Dave says:

"Web 2.0 is nothing more than an aftermarket for Google."

Amen.

Dave predicts that we'll know when the web 2.0 bubble bursts when Google's stock crashes.

This will happen when the ad market stutters again. Google is the infrastructure that routes ad revenue to many startups, but the crash comes when the ad market stops growing at the same pace. My guess is that this will be half way through next year when consumer spending drops triggered by the real estate market crash.

Imagine what all those business plans look like with their eCPMs halved.

I coined the term 'Social Shopping' and put it in the masthead of Wists, largely as a joke.

The joke was that I could imagine people pitching an idea like Wists to VC's as: look we've wedded social networking to shopping, i.e. community plus money equals more money.

Unfortunately three people did pitch this and they all raised money, and one of them is actually rather good.

I'll post more about Wists and 'social shopping', over the next few weeks.

In the mean time, it seems that It seems that Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester and Kate Kaye of Click Z are seeing social shopping with a clear head.

Click Z on social Shopping

On the way back from a nice walk this afternoon, I learned the truth about the BODIES...The Exhibition. At the South Street Seaport, near where we live.

Some background to this. When I was a student I worked at the Royal Academy in London, during the holidays. In the basement there is a sculpture of a crucifiction, with one unusual aspect - its real. The artist, Stubbs, bought an executed prisoner's corpse, flayed him, nailed him to a cross and took a plaster cast, in order to do anatomical studies. Seeing this a night in the darkened basement of a near deserted museum after closing time made some impact.

Now I learn that plagiarized versions of the Van Hagens Bodyworks exhibitions, such as the 'Bodies' exhibition use corpses that probably come from executed Chinese prisoners, possibly prisoners of conscience.

I have absolutely no problem with anatomical exhibits, however the use of an executed prisoners body in this manner is the moral equivalent of rape for entertainment.

I so hope that the spirits of the dead haunt every living moment of the morally bankrupt individuals that put this exhibition on.

If you feel the same way, why not write to Katherine Morgenstern who runs Media and Publicity for 'Bodies'' organizers Premier Exhibitions Inc, and hopefully has trouble sleeping at night.

(404) 842-2675
kmorgenstern@prxi.com

Imagine your son waking up on Christmas (if you're into Christmas) morning and rushing to open his presents in breathless anticipation of getting a shiny new iPod, only to find out he's got a Zune, which is like coming second in chess.

You think he's being a spoilt little ungrateful brat until he (this is why it's a he) gets the shit kicked out of him at school by mocking friends chanting 'Zuny Zuny Zuny'. Yup, in the twisted 'Lord of the Flies World' of young adults, I'm sure this will actually happen. The Zune is unsafe for children, but surely that can't be Microsoft's fault?

Consider the ambiance of a cubicle divided office vs the average home. Cubicle offices, particularly in America, where deep plan spaces with no visible windows are legal, are soul crushing spaces. They destroy people's individuality in a way that Stalin never could have dreamed of, and ironically, in the service of capitalism. Fortunately, people are not naturally inclined to this because they do not decorate their homes this way.

Microsoft is a company that sells to the type of business that has cubicle offices. It has made bad design a virtue, by making it look economical. Soul crushing design is what Microsoft is about, but personal technology is changing that.

Microsoft's Zune may be the thing that makes it obvious that Microsoft has crappy products, because it is a luxury item for individuals, and individuals are more discerning than businesses when it comes to design.

This dirty little secret is what has suppressed innovation in computing. Its why people pay money for a piece of tawdry shareware like Powerpoint.

The moniker 'business', implies pro and 'personal' implies amateur, but the reality is entirely the opposite. Business software is quite often shit. Reliable shit, but shit nonetheless.

Zune manages to take the very few features of the iPod and over complicate or ruin them. For example, the navigation copies the iPod's in the way it looks, and for absolutely no reason, because the way the navigation works does not require the scroll wheel design. This tell tale sign of unergonomic design is known to product designers as a skeuomorph, it's why cheap hifi equipment has lots of flashing lights to look 'pro'.

It's best to let a better writer than myself bury the Zune, however. Andy Ihnatko in the Chicago sun-Times lets rip:

Yes, Microsoft's new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I've spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face."

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Andy Ihnatko :: Avoid the loony Zune

The Apple Revolution. Hasta la Vista Microsoft.

