By now you have probably heard or read the news that Michael Jackson’s death almost brought down the Internet.

Are you kidding!?

I understand that MJ was an internationally-recognized, bona fide superstar – irrespective of his legal woes and overall craziness. However, when the death of a single individual gives us a glimpse of how our technology – technology we now depend on – can vanish and buckle under the weight of a massive event – I consider it a pretty eye-opening experience.

The real reason the Internet was created in the first place was not so I would have an outlet to speak my mind, but to create a communication network with infinite redundancy. I highly doubt that when the United States Department of Defense backed the project in the 50s, they were worried that one day will.i.am and Perez Hilton would have beef with each other.

In his final act, The King of Pop took down AOL-owned gossip Website TMZ. I can live with that. But I can’t accept the fact that The LA Times went down. Or the fact that ABC, CBS and CNN all slowed to a crawl.

(I can handle a Twitter FAIL since they’ve never shown me that they can sustain)

But major news organizations?

What if, God forbid we were at war? Or if our president was killed? Or if aliens invaded. I have to believe that those circumstances have the potential to crash the Internet like a series of Pacific Ocean waves. Imagine if they all happened at once?!

We all hope we never see anything as dark as the scenarios above in our lifetimes, but you sure hope that the Internet could handle them should they arise. Right now, I’m just not sure.

If I told you that 87%* of Jack of All Blog readers found the authors heart-stoppingly gorgeous, would you buy the hype?

Numbers have a funny way of stirring up emotions. There’s a reason that 71% of all Web articles and blog entries contain a numerical value in their headline.

Put something on sale for $9.99 instead of $10.00 and see which one you sell more of.

And think about age. Whether it’s your friend dating an older man or the number of years that automobile has been running, you’re quick to rush to judgment anytime a number is floated.

A 92-year-old woman…
10% off…
49% of the vote…
9 Ways to Lie (Without Getting Caught)...

But Jack of All Blogs thinks that there is far too much emphasis placed on numbers. That survey data you collected or quoted is nothing more than a number. I don’t care what mathematicians or scientists say: life is more than a number.

The same must be true of your blog. Content must go deeper than simply spitting out stats.

13% of Blog Readers View Porn Online
77 out of 100 people prefer drinking to smoking
29 people died in the accident
I received a 2.7% pay increase

Numbers are everywhere; especially at work. Analytics. Metrics. Whatever they call them at your job, I’m willing to bet you’re spending too much time analyzing and crunching.

So stop with all the numbers and dig a little deeper.

*All statistics are completely fabricated. Hey, when you’re Jack of All Blogs, you can get away with that.

I’m tired of hearing about search engines and how well they are doing – or not.

A search engine’s success is actually quite irrelevant to me. Like most people, what I want out of Web search is fairly simple:

Bring me what I want and bring it to me now.

It’s not like choosing between Coke and Pepsi. At least with those items there is a different taste. Perhaps one is cheaper than the other. Maybe I want people to see me drinking one over the other to portray a certain image.

But search engines are different.

No one is going to walk past my desk and say, “Wow, you’re a Bing man, eh?”

Google’s market share really has nowhere to do but down. And with the amount of money (reported at over $100M) being poured into promoting Bing, at least initially, they’ll HAVE to show some serious traffic.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10266390-56.html

The real question is if they’ll be able to sustain enough market share to remain a player.

Microsoft will make sure the computers they sell have Bing as the default search engine. They’ll load Bing search into every toolbar they can. So of course more people will be using it, but that doesn’t mean it’s better (or maybe it is).

Different search engines might present information differently. They might offer some different filtering options. But at the end of the day…

Bring me what I want and bring it to me now.

Even if a search engine promises to pay or reward you for using it I’m not interested.

Bring me what I want and bring it to me now.

Am I being too demanding? Maybe. But this is Jack of All Blogs after all and we have one request:

Bring us what we want and bring it to us now.

Here at Jack of All Blogs we already established that Techcrunch is broken but things seem to get worse and worse every day for the once so popular Tech/Web2.0 blog.

For months TC has been adding authors and quantity to it’s arsenal, but sadly no quality. One could argue that former blogging Guru and TC full-time contributor Duncan Riley was not the best author either, but at least he knew how to stir some controversy. Ever since DR left TC has gone downhill.

Last week (community) blog Mashable passed TC to become the new #1 tech blog. But things do not only seem to be bad on the quality front, especially the financial department seems to have suffered.

Since weeks, TC has had several adblocks in its feeds. Ads in feeds are nothing new and several bigger blogs do have several ads in their feed. But today TC updated the feed and now comes with not 1, not 2, not even 3 but 5 (FIVE!) ads in the footer.

A whopping 720px*425px of ad space in your feedreader!

The English language continues to progress and evolve, but sadly in a not too great way. After the addition of the term Web.2.0 we really have to wonder what will happen to the language once mastered by the great Shakespeare. Maybe I’m just an old and boring sod, but can someone please explain me what numbers do in words? Since when are digits dictionary worthy?

What will next be added to the English dictionary? Will we see a new landrush for words in the dictionary just like we saw for the Facebook username? Will we see people starting cyberwars to have their nickname recognized as an official word? Can you imagine aplusk become a real word?
Or will the new fashion be abbreviated, short term, text speak words? Punk’d?

In the latter case I will gladly make the best web app ever my homepage.

Social Media and Social Marketing Guru par excellence Trent Reznor, from NIN fame and more even of free music fame, has had enough of it and quits Twitter and co for a while.

The reason: the haters online. Never mind that Ashton Kutcher much more boring and annoying is online and no respect at all deserves for his tweeting efforts. Respect which Reznor has earned over the years. That much even that Jack of All Blogs never had a go at him. How have we been that silly. One celebrity decides to have a break from the intarwebz even though we never bashed him. I feel as if we just failed.

