Features, not products

Wake up call over at Google? Though a little saddened that the quick surprise releases of new cool things will slow down or stop for now, I do agree that some fine tuning and improving of their core will be very welcome.

Interesting how it somewhat mirrors the old Surfboard strategy too. At first it was more sites, more categories, more sections. But later it turned to more automation, tighter Zuma integration, better usability.

Google Puts Lid on New Products

In another sign of Google Inc.'s growth from start-up to corporate behemoth, the company's top executives said Thursday that they had begun telling engineers to stop launching so many new services and instead focus on making existing ones work together better.

The initiative's primary goal is to make Google products easier to use, especially by packaging disparate products. For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications.

The company does not plan to tell engineers to halt all new products, Google said, nor does it plan to kill little-used services.

Rather, the effort is more focused on future development. After launching the initiative this summer, Schmidt said, Google canceled several services in development — which he would not describe — and instructed their creators to instead make them features in other products.

Networking and LinkedIn

Newest episode of Venture Voice is an interview with the founder of LinkedIn. I found most interesting the discussion on what I feel is the biggest problem to the legitimacy of LinkedIn: Mediocre workers with glowing testimonials bringing down the value of a referral by mis-using the networking concept.

It goes into some interesting ideas on how they plan to handle it in the future and how they intend for it to be handled today if people utilize the tool properly.

(If you don't want to listen to the whole thing, this part starts around the 33 minute mark).

Venture Voice #40: Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn

Simple Organizing: Scrybe

G. and I were just talking about organizer type applications the other day.

I came across this one, which seems like it's in closed beta currently.

http://iscrybe.com/main/index.php

They're doing a cool marketing campaign, where they're using YouTube to do different product demonstrations before they launch it to the public.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/21/scrybe-could-set-a-new-standard-in-office-apps/

I like the PaperSync towards the end.

Time Machine Video

Found a great (though somewhat cheesy)time machine documentary on google video.

The theory is that time travel into the past on very small particles is now feasible. If we could encode information onto said particles, then we could technically send information into the past, but only so far back as the "time machine" has been invented.

Thus, when it is finally created, it may suddenly be flooded with messages from the future. This scientist's theory is that Einstein was correct about black holes - but that laser light itself is actually much more effective at twisting space/time.

Thought Jake of All Trades might really appreciate this. The video is 45 minutes.


Time Machine

Microsoft Installation Woes

Great SvN Post on the frustrations of installing software on Windows, including an almost comical screencast video.

Semi-related:

The 37Signals "Getting Real" $19 PDF book is now available in a free online HTML version, as well as a $29 print on demand paperback from my future publisher Lulu.com. Now there's no excuse not to read it if you've been too cheap or too lazy. (I'm the latter.)

Getting Real: The Book

Small Number of Video iPods Shipped With Windows Virus

This little jab on the official Apple release about the iPod virus is awesome:

"As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."

(via TUAW)

The 100th Post - Cool Gadget Search

Apparently, I'm lucky enough to be posting the 100th entry on this blog. Kudos to J. for having contributed more than his fair share to get us here.

Anyways, just saw an article for this site:

http://www.retrevo.com/

It's a targeted search engine for gadget-o-philes. I like the dual-paned "preview" interface. Admittedly, I haven't done enough searches to see how much easier it is to find information than Google.

At a minimum it does seem to make it easier to filter out the true reviews from the proliferation of shopping price engine sites that usually come up when you search Google.

Narnia Redux

I know I'm way behind on this, but I never realized there were so many response/parody/sequels to the "Lazy Sunday" Narnia Rap until I did some YouTube surfing today:

The Original

The West Coast Response

The Midwest Response

The English Response

Organic Canadian Response

German Response

Dallas Mavericks

Little Kid Remake

Wicked Wednesday

Reid Park Zoo

Central Style

Conventioneers

1833

Google boss warns politicians about Internet power

Google boss warns politicians about Internet power
"Many of the politicians don't actually understand the phenomenon of the Internet very well," Schmidt told the Financial Times. "It's partly because of their age ... often what they learn about the Internet they learn from their staffs and their children."

Fun With Verification Boxes

Saw this SvN post, which led me to this Jeteye site. Some interesting/amusing word choices in the infamous verification box. (Keep hitting refresh on your browser to change the word.)

What Might Have Been

Think Neil mentioned before that he thought if iNetNow were still around today the Surfboard, etc would be more Wiki based. Sounds like the rest of the world is starting to agree. The Google profile page sounds a little like an advanced version of our old employee page intranet.

