Traveling Back

I'm in the air most of today. Back at it tonight....

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:48 AM
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SearchMob Roundup

The Tao of Linkbait Method

Microsoft unveils Innovative New Computing Model - SURFACE

CozyBug - Where Buyers And Sellers Meet

.CN - Domain names for China, is now just $12.99

See Who's Online Behind Your Browser

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:48 PM
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News: Yahoo's Top Tech Guru Leaves

Just was tipped to this filing from Yahoo, which declares that Farzad Nazem, the head of their Tech group, is leaving. That means of the three groups created in the re-org, only one position - Sue Decker's - is filled:

On May 30, 2007 (the “Agreement Date”), Yahoo! Inc. (the “Company”) entered into an agreement with Farzad Nazem (the “Separation Agreement”) providing for Mr. Nazem’s resignation as Head of Technology Group and Chief Technology Officer of the Company, effective as of June 8, 2007 (the “Separation Date”). A copy of the Separation Agreement is filed with this report as Exhibit 10.1 and is incorporated herein by reference.

I have sent a note to Yahoo asking about this. I can't find any news stories referencing it yet, nor any Yahoo releases save the SEC form filed today. For now, his image and bio is still on Yahoo's corp. page.

Wait, here's his blog post on it on Yahoo's Yodel blog.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:38 PM
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Mahalo Launches

I'm not at the D conference this week, as business has kept me on the East Coast. But at that event, Jason Calacanis just launched his "people-powered search engine" and I happened to be meeting with one of his Board members here in New York. So I got a bit of inside scoop. Jason has a star studded line up of investors (from CBS to Jon Miller to Mark Cuban to Fred Wilson to many more), and a focus on the top search terms - the head of search, so to speak, including human brains (humans help organize the best results for the top search terms, as I understand it). More here, the site is not yet live. I've asked Jason for an interview, once he gets through the crush of D, I hope he'll have the time to respond.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:18 PM
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CBS Continues Buying Spree: Snaps up Lastfm

Hmmmm:

Social music site Last.fm has been bought by US media giant CBS Corporation for $280m (£140m), the largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.

The online network was founded in the UK five years ago and it now has more than 15 million active users.

It allows users to connect with other listeners with similar music tastes, to custom-build their own radio stations and to watch music video-clips.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:34 AM
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Death of Journalism - Blame Google? No. Ask Google to Lead? Yes.

Thanks to commentor Kimo for pointing me to this SF Gate Op Ed, written by Neil Henry, a former colleague at the Graduate School of Journalism.

Snip:

The Chronicle's announcement earlier this month that 100 newsroom jobs will be slashed in the coming weeks in the face of mounting financial woes represents just the latest chapter in a tragic story of traditional journalism's decline.

Reportedly losing an estimated $1 million a week, the paper's owner, the Hearst Corp., concluded it had no recourse but to trim costs by laying off reporters, editors and other skilled professionals, or offering buyouts to the most seasoned journalists in order to induce them to leave. The cuts reportedly will amount to a quarter of The Chronicle's editorial staff...

....The factors behind this shrinkage are sadly familiar: The rise of the Internet has produced sharp declines in traditional advertising revenues in the printed press. Free online advertising competitors such as Craigslist.com have sharply undermined classified advertising as a traditional source of revenue. While many newspapers have attempted mightily to forge a presence on the Web -- including The Chronicle, whose terrific sfgate.com is among the top 10 most trafficked news sites in America -- revenue from online advertising is paltry compared to that from traditional print sources. As a result, newspapers such as The Chronicle must make staff cuts to survive -- and increasingly it is highly skilled professional journalists committed to seeking the truth and reporting it, independently and without fear or favor, who must go.

The average citizen may not realize how severely the public's access to important news, gathered according to high standards, may be threatened by these bottom line trade-offs.

When journalists' jobs are eliminated, especially as many as The Chronicle intends, the product is inevitably less than it was. The fact is there will be nothing on YouTube, or in the blogosphere, or anywhere else on the Web to effectively replace the valuable work of those professionals.

