Weekend Blog Roundup

I was out Friday on my first vacation day of the summer (I’m stockpiling time for my wedding this December), and now I’m trying to catch up on everything I missed – in just one day, plus the weekend. Here’s a roundup of some of some of what grabbed at least a few seconds of attention:

• Mitch Joel at Twist Image ponders whether “Boliao,” a term he heard at Podcast Singapore, will stick at all:

Boliao had been defined to me by a PodCamp attendee as “no
substance” and I’ve had a hard time finding other definitions for
Boliao beyond this one from the Urban Dictionary:
Boliao – “Hokkien term. Meaning very bored and without anything better
to do. Usually used with a negative connotation.” With this example:
“She’s so boliao, wasting her time singing nursery songs.”
My nascent understanding is that there are tons of people spending
tons of time watching and creating content that is now called Boliao.
Just random, with no substance, but it grabs tons of traffic and is
highly viral. And, with everything the youth latches on to, they’ve
taken a negative term and turned it into a positive.
Again, my understanding is that Boliao is now a good thing.

There’s a lot more at his blog, so read the whole thing.

• Yahoo now has health search shortcuts. What differentiates theirs from Google’s and others is that they include links to community resources like Yahoo Answers:

I now have a better understanding of common symptoms and treatments after reading up on the latest clinical trials on MedlinePlus. I also found a Yahoo! Group that she can join to connect with others living with the condition. And to get more detailed, I did a search for ‘levothyroxine,’ a common medication used to treat hypothyroidism, to learn about the possible side effects.

• • Organic’s Threeminds covers the WhoIsSick mashup.

• • Mashable covers 30+ Firefox themes. Pink or wood, anyone?

• • Mashable writes how MSNBC thought a Fake Al Sharpton was real – and quoted him.

• • I’m still hooked on Facebook’s Scrabulous. This isn’t new.

• Jeremiah Owyang says Wal-Mart’s Facebook strategy is “sinking.”

I’m checking up on the group, and have noticed that the group size is
very low, in fact only 934 members. The Web Strategy Group that I
promote is at 1500 members in just a few weeks longer, and it’s
certainly a much smaller ‘brand’ than Wal-Mart.

Note that Jeremiah does this without a dollar spent on advertising.

• Mary Meeker says YouTube ads will ad $4.8 billion to Google’s bottom line, but her math’s off and she apparently means $4.8 MILLION (Techdirt has the recap). The only logical conclusion is that Mary Meeker is Dr. Evil. I could just see her a couple years ago videoconferencing with Google’s boardroom suggesting they buy YouTube for $1.65 million. Really, has anyone seen Mary Meeker and Dr. Evil in the same place at the same time?
  • Postscript: I noticed there’s an Austin Powers reference in the Techdirt comments, and I’m sure it’s elsewhere, but I’m proud to say I came up with the idea independently. I’m just covering my butt so I don’t get flamed on Techdirt. The image is my own cobbling via Google Image Search selections from New Media Musings (Mary) and The Writing Company (Evil).