I write that partially in jest, as there are many announcements today, but I have to travel again, this time on personal, family related business. Please forgive my lack of posts….and I'll post later (mid afternoon if I am lucky). Unfortunately the personal stuff has forced rescheduling of my…
Unfortunately the personal stuff has forced rescheduling of my talk at Yahoo today (originally slated for 2 pm), and that’s a real bummer. We’re going to do it, but just not today. I will still be making my evening chat with Dan Farber and four search startups at the SDForum’s Search SIG on the Microsoft SV Campus. Looking forward to that….
If you've been meaning to get caught up on the whole Microsoft/Web services/Web2 threat meme, then read this Cnet piece on Gates' recent memo to employees (Winer has full text there of it and Ozzie's as well), which I very much doubt was intended solely as an internal rumination,…
Microsoft truly does face the second coming of the Web, and this time it’s not conveniently packaged as one killable company a la Netscape (Google notwithstanding).
(image credit) CDT, among many others, is urging all of us to take action on the PATRIOT Act, a terrible piece of legislation that I've written about before. I also featured this Act in the book. From it: ….under the PATRIOT Act, the government now has far broader rights…
(image credit)
CDT, among many others, is urging all of us to take action on the PATRIOT Act, a terrible piece of legislation that I’ve written about before. I also featured this Act in the book. From it:
….under the PATRIOT Act, the government now
has far broader rights to intercept your private data communica-
tions—a reinterpretation of the Fourth Amendment, which states:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, pa-
pers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall
not be violated.”
The PATRIOT Act certainly puts a new spin on the word
“search.” But this is to be expected, right? After all, if the government
has probable cause and a search warrant, nothing has really changed,
has it? As all good civics students know, the Fourth Amendment con-
tinues: “no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported
by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Under PATRIOT, prior interpretations of these constitutional
presumptions don’t necessarily hold true. To summarize, the PA-
TRIOT Act holds that your private information can now be inter-
cepted and handed over to government authorities not via a search
warrant tendered to you, but rather via a request to your ISP, your
community library, or another service provider. That means that
should the government decide it wants access to your information, it
no longer needs to serve a search warrant on you; it can instead go to
the company that you use—be it Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL,
or any number of others.3 In the past, the government could cer-
tainly tap your phone or search your effects if you were a suspect in
a crime. But under the PATRIOT Act, not only can the government
tap a suspect’s clickstream; the standards for who the government
can tap and how it informs a suspect have loosened as well.
More on this as it develops, first saw Jarvis's post here…Long and short: This is Google's AdWords-eBay mashup, without eBay… Update: Internet News, Forbes coverage….
Update: Internet News, Forbes coverage.
Apologies, Searchbloggers, for my absence. Travel plus some Real Life stuff have intervened on my abilities to properly post. Meantime, much afoot. Here are some highlights. Looksmart is branching into vertical search in a big way. Reactions are varied. Searchblogger Chris Zaharias has started a site on SEM. Find…
I'm at ad:tech Monday, in NYC. Back online Tuesday…and this Thursday, I'll be part of the SD Forum's Search SIG. From the description on Jeff Clavier's blog: The topic of this month is “The Search: A ten year perspective”, during which we will look back at the early days…
The topic of this month is “The Search: A ten year perspective”, during which we will look back at the early days of the search industry, its key turning points, and discuss its short term outlook and its future.
The event will be held on the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus, Mountain View. Hope to see you there!
First we had readers in the Dublin airport, now it's the Munich airport, with reader Oliver Thylmann deep in the pure literary joy that is The Search (nice bubble chair, buddy). By the way, last week you guys pushed the book to #10 on the BusinessWeek best seller list….
By the way, last week you guys pushed the book to #10 on the BusinessWeek best seller list. THANK YOU!
Kevin Kelly sent this my way, and it looked like a hoax, but I don't think it is, nor does Kevin, and the b'sphere is all over it. Amazon Mechanical Turk. From the overview: In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton…
In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelen’s “Turk” was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. To persuade skeptical audiences, Kempelen would slide open the cabinet’s doors to reveal the intricate set of gears, cogs and springs that powered his invention. He convinced them that he had built a machine that made decisions using artificial intelligence. What they did not know was the secret behind the Mechanical Turk: a chess master cleverly concealed inside.
Today, we build complex software applications based on the things computers do well, such as storing and retrieving large amounts of information or rapidly performing calculations. However, humans still significantly outperform the most powerful computers at completing such simple tasks as identifying objects in photographs—something children can do even before they learn to speak.
Read MoreThere's much AdSense news today, including a new affiliate program that lets AdSense publishers make money by referring folks into AdSense, and – surprise surprise – make a buck (literally) for everyone who might download and install Google's Toolbar. But what I find fascinating are the new AdSense Terms…
But what I find fascinating are the new AdSense Terms of Service, which I am just digging into (thanks Glenn). The industry seems focused on the new referral stuff, but it seems they have changed to redefine what Google finds competitive to their network – now that the company has image ads and site specific stuff, they need to start boxing out new kinds of competitors. Anyone out there fully grokked this? I plan to later this weekend….
I've been watching the number of posts on Searchblog gradually head up to 2000, but not till I saw that the last one was # 2004 – and this # 2005 – did I realize the milestone had been reached. And, Searchblog turned two years old last month, another…
I’ve been watching the number of posts on Searchblog gradually head up to 2000, but not till I saw that the last one was # 2004 – and this # 2005 – did I realize the milestone had been reached. And, Searchblog turned two years old last month, another milestone I forgot to note! Here is number 1, and here’s number 1000….
