Category: Random, But Interesting

Rule The Web

I just got my copy of Mark Frauenfelder's "Rule the Web" and I can't wait to dive in. If you want yours (Mark is the editor of Make and a partner of mine in Boing Boing, which he founded), head here!…

Ruleweb

I just got my copy of Mark Frauenfelder’s “Rule the Web” and I can’t wait to dive in. If you want yours (Mark is the editor of Make and a partner of mine in Boing Boing, which he founded), head here!

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Something Different

Tonight a pal is coming into town to screen her third film, Gypsy Caravan. It's playing in Marin tonight, and also all over the country. I'm very proud of Jasmine and will be at tonight's screening in San Rafael. If you're around, come and see it, Jasmine will be…

Tonight a pal is coming into town to screen her third film, Gypsy Caravan. It’s playing in Marin tonight, and also all over the country. I’m very proud of Jasmine and will be at tonight’s screening in San Rafael. If you’re around, come and see it, Jasmine will be there!

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Your Spam Control Is a Sham. No It’s Not.

InfoWeek asks: Is Google's Spam Fight a Sham? Matt Cutts, who runs it, answers: No!…

InfoWeek asks: Is Google’s Spam Fight a Sham? Matt Cutts, who runs it, answers: No!

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The Garage That Built Google

(image clipped from USA Today story) We all know the Valley lore around garages. If you read my book, you know Google's garage was owned by Susan Wojcicki, who went on to work at Google, and whose sister ended up marrying Sergey. Here's an USA Today story about the…

Susan W And Garage

(image clipped from USA Today story)

We all know the Valley lore around garages. If you read my book, you know Google’s garage was owned by Susan Wojcicki, who went on to work at Google, and whose sister ended up marrying Sergey. Here’s an USA Today story about the garage. From it:

After earning her MBA in 1998, Wojcicki bought 232 Santa Margarita Ave. for about $600,000. She rented the garage to two Stanford students for $1,700 a month to help with the mortgage. The renters: no ordinary slackers, but the Google Guys, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who incubated Google(GOOG) right there.

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Gary’s Got Research…

From our pal Gary, who watches new research papers: A list of accepted papers that will be presented at The First International Workshop on Data Mining and Audience Intelligence for Advertising (August 12, 2007, San Jose, California, USA) has been released. Here’s a selected list: + Pay-per-Action Model for…

From our pal Gary, who watches new research papers:

A list of accepted papers that will be presented at The First International Workshop on Data Mining and Audience Intelligence for Advertising (August 12, 2007, San Jose, California, USA) has been released.

Here’s a selected list:

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Google and GrandCentral: Open MP3s No Longer Allowed

After Google's GrandCentral acquisition, Reader Troy points out: GrandCentral offers a range of truly useful features, but one that was just plain fun was "RingShare." This allowed users to pick from a range of different ringtones (authentic Russian *beeeeeep*, anyone?), or — better yet — upload their own MP3…

After Google’s GrandCentral acquisition, Reader Troy points out:

GrandCentral offers a range of truly useful features, but one that was just plain fun was “RingShare.” This allowed users to pick from a range of different ringtones (authentic Russian *beeeeeep*, anyone?), or — better yet — upload their own MP3 for a personalized ring, “please hold” message or muzak.

As of today, though, the MP3 option is no more. (See below)

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Follow the FreeBurner

My colleague Kevin Kelly popularized the phrase "Follow the free" whilst an editor at Wired. Google certainly seems to agree, making most every paid service it buys free. Next up: Feedburner's paid services, TotalStats and MyBrand….

My colleague Kevin Kelly popularized the phrase “Follow the free” whilst an editor at Wired. Google certainly seems to agree, making most every paid service it buys free. Next up: Feedburner’s paid services, TotalStats and MyBrand.

1 Comment on Follow the FreeBurner

Fight For Mike

Mike Homer is an investor in my company, FM, and I've always enjoyed spending time with him. He's smart, he's connected, and he's fun. Now, however, he's very, very ill, with a disease that has precious little understanding in the medical community. But we can all help. His family…

Homer

Mike Homer is an investor in my company, FM, and I’ve always enjoyed spending time with him. He’s smart, he’s connected, and he’s fun. Now, however, he’s very, very ill, with a disease that has precious little understanding in the medical community. But we can all help. His family and friends have started a “Fight for Mike” fund and I ask anyone who might help, to help. More details are here.

From the Fight for Mike page:

Your donation will help accelerate research on medication that might prolong Mike’s life as UCSF continues its work on a cure for CJD.

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Interesting Study: Brand and Search

Thanks to reader JG for this interesting writeup of a recent study on how brands effect search results. From it: Web searchers who evaluated identical search-engine results overwhelmingly favored Yahoo! and Google, providing evidence that people go for brand names on the Internet just as they do in the…

Thanks to reader JG for this interesting writeup of a recent study on how brands effect search results. From it:

Web searchers who evaluated identical search-engine results overwhelmingly favored Yahoo! and Google, providing evidence that people go for brand names on the Internet just as they do in the real world, according to new research presented at the Computer/Human Interaction 2007 Conference in San Jose, California….

Despite the results pages being identical in content and presentation, participants indicated that Yahoo! and Google outperformed MSN Live Search and the in-house search engine.

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The Roof Party

Way back in the day, my old company had a lot of beer blasts on Fridays, up on the roof of our building in the city. Lots of folks came, and it got to be expensive, so we brought in sponsors. Then they got really big – and very…

Way back in the day, my old company had a lot of beer blasts on Fridays, up on the roof of our building in the city. Lots of folks came, and it got to be expensive, so we brought in sponsors. Then they got really big – and very good for my company’s business. Lots of ad deals were closed, lots of new folks were hired in a very competitive market, and our conference business, which ran the parties, made lots of dough. Of course that’s not how history remembers them – the parties became symbolic of the excess of the dot com era.

Well, that’s OK. You live with history, and learn from it. Today my current company, FM, is having a party on a roof, and I couldn’t be more happy about it. It’s our fourth annual Author Salon, and we’re doing it atop the Hotel Vitale in the city. I’m posting this from the party, and I’m proud to say that as with the last go round, this party is sponsored – by Searchblog. I’ve not taken money for the ads that run on the site for over a year, and the balance has really piled up. So I decided to use a portion of it to thank our staff, our authors, and our pals and partners by supporting an afternoon celebrating our second anniversary. In a very real way, all of you as readers have made this company and this celebration possible. Thanks! If you’re in the neighborhood, come on by!

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