Month: September 2005

More Links

The book tour is not quite winding down, more stuff this week, including reading in studio for three days for the audio book. So for now, some interesting links… Findory has a neat sounding new feedreader, which watches what you do and refreshes its presentation. Cool. In an LA…

The book tour is not quite winding down, more stuff this week, including reading in studio for three days for the audio book. So for now, some interesting links…

Findory has a neat sounding new feedreader, which watches what you do and refreshes its presentation. Cool.

In an LA Times op ed, Xeni weighs in on the Google Print lawsuit.

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Yow, WSJ Best Seller

I sense you might be getting sick of me tooting this particular horn, but I can't help myself, The Search made it to the Wall St. Journal's weekly list of Business Bestsellers (reg required) today, at #12. That's pretty good for only being out ten days, I'm told. And…

WsjbsellI sense you might be getting sick of me tooting this particular horn, but I can’t help myself, The Search made it to the Wall St. Journal’s weekly list of Business Bestsellers (reg required) today, at #12. That’s pretty good for only being out ten days, I’m told. And now I can brag about being a bestselling author. Like I am right now.

Again, I think all this happened because of Searchblog readers. I really enjoyed meeting some of you in New York, I have a few more events coming up, and will make sure to keep my book page updated. Thanks.

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Cringely Questions AdWords

I've run across many a speculation on what levers and dials the folks at Google are pulling behind the AdWords curtain. This is another one, and begs the question: can we have a bit more transparency? One of my readers makes his living selling goods over the Internet, and…

I’ve run across many a speculation on what levers and dials the folks at Google are pulling behind the AdWords curtain. This is another one, and begs the question: can we have a bit more transparency?

One of my readers makes his living selling goods over the Internet, and his sole means of obtaining customers is through Google AdWords. His business is robust for a one-man operation and he makes a good living. Knowing the actual numbers, I would say he makes a VERY good living, which shows the effectiveness of Google and AdWords as an advertising medium.

But one can never make enough money, it seems, so this reader decided to do some research to see if he could improve his results by modifying this and that. He decided that the best way to conduct this research was not by altering variables on his existing, very profitable web site, but by creating a separate site purely to be used for these tests.

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Frank Quattrone Responds

As you all know, I promised to use this forum as a platform for anyone who took issues with the book to provide me feedback and corrections, if I got anything wrong. I was recently contacted by a communications consultant for Frank Quattrone, one of the most formidable investment…

As you all know, I promised to use this forum as a platform for anyone who took issues with the book to provide me feedback and corrections, if I got anything wrong. I was recently contacted by a communications consultant for Frank Quattrone, one of the most formidable investment bankers of the dot com era. I made a passing reference to Frank in my book, and he clearly disagreed with my observations. Bob Chlopak, Communications Consultant to Frank Quattrone, drafted a statement, which I post in full below. I’m happy to do the same for any source or character in the work who feels similarly.

”The Search” mischaracterizes Frank Quattrone’s case. The book makes reference to the right to privacy for personal email and says:

“While the more sophisticated e-mail user among us has grown to understand the folly of this assumption in a corporate environment, the idea that e-mail is an ephemeral medium is still widely held. In 2003, Frank Quattrone, one of the technology sector’s most powerful bankers and hardly a computing rube, was brought down by such a presumption when incriminating e-mails were used as evidence against him in a widely publicized trial.”

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Google Defends Self On Blog

I have to say, this post – defending Google's position on Google Print against yesterday's lawsuit – is damn refreshing. Google makes its case clearly, and the writing seems to be driven by conviction and passion. The use we make of all the books we scan through the Library…

I have to say, this post – defending Google’s position on Google Print against yesterday’s lawsuit – is damn refreshing. Google makes its case clearly, and the writing seems to be driven by conviction and passion.

The use we make of all the books we scan through the Library Project is fully consistent with both the fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law and the principles underlying copyright law itself, which allow everything from parodies to excerpts in book reviews. (Here’s an article by one of the many legal scholars who have weighed in on Google Print.)

