Very smart idea from Charlene Li for all those school sign-up sheets we get bombarding our home:
Tag - google
…. you’re supporting your competitor:
I wonder how much money Ask is spending at Google in order to boost their own business. As a business that uses Google AdWords, you could hardly ask for a better endorsement of Google’s services and ads than a direct competitor also using their services.
If you were inventing email today … what would you make?
This is a 2700-word paper for ETEC 533, a course in my Master of Educational Technology program at UBC.
Excerpt:
But when just about anything anyone wants to know is a simple search away, what, specifically, constitutes education in the age of Google? And, is it enough to know about, without knowing how, or why?
This paper is inspired by Nicholas Carr’s widely read Is Google Making Us Stupid? That being the case, of course, I have absolutely no expectation that any of you will actually read the entire thing.
But you may wish to skim …
Those of use know live and contribute online know what captchas are and what their purpose is. And we all, uniformly, hate them with a passion usually reserved for Nazi war criminals or past US presidents.
But, generally we accept that to keep blogs and other social spaces on the web free of spam, we’ll submit to the hassle of typing in some nonsense word that purports to communicate that we are, in fact, human and not Martian.
But this captcha is not just annoying. It’s pure, unadulterated evil. In fact, you can almost see the vitriolic green acid oozing out:
It stands to reason, therefore, that this is a captcha from Google, the company whose founders have famously promised to do no evil.
Somebody call Sergei and show him this!
I knew it would happen in my lifetime: Google Calendar and Apple iCal syncing simply, quickly, effortlessly:
Google calls it Calaboration … and yes, that’s the way they spell it. The software is a thing of beauty. Download, install, enter your Gmail account information, and you’re done. In my initial testing on two Macs, it works perfectly and quickly.
It also completely reduces the need for Apple’s MobileMe. Now my calendar is everywhere I want to be, and it’s on my iPhone either through syncing (unlikely, as I only sync every couple of weeks or so) or through simply going to Google Calendar in Safari, and checking the latest updates.
So I’m searching for software usability features, and in the Sponsored links … this is what appears.
Sketchup is an architecture prototyping tool – a very cool one – that Google bought for no apparent reason and now offers for free (well, the basic version).
What on earth does that have to do with a search for usability information? Your guess is as good as mine.
I can only assume someone in the Sketchup marketing team has his AdWords campaigns screwed up. But hey, if your ads are free … why not?
Interesting page on trying to search Google:
Apparently, Google thinks I’m a bad guy running an automated query. I get the same result from Firefox’s search box as at Google’s own home page.
Odd! Off to Yahoo!
I saw a link to Google Moderator tonight on Matt Cutts’ blog and thought I’d try it out.
It’s a tool to aggregate questions on issues and let the wisdom of crowds moderate up the most important ones. It can be used real-time to generate questions for a speaker or presenter – Google uses it during company meetings for precisely that purpose – or asynchronously online.
Here’s my quick test of Moderator: What I’d like to ask Warren Buffet.
I’ve had the most amazing neighbors on flights lately …
Last week it was a Google engineer who heads up the ?SRE? unit for Gmail. He works in Zurich, and his team’s focus is provisioning servers and other resources for the growing user base. Interesting phrase of the discussion: “up and the the right,” which is what Googlers say when they talk about increasing resources being required for services.
Today it was a chief research scientist who is a cofounder of a start-up that works on video processing technologies for Predator UAVs, among other things. They’ve grown from 8 to over 100 in about 14 months, and he had fascinating stories to tell about goverment and defense contracts. (He was a triple-booter: Mac, Linux, and Windows, and carried two laptops and an jailbroken iPhone.)
I hope I’m so fortunate in my seat selection on the way back!
From the Google blog:
We’ve known it for a long time: the web is big. The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we’ve seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. Recently, even our search engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days — when our systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!
Awe is a good word – one trillion is a big, big number. Wow.
. . . Excel help than Excel.Every single time I need to find out how to do something in Excel, I try to figure it out from Excel help. Search usually gets me nowhere, but sometimes gives me a clue what I should actually be searching on. But the help I usually get is not very helpful.So I turn to Google, and usually on the first page of results, using the search terms that make sense to me (an admitted Excel weenie, and proud of it) I find the answer.Isn’t that bass-ackwards? Shouldn’t the best source of information about your product come from your company?
OK, I’ve moved my OPML to Google Reader from Bloglines and I’m going to give it a shot.Based on the last 15 minutes use, it’s probably going to stick.We’ll see …
If Scoble says it’s good, it’s usually worth a look. So when Scoble says that ClipBlast is a “killer video search engine”, I thought I’d check it out.
