Author: John Battelle

Remember the Internet Generation?

That's what John Chambers of Cisco dubbed our nation's youth back in the bubble era. Well, now that the internet is cool again, USA Today has come up with another moniker: The Google Generation. The author of this article, a child psychologist, makes a good point: "As members of the…

That’s what John Chambers of Cisco dubbed our nation’s youth back in the bubble era. Well, now that the internet is cool again, USA Today has come up with another moniker: The Google Generation. The author of this article, a child psychologist, makes a good point: “As members of the Google generation, today’s children have facts at their fingertips. They don’t need information fed through toys. They need to play and to become creative problem solvers.” I certainly agree with this. A quote used by the director of my kids’ school (originally from Socrates, I think) goes something like: “A child is a flame to be ignited, not a vessel to be filled.” She suggests holiday toys that do not entertain, but rather that provoke creative play. Her top ten: Play-Doh, building blocks, costume drawers, puppets, red rubber balls, books, crayons, paints, rhythm instruments and dolls.

5 Comments on Remember the Internet Generation?

SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date on the latest from BattelleMedia.com

Google, India, Yahoo, Paul

I spent most of yesterday working on the book, talking to folks at Yahoo, Google, and with Paul Saffo. I met with Terry Winnograd, who was Larry Page's professor at Stanford, worked with Larry and Sergey early in the project, and is still on Google's technical advisory board (scroll down)….

I spent most of yesterday working on the book, talking to folks at Yahoo, Google, and with Paul Saffo. I met with Terry Winnograd, who was Larry Page’s professor at Stanford, worked with Larry and Sergey early in the project, and is still on Google’s technical advisory board (scroll down). While I was there I ran into Yossi Vardi, who is always a joy to see. The man is always beaming, and this was no exception, he was touring Google’s new building with Sergey and telling enthusiastic stories about Sergey’s recent trip to Israel (Yossi of course played host). In any case, internationalization is clearly a theme at Google. The company recently announced a new R&D center in India. I asked David Krane (Director of CC) why, and he said he company can’t expect everyone to come here, and there’s a lot of talent in Bangalore. Makes sense.

Terry is an energetic man, he was a founding member of CPSR and has done a lot of work on natural language and HCI (human computer interface). He recently took a sebbatical from Stanford to work at Google full time, and is now moving back into the academic life. I won’t go into all we discussed (gotta save something for the book!) but it was a good meeting, and I heard some funny tales of the early days, among other things.

At Yahoo I met with Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo’s Editor in Chief. She’s been there almost since the beginning, and we had a robust and lengthy conversation about the role of editorial in search, the role of the directory at Yahoo (very interesting) and challenges ahead for the industry and the company. I really enjoyed Ninj, as she is known. She’s only 32, but has spent nearly 9 years thinking about this stuff as EIC at Yahoo. Prior to that, she worked on Doug Lenat’s CYC project, which for those of you unfamiliar with it was a very brave, arguably foolish, and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to solve AI’s “brittleness” problem. CYCorp still exists, applying some of its early work to corporate data issues.

Read More
Leave a comment on Google, India, Yahoo, Paul

Marchex

Marchex, a Seattle-based SEO/Pay per click firm headed by folks from Go2Net, has filed to go public. Here's a story on it. This is interesting in many ways – the company is not profitable (though it is cash flow positive), and it's not well known, but it's in the…

marchex.gif
Marchex, a Seattle-based SEO/Pay per click firm headed by folks from Go2Net, has filed to go public. Here’s a story on it. This is interesting in many ways – the company is not profitable (though it is cash flow positive), and it’s not well known, but it’s in the search/advertising space, which is feeling overheated. Worth watching.

