urchin, the analytics company that Google took under its wing and gave it out to the people completely free of charge, under the name “Google Analytics”. I doubt anyone is feeling nostalgic about the old Urchin, simply because Google Analytics (which recently had a considerable facelift) looks and functions great.

Making it thrive
Example: Google and YouTube, Yahoo and Flickr
These relatively recent examples show that big companies (some of them, at least) have wisened up. If they spent billions on something, they wont carelessly and immediately paint the service into their own colors. They understand that users like the original service, and don’t want to be fed corporate crap. They also understand that the trademark they just bought is theirs now, and they can use it to their advantage. Thus, the users of Flickr and YouTube barely noticed that their favorite service had been bought at all. This is how it should be done; and this is what you should do if you want your users to trust you.

So, what can you - the everyday user - do about this? Not much. Companies will get bought and sold no matter what you do. But you can check out lists such as this one - our big list of Yahoo!’s and Googles corporate acquisitions - do your research, and decide who do you trust. If a company has a history of screwing up companies they acquire, don’t forgive them, and don’t let them get away with it. Go with the competition.

In the 5 months FranticIndustries has been online, we’ve had several bigger lists and roundups. Some of these are actually ongoing projects and are occasionally being updated, either directly or by followup articles.

These lists don’t really lose much of their value over time, because it’s still as hard to find all this information in one place as it were before. In case you might have missed some of them, here’s a quick reminder:

• All Twitter tools and mashups in one place

An ongoing list of everything Twitter-related. Send in your favorites if they aren’t on the list!

• Top 40 sites according to FeedBurner stats

This top list of sites with the most FeedBurner subscriptions may not be fully accurate (and it never will be, since some sites don’t publicly disclose their subscription numbers), but it comes pretty damn close. The list is live (the numbers change over time), so it’s interesting to see how some sites have been progressing while the others are falling behind.

• Big guide to getting your questions answered online

Yahoo! Answers is leading this field, but the other services from the list are still alive and kicking.

• Big memetracker roundup - 8 news aggregators reviewed

Memetrackers and news aggregators haven’t been appearing that often, so this list is still fully relevant.

• 15 key articles on DRM

All you need to know about DRM in one place.

• 13 most useful Netvibes modules

I still use these 13 modules. One to add to the list is the Revised Daily Comics module, which is great if you’re into online comics.

• So long, Photoshop - 6 online image editors reviewed

In one of the most detailed reviews ever done on this site, these online image editors have been thoroughly tested. Several others have emerged in the meantime, and Adobe has announced an online, lightweight version of Photoshop; when it comes out, it’ll be time for another review.

• The RSS cookbook - 10 advanced RSS tricks

A resource for all you RSS hackers out there.

• 5 RSS mixers worth trying

Several other products have appeared since I’ve written this list, but these 5 are still among the best.

• Every Google and Yahoo acquisition - the big list

By far the hardest list to make, a lot of time and research went into this one. It’s relevant today as it were the first day.

• 10 Pligg sites worth visiting

By mistake, there are actually only 9 sites on the list. Today, the list could probably be extended to 30, as Pligg as a platform has progressed a lot.

• Big WebOS roundup - 10 online operating systems reviewed

Back in the day it was hard to find 10 webtops/webos/online OS products, but right now there even might be enough for a second list. Some of the products from the list have really progressed since the article was written.

• Top 10 features Digg doesn’t have

Once a favorite post among diggers, noticed even by Kevin Rose. It’s unfortunate that most of the features on the list are still absent from Digg, especially the advanced search.