One thing I’ve been looking for lately is video footage of Alexander Ovechkin’s lying-on-the-ice backhander goal from last year. We’re talking ice-hockey, in case you’re wondering.
Here’s what ClipBlast gives me:
That contrasts rather poorly with plain old Google:
The first two results are direct links to the video; the other results are directly related.
Not very “killer” to me.
[tags] scoble, video, search, clipblast, google, hockey, john koetsier [/tags]Scoble’s interview with the Google program manager:
This is huge … an environment for building applications locally that will sync globally. I can see thousands of major and niche applications for this.
[tags] google, gears, offline, sync, scoble, john koetsier [/tags]Text Link Ads just informed me that (yay!) they’ve sold another ad for me. (You can see ’em down near the bottom of the right column under, appropriately, text link ads.)
This is cool, because it pays the hosting bills and because I make more from TLA than I ever did from Google AdWords. It’s even more cool because text link ads are incredibly aesthetically better than AdWords. But it’s uber-cool because the latest one is for VentureThree.
Naturally, when someone wants to market themselves on my blog, I check them out. And VentureThree has the coolest interim site I’ve ever seen.
The title at the top says Branding | Brand Consultants | Strategic Identity Consulting Design, and the page looks like this:
Simple. Direct. Powerful. Intriguing. Bold. Clean. Smart. Beautiful.
I love it. I want to work for a company with that kind of strategic aesthetic vision.
. . .
. . .
In case you’re wondering, I haven’t posted anything about any of the other advertisers on this site … so it’s not like you buy an ad, you get a puff piece. Just so you know!
🙂
[tags] venturethree, branding, consulting, brands, john koetsier, adwords, text link ads [/tags]
Whoa … I see Chris DiBona of Google’s open source program is helping NASA move 120 terabytes of data … all the data that the Hubble space telescope has ever collected.
Now that’s a LOT of data. Very cool. Hope they don’t lose any spare terabytes here or there.
But what’s with this pic? Is it Chris DiBona or Fabio?
This has gotta be a gag shot …
[tags] chris dibona, google, nasa, terabytes, hubble, john koetsier [/tags]I just saw the story on super-close Google map zooms and checked it out.
All you have to do is:
- Select a location and switch to satellite view
- Zoom in as far as you can, and click “link to this page” at the top right
- Now replace the “z” parameter in the URL with a higher value, e.g. 20, 22, or 23, and wait. Some locations will now show more detailed imagery
When I saw this photo of men standing around a well I couldn’t resist adding a caption. There’s one guy looking straight up:
It’s a super-zoom from the country of Chad, in Africa. And perhaps that is someone who the US government suspected of being in cahoots with Osama or Al Quaeda … which is the only reason why satellite image providers would zoom so close.
More info at Ecrans and Geo-trotter.
[tags] google, maps, zoom, hi mom, chad, africa, john koetsier, funny [/tags]Apparently, gadgets are huge:
- Google Map – 4,861,113
- PacMan v2.0 – 8,114,344
- DIGG – 3,228,599
- My IP – 1,063,244
- Wikipedia – 27,314,972
- Countdown – 2,076,028
- Online Second Life Friends – 1,396
- Free Sudoku Puzzles – 4,450,349
- Memory Game – 647,151
In that spirit … have some retro fun:
March 22 note added:
There was a DMCA takedown notice filed against this post a few days back. I’ve since spoken to the owner of Motiono.com and we’ve resolved our differences amicably.
On a bit of an edtech kick lately. Noticed these today and wanted to save them:
- E-learning infiltrates the classroom
- Gradefix (“the easiest way to get good grades”)
- Google for educators
- stu.dicio.us (collaborative classnotes sharing)
- Digital printing press
If you want to feel bad but you’re feeling good, or if you want to feel good but you’re feeling bad, I have the perfect solution for you:
Today, Steve Ballmer is work almost $200 million more than yesterday. Google’s Eric Schmidt is up $150 mill or so too. That’s gotta be a downer if you, like most, have a $1500 mortgage payment due at the end of the month.
On the other hand, Michael Dell dropped $80 mill. That’s gotta suck. Larry Ellison of Oracle lost $40 million of net worth – nasty. Barry Diller of InterActiveCorp, on the other hand, lost just $2 mill – must be an amateur.
😉
[tags] ceo, wealth, money, john koetsier [/tags]Just finished watching the Apple iPhone keynote. What a masterful Jobsian performance.
