Category: Random, But Interesting

The New West Summit

As many of you know, in a previous life I ran the Industry Standard. My partner in editorial pursuits was Jonathan Weber, a man I hold in very high regard. He's running New West now, an innovative regional newssite based in Montana. He asked me to come to his…

Newwestsummit

As many of you know, in a previous life I ran the Industry Standard. My partner in editorial pursuits was Jonathan Weber, a man I hold in very high regard. He’s running New West now, an innovative regional newssite based in Montana. He asked me to come to his New West Summit, and I certainly couldn’t refuse. It looks like a great event. If you have an interest in how the economy of the Rocky Mountain region is changing, I highly recommend it. And it’s not a bad place to be in June, I can attest to that. Jonathan is a consummate host!

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Ballmer On Google – Uh Oh

Late last week Steve Ballmer gave an speech at Stanford in which he stated that Google is a "one trick pony" – that trick being search, of course. He also noted that Google's staff growth is "insane" and called Google, in short, "cute." Lordy, Steve. That's simply baiting the…

Monkey Ballmer DanceLate last week Steve Ballmer gave an speech at Stanford in which he stated that Google is a “one trick pony” – that trick being search, of course. He also noted that Google’s staff growth is “insane” and called Google, in short, “cute.”

Lordy, Steve. That’s simply baiting the bear, isn’t it? Now, lemme think. For its first ten years (Google is nearly ten years old now), Microsoft was a “one trick pony” – that trick being DOS. IBM, the incumbent, most certainly saw you as “cute.” And as you piled on staff up there in Redmond, handing out options like it was crack, I bet someone gave a speech claiming you were “insane.”

I love the fire in the belly. But where’s the plan of attack? I’m guessing you have one. No, I’m sure you do. Can we hear it?

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Image Search – What Will Happen

I was in the Portland airport recently and I saw an image of a happy, professionally smiling face welcome me as I logged into the free wifi there. The image is at left. It was very, very familiar. I felt like I had seen it, or rather, her, hundreds…

Have You Seen? You Will

I was in the Portland airport recently and I saw an image of a happy, professionally smiling face welcome me as I logged into the free wifi there. The image is at left.

It was very, very familiar. I felt like I had seen it, or rather, her, hundreds of times. Then it hit me. Once we can search by image, I mean, really by image, we’ll be able to find ALL the instances of this gal, all over the web. Imagine what happens once we can find every single stock image of glad handing corporate models? It’ll be just like it used to be, searching for “copyright (insert date here)” or “about us” back in the early days of text search. Ah, nostalgia!

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Giants 11, Rockies 7

We walked to the game, played a bit of catch in the stadium, then Bonds homered, Cain pitched well, some new talent showed off their bats, most of the vets stayed through the fifth, Benitez didn't blow his save, it was sunny and gorgeous, and the "Lemonade Like Grandma…

Giants

We walked to the game, played a bit of catch in the stadium, then Bonds homered, Cain pitched well, some new talent showed off their bats, most of the vets stayed through the fifth, Benitez didn’t blow his save, it was sunny and gorgeous, and the “Lemonade Like Grandma Made” man signed a ball for my son. It doesn’t get much better than this.

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Microsoft Deal For Large Customers: Use Live Search, Get Free MSFT Products

A loyal reader sent me this tidbit: Microsoft is offering its large enterprise customers free service and product credits if those customers push Live search inside their enterprises. Called "Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search," a Powerpoint overview of the program sent to me states: "Employees search the web…

Msft Live Credit 1

A loyal reader sent me this tidbit: Microsoft is offering its large enterprise customers free service and product credits if those customers push Live search inside their enterprises. Called “Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search,” a Powerpoint overview of the program sent to me states:

“Employees search the web daily with tools from Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo. OEMs and web sites are already earning credits based on searches that their users bring. Now, your organization can earn credits for Microsoft web searches and redeem them for Microsoft or preferred partner deployment and training services. More searches earns more credits towards the services you value.”

Msft Live Credit 2The value is non-trivial – the presentation estimates companies can get from $2 to $10 per computer annually, plus a $25K “enrollment credit”. For sites that have tens of thousands of computers, that can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in free stuff from Microsoft. Most large enterprises spend millions on Microsoft services and software each year. It’s not hard to imagine a CFO getting slightly moist over savings like these.

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Two Reader Suggestions

First, check out Research Google, a CSE rolled by reader Chris that includes 160 or so Google related sites. Then, check out cRANKy, which is "age relevant" search, thanks to reader Joel….

First, check out Research Google, a CSE rolled by reader Chris that includes 160 or so Google related sites.

Then, check out cRANKy, which is “age relevant” search, thanks to reader Joel.

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And We Needed Proof Alexa Is Terrible

Well, no we didn't, but as I've said before, when is Google going to gift the world with a non broken version of Alexa? Google Peter Norvig does a good job of anecdotally proving the obvious. (via another Googler, Matt Cutts). For example, let's look at the log stats…

Well, no we didn’t, but as I’ve said before, when is Google going to gift the world with a non broken version of Alexa? Google Peter Norvig does a good job of anecdotally proving the obvious. (via another Googler, Matt Cutts).

For example, let’s look at the log stats for my site and for some of my friends who have recently published their stats for 2006. We list the actual number of visits and pageviews, and the Alexa numbers for reach and pageviews. The difference is quite profound.

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GooTube: How Goes It Internally?

A SF Chron article takes a look. Fine overview if you've not been paying attention…..

A SF Chron article takes a look. Fine overview if you’ve not been paying attention..

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I Love Comments

Some great comments – and debates – all over the site lately. Thought I'd point a few out. On my post about Quintura, some of Searchblog's most prolific and accomplished commentators have a strong discussion of approaches to search. Worth the read. Over at my post on Google's 10-K,…

Comments

Some great comments – and debates – all over the site lately. Thought I’d point a few out.

On my post about Quintura, some of Searchblog’s most prolific and accomplished commentators have a strong discussion of approaches to search. Worth the read.

Over at my post on Google’s 10-K, reader Lars, who has some serious credentials in new media, goes off on a nice long rant, it’s also worth the read….

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