Cal Lectures with Google

While UC Berkeley has been sharing a limited stream of its lectures as public videos since 2001, it is stepping up the effort with a dedicated Cal page in Google Video. In fact, sharing the valuable access is part of its curriculum strategy, part of the wave of 'coursecasting' as Reuters notes. Currently more than a dozen college courses and symposia are available, with more to be added in the coming months.
(Very much in the spirit of public education, I might add. w00t, alma mater!)

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:49 PM
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The Search In Paperback, With New Chapter

Well, I'm stuck in Atlanta, waiting for a delayed flight. My wife and I hit the bookstore and what does she find but the paperback edition of The Search, the one with the new chapter. I'm mildly surprised, as it's not supposed to be out till Monday, but there it was. I've been meaning to post some teasers from the new chapter. Thanks to Delta's utter hopelessness, here is the first of a number of installations I'll post over the next few weeks.

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Barely a year has passed since I finished final edits on The Search, which was originally published in September of 2005. I sent the final manuscript to my editor in April of 2005 (yep, it takes nearly six months to get a book out once the manuscript is finished; books, like democracies, are deliberate and plodding beasts). Since then, an awful lot has stayed constant. Google remains the undisputed king of search, Wall Street, and the Internet, and a host of Google’s competitors continue to wring their hands over what do to about it.

But an awful lot has changed, and the pace is quickening. Put mildly, it’s been a busy year in the world that search impacts. Which is to say, pretty much the entire world, from the executive suites at Amazon and Microsoft to the governments of France, Germany, China and the United States.

Google Dances With Dragons
So let’s start in China, with a nod toward the US Department of Justice. If you’ve read this far, that means you read Chapter 8, a chapter starring, among others, Sergey Brin and his company’s tortured decision process as it relates to entering the Chinese market. Well, regardless of the sleepless nights, in the past year Google has entered China with gusto. It not only opened offices and poached staff from Microsoft (prompting an unsuccessful lawsuit from Redmond), it also launched a Chinese native site (Google.cn) and agreed to the rules of the Chinese government (in short, the site is censored).

Now, as I pointed out earlier, this is not a new development for US Internet companies – Yahoo, Microsoft, and many other information services had already submitted their products to Chinese censorship. But when Google made the move, well, that got some attention.

On January 23 Google announced the launch of Google.cn. In a prepared statement defending the move, Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel for Google, wrote: "Google.cn will comply with local Chinese laws and regulations…In deciding how best to approach the Chinese--or any--market, we must balance our commitments to satisfy the interest of users, expand access to information, and respond to local conditions."

In other words, Sergey Brin and Larry Page had argued themselves into entering the world’s largest developing market, just as it seemed they would when I spoke to Brin a year before in Davos. And while Yahoo and Microsoft can go into China without arousing the passions of the US government, Google apparently can not.

Two days after Google announced its service, US Congressmen Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who chairs a House subcommittee on human rights, called immediately for a hearing. His goal: To explore the “operating procedures” of Internet companies who operate in China. Clearly Smith smelled blood: because of its towering profits and seemingly contradictory “Do No Evil” motto, Google was an easy target.

Smith was also spurred into action by disclosures in the press that on multiple occasions Yahoo had cooperated with Chinese government requests for information on suspected dissidents. As a result, at least two Chinese citizens, including a researcher for the New York Times, ended up incarcerated. And Microsoft piled further fuel on the fire when – at the request of the Chinese government - it summarily deleted the online journal a prominent Chinese dissident had kept on Microsoft’s blogging service.

On February 16, 2006, representatives from Yahoo, Cisco, Google, and Microsoft found themselves on the hot seat, but the warmest bum belonged to Eliot Schrage, newly installed VP of Corporate Affairs for Google. Congressman Smith called Schrage and Google out on the company’s informal “Don’t Be Evil” motto, at one point stating that Google had “become evil’s accomplice.” Representative Jim Leach of Iowa went so far as to call Google “a functionary of the Chinese Government.”

Coverage of the hearing dominated the news, and stories around the world showed pictures of Tibetan monks and angry Chinese students protesting Google and imploring the company to “not be evil.” The decision to go into China was clearly damaging Google’s once pristine consumer brand.

