What’s going on HoopStick?  How long does a routine maintenance have to last before its no longer routine? My earlier review and forecast predicted this service would be dead within 12 months.  Looks like it may have taken less than half that to join the dead pool.

Forget the stock market, it’s falling apart. Invest your money in OneSeason instead, a newly launched San Francisco-based startup that lets you invest real money in professional athletes.

Seems like sound advice for your money, unless you actually care about things like “money” or “sound advice”.  In what is essentially a hybrid of the stock exchange and your local bookie, without the oversight or rules of either, this start-up is unlikely to see more than “one season” on in web.

Th “virtual-stock-market-using-real-money” boat has floated once before.  StockGeneration sucked in millions of dollars getting people to invest in make-believe stocks before facing legal challenges and disappearing, much to the chagrin of thousands of “investors.”

Sroka isn’t being modest about the companies potential, either. He says once the site reaches 3 million users after a few years, revenue “could hit $50 million to $100 million.” He added, “The ultimate potential for the website is far greater than the $800 million fantasy sports industry.”

The only fantasy here is the CEO’s expectation of signing up 3 million suckers. 

He shoots, he misses!

If you do like the concept of trading shares of your favorite atheletes, ignore Mike’s recommendation and have a look at ProTrade.  It’s basically the same idea without the need to deposit real money.

The Good: Spending your money on virtual shares of Jorge Posada is way more interesting than dealing with less predicable things like company stocks or mutual funds.

The Bad: Might need anti-depressants after losing your cash here.

TechCrud Grade: D-

Forecast: Either offline within 12 months due to legal troubles, or relaunched as a virtual money game.

In this vid, TSR raps about proper design and coding of your site.

Good advice. More crud like this over on his YouTube page.

TechCrud Grade: A

Out of this comes a cool piece of crud from the developers at Echo Nest.  MoreCowbell.dj is a site that lets you upload your MP3s and digitally add cowbell to it.  It’s not a half-assed effort either.  Your music is analyzed and the cowbell sound is inserted with proper tune and tempo, as if Gene Frenkle himself is playing along on the track.  You can also choose to add Christopher Walken soundclips into the mix.

After your upload is done, you can get a HTML snippet to add your creation to your blog or MySpace page.

It’s crud like this that makes the Internet worthwhile.

TechCrud Grade: A

Like|Umm - It’s a Digg wannabe, but not as interesting, useful, or fun.  And by the way, your domain name like umm… sucks.

TechCrud Grade: F

koornk - Ditto the proceeding review, replacing Digg with Twitter.

TechCrud Grade: F

ur tbox - A social network for young narcissists. Nice looking site, but it’s all style and no substance. Where’s the talent?

TechCrud Grade: C

Perhaps the easy money is done, but is it really the end of Web 2.0?  I say no.  The concepts that define Web 2.0 will continue on.  Sites built on user generated content, daily launches of new social networking sites, paper thin revenue models and business plans,  even silly domain names and pastel logos… these things will not go away.

Mark my words, for every Web 2.0 death we see in the coming months, another start-up will be waiting to take it’s place.  Team Cyprus won’t stop believing.  Neither will I.

Web 2.0 lives!  Bring on the crud!

Find out how people see your website, photo or ad and which areas are getting most of the attention. This artificial intelligence service simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals.

Feng-GUI is very easy to use.  You can start uploading images and generating simulated heatmaps within moments, with no registration needed.  Here’s what it spit out for a screenshot of our site.

Feng GUI likes the pretty pictures.

One minor annoyance as a webmaster is the need to screenshot their site and upload it as an image.  Hopefully future versions will include built-in thumbnailing to allow webmasters to simply input a URL.

Feng-GUI cleverly borrows inspiration for its name from Feng Shui, the modern Chinese practice of arranging objects to generate good energy.  Like it’s namesake, I suspect Feng-GUI also incorporates some degree of bullshit into their algorithms.  Take my next image for example.

Who littered? Feng GUI wants to know!

While Feng-GUI surely fits the definition of tech crud, It is always refreshing to see a startup with an actual technological development behind it over yet another regurgitated “social networking for [bleh]” business model. In that respect Feng-GUI earns good marks from this reviewer.

The Good: Easy and cheap, just the way I like them.

The Bad: Not all that useful.

TechCrud Grade: B-

Forecast: Relegated to life as a tech novelty, despite improvements in its technology.

As the story goes, TechCruch had created a mobile network on Loopt for their users and now find themselves tacked onto this lawsuit as a co-defendant.

As Michael Arrington reports on TC,

I called Earthcomber President Jim Brady this morning to verify the lawsuit. At first he wouldn’t answer - all he did was try to explain how he’s been wronged by Loopt. When pressed he did confirm that the lawsuit was filed, but quickly added that he didn’t really mean to press it with us. He wants to go to court with Loopt, but is willing to quickly work something out with us to make this go away, he told me, hinting that he’d like to partner with us. He also said he’s been desperately trying to get me on the phone but hasn’t been able to, so he decided to sue us instead.

TechCrud commentary removed (see below)

Arrington continues,

We will not be bullied, and people who file frivolous lawsuits need to be put down. I would rather run TechCrunch into the ground and go out of business than let this guy win.

Go get ‘em, Mike!

We’ll continue to track the progress of the situation.

TechCrud Update: Anonymous lawsuit threats coming from Chicago based IP addresses scare me. The following statements are hereby retracted:

• If what Arrington says is true, Jim Brady is a major league asshole.
• Jim Brady is the cruddiest person on the web.

I will add that it is not true that the staff at Earthcomber is required to give Jim Brady oral sex as a condition of employment or that Jim himself is an actor in several gay porn movies. I repeat, the proceeding statements should be considered to be untrue.

Thank you, that is all.

I am a fan of Woot.com. This was probably evident in my assessment of HoopStick a couple days ago.

On a near monthly basis, Woot offers their “Random Crap” item.  When it goes up for sale (usually during a “Woot Off”), it always sells out in a matter of seconds, usually crashing their site in the process.  Regular shoppers see this item as the holy grail of all their offerings because for $8 you you have a chance of getting something really good on the cheap.  At the bare minimum it’s entertaining to see the junk they dig out of their warehouse to send you.

Here’s the crap that landed on my front porch today-

My crap! Click to enlarge.

Nine 64 MB memory sticks

Lovely generic earbuds

My radical new FM radio

Sweeeet! ;p

Buying this crap, I’m bound by THE HOLY CRAP COMMANDMENTS, #2 of which is “Thou shalt not whine and complain when some people’s crap turns out to be nicer than yours.”   I shall abide.

Thanks Woot!

From the daily REJECT pile comes Peegly.com, another “come confess your secrets” type of site.

In their own words,

Peegly is a virtual pillow intended for your inmost thoughts, feelings and emotions. A big, soft and good-natured pillow is always ready to hear you out and help you… Here you can tell just anything, share any emotions you seethe with or are overwhelmed with.

“Right, come share anything and everything, because…”

All new sentiments appear on the main page of the portal, which gives every visitor a personal ‘podium’ to declare their feelings.

“…we want to publish your most intimate thoughts publicly, where everyone can read and ridicule them.”

Anonymous submissions are added to the site immediately with no moderation or email verification needed.  Visitors also have the option to comment on others’ posts.  (There may be great potential for fun in this.)

The Good: Cheaper than a psychiatrist;  Easier to confess your sins to a virtual pillow than going to church.

The Bad: Another creepy mascot.  That tasseled pillow looks all to eager to hear my secrets.

TechCrud Grade: F

Forecast: Who cares?  Probably will be found and overrun by spammers within 6 months.