We all want to have our voices heard. It’s why many of us blog, tweet, share, comment and engage on the Internet. Despite what you read by the mainstream articles about ways to make money on some of these activities, I along with many others don’t do these activities for money nor ever desire to do so. Let me make that point clear: I will never place a banner Ad on TechYell or plan to get paid for any activity on this site. It’s simply my voice, my opinion on things happening around my interests.

That said, it is very frustrating when you write something that gets little attention until bigger sites pick up on the story later on and get the majority of the credit such as my piece on why the iPad had no camera. It’s also frustrating to see no traffic on something that you felt was worth reading. I’ve been very busy the past few weeks but I felt that I should write about an idea that Holden Page had wrote about yesterday. Holden came up with an idea of creating a TechMeme-type service that was purely focused on non-mainstream blogs, the indie bloggers so to speak. Like artists in Indie Music & Films, the unknown independent bloggers in many ways are the underground unit of news that relies on word-of-mouth, tools like Twitter and some luck to pick up viewers. We are a very passionate community that like to contain complete control over our voices and talk freely about what we want, when we want at a pace that fits our lives. We don’t have article quotas, deadlines, list of topics, list of taboo topics like those who write for mainstream websites. That’s no disrespect for those who do write for those sites, we just have a different agenda which also gives a more personal perspective. Yes we would all love to be internet superstars but that’s a secondary goal.

A couple weeks back a very popular (I’m assuming that will be excluded due to popularity) independent blogger known as the Scobleizer sparked discussions around curation, what Holden is proposing is in many ways relevant to that topic. LayeredByte can be a curator to the Indie Blog Posts related to the topics picked up by the mainstream sites but hopefully also the posts that talk about the topics they chose not to in the back rooms. Curation of unstructured and disjointed data is incredibly challenging, especially if the plan is to automate this activity.

I don’t know how exactly Holden plans to execute this idea but I’d love to see it and will help as much as I can if the vision becomes clear. Creating such site has many complexities that would need to be addressed though such as what blogs are accepted and which are considered too mainstream? Where is that fine line and can it be clearly defined? How do you group articles on specific topics without it being a manual process? How does rank work without bias? Will this just create a new popularity contest site that a select few would benefit? How many people besides this indie community want to find these sites over the mainstream ones? These are only the tip of the iceberg of challenges in such a system. The intention is trying to solve a problem but it’s not an easy problem to solve, I’d sure love to see it though!

Fake Steve Jobs today wrote a humorous piece that made me laugh but one phrase of the article caught my eye: “let the dark energy flow away”. It made me think, does questioning why we need something make us the bad guy? Is it wrong to be a critic to something that hasn’t been touched, seen or used by anyone outside of Apple’s walls? Should we all just be Mr. Optimistic? This is Apple after all which has a history of making successes in device types that others have failed.

Seriously, I’m not even an Apple user, but I wouldn’t go discouraging people not to buy something that I haven’t even seen but I will tell them not just buy on impulse. I believe Apple makes great “closed” products largely because they have gained the trust and satisfaction with almost every product that individual person has owned from Apple. I’m not a huge fan of the “closed culture” but it’s not fair for me to complain about something that I have not even seen yet. From what I here from macrumors.com and gizmodo.com this Tablet will be pretty awesome and will make many people want it immediately.

Will I buy an Apple Tablet, most likely not but I’ll never say never. I have a PC, a laptop, a Media Center and an Android SmartPhone already. Call me a dinosaur but my life is just fine with these few items as more gadgets can sometimes defeat the ultimate purpose of making life easier.. Do I see a need for something like a Tablet, sure I can think of several places that this form-factor would work but unless it fills a significant void that I can’t do with me other devices, can I really justify the price? Plus, we know there will be cheaper alternatives, there already are. We have become a culture of “want it and want it now”…even if it really doesn’t make life a whole lot better. For the most part I see the Apple Tablet being initially a success due to it becoming a Status Symbol. There will without a doubt be lines the night before at every Apple Store. For some, the will skip the mortgage payment in order to have a handheld device that you can manipulate with the simple touch of a finger.

If you want one because you have examined your needs, your budget and you can afford one or two, go ahead, because any ways it’s what you think that matters, isn’t it? But my advice is always wait and see, let Apple’s device speak for itself and then let other consumers wait in line and read their feedback.