4 Comments on Marchex

Glimmers of Hope In Video Search

One of my more inchoate but deeply felt rants has to do with the role of video in our culture. I'm convinced, for reasons I can't properly articulate, that as a culture we've hobbled ourselves by refusing to make video – in particular the incessant stream of television so omnipresent…

One of my more inchoate but deeply felt rants has to do with the role of video in our culture. I’m convinced, for reasons I can’t properly articulate, that as a culture we’ve hobbled ourselves by refusing to make video – in particular the incessant stream of television so omnipresent in our lives, a more citation-friendly, searchable, and conversational medium. What I’ve always wanted was the ability to approach video much as we now approach text – it can be searched, annotated, cut and pasted, linked to, etc. I want to be able to say “Hey, remember that great rant by Jon Stewart on Halliburton?” and then link to it or email it to a friend. I hint at some of this in various 2.0 columns.
Of course there are many technical and legal issues with the implementation of such a dream. Fist, bandwidth is still too expensive for most mere mortals to be hosting massive libraries of video. Second, the numbnuts at the MPAA. And third, video must be logged and tagged to be searched – it’s not a self-tagging medium like text.
But there is hope. For issue one, there’s the optimism (if not the politics) of folks like Gilder. For issue two, there’s folks like Larry Lessig. And for three, there’s closed captioning (it’s a start!), and the work of lesser known but really exciting companies like ShadowTV (thanks for the link, Gary!).Worth grokking, and good to know smart folks are on the case here.

4 Comments on Glimmers of Hope In Video Search

It’s Not The Name, It’s The Verb

So the debate on re-naming, or re-spinning, or re-thinking what RSS might mean to a broader world is playing out, at Contentious and on Dave Winer's blog as well as at Salon and here. But as I've been thinking about it, I'm increasingly convinced that the phrase we're looking…


So the debate on re-naming, or re-spinning, or re-thinking what RSS might mean to a broader world is playing out, at Contentious and on Dave Winer’s blog as well as at Salon and here. But as I’ve been thinking about it, I’m increasingly convinced that the phrase we’re looking for we already have – The Web. That word can shapeshift enough to incorporate the changes inherent to a pubsub world, as Dave puts it. Maybe what we’re really looking for is a better verb. Let’s kill surf, as soon as possible. And come up with something better.

2 Comments on It’s Not The Name, It’s The Verb

Yet more funky little search companies

* Brainboost, an Ask Jeeves like Q&A engine (employs “cutting edge AI!”) * Think Tank 23 (finds “ideas”) * Nervana. ” You define the context of what you need, and Nervana delivers semantically relevant results from a multitude of sources (such as documents, emails, knowledge communities, intranets, and the Internet). “…

* Brainboost, an Ask Jeeves like Q&A engine (employs “cutting edge AI!”)
* Think Tank 23 (finds “ideas”)
* Nervana. ” You define the context of what you need, and Nervana delivers semantically relevant results from a multitude of sources (such as documents, emails, knowledge communities, intranets, and the Internet). ” (via Gary Price’s Resourceshelf)

There must be hundreds of these small search-related companies already, with scores more on the brink of launch.

Leave a comment on Yet more funky little search companies

Lycos Top Search Terms for 2003…

And the Top Ten are (with last year's ranking in parens): 1. KaZaA (2) 2. Britney Spears (4) 3. Dragonball (1) 4. Paris Hilton (-) 5. IRS (7) 6. Kobe Bryant (-) 7. Christmas (9) 8. NFL (6) 9. Pamela Anderson (10) 10. Brooke Burke (34) Check out the…

And the Top Ten are (with last year’s ranking in parens):

1. KaZaA (2)
2. Britney Spears (4)
3. Dragonball (1)
4. Paris Hilton (-)
5. IRS (7)
6. Kobe Bryant (-)
7. Christmas (9)
8. NFL (6)
9. Pamela Anderson (10)
10. Brooke Burke (34)

Read More
Leave a comment on Lycos Top Search Terms for 2003…

Google+Friendster+Plaxo = Eurekster

I've not fully grokked it yet, but here's a new concept in search: Eurekster. From the site: "Eurekster uses the six-degrees of separation concept to learn from your extended network of contacts and deliver you prioritised results based on the success and proximity of the searches they have done."…


I’ve not fully grokked it yet, but here’s a new concept in search: Eurekster. From the site: “Eurekster uses the six-degrees of separation concept to learn from your extended network of contacts and deliver you prioritised results based on the success and proximity of the searches they have done.” The site is in beta and you need a password to get in, a friend who will remain anonymous gave me his. I signed up to be official, we’ll see if I get the nod.

