Category Archives: Science & Technology

Webmaster World Day 2 – Jeremy, Matt, Robert on blogging

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The blogger session at PubCon Boston was a crowd favorite. Jeremy Zawodny, Matt Cutts, and Robert Scoble talked about their experiences as the key "unofficial" spokespeople for Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. The big item here was "Where is Matt's Mom's blog?"   

Jeremy also gave an interesting summary of his experiences blogging about the troubled history at Yahoo Finance.   He compared it unfavorably to Google's new product suggesting Google was doing things Yahoo should and could have done long ago.  His gutsy post got him a meeting with the new Finance program manager who was new and wanted to brief him on what appear to be excellent upcoming features.  The moral of the story seemed somewhat in line with Scoble's insistence that companies need to "blog or die" and that allowing this type of open examination is healthy, leading to faster action and enlightenment.

I'm not so sure that on balance negative blogging episodes have a positive impact on the company, but I do think that the long term, honest blogging by Zawodny and Scoble and Matt's new efforts send a very powerful credibility signal to the community and indicate their companies "get the new web" in an important way.   

I hope that YPN and other "official" blogs work to retain an honest, creative voice.   I'm skeptical and waiting to see if that is even possible when the blog is under corporate management.   Better to just cut your people loose, treat them well, and involve the whole world in the conversation.

Learning curves

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What if most task learning takes place very early in the learning process, with refinements and “expertise” coming later and at much greater cost in time involved in the task?

For example what if most of our driving skills come from the first 50-100 hours of driving? Interestingly this is the amount if driving time required to get a license in Oregon so the state seems to feel it’s “enough time” to drive safely, I’d agree and suggest this is the case for most task learning.

IF TRUE across many tasks, then I’d suggest we should be spending a lot LESS time teaching people refined skills because the return on that time investment goes way down as we continue. Rather we should be *introducing* kids to more things so they can choose which to pursue in depth later in life. This is done to some extent – I think more than in the 1950s – but I see little reason to push calculus on students who often lack basic investment math skills UNLESS they’ve chosen a career where calculus is important. There are not many of those, and you hardly close doors by substituting practical life skills for advanced math (or science, or literature) studies.

As adults we should focus on learning new approaches and information rather than refining our expertise in very restricted areas *unless* our life depends on that expertise. Though I’m not even sure in this latter case that broader learning won’t trump specialized learning in terms of producing a well rounded intellect capable of handling the varied and sundry tasks of the modern world.

guns or butter?

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This clever site offers some insight into the cost of the Iraq War in dollar terms.   Human costs are of course ultimately more important than money, but most people simply refuse to recognize that when you are talking about things like war and hunger the *human costs* often boil down to dollar costs.

You can save  LOT of people in the developing world by allocating a relatively small number of dollars, especially if they are spent on famine or health items. More about that later as politically and emotionally motivated spending is a fascinating examination of human irrationality.

The human death toll in Iraq (or even the total global WAR death TOLL) simply pales in comparison to the global hunger OR health tolls.   It's a factor of many thousands of preventable hunger deaths for every ONE (arguably NON-preventable) Iraq war death. 

Unlike most fiscal conservatives I simply stagger from the failures of the neocons when it comes to intelligent budgeting and ROI.    McCain, very much to his credit, was talking about this years ago and is talking about it now.  

Web 2.0 as the “generous” internet

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Over at O'Reilly's blog there is an excellent discussion about the nature of biz in a Web 2.0 world (why does the term Web 2.0 BOTHER so many people?  Get over it!)

Doc Searls seems to suggest that old style biz is selfish where new style is generous, sharing resources in a virtually unrestricted way.   One poster suggests, I think wrongly, that generosity comes after affluence.   Based on my experiences I'm often surprised that when I share ideas openly and honestly I build trust with people and that trust leads to opportunity *for everybody in the equation*.   Sure there is a *chance* that somebody will nab your idea, implement it better than you can, and do great thing.   But that is:

1) OK because ideas, even great ideas, are not a key component of change.  The key is a fully implemented great idea and is a much taller order. 

