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Do you know exactly how you spend your time while surfing the web? Do you spend too much time on a given site, and you think you should cut back (Excluding Mashable, of course?) Well, the wonderful world of Firefox extensions can help you monitor your usage and better plan your web browsing, some will even help you control yourself by placing blocks on which sites you visit, and how long you can visit them. So, find one you like, get it installed, and start earning back some time in your life! (more…)

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BusinessWeek has a source which claims that iPhone SDK, due next week, is going to be late. However, the delay should not be too great: rumor has it that the SDK should be ready by mid-March.

Apple is, of course, silent on this one, but I’m wondering if this could have anything to do with George Hotz soft-cracking the latest iPhone firmware - 1.1.3 - so easily.

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An unlikely guest at Drop.io’s launch party in New York on Friday night: Comedy Central personality, film star, writer and stand-up comic Lewis Black (seen here with Pete Cashmore and Michael Gruen). Black wasn’t there for private web-based filesharing, alas: he knew the DJ, he told me, and a web 2.0 launch party is preferable to “drinking alone in a bar”.

The file sharing site, originally covered on Mashable by Kristen Nicole after its $1.25M funding round, is all about private hosting of files. The “io” stands for “in/out”, with Drop.io allowing you to post photos, voice and text via email, your phone, the web, embeddable widgets and more. Outputs include email alerts and RSS. The team see Box.net as competitive, although they claim admiration for the file-sharing service. Twitter and Pownce also seem to be rivals, although Drop.io doesn’t see them as such. Drop.io’s functionality was demoed upstairs, with a 7ft high screen displaying photos, text and other media uploaded live by attendees.

Drop.io shines when it comes to live blogging of events. SXSW in March could therefore be a make or break moment: with enough signage encouraging mobile users to post media to the service, they could have their “Twitter moment” (Twitter famously took off after Austin’s South by Southwest event last year) . That said, the addition of native multimedia support to Twitter could be a serious blow that knocks Drop.io out for the count.

The Drop.io page for the launch party can be found at drop.io/launchparty

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Ever since I’ve been involved in podcasting, one of the pillars of the community has been Rob Walch, probably best known from his show Podcast 411, a sort of Insider the Actor’s Studio for podcasting. Last year, though, he was hired on at Wizzard Media to be the Vice President of Podcaster Relations, a position in which he acts as a liason between the technical and sales folks at Wizzard to the media producers that use the network.

He had a chance to stop by Mashable Conversations this week to discuss podcasting in general. Aside from the long series of landmark headline grabbers Wizzard Media has achieved over the last year, we covered where podcasting has been, where it’s headed, and where it is with a clarity that can only come from being perched atop one of the most successful firms in the podcasting business.

The embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.

Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here.
Add directly to iTunes here (or give us a rating).
Add directly to your Zune here.

You can check out Wizzard Media here.

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Here at Mashable we see a lot of Digg clones, some are looking to compete directly with Digg (often in other countries) and some are looking to just incorporate more of a Digg-like voting system within their existing networks. But today we received a word from an upcoming site called Popularo, which has just come right out and said it. They want to be a true, blue alternative to Digg.

Spurned from ex-Digg users that have been fed up with the direction in which Digg has been headed this past year or so (the trouble with getting too mainstream!), The folks behind Popularo have seen first hand what goes on within the Digg community. Most of you Mashable readers are familiar with some of these same problems, the largest of which revolve around the voting system, which can often turn into a popularity contest, and the bandwagon mentality, which becomes especially rampant in the commenting system. Some Digg users have even considered Digg’s move towards becoming a social network to be a major cause of such rampant behavior, which could veer away from the core competencies of Digg’s community. How many Digg revolts have we had?


While Digg is furiously working to fix both these fronts, having tweaked its voting algorithm as well as its comments system, the changes weren’t enough for the Popularo team. Taking more drastic measures, Popularo addresses each of these major concerns, and looks to fix them head on.

So let’s just start from the beginning. Heading over to Popularo’s home page, you’ll see one item that’s available for voting (hot or not style), and the top items as determined by the community. Yep. Just one item to vote on. You can love it, hate it, or skip it. What you won’t find on this page, however, is the name of the person who submitted the item, what the original source is, or even what time it was submitted. Users that submit content can’t even share links or badges to get others to vote for the submission.

All of this data is considered erroneous by Popularo, and is tossed aside, encouraging users to focus on the central task at hand: looking at the content for what it’s worth, and removing all possible variables that may sway your decision. Of course, you can click on the story title to see the original content, but that’s all the additional context you’re going to get. What’s more, the items found on the front page will be exempt from voting, as they’ve already “won the prize.”

This makes way for more content to get some face time, and also removes the aura of Popularo actually being anything that could remotely be considered a popularity contest. Lastly, Popularo has no comments system. This drastically diminishes the interactive capabilities of Popularo, but that’s the point.

While I like some of Popularo’s considerations for “fixing” Digg, there are a few ways in which I feel Popularo is missing the mark. In randomizing and limiting the content that’s available for voting purposes, you’re already giving way to severe limiting structures that almost penalize the users of the community. Yes, it’s kind of fun to click through all the submissions like a hot or not game, but is it really giving everyone and every story the equal opportunity that Digg doesn’t?

Another aspect of Popularo that I find to be somewhat questionable is the lacking of a comment system. I understand that negative comments on Digg often get buried, and the comments can actually become a hindrance to the overall discussion of the content at hand, but that’s a direct result of community interaction (i.e. if that’s what the majority of the community members want to do, then that’s exactly what they will do).

I feel in making Popularo so bare-bones that it’s almost too naked to be a true Digg alternative to the majority of people. I completely respect Popularo’s attempt to rid the social news world of the confirmation trap, and with continued tweaks to the system here and there, I think Popularo could in fact be a useful alternative for some hornery Digg users out there.

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