I can't disagree more with what Neil is saying in this first part of his Op Ed, though I do agree with some of his conclusions (more on that later). I can't tell you where I heard this, but trust me, it's from a good source: Up until recently, the Chronicle had 400 journalists working at the paper. FOUR HUNDRED! When I wrote for the LA Times, I often wrote two stories a day. Is the Chronicle pumping out 800 stories a day? Is it breaking all sorts of amazing stories and being a leader in the community with those 400 journalists? Hell no! 400 reporters and what is the paper DOING with them? Not much, I'm afraid. The paper should OWN the Valley Tech story. Does it? No. It should OWN the biotech story. Does it? No. It should OWN the real estate/development story. Does it? No. It should OWN the California political story. Does it? No!

Why? Well, maybe it has THE WRONG 400 journalists working for it?! And the wrong tone/approach/structure? Just maybe?

Neil goes on to write:

I see a world where corporations such as Google and Yahoo continue to enrich themselves with little returning to journalistic enterprises, all this ultimately at the expense of legions of professional reporters across America, now out of work because their employers in "old" media could not afford to pay them.....

....the time has come for corporations such as Google to accept more responsibility for the future of American journalism, in recognition of the threat "computer science" poses to journalism's place in a democratic society.

It is no longer acceptable for Google corporate executives to say that they don't practice journalism, they only work to provide links to "content providers." Journalism is not just a matter of jobs, and dollars and cents lost. It is a public trust vital to a free society. It stands to reason that Google and corporations like it, who indirectly benefit so enormously from the expensive labor of journalists, should begin to take on greater civic responsibility for journalism's plight. Is it possible for Google to somehow engage and support the traditional news industry and important local newspapers more fully, for example, to become a vital part of possible solutions to this crisis instead of a part of the problem?

I agree with Neil's sentiment, and in answer to his question, yes, I do think it's possible, and I agree that Google and others should be more engaged in helping shore up and - GASP - evolve the fourth estate. But assuming the way to do it is to support more of the same - the approach that gave us a bloated newsroom that puts out a product fewer and fewer people want to read each year - is to ask for tenure over evolution.

I'd love to see Google and Yahoo and others lead here. I do think they have a responsibility. But not because they are responsible for "killing newspapers". Rather, because they are responsible for leading, period, in a world where they are the premiere corporations of the information age, an age that requires analysis, transparency, and, well, simply good journalism, unfettered by traditionalist packaging presumptions.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:47 PM
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Google Wow's Em At Where

Google has once again taken a good idea from a competitor (in this case, A9's Block View) and taken to the next level. Check out this review from Where 2.0:

This morning Google gave their 2D maps an incredible realworld addition. Its a street-view, that in certain cities, will let you get a street side view of the area you are currently in. This is not just a static, A9-style image. It will also let you move along the street in a smooth manner and even more amazing it will let you change your angle and continue moving that way. This will be formally launched at Where 2.0 later today.

As you can see from my probably-confusing-words above, this is something that you must interact with to really understand. It's awesome. Go. Check. It. Out. Now.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:20 PM
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Traveling

I'm moving around the world this week, and it will be, as it's been, a pretty light week of posting. I'm working hard to get back to my first love...writing more here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:12 PM
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This That

Stuff worth noting I missed near the end of the week, as I was traveling:

Blinkx goes public, soars.

FT has an op ed from Google's global privacy counsel. This in response to the EU noise earlier this week.

Google and Dell taking some flack for approaches to software bundling.

Facebook gets generally positive reviews after its first developer conference. "The anti-Myspace" seems to be the buzz.

Cringely says it's inevitable: Google will do itself in because there are more good ideas than the company can go after. I'm not convinced. Google may lose some folks to entreprenuerialism, but that's entirely normal. The NYT covers how Google recruits.

From Ars: The Future of Google Mobile Search.

Bloggers are more connected than journalists. Huh. What if we're both?

Yahoo testing linking to outside sites on homepage. Firehose, ho!

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:50 PM
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Agency vs. Big G?

Nah, focus on what you do best, says Ad Age publisher Scott Donaton. I agree:

Consumer insights. Creative ideas. Media strategies. Marketers will still need those. Yes, even when behavioral targeting and advanced technologies make it possible to serve the right ads to the right audience at the right time. It won't all come down to technology.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:15 PM
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Barr Bares

Jeff Barr, who works at Amazon, discusses his go rounds with Google recruiters:

They were almost ready to make the “can’t refuse” offer but the process became bogged down when I couldn’t recall my college GPA. Given that I earned my degree in 1985 and have been earning a living by writing code since I was 15 or 16, this didn’t seem all that essential.

