Joe Duck

Google Social Circle

JoeDuck — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:05:40 +0000

Google labs is testing a very interesting new feature within the Google search results which lists and ranks content from people that have connections to your own social networks, websites, blogs, etc. It’s called Google Social Circle and I think this approach has a lot of potential…

More to come at Technology Report

Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, California, USA

JoeDuck — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:32:31 +0000

This is an old pic but I like it!

Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, California, USA

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Ben at Yosemite

Mark Cuban’s Stimulus Plan is a good idea

JoeDuck — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:39:12 +0000

Always enjoy Mark Cuban’s kick-butt prescriptions for economic success. Sure he oversimplifies, but like most successful entrepreneurial folks Cuban understands what a remarkable number of people do NOT understand – innovation drives our economy forward in powerful ways and our current bureaucratic-heavy approaches to the economy too often stifle innovation in business while failing to inspire innovation in Government (which is almost an oxymoron).

I was especially interested in this comment, something I’ve believed for many years:

There are exceptions, but more often than not, the stupidest thing a business of this size can do is borrow money.

Cuban:

Like the administration before it, the current administration seems to have no concept of what it takes to start, run and grow a small business. None. Here is a hint. If you want to see more jobs created by Small Businesses and entrepreneurs REDUCE the amount of paperwork required. Dramatically simplify the tax code. In other words, if you REDUCE THE OVERHEAD of small business, you effectively create capital for them through reduced costs.

Not only do you improve their financial position, but you reduce that great big time suck known as dealing with your accountants and lawyers. The more time wasted with “professional services”, the less time spent doing your job. This seems to be a concept lost on government. One last thing. It appears to be a goal of the administration to free up loans to small businesses. For the sake of this comment, let me re-define Small Business as those companies with fewer than 20 employees. There are exceptions, but more often than not, the stupidest thing a business of this size can do is borrow money. Its stressful enough for a small business in these times to be profitable. Add to that stress the need to repay a loan and success becomes far more difficult. If we want to accelerate the formation and growth of these small businesses we need to first reduce the costs imposed on them by the government (at all levels) and then simplify and reduce the costs of raising capital. Forget government loan guarantees. Make capital gains on investments up to $1mm in small companies tax free. Make this process paperwork free for the small business and a 1 page form for the investor. Thats how we will see economic and job growth in this country..

I’m not convinced paperwork is the key thing to focus on but it is certainly a valid concern. One of the great ironies of our “pretty successful” American experience is the failure of so many to insist on better government accountability with respect to the massive spending. People very correctly are outraged when big business screws up, but often businesses often pay the penalty they should pay for major mistakes: the death penalty. Bailout issues aside for now one of the reasons for the vibrancy of the American economy over some 300+ years has been our somewhat ruthless reliance on the survival of the fittest businesses.

As we move into a new era of much great Government involvement in business, I sure hope we find ways to limit the damage to American’s engines of innovation – small businesseses.

Hubble Deep Field 3D

JoeDuck — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:34:49 +0000

Thanks to Duane at Ashland’s Lithia Springs Inn for sending this out!

Are you practicing censorship? Yes. Just ask Caesar.

JoeDuck — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:31:29 +0000

Interesting debate going on at one of our websites about how to handle advertising coming in from Google adsense with themes that are presented in misleading, stupid, sensational ways. Often these ads are political and tend to be from the frothing-at-the-mouth right wing websites like NewsMax, where they routinely parody Obama.

Since we’ve had complaints about these ads (ie they offend some people and often annoy us), the question arises about what to do. This question is complicated by the fact that it was a *prospective advertiser* who complained to us, so I’m a bit concerned that our incentives in this case are getting aligned with one point of view over another. We don’t want political advertisers having a say in what their political opponents can or can’t say at our site.

I think my partner has come to a good compromise position which is to shut off the images and use the text only ads. He thinks this is NOT a form of censorship but I’d say it is – albeit an acceptable kind of censorship in cases like ours:

I also would say that if one narrows things to the censorship protections defined by free speech provisions of US Constitution the game changes since the supreme court generally argues that for legal purposes we are generally concerned with political censorship and not commercial speech or “hate” speech. Both of those are legally (and I think usually appropriately) censored.

Your definition of censorship is too narrow, a common frustration of mine. This lets people argue – totally speciously – that THEY don’t ever censor but OTHER people do.

Virtually everybody believes in some censorship – in fact I would argue emphatically that “zero censorship” is a sociopathic condition (e.g. child pornographers should be shot or imprisoned, people who routinely shout loud obscenities in public should generally be stifled).

So, is it censorship to limit the choices of people practicing free speech *in any way whatsoever* ? Of course it is!

Why? I direct you to the origins of the word “censor”.

Etymology: Latin, Roman magistrate, from censēre to give as one’s opinion, assess; perhaps akin to Sanskrit śaṁsati he praises

Date: 1526

1 : a person who supervises conduct and morals: as a : an official who examines materials (as publications or films) for objectionable matter b : an official (as in time of war) who reads communications (as letters) and deletes material considered sensitive or harmful
2 : one of two magistrates of early Rome acting as census takers, assessors, and inspectors of morals and conduct

Brain Interfaces

JoeDuck — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:39:20 +0000

Lots of new info a Singularity Hub here about the quest for brain / computer interfaces, which I think will be the next ‘really big thing’ on planet earth, in part because they’ll be cool and helpful and in part because they are very likely to speed up the creation of a conscious mechanical computer which will quickly surpass human abilities in all respects.