Just as Google helps you find sites you might not have found any other way by indexing the full text of web pages, Google Print, like an electronic card catalog, indexes book content to help users find, and perhaps buy, books. This ability to introduce millions of users to millions of titles can only expand the market for authors’ books, which is precisely what copyright law is intended to foster.

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New York Book Event Details

So we have a time, date, and location for my New York pitstop: Wednesday 9/21 6:00 pm Coliseum Books 11 West 42nd Street, NYC Between 5th and 6th Aves, across from Bryant Park (212) 803-5890 www.coliseumbooks.com Hope to see all you New York Searchbloggers there!…

New York SkySo we have a time, date, and location for my New York pitstop:

Wednesday 9/21

6:00 pm

Coliseum Books

11 West 42nd Street, NYC

Between 5th and 6th Aves, across from Bryant Park

(212) 803-5890

www.coliseumbooks.com

Hope to see all you New York Searchbloggers there!

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MSFT Reorganizes

For all those watching the AOL/MSN/Google M&A game, Microsoft's recent reorg, covered here (NYT), is worth noting. The company is creating three divisions, and the one I find critical is what is called "Platform Products and Services". This division combines Windows and MSN, and that is an important shift…

For all those watching the AOL/MSN/Google M&A game, Microsoft’s recent reorg, covered here (NYT), is worth noting. The company is creating three divisions, and the one I find critical is what is called “Platform Products and Services”. This division combines Windows and MSN, and that is an important shift – the two are increasingly interdependent. Applications like Office are now in a separate division, as are Entertainment and Devices.

Ray Ozzie (speaking with MSN chief Yusuf Mehdi at Web 2.0) is now reporting to Bill Gates and overseeing all three divisions integration with the web. Interesting as well.

I was starting to think that perhaps Microsoft was going to let MSN go and focus on evolving Windows to the open Web OS, independent of MSN’s content focus. Now, I’m not so sure. More considered thinking when I get off this book merry go round….

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Google Wifi Heats Up

Rumors abound now that folks have found some Google beta test pages which seem to indicate that Google is testing a Wifi service. The leader on this story is Om, whose piece frames the argument for why the company might do it here. The pages in question – http://wifi.google.com/download.html…

GoogwifiRumors abound now that folks have found some Google beta test pages which seem to indicate that Google is testing a Wifi service. The leader on this story is Om, whose piece frames the argument for why the company might do it here.

The pages in question – http://wifi.google.com/download.html and http://wifi.google.com/faq.html -either do not resolve, or now resolve to Google itself. Certainly the company is up to something…but Google is not commenting. No cached pages are found on Google either. Anyone find any screen shots?

In any case, I think folks really want to believe that Google is about to offer something totally game changing here, and honestly, it’s hard not to want to believe this – it fits exactly our collective expectations for the company. But there are so many dots to connect in this idea, that I find a massive, one step roll out hard to fathom. On the one hand, if Google does pull this off, it’d be a coup. On the other, maybe this is just a speculative test, and it’s teaching us the power of the the Google Rorshach effect in real time….

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Financial Advice, Horoscopes on the Way?

Google has altered its famous Philosophy page and footnoted the change, SEW points out after noting an older Cnet piece. The line on the page once said: "Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat." It was a poke at portals, and, well, was written before Google became,…

Google has altered its famous Philosophy page and footnoted the change, SEW points out after noting an older Cnet piece. The line on the page once said: “Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat.” It was a poke at portals, and, well, was written before Google became, well, a portal of sorts. It has chat now, so one wonders, can Google Finance be far behind?

As Danny points out:

Overall, that page needs more than a full-disclosure footnote. It probably needs to come down entirely, at least the portion with points about what Google has found to be true. It’s not that the horizon is becoming less blurry. It’s simply that Google itself is growing up and changing, and so will the things it finds true as part of that process.

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