Schrage and others admitted that China represented a conundrum, and during the hearings and afterwards there was vague talk of a “coalition” effort – an industry pact of sorts that might actually voice an opinion about China’s attempts to censor its businesses. But such ideas seemed doomed to remain just that – ideas. Were Google, Yahoo, or others to actually voice a strong opinion about Chinese policies, well, Beijing would not look kindly on such moves. Not to mention Wall Street, of course – there’s profit to be made in China, if everyone just keeps their heads down.

While no one has declared the idea of a pact dead, in practical terms it's really not sensible to expect that such an effort will ever take root. After all, this is a group of companies who can't even agree to interconnect their instant messenger networks. To think they might change US policy without the support of, well, the US government, is pretty silly. It seems to me that when it comes to China, only one force can provide leadership: The US government itself.

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A note: It's odd how much a story can change in a few months. I finished this chapter in May, and just four months later there is serious talk about how Google has lost its mojo in China - not one year after it entered the market.

The next installation will focus on the DOJ and Google's software distribution plans.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:11 PM
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Google Reverses on Releasing Orkut to Brazil

Despite spelling out compliance to Brazil's standing demands for Orkut user data earlier this year, Google today appeals. The timing of the appeal coincides with the deadline for complying with the demand of the Brazilian authorities, placing Google in a spot that risks fines of up to $23,000 a day.

Google indicated it had and would continue to comply with requests to the full extent allowed under US law and which "are issued within the country in which the information is stored," But a Brazilian federal judge earlier disagreed, saying "all the photographs and messages being investigated were published by Brazilians, through Internet connection in national territory. (sic)" From the AP story, "The Sao Paulo federal prosecutor's office said Google was in clear defiance of the judge's order and could be fined at any moment.

Also this week, Business Week notes that Google took down eight Orkut communities at the request of the Brazilian government, in a case it says is unrelated. "The company says those communities, which advocated drunk driving by minors, the pirating of cable television, and illegal drug use, did not comply with Orkut's terms of service, which state it is prohibited to "promote or encourage illegal activity."

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:49 PM
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comScore Revvs Local Search Data

comScore released new, in depth data on local search.

A summary of highlights from the full release:

Among comScore respondents, 41% of searches were directed near the home, rather than as research for travel. And among those local-to-residence searches, 59% were related to media and entertainment, and 52% focused on a specific businesses. "Two out of five local searchers (41 percent) were looking for information on a local service in their home area, including car rental office, dry cleaner or lawyer."

Further, and perhaps most significantly, comScore found that "performing a local search drives consumers to take action. During the second quarter of 2006, 47 percent of local searchers visited a local merchant as a result of their search behavior, while 41 percent made contact offline. More than one-third (37 percent) made contact online as a result of conducting a local area search."

SEW points out that Google (30%) and Yahoo (29%) together dominate the local search field--- which this July's figures described as 63% of US internet users (109 million individuals).

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:16 PM
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Searchmob Roundup

Matt Cutts' Evil Twin Revealed

AdWords Optimizer Review: Use With Caution

NY Post Online Joins Web 2.0

How to Steal Your Competitor's Google Traffic

Is Push Back? Again? Real Networks and Feedster Launch

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 3:21 PM
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Travelin'...

I'm in the air today and OOP Friday, posting will be light...

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:40 AM
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Searchmob Roundup

Yahoo Acquires Online Video Editor, JumpCut

Have Blogs Replaced Newspapers, and Should We Care?

Using a Blog to Track Down a Missing Retainer

Dynamic, Realtime Travel Planning Info

Behind the Scenes in the Search Engine Labs

Australia via Google Earth

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 9:29 PM
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Shit Howdy.

Ten years ago, if a Martian from the future visited me at the offices of Wired, and told me that Microsoft would be announcing this, I'd have run him out of the building. No, wait, I would have interviewed him and put him on the cover, come to think of it.

Sure, not surprising to us at the moment, but really, think about what Microsoft was back in the 90s, and what this means now. From the LiveSide post:

At Advertising Week 2006 in New York, Microsoft is set to unveil a new unified global advertising initiative. Under Digital Advertising Solutions, advertisers will be able to more easily reach customers by packaging Microsoft's products, including Xbox, MSN, Windows Live, Office, Windows Mobile, and Microsoft TV under one advertising solution....Clearly Microsoft is not only targeting Google and Yahoo with this advertisement push, but also TV and print media as well.

