Scott Duffy's Weblog

The End of Credit Card Consumerism May Be Near

2008-08-11T12:44:00.001-04:00

For more than four decades, the shopaholic America has shown an insatiable desire to spend until our credit cards melt. Yet today, a sharp slowdown, record-high gas prices, high consumer debt levels, a plunging real estate market, and the growing green movement all seem to be conspiring to dethrone the credit card way of life.

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The Culture of Friends

2008-05-20T13:55:00.001-04:00

With digg, myspace, facebook, and twitter, it is easy to track who your friends are. But these tools not only track friends gained, but also friends lost. It's sometimes surprising to look at your friends list and realize who is not on there any more...

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Give Up, Go Home: All The Good Keywords Are Taken (Or Will Be)

2007-11-20T20:45:00.001-05:00

When starting a new business, entrepreneurs have a dream. They dream that there is a great untapped demand out there, who are looking for something and not finding it. It's just not true. We're looking at a future (very soon) where every good keyword is marketed to agressively. And they're unbeatable.

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Hilarious Indian Music Video

2007-11-03T01:09:00.000-04:00

I don't want to offend anyone, but I couldn't stop laughing when I watched this.

http://www.break.com/index/absolutely-hilarious-indian-music-video.html

Maybe it's better to recommend you watch it and let you figure out for yourself why it's so funny. But let me just say that it's the translations that I can't get enough of. "Do you want that sign Benny Lava?" It really does sound like they're speaking English yet it makes absolutely no sense!

Business Development for Busy Freelancers

2007-09-25T17:05:00.001-04:00

Sometimes as a freelancer, you may find that you get so wound up working on your trade that you forget about running your business. Business development is vital because it involves creating a pipeline of assignments so you don’t run dry. Here are some of the strategies I use to ensure that business keeps coming in.

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Freelancing: How To Create Multiple Income Streams

2007-09-25T17:01:00.001-04:00

What do you do if you have one main client and for some reason the work from that client dries up? Perhaps the client goes out of business or goes in a different direction or just has a lull in business?

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Want To Be An Astronaut? NASA Accepts Applications Online

2007-09-25T13:17:00.001-04:00

NASA is hiring a handful of people over the next year to join its astronaut training program. The requirements? Must be willing to travel.

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Apple: Unlocked iPhones Might Become Bricks In A Future Update

2007-09-24T17:32:00.001-04:00

Apple has issued a statement after the stock market closed today saying that using unlocking software "will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable" once a future Apple patch is applied.Is this just half-hearted talk from Apple, or have they got an update ready to go already?

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CNN.com: Seven Soldiers Died in Iraq Today; Now Buy Life Insurance

2007-09-12T19:58:00.001-04:00

We're all used to contextual ads by now. You're visiting digg, and you see advertisements for iPods. But is there any limits in online advertising? CNN.com is running a story about how 7 American soldiers died in Iraq today. And the ad banner reads, "What if you died today..."? Should life insurance be sold alongside obituaries?

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$2 million yacht plunges to its doom (PHOTOS)

2007-08-14T19:39:00.001-04:00

In March, a 55-Foot, 62,000-Pound Carver Marquis Plummeted From its Sling With Two Men Aboard. Here's What Happened.

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Nerds on Site From The Nerd's Perspective

2007-07-03T18:26:00.001-04:00

I applied to Nerds on Site back in May, because I thought being an independent consultant as part of a larger company would push my current consulting business to a higher level. Well, after 5 weeks of trying to set up my first appointment with them to talk, I give up. If this is how they recruit, how do they treat their employees?

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Why Do Consumers Put Up With Apple?

2007-05-24T14:02:00.001-04:00

From the iMac, to the Mac Mini, to Apple TV - Apple has a history of releasing products that lock consumers into limited choice, and almost no ability to upgrade later. So why do consumers love this company so much?

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NASA Opens Zero-G Parabolic Flights To The Public!

2007-05-22T20:00:00.001-04:00

Want to experience weightlessness, but don't want to pay the Russian government $20 million? For a mere $3,500 you can take a flight in the famous NASA "vomit comit". The flight includes 15 parabolic maneuvers, each one making you feel weightless for about 25 seconds. An absolute bargain if you ask me!

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Outsource Your Homework to India

2007-05-22T19:53:00.001-04:00

TutorVista is an Indian company offering round-the-clock tutoring, homework help and test preparation services to students. For $100 a month, students get unlimited help with various subjects. Over 2,000 American families have signed up for this service.

