Archive for 'Search'
OK, Mahalo Vlog Idol Is Funny
Posted on April 29, 2008, under Media, Search, Tools and Services.
As Jason Calacanisis behind it and he is a master at promotion, I do not need to promote Mahalo, Mahalo Daily, or probably even Mahalo Vlog Idol. But just incase you live under a rock, basically they are spoofing American Idol looking for a replacement for Veronica Belmont. I know they are definitely having fun with it, but I have to imagine that they are really looking for a host and one of these contestants will be it. Either way it’s funny and entertaining, check it out.
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Why Is Yahoo Motivated All of Sudden?
Posted on April 24, 2008, under Search, Tools and Services.
Maybe Microsoft should threaten mergers of other companies, because to me it seems Yahoo has been on fire releasing something new almost every week since this whole merger game began. I just read about Yahoo and SearchMonkey.
I am not sure what is driving the sudden progress, management realizing they had a problem, or the merger. Just taking a look at the Yahoo blog you can see the progress. I like it, good things are coming from Yahoo, but I do not think it will get Microsoft off their back.
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Trying Mahalo for a Week
Posted on August 26, 2007, under Search, Tools and Services.
Note: I am not employed, endorsed, or in any way associated with Mahalo or any other of Jason Calacanis’s properties.
Today is Monday, the start of a new week. I have decided to try Mahalo, the new “Human Powered Search Engine” by Jason Calacanis, for an entire week. I have started by installing the Firefox search extension and will be using it for every primary search this week. This means when I need to search for something, I will be trying Mahalo first and then resorting to traditional search methods as a fall back. I feel that the hardest thing to get use to during this trial is not having to weed through search results myself, as Mahalo’s guides compile the “best” of all links into a customized page.
I have decided to try this experiment with Mahalom and other non-Google search engines, primarily because I feel a lot of us get stuck in our ways of doing things and then it becomes that much harder to eventually branch out. I have decided to start with Mahalo, because it is a far reach outside the traditional search engines.
I hope you come back for a full review next Monday.
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Google Makes FeedBurner Free
Posted on July 3, 2007, under Blogging, Development, Search, Tools and Services, Web Design.
You have to love Google…. with the recent acquisition of FeedBurner Google has now opened up the pay services to all for free. Before, FeedBurner Pro and FeedBurner MyBrand were both pay services, but Google has made them free.
If you have a FeedBurner account go in and enable pro stats. You can also get up an running with MyBrand feed domains in minutes. It will be interesting where Google will go to not only monetize FeedBurner along with Google Analytics but additionally what will be the future of the “monetize” portion of FeedBurner where they let you put ads in your feed.
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Does Auto-Complete Search Limit You?
Posted on June 12, 2007, under Search.
Auto complete is a great feature in most cases, but lately I have found some frustration with it to the point I turned it off in Firefox. When I search for something, I generally know what to put in as a query to find what I am looking for. In other cases I am looking for something so specific that I need to find an exact match, like an error code or something from debugging. In these cases, I have found auto-completion a hindrance to my query. I am looking for something specific, I do not need to know what others have searched for an how many results they pulled.
I will admit that for some cases Auto-complete is good, like if you are searching for names of places, people, etc. But more often than not I have not found it valuable, and it really gets in the way for what I am searching for.
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One Month With Google Branded GMail
Posted on May 31, 2007, under Email, Search, Spam, Tools and Services.
So it has been one month since I converted my personal email over to Google Apps. There were several phases in this process, the initial being research and testing different setups. I knew what my ideal end goal was going to be, but did not know which of the many ways of accomplishing that I was going to go with. In the process I was and am still converting my machines over to Linux, where the software compatibility with my Windows Mobile device are lacking. I ended up trying a bunch of different software to sync my desktop with my mobile device and then Google. None worked in such seamless manner as I wanted. Give it a couple more revisions and I am sure the software will be mature enough, but not at the moment. So ended up just going completely web based, something that is very foreign to me as I have used Outlook for most of my life. I am still looking for a good solution to backup my GMail, because the thought that “in case something happens my mail would be gone” kind of has me worried. I am no syncing my calender and mail right on my device to Google, bypassing the desktop.
So how has Google scored in this whole transition? Well here is the break down.
Pros:
- Google is fast!: I am not just talking about from the web application side. But from receiving and sending a message, it is lightning fast. It’s even faster when you are going from a Gmail account to another Gmail account.
- Shared calenders: I have my better half setup so we can share our Google calenders together, which has really been a great feature. This is one of those features that once you use it, you wonder how you ever survived with out it.
- Features: I am not going to go as far to say that Google’s webmail application sis flawless, but it is dam good. Features like Address Completion, Spelling, Tags, are easy to use and just as convenient as a desktop application.
- Load: Less load on my server, which means it can do what is does best: serving up web pages.
- Spam Filter: The spam filter is not perfect, but much better than what I previously had.
Cons:
- No API: I am really not sure why no API has been created yet, but it leads to being less in sync with your email. Applications to syncronize, applications to notify; are the applications I needed and wanted, but are cumbersome because there is no official API.
- Tags not Folders: Coming from an Outlook background, as mentioned above, getting used to tagging mail and not putting mail in folders was a change.
