Sure is nice to have the WIFI going here at Medford Airport since my plane just got delayed by over 2 hours. I’ll need to redo the SFO to LAS connection but hopefully there are many flights and I was getting in pretty early anyway. Connectivity is somewhat flaky – not sure why but it’s been problematic all along, but it’s still good to have it and get a bit of work (or chess!) done while I sit here.
I’m getting mentally geared up for the coming week of Webmaster World. I’m hoping to blog the sessions I attend in some detail although the laptop has been acting up a bit and there’s no time to fix it now. If I’m really energetic I’ll post pix at Flickr same day.
Last week’s widgets conference in Silicon Valley would have been fun to attend but I’d just returned to Oregon from Startup Camp and my mom is already giving me a hard time about the Las Vegas trip tomorrow. I give her credit though for asking what does this trip add to your company’s bottom line? The obvious answer “Free microbrews and fried wings at the Google engineer event” won’t impress her, but there are some tough jobs that just need to be done!
However I think Widgets (aka Gadgets) are clearly where the web is going, and perhaps more interesting is that fact that I don’t think this is well understood by many “internet outsiders” yet, and poorly understood by many internet insiders.
The impact of Gadgets This will start to become clearer as Vista environments merge the browser, desktop, internet, and applications using gadgets for navigation, information, and advertising. Standard page view and website metrics will break down quickly and we’ll see that publishers will seek to promote even more cluttered, busy, and interactive gadget filled computer screens in an effort to boost revenues. The future isn’t pretty, but’s it’s sure going to be interesting.
I also need to add Niall Kennedy to the blogroll – he’s one of those folks you really need to pay attention to if you want to see where thing are going to be in a few years.
I don’t think the Pope is the best source of inspiration about how to structure the world but I certainly respect the fact that’s he’s sincerely interested in alleviating suffering and is a very sharp fellow. Here, the Pope has suggested we need major structural changes in the global economy to stem the tide of poverty.
My working assumption has been that globalization is, on balance, a hugely positive force as well as an inevitable one. In simple terms I believe this because as I travel and look around me it is the highly capitalistic and globalized environments of the USA and western democracies that provide for their people better than the “anti capitalistic, anti westers globalization” economies of Cuba, North Korea, etc.
Socialists suggest that our higher standards are a result of exploitation of the underdeveloped countries, but if this were true we’d tend to see a LOT more flow of goods and capital from, for example, Africa to the USA. In fact we see that Canada and Europe, Japan and China are the huge trading and economic partners of the USA rather than the suffering countries. In fact the striking thing about US interaction with the poor is that it’s non-existent rather than exploitative.
The Pope’s comments notwithstanding, clearly it seems we should be working to bring the poor into the globalization loop, rather than do things that might destabilize the capitalistic global goose that lays so many golden eggs.
We don’t have a crisis of economy, we have a crisis of indifference.
I think the most disconcerting thing as I age is how fast the time seems to go these days. Time is an elusive enough thing as it is, I wish it wouldn’t fly by so fast, leaving me to wonder how I can suddenly find myself hanging out the middle ages wishing for the wisdom of age and the vigor of youth.
In fact I think if I had to make the case that we are not even physical beings, rather some form of data construct programmed to interact in complex ways with a mathematical reality, I’d point to how time seems to slip by so unnoticed, yet so ungracefully.
… can’t we just hurry up and make it so we can download our brains?
WebmasterWorld is one of the two big conferences with really advanced SEO information and it starts Tuesday.
About 1000 people will gather in Las Vegas for info, conferencing, and interaction with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and ASK folks. Many of the best internet marketing folks in the world are here, and it’s always a fun time.
I’m looking forward to it!
As a general rule I’m optimistic about the intentions of those who govern because I think in general good people go into politics with the sincere intention of making things better. That said, I favor the type of small government intended by the founders, who roll over in their graves which each election, staggered by the scale and sweep of modern governments here and in other “democracies” around the world.
Power was supposed to rest in the hearts and minds of an informed populace, yet we the people have chosen to distance ourselves from government to the degree it’s become an abstraction for most of us at the local, state, and national levels.