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Google Invests in Sergey Brin's Wife's Company...

2007-05-22T19:46:00.001-04:00

$3.9 Million doesn't seem like a lot of money to Google. But it makes a decent wedding present to Sergey Brin and his new wife Anne Wojcicki, who were married a couple of weeks ago. Google invested the money in Anne's company, 23andme, "an early stage biotech company focused on helping consumers understand and browse their genome".

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Domino Day

2007-05-08T19:00:00.001-04:00

No idea if any CGI was used in the making of this commercial, but if there wasn't, this idea was brilliantly executed.

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FlexWiki 2.0 Beta 1 Released

2007-05-07T15:46:00.001-04:00

FlexWiki, the most popular .NET based wiki framework, just released the first v2.0 Beta. This is a major release, with tons of enhancements over v1.8. This release features .NET 2.0 support, enhanced security allowing pages to be secured at the wiki, namespace and topic level, and many more features. Give it a try.

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Freebase: The Free Internet Database Hits Alpha Stage

2007-05-02T21:48:00.001-04:00

I just received my signup code for alpha testing Freebase. The possibilities are endless for this: it's like Wikipedia, in a relational database form. Imagine you could simply run an SQL query to retrieve a list of all beers consumed on Diggnation along with the episode number? Its now possible!

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Into WOW? This Video Is Hiliarious

2007-05-01T23:36:00.001-04:00

I don't play World of Warcraft, but Oh My God this is hilarious. Some guy is leading a group in an attack. But someone had the brilliant idea to stick-figure ANIMATE what hes saying. Really really funny. Old maybe, but still great. "Hit it like you mean it."

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5 Things To Know About Harems Before You Get One

2007-05-01T21:51:00.001-04:00

You’ve heard about them. You’ve fantasized about them. You’ve dreamed about one day owning your own. But are you really mature enough to have your own harem yet? With great harem comes great responsibility. You might want to read the following five facts before you decide to invest in one.

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Second Life Releases the source code

2007-01-08T12:51:00.000-05:00

I'm very much into Second Life at the moment, so the idea that the source code for the client is now available is an exciting development. I expect some really obscure but annoying bugs will be fixed in short order, and some of the top user requested enhancements will come quickly too.

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Oops sorry! Man Ties Up His Neighbor and Lights Him on Fire... By Mistake!

2006-09-18T19:08:00.000-04:00

A 55-year-old man in Austria believed his neighbor kidnapped his teenage daughter, so he tied the man up. When the neighbor denied kidnapping the daughter, he poured gasoline on him and set him on fire. One hour later, his daughter comes home from a secret holiday she took with her boyfriend. Whoops, sorry about that neighbor!

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Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games!

2006-08-14T14:30:00.000-04:00

Great! I was just thinking about this the other day! I want to be able to create my own XBox 360 games...
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Talking on the eve of its Gamefest event in Seattle, Microsoft has revealed XNA Game Studio Express, a new product which will allow indie developers and students to develop simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC, and share their games to others in a new Xbox 360 'Creators Club'.

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You Heard It Here First: The End of Web 2.0

2006-08-05T02:34:00.000-04:00

Has anyone seen the BusinessWeek cover story on Kevin Rose from Digg.com? Well, first of all, the cover is outrageous. Maybe preposterous is a better word. Kevin's wearing a dorky hat, cheesy headphones, and giving a two-thumbs up pose. And the words across his chest say he's worth $60 million. Which he isn't. He owns 30% of a company with $3 million in revenues and no profits.

The picture scares me. The hype on the cover scares me. It's Internet Bubble mania all over again. It might be time to sell your tech shares, we're headed for another 2001.

More signs? Many of the premier "Web 2.0" companies are starting to fall out of favor. There is a lot of MySpace backlash. Del.icio.us's traffic is apparently in freefall. Netscape is offering to pay people $1000 a month to post links to their site instead of digg. It's madness.

Mark my words. The party is almost over. Who's going to have the worst hangover after this one?

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Truly Amazing! Motorcyclist Hit By Speeding Car - Lands on Feet!

2006-08-01T00:11:00.000-04:00

One of the most amazing things I've seen in a while. A guy on a motorcycle is hit by a car that runs a red light at high speed, and lands on his feet. Like a cat. Or a ninja!

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