- Trash is not Storage: With Outlook I would keep my trash, it was a place i could reference if I ever needed. With GMail you use “Archived Mail” and anything in the trash is deleted after 30 days.
- Setup: If you have basic knowledge or a will to learn about of DNS and MX records, you can setup Google apps. It’s not too difficult, and the turn around was quick.
Overall I am very pleased, and it;s good to just have it work and not have to worry about managing it. Best of all when new features roll out, they will be implemented with no effort from me. Meaning I will not have to go and update the web mail software just to get the new feature I was waiting for.
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Google Maps Street View, Bound For Trouble
Posted on May 30, 2007, under Search, Tools and Services.
I am an avid Google supporter, but I feel with the launch of the new Google Maps Street View feature they have put behind them the “Do no evil” motto they employ. Basically for select cities Google lets you zoom down to street level to view very high resolution photos, I would say they are surveillance quality photos… not the cheap stuff. Not only does this raise concerns for the obvious like license plate numbers, peoples faces, identity’s, etc. But on a more serious level, what if there was a photo of a police stake out, mob crime, or something else. There are laws preventing someone from walking in public taking pictures and publishing them without consent. I am not really sure how Google feels this was OK to release. Take a look at this photo I found of someone on the streets of California, the quality is amazing… I even scaled it down some to save on bandwidth. Personally I feel Google really messed up here, this seems like a rush to market feature that was not fully thought through.
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Why Microsoft will Never Succeed In Search
Posted on May 21, 2007, under Email, Operating Systems, Search, Tools and Services.
My recent change over to a Linux desktop has really given me some different perspective on things. It has allowed me to see things differently. The task of trying to find Linux replacements for some of my “must have” Windows desktop applications proved to not as easy as I thought. In the process I quickly learned what big name companies support Linux by making their applications and products cross platform. Google was on one side with their Linux versions of Picasa and Google Earth. this really had me thinking about how Microsoft plans on succeeding in the search market when they are too stubborn to embrace other communities like Linux and Macintosh. The search business involves managing data, take Google the undisputed leader in search. For email it’s GMail, for instant messaging it’s Google Talk, for documents and spreadsheets it’s Google Docs and Google Desktop Search, and the list goes on. So how is Microsoft going to compete with this? Is Microsoft’s online Office going to be compatible with Firefox with absolutely no feature different? Is Microsoft going to release a Linux or Macintosh version for their Desktop search product? Is Microsoft’s Picasa killer going to support other image and video formats that are not Windows dependent and plugged into to their DRM system.
Microsoft has never really been platform independent. They stopped releasing Internet Explorer for the Mac, the web-mail for Microsoft Exchange is completely less usable and has less features if running on a browser other than Internet Explorer, and IMAP in Outlook has never worked the way IMAP is supposed to work. Microsoft has always had the problem of needed to own the entire market, and complete the circle from Desktop, to Internet, to Mobile; this does not play well when you want to be a service company.
Enter in the ongoing rumor that Microsoft has been looking at Yahoo for an acquisition, and I am completely dumbfounded. Yahoo uses open source technology like PHP and MySQL. How long is it going to take for Microsoft to convert all of that over to Microsoft proprietary software? And what is the cost in doing so in terms of advancing your product from its current state?
Maybe I am missing something in all of this, but I just am not sure how Microsoft plans on putting the pieces together. When you are a service company, you have no platform in the term of Windows, Linux, or Mac, you need to bee diverse, which is something Microsoft built a monopoly on top of not being.
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Service of The Day: Sputtr
Posted on May 17, 2007, under Search, Tools and Services.
I came across this little service called Sputtr in my daily RSS readings, and thought the service was so dead simple and useful I set it as my homepage. I have gotten so much use out of this. the site acts a lot like the little search bar in your browser works, but as a web page. I really like the sites design, and it is very quick to load (for now). They even have a button that allows you to suggest new search engines.
Great little service, check it out.
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Think Twice Before You Sell Out
Posted on April 19, 2007, under Development, Search, Tools and Services.
It’s been all over the blogosphere lately Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert have resigned from Google where they have been employees since May of 2005 when their company Dodgeball was acquired. An official quote sheds some light to their reasoning behind the departure.
It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially as we couldn’t convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space. And while it was a tough decision (and really disappointing) to walk away from dodgeball, I’m actually looking forward to getting to work on other projects again.
This isn’t the first time that Google has shelfed an acquisition, I have been waiting to see something out of Measure Map for sometime but feel it’s a lost cause. Google isn’t alone with this, it’s not too uncommon for large companies to acquire a smaller company for the technology, talent, or just to remove them from the market. And while some might think selling out to the man is a great deal: you get some cash, stock options, and going to work for the #1 company to work for; at the end of the day there is still a direction to take the service or product that is being acquired. Entrepreneurs have a great deal of passion for their product, and sometimes being acquired means more resources and a wider audience, sometimes it means having to deal with someone else telling you the new direction of that product.
Many have balked at Kevin Rose of Digg.com and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook for not selling out when the price is right, but I say that this just proves they are more motivated by making the service better than a pay day. Turning down millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars isn’t easy, I guess it depends on your driving force.