Funny thing is, I now have several more emails in my inbox from other Google recruiters. After reading these emails it appears that they don’t know that I interviewed there last year! Perhaps they don’t have this data in searchable form. Could that be?

The comments are very interesting as well.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:57 AM
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Privacy and the EU: Watch This Space

Bloomberg:

Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular search engine, may be violating the European Union's privacy laws by storing information on customer queries for as long as two years, advisers to EU regulators told the company.

Google's privacy counsel in Paris, Peter Fleischer, said the company received a letter this month from the EU's data-protection advisory agency asking it to explain why records of user searches are retained.

The scrutiny of policies at Google, the gateway to the Internet for tens of millions of users, has increased since it announced plans in April to buy New York-based online advertiser DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion. Regulators have said that competition among Google, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. to deliver ads to specific users may violate civil liberties.

More on privacy from Searchblog.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:38 AM
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Google Keeps Taking Search Share

Robert Peck (Bear Stearns) analysis of recent Comscore search share numbers:

GOOGLE: SIGNIFICANT SHARE GAIN AT THE EXPENSE OF EVERYONE ELSE. According to comScore data release yesterday, Google once again posted solid domestic market share gains of 140 bps in April 07 to reach domestic market share at 49.7%, up from 48.3% in March 07. Google grew search queries by 27% YoY in March 07. While this growth level almost triples the industry growth at 10.5% YoY, it continued the deceleration trajectory of Google's YoY growth rate. Q/Q, Google searches grew 12% (April over January), tracking ahead of our top line seq. growth projection of 6% for 2Q07.

· YAHOO. Google's share gain came at the expense of almost all top search sites and Yahoo! took the largest hit as it lost 70 bps in market share and came in at 26.8% in April 07. Yahoo continued to be the second fastest growing search site YoY among the top five with growth of 5.7% YoY, down significantly from the 12.7% reported in March 07. However, Yahoo's YoY growth is still behind that of the industry at 10.5%. Q/Q, Yahoo searches grew 2%, tracking behind our seq. growth projection for search revenues at 4% for 2Q07.

· MSN, AOL & ASK. MSN posted 60bps share loss facing Google's strong share gain and came in at 10.3%. AOL stayed flat at 5%; however, we think this could be aided by the addition of several sub-channels by comScore. Ask Network lost 10bps and came in at 5.1% in April 07. Ask.com's market share, on the other hand, remained flat at 2.2% in April 07. While Ask Network’s search queries were down slightly YoY, Ask.com search queries grew 2% YoY.

· SEARCHES PER SEARCHER. We took a look at monthly searches per searcher as Google has stated this metric is important as it shows mind share. Google is leading the pack and came in at an average of 31 searches per searcher per month. Yahoo came in at a distant second with 22 searches per searcher per month while MSN, AOL and Ask were all around the low teen vicinity.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:56 AM
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Google Owns Climatesaverpc.com

Gary found it. Innaresting! Also, climatesaverpc.us is owned by a Google VP.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:57 PM
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Check Out...

SearchMob and the queue of stories. Gary is posting like a madman!

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:42 PM
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Traveling

Today I am traveling, light posting. For your enjoyment, play with Babelplex. It's a new twist on translation search, which has been around since Alta Vista....using Google's translation service.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:09 AM
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Let Paul and Mark have Basketball....

Google Ad honcho Tim Armstrong now owns the Boston lacrosse universe!

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:22 PM
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The Day I Ask a Search Engine "What Shall I Do Tomorrow" ...

...or "What Job Should I Take" is the day one of you, please, should put me out of my misery. Some things are simply best left to conversation and that messy thing called human relationships. Hell, once I can have that kind of a conversation with a search engine, it's entirely arguable if the search engine is anything other than a human being, right?

From the FT:

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said gathering more personal data was a key way for Google to expand and the company believes that is the logical extension of its stated mission to organise the world’s information.

Asked how Google might look in five years’ time, Mr Schmidt said: “We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation.

“The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ”

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:11 AM
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Feedburner to Google

Sources say it's done. More at Techcrunch.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:02 AM
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Ask Advice

RWW and CenterNetworks have tons of advice for Ask, not that Ask asked...but when you plan to spend $100mm in marketing money, folks are going to start talking, that's for sure!

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:04 AM
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Tapping Blogs to do Social Search: Technorati Evolves

An interesting "refresh" over at Technorati (I've been an advisor in the past) points to where the company is heading: as a social search service that uses blogger's signals to surface popular and interesting media objects. The clear next step is to package these insights into media products.....congrats, T'rati folk!

