Month: June 2006

Cox and Craigslist: A Cautionary Tale?

Tom has the scoop on Cox, a cable ISP which also happens to own a lot of newspaper assets, blocking Craigslist. The culprit is a third party filtering service, but….apparently Cox isn't exactly rushing to fix this. It's been three months. As Tom points out, it's not like it…

Cox

Tom has the scoop on Cox, a cable ISP which also happens to own a lot of newspaper assets, blocking Craigslist. The culprit is a third party filtering service, but….apparently Cox isn’t exactly rushing to fix this. It’s been three months. As Tom points out, it’s not like it takes three months to delete a site that was mistakenly put on a filtering blacklist.

PS – I love the tagline Cox uses for its digital services: “Your Friend in the Digital Age.” Unless you use craigslist, of course.

3 Comments on Cox and Craigslist: A Cautionary Tale?

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A Melanie RoundUp

We're listening, and shortening up these posts, and Melanie will start to post longer items on her own. Here's some news of note in the past few days: Korozu Byoms Launched Yesterday, Korozu made its trial of byoms search open to the public. Byoms brings a specialized search engine…

We’re listening, and shortening up these posts, and Melanie will start to post longer items on her own.

Here’s some news of note in the past few days:

ByomsKorozu Byoms Launched

Yesterday, Korozu made its trial of byoms search open to the public. Byoms brings a specialized search engine (with WebMD or Wikipedia, for instance) into your IM client, and in a way that can handle natural language queries. Make byomsFedMedia as a buddy, for example, to use a byoms selected by Korozu or create your own. As SEW notes, “In order to get the most out of the byoms, the searcher really needs to know their source and which search terms to use; a regular search that doesn’t give good responses isn’t going to be much better if consulted via an IM client.”

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3 Comments on A Melanie RoundUp

Yow. Brin Waffles on China

I've written a lot about Google and its decision in China – I've always thought that the company had a chance to lead here, but talked itself into doing what everyone else has done. In fact, back when Google was just getting into China, I wrote: The Real Irony…

Chinese-Dragon-Green-17-Large-TmI’ve written a lot about Google and its decision in China – I’ve always thought that the company had a chance to lead here, but talked itself into doing what everyone else has done. In fact, back when Google was just getting into China, I wrote:

The Real Irony Here…is that Google is, for the first time, being a content editor. I’ve written extensively about how Google, by its very DNA, does not like to be an editor of content. But in China, it’s doing exactly that.

Google’s first big editing job? Deciding which sites to exclude because they might offend the Chinese government.

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Updated: On FareCast: Rip Me Off No More

Second Update: Hugh has given us unlimited invites (thanks Hugh!) and a process for making this easy. I'll have this done asap. Most likely you are painfully aware of how bizarre and seemingly inscrutable the pricing schemes are for airline travel. One day you might get a fare from…

Farecast Logo

Second Update: Hugh has given us unlimited invites (thanks Hugh!) and a process for making this easy. I’ll have this done asap.

Most likely you are painfully aware of how bizarre and seemingly inscrutable the pricing schemes are for airline travel. One day you might get a fare from SF to Boston for $400, the next it’s $335, and the day after that it’s $500. Why? Well, airlines have shitloads of data about historical pricing; they understand the supply and demand curves for every market, and they know when they need to sell more seats, boost margins, or compete to win business. They take advantage of all that data to push a price at you that suits them, and they’re very, very good at leveraging algorithms to drive maximum revenue. It’s frustrating as hell to use an online service like Expedia to try to beat the airlines at their own game – it simply isn’t the right interface. Not to mention, Expedia’s real customers are the travel companies – not you.

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434 Comments on Updated: On FareCast: Rip Me Off No More

Reader Phillip Writes…

Reader Phillip Writes: Google HAD to do a spreadsheet because it is simply the best, most flexible, easy to use database currently available. It and Writey are nice big widgets, not serious standalone programs. The future is what you can do with them. A spreadsheet gets data into Google in…

Reader Phillip Writes: Google HAD to do a spreadsheet because it is simply the best, most flexible, easy to use database currently available. It and Writey are nice big widgets, not serious standalone programs. The future is what you can do with them.

A spreadsheet gets data into Google in a slightly more structured format. Think a GUI for GoogleBase.

