Monthly Archives: May 2006

Perfect Search = Advertising problems?

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Issues about Search are generally and wrongly presented as technological or computer challenges when in fact they are best viewed as *advertising* challenges.     Ultimately the search winner will be the advertising winner  (Now that winner is Google with Yahoo, MSN, and ASK working hard to catch up).  I'm suspicious that innovation is now driven more by advertising than by "quality search" considerations.  Certainly innovation is now mostly *funded* by advertising and bets placed on the quest for ad dollars.  

I suggested in an email exchange recently:

…. a "perfect" search engine set up like Google would make much less *directly* from ads since it would always deliver a perfect organic (ad free) result.   I suppose in some cases there would ALSO be a perfect ad match, but there is an interesting natural tension between profit, search quality, and market share.

Tom observed in response:

…let's assume a perfect search result is one where each search result has a bit of information that's of interest to the searcher; and since it's perfect, the search engine has gone over the results and found superficially similar results that don't contribute new information content, ranked the results according to useful information content, and generally done a perfect job.  I think there's still room for product promotion in there, especially if I'm looking for a product, which I increasingly do on the 'Net.

I replied:
I agree if we ssume as below that perfect search still does not really match us exactly to our query. But I'm more optimistic about search and think that when combined with personal histories and other inputs like query refinements, it'll come close to reading our query intention with extreme accuracy.    People would still BUY stuff as a result of search but it would be hard to use the existing models for advertising which associate only those willing to pay with the relevant results lists. 

“With enough money … current technology could compute the billions of neurons in the brain”

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Thanks to Politech for pointing out this remarkable attempt to Blueprint the Human Brain using high speed computing.   I'll be very surprised if we can't duplicate human style thinking within a generation.  In fact I'm optimistic that machines will so far exceed our abilities that many complex problems will have solutions available to us as part of this process.  I'm not nearly as optimistic that we'll accept/implement these solutions.   Many pressing global problems are solvable NOW, but the forces of ignorance, selfishness, and politics prevent the implementation.

Drats, Foiled again! Humbled by math and technology, which I’m convinced are EVIL forces of the DEVIL!

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There was me, priding myself on applying the elusive Monty Hall conditional probability math to "Deal or No Deal" TV show and thinking how clever I was to integrate DVD, touchscreen, and LCD Television for a snazzy new tourism presentation.     WRONG and WRONG was I, since it appears the math on Deal no Deal is NOT Montyfied, and the DVD touchscreen solution remains elusive.

Circuit City was very helpful figuring out the challenges and I learned that running DVD through a computer using the normal VGA outputs will give crappy picture.   The video is very high quality and keeping it that way is a priority.  Surprisingly to me, even with a hyped up graphics card and DVI output I may not get great quality on a 42" LCD TV.    The TV dude said that this is from incompatibilities in digital standards and helps explain why media center technology (much hyped by Microsoft at MIX06) is NOT taking off very well.

The problem is I need to interface with a touchscreen so the users control the presentation on the touchscreen but can also view it on the 42" LCD TV above.    The solution appears to be to get a touchscreen capable DVD player (which I did not know until today existed) and then hopefully be able to output from it to touchscreen AND the LCD TV.     If this fails it's back to the DVI PC solution.

Let’s have more OPEN conferences – a LOT more.

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I've been to all or portions of about 7 internet conferences in the past year, and without a doubt Mashup Camp was my favorite in terms of the quality of the information and the way it was delivered.

Unlike the highly structured MIX06, WebmasterWorld, AD TECH, and Search Engine Strategies, MashupCamp lets attendees decide the topics, interact via wiki and other features, and in my favorite session had developers present their stuff to small roving groups in 5 minute "speed geeking" sessions.

Rather than take a nap because the topics were rehashes of what I knew, I had to take a walk outside to cool my brain from the firehose of Web 2.0 information overloading me in Mountain View during the 2 day conference.

I think and hope that events like Foo Camp, Bar Camps, and Mashup Camps are the future of power networking, because this type of conference builds a much stronger type of relationship between attendees and powers more effective idea building than the traditional "lecture/session/track" model. It's a wild west out there and the conferences should reflect that.
Conspicuous is the fact that this conference charged nothing to attend, cleverly getting corporates to sponsor the meals and other needed items. I did chip in a few hundred because that was helpful but I don't think it'll be needed at the upcoming conferences, which now have even more active support of Yahoo, Google, MSN, ASK, and many more key industry players.

Huge KUDOS to David Berlind, Doug Gold, Mary Hodder and Doc Searles who not only put on a great event but are doing it again in July and expaning the camp to include "Mashup University".

Mission Impossible III – the secret of the rabbit’s foot NOT REVEALED HERE!

