At some point, my blog was in the top 5000 of Technorati. I hadn't really looked at it anymore for ages because I felt it kind of lost it's relevance. However recently I had to look into it again because my wife told me that publishers use Technorati to evaluate book bloggers in terms of how relevant they are.

I found out that my wife's book blog has a 'Technorati Authority' of 1. That kind of means: completely irrelevant. Given the amount of inlinks and the amount of traffic her blog gets this is obviously bullshit. Yet this thing is damaging because publishers look at it and think it has value. Just like some people still think Alexa rankings have any meaning.

Then I decided to take a look at my own blog which has been in existence for well over 5 years by now. Pretty well established, 1100+ RSS subscribers and excellent traffic. Guess what?

Hah! Apparently my blog is also COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT in the blogosphere according to Technorati. I think I'll start sobbing now?

Everyone and their mother has an opinion about Apple's latest creation and therefore so can I. Not the most unique blog post I'm sure but hey, what the heck?

So... after months and months of hype, Apple revealed the 'iPad'. I was honestly quite underwhelmed. Sure it's a sexy looking device but the big question is: what am I gonna do with this? I haven't quite figured that out. Let's start with a bunch of things that I consider serious flaws or at least areas in which I think the device is lacking.

Hitler too was underwhelmed

1. Awkward screen aspect ratio: Apparently it's something between 4:3 and 16:9. What? Why? What is wrong with 16:9? You tell me.
2. No USB and no card slots: We have to do awkward things to get pics / movies from our cameras onto this device. Meh. If the internal SSD is full we're screwed. Meh.^*
3. No replaceable battery: I'm sick of the battery hype. They all worsen over time and I'm sure this one will too. My Macbook Pro now runs for 5 minutes on a charged battery. At least I can get a new one for this machine!
4. No camera: No snapping pics, no videoblogging on the road, no Skyping with my family and no augmented reality. Kinda crappy if you ask me.
5. Locked down OS: Nothing is open here. Apple and only Apple decides what we run on this thing. I would much rather have had Mac OS X on this thing.

This book thing...

On a lot of blogs I see the iPad being heralded as 'Kindle Killer'. I think this is an absolute nonsense statement.

It's been quiet on this blog for sure. The latest addition to our family surely requires a lot of time. Now that things have settled down a bit I've finally been able to do a full on new website design and implementation. Bookalicio.us is my wife's book review site. She has been running this site for just a little over a year now and she has managed to become one of the more authoritative YA book blogs. She's become a name in the Twitterverse (heck, she's got twice the amount of followers I have), all major publishing houses are aware of her site and many of them work with her and she's an active member of the book blogging community. This is quite an accomplishment for just one year which is why I thought it's time to take her site to the next level. Professional accomplishments demand a professional looking site. While her previous design didn't look all that bad I felt it was somewhat limiting in terms of what can be done with it. Pam's content could use some more space. Space to grow and to accomodate new things.

A fragment of the new Bookalicio.us