Is it just me or is everyone pretty much doing the same thing? Is it just me, or has Web 2.0 got absurdly boring?

I was going to write a long post talking about this, but truthfully, it bored me too much so I just deleted it.

The bottom line is, Web 2.0 comes down to 4 websites that everyone else is copying. Flickr, You Tube, Facebook and Twitter. I’m participating in probably two dozen betas and thats what I have seen.

Please, someone do something new.

I am going to give my first impressions of Leopard, which I finished installing about an hour ago. This isn’t going to be some in-depth walk through with lots of pictures. Check out one of the other thousands of reviews out there for unboxing and all that bullshit.

Leopard install was painless. Insert DVD, restart, click accept on a few dialog boxes and an hour later you are up and running. This was a good thing! It figured out everything for me and I didn’t really have to use my brain at all.

Spaces is the stand out feature for me. I’ll be using it a lot. In fact, I am using it right now. Still need to figure out how I want to arrange my desktop but for now I have all my social chatting tools (Twitterific, MSN) on space 1, space 2 is my web browsers, space 3 is iTunes and space 4 is empty. Switching between is fast. Very useful feature.

Reflective desktop and transparent menu bar are overrated. They don’t add much and honestly, are hardly noticeable. I know a big deal was made about how gorgeous this made the desktop but I don’t see it.

The new iChat I also find overrated. The only real feature I was interested in seeing was how it handled the blue screening and background replacement. Well, so far it hasn’t worked well for me. I tried to have it replace my couch with Yosemite and instead I got a waterfall with a pillow sticking out the side of it.

Cover Flow in Finder. I’ll leave it on for now, but it just kind of makes the process of finding things longer. It looks nice, but it isn’t that effecient. Quick Look is interesting but, it doesn’t show you the full slides of say, a keynote presentation, if those slides have animations / transitions. At least, I didn’t see them. Made it hard to see what was on a slide.

Stacks are alright. It will ultimately un-clutter my desktop so thats good. I don’t like having a long dock though. I might need to start hiding some icons - Quicksilver works good for that anyway.

Time Machine is something I want to try but i don’t have an external drive on my mac book.

I also want to try the Bootcamp stuff but I don’t have the energy tonight to install Vista Ultimate. And that scares me anyway.

Just some general stuff - I can’t believe that Apple didn’t pack more backgrounds into Leopard. Hell, one of an actual Leopard would have been nice (they included a Zebra picture). I was surprised.

I am getting some programs, like Last.FM Audioscrobbler, showing up multiple times in the dock and I can’t get rid of them. Sort of strange.

My bottom line impression with Leopard is that it has a few nice features. I certainly won’t say it has 300 great features, like Apple would have you believe. For the things that I really like in the release, I’d think those could be downloadable updates/extras. Leopard isn’t worth $200 in my opinion (family pack). I do get reimbursed by work though so I am not complaining too much.

I know some people who are on the fence about upgrading. I’d say just wait a bit if you need the cash for other things. If money isn’t an issue, sure, go ahead and get Leopard. It is nice. Seems stable. Just not a great value.

And i don’t care.

I guess Google changed their algorithm for deciding page rank today. Lots of people are crying about it - mostly bloggers.

Who here can honestly say they found a blog by doing a Google search? I can honestly say I haven’t.

TechnoSailor? I love your blog - i didn’t find it through Google. Don’t stress your page rank so much.

You promote yourself the right way. You write good content, you participate in social networking. You care about your audience.

One day, Google is going to be knocked off its perch on the top of the search hill. That, or some other way of discovering sites is going to be en vogue. Regardless, the sites with the good content are going to still rise to the top.

I don’t see this change as a bad thing. If Tech Crunch, Engadget and some other mega blogs lose a little ground so some other quality voices out there get heard, so be it. I am sure that *some* blogs got a page rank boost. The only reason you don’t hear about them is because people didn’t know about them before. Their voice was drowned out by the huge personalities and sites with hundreds of thousands of links.

People who read Engadget yesterday are still going to be there today - and tomorrow. But maybe some other web publishers are going to get noticed now.

Edit: Great post about this that sums up my feelings.

Google took my balls and went home..

and

Page Rank Doesn’t Matter: Can we stop talking about it already?