Category Archives: companies

Google Dance 2008

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The Google Dance Google Party at the Googleplex was great as usual, with excellent buffet BBQ, the most prized T-shirts in the business, and a lot more. Having trouble with Flickr uploader so I can’t put up all the photos I took yet but this really is a great event. It was fun this year to attend with my college bound son Ben and 4th one with my great pal John though I had to keep reminding Ben that Google is not your typical corporate environment, even in his chosen field of computer science. Of course he’s got four years to go and a lot’s going to happen in that time, though if the extravagance of the party and healthy conference booth attendance are any indication Google’s going to be the big player for some time.

Google Dance 2008
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Digital Hollywood at CES

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I thought I’d repost part of this note from the Digital Hollywood folks at CES 2009.   They run several of the sessions that deal with the convergence of the online world with TV, Film, and more.

For me one of the most powerful technology themes is the fact that TV remains the big kahuna of advertising even as awareness grows that online advertising is far more effective – at least in its common pay per click form.    It remains to be seen if video clip advertising, such as what Google is experimenting with at YouTube, will ever take off as a major revenue source for publishers.    It certainly has been underwhelming so far, I think in part simply because it is performing as poorly as almost  *all forms of offline advertising*.    The difference is that online metrics allow us to monitor performance in ways we have not been able to do before, and perhaps more importantly the online metrics help disconnect the analyst from the marketeer.

In travel it is very commonplace for the same group running the ads to do the analysis of their effectiveness.   This is a preposterous state of affairs, yet it persists.    There are now some sneaky variations on the theme which include specialized “travel marketing” agencies that appear to have methods that inflate effectiveness.    Why?    This prevents them from biting the hands that feed their research.

—————— DIGITAL HOLLYWOOD CES 2009 —————————

The agenda – and call for speakers – for the CES conferences- January 7-10, 2009 in Las Vegas – Reinventing Advertising, Mobile Entertainment, Game Power & Digital Hollywood at CES, Las Vegas Convention Center, see http://www.digitalhollywood.com/CES2009.html
is now posted.

Speakers are being booked now. Your submissions are welcome.

We are proud to be organizing the most significant conferences at the most significant and largest trade show in America. CES has over 140,000 attendees, over 4500 press, over 1000 financial analysts and over 2700 exhibitors.

We are organizing four tracks at CES:
Digital Hollywood Events at CES
Session Keys:
RA – Reinventing Advertising
ME – Mobile Entertainment
GP – Game Power
DH – Digital Hollywood

Yahoo Shareholder non-meeting

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Today Yahoo Shareholders are meeting in San Jose.   Or maybe we should say non-meeting since there are apparentely mostly empty chairs and uneaten pastry in a venue that was to hold 1000.

With shares now trading about $19 you’d think shareholders would be out in force with torches and pitchforks, but Yahoo management – at enormous cost to shareholders and the company – has kept the corporate raiders and Microsoft at bay partly by granting a newly sheepish Carl Icahn a seat on the board and two more seats.     Icahn noted last week that enough large shareholders were sticking with the current board, making it impossible for him to take over the company.     His plan was fairly simple – buy a lot of Yahoo and then sell the company to Microsoft at a huge profit.    As a shareholder I remain  *totally* confused as to why large shareholders were unwilling to support this move – the obvious choice in terms of maximizing shareholder value with minimum risk.

However with challenges come opportunities.  Yahoo at $19 is looking pretty ripe right now given that Microsoft offered $31 just months ago when Yahoo’s prospects were not significantly different than they are right now.    Either MS is horribly miscalculating Yahoo’s value, or the Market is underestimating that value.     Clearly the current board is convinced there is a lot more value, and in this at least I would agree with them.

It’ll be interesting to see how the rank and file Yahoo folks are feeling at SES San Jose in a few weeks.   SES is the biggest search conference of the year in the heart of Silicon Valley, and hundreds of Yahoo folks will be there.  It will be interesting to get a feel for the current morale challenges at the company.

Disclosure:   Long on YHOO.  Considering buying more.

More Cuil Search fun. Check out the …ummm… multiple personality finder.

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Over at Sarah Lacy‘s place she’s reasonable asking “Is it Cuil or Us” in terms of expecting too much from this new search startup.   Since I’d been poking fun at Cuil’s failure to find itself I thought I better try a new search.     Since Sarah’s is indirectly suggesting that bloggers like *me* might be the problem let’s ask Cuil… about me… Joe Hunkins….

