Macrumors.com reports that Apple’s servers are hosed with the gazillions of people trying to activate new iPhone 3Gs, and existing iPhone users who are downloading the new iPhone system and firmware:

Notice: The server problems extend to users who are trying to upgrade their iPhones and iPod Touches to the latest firmware update. In fact, readers should avoid upgrading to iPhone 2.0 until these issues are resolved. Until you are able to connect to the iTunes servers, your iPhone will be left in an unusable state after the 2.0 upgrade.

I upgraded last night, and although the weird codes aren’t exactly the same from last night’s system upgrade link compared to today’s more official upgrade, I’m running 2.0 and mostly enjoying it.

My thoughts on the new apps are still being formed, but a good amount of them that I’ve seen recently pretty much stink. Note to Twitteriffic developers: If you want people to more easily read their tweets, try a dark-colored text on a lighter background. Take a couple design classes, for God’s sake. I’m still looking for a decent Twitter application. C’mon, Twinkle! I konw you’re working on something…

I just started Plurking. There was no warning, it just started happening. Plurk is some sort of Twitter 2.0, I guess. It definitely allows for some better interaction between you and your contacts, but I’m still on the fence about it.

Until there’s a Twinkle-style iPhone app, I don’t think I’ll really fall in love with Plurk. Plus Plurk is pretty much the dumbest name I’ve ever heard.

First let me tell you that I spelled Hippopotamus correctly on the first try. And I think that’s nice.

So there’s this web browser that everyone in the world uses called Firefox. And it’s a pretty good browser, there are lots of cool plug-ins, like the Greasemonkey script that adds “in bed” to the end of the main cnn.com headline. And by the way, ironicsans.com is one of my all-time favorite blogs to read, I’d recommend that it’s your favorite blog to read from now on, too. Anyhow, Firefox is pretty decent.

Enter Fire Eagle, a new Yahoo! enterprise that’s being run by Tom Coates, who incedentally once linked to a flickr photo of mine. It’s some sort of secure location sharing type site and sounds cool.

My gripe is this, why is it called Fire Eagle? Maybe that’s the new trend in developing applications and websites, much as flickr started the whole “get rid of an e if it’s followed by an r” thing (and other sites have followed such as tumblr.com). I should just start registering websites that have the word “fire” and an animal afterwards.

• fireant.com (probably taken)
• firehawk.com (my “replica” Fire Eagle site – maybe I can sell the domain to Google, Yahoo’s competitor)
• firemarmot.com (my Big Lebowski fan site)
• fireseal.com (also already taken, most likely)
• fireteledu.com (the teledu, of course, is a stink badger from the island of Java – and also the name of my ski team that raises money to fight MS)
• firefish.com (the first fully-aquatic web browser, perhaps?)

There are plenty of great names out there ready to be discovered, with plenty of meaning and wit. Fire Eagle probably isn’t one of them. I’d think that Yahoo could pay some smart people to develop some better names. I volunteer for this.

*Fire Hippopotamus ©2008 Josh Mishell – Don’t you go on stealing my name, now, developers.

One of the really unique things about Facebook is that you can install third party applications. Which allows people to play scrabble from Facebook, check the snow report at your favorite resort, etc. These can be really cool, like Scrabulous (which is in danger of being shut down for copyright infringement). Lots of times, however, these applications are crippled by poor programming. Most applications ask if you’d like to send a request to other users to add the aforementioned application. Which is cool, if it’s optional to solicit your friends. Some applications require that you solicit your friends to access some key part of the application, such as quiz results. For instance, a stupid quiz I took about grammar wouldn’t give me my results unless I basically spammed 20 of my friends to add the application. So fuck those developers. A small degree of common sense (like thinking that maybe we don’t want to inundate our friends with junk mail) goes a long way.

Had a discussion with someone today about how the number of hits you get may not translate into real customers. A percentage of these hits come from spammers and people who aren’t remotely interested in what you’re talking about. And even if you can factor those people out (especially when the spammers are trying to mega-comment-spam your site), you can’t always know that even the people who arrive are interested.

Take work. A simple website I built got a decent number of hits today from a large newspaper’s blog subdomain. A few more clicks with Google Analytics (which is a must have for any website no matter the size or content) revealed that this particular blog was about soccer (which is also weird because I used to write a soccer blog for a retail client at my old agency). I navigated to the blog in question and saw that the link to our site was in a list of other holiday-themed links at the end of a lengthy soccer article.

So people were reading the post and clicking on his links. How many of them are over 21? How many drink beer? These questions can’t really be answered. I do get a good idea of how many people click on this guy’s links, though.

