In what I like to call "the real world" -ie, the place where no one has heard of commontag, Freebase, or Zemanta, and maybe not even gizmodo - the #tag is the closest you're ever going to get. People use it on twitter and instagram, and advertisers have embraced it. Do any of these giant companies want their users going to other sites? Hell no. Facebook brought back the walled garden, and open systems are going to suffer.

Now that we've realized it's unlikely to happen, would you even want it if it did? If you add an ubuntu link on pinboard, would you want to instantly see all the old ubuntu stories on slashdot? Tag a flickr picture with "hotdog" and see all the tweets about hot dogs? Or take a picture with some app that adds its own tag (#vsco or some such) and see all the other pictures taken with that app? Some of these things actually work, but why? I could see doing something like subscribing to only slashdot/bizarro or gizmodo/tv in your RSS reader, but take a look at the RSS market and no one really gives a shit about that either.

I think wide-area tagging is quasi-useless. Even in closed silos (twitter, instagram), it's a messy sea of miscategorization and gamification. If it helps out the sites search engine, great. If it helps your own organization in whatever tool, great. It may even be good in workgroups - i'm interested to see how it pans out in OS X Mavericks.

Most cap at 8 or 16g. Way too little for graphic intensive applications.

I went to New England Computer Camp. 8086 Assembly in the morning, Trapeze and Fire Eating in the afternoon. That was an awesome camp.

Thank you for proving the parent's point.

A lot of critics liked it, but quite a few, including Rex Reed and David Edelstein destroyed it. I'm with them, personally. It seems to be fairly polarizing.

Or read both, and make up your own mind. Everything is slanted, and slimming your intake to just a few trusted sources is dangerous on either side of the political spectrum.

This is the type of scenario that social media excels at, but most people don't have white house press credentials, or correspondents in kandahar, or the patience or experience to dig through piles of legal documents. Stories like enron, what caused the financial crisis, the CIA torture memos, etc all need experienced journalists who need to be paid.

That said, your point is totally valid. Why pay for something that is now free? Personally, I'm willing to pay for the increase quality, both of journalism and UI. But my cap is probably around $8-10/mo. And I'm a fanboy.

I totally agree. Still way to many animations and eye candy. UI designers should keep the focus on what works well and fast not what looks slick, but the slick looking designs are the ones that get picked in the meetings...

My favorite part is the "find people faster".... that's what you're selling? exactly how is that faster, or at all different from your competitors? My treo 300 could get to contacts quite quickly, and the iphone search is easy and works well - is this a still a problem?

If Seattle or Baltimore wins, I'd think about it. Seems like whoever wins will get a giant influx of nerds.

If someone is curious about computer tinkering these days, I feel like their first toe in the water will be with HTML/JS/AJAX rather than BASIC/ResEdit/Etc. ipad will definitely have a text editor and file sharing... and as many have said, if you REALLY want to get under the hood, they can step up to a linux box (or any other desktop OS).

besides, jquery touch looks much, MUCH more fun than 10 PRINT "VOIDSTIN RULES!" 20 GOTO 10

http://www.jqtouch.com/

So, if the revenue really comes from honestly entertained consumers trading money for an enjoyable experience, fine. Do that. Stop it with the text message scams and toolbar downloads..

But, since $9.99/mo in hidden text message charges > $1 for a tractor, it seems to me that the tractor is the red herring, in order to get you to the far more profitable malware. But Zynga can easily prove me wrong by stopping these practices....