One reason I haven’t been blogging much lately is that I’ve been running phone banks in what little spare time I have. And if I didn’t say that here, you could have found out about it here. In the words of Kos diarist Mr. Jordan:

This was my first effort in any GOTV or Obama-related campaign activity (in this case, unofficial), and I enjoyed not just being able to help but the atmosphere among the small group—the same positive feelings that have been felt by millions across the country. I don’t have a car and took the train nearby, but others were kind enough to give me a ride from the local train station to the phonebank and also a ride back home (thanks!).

I appreciate Jordan’s kind comments, though he didn’t tell me he’d be blogging the phonebank. But that’s beside the point. His post is a reminder that, in the Web 2.0 world, you’re always on the record. True, Jordan didn’t ID me, instead calling me “the fellow who ran the phonebank.” But since the folks I was working for have already seen the post, I figured I should out myself here. I’m just glad I said no when Jordan asked if he could take my picture!

I’ve been reading the developer docs for Google Chrome with great interest; clearly Google has put a lot of thought into this application, and has major plans for it. And one paragraph in the docs has really stood out for me. In Google’s documentation on the user experience for the browser, the company states:

In the long term, we think of Chromium as a tabbed window manager or shell for the web rather than a browser application. We avoid putting things into our UI in the same way you would hope that Apple and Microsoft would avoid putting things into the standard window frames of applications on their operating systems.

That paragraph makes Google’s goals pretty clear: though the company has brushed off countless claims made over the years that it eventually plans to release its own operating system, it has now essentially done so. Chrome is intended as nothing less than a cross-platform OS for web-based applications and content. Though this is a big move for Google, it’s not exactly radical for a browser to do far more than serve as a window onto the web; Firefox essentially functions as a web OS for millions of users today. Whether you’re using Firefox on a Mac, Windows or Linux box, your experience is largely the same, and if you live in the cloud and beef up your functionality using plugins and extensions, your underlying OS is almost negligible.

But Google’s plans to enter this space could, potentially, have much higher stakes. Google has the resources to build its market share far above the 20% level Firefox currently enjoys, and could easily do everything from striking bundling deals with netbook manufacturers to paying users to download the app a la Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback promotion. Should Google truly decide to make good on its plans to turn Chrome into a universal “shell for the web,” the potential losers could include not just Microsoft and Mozilla, but every OS maker from Steve Jobs to Mark Shuttleworth. In the long run, operating systems could fade into the background, serving as little more than a collection of drivers and utilities, as they did in the days of DOS and CP/M. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for consumers; they could get a consistent and familiar experience on any computer, and ignore all of the banter about snow leopards, herons and seinfelds.

That long run may be a very long way off, but Google is nothing if not patient (this is a company, after all, that has kept its email client in beta for over four years). And even if Google eventually loses interest in Chrome and it becomes the next Orkut or Google Answers, OS makers should remain concerned. The browser-as-OS era is already upon us, and the only question remaining is which browser you’ll be booting in the next few years.

I was recently “deactivated” by Facebook. The details of what I did to get myself taken down aren’t worth going into right here (though if you’re interested in all of the lurid details, you can find them here). What really concerns me is what occurred after I was cut off. Because what actually happened is that I completely disappeared from Facebook. Not in the simple sense that my friends would get a message saying that my account had been deactivated; that would have been fine. What happened was much worse, and says a lot about what can occur when we entrust our social networks to commercial enterprises: I disappeared completely from Facebook. My profile vanished, along with anything I had ever done elsewhere on the service. Posts to friends’ walls: gone. Comments on boards: gone. History of participation in games: gone. In short, it wasn’t just a simple service cut-off. For all intents and purposes, I had been erased. It was as if I had never existed on Facebook.

I eventually opened a new account, and painstakingly rebuilt my network and profile. But I’m still troubled by the way in which my account was disabled. Facebook has become extremely powerful, and countless numbers of people almost literally live their lives within the service’s walled garden. However, Facebook’s power isn’t based on its technology or brand; it’s based solely on its network of users. If those users begin to defect in large numbers, Facebook will rapidly find itself in the same predicament as other former powerhouses that took their users for granted, like AOL, which virtually invented for-profit large-scale social networking without quite realizing it.

Fortunately, Facebook seems to recognize this risk, which is one reason the service has opened itself to so many third-party tools. It’s now extremely easy to maintain an active profile on Facebook without ever actually using the service. This post, for example, was written for my blog, but if you’re reading it on Facebook, you may never know that. Ditto for my updates, which are sucked in straight from Twitter. Of course, this openness is a two-edged sword. The value of Facebook’s network is based on user interaction. If I post on Facebook via third-party tools, and then interact with my friends directly on other platforms (such as comments in my blog, or Twitter replies), rather than Facebook, ultimately Facebook has a lot less value for me, and I may eventually stop checking in at all; my profile will still look active, but it will essentially be an automated shell, with all the real action taking place offsite.