The outcome of this election clearly “proves” our system really does allow for significant and peaceful change. Yet it also suggests that our choices are confined to only two — and to my mind somewhat equally inadequate — visions of how we should step into our uncertain American future. Why can’t the pendulum swing sideways for a change rather than back and forth between these two inadequate visions of the right path for America?
Is “democracy” the best word to describe the American political experience? I thought I’d coined the term “Advertocracy” but found a nice Canadian article here about the concept back in 2004.
Clearly our elections, the outcomes of which seem increasingly to depend on razor thin margins, are best described as marketing productions rather than the product of a well-informed citizenry acting on democratic principles. I’m not as alarmed by this as many “anti-advertising” people who fail to see that we all practice forms of advertising in one way or another whether we are telling a fish story about a life experience, beefing up a resume, talking up our favorite movie, or buying time on TV to say “Vote for Me!”. If you blog for your favorite candidate is that advertising? Of course it is.
Communication categories are breaking down quickly, I hope in favor of transparency. Transparent, full disclosure is a better way to measure integrity than “commercialization”, which we all practice to varying degrees of success.
Yet the fact remains that our election results are largely the product of last minute activity by those least concerned about the outcome based on their perceptions of last minute “sound bites” and largely negative ads. There has GOT to be a better way but in the meantime …
God Bless America, and God Bless Advertising.
CNN’s election coverage was, in my opinion, a technological masterpiece combining superb graphics and charts with excellent TV journalism. As I flipped channels last night it was clear that those in charge of the CNN information environment had done an exceptional job of providing lots of information in a good format. Nonetheless it was the quick insights of Democratic strategist Carville who alerted us to importance of the six close senate races and certain congressional districts as key metrics.
One disappointing aspect of CNN TV coverage was the CNN “blog party”. To me it seemed like a good idea gone stupid. The blogger comments were, for the most part, uninspired. TV and blogging don’t really mix which is one reason why blogs are taking over the news space. An active reader can scan many opinions very quickly rather than “waiting” for the TV camera or venue to switch to their items of interest.
I’m not much of a partisan, believing that those in high office are generally sincere and hard working people who differ in ideology rather than virtue. One can only hope that the new composition of American government will bring more innovation to the table while seeking solutions to the pressing problems in Iraq, Sudan, and the world at large.
Dave Sifry at Technorati has compiled a wonderful list and report about blogs and mainstream media. It’s the “State of the Blogosphere” and supports the obvious – blogs are increasing dramatically both in number and in influence. I think the data supports the notion that we’ll see an information landscape that is driven increasingly by niche interest groups and collaborative online communities. The traditional models for news and information dissemination — TV, Newspapers, and Magazines — will play roles of decreasing importance.
At some point in the decline of traditional media there may be a sort of “tipping point” where advertising simply can’t sustain the efforts and we’ll see a mass extinction but I doubt that. Rather I’d predict (wildly and without a lot of thought) that we’ll see print and TV die very slow, laborious deaths as they struggle to bring online content and online viewers into their spheres of influence and reduce some of the spending patterns (and unfortunately much of the quality, in depth reporting) that has come from the high barriers to entry which kept every Tom, Dick, and Harry news producer out of the space. Blogs reduce the participation barrier to “literacy” (marginaly literacy at that) and therefore will change information and news … forever.
One of the most frustrating things “Verification” sites do is make bogus and ridiculous assumptions about websites and offer pathways to remove them if you pony up cash.
When I read about Compete over at Battelle’s I tried it and noted that one of my 10 year old travel sites with a long history and good contact information had a Compete.com “warning”. Naturally this pissed me off but I assumed a server change last year may have been the problem.
I felt better when Matt Cutts , whose name appears on no less than the Google Patent documents, pointed out that Compete is questioning his blog’s veracity (see snapshot below).
Adding opportunistic insult to injury, the Compete explanations imply (indirectly) that a legitimate site can get rid of the warning by subscribing to a website service called GeoTrust. Prices seem to vary depending on the site, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a relationship here, making compete look somewhat more like an extortion racket than a good new online resource.
SnapShot |
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Use caution in providing any personal information or downloading software on mattcutts.com. |
Joe Duck 