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Google: FU, MSFT

From the WSJ: Google Inc. plans on Tuesday to release a Web-based spreadsheet application, according to people familiar with the matter. Google Spreadsheet, which will be made available on a limited test basis, follows Google's March purchase of a company offering a Web-based word processor called Writely. The two…

From the WSJ:

Google Inc. plans on Tuesday to release a Web-based spreadsheet application, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google Spreadsheet, which will be made available on a limited test basis, follows Google’s March purchase of a company offering a Web-based word processor called Writely.

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JPM Analysis: More Third Links

From research sent to me by JP Morgan (this link may work): Google recently posted an entry on its website that suggested the company would begin showing fewer ads on queries where they may not be relevant, and more ads on queries for which the ads may be useful….

From research sent to me by JP Morgan (this link may work):

Google recently posted an entry on its website that suggested the company would begin showing fewer ads on queries where they may not be relevant, and more ads on queries for which the ads may be useful. The changes were to take place over several weeks, beginning sometime in April.

· In 1Q, we began conducting a study to monitor changes to Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). Our survey included 20k+ keywords, and we tracked the coverage, the number ads, and the positioning of ads.

· Our survey identified a 19% increase in the number of queries with three sponsored links above the algorithmic results. Thus far in 2Q, we have identified the 3rd link on an average of 7.6% of queries, compared to 6.4% at the end of 1Q.

· We believe Google prefers to show the 3rd link on commercial queries. The categories with the largest 3rd link exposure QTD were ‘Shopping & Classifieds’ (18.3% of queries), ‘Travel’ (12.9% of queries) and ‘Business & Finance’ (11.8% of queries).

· We believe these changes will lead to higher CTRs and CPCs, all else being equal. We are therefore increasingly confident that the company may report upside to our 2Q estimate. Google continues to be our top pick, and we believe the shares will show material appreciation by the end of the year.

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500-hour review of Windows Vista

(via Melanie) John was just considering taking-on a 500-hour product review of Windows Vista, but as luck would have it, Tom's Hardware got to it just before him. It's a very thorough walking through of every new feature with screen shots, in a total of 40 pages….

(via Melanie)

John was just considering taking-on a 500-hour product review of Windows Vista, but as luck would have it, Tom’s Hardware got to it just before him. It’s a very thorough walking through of every new feature with screen shots, in a total of 40 pages.

2 Comments on 500-hour review of Windows Vista

Ping-o-rati

(via Melanie) Technorati is offering a preview of its new microformats search tags and Pingerati, its new microformats router — still simmering in trial-mode in the Technorati Kitchen. Microformats search expands with three new tags for contacts (hCard), events (hCalendar) and reviews (hReviews), providing automatic data updates from any…

Pingorati

(via Melanie)

Technorati is offering a preview of its new microformats search tags and Pingerati, its new microformats router — still simmering in trial-mode in the Technorati Kitchen. Microformats search expands with three new tags for contacts (hCard), events (hCalendar) and reviews (hReviews), providing automatic data updates from any type of site (previously limited to blogs) to ping search aggregators. Pingerati then provides a channel to translate human-directed announcements into microformat-ready html. Together the new microformat rypes and Pigerati help avoid redoubling efforts to create content for computers and humans, eliminates manual pings, and broadens the richness of search in microformat standards.

Tantek Çelik, Chief Technologist Technorati who has helped pinoneer in the microformat standard, writes, “Microformats are the key building block, the lingua franca, that make structured information open and sharable on the Web… For me personally, this has meant enabling millions of people to take control of their own data, publish and update it wherever they want, whenever they want, and move it freely among services, without having it locked up behind a walled garden or trapped in a ‘roach motel’.”

1 Comment on Ping-o-rati

Mark Cuban on Clickfraud

From his post: Try explaining the difference to authorities between a blog, a splog and a website that is trying to make money from any of the many, many affiliate marketing programs that also happens to host adsense or other ad publishing network ads. …Hackers have figured out that…

From his post:

Try explaining the difference to authorities between a blog, a splog and a website that is trying to make money from any of the many, many affiliate marketing programs that also happens to host adsense or other ad publishing network ads.

…Hackers have figured out that they look a lot more legit getting checks from google than trying to wash 10k dollars in cash delivered in a bag.

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