Author: John Battelle

Declan on Govt. Information Practices

Worthy of a read, and related to my earlier post about architecture and politics, Declan at CNET outlines current administration tactics w/r/t information sharing that taken together certainly seem to form a pattern. We should all be thankful for projects like Brewster's Internet Archive and The Memory Hole. UPDATE: Larry…

Worthy of a read, and related to my earlier post about architecture and politics,
Declan at CNET outlines current administration tactics w/r/t information sharing that taken together certainly seem to form a pattern. We should all be thankful for projects like Brewster’s Internet Archive and The Memory Hole.

UPDATE: Larry Lessig points out that in fact the White House has deliberately changed the press release, and the Internet Archive proves it. No record made of this by the administration. Thank God for the IA.

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“Get Where You Want In Two Clicks”

Dipsie, a new search engine coming Summer 2004, was recently written up in Businessweek (two paragraphs, with no mention of who was behind it). I could not find the site using a Google search (or Alta Vista or Teoma, so hold the conspiracy theories), but found it by simply typing…

lockupDipsie, a new search engine coming Summer 2004, was recently written up in Businessweek (two paragraphs, with no mention of who was behind it). I could not find the site using a Google search (or Alta Vista or Teoma, so hold the conspiracy theories), but found it by simply typing in “dipsie.com.” Gee…that seems odd, or they are so new that they’ve not been crawled, or…they have banned spiders from their site.

The site is very light on details, though it does say they are privately funded, in Chicago, and they are hiring. In the Businessweek piece (I’d link to it but their online site is deeply f*cked up) they also claim they will index 10 billion web pages (Google et al do about 3 billion) and will have semantic ranking (language based) that will be better than Google (the motto is “Get Where You Want In Two Clicks”.) If that’s right, expect them to be bought soon. If they *really do* have great tech, tech that can scale and withstand serious slashdotting, they’ll lash themselves to the mast, ignore the siren call of easy money from Google, MSFT, or Yahoo, and launch. Their price will go up with every new user they pull in. As Eric at Google often points out, the competition is one click away. And as great as Google is, fact is, no one ever gets past what Tim Bray calls the “Google Event Horizon” – result # 1001. In fact, few get past result #10 in any search engine, and therein lies an opportunity.

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The future of video advertising

In my recent B 2.0 column, I give MSFT credit for pushing a new form of video advertising into the mainstream, and claim that this TV-type advertising will support free video consumption on the web. Neat then to see that Yahoo will expand its free video again, and has killed…

In my recent B 2.0 column, I give MSFT credit for pushing a new form of video advertising into the mainstream, and claim that this TV-type advertising will support free video consumption on the web. Neat then to see that Yahoo will expand its free video again, and has killed its video subscription service.

Microsoft and Google?

I've written about this before, in Business 2.0, pointing out that MSFT and Google – in some ways – share similar cultures. But I really doubt this will happen, regardless of the rumours spurred by reports in the NYT. Of course MSFT wishes it had Google, and of course…

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I’ve written about this before, in Business 2.0, pointing out that MSFT and Google – in some ways – share similar cultures. But I really doubt this will happen, regardless of the rumours spurred by reports in the NYT. Of course MSFT wishes it had Google, and of course Google respects MSFT. But I just don’t see them doing it. If they do, well, it’d be the biggest thing to hit the internet since AOLTW. Enough said.

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O’Reilly on Tech/Media Future

"We're all Linux users," he points out at the OSCOM conference this week. Huh? Well, we all use Google, a Linux application running over the net. His point is important: traditional notions of the application and operating system, once held fast to our individual computers, are in flux, and now…

“We’re all Linux users,” he points out at the OSCOM conference this week. Huh? Well, we all use Google, a Linux application running over the net. His point is important: traditional notions of the application and operating system, once held fast to our individual computers, are in flux, and now the best applications run across the network (ie, iTunes, iPhoto, Google). I’d add that most of the best network applications are media applications, interestingly. Here’s more on the idea from Wired News.

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Standing By Their Numbers…

Neilsen rechecked their figures, and stands by them, this WSJ Page One piece reports (sub req'd). The upshot: Young men are abandoning network TV….

Neilsen rechecked their figures, and stands by them, this WSJ Page One piece reports (sub req’d). The upshot: Young men are abandoning network TV.

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AOL Turnaround?

First a piece in Fortune predicting a turnaround, mainly due to cost cutting and the rising tide of online advertising, then this piece in the Times today. It again points to the rising tide, and claims AOL may have an ace up its sleeve – a positive surprise in the…

First a piece in Fortune predicting a turnaround, mainly due to cost cutting and the rising tide of online advertising, then this piece in the Times today. It again points to the rising tide, and claims AOL may have an ace up its sleeve – a positive surprise in the form of profit growh, due in large part to its relationship with Google and its ability to sell contextual positioning of video to big ticket advertisers like carmakers. About time, I’d say, and encouraging news. If AOL has a big Q4, there may yet be pop to the parent company’s stock. A downside: As with Yahoo and Overture, AOL may become too dependent on Google for its revenues/margins.

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Architecture = Politics

I've long been waiting for something to boil over in the area where politics meets the architecture of search engines. I'm not sure this is it, but it certainly points the way. Someone over at the DNC noticed that the White House website was purposefully blocking various public documents from…

I’ve long been waiting for something to boil over in the area where politics meets the architecture of search engines. I’m not sure this is it, but it certainly points the way. Someone over at the DNC noticed that the White House website was purposefully blocking various public documents from being crawled by search engines. This usually is standard stuff – a file that webmasters keep called robots.txt instructs spiders to ignore various pages, usually because those pages are internally-focused or the company wishes to keep them private. However, White House-posted documents are clearly in the public record. A quick review of the White House’s .txt file shows that something else is going on. A lot of files about Iraq are in the “disallow” category. It’s pretty easy to assume an intention: Keep past statements about Iraq out of the public consciousness, especially ones that are now – er – out of touch with current reality (ie, it’ll be an easy peace! And inexpensive!). If you believe, as I do, that search engines are becoming a powerful proxy for what the public knows, then this action by the White House extends spin to the level of public records. It’s a fascinating move – clearly they knew they could not expunge the documents from the site, that would be too obvious, and it would mean they had something to hide. But…they seem to be trying to keep those embarassing public documents from being found via the tool most casual (or intentional) searchers use first (and sometimes only) – the search engine. Thanks to Dan Gilmor, who first posted this. Stay tuned, this one might turn into something.

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