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:57 AM
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IAB: Ad Spend up 35% in 2006

The IAB has released its annual PricewaterhouseCooper/IAB online spending report. This report, as I recall, is quite conservative, but it still shows very healthy growth. (Caveat: I am on the IAB Board).

Some breakouts:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) today released the Internet Advertising Revenue Report which shows record results for the full year and final quarter of 2006. Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. continued upward totaling $16.9 billion in 2006, a new annual record exceeding 2005 by 35%. Q4 2006 internet advertising revenues totaled $4.8 billion, representing record revenues for a single quarter and a 35% increase over same period in 2005.

I like the trends in terms of the top ten largest sites' share of revenues, which were down year over year (from 72 to 69%).

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:28 AM
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Google Testing AdSense Video Ads

From an email sent by Google PR to me today:

Today website content is much more than just text – it's also video. As the importance of online video increases, we think it's important to deliver users relevant video ads, give advertisers a new way to reach customers online and help publishers earn additional revenue from their video content. Starting today we will begin an in-stream video ads test with a small group of US publishers and advertisers to help us learn the easiest and most scalable way to deliver ads to online video content.

Publishers will now be able to insert high quality, relevant in-stream ads that enhance their video content while maintaining a positive user experience. It also provides broader distribution for participating publishers, and an effective way for advertisers to reach their target customers with rich, engaging messaging. This test represents our continued efforts to address the challenges faced by publishers who want to monetize their video content, by advertisers who want access to quality video inventory, and finally by users who want ads to enhance their video watching experience, not detract from it.

The details:

The test will run on participating sites throughout the network.

As with current AdSense publishers, revenue will be split between the website publisher and Google. The exact revenue share is not being disclosed.

The advertisements will play on the publishers' Flash players, not on YouTube or Google Video hosted videos.

Publishers can select which videos to monetize and track their performance using AdSense. They can also choose where the ads will appear within the videos.

Ad creatives, which can be no longer than 30 seconds, can be made skippable for users.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:16 AM
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Browse your Genome, anyone?

Google has invested nearly $4mm in 23andMe, Inc., "an early stage biotech company focused on helping consumers understand and browse their genome".

The company is co-founded by Sergey's new wife. Details in this SEC filing, thanks to Gary, himself newly married. From the site:

Even though your body contains trillions of copies of your genome, you've likely never read any of it. Our goal is to connect you to the 23 paired volumes of your own genetic blueprint (plus your mitochondrial DNA), bringing you personal insight into ancestry, genealogy, and inherited traits. By connecting you to others, we can also help put your genome into the larger context of human commonality and diversity.

Toward this goal, we are building on recent advances in DNA analysis technologies to enable broad, secure, and private access to trustworthy and accurate individual genetic information. Combined with educational and scientific resources with which to interpret and understand it, your genome will soon become personal in a whole new way.

You think this search stuff ain't getting cosmic? Uh huh.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:17 PM
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Google Launches Hot Trends (Sorta)

If you know my book, you know I started this whole endeavor with a random link in late 2001 or early 2002 to Google's first ever Zeitgeist. Well, since then they launched Trends, and now they've updated it with Hot Trends.

From an email Google sent me (the site is not responding at 10 pm...):

On Monday night, Google launched Hot Trends, a new feature on the Google Trends report. Hot Trends enables users to see a list of the current top 100 fastest-rising Google search queries in the U.S. Users can also select specific dates to see what the top-rising searches were at a given point in time.
For years, Google has produced a manually-compiled list of popular searches called the Google Zeitgeist. Hot Trends takes this list to a new level, providing an up-to-date snapshot of what's on our collective mind – from current events to daily crossword puzzle clues to the latest celebrity gossip. For each Hot Trends result, the associated Google News, blog searches and Google web search results appear, giving users greater context for each result. For example, the #2 Hot Trends result on Tuesday, May 15th was a cryptic phrase: “I who have nothing.” The associated news articles and blog results showed that this is in fact the title of a song that was performed on American Idol that night. And the associated web search results reveals this was originally a song made popular by Shirley Bassey. Mystery solved.