Random thoughts as I slowly exit the reality distortion field:
- want one, now
- five months is a loooooong time to wait
- pricing is OK
- gonna want more space than 8 GB, and soon
- battery life is a bit of a challenge – this baby will need to be docked every night
- beautiful, beautiful integration
- amazing design
- just to be clear (and to quote his Steveness), I’m not talking about pretty pictures. Design is how it works
- the third-party app universe is going to be amazing … just like the iPod ecosystem today
- he got Google’s CEO and Yahoo’s Cheif Yahoo on the same stage, seconds after each other!
- telecommunications guys are boring
- Eric Schmidt is boring, too, but at least he was quick
Oh, and one more thing. It probably won’t get to Canada for months and months after it launches in the US. Bleh.
[tags] apple, iphone, steve jobs, keynote, john koetsier [/tags]
This post is a follow-up to my recent web2.0 monetization post.
In order to make money in the web 2.0 world, you need to reduce the cost of product to almost zero. That’s because the means of web monetization are almost all very marginal.
(See my list in linked post above if you don’t agree. If you don’t – great! Share your secret.)
So how do you reduce your cost of product to almost zero? There are three ways I can think of:
- Outsource
Get your infrastructure built cheaply, at least when starting up. India, China, Eastern Europe, developing Asia, whatever. Get it built cheap. - Crowdsource
Build something that increases in value as people use it and share it. (And, as should be obvious) build something that has enough value that people will use it even before other people have started using it.) Note that when I use the term crowdsource, I don’t mean use people to build your empire. I mean providing something with enough built-in utility that people will freely decide to use your services because your services meet a need they have. - Automate
Google has two huge assets: a great search platform and a great advertising platform. Both are almost completely automated … they run by themselves. Build something that runs by itself – the fabled perpetual motion machine – and find a way to make penny every cycle, and you’ve just built yourself a wealth engine. (Of course, it’s the almost completely part that some people forget.)
(Make sure the page you’re linking to works.)
Well it’s the morning after and I have to decide if I can still live with myself.
Yesterday, of course, I dipped my toes in the (murky?) waters of paid reviews with Review: Search Engine Marketing Glossary. Today I see that my review has been accepted and I’ll be paid $30.
A buck a minute isn’t too bad – it sure beats Google AdWords – but how do I feel about writing a post for money?
Short answer: I’m not sure yet. It definitely feels different … frankly, it feels a little frightening. Am I OK with this? Is it right?
I don’t think paid reviews are unethical when there’s full disclosure. I think the ambivalence that I’m feeling rises from the fact that my blog, my space, my stake in the cyber-sand, which I have only used so far for personal and professional thinking out loud, now has a commercial feel to it – more than what you’d get from AdWords or banner ads.
I’ll have to think this one through a little more …
. . .
. . .
Some other thoughts:
- Why I won’t use Pay-per-post
- Can someone tell me why?
- Hugh McLeod’s “pimped” wine (read the comments, that’s where the gems are)
- ReviewMe Launches (a paid review of the paid review service!)
- A Better PayPerPost (TechCrunch’s review)
- ReviewMe: Too Good for Deep Jive Interests (a good blog that inexplicably was rejected by ReviewMe)
- Get Paid to Review Product
- ReviewMe to pay bloggers (check the rates of various sites about midway through this article – interesting!)
This is a paid review. More details at the end of the post.
SEO is a bit of a black art to me.
I mean, I know all about the generalities of search engine optimization, and I think you’ll find a few of them reflected here. URLs of all my pages contain keywords; titles of all post pages have the title first, then the bizhack station ID second; and I try to be a good linking citizen – linking to those who are useful and good and interesting, and hoping to be linked to in turn.
But SEO is one of those topics that you can seemingly delve endlessly into. Everyone has different ideas, everyone has different strategies. Just to make it more interesting, SEO is an ongoing arms race between Google et al and the SEO practitioners … who are always looking for a new way to game the system.
When it comes right down to it, the best SEO strategy is probably to:
- create great content
- that is keyword-rich for subjects you’re focused on
- that people will link to
- for a decent length of time (at least 6-9 months)
- until Google knows you’re one of the good guys
With that as background, I was asked to review the Search Engine Marketing Glossary … a compendium of SEO terms and definitions compiled by Aaron Wall, the author of the SEO book. A little expensive, at $79, but it’s recommended by Seth Godin, which is high praise, and obviously any reasonably proficient SEO optimizer would cost you far more in consulting fees.