Meanwhile, I see the folks behind this are RealContacts and SLI Systems. SLI is the tech that was behind Snap!, and survived it (and now powers some portions of the NBC webspace).

I can’t tell is this is simply silly – take the hottest stuff on the web right now and combine it! – or for real. More when I get smarter.

2 Comments on Google+Friendster+Plaxo = Eurekster

Grokking Groxis’ Grokker

So last night was the launch soiree for version 2.0 of Grokker, a search interface tool built right in my own backyard of Marin. It's backed by Paul Hawken, and sports some impressive advisors, investors, and board members, including Paul Saffo and John Seely Brown. Grokker "gives the big…


So last night was the launch soiree for version 2.0 of Grokker, a search interface tool built right in my own backyard of Marin. It’s backed by Paul Hawken, and sports some impressive advisors, investors, and board members, including Paul Saffo and John Seely Brown. Grokker “gives the big picture” on large collections of data – it’s a visualization tool, and from what I saw last night, the new version is quite elegant. I saw a demo of Version 1.0 about a year ago and they’ve really made a lot of progress. I am a huge fan of the word “grok” – from its original Heinlein origins through Wolfe and Wired (where I helped the author of Wired Style write the definition) and the Standard (where we launched a series of newsletters and a magazine called “Grok“). It’s neat to see it making another round through the vernacular.

In any case the party was quite subdued by usual product hype standards, with an odd assortment of well-to-do investor types wandering shoeless through an extraordinary Mill Valley home, and Bonnie Raitt also in attendance (Bonnie Raitt?!), sporting a very down-to-earth and pleased-to-be-here manner. Groxis CEO RJ Pittman gave me a demo. Grokker takes datasets created by a keyword or phrase queries on sites like Amazon or “the Web” (it hits six search engines) and runs them through a second filter which displays results as clusters of nested orbs, each with tags derived on the fly from the data. It’s quite a seductive interface, and I can see it working for any number of search needs. And as a trend, I applaud this kind of development – building new applications based on search as a platform, rather like an OS. (Tim Bray among others have noted in the past how search today seems stuck at the level of the DOS C: prompt. Groxis might be seen as an attempt to go GUI.)

But the most interesting thing about Groxis is how it is approaching versioning – this release comes after more than a year out in the open, soliciting feedback (some of it quite negative) from the search community. With Version 2.0, Groxis plans to again listen and learn from how the product is used, rather than try to force it into a particular bucket of revenue (though they do have enterprise and licensing deals). This is due to the angel investors behind the company, Pittman said, who are not demanding a rigid, pre-determined approach to how the product will make money. That was exactly how Google did it in the beginning (and, it seems, how Friendster is doing it now). The Mac version will be ready to beta in a few weeks. When I get it, I’ll post more.

3 Comments on Grokking Groxis’ Grokker

Three Years Ago, Where Were You?

Last night at the Webby Business Awards dinner (caveat, I was a judge), while having a lively conversation about the future of technology and business online, it struck me that it might be interesting to ask the folks at the table not what they thought was coming, but rather…


Last night at the Webby Business Awards dinner (caveat, I was a judge), while having a lively conversation about the future of technology and business online, it struck me that it might be interesting to ask the folks at the table not what they thought was coming, but rather where they were three years ago. Because, as it happens, three years ago this month was pretty much when the worm turned in the internet industry. Late 2000, the money ran out, the businesses started to fall apart, the media coverage got bitter and angry, and a lot of people started losing their jobs. Not surprisingly, most of the folks at my table had entirely different jobs three years ago, as did I (there were folks from Google and Salesforce present, and as you might expect, they were in fine fettle).
Three years ago I was running the Standard, facing the first layoffs in the company’s history, and dealing with a dramatic reversal in our advertising forecasts: a drop of about 75%. So where were you, and what were you doing? And…more importantly, how are you doing now? Are you happier? Interestingly, every single person I asked that question last night said they were. Worms keep turning, and eventually the soil again bears fruit.

1 Comment on Three Years Ago, Where Were You?