2) unlikely, because they are probably working on a new angle or different idea or implementation anyway.  At MashupCamp I was pleased and surprised how few people were even interested in doing some of the things I thought would make "great mashups" in the travel space.  Why?  Because they were busy with THEIR vision of the next big thing.  Cool, and the best part is that the collective intelligence in such a group, or in the internt community at large, leads to a sort of *collective* expanion of horizons and creation *even better* stuff than without the open exchanges.    I'd note that MSN's traditional failure to understand and harness this power may be their biggest impediment to moving ahead successfully in the new Web world.

What one should seek in the new "generous" internet are relationships and mechanisms (e.g. blogs, websites, wikis, wifi, free computers, etc, etc) that foster bigger and better ideas which in turn will foster bigger and better improvements to the global web, still a very immature system.

Somalia starves, nobody cares. Why?

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Jan Egeland of Norway is the key person for the UN’s humanitarian affairs. He noted last year that Tsunami areas got plenty of international aid (almost 100% of that needed to rebuild) while Pakistan earthquake victims languished (I think it was 25% of the needed relief).

In Africa starvation now stalks millions. Egeland was recently quoted suggesting urgent need could rise to 15 million, momstly in Somalia, and correctly noted that if, for example, Scandinavia faced hunger on this scale the world would be scandalised:

“It would be evident if, say, all of Scandinavia faced collective starvation, the world would really respond. “If all of northern Iraq was facing massive starvation, I think the world would really respond. If Kosovo and Bosnia again faced starvation, I think the world would massively respond.”

Some suggest foolishly that starvation is a natural limit on population, yet it’s clear that over long periods development leads to LOWER birth rates. Thus funding development in third world can *theoretically* lead to a positive feedback, creating less suffering in the long term.

Political impediments caused by instability and despotic leaders and persistent ignorance about basic health issues stand in the way of optimal distribution of aid. Yet there are always better ways and collectively we should be able to find them.

I think many who oppose higher levels of aid to Africa would support much higher levels of international aid if there were better mechanisms to make sure the funding was working and demonstrate the benefits to the skeptics.

As the cost of the Iraq war approaches $400,000,000,000 I’m reminded that 20% of that number, or $80 billion, was cited a few years back as the cost to eliminate world hunger. Where are all those conservative economists when you need them for this cost/benefit analysis?

Google Wifis San Francisco….sung to the tune of “I left my router…in San…Fran…CISCO”

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It's brilliant for Google to offer free internet to any metro area, and maybe even rurally though that gets more complex logistically. Google doesn't need ISP fees, they to keep up market share and ad clicks. Even a linked logo to Google will probably create enough ad clicks to justify the cost here and certainly if you include brand awareness it's worth the money for them.
A drop in Google's bucket of cash to consolidate the position as search leader.

Where the HECK are Yahoo and MSN when all these cool initiatives spring up?

ASK ing Walt Mossberg why he stopped using Google search.

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Henry Blodget poses some provocative search questions and gets a thoughtful answer from Walt Mossberg, who has switched from Google to Ask as his primary search tool.  

This is significant as I recall that it was people like Mossberg, with a huge audience, who reported early and favorably on Google, creating the favorable buzz that launched them from obscurity to search stardom in just a few years (also less well known people like me and the thousands of other web savvy folks who helped with the positive Buzz about Google back in the ancient internet times c1998).

I don't think internet habits die all that hard which is why I have Google puts AND admire Google's brilliance at the same time.  Online fortunes, literally and figuratively, can change overnight.  Note that over a decade we saw Alta Vista, then Yahoo, and now Google as the 800 pound gorilla of search.  The new game has Yahoo and Google equal in actual relevance (though not in perceived relevance) with Ask and MSN catching up soon.  

