The Hypocrisy Weblog

cnet’s web 2.0 blog, “Webware” has announced it’s Webware 100 winners-list. The question is now; how is this list relevant to anyone in the Internet-business? Each and every category, 10 of them, has 10 winners each – and each and every site on the top 100-list anyone who’s involved in working with the Internet (in any way) have heard of.

The categories are; Browsing, Communications, Community, Data, Entertainment, Media, Mobile, Productivity and Commerce, Publishing, Reference.

Surely, it is a good ego boost for the people behind the services to get recognition, but does it serve any journalistic purpose? I am not so sure about that; Rafe Needleman and the Webware crew are preaching for the already saved. There is no internal ranking of the sites in the individual categories – so how do I as a visitor know which site got more votes than the other? (Yes, alright – they do have a list of the over-all top 10 and the sites that got over 1000 votes, though it doesn’t show the internal ranking in between the sites within each category. Perhaps the over-all statistic material wasn’t enough?! I don’t know…)

From my own perspective I am glad that the swizz army-knife-like site Netvibes, which deserves more media coverage – as it is a really nice service to keep track on all your communication needs ranging from rss-feeds (sites, forums, email, blogs etc), to email, to skype, to.. yeah – you get the idea.

Google was the company with most services in the top 100-list, yet this is not surprising as they are the biggest site on the Internet.

To the Webware authors; Please make the list more detailed the next time and get a broader statistic foundation (aka get more people to vote on the list), then we’re talking about a relevant list.

Hacker group Hacktivismo has released a secure instant messenger client known as “ScatterChat”, which encrypts all conversations and on top of that tunnels all transfers over the onion router service “Tor“.

Hacktivism says:

“ScatterChat is a HACKTIVIST WEAPON designed to allow non-technical human rights activists and political dissidents to communicate securely and anonymously while operating in hostile territory. It is also useful in corporate settings, or in other situations where privacy is desired.”

ScatterChat is built around the open source instant messenger program Gaim and can be downloaded here.

So, now the acquisition everyone have been waiting for: online auction company eBay bought Voice over IP-company Skype for a staggering 2,6 Billion dollars US!!!

2,6 Billion Рtaste that number!!! If swedish Niklas Zennstr̦m and danish Janus Friis stays in the company until 2008 and certain goals are achieved, another 1,5 Billion dollars US will be paid out.

The figures are incredibly high, and I won’t comment if it’s too high or not, or say that this is “the new Internet-bubble”, but I will say that eBay will implement Skype’s technology so that auctioneers will be able to voice-chat with each other instantly, and that this feature will make Skype the biggest VOIP-client out there. This was actually a totally logic acquisition by eBay.

For more information:

eBay webast
article in Financial Times
Download Skype