categoriz – A comprehensive directory of web 2.0 sites
Via Logic+Emotion, a pointer to categoriz, a link to a huge set of web 2.0 sites.
Tags: web-20
Add comment May 4th, 2006
Keotag the Tag Search Engine
Via John TP, a pointer to Keotag, a new metasearch engine for tags: search for the same tag on various services including Digg, 43 Things, del.icio.us, Technorati. It’s a show of how much time I’ve been away from the whole Web 2.0 thing when I don’t recognize 80% of the services.
It also has a very handy generators for tag links and “Add to del.icio.us” type links.
The interface is very clean, but some kind of “related tags” exploring would be very useful.
Add comment May 3rd, 2006
Spotback, a learning news aggregator
TechCrunch writes about a new personalized news service, Spotback. The idea certainly sounds intriguing – rating stories as more or less interesting using a slider will in a time give you a tailor-made news service.
I’ll try it using over the next few days as the concept and overall design is appealing, but as it is right now it suffers from clutter and “what do I do” confusion (a better blank slate design would be in order).
Privacy issues would also make me wonder about appeal to mainstream audiences.
Add comment May 3rd, 2006
Here we go: Bolivia nationalizes the gas industry
As CNN reported yesterday, Bolivian president Evo Morales ordered nationalization of natural gas industry. I honestly believe this is a decision that will hurt Bolivia in the long run: state-owned companies suffer from acute sense of myopia in terms of extracting money now vs. investing in exploration & production.
In the Soviet Union, for example, maybe one third of all hydrocarbons underground in a particular well were extracted in a rush to move to the next one. In developing countries, the tendency is to suck the money out of the monopoly for electoral purposes while neglecting to find additional reserves.
Update: Nice round up of reactions to Bolivia nationalization over at Off Topic
Tags: bolivia, politics, energy
Add comment May 2nd, 2006
Drug legalization
While Economist.com writes about medical benefits of marijuana, Mexican congress approved a bill legalizing small amounts of pot, cocaine and heroin.
Nice sampling of reactions over at Hammer of Truth.
Overall, a lot of knee-jerk reactions, but what I find most interesting is that the conservative, Catholic Political Action Party (PAN) also supported the bill. Tells you something about different political alignments down here.
Add comment April 29th, 2006