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Though NOT to be confused with the superb TV series which had a sophistication and charm notoriously lacking in all 3 Mission films, MI III is fun and fairly clever with one excellent plot twist I won't reveal here.

Calling it "action packed" would be an understatement. It's a (PG 13!) orgy of torture, murders, extrajudicial killings, bombings, explosions, implanted head detonators, defibrillators, and …..  Katie Holmes/Tom Cruise marriage references.

I could certainly believe Seymour Hoffman as an evil international bad guy, and Lawrence Fishburn as IMF spymaster, and even Tom Cruise as super spy, but what was HARD TO BELIEVE was how close Tom's real life beau Katie Holmes looks to his movie beau Michelle Monaghan.
katieORmichelle.JPG

Scary, right?

Which brings me back to the film. Outtakes have revealed that the China made "Rabbits Foot" which was the subject of great interest to bad and good guys alike is a super sensitive biometric identification device that can help Tom determine if the girl he's with is actually Katie or Michelle. Without it Tom's pending marriage would be at risk. Given the multi billion success of the Cruise film empire palimony is incredibly expensive, helping to set the Rabbit's Foot's price tag, which WAS mentioned in the film, at $680 million.

Money well spent I'd say.

Mission III: MoneyMaking II

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Off to see Mission Impossible III this afternoon, but first let's check the economics of the  franchise at www.boxofficemojo.com

The first two have made very close to a billion so far on production and marketing costs of only about 240 million, which I think helps explain why we see more lackluster blockbusters than thoughful, clever films.    Films at this level are much more an economic enterprise than a creative one.  

I'm not saying there are no good blockbusters – many are and I for one really enjoy "big" movies.   But I'm often surprised at how superficial/silly/nasty/foolish/weak/ridiculous/etc the big films can be given their huge production budgets and top level direction writing, and acting.  This may best be explained by the fact they are addressing a mass entertainment appetite and looking to capture the maximum number of viewers (economic concerns) rather than making the most creative film they can.   

So, I'll keep feeding the blockbusters my ticket while hoping for more great independent films to make it into wider distribution – perhaps through the exploding online video venues like youtube.com 

MISSION Impossible:  Release Date: May 22, 1996
Domestic:  $180,981,856    39.6%
+ Foreign:  $275,512,947    60.4%
= Worldwide:  $456,494,803  
DOMESTIC SUMMARY
Opening Weekend:  $45,436,830
(3,012 theaters, $15,085 average)
% of Total Gross:  25.1%
Widest Release:  3,012 theaters
Close Date:  December 19, 1996
In Release:  212 days / 30.3 weeks

Mission Impossible II:  Release Date: May 24, 2000

Production Budget: $125 million
Domestic:  $215,409,889    39.5%
+ Foreign:  $330,492,673    60.5%
= Worldwide:  $545,902,562  
DOMESTIC SUMMARY
Opening Weekend:  $57,845,297
(3,653 theaters, $15,835 average)
% of Total Gross:  26.9%
Widest Release:  3,669 theaters
Close Date:  October 19, 2000
In Release:  149 days / 21.3 weeks

Another one bites the dust.com?

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It’s spring and people in the travel sector are all buzzing about revamping their websites. In many cases this will happen with little regard to quality information or navigation and will wind up with the site losing traffic thanks to deep sixing pages that have been indexed for years. Even with 301 redirection it’s not clear you can recapture old page ranks easily after revamping sites. The best advice for travel sites? CHANGE little with your old indexed pages unless you are having problems within search indexes. Add NEW PAGES to the existing site with information in mind rather than “improving the look”.

For reasons I simply can’t understand people in travel cannot get beyond “image” and therefore almost completely misperceive the value of designing websites not for “looks”, but for info richness. Although nice looks are not totally incompatible with nice info, one sees few sites that blend them in ways that will optimize the intended result (more travel related business in the area).

Errors like flash introductions and splash pages are simply too dang common in the travel sector which ironically still has simply staggering potential for sites that are built to help users find usable information.

PPC campaigns are far more common at the mom and pop business level than at the higher level destination management level where they’d have ROIs of ten to ONE HUNDRED times that of TV and print campaigns where the travel ad spend is largely wasted. There is still a very common notion that you can drive people to a URL using print advertising as effectively as with online ads. In fact the cost to drive people online with print is about 10-100x the online cost (I know this from extensive experiments I did in my past life as webmaster for Southern Oregon Visitors Association).

I’m finally coming to understand that as human primates we have a tendency to be stubborn and hold old ideas dear until the consequences become so severe and negataive or the evidence so overwhelming we simply MUST change course. Combine this with most people’s mathematical illiteracy and you’ve got what we’ve got – a LOT of wasted advertising buys in the travel sector, not to mention waste, waste, and more waste in all areas where human stubborness prevails over reason.