Recall the days when Microsoft was a software company? Recall that Wired cover when we claimed they were, in fact, a media company? Ah, good times.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:21 PM
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8 Years Old

My daughter is eight. Google is eight. Somehow, it all makes sense to me now.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:12 PM
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Merchant Full Circle

Earlier today an odd thing started to happen - new comments started pouring in on a months old post I wrote on MerchantCircle, a local business search play. Apparently today the company started automatically calling merchants in its listings database, and what MerchantCircle had to say really upset any number of business owners. Apparently in the call MerchantCircle informed the business owners of their relative rankings and reputation in the system, regardless of whether or not the news was good. As one might expect, if your entire livelihood is in your small business, and an automated system leaves you a voicemail telling you that there is an "unfavorable review" of your livelihood, why, you take that personally.

So what do you do? Well, you fire up Google and do a search for "Merchantcircle," of course. After all, you want to know what is up with this company, which you've never heard of, and Google is always your first stop. And who has the third link on Google, and the first non MerchantCircle related link? Yup, Searchblog. You read my (not very deep) thoughts on the company, and then notice there is a comments section. AHA! A chance to take action is born, and action is taken.

As more and more comments pile on, the site author (that'd be me) takes notice, and I sent an email to Ben Smith, the CEO, alerting him to the issue. Ben has responded that he's on it.

What I love about this story is how search becomes the connective tissue between cause and action, conversational stitching in real time. Magic.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:49 PM
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Ning. I Likey The Idea

Om has the scoop on the first look at Ning's new services, backed by Marc Andreessen and run by CEO Gina Bianchini. I was there today getting a demo of the service, which will be showing itself off at Web 2 later this Fall. In short, they are launching open, free, customizable versions of YouTube, MySpace, and Flickr. At once. And that's just the start....it does not lack for ambition.

I really liked the philosophy behind this company and its platform. It has the potential to change the game that major first wave Web 2 companies (like MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube) defined. In short, it's not about one company owning a space - video, or social networking, or photo sharing. It's about letting anyone have these kinds of services. That's biting off a hell of a lot, and there is much to prove, but if the planets align, I have to say, it's an impressive play. More as soon as I can....

From Om's post:

The company, if you ask CEO and cofounder Gina Bianchini, has built a web platform that allows users to clone, and modify many social services that can allow you to share bookmarks, or have your friends help you create a little recipe site. Even your own Hot or Not!

The company is about to launch a new video and photo sharing applications based on the Ning-platform. I can hear readers groaning and saying, not another “something” sharing service. The key difference is that unlike YouTube or Flickr, these new add on are about creating a private space, where you can share family videos and photos. You can make it private and limit access to these spaces.

But most importantly, the Ning Video (and Photo) can help you pull in and organize videos from across all video services like YouTube and Google Videos. If you so desire, you can embed the videos in your blog, or MySpace page.

You can customize the look and feel of your video player. I tried it - its pretty simple actually. In other words, if I could find time to exhale, I might be able to do GigaOMtv. No that is not happening anytime soon, but the power of Ning platform makes it possible.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:46 PM
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Google Clarifies Philosophy Re: Content

Last night I had a chance to speak to a rep at Google about this post: Google is clarifying and stating, for the record, it's approach to that big, wild world known as Content. From it:

The Internet has broken down many of the barriers that exist between people and information –- effectively democratizing access to human knowledge. By typing just a few keywords into a computer you can learn about almost any subject. Google is one of many organizations that work to make this possible.

But today only a fraction of the world’s information is available online. Our aim to help organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful means working with a lot of information – newspaper articles (many written over a century ago), books (of which there are millions), images, videos (including all of the new footage users are creating), websites, important financial information and much, much more.

Because we don’t own this content, over the years we’ve come up with three primary principles to ensure that we respect content owners and protect their rights:

* we respect copyright;
* we let owners choose whether we index their content in our products;
* we try to bring benefit back to content owners by partnering with them.