I guess that’s the tough thing in word of mouth marketing, it’s difficult to fully quantify the people we’re actually reaching out to. But I need to keep motoring to create the best content I can.

Incidentally, I was looking (in vain) for a photo for this entry and stumbled upon Dashalytics – a dashboard widget for Google Analytics. It’s a nice and simple interface to keep track of the websites you administer. Seems easier than going into Google Analytics every day, and you can open the same widget multiple times (to have multiple sites up on the dashboard at once). I never use dashboard, so maybe this is a good way to implement it into my life.

Woot.com is a pretty cool shopping website. They sell one item a day, and there’s usually a very limited quantity for sale. Sales begin for each item at Midnight. They also publish an RSS feed, so I can read via Bloglines Often, the item sells out before I wake up. So I check what’s up there before I go to sleep. A trademark of each woot sale is a sarcastic description of the product. Not just your run-of-the-mill quick rundown of the product’s features (although those are featured after the creative copywriting that begins the sales pitch). Read today’s description over at the Woot blog. I think they’re funny, engaging, and compelling.

Occasionally, Woot will sell items back to back for a day or two. It’s like a Woot “everything must go” sale. Every few minutes, they’re selling out of shit, and new shit is going online. It’s pretty addictive. I’ll try to post next time one of those happens. I think it’s called a “Woot-Off” (which is sort of a lame name).

I’ve only bought one thing there, two 2-packs of walkie talkie wristwatches. These bulky things have to charge for like 10 hours, and are pretty ridiculous. Radios are pretty inexpensive these days. But if you happen to have a four year old nephew, a wristwatch with a 2-way radio is pretty amazing. The above photo is from the day I gave them to him. We were in Sunflower Market and basically screwed around the whole time my brother was shopping.

But there’s never anything on woot that I ever find exciting. They sell a Microsoft Zune pretty much like twice a month (and always in brown!), a DLP projector about as frequently, and some other nerdy shit.

Woot also operates shirt.woot.com – where they well cool limited run t-shirts every day. They also have a weekly design competition known as a “derby”, where the 3 top-rated designs go into production just a few days after they’ve been submitted. So you can go from schmoe to hero quickly. I need to try to enter one of these sometime soon. Woot also runs wine.woot.com, but I don’t much care about that.

Enter steepandcheap.com. It’s woot for skiers. And snowboarders, too, in all fairness. Steep & Cheap operates in continuous “Woot-Off” mode, so things are always for sale there – at least a few items a day, many days probably a bunch more. They say the products for sale are between 50% and 80% off. Looks to be pretty decent if you’re into ski gear. A day into this site, and it seems to be mainly clothing and goggles, but I have no idea. Additionally, if the current product piques your interest but they’re sold out of your size or what-have-you, there are handy product links to backcountryoutlet.com. After seeing this, I figured that steepandcheap.com is operated by backcountry.com and it’s a great way to drive traffic to their site. Turns out steepandcheap has been around a while (since at least 2004).

I like the idea so much that I reset my homepage to there. I’ll keep it up for a week or so, and will see if any items are worth it. So far it’s just been snowboard clothes – which isn’t my cup of tea.

I wonder how many other websites are out there with this same business model. Feel free to point me to other sites that use this one-at-a-time business model.

I am going to Detroit for a wedding. The Comedians of Comedy are playing at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor that weekend. I’m definitely going. By myself. I was going to try to make a comment on their myspace page about it, and the following error came up.

Error: You must be someone’s friend to make comments about them.

Yeah, um, that’s totally wrong. Just ask Mister Boswell.

sIFR looks cool, may use it for some websites, including this one.

Have you ever wanted to legally share music over the internet through iTunes? Your wait has come to an end. Simplify Media allows you to share your library with up to 30 friends (or computers) across the world. FOR FREE! Holy crapballs. I like this solution for a variety of reasons. I have lots of music at home and can’t fit it all onto my laptop or ipod – Simplify Media makes it so I don’t have to worry about that crap anymore.

I think that it doesn’t allow you to share iTunes Music Store purchases, and that makes sense (stupid DRM).

Do you know me and want to share music? Drop me a line, leave me a comment, call me on my phone, get in touch with me.

TinyURL Firefox Extension is a handy little Firefox Add-On. You install it and then you can right click on a page or a link and you can make a TinyURL address. A tiny little pop-up comes up and notifies you that your URL has been created and has been copied to your clipboard. Pretty nice for posting to places like Yahoo! Groups because they often screw up long URLs. But it’s also a nice way to hide a joke where the URL could be a dead giveaway.