In addition to Hot Trends, there are a few other new changes to Google Trends to make it more informative and user-friendly. Now, in addition to viewing the top countries and cities that searched for a term, users can view the top “sub regions” (i.e. states within the U.S.) across more than 70 countries. Users can now compare the leading presidential candidates around the country, for instance, or find out what region in France is crazy about cognac. Hot Trends is Google’s newest tool for users who want to keep their finger on the pulse of what the world is searching for.

I'm sure it'll be up soon here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:16 PM
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Google Cleaning House?

It's all over the search engine web: Google is cleaning house of Adsense arbitrage sites, which I wrote about in The Search and form a cottage industry that benefits both parties. SEW has more here. I asked Google for a statement on this and got this rather tepid, but telling response:

At Google, we are always focused on how we can make the user experience as positive as possible while still providing value to our publishers and advertisers. As part of this effort, we continually conduct automated and manual reviews of publishers and sites that violate our policies. In some cases, violations of our program policies will result in termination from AdSense.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:37 PM
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Site News

My site was jammed by spammers most of today, I barely got two posts out. But it's back, and we'll be back to normal soon. I did have a very interesting talk today with Yusef Mehdi, who ran the aQuantive deal for Microsoft, and Brian McAndrews, the CEO of aQuantive. What struck me most was the commitment to have a solution that counters AdSense, but with a richer suite of services for both publishers and advertisers. Microsoft is really committed to this business, but they have work to do to productize and integrate this acquisition. More soon.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:35 PM
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Meanwhile, Over at FM...

I've started to interview interesting online marketing folks over at the FM blog. The first is Casey Jones, the new VP of Marketing at Dell. Check it out!

And if you have an appetite for marketing, you might check out the cool stuff going on with FM partners, including avery cool deal with Ask A Ninja, Boing Boing naming a plane, and Intel sponsoring Digg Labs.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:44 PM
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aQuantive/Microsoft

I'm talking to some of the key players later today and will post some thoughts afterwards. Meanwhile, some second day stories:

Merc News

Scoble

GigaOm

Reuters

SEL

AdAge

NYT

B2

Kara

Ars

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:40 AM
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Holy Crap: Microsoft is Buying aQuantive

OK. I gotta think about this one. Give me some time...

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:00 AM
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Updated: Google Universal Search: Expect Display, Video Ads

More on this as I get better connectivity and figure out my flight options. I'm stuck in La Guardia in thunderstorm hell. Here's SEL:

Google is undertaking the most radical change to its search results ever, introducing a "Universal Search" system that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages.

The new system officially rolls out today for anyone using Google.com and searching in English. Not everyone will see it at first, but over the course of the next several days, Universal Search should be more, well, universal.

I plan to write about this at length if I ever get on a plane...

Update: Several of you have noted in comments that Google's new approach to search is old news - Ask and A9 and others have had these kind of services for quite a while. True, for the most part (they have not combined them as aggressively as Google promises to). First, it's notable that Udi Manber is making his first tuely public appearance as the face of Google search this week, and it's not a coincidence that many of the search innovations he pioneered at Yahoo and A9 are now showing up at Google. Second, regardless of whether or not Google is simply playing catch up, the fact that it has decided to do this is quite significant. And it will no doubt send the folks at Ask and other places into paroxsyms, Google will, because it's the market leader, get credit for what others have already done. Jim Lanzone, you now know what it feels like to be Steve Jobs when Windows came out.....

Lastly, and very importantly: this "gradual change" to a multi-media search result is a very tangible step toward the execution of intent-driven web navigation - and advertising. Expect display and video ads on the home page of Google very soon.

PS - I am focusing on family matters for much of the rest of the week. Back at it as I can be....

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:22 PM
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Google v. Meetup

A very clever morale booster and job baiting document from Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman.

At Google, you take the Google Bus with people as smart as you. Your fellow Googlers will probably be listening to Tech Talk Podcasts while coding.

At Meetup, you take the NYC subway to work. You're part of the greatest melting pot on Earth. WARNING: Some of your fellow riders aren't naturally excited about Google Apps.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:40 PM
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Porn Thumbnails Get the Thumbs Up, Googlers Universally Rejoice

From Threadwatch, Google has won a key battle in the Perfect Ten case. Now we can have porn thumbnails in our universal search results....

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:25 PM
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Today Is Google "Searchology" Day

I was invited to this search-a-palooza, but I'm in NYC and then SD tending to some business and family issues. I won't be covering it, but you can follow it here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:37 AM
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Pipl: A New People Search Engine

Via SEL, check out Pipl. Not a bad first impression....