Here at JOAB we have to wonder what else we will have to do now. How can we improve again and make sure we will not be not guilty when the next star quits. I think we should put Scobleizer back on the agenda. On top of our agenda, because don’t you think that it has gone quiet around our formerly most beloved online ‘guru’/’pundit’?

in no particular order…

things i like more in my 30s than i did in my 20s

mushrooms, Sonic Youth, alone time, home improvement shows, cilantro, bottled water, going to work (most days), meditation, the Internet, tofu, the library, bike riding, showers, jeopardy, drinking, gambling, blogging, gardening, dogs, boxing, babies, chewing gum, being cold, hugs

things i like less in my 30s than i did in my 20s

meetings, hair gel, salespeople, liars, awards shows, chinese food, curly hair, weddings, surprises, doctors, the Internet, cherry garcia, tight-fitting clothes, soft mattresses, video games, new york yankees, wheel of fortune, social networking Websites, ramen noodles, Denis Leary, spicy food, crowds, buffets, cats

things i think i will always like

tennis, sex, the sound of rain, bacon, writing, guitar-driven rock, bending paperclips, clean socks, the ocean, Thanksgiving, Silly Putty, Twizzlers

head over to twitter and share the things that you will always like. be sure to include the tag – #thingsiwillalwayslike

Social media departments are popping up at companies across the globe, spreading faster than the Swine Flu ever could.

Many large businesses have already, at the very least, dipped their toes into the social media stream. Some run because the water is too cold and choppy. Others think the water is a mirage and refute its existence. But for those who have bought the hype (and it’s probably fair to say that it’s no longer hype, despite a lack of empirical ROI data), there have been many different strategies incorporated.

Over the past few weeks I have come across MANY examples of large companies – some mammoth in size – completely dropping the ball on their social media endeavors.

I understand that it’s not always easy for big and stuffy organizations to bust out of their brick and mortar shells, but just because they are attempting to reach a younger demographic, is no excuse for poorly implemented ideas and haphazard marketing strategies.

Share your examples of businesses who, in your opinion, are doing a poor (bordering on embarrassing) job with their social media entities.

We’ll get you started with this crappy mess. The Quiznos, 2 Girls, 1 Sandwich video. I mean, this is not Uncle Mike’s blog – this is Quiznos – a company that generates millions of dollars in sales. Not to mention, their franchises are owned by everyday, hard-working people. People who likely did not sign off on this horrendous social media foray. It’s one thing to try to cash in on new media, but that is not an excuse to throw social responsibility to the wind.

By the way, the Quiznos up the block just closed. Good.

Every year again, in the second week of June, the Apple’s WorldWide Developers Conference (WWDC for intimates) takes place and year after year again it does not only excite all Apple and tech pundits, but also incites them to publish their predictions. Most of them usually being wrong, but they always serve as awesome linkbait and keep the conversation among A-listers going.

Every year again you can also find bingo cards to print out and keep your no-life nerdism excited. What could be better than sitting on the edge of your chair, reading a live blog of the conference and wait until Apple has uploaded the conference video. Surely not pr0n!

Of course here at JOAB we do not want to miss out and also want to share our predictions.

• iPhone 3GMYM: A new iPhone will be announced and will be named GMYM. GMYM stands for Give Me Your Money


• At least 3 bloggers will run out of battery power


• Many pictures will be uploaded during the event, just as many photos will be hotlinked on other sites


• During the event Duncan Riley will make more stupid LOLcat pictures only to complain publicly after the event that the release of the iPhone 3GMYM will take months longer in Australia than in the US


• After the event, Gruber, of Daring Fireball fame, will post ‘Told you all!’


• Apple will not announce a tablet


• Apple will obviously bump the speeds of the slower unibody MacBook. We actually are surprised it took the wannabe pundits more than a week to discover that the almost 7% CPU bump for the White MacBook resulted in a faster machine


• Many people will be present at the Moscone center


• There will be spotlights

All in all, the event will be disappointing. No announcement of new Apple powered NASA capsules or satellites will be made. Apple will not solve global warming or make the UK dryer for that matter. War on earth will continue. Poverty will not be solved and Steve Jobs will not announce a cure for cancer. There won’t be any bacon either.

Is Twitter the new celebrity press release system? While I don’t think many Hollywood agents will be heading to the bread line anytime soon, it is becoming apparent that famous people really are just like us. Boring, predictable and, well, full of themselves.

While Tony La Russa remains pissed at Twitter and Ashton could be taking this whole tweeting thing too far, Lance Armstrong of cycling fame, has used Twitter to deliver the first photo of his fourth child Max.

I would like to think that the man who made yellow bracelets cool and took a turn with Sheryl Crow would have more important things to do than upload a pic of the newborn. I mean, who the hell cares?

Wait. Hold that thought. He has over a million followers who might disagree.

But in an even yuckier move, Lance has already set up a Twitter account for his young son to chronicle every out-of-womb experience (@maxarmstrong1). Please note that since verified Twitter accounts are not yet in play, we can’t vouch for the authenticity of young Max’s new account.

This might not be the first time Lance has DOPEd. Somebody give that man a urine test.

Quite frankly, I’m angry at myself for being surprised that famous people don’t have anything better to do then tweet. It should be obvious that what these people do best is talk about themselves.

So will Twitter replace the PR mouthpieces – some of whom earn seven digits – to speak for the rich and famous? Only time will tell. One things for sure…with the amount of money the tabloids are willing to pay – you won’t see any ‘A-level’ stars reveal their babies via Twitter.