photo credit: marc_eliot

Last week the blogosphere was abuzz with talk about the article that NYT published regarding the stress levels being seen in Tech bloggers (My views on this subject are here). At the same time Eric Rice posed an interesting theory last week, asking if social web early adopters have psychological disorders?

My initial reaction was like WTF? Is this guy trying to offend Tech Bloggers worldwide. I always thought Tech Bloggers are the people who are generally ahead of the curve in adopting the latest in technology. I was like why on earth is this guy calling out the early adopters to be suffering from Psychological disorders like ADHD and OCD?

I reread the whole post and just went through the saved passwords on my main Firefox install to see if what Eric was saying was indeed true. I was instantly shocked to see over 300 saved usernames and passwords and more than half of them were some new apps and services I signed up for and never used. Not to forget I use OpenID on many sites as well. I could easily say that all those saved passwords in there are for researching new posts on DailyApps, but to be honest I don’t really need hundreds of them over there.

For being the tech enthusiasts that we are, we always want to be the first person to try out the latest Web2.0 app on the block. We’ve developed serious problem with our attention whether it’s in the latest electronics or Web apps. Everyone wants to be ahead of the rest, and if that means signing up for every darn service on this planet, so be it!

Here are some questions that you should ask yourself. How many of you are holding out on a purchase of iPhone thinking that a 3G model is around the corner? How many of you would leave the social networks you are currently on, just because some internet celebrities are endorsing another social network?

I receive emails everyday wherein readers are asking me to review one app or the other. People are no longer happy with an existing app that does 99.99% of everything that they want it to do. But when a new app that is underpowered compared to the existing one comes along, people move along to the newer app without a second thought. Well in the end the result is digital garbage! We’ll have loads of apps and softwares that we will probably never use again lying on our disks being eaten by digital moth dying a slow death.

The current Web2.0 world is just not sustainable. We’ve a setup where apps are created everyday and discarded at an equal pace. This doesn’t bode well for us in the long run. I wonder what guys like Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington will say on this? You surely know the amount of crap that blogs like Techcrunch and Mashable churn out on a daily basis right?

What are your views on this subject? It surely deserves a debate in the blogosphere.

The much hyped Qtrax (read as disgusting) that released yesterday to much fanfare, had one of the most disastrous launches a product or a service could have probably asked for. The people behind Qtrax thought that it was Ok for a web company to lie to its user base. When I first read about Qtrax, my first thought was “hey this could probably take everyone by storm”. I put up a note on my To-Do list and made it a point to check them out once they launched.

But things didn’t work out the way they would have probably planned. Here’s a list of things that went wrong for them.. 

• They never had any deals signed with any of the Big 4 labels.
• Once the Site came alive, the download link to the software was disabled causing lot of anger for the people who were waiting to get their hands on the software.
• The 25million songs for free was just a catchphrase aptly described as vaporware, even after launch you have nothing that you could download and listen.

Seeing all the negative press surrounding their launch, I’d be surprised if they are able to pick themselves up after all this bungled up launch. If they can come back with a good return, this will be forgotten about. Right now they have got a lot more press than they probably would have had with another boring “another start-up launches yay!” post….. People’s memories are short about stuff like this (again assuming they come back with grace). Otherwise they are probably heading for the deadpool, unless they can pull of something magical.

Well for me they are just dead, and I expect something more promising in the near future. So shall we award Qtrax with the award for being the startup to end up in deadpool in the first week of its launch.

If you are planning to purchase yourself a Flickr Pro Account, then this is the right time to do so. Well if you are wondering how, Flickr has a deal running for the month of January wherein if you purchase a Gift Account, 3 Extra free months are credited to your Flickr Account. Which means you get 15months of Flickr Pro Account for just 24.95$, not a bad deal isn’t it?

Well here is how it works..

• Go to the Flickr gift site.
• Purchase a 12 month gift subscription which will cost your $24.95 ( but this gift is for you, my friend)
• Once you are done with that, you’ll get a gift code, redeem it here. 
• After the purchase has been made, three free months will be added to your account.

Well, guys you better hurry up, because this super deal closes on the 31st of this month. The benefits of a Pro include, Ad Free browsing, Unlimited Storage, and Unlimited Photo sets. Well on a personal note, I’m planning to buy myself a Smugmug account rather than a Flickr Pro account.

So I suggest you have a look at Smugmug too. Its a lot better than Flickr in my opinion.

Via Tech-Buzz

FlickrStorm is a better search for Flickr! It works by looking for more than what you enter to find related and more relevant images… Be suprised!

When you search for pictures on FlickrStorm a super cool AJAX interface brings up the search results. The interface allows you to directly download the pictures, keep track of pictures you’ve seen and ofcourse a very nice way of sharing photos with your friends is also thrown in. Here is a small screencast that I did while using FlickrStorm :

If you have not been impressed with the simplicity of FlickrStorm and its beautiful and attractive design, here’s another service that just doesn’t search Flickr, but also searches Amazon, eBay, Youtube etc.. Yes I am talking about oSkope.

oSkope is a visual browser that lets you search and organize items from different web services like Amazon, eBay, YouTube or Flickr in an intuitive way.

Here is a screencast that I did with OSkope. Pretty Impressive..

So this is it. Some cool new ways to browse and explore Flickr, Amazon, eBay and Youtube. Go ahead and try out FlickrStorm and oSkope today.

So here are the milestones that were reached this week :

• Firefox hit 400 million downloads
• MySpace registers 200 million users
• Wikipedia boasts 2 millionth English article
• My Opera breaks the 1 million member mark
• The One Millionth iPhone was sold.

See, the amazing growth of these companies is a sign that things are growing faster than ever before on the Internet today.

Via CyberNet News

Here are some screenshots of del.icio.us. I really am looking forward to this new design because it looks simply amazing :

The New Version has a number of new features that were requested by many users on del.icio.us. The New del.icio.us features a new search engine, better bookmarking and tagging and lots more that should have been there on del.icio.us. This is one of those few redesigns in a while that really improve upon the original design.

If you want to try out the preview before the rest of the world sees the the New Del.icio.us, then head over to this page and ask the del.icio.us team for an invite.

Via TechCrunch