For now, Facebook has the critical mass, and more of my friends communicate there than through Twitter, FriendFeed or any of the other services that allow easy online interaction. Which is why I went through the trouble to reconstruct my profile and nag my contacts to friend me again. But there’s no guarantee that this will remain the case, and if Facebook wants to retain its dominance, it will need to do more than just provide a convenient place for users to share their thoughts, pictures and experiences. It will need to provide better customer service, and be able to assure users that their digital life won’t be snuffed out without notice because of one careless mistake.

Back in early 2005, I was working as a blogger for Engadget, and, in a brainstorming discussion with some of the other bloggers, I raised the idea of a software blog. We’d cover new releases, betas, warez, the whole scene. The idea was quickly shot down; there wasn’t a big enough audience, and besides, Beta News, Tucows and Download.com already covered that market. A few months later, however, I learned that geek minds think alike, when I got an IM from Weblogs Inc. honcho Jason Calacanis letting me know he was launching Download Squad—a software blog—and he wanted me to help run it. I jumped at the chance, and began posting for DLS in June 2005. For the next eight months, I had a blast writing about everything from DOS nostalgia to Google Goo, and especially about non-downloadable, cloud-based apps, which—despite the site’s name—Jason felt were the most vital segment of the software market (gee, looks like he was onto something, there). After eight months, with DLS up and running smoothly with a talented team of software-obsessed bloggers, I went back to working at Engadget full-time, but I continued to keep a watchful eye on DLS, and saw it grow to become a successful blog in its own right. Later, some of WIN’s other platform-specific blogs were rolled into DLS, giving it a larger audience—and a new pool of talented bloggers. The site grew in popularity, and even gained the grudging respect of bigger competitors such as Lifehacker . Last year, PC Mag listed it as one of the " Top 100 Undiscovered Web sites." It looked like the naysayers were wrong after all.

Until this morning. That’s when word leaked out that AOL, as part of an effort to "trim up for a sale," would be pruning its blogroll. One blog, DIYlife, would get the axe immediately. DLS (and The Unofficial Apple Weblog, another WIN property) would be going on a one-week hiatus. "DLS bloggers should immediately press pause on new content," wrote an AOL programming manager in an internal memo. According to the memo, the site will "emerge stronger" on August 1st, but it’s hard to see how that will happen—or how a one-week break, apparently instituted to help balance the July books, really accomplishes anything. During that week, RSS feeds will go dead, writers will turn to other sources of income, and advertisers will lose faith. How will that help a potential acquirer? Despite the negative prognosis, I’ll be rooting for DLS. I need my Time Wasters, freeware fixes, and web service updates, and I believe AOL does too.

“Convergence” may be a dirty word these days, and it was certainly overused by companies like one former employer of mine back in the bubble era. But when it works, people do manage to take notice. Case in point is The Washington Post’s Pulitzer for Gene Weingarten’s report on the public response (or lack thereof) to Joshua Bell playing violin in the DC subway. While the article may have had its origins in the dead-tree pages of the Post, it really shines online, where it’s accompanied by a video play-by-play of Bell’s whole underground escapade. As Weingarten recently told NPR, embedded video made the online version “just a beautiful way to read a story.” So, congrats to WashingtonPost.com for getting convergence right, and acknowledging that there are things you can do online that you just can’t do on paper.

You know that sinking feeling you get when you buy something only to have the price plummet when the manufacturer releases a new model or just decides it’s time to slash prices. Well, imagine how it feels if a product you’ve paid for suddenly goes free. That’s the case with Newsgator, which just made all of its pay products, including Feed Demon and Net News Wire free. I happen to own paid versions of both products and have used them for years. And when I heard that they were going free earlier today, instead of getting that sinking feeling, my response was, yeah! Because these apps really are the best RSS readers I’ve used,* and now more people will try them out. Why do I like them so much? Mainly because they’re fast, well-designed, cross-platform and can seamlessly sync your feeds across multiple computers and platforms. And, as someone who subscribes to over 200 feeds and uses 4-5 computers and other devices on a given day, that syncing function alone is worth paying for. So, right on, Newsgator. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to download the Blackberry and Outlook versions, which I didn’t spring for when they were pay products.

* As always, all opinions expressed herein are mine and mine only. Got it?

From Kara Swisher’s latest “Boomtown” blog entry:

“First, after almost eight months of daily blogging for this site, I think it is safe to say that I will probably never write another thing professionally for a print publication and will spend the rest of my career–such that it will be–publishing online only.”

That’s great, Kara. Really. Welcome to the nabe. However, there’s just one problem with this approach: This business is about the content. The web, newspapers, magazines, cellphones, TVs, etc., are all just distribution channels. Each channel has its own strengths and weaknesses, and content developed for one channel doesn’t always work out all that well on others (which is why newspapers and magazines are finally turning their web sites into unique products, rather than just conduits for repurposing). The web is great at interactivity and immediacy. TV’s great at, well, video. And print is good for, um, something or other. But there’s no reason to swear eternal fealty to a single distribution channel. And, yes, I say this as someone who started in print, but has worked online-only for well over a decade. I may never write for a print publication again, either. But that doesn’t mean I’m online-only forever. If the right magazine, TV, radio, newspaper or cerebral implant opportunity comes along, I’ll go for it, especially if it provides a chance to create exciting, compelling content that takes advantage of the unique capabilities of the channel.