There is a lot to say about this, and as regular readers know, I have been somewhat vocal about Google's role in the world of media for some time. While this post might seem rather DBI (dull but important), it comes at a very interesting time for the company. Primarily, it's important for folks at Google to have something to point to when they are in the endless business development meetings with the music, publishing, and entertainment industries. It's clear that scores, if not hundreds of such meetings have ended with a frustrating chorus of "Really, trust us, we swear we aren't out to undermine your business!!!" A post like this helps Google demonstrate to their potential and current partners just that.

This is not a new issue. I wrote in my book about the first complaints from webmasters when Google went live - threats of lawsuits from online museums and the like.

I sense that Google is starting to truly declare its position relative to content creation companies, and it's this: we're not in your business, and won't be. We might impact your business, and in significant ways, but you can't sue us for that, brother. Now, let's go make tons of money, together....and if our margins are higher than yours, well, that's not our fault....

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:28 PM
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Google Plugs In

Google is pushing for more efficient power cords for PCs. Totally random, seemingly, but a fine idea.

From the Times:

The Google white paper argues that the opportunity for power savings is immense — by deploying the new power supplies in 100 million desktop PC’s running eight hours a day, it will be possible to save 40 billion kilowatt-hours over three years, or more than $5 billion at California’s energy rates.

Is there a Mac version? I HATE HATE HATE the way the Mac handles power.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:20 PM
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Reader John Writes...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:49 PM
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A Brief Interview with Google's Matt Cutts

Matt is the man who the SEO/SEM world looks to for answers around most things Google related. Over the past month Melanie and I have been having a wide-ranging email exchange with him on spam, the role of humans at Google, and other things. Here's the result:

Let's say you decide to leave Google and are asked to write an exact job description for a replacement to do exactly what you do now. What does it say? (We told Matt to be honest, or his options will not vest!)

My official job is to direct the webspam team at Google. Webspam is essentially when someone tries to trick a search engine into ranking higher than they should. A few people will try almost anything, up to and including the mythical GooglePray meta tag, to rank higher. Our team attempts to help high-quality sites while preventing deceptive techniques from working.

As a result of working on webspam, I started talking to a lot of webmasters on forums, blogs, and at conferences. So I've backed into handling a fair chunk of webmaster communication for Google. Last year I started my own blog so that I could answer common questions, or to debunk stuff that isn't true (e.g., inserting a GooglePray meta tag doesn't make a whit of difference). These days when I see unusual posts in the blogosphere, I'll try to get a bug report to the right person, or to clarify if someone is confused.

As you pointed out, you've become the human voice between Google and webmasters/SEOs. We've heard Google needs to manually remove spam sometimes. And even the algorithm-based feed for Google News requires an editorial gatekeeper for selecting sites. Do you think there is a growing role for human presence in Google's online technologies?

Bear in mind that this is just my personal opinion, but I think that Google should be open to almost any signal that improves search quality. Let's hop up to the 50,000 foot view. When savvy people think about Google, they think about algorithms, and algorithms are an important part of Google. But algorithms aren't magic; they don't leap fully-formed from computers like Athena bursting from the head of Zeus. Algorithms are written by people. People have to decide the starting points and inputs to algorithms. And quite often, those inputs are based on human contributions in some way.


The simplest example is that hyperlinks on the web are created by people. A passable rule of thumb is that for every page on the web, there are 10 hyperlinks, and all those billions of links are part of the material that modern search engines use to measure reputation. As you mention, Google News ranks based on which stories human editors around the web choose to highlight. Most of the successful web companies benefit from human input, from eBay's trust ratings to Amazon's product reviews and usage data. Or take Netflix's star ratings. This past week I watched Brick and Boondock Saints, and I'm pretty sure that L4yer cake and Hotel Rwanda are going to be good, because all those DVDs have 4+ stars. Those star ratings are done by people, and they converge to pretty trustworthy values after only a few votes.

So I think too many people get hung up on "Google having algorithms." They miss the larger picture, which (to me) is to pursue approaches that are scalable and robust, even if that implies a human side. There's nothing inherently wrong with using contributions from people--you just have to bear in mind the limitations of that data. For example, the three companies I mentioned above have to consider the malicious effect that money can have in their human systems. Netflix doesn't have to worry much (who wants to spam a DVD rating?), while eBay probably spends a lot more time thinking about how to make their trust ratings accurate and fair.

