Category Archives: Web 2.0

Fiddling while O’Reilly Rome burns?

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Poor Tim O’Reilly. He heads out on vacation and perhaps still unknown to him a firestorm of protest erupts overnight over his company’s decision to fight to protect their ownership of service mark “Web 2.0 Conference”.

I’m sure the O’ staff is upset and worried, but their statements are not managing to comfort the BlogBarbarians at the gate who grew very hostile very fast.

Though I’m generally in the “support” camp, feeling this is greatly overblown by detractors (which is part of why blog land is so enjoyable). I wonder if folks are doing a bit of fiddling over there while O’Rome burns. Clearly people feel that it’s not in the spirit of Web 2.0 to try to *own* the name “Web 2.0”.

This issue appears to have struck a strong chord and staff would be well advised to lay the groundwork for a retraction (rather than the groundwork for arguments in favor of the action).

Retraction is the logical step by Tim to avoid a PR disaster. Instead staff and even the inimitable John Battelle seem to be saying “we were right and when his 2.holiness returns he’ll rescue us from the situation”.

I’d bet my own rights (or lack of them) to my own name that O’Reilly will pull the claim to “Web 2.0” almost as soon as he returns.

Copyright is copywrong in this case since you are protecting more long term profits by … NOT fighting for this as an O’Reilly mark. Given the level of hostility NOW, think of the blog response if they actually go court on this issue !?!

UPDATE:  Here’s the resolution, which is very reasonable IMHO.   He’s only going to hassle this for “confusingly similar” conferences.

Google v Kinderstart Lawsuit over downranking

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Eric Goldman offers his summary of the Google v. Kinderstart lawsuit, and I think he speaks for many online people in his aversion to government regulation of search. However, I'm not as persuaded as he by the Google arguments, which ring increasingly hollow given the complexities of the ranking process and the onslaught of spam, which seriously inhibits the ability of search engines to rank sites optimally for users.

Our Online Highways site suffered a similar fate to Kinderstart in February 2005 when Google traffic dried up almost overnight. As one of the most comprehensive travel sites online it is still not clear why the site was downranked. Google has assured us we have "no penalties" and only have changed from algorithmic ranking issues. Our pages are still in the Google index yet Google users are unlikely to find us despite the fact we have arguably the best treatment of several travel topics. Note ohwy.com/uz/ which was developed by the Silk Road region's top travel guide publisher.

Frankly I'm surprised how sympathetic Goldman is to the notion that the cornerstone issue here is Google's right to do pretty much whatever they please regardless of the consequences. I'm guessing he was hardly this generous with Microsoft's attempts to monopolize search using the browser.

The "hands off of search" is a slippery slope, especially when granted to companies that make 97% of their revenues from advertising. I strongly contend that there are solutions that help users and enhance Google's long term prospects which some feel are in great jeopardy due to ranking capriciousness.

The solution is to create MUCH better feedback mechanisms for webmasters and companies that suffer from ranking irregularities. Google's actually started such a process though I think it's only addressing a small percentage of the growing number of legitimate concerns about ranking changes.

Web 2.0 is brought to you by …..

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Wow, O'Reilly sure pissed off a bunch of Web 2.0 people fast!

My take on the controversy which has become a top Web debate this afternoon, posted at O'Reilly's blog:

I've defended O'Reilly's corporate action since clearly Tim coined the term and Tim has done more to foster Web 2.0 notions than anybody else.

But you need to throw in the towel here as I'm confident Tim will do when he returns to this firestorm of protest.

Right or wrong the "Web 2.0" mark is not worth this level of hostility to the idea of "owning" a term celebrating the collective sharing of networked intelligence. Many rights are worth fighting for. Owning "Web 2.0" clearly is not.

Big Profit Eludes Myspace.com – why?

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This excellent New York Times article outlines how Myspace evolved from a spammy junk site to one of the internet's top destinations, second only to Yahoo in page views according to several sources.   I remain skeptical Myspace has more traffic than EBAY, but clearly they are huge and growing at a jaw-dropping rate from last year.  

HOWEVER, Myspace is NOT hugely profitable with only 1/20th the revenues of Yahoo, the top online destination in terms of pages viewed.

I think the explanation is simple – Myspace traffic is dominated by young onliners who are enthusiastic and spend many hours per day online but have little interest in most advertising and not much money to spend.   I doubt this will change.  

We've noted at our US history site, which appears to get most traffic from school searches, that it is hard to match users and advertisements.

The Downloadable Brain era

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Some have suggested quite reasonably that the "next" really significant step in human evolution is the computerization of our brain functions, and that we'll usher in this downloadable brain era in about 30-70 years.  

Once humans have a process to "download" our brains into machines, or perhaps simply create processes where machines have their own consciousnesses, many of the challenges facing humanity could go away – perhaps overnight.     Concepts like health, water, food, fuel, and population will change as increasing numbers of societal participants will need few resources other than enough power to sustain their electronic consciousness .

For reasons I don't understand this sounds fanciful or even foolish to many who fail to realize or acknowledge the degree to which we NOW rely on machine intelligence.   From simple calculators and spell checkers to satellite photos to internet searches and computer models of climate our information gathering and processing is enhanced via machine processes.  

Sure, the leap to conscious machines is much larger but I'd suggest it will not prove qualitatively different from the subtle enhancements machines now bring to the table of conscious thought.

I'm just looking forward to playing perfect chess games every time. 

Playstation 5 = Human Brain says leading UK futurist

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Playstation 5 , said leading UK futurist Pearson, will be as powerful as a human brain.  He notes the dramatic increase in power as video games evolve, and predicts that by 2050 we'll be able to download our brains into computers.    Combine this notion with the recent brain blueprint experiments for a neat look into the probably future of …. self.  

The implications are nothing short of staggering for a world filled with machine housed consciousnesses, communicating at near light speed via global networks.  

How would these entities, perhaps AKA "you and me", view those who have chosen NOT to download into the machines?     I'm guessing favorably unless the physical entities became threatening which would seem unlikely.  Machines – conscious and otherwise – by that time will be so capable that it seems unlikely serious conflict would be to anybody's advantage.

I just hope I can make it to 2050 and have enough cash for the download.  Pearson think's it'll take 25 MORE years before the procedure becomes cheap enough to be routine. 

Google Analytics

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Wow, I've got to hand it to Google – again – for offering an extraordinary application at no charge.  Google Analytics was formerly "Urchin", and cost about $500 monthly.  It's an extremely robust log analysis tool that allows detailed "drill down" examination of things like referrer logs, page views, and much more.  A very clever user friendly tool called "site overlay" allows you to explore the click through rates of a home page's (any page's?) internal links.   Very helpful in designing navigation for the site.

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. 

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.