JMP securities suggest that Microsoft may lose Windows Vista users to OSX.

How could an operating system, such as OSX, with such a tiny market share gain dominance without a fundamental change in computers as big as the one that replaced mini computers with desktop PCs?

There is an elephant in the room. The change has already happened and people just haven't noticed.

The elephant is the laptop. Laptops have been around for ages, but several factors, have recently conspired to make them the primary computing tool.

The reason this is fundamentally different is that a laptop is a very personal thing, its as different a computer as a PC was to a room sized Vax.

A laptop is a truly personal computer, one that connects to business data when needed, but which should naturally be yours. You may not own your office furniture or your desktop PC, but owning your laptop will be as natural as owning your briefcase while your company still owns the documents inside.

A truly personal computer does personal things like manage your photos and music. Only one company has an operating system that does this well.

A truly personal computer is an object that says something about your personality like the clothes you wear and the car you drive. Amazingly, only one company makes computers that are not butt ugly.

A truly personal computer should be easier to maintain, less prone to infection and able to link to the businessy stuff when needed. One company shines here.

The PC revolution was the Microsoft revolution. The laptop revolution may be Apple's.

Apple shares hit new high as analysts say Mac OS X may beat Vista - Mac - Macworld UK

I've noticed that even the use of the spin doctored prefix 'not in full blown' to pretend that Iraq is not in Civil War has been quietly dropped in the last couple of weeks by magazines like the Economist and people like Kissinger.

At the same time, people who supported the war in Iraq, such as Matt Drudge, the Economist and nearly all of the red blooded (now red faced) war bloggers are now desperately clambering all over each other to make sure the shit doesn't stick to them.

They don't want to be on the losing team, there is nothing in it for them to continue to support Bush over McCain or even the Democrats - except loyalty and integrity.

People who witnessed Murdoch switch his support, overnight, from the Tories to New Labour, in the UK, will not be surprised if even Fox News flips allegiance as its ratings drop. Expect freak shows like O'Reilly to be canned next year. Fox will only follow ideology if ideology happens to be in power and roughly in line with its bottom line.

To help its own switch, in a sleight of hand that doesn't appear to be a switch at all, the Economist defends its original support for the war and blames Rumsfeld. This seems plausibly pragmatic till you consider that Rumsfeld was one of the only pragmatists on the Bush team, leaving them in self-contradictory pragmatic support of the crazy neo-con ideologues.

You can't pretend to be pragmatic when you are choosing the ideologues over the realists. And its mighty convenient to use Rumsfeld as your scapegoat when nobody likes Rumsfeld anymore.

What if the decision to go to war in the first place was wrong?

What if old fashioned military tactics had been used and the outcome was even worse?

Here's a thought. It may just be that Rumsfeld was the only competent person in the Bush administration.

That would leave the Economist, Drudge and the war bloggers to be wrong in the first place, unapologetic about it, and now guilty of absolute cowardice and hypocrisy by blaming the execution rather than the decision to go to war.

A year or so back, after the Iraqi elections, and a glimmer of hope, War Bloggers asked that those who were against the war follow Andew Sullivan's lead, apologise, and admit that they were wrong.

Now its their turn.

Wists in Wahsington post article on the post Thanksgiving online retail brawl:

Online Retailers Can't Wait to Snare Shoppers - washingtonpost.com

There's some good stand up comedy material in Japanese shoe measurements:

"Foot Morphology and Fitting of the Shoe to the Foot"

In the Japanese shoe size system, shoe size is determined by length and ball girth. The shoe size indicates the size of the foot that fits the shoe, not the size of shoe itself.

A shoe is manufactured on a last, so last size and shape determines the size and shape of the shoe.

The foot shape may vary even when the foot length is the same. Any shape mismatch causes disuncomfort [sic]. Through research into the size and shape variations of Japanese feet, we are developing a method of shoe design that takes shape characteristics into consideration.

Foot Morphology and Fitting of the Shoe to the Foot

Rev. Haggard:

"There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life."

Unfortunately he is not referring to the part of his life that extorts money to brainwash people into following a obscenely twisted form of Christianity, via sermons that have been compared to the Nuremberg Rallies?

Haggard confesses to 'lifelong' sexual problem - CNN.com