One of the odd things about following this science and these technologies is that about 90% of the world still thinks these are for the most part “kooky sci fi whacko” kinds of technologies and ideas, even as they become mainstream ideas in many tech circles.

Apple iPad Launches Today. Lowest priced model only $499

JoeDuck — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:01:22 +0000

The new iPad tablet computer from Apple launched today and I’m going to try to summarize the reviews as they come in – which frankly is a better indication of the quality of the device than if I had one in my own hands…. which I don’t …. However at an iPad Price of only $499 this looks like an amazing device at a great price.

One of the big issues at CES 2010 was the fact that Apple’s Tablet would almost certainly raise the computing bar in terms of expectations for the “robustness” of something that is a cross between a full computer and an e-Reader. To my way of thinking (ie rational computing purchases) good tablets may wind up as e-Reader killers – or at least will force e-readers to become real computers and offer a lot more features than they currently offer.

Why buy a Kindle or Nook when you can have a full computer and internet at your fingertips for only marginally higher cost? At $499 the Apple Tablet “entry level” model is coming in much cheaper than the predicted $1000 price tag – perhaps as part of Apple’s normally brilliant quality and marketing approaches which generally lead to early widespread adoption of devices.

iPad from Apple

Hope for Haiti Concert – Beyonce

JoeDuck — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:08:36 +0000

Donate Now: 1-877-99-HAITI in US/Canada, or go to www.hopeforhaitinow.org

http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/474738/beyonce-halo-live.jhtml

The music from this concert was pretty amazing, and if you buy it from iTunes it’ll help Haitians recover from what now appears to be one of the greatest natural disasters in many years.

There’s a lot of political discussion that should center around how to best help developing countries, but I think that should wait until after we address the emergency needs with water, food, medicines, and security. After that I hope we start an international discussion about what it takes to rebuild a failed state into the healthy and vibrant democracy people deserve to live in – the kind of country we in the USA take for granted.

FourSquare, Twitter, and Facebook

JoeDuck — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:37:55 +0000

As a self-proclaimed social media expert (hey, cuz I have a MASTERS DEGREE in Social Science!), I like to think I understand what is driving the latest wave of online enthusiasm. But I’m increasingly convinced nobody understands it. Rather, like evolution, we work away from failure and wind up with applications and websites that have *survived* and adapted far more than were “brilliantly planned and executed” according to some online success formula.

Of course predicting Google’s success was easy – they’d cracked the nut of “really good search” and even as others caught up to their quality they’d established our habit of “googling” when we needed good info fast and have reaped the enormous advertising revenue rewards from that early success. I had more trouble understanding why Facebook was so appealing yet it has thrived as the key friend and family connector in an increasingly social media world.

I remain skeptical that Facebook can drive advertising revenue to the extent needed to ever compete against Google for online dominance, but we’re still *very* early in the big online game and clearly Facebook is rocking in terms of online influence.

As for many, Twitter didn’t impress me initially but after following a lot of people and capturing a lot of followers I started to understand how important Twitter would be to the online social experience. This was borne out very strongly at CES Las Vegas watching how quickly businesses – even including non-tech businesses like the hotels and attractions in Las Vegas – were using Twitter as a key news, customer contact, and customer relations tool. As mom and pop businesses and “regular folks” begin to understand how active engagement with Twitter can revolutionize the way we do business communication I think we’ll see a second explosion in use and Twitter will rival Facebook in terms of importance.

The latest in the pantheon of very popular “social media” applications is called “FourSquare”. The idea is to know the location of your friends and share your location as well as offer tips about everything from dining to attractions. The basic idea is appealing and intuitive and the service appears to be exploding in popularity, though I’m finding it hard to use I think in part because I’m a rural dweller and things like this are more useful in urban centers where there are a lot more participants. Still, it seems to me this only enhances Twitter somewhat, and is not really a major improvement over what we’d expect from more active use of Twitter, which I see as playing (eventually) the a role as an application that manages how people are relating to other people on an hour by hour basis. Although it’s mostly early adopters who use Twitter in this way now, the fact that tweets are easier than a phone call means to me that eventually we’ll shift from calling to some form of text messaging, the most powerful of which is …. tweeting!

In summary I’m thinking that Google search will continue to thrive and dominate with Facebook and Twitter becoming the key tools for social interaction – Facebook more between friends and family and Twitter between businesses and celebrities and customers / fans. That doesn’t leave much room for Foursquare to become huge, but the online social space has become so large that even a supporting role can be an auspicious one.

Looking North along Las Vegas Strip. House of Blues Foundation Room at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas

JoeDuck — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 04:54:33 +0000

Looking North along Las Vegas Strip. House of Blues Foundation Room at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

One of the best views of the Las Vegas Strip is from the Foundation Room high up at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. There’s also a House of Blues restaurant below, but the Foundation Room is different. Not sure if this is only reserved for special events or not, but it sure was a great view.

Unfortunately the Web 2.0 party here didn’t have many Web 2.0 companies. However I did enjoy talking to the “Life Extension” folks who were doing some really interesting research on the relationship of the telomeres in a gene and longetivity: http://www.telonauts.com/