Google recently added user-tagging to photos. it's an interesting way to sort search, adding a personal and human dimension yet opening up a can of worms for syntax and keyword variation. Is this social training of human-input going to be applied to other dimensions of search at Google? Requiring labels to gain a critical mass before they become official is clever step, but of course its not immune to automated spamming. From your perspective on quality control, is this going to open up doors for more abuse of Google as a platform?

I personally would love to see more human input into search at Google. But the flip side is that someone has to pay attention to potential abuse by bad actors. Maybe it's cynical of me, but any time people are involved, I tend to think about how someone could abuse the system. We've seen the whole tagging idea in Web 1.0 when they were called meta tags, and some people abused them so badly with deceptive words that to this day, most search engine give little or no scoring weight to keywords in meta tags.

Google took a cautious approach on this image tagging: the large pool of participants and their random pairing makes it harder to conspire, and two people have to agree on a tag. Users doing really weird things would look unusual, and image tagging is easy for people but much harder for a bot. As tagging goes, it's on the safer end of the spectrum.

I think Google should be open to improving search quality in any way it can, but it should also be mindful of potential abuse with any change.

W3C Schools is listing its supporters' websites on Page Rank 9 and PR7 pages in exchange for donations, $1000 a pop in cash or trade (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/sup). Speculation on this is buzzing because though W3C is a well respected educational resource many SEO blackhats endorse similar tactics. Does Google consider link selling a type of webspam against Google's TOS? And if so, should we expect to see some kind of a censure on W3C? Or how does it differ from what Google considers webspam?

I've said this before in a few places, but I'm happy to clarify. Google does consider it a violation of our quality guidelines to sell links that affect search engines. If someone wanted to sell links purely for visitors, there are a myriad number of ways to do it that don't affect search engines. You could have paid links do an internal redirect, and then block that redirecting page in robots.txt. You could add the rel="nofollow" attribute to a link, which tells search engines that you can't or don't want to vouch for the destination of a link. The W3C decided to add a "INDEX, NOFOLLOW" meta tag to their sponsor page, which has the benefits that the sponsor page can show up in search engines and that users receive nice static links that they can click on, but search engines are not affected by the outlinks on that page. All of these approaches are perfectly fine ways to sell links, and are within our quality guidelines.

Did the W3C decide to add the metatag on their own, or was that the result of talks between you and the W3C?

We were happy to talk to people at the W3C to answer questions and to give background info, but I believe they made the decision to add the metatag themselves.

Thanks for the considered responses, Matt!

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:59 PM
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Class Action Against AOL Search History

TechCrunch has the scoop, I have to say, this ain't just AOL, folks. I'm sure counsel at Google, Yahoo, et al are watching this one closely.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:13 PM
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The Internet Ad Market Is, Well, Healthy to Be Sure

The IAB reports:

Today, during the MIXX Conference and Expo, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released Internet Advertising Revenues covering Q2 and the first six months of 2006. Internet advertising revenues (U.S.) for the first six months of 2006 were approximately $7.9 billion, a new record and a 37% increase over the first half of 2005. Internet advertising revenue totaled nearly $4.1billion for the second quarter of 2006, exceeding the $4 billion mark, representing a 36% increase over same period 2005. Q2 2006 revenues represent a 5.5% increase over Q1 2006.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:57 PM
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News: Froogle Ain't Dead, Google Says

Over the past few days, blogs and the news media has been buzzing with reports (started by Robert Peck at Bear Stearns) that Froogle is being de-emphasized as Google begins to implement shopping listings into its main index. I read the coverage with interest - it's rare that Google actually admits defeat in any category, preferring instead to let the pasta drip off the wall on its own, so to speak. So I sent an email to folks in corporate communications, and here's what I got back:

Me: Over the past few days, a Marketwatch story and coverage of recent news about integration of shopping features into the main index has stirred up speculation that Froogle's days are numbered. Are they?

G: Froogle is alive and well. We are continuing to integrate shopping and product search features into Google.com to make it as easy as possible for users to find product information through Google. We don't have any more specifics to share publicly on how this will look down the line but we will make sure to let you know about any developments.

Now, you might read this as having it both ways - but that's to be expected, I'd warrant. Froogle isn't dead, but that doesn't mean Google won't leverage Google.com (and Google Base) to make shopping search more profitable and more useful for consumers....

(also see Read/Write on this issue....)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:13 PM
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Reader Salman Writes...