In any case, the Glossary is simply that – a list of SEO terms and their definitions. Here’s the funny self-referential point … the glossary of SEO term is actually a major SEO effort to improve the SEO ranking of the SEO book so that more people who search for the term SEO will find it and, perhaps, buy it. Now that’s the essence of SEO!
With that said, I can’t say that I found a huge amount of value in the glossary. Most of the definitions I either know or don’t have a huge interest in. One that was interesting was an actual revealing of the Google PageRank algorithm:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
PR= PageRank
d= dampening factor (~0.85)
c = number of links on the page
PR(T1)/C(T1) = PageRank of page 1 divided by the total number of links on page 1, (transferred PageRank)
Of course, that’s the purported PageRank algorithm. The real, current PR process may or may not have a huge impact on Google listings today, and probably bears little relationship to whatever Larry Page and Sergei Brin wrote up in a Stanford paper years ago.
I don’t really understand why PDF is in the glossary, and as far as I know Safari is a Mac web browser, not a “measure of how frequently a keyword appears amongst a collection of documents.” But hey, words have multiple meanings.
Overall, I’m sure there’s plenty of value for newbie SEO optimizers, and even some for those who understand a little more about SEO.
Most of the value, however, is in driving potential clients to the SEO book.
Paid Review
Since I like to keep in touch with all the new forms of blog monetization, I signed up for Review Me‘s paid review service about 2 months ago. I’ve had a few requests to do paid reviews that I’ve turned down; this service seemed to be one that was up my alley of interests enough that I probably would have done it anyways, paid or not.
I haven’t said anything simply because I’m being paid for the review, and frankly, the content of the review is very likely not what a person or organization using paid reviews even cares about. What they’re paying for is the link, primarily. At least, that’s my assumption. (The amount, if you’re interested, is $30.)
In any case, I’ve done this mainly as a test – to see what it feels like, and to see how it works on this blog. If you have any comments, flames, criticisms, or any reaction at all, please let me know!
Yesterday I met Joe Laudenbach, a Bellingham, WA realtor who is wondering how blogging might be something he could use in his business. As I prepped for the meeting, I jotted down some thoughts on how blogging will fit into his business.
Note: my goal was not to get him blogging, but to give him information that will help him make an informed decision whether or not he wants to start.
Why to blog
- Better SEO
Because blogs are more frequently updated, they’re a major benefit to your site’s search engine optimization … the factors that help you rank higher in search engine results pages. - More interesting site
A blog is usually much more interesting than a website … it’s not corporate, it delivers content in quick hits, it’s more accessible … - More human face to potential clients
Building on the “not corporate” theme, a blog is where your personality comes through – which is attractive (unless you’re Attila the Hun) - Learn and develop more as a person and as a realtor
I learn more from blogging than just about anything else. Simply the process of thinking and writing and writing and listening and linking makes me much more consciously aware of trends and opportunities. The same is true for realtors or virtually any occupation, I believe. - Creative outlet
People who blog regularly come to love blogging as a creative outlet. And I don’t believe there’s a single person alive who isn’t creative to some degree, in some way. Feeding this impulse has personal and professional benefits. - Contacts, conversations, communication
Through blogging I’ve had email contact with Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, and many other major, well-known technology, business, and marketing leaders. They’ve made me smarter. Plus, I’ve had many more contacts with many more people who aren’t so well known … and that’s had even greater benefits. The same can be true for real estate agents or any professional/business people. Jobs, work contacts, and just plain interesting people: blogging can bring all that. It has for me.
Why not to blog
- If you can’t write
Don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to be Hemmingway. But if you absolutely cannot string 2 words together intelligibly, forget it. Find some other way to engage your clients. - If you won’t keep it up
Don’t start if you won’t keep it up. Few things are more pathetic than an orphaned blog. However, don’t get too worried, either. One post a week is not ideal, but it’s perfectly fine for many, many professionals. - If you’re just marketing yourself
If your blog is only going to be about how your company and you are incredibly, stunningly great (not to mention handsome and wealthy) forget it. No-one’s going to read it – one Paris Hilton is enough, thank you very much. - If you’re looking for a quick fix marketing hit
Blogging isn’t a quick fix solution. It’s about telling stories and developing relationships, and those don’t form overnight. Even the blogosphere success stories such as Thomas Mahon blogged for months and months without seeing major results. The good news: all your work is always paying dividends. Old blog posts never die, they just keep attracting hits. - If you’re not comfortable being authentic, real, and non-corporate
Don’t be a stuffed shirt – let your hair down and be real. If you can’t tolerate the slightest mistake, if you can’t speak with anything other than the traditional marcom voice: forget it. It’s boring. It’s just advertising … and people are more adblind now than they’ve ever been.
