I present to you, my newest startup:

The URL Shortener URL Shortener

http://1 -> http://bit.ly
http://2 -> http://goo.gl
http://3 -> http://youtu.be
http://4 -> http://su.pr


So much joy for so little URL typing.

Looking at the genius xkcd comic Gravity Wells got me thinking about the extreme sports of the future.
Mars' moon Deimos' escape velocity is only about 20 km/h (12mph) and can be escaped using a bicycle and a ramp.
Mars' other moon Phobos has a slightly stronger gravitational pull with an escape velocity of about 40 km/h (25mph).
We have pretty much exhausted the possibilities of extreme sports that can be done here on earth (a.k.a. "stupid shit") so what is the only possible evolution for the X Games of 2030? That's right: outer space.
Here are my suggestions:

1. Low gravity bike/roller blade/skateboard jumps on Deimos.
2. Synchronized space floating (like synchronized swimming but with a bunch of people with oxygen masks jump out of spaceship orbiting Phobos).
   
3. Space diving. Like sky diving but from outer space. This can be done on earth.
4. Low gravity pole vaulting. Someone like Sergey Bubka can possible clear a bar that is miles-high on Deimos.
5. Motorcycle jumping over craters on Phobos.

I am really looking forward to it all.

Soon after publishing my last post "Google's Starfish" here, I was very (unpleasantly) surprised to discover the whole post appear as a "note" on my Facebook page. I wouldn't have even noticed that, unless someone post a comment on that post, inside Facebook.
In the past, I did, on my own will, configure the RSS of pashabitz.com to appear on my Facebook.
But still, my natural reaction was to get extremely pissed, even though no explicit rule was probably broken here by Facebook. I've been trying to figure out why I got so mad. Here's what I came up with:

Change of the rules
Facebook changed the behavior in a non-trivial way without asking me first. Commonly, other sites only syndicate a small part of the external content and point back to the original. This is what Facebook did in the past too.
They still have a link to the "original post", but it is very non prominent.

Stealing content...
The whole text of my post on this blog appears as a standard Facebook entity (the "note") virtually exactly as if it was published on Facebook itself. There is absolutely zero motivation and additional value for the reader to click-through to my own site, where I actually posted the content. Also remember that Google doesn't like seeing the exact same content on two different URLs.

...and making money off that content
Guess what - Facebook display an ad on the "note" page which is a copy of my blog post. They get the money for showing that ad.


What do you think?

Reading "The Starfish and the Spider" now. The book is about how decentralized organizations and entities (the "starfish") without clear hierarchy and leadership are equipped to defeat classic, centralized organizations (the "spider"). One of the first examples given in the book are the p2p music sharing sites that defeated the big record labels.
I immediately started thinking about the centralized giants of software and the internet, and who their "starfish" were.
So with Microsoft it's easy: the Linux operating system is the starfish that "defeated" it.
What about Google (the web search / web advertisement spider) and Amazon (the online shopping spider)? Who (or "what") is going to be their starfish? I think inventing that starfish will be quite interesting.

During the current horrible economic conditions, many business leaders across the world are scratching their heads trying to survive and looking to find new income sources.
Meanwhile, the new fad that's taking the world wide web by storm is the usage of obscure TLDs (top level domains, that's the few letters coming after the last dot in the web address), such as http://bit.ly, http://cli.gs/ etc.

So, here at pashabitz.com, I will provide a way for existing companies, large and small, to transform their businesses and expand into new and exciting markets, using these obscure TLDs (ideas are free of charge, as usual):

1. An existing provider of services to the enterprise market - bigco.com...
...can reinvent as a specialized adult-content company - bigco.ck (using the TLD of Cook Islands)

2. A restaurant table reservation service - eat.com...
...can increase revenues by creating a site for fellatio lovers - eat.me (using the TLD of Montenegro)

3. Publically traded Beckton, Dickinson and Co, that uses it's site bd.com to sell fine medical supplies...
...can increase revenue by restocking and setting up shop at bd.sm (using the TLD of San Marino)

4. Libraries Unlimited, a fine resource for librarians at lu.com...
...can sell a wide array of products at lu.be (using the TLD of Belgium). Things like... like... for car engines?

5. Matematicians at pi.com, who must also be suffering during these times of economic turmoil...
...can sell software for tech-savvy prostitute managers at pi.mp (Northern Mariana Islands)

6. Sexaholics Anonymous (sa.org) surely don't need my help, but if they ever give up on giving up...
...why not cater for the leather loving crowd at sa.do (Dominican Republic)

And if all of the above doesn't help and you just totally run out of ideas, there's a whole nation in Africa that was set up just to help you out. It's called Benin, and its TLD is .bj.

Update:
Apparently, the Cook Islands have little sense of humor:

"Domains considered profane, e.g. 'blow.co.ck', 'mybig.co.ck', etc, will not be considered on any level"

 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ck)
Thanks, Ofer.

Amazon Elastic MapReduce

Amazon Elastic MapReduce is a web service that enables businesses, researchers, data analysts, and developers to easily and cost-effectively process vast amounts of data. It utilizes a hosted Hadoop framework running on the web-scale infrastructure of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

80 Legs
(Still in private beta)

80legs is a platform for running web-scale applications, or any application that requires fast access to data from across the entire Internet. We give developers access to the bandwidth and computing power of over 50,000 computers at prices anyone can afford. With 80legs, web-scale analyis is for everyone.