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:46 PM
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BB: NSA Legislation Is Nigh

If you want to stop ill conceived legislation that will overrule EFF's case against AT&T, take action now, BB says.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:43 AM
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Relevancy Vs. Targeting

An interesting rumination from Joe, who first wrote this on his blog...

We all know that targeting is important, but the core of what Google provides is relevancy--namely, relevancy of search results and relevancy of advertisements.

There are infinite reasons why Google has been successful, but the most basic is that it has always focused first on relevancy.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:51 AM
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Google: What Are The Interesting Questions These Days?

Google's on the cover of Fortune again, this time with the come on that the company is in chaos! No, wait, maybe that's a good thing...yeah, in fact, it is a good thing! Fortune turns it into a cover package on "managing chaos" that might well have been a Business 2.0 cover....three years ago. Funny that B2 has as it's cover "The New Disruptors" (just got it in the mail, not online yet)- Google, apparently, is the old disruptor, as Fortune represents the status quo, and B2 the upstarts.

I dunno, but after reading the piece, which was reported as well as is possible given the access given, I felt like I had read the same story I've been reading about Google for the past three years - the piece turns on the interesting question of "Do They Have a Plan?" and then fails to answer it definitively (Marissa says Google has a plan, but the evidence ain't overwhelming). I'm starting to think that maybe we are all asking the wrong question. I've been asking that one for some time now, and now I'm thinking there are more interesting ones out there. (There are good tidbits in the piece, for more see Read/Write Web's write up...)

With that in mind, Eric Schmidt has agreed to be the first keynote interview at this year's Web 2 conference. I'll be interviewing him, and I'd love all of your input on what you think I should ask him. What are the interesting questions to ask Google these days?

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:18 PM
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Weekend SearchMob

Top stories:

Nokia Adds Microsoft Live Search

Search Engine Bias and the Demise of Search Engine Utopianism

BusinessWeek Cover Story and Investigation on Click Fraud

Over 30 Domain Names Transferred to Google Inc.

FORBES: 400 Richest American$ , Their Details

New AOL Search Beta Test Available

Save the Forbes story (what is it with lists of rich guys?), I've been really pleased with the quality of the stories sumitted to SearchMob. What I wish I had was more voting from readers - in general, the voting has been pretty anemic - 4-6 votes for top stories, usually. I'm not looking for Digg numbers (1000 diggs is not unusual), but my logs tell me there are thousands of readers each day at Searchblog. So...is SearchMob working, or not?

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:25 PM
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BusinessWeek Covers Click Fraud

Literally - it's the cover story this week. Gary has a great round up here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:26 PM
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ClickPrints

Clickstreams - the essential building blocks of the Database of Intentions - may have characteristics unique to each person - a "Clickprint", as this report from Wharton calls it. From Gary's post excerpting the paper:

“We address the question of whether humans have unique signatures - or clickprints - when they browse the Web. The importance of being able to answer this can be significant given applications to electronic commerce in general and in particular online fraud detection, a major problem in electronic commerce costing the economy billions of dollars annually. In this paper we present a data mining approach to answer this ‘unique clickprint determination problem."

The paper is reviewed in Wharton's online publication. What I find rather irritating in the coverage (I have not read the paper yet) is there is precious little discussion of privacy issues, and none of government abuse. It strikes me that at the end of the day, these are the two most important issues facing the deployment of such a technology. Who knew your keyboard and mouse, in essence, are transferring your fingerprints across the web?

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:46 AM
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Sterling Riff In New Scientist

Bruce Sterling, a prolific sci-fi author who I've had the honor to know since the birth of Wired, has a great riff on being a teenager in a rather dim future in the current print edition of New Scientist. It's online, but only for a while, as the magazine seems hell bent on a subscription model. (Memo to New Scientist: Join the Point to Economy). From it:

It's not that we can't do it: it's that all our social relations have been reified with a clunky intensity. They're digitized! And the networking hardware and software that pervasively surround us are built and owned by evil, old, rich corporate people! Social-networking systems aren't teenagers! These machines are METHODICALLY KILLING OUR SOULS! If you don't count wall-graffiti (good old spray paint), we have no means to spontaneously express ourselves. We can't "find ourselves" - the market's already found us and filled us with map pins.

