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I forgot my own advice and pulled a Chuck Olsen last night. While eating enchiladas and waiting for my plane, I noticed Twitterank forcing itself into my pals’ twitterstreams. I glanced at it and made a joke about how it was all a scheme I concocted to gather passwords, make Twitter hurry the oAuth implementation they initiated in the first place, and, as lagniappe, mock everyone’s vanity. It seemed funny at the time. Or, at least, it seemed hypothetically funny to the half-dozen nerds I had in mind.

Tantek retweeted said link with his usual @t compacting of characters. This is all fine, we’re still enjoying a little nerd backchannel at this point. Then Oliver Marks decides to use T’s retweet as the basis of a story on ZDNet. Evidently some people grant ZDNet an aura of journalistic authority, and a meme was spawned. ‘Twitterank is a phishing scam’ spread almost as fast as the app built to hijack your network and replicate itself. Ryo Chijiiwa, who was just hacking up something while waiting for the next go

Oh, You Wanted the Douchy Web?September 11

The KGB is running Russia. Las Manitas is shut down. And Yammer is the best thing at Techcrunch 50.

If your nips perk up when hearing about an app that mimeographed every feature (official and unofficial) and UI pattern of another stupidly well-known app, then tacked on some gating and integration mechanisms, have at it.

Meanwhile, I’ll be in the lab with my pals working on a Web that is handmade and big-hearted.

Small Tweaks, Bigger ExperiencesSeptember 5

Maybe you’re like me, and you’re way over email notifications. I turn these off almost instantly. But, still, I’d love to know more about who is trying to connect to me. So, when Twitter made a subtle tweak to the way they showed you who is following you (giving you most recent followers first, instead of by when the account was created), it made all the difference. Before, the button was almost useless. It would only show me the same early adopters, and there was no way I was going to page through the lists of followers to try to detect who was new. But now, I can occasionally look at the list and maybe notice some new names I recognize. Sweet.

5 Ways to Swap Your Pride for Some Page ViewsAugust 22

1. ‘Write’ (and we use the term loosely) posts that are nothing but lists. As a wise man said: writing by people who don’t write for people who don’t read.

2. Gratuitous shout outs and meaningless links any monkey could make.

3. Overstatement. On a grand scale. Like you’re still in grad school and it’s 3 in the morning.

4. Troll Techmeme and add your +1. (I recommend this knowing just how boring it is now. But you’re a page view ho, so nothing should get in your way.)

5. Show up at every nerd event, say nothing original, recap what every other person said (and says at every other event that feels exactly the same). Pretend they are both sexy and charming. Take their pictures. Tag liberally.

Repeat often & you’ll get some leg tonight for sure.

In love with your anvil?August 5

You ever get in trouble with friends and family because you have that far away look, dreaming about something you’re working on? Sketch uncontrollably? Write lists and ideas in the margins of a book you’re supposed to be reading? Find it easy to be fan of great work?

Huzzah, there’s hope.

You already know that it doesn’t matter:

* what software platform you choose

* what launch strategy you herniate on

* what parties you are seen at

* who blogs about you

* which startup conf. you first demo at

* what the logo looks like

* where your space is

Right, I overstate the case to make a point. They matter in a minor way. But startups, like the rest of life, are a test of constant failures. What is the thing that refreshes and renews you and gets you back to the textmate file? Fame, greed, insecurity, opportunism. They go only so far. The greatest of these is love.