A good year for alienation? From the “research that confuses me department” comes the results oft he annual “Harris Interactive poll of alienation” and the resulting (no kidding) “Alienation Index.”

This year, the alienation survey found that Americans are feeling more isolated. In fact, the Wall Street Journal headline is this: “Americans Feel More Isolated, Less Empowered, Poll Shows”

Here’s what confuses me: the chart accompanying the story reveals that Americans are feeling significantly less isolated and alienated during the 2000s than they felt during the 1990s. Ironically, or perhaps not ironic at all, the survey after 9/11/2001 marked the lowest “Alienation Index” in nearly 30 years. You have to go back to the height of the Vietnam war to find less feeling of alienation and isolation, which also confuses me. The alienation index was low (which is good, I think) in the 1960s during a period that is rarely portrayed by historians as one defined by a universal feeling of empowerment and (except for Woodstock) brotherhood among men (and sisterhood among women).

I’m not trying to make a political statement, here. I, too, sense a collective feeling of alienation among Americans. I, too, feel our leaders of both political parties are out of sync with what people really think is important. But a deeper understanding and a more lucid interpretation of these statistics are obviously required for them to make any sense. Do these numbers reflect the reality of the world in which we live or the way in which media portrays that world? I have no idea — and don’t want to guess.

The Web 2.0 name game: Tonight, I did some swimming up a river of news and saw this post from a few days ago regarding, “Four Concentric Circles of a Web 2.0 Name”.

Quote:

Gone are the days of eWhatever, MyWackyProduct.com, and iYounameit. This is Web 2.0 baby, and your quintessential Web 1.0 brand isn’t going to cut it. You’ve got to be hip, trendy, cutting-edge. In short, you’ve got to come up with a word that makes no sense to anybody, anywhere.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, humor

Not likely due to pockets of resistance: “Blog” and all its derivatives are on the list of words people would like to banish.

Blogger hit records: All the original hits, all the original stars on this parody of a CD of 43 hit blogger songs. My favorite is #20 on Disc 1: “Touched By Celebrity (I Met Winer Once)”

(via: kottke.org)

Technorati Tags: blogging, humor

Nashvillepost.com update: The Nashvillepost.com is, indeed, relaunching. And if you had a $9.95 per month subscription, you could read the press release here.  Nashvillepost.com, good. Their subscription model, bad.

The gift that keeps on giving: Folio: has a story about magazine subscriptions being sold in a “holiday” gift box at retail locations. You can apply the gift to any one of 50 different titles that are included in a small catalog in the box. And, as you might suspect, you can get a discount on the gift box at Wal-mart.

One of the fun by-products of maintaining a weblog for a long time is that you get to point back to a post you made exactly three years ago (minus a day) and say, “except for the packaging: been there, done that.”

Yahoo answers: If someone describes Yahoo Answers as being Web 2.0, I’ll not rant, but merely have a knowing smile. For as a few readers of this blog will recognize, Yahoo! Answers is an attempt to do exactly what I attempted to do with the original version of smallbusiness.com (I’ll post some screen shots of the early site later) in 2000. (Back in the day, the site had lots more social networking features but none of Yahoo’s vast array of financial resources and related heft, so, alas, that early version of the site didn’t make it through the dot.bust — today, it’s a humble little service run by one guy (me) and some helpers. ) (Sidenote: Would you like to help? A way to start is to add something to SmallbusinessWiki.)

The best rundowns on Yahoo! Answers are by Gary Price and the inside poop form the Yahoo! Search blog. By the way, back in 1999.1, there were lots of pay versions of this model (in their business plans, something like “the e-bay of questions” was always included). Indeed Google Anwers (one of those things you’ve never heard of) is a pay model, sorta.

By the way, that Yahoo Answers logo is a little 1999.1ish (see the smallbusiness.com logo) but the Yahoo Answers page design is very 1999.2. In January, I’ll be changing several things to the look of smallbusiness.com to beef up its Web 2.0ishness.

Update: Fred Wilson’s post reminded me of another 1999.1 service that Yahoo Answers is cloning: Abuzz.

Technorati Tags: google, smallbusiness.com, web2.0, yahoo answers

Return of NashvillePost.com? I noticed the following news deep in Liz Garrigan’s “desperately seeking the news” column:

…business reporter Richard Lawson, who recently quit his job at the daily paper, appeared as an expert on WKRN-Channel 2 that night saying that the automotive jobs may eventually return and that this is only a temporary setback for the city…. Regard that as a possible preview of what’s to come. Sources tell the Scene that the online business publication NashvillePost.com, which ceased publishing in August pending a review of the operation, is expected to relaunch soon, with Lawson covering development and commercial real estate, writer E. Thomas Wood covering health care and courts and former Democratic political operative Ken Whitehouse covering politics. The pub is in talks with Channel 2 to share its content with the station and would get promotion from WKRN in return…

That would be great for anyone desperately seeking Nashville business news — as long as they drop the paid subscription approach this time out.

(via: “News of Nashville Technology,” a newsletter from Milt Capps that you can see online here.)

Technorati Tags: nashville

Wiki+Lost=Lostpedia: I have a dilemma. I know there are several Lost fans among the readers of this weblog, but it’s a topic I avoid because I know folks who are working their way through the first season via the DVD and this season through iTunes downloads. This is a show where spoilers should be avoided if you’re enjoying the journey. However, if you’ve caught up, you might want to check out the wiki approach some of the shows fans are using at Lostpedia to organize their knowledge and theories related to the show. (By the way, don’t use the information you find there as “facts” — I feel certain John Locke had nothing to do with the Kennedy assasinations.)

(via: the other Rex)

Technorati Tags: Lost, wiki

And that’s the way it is: CBS News PublicEye weblog sent some link love this way in a post about the Pulitzer committee decision. My “co-recommender,” Jeff Jarvis, is also highlighted.

Technorati Tags: blogging, pulitizer