Spare me the “it’s a beta product” speech. I know it is, and so does everyone else. It’s been in beta forever. That doesn’t excuse the slowness does it?

It seems the problem started when google released their ‘premium’ service for businesses, including mail, spreadsheet, and a calendar.

I’m just venting — it’s annoying

Forbes is reporting that Skype has “outrun” Myspace. They make this claim based on the number of users the respective companies have.

Skype reports having 113 Million users. Myspace (as of Aug. 08) reports having just cleared 100 Million users.

I think this is a poor comparison when it is the only inidicator used for comparative analysis. I took a look at what Google said. Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time.

While Skype may have more users (and much more financial backing), myspace still rules the roost when it comes to sheer searches, and popularity. I’ve seen Myspace plastered over every media outlet I can think of. They’re everywhere.

Is forbes backing Skype? Maybe this is something for the sharesleuth to investigate. The guys over there are pretty good about digging up information.

Click the image to view the full trend report generated by Google.

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

I signed up a couple of days ago and it was pretty painless. If you can make an  80×80 image, you’ve got an avatar. Simply register, activate your account, and upload your avatar. After their reviewers are done ‘rating’ it (using the MPAA style of rating) you can begin seeing your gravatar here on the website when you make a comment. Cool eh?

As long as the email you sign up with gravatar is the same one you use here, you’ll see your gravatar on the comments here.

That’s all it takes.