“Have you tried Netscape yet?”

“Netscape?”

“Go and download it right now!”

It was the fall of 1994, I was in the process of building my first Web site (Asia Inc Online), and a colleague tipped me off to a hot new browser that I just had to see. The next day, I fired up my copy of NCSA Mosaic, went to akebono.stanford.edu, and searched for Netscape. In no time, I was using Netscape 0.94b, and I soon learned that this hot new browser was the new brainchild of Marc Andreesen, the wunderkind behind Mosaic. In fact, this early version bore the logo of the Mosaic Communications Corp., which was soon supplanted by Netscape Communications, once NCSA warned Andreesen and co. that they were infringing on their copyright.

For most of the next decade, I stuck by Netscape, even as the browser’s early market dominance fell to such upstarts as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and even as the company was acquired by AOL, which somehow managed to help Microsoft grow its market share at the same time that it allowed Netscape to languish. Then, almost in spite of itself, AOL did one crucial thing right: It provided early funding to the Mozilla Foundation and allowed it to run free with Netscape’s source code. And the rest, as they say, is history.

When I read yesterday that AOL was officially ending support for the Netscape browser and telling users to switch to Firefox, it hardly came as a surprise. Indeed, I can’t recall the last time I used a Netscape-branded browser. And, in fact, all recent releases of Netscape were really reskinned versions of Firefox, so actual development of a “real” Netscape browser ceased long ago. It will be hard for me to mourn for Netscape, when Firefox has so much of it in its DNA. Still, I can’t help but get a little wistful for those early days, before Internet Explorer, before Netscape’s IPO, before the browser even went 1.0. Netscape was the Internet back then, and those of us who developed sites hung on every update, as Marca and company created new standards on the fly (look, it supports animated GIFs! Now that’s interactivity!). Today, though, we do the same with Firefox (look, it supports Silverlight. That’s interactivity?). And as long as I see that familiar mozilla show up in user agents in my server logs, I’ll know that all is right with the world wide web.

Must read: Paul Boutin’s How to coast to a writing career in Valleywag. Paul, a veteran journalist and blogger, lays down the law in a series of hilarious and dead-on points, including this classic for bloggers who want to make the move to what Paul calls the “real” media:

“Don’t troll other bloggers for links, or try to get onto Techmeme by posting about whatever’s already there. NEVER try to win a fight with Dave Winer. People in the real media don’t care what your Technorati rank is, they’ll just Google you to see what you write.”

Of course, to really make it as a freelance writer, one part of the work you can’t coast on is self-promotion. Paul may make it seem easy, but it’s not unusual for successful freelancers to spend as much time pitching as writing. That’s an even harder skill to master than getting your drafts in a day early and within 10 words of the requested count—and one reason I’m in a staff position, rather than freelancing. Guess that makes me a real slacker.

The latest in my series mourning failed business models.

Remember back in the bubble era, when online greeting cards looked ready to make their paper cousins irrelevant, much as email had killed personal letters? Dancing, singing, tacky, tasteless ecards were so hot that zero-revenue startup BlueMountain.com sold for $780 million, all on the strength of its brand of ugly, annoying cards. Of course, when the bubble burst, buyer Excite unloaded the business for about $35 million. But the bubble isn’t what’s killing the ecard business today. In fact, post-bubble, ecards have continued to, well, bubble along. I still get a couple now and again from relatives who’ve missed the deadline to send a postal greeting. And many of today’s models are a vast improvement over the MIDI-laced, animated-GIF based cards of the 90s. So, why is the ecard era about to end? One word: Spam. As Bob Sullivan points out in a recent post:

Would-be spammers first send out fake greeting cards, which trick recipients into visiting Web pages that are booby-trapped with malicious software that allows visitors’ computers to be hijacked. Then those hijacked computers are turned into spam machines, and directed to send out attachment spam. The two-stage attacks are very effective.

So many fake greeting cards have flooded the Net that Sullivan is even recommending a blanket ban: “Don’t ever read electronic greeting cards. They have officially become more trouble than they are worth. If you think one might be authentic, and you just can’t resist, call the sender before opening it to make sure the card is real.” Sure, can you imagine that? “Hi, Uncle Joe. Did you really send me this ecard? Oh, and by the way, next time can you just send cash?”

While the spam-powered destruction of the ecard business may not bring tears to too many eyes (BlueMountain.com’s current owner, American Greetings, still makes its real money from paper cards), the broader implications aren’t pretty. After all, if spammers can bring down one industry so easily, what’s to stop them from doing the same by mimicking other online services? Indeed, as Sullivan points out, they’ve already moved on to sending PDF attachments. Will Adobe’s venerable format become the next victim? Or will email providers finally get serious about fighting spam and recognize that it’s not just a threat to BlueMountain or Adobe—it’s their business that’s on the line if they can’t find a way to beat the spammers.