JoeDuck’s World has moved CLICK HERE

Time to move my posting to the superior WordPress environment. Given how simple and easy it was to set up and that it’s free I’m not clear why Yahoo and/or Google have not scarfed them up or copied that format. I think Yahoo *supports* wordpress but why don’t they just buy it and then they’d be better than blogger…

joeduck.blogspot.com/

Online Highways Guide to Travel, Leisure and Recreation …

US States: Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Indiana Illinois Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Mississippi Missouri Minnesota Montana Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York…

www.ohwy.com/

Joe Duck

Joe Duck. Internet Entrepreneur, Online Quack. Home. Ashland. China Travel&Tips. Joe&Duck. Kim&Story. Las&Vegas. Linkage. Rogue River&Map.

joeduck.com/

Google and privacy

Richard Eid, I’m also a huge fan of using Ctrl-Ctrl in rapid succession with Google Desktop. Joe Hunkins | Joe Duck, I think the “data portability” idea is a good step in that direction. It means that you can take your data in Google and take it somewhere else (not “trapping users’ data”). Good point…

www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-and-p…

Cow Creek/Umpqua Tribe: Joe Hunkins – SOVA

I’m Joe Hunkins of Southern Oregon Visitors Association, and I’d really like to link your resource page to the Native American section of our regional travel site http://www.SOVA.org/native.htm. Our site is a regional focus for travel information, and we have not done a good job of getting travellers information…

www.cowcreek.com/tribes/xkudos/k06_…

Twitter / joeduck

Name Joe Hunkins. Location Oregon. Web http://joeduck.com. Bio Travel and Tech and Internet and Oregon. Stats. Following 603. Followers 341. Favorites 0. Updates 485. Following.

explore.twitter.com/joeduck

Twitter / Joe Hunkins: Bill Richardson to Endorse …

Joe Hunkins.

explore.twitter.com/joeduck/statuse…

Joe Hunkins: ZoomInfo Business People Information

Joe Hunkins, ABR, CBR, CRS, GRI, of Hunkins Real Estate, Inc. in Greenland, N.H. and treasurer of the New Hampshire Association of Realtors was recently appointed as a trustee of the NH Realtor’s Political Action Committee. As a trustee, Hunkins will be responsible for interviewing political candidates and deciding…

www.zoominfo.com/people/Hunkins_Joe…

Explore by Category

Happy Birthday!

Joe Hunkins Said, September 7, 2005 @ 1:57 pm. Congratulations Matt … and Google. Really enjoy the “insider” stories. Gerald Said, September 7, 2005 @ 5:51 pm. Happy Birthday from germany. But why did you xxx the names at the bottom of your mail. Makes me curious. Lxxxx makes me thinking that it could have…

www.mattcutts.com/blog/happy-birthd…

Twitter / joeduck

Name Joe Hunkins. Location Oregon. Web http://www.joeduc… Bio Travel and Tech and Internet and Oregon. Stats. Following 884. Followers 550. Favorites 0. Updates 605. Following.

twitter.com/joeduck/

Now, there is one more “Joe Hunkins” that is fairly prominent online – a real estate guy in New Hampshire – but he’s not pictured here. And neither am I. Despite the fact most of the text does relate to things I have written – though much of it long ago – I’m wondering who the dude is in the first picture?  Hey, he’s a pretty good looking guy – maybe I should be him.    Nope, the older guy isn’t me either.   Hey, the young backpacker dude is more my style.   Maybe I should take over his identity?    Whoops – Cuil is obviously not gender biased – I also am listed as the two women pictured.

Hmmm – I had an imposter over at Furrier.org the other day – maybe they fooled Cuil, too?

YouTube lawsuits now top YouTube’s total valuation

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When Google bought Youtube for 1.6 billion last year they effectively allocated $400 million of the purchase price towards lawsuits they felt were coming down the pike.   Although both the purchase price and that extraordinary “copyright payoff” of 400 million seemed extraordinary at the time, Eric Schmidt and the Google boys may be wishing they’d allocated a few more bucks to stave off the copyright violation bandwagon, which today solidly topped YouTube’s 1.6 billion price by about 179 million dollars.

Viacom is suing Google for a billion already, and today Mediaset joined the fun with a 500 million Euro ($779 million US) lawsuit.     Interestingly, Mediaset is controlled by a company owned by Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Burlusconi, so the case will likely become fairly high profile in Europe.

So, assuming YouTube is worth the $1.6 billion Google ponied up for the big show, they’ve got to be more than a little concerned that the legal onslaught has only just begun but already is approaching 2 billion.   Obviously neither Viacom or Mediaset expects a full payout but you can be sure many, many others will follow for two important reasons:

1)  Google’s got the money. Deep pockets are a *very* attractive stylin’ feature these days and despite some stock price setbacks Google is still sitting pretty pretty in terms of cash and revenue prospects.

2)  Videos don’t got the money. Monetizing video remains one of the most problematic features of the online world, and it’s becoming clear that no “magic bullet” is out there.   I’ve written for some time that video will not monetize well and I think the jury (that would be millions of us out there in online land) is almost in with the verdict that video simpy will not pay distributors nearly as well or serve advertisers nearly as well as pay per click which remains the most lucrative and effective form of online advertising – probably of any paid advertising for that matter.

Who ARE these WordPress Guys? Bravo … again.

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WordPress is one of those amazing Web 2.0 companies that always impresses you with innovation and quality.

Here, they have created a way to better index WordPress blog content using Google sitemaps.  WordPres was was already the best CMS system in terms of facilitatating proper search rankings through categories, tagging, and general structure.    Ironically WordPress is better than Google’s own Blogger.com – ie I think it’s fair to say that an identical blog written to the two CMS would rank better in the WordPress version because it is far more robust in terms of crosslinking, creating categories, and with the sitemap feature even pushing out content descriptions to Google.      To Google’s credit they do not appear to elevate blogger content above others – in fact I think the algorithm accurately notes that bloggers blogs have far more spam than WordPress.