At our local mall, events-management sub-engines emit floods of locative data. So if Debbie and me sneak in there, looking for some private place to get horizontal, all the vidcams swivel our way. Then a rent-a-cop shows up. What next?

(thanks, BIll)

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:27 PM
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Looking for Short Videos

A new feature at the Web 2 conference this year will be "Shorts" - I'll be showing off videos that are emblematic of where our culture's video grammar seems to be headed. I've been writing about the idea of video as cultural grammar off and on here, and I think this year will mark an axis of sorts - the year video was reborn as a native web medium.

To that end we've issued a call for submissions. From the submissions page:

Have you seen a video clip or short film that you think is Web 2.0 worthy? We're looking for fun and telling viral videos (less than 3 minutes in length) to feature at the conference in November. Submit your nominations below. Submitters of the chosen shorts will be thanked from stage.

If you've seen something great, I'd be indebted if you could point it out to me. Thanks!

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:20 PM
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NYT Integrates Answers.com Content

A portion of NYTimes.com inline links will now serve Answers.com's reference content. With a single Alt-key selection, Answers will allow online NYT readers to stay on page while accessing a pop-up of contextual material on key terms, selected by NYT editors. Answers will also now feed a reference search box on the NYT homepage. The goal of the integration is to help online Times readers "understand current events in historical perspective."

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:19 PM
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Google Registers Political Action

Google Registers Political Action Committee Domains

The Oldest Websites Still Alive

Big News Join Mobile Web Growth

Interview with Google Webmasters on Sitemap conception and Recruiting Women

Zillow Home Database Opens to User Data

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 2:28 PM
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TiVo's captivated research audience

TiVo launches a new research service, called the IRI TiVo Consumer Insights Suite(TM), to help marketers enter the mind of the ad-free viewing audience. TiVo boxes will become a passive data sponge for user viewing habits--opt-in Nelson Ratings-style--offering advertisers unprecedented insight into this group of serious TV viewers who are also at once an uncaptive audience. In particular, TiVo is marketing the research pool to-be to advertisers as a "link [between] consumer DVR viewing patterns [and] purchase decisions."

The goal? "making it possible for brand purchase results to be traced and compared to the actual viewership of commercials." But how many homes with a digital video recorder will willingly enable auto-monitoring equipment to feed information directly back to the advertisers who they've bought the TiVo precisely in order to escape?

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 1:17 AM
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Now, If We Buy You, Can We Lose the Deal with Microsoft?

WSJ says (reg required) Facebook and Yahoo are close to a deal. OF course, Microsoft won't like that much....

People familiar with the matter say the company has held separate acquisition talks with Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Viacom Inc. over the past year. Now, say some of these people, the start-up is in serious discussions -- again -- to sell itself to Yahoo for an amount that could approach $1 billion.

Update: Free WSJ link.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:33 PM
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Searchmob Top Stories

Learning Searchles Rolls-out New Features

Google Adds News Archive to Search Results

Yahoo Partners with CurrentTV

Google Web Hosting ahead?

Zebo Profiled - List What You Own

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:31 PM
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Mostly Offline for Next Few Days

I'm taking a whirlwind trip to Norway over the next few days, and will be mostly offline. Melanie will be posting, lightly, but forgive my absence for a bit...

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:48 PM
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SearchMob Top Stories

As of this evening:

Google Adds Text to Shopping Cart Icon

Local Matters and Mobile People Partner

Battelle Media Blog Worth $1,011,091.14 (oh really....)

Top 5 alternative search engines

Google Receives Several DMCA Requests From Around the Globe

Now guys, remember you can vote on new stories here, and post new stories here...

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:24 PM
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JG Writes...

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:23 PM
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Meanwhile, Over at Yahoo...

Not good news, a warning on ads, and a serious drop in the stock to boot. From the Journal email alert (on the public home page):

Yahoo shares plunged more than 10% after Chief Executive Terry Semel warned that online advertising growth appears to be slowing in some categories. Mr. Semel, speaking at an analysts' conference, said the company has seen growth weaken in ads from automotive and financial services companies, and said it's too early to tell if the slowdown will spill over into other areas.

Update: Safa at Piper says this is "a buying opportunity." I uploaded his report here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:03 AM
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Calla Lilies Choking a Silt-shallowed Lake