Web 2.0 entering corporate world slowly

How The Maps Are Made

Interesting article on the behind the scenes world of online map database making and techniques. Too bad they chose the worst one for the title ;)

Map Quest

Some interesting tidbits:

-Williams stares at his email inbox: a solid wall of news alerts from Yahoo and Google. His search terms aren't the usual fare, like "Hilary Duff." They're more like "Tulsa city one-way" – queries that will help Williams track down announcements of road changes reported by local newspapers. Today has been slow, but suddenly he lights up. An email has arrived containing a newspaper report that a particular one-way road segment in northwest Indiana is changing from westbound to eastbound. Sweet!

-GDT acquired detailed aerial photography of major cities. "We could look at a street and see which way cars were parked, even tire rubber going into intersections, and deduce 85 percent of the turn restrictions and one-way attributes,"

-"We've had projects with pizza-delivery companies where we've printed out for them a big wall map of their 30-minute delivery area. The guys mark things that are wrong and send it back to us," says former GDT president Mike Gerling, who now heads Tele Atlas' North American division.

Mobile providers lock away GPS on phones

An interesting NPR story on the power of GPS in mobile phones and why many cell providers lock it away from the users. Still doesn't explain why AT&T use to have the find a friend mode but then got rid of it.

Power of GPS Phones Locked Away from Most Users

Can't See The Target

From Consumerist, via LifeHacker:

The image with the article is priceless...

Target Still Being Sued For Having Website Blind Can't See

"The class action brought by the ADA on behalf of Bruce 'BJ' Sexton, a student in California, contends that Target.com is problematic for blind people because, "alt-text is missing from images, preventing screen readers from describing them to blind users; purchases cannot be completed without a mouse because keyboard controls do not work; image maps are inaccessible; and headings are missing that are needed to navigate."

For a blind person, Brian can sure see bad web design darn good."

To Blog or Not To Blog

Maybe this explains the low post rate around here lately...

How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger

Dot Bomb 2.0

11 Suggestions for not being a dot.bomb

Great stuff here, and compelling reading for all of us that went through the first hype wave right before the crash of 99...

Web 2.0 Logo/Dossier List

I found this yesterday after Boryan posted; it was a link somewhere else on the "Death by Google Calendar" page.

I spent almost two hours playing with this last night. This is a list of the most popular "Web 2.0" applications by popularity and logo. I particuarly like "Rollyo", but the list here is comprehensive. Still wading through it, but some really great ideas.

Check it out.

Search Powered By People

New Engine 'ChaCha' Offers Real-Time Answers From Live 'Guides'
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060904-044533

I think this has too much overhead to be successful, but it's fairly close to the user-supplied search and text message idea we discussed a couple of month's ago. I think you have to find a way to recruit "guides" and provide them with non-financial incentives only.

I liked the "best LA hotel to stay in with kids" questions. It's those kind of questions that highlight the limitations of search even in this day and age. Unless you've stayed at such a place, chances are you meet the asker's expectation.

Death By Google Calendar

Just re-posting an article on Slashdot.

http://dumblittleman.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-to-get-robbed-killed-or-stalked-by.html
"I find it utterly stupid that people display their lives online. As a simple study, I did some digging on Google Calendar. Now, keep in mind that I am somewhat tech-savvy but I used no skills for this. Everything I found in this case was simply a result of a Google Search, an additional search on Travelocity and a 411 call. There was nothing to this at all."

I like Google Calendar and use it, but in this age of Myspace tell-it-alls, there really needs to be a class in junior high or something that teaches kids how to maintain their privacy.

After all, the magic sword is forever imprinted in my past...

Stupid "9" tricks

Search Terms:
stupid 9 outside line

Kuro5Chin
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:fwZ2-S8mXu8J:www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/25/21742/8241+stupid+9+outside+line&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8&client=firefox-a

“Now the last piece is this: You may think that in-band signaling is a thing of the past, but it isn't. In the telecom company's infinite wisdom, they have overloaded this switch-hook depression to an extreme degree. It can be a hang-up request to "start over", it can be a rotary "1", AND, if you happen to have already connected to a party, it is now the "flash" signal, a request to put the first caller on hold, and get a new line, for three-way calling, etc.

So, here is what I think happened. I dial
1. "9-1",
2. aw shit, I'm not at work
3. -- Just completed 911 due to rotary compatibilty mode!
4. don't hear dial tone (because we are connecting to emergancy dispatcher!)
5. (3-way calling mode, dispatcher now on hold, which they refer to as an "open line")
6. Dial my lady... yack away... moments later, troops arrive!
Just to let you know to be cautious in a similar circumstance.”

Also found this link, from the same page as above. If you’re brave and really want to find out, maybe you can under the “North American Numbering Plan Administration.”
http://www.nanpa.com/

The North American Numbering Plan Administration? Really? We have an organization just dedicated to this? Sounds like a horrifically boring job...