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:34 AM
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Weiner Breaks Down the Yahoo Mission

I've interviewed Jeff Weiner plenty of times (including this onstage interview in April at Web 2 Expo), and had enough off the record chats as well, to know that this post outlining Yahoo's mission is a milestone of sorts for both Yahoo and Jeff.

That mission:

"To connect people to their passions, communities, and the world’s knowledge.”

Recall my earlier post on Jeff's mission for his search group, before he was elevated to EVP, Network Division:

"To enable people to find, use, share, and expand all human knowledge."

Sounds like Jeff's earlier visions for search have begun to inform all of Yahoo lately....

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:24 AM
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Speaking of Odd Googly Things...

Where there might be an ad market, Google has a possible patent (ars)...This one in games.

Imagine a small bit of code that runs on either a PC or a console and monitors user behavior in video games—everything from the sort of car that people drive in racing sims to the conversations that they have in WoW. Imagine that this code examines saved game files to see what titles are currently being played, and imagine that it could look inside those files to learn about a user's game choices and abilities. Now imagine that all this data is relayed back to a central server, where it is sliced, diced, and deep-fried, then used to serve highly-targeted ads that appear onscreen. Sound like spyware? Nope, it's a new in-game advertising system that Google hopes to patent.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:40 PM
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WWGD?

What would Google do...if it had tons more assets? Tim asks....

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:10 PM
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Google Video Chief Leaves

From Fortune's blogs:

The writing was on the wall for this one since the moment last October that Google (GOOG) agreed to buy YouTube. Jennifer Feikin, the director and chief businesswoman of Google Video, is leaving the company. I’ve wondered ever since the deal was announced how Google Video and YouTube would co-exist inside the same company. YouTube so thoroughly vanquished Google Video, an also-ran product in terms of traffic, that Google was compelled to buy YouTube, if only to keep it out of the hands of Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) or one of the several broadcast networks that should have bought it. Feikin, at least, has something of an answer to the question: She’s not sticking around to find out.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:56 PM
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TV Networks (And The Journal) Try "A Little Blogola"

I'd call this article pretty obviously an attempt to get link cred....and I bit.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:09 AM
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Drop Acid, Get Googled, Get Turned Away By The USA

You have got to be kidding me. From the NYT:

Andrew Feldmar, a Vancouver psychotherapist, was on his way to pick up a friend at the Seattle airport last summer when he ran into a little trouble at the border.

A guard typed Mr. Feldmar’s name into an Internet search engine, which revealed that he had written about using LSD in the 1960s in an interdisciplinary journal. Mr. Feldmar was turned back and is no longer welcome in the United States, where he has been active professionally and where both of his children live.

Mr. Feldmar, 66, has a distinguished résumé, no criminal record and a candid manner. Though he has not used illegal drugs since 1974, he says he has no regrets.

Thanks, Hugo!

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:11 PM
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HP's HALO: Now This Is Telepresence

Last week I got a chance to test drive HALO, Hewlett Packard's super high-end telepresence application. And all I can say is .... Oooooh, I want one. In fact, I want everyone to have one.

Of course, that's pretty impractical. HALO is, in essence, an extraordinarily expensive television studio cum virtual private network, and I can only imagine the cost of building one of them is in the low seven figures. For now, only large enterprises with serious budgets can afford to install such a system.

But man, after you use it, you really, really want to use it again.

I was invite to a HALO meeting by VJ Joshi, the fellow who runs HP's Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), and HALO is one of VJ's many products. IPG is best known for its printing business, but VJ has a larger vision for printing as a platform, and he wanted to bounce it around with me. (HP is a marketing partner of my company FM. Am I guilty of writing glowingly of a partner's products? Yes, but I only do that when, in fact, it's worthy.) VJ is also on the board of Yahoo, so I knew we'd not run out of things to talk about.

I came unsure what to expect - I've done video conferences before, and I was worried that all the usual glitches - latency, crappy video quality, poor audio - would make it hard to really connect. And I wanted to connect with VJ, I had heard a lot about him, and I was eager to pick his brain.

All that fell away when I walked into the rectangular HALO meeting room. The room was paneled in soft, light brown fabric, and dominating its left side was a board room table of sorts - well, half of a board room table, really, an arc of sorts from the stem to the stern of the room. On the wall to my left as I walked in were three 42+inch HD monitors, arranged at table level. Above them was a fourth screen, the same size.