What to blog about
Note: these are tailored for Joe, who’s a real estate agent. But they’re adaptable to different situations.
- Why people move to Bellingham/Whatcom county
There’s probably 10 or 15 blog posts right here … as many as there are reasons. - What areas are great for kids|seniors|adults
Another 5-7 posts … - Things to do in Bellingham
- Seasonal events
If you do to a harvest festival, blog it. Christmas candlelight parade? Blog it. - House-hunting tips
Keep it to one tip per blog posts … there’s probably an indefinite number of tips here. Organize them in a category so that visitors can see them all. - Top ten house-hunting gotchas
I know I’d love to know what to watch out for when moving … and I’m probably searching for this type of information when I’m about to move, too. - Things you realize AFTER you move in
Wouldn’t we all like to have known this – about a month before moving in. - Stressless moving
How to blog
- Intentional keywords
Be intentional about the keywords you use. Know what people will be searching for when they’re looking to find a home in Whatcom County, WA. Niche it out to the max if you want to rank in search engines, and make sure you use those keywords in titles and posts. - Regularly (at least once a week)
As mentioned above, don’t make an orphan out of your blog. - Naturally
When you’re blogging, you’re a person. Not a company. Talk to people who are also persons as you would talk to someone on the street. Anything else is disrespectful, stuffy, and annoying. - Interview people
Interview key people in your community. This is a great way to expand your circle of contacts, blog about interesting valuable topics, and grow your readership. - Talk to clients
Clients will give you all the blog fodder you need, if you just ask.
Other things to consider
- Other social media
Over time, as you become established in your blog and comfortable with the technology, why not explore other forms of social media? Upload a house video or a neighborhood drive-through to YouTube. Then post it to your blog. Or … - Podcasts
Create a couple of podcasts so that people can hear your voice. This can really give people a sense of who you are and that they know you.
These are a few of the suggestions I had for Joe. I hope that they’re applicable to whatever situations you’re in, whether you’re a small business blogger, a corporate blogger, or a social media consultant. I’d love any feedback you might have, positive or negative.
Questions/opportunties? Looking for help in your social media adventure? Let me know.
It’s that time of the month again, so I dropped Google AdSense.
It adds a bit of load time, visual clutter, and general tackiness … and makes me a pittance. A couple of bucks a day just isn’t worth it.
Maybe I’ll try again in a couple of weeks with a single ad in the body of each post, if I can figure out a way to make it as unobtrusive as possible.
[tags] google, adsense, adwords, advertising, john koetsier, bizhack [/tags]
How much blog bling is too much?
Context: I was just at A VC – a blog by Fred Wilson, a New York venture capitalist that I follow from time to time.
He has about 5 million widgets and doodads hanging off his blog. He’s even worse, if possible, than Matthew Ingram.
Let me count. In the left sidebar Fred’s got:
- A picture
- Feedblitz RSS subscription form
- Yahoo! search widget
- Assorted other Fred Wilson RSS feeds
- My Blog Community photo widget
- Gotham Gal’s Stuff
- Podcasts he listens to
- Amazon music widget with about 15 albums in it
- tourb.us concert widget
- Streampad My Music widget
- Last.fm music widget
- iTunes music widget
- Shopcasting widget from ThisNext with about 6 products and full descriptions
- Alacra store search widget
- Blog categories
- Blog archives
- Blog about
- Blog stats
- Various links: axis of evil
- Fred’s social networks
- Facebook widget
- LinkedIn widget
- Some other links
In the right sidebar, not to be outdone, he’s got:
- Sitepal voice message widget
- Personality profile link (what a shock, he’s not high on aesthetics)
- Federated Media (FM) publishing banner ad (skyscraper format)
- Flickr widget
- Wallstrip video widget
- Shakeshack widget
- More FM ads
- VC Feedburner network widget
- WordofBlog widget
- Ad for another of his blogs
- Del.icio.us linkroll widget with about 20 recent links, including brief descriptions
- Indeed.com job posting “jobroll” widget
- Another Indeed.com widget, this one focusing on salaries in NY
- Blogroll with about a hundred blogs in it
- Another shopcasting widget from ThisNext with about 10 products, pictures, and descriptions in it
- Recent searches widget
- Contextual text link ads from Yahoo!
- Contextual text link ads from Google (could be against AdSense terms & conditions if Yahoo! is also being used – I think it is, actually)
- Recent posts
As I said earlier: holy freaking mother. Stop the insanity!