Of course one of the best aspects of WordPress is that Matt and his merry band of WordPressers don’t charge a dime for all their great WP work.   They make enough off of spam blocking “Akismet” which is sold to big companies for enterprise network use, and pick up a few bucks from various add-on features such as domain names and CMS styling at WordPress.     This is a perfect example of how innovative entrepreneurship, global scale technology, profit and non-profit can all mix comfortably in systems that work well for every participant.

WordPress dudes, keep up the amazing work!

Goodbye [S][C][R][A][B][U][L][O][U][S]

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Hasbro appears to have won a battle with Facebook application “Scrabulous” which has been wiped off of Facebook.   One of the most popular applications on the massive Social Network, many thought Hasbro would buy Scrabulous from the two founders.   That may still happen but Scrabulous’ negotiating position has been severely weakened over the past month as Hasbro first launched an “official” Scrabble on Facebook and now has won the copyright battle and had the competitor removed.

As I’ve noted many times before the prevailing notions of copyright among onliners differ quite a bit from those held by most judges and the legal world at large and this will continue for some time.   Napster, YouTube, and Scrabulous may seem like reasonably clean applications for the online crowd, but in a legal sense they are on very shaky ground.   Will these copyright issue clear up anytime soon?   In one two letter word …  [N][O]

Cuil Search – what am I missing about all that they are missing?

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TechCrunch and others are waxing almost poetically about the new Cuil search engines, designed by ex Googlers to compete with the mother ship.    But after a few scattershot queries I’m just not feeling the power of Cuil.    It still is failing to find itself for what seems like an obvious query of “Cuil Search Engine”, and for the query “computers” I’d expect a bit more than this among Cuil’s claimed inventory of 121 billion web pages:

We didn’t find any results for “computers”

Some reasons might be…

  • a typo. Please check your spelling.
  • your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute.
  • too many search terms. Please try fewer terms.

Finally, try to think of different words to describe your search.

Obviously Cuil is missing a LOT of stuff, so what am I missing here?

Update:  I’m still waiting to be impressed, but have learned that Cuil’s architecture is such that if some of the servers go down you can get empty results as I did last night.   Now, ‘Computers’ does turn up relevant results.

Google: A Trillion URLs and counting

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The Google blog notes how huge the web is now, with Google indexing over a trillion unique URLs.  As they note in the article the actual number of indexable URLs is, in one sense, infinite.    For example calendar pages will automatically appear as you scroll through many applications, continuing through the years until..the singularity and beyond.     Of course Google does not index many of these “empty” URLs or even a lot of junk or redundant content, so the true number of real, unique URLs is actually well above a Trillion.

I think a fun question is this:   What will the information landscape look like in, say, 20 years when we should have the ability to pour *everything* from the past and the present online?     Questions might take a different form if we had access to every reference on a topic that has ever been produced.    Algorithms will be used to sort through the oceans of content much as Google does now, but with far more precision and better comprehension of the whole mess.

Yahoo Microsoft Boxing Match

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Yahoo and Microsoft haven’t been able to agree on very much over the last few months so it now appears fairly likely the battle will head into the shareholder meeting on August 1st.

Microsoft hasn’t lost many of these matches and the smart money remains on them to “win” this battle and take over Yahoo.   My take is that there is now enough ego investment on all sides that you can expect Microsoft to be pretty ruthless in their efforts to replace the board and overhaul the company.  Of course with with management leaving Yahoo at a record pace anyway, Microsoft is likely to inherit more of a management skeleton than a burden, and they are probably fine with this.

How poison will Yahoo make the pill?     As a shareholder I’m concerned about this but comforted that the current board and Jerry Yang have a huge financial stake in this outcome.    To Bostock and Yang’s huge credit they has been playing this game with their own money, though I’d argue they have not been playing it very well or with anybody’s best interests in mind (including their own).    My take is that Yahoo simply could not readjust their expectations from the dramatic success story they enjoyed early on and the belief they could see that kind of success again.     This gave them a perception of the current value of Yahoo that was completely out of line with the market perception, which by definition is the real value of a company.    The $33 sale price has come from the desparate realization by Yahoo that they are going to lose the battle and possibly be forced to sell well below this price, though I think it’ll be in Microsoft’s interest to keep the tensions to a minimum and keep their new “post Yahoo merger” shareholders marginally happy with an offer above $30.

That said, Ballmer is clearly smelling the blood in the water and could probably force an eventual sale of Yahoo in mid to high twenties by jerking the strings for a few more months to soften up Icahn and other major shareholders who are clearly looking for something above the $31 offer Yahoo rejected a short time ago.  Without Microsoft Yahoo’s share price would be well under $20 and this is now clear to everybody.

So the boxing match moves into the final rounds.   It’s pretty much a corporate death match between Jerry “the Yahoo” Yang and Steve “the Basher” Ballmer.    Although my money is invested with Jerry right now, I’d be betting on Ballmer to win this fight.

Disclosure:  Long on YHOO