All use different approaches and eventually there will probably be a "breakout application" that will do a much better job.  As Jeremy Zawodny has noted people won't switch because you are a "little better". The next search giant may need to be "great".  It might remain Google but it could also become, for example, IBM who arguably has the best but too-slow-for-prime-time search routine called "WebFountain".

Check out this new search company called “Microsoft”

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John Battelle's excellent interview with MSN search engineer Gary Flake reminded me of a long talk I had with Andy Edmonds in New Orleans PubCon last year.  Andy is a former Mozilla geek now working at MSN to determine search relevancy.  Andy is VERY sharp and reminds me of guys like Jeremy at Yahoo who can see far beyond the narrow corporate interests into the heart of what's up with the evolving internet.  (though they rightfully are sometimes protective of those corporate interests).

Also, at MIX06 I was impressed with how hard the LIVE search team was working and felt that they are getting the resources and respect needed to make big changes at MS in search.

Back in June of 2005, Andy was very optimistic and obviously sincere in his assumption that relevancy at MSN would equal Google's sooner than most were thinking   It's not happened yet but the Flake interview suggests that Microsoft's use of artificial intelligence in their algorithm is improving fast.   If as Gary suggests MS has a superior configuration (using a 64 bit architecture) that will allow deeper analysis things MS search could get very good very fast.

I won't hold my breath, noting when talking to guys at Google and Yahoo they tend to dismiss MS search as "hopeless".      Part of this is their ego talking but mostly it's an assumption that Microsoft no longer is doing  bleeding edge research needed for a breakout in search quality.    People at MSN like Gary and Andy challenge that assumption.

SPAM is in the eye of the beholder?

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For many the term web spam simply means unwanted junk email, but in the search community the definition of spam tends to be far more comprehensive and, to me, confusing. Obviously totally irrelevant junk is spam, but what about poorly written, marginally relevant information written by a seventh grade student about her class project dealing with asbestosis?

Few would call THAT grade school project "spam", yet most internet professionals would say "spam" if the *exact same information" was prepared by an outsourced team in an effort to rank for the term "asbestosis" becuase it fetches big money on the pay per click market.

In this example intention is defining the material as spam and that approach bothers me. I appreciate he fact that major search engines lean in the direction of objective measurements of relevancy, which probably do not attempt to factor intention into the equation except in extreme cases where, for example, Matt's spam team would ban a site for manipulation.

I suppose in this case they'd probably apply different metrics to the two sites above though I'm guessing they very rarely apply non-objective analysis. For one thing it's not scalable. For another it's hard (impossible?) to define subjective criteria.

Searching for Myspace with John Battelle

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John Battelle is the web's best "search watcher" and he's posted a great summary of recent events in search HERE at Searchblog.

I would note though that he does not address the significance and growth velocity of the Myspace phenomenon, which I'd suggest is the best, and crappiest, website in history.

Myspace proves that much of the Web 2.0 dialog is misguided, still emphasizing technology improvements over human considerations which lie at the heart of the "new" web and at the heart of the ugly but overwhelmingly successful Myspace.

In many ways I'm a big fan of Myspace as I think it's passes many of the tests that other sites fail – easy to join, navigate, and participate. It passed the critical mass of users long ago and continues to grow wildly – now with 66 million online. Myspace is a prime study in "mass appeal". It's ugly because people, on average, aren't very artistic or clever or well-organized. This aspect of the human condition leads to the web's largest collection of junky pages, and to the web's largest community of super active users.

My personal jury is still out on the "evil" side of myspace with the potential for stalking and young people mingling with unsavory or dangerous kids and adults. The user base is now so huge one must be very cautious in the interpretation of recent criminal activity at the site. Whenever you have a collection of 66 million people you'll get crime.

That said, Myspace probably has a greater community responsibility than it currently acknowledges or deals with proactively – this is certainly the case with the web at large where most onliners maintain that companies have few responsibilities outside of policing outrageous abuses of their services.

For the good of the entire online and offline community this must change, and it will change.