This is to be expected, and Google is right. Of course they won't stop storing all this information about us. Sure, it can be used for all kinds of evil purposes (but they don't do evil, right?), it could be misused, as in the recnt AOL example, or it could be used for all kinds of good things, such as having a search engine that knows what I want before I have time to enter my query.
Interesting, but wouldn't it make more sense to have a neutral party do the analysis instead of Google, whose bulk of the revenue comes from those same clicks they analyzed? Having Google do the analysis and reporting is like having Microsoft do Vista benchmarking. That is, if Vista were actually ready.
This should be no surprise. About half a year ago I went to one of the BarCamp gatherings where a couple of people presented the results of their study of MySpace, where they found similar behaviour. But they found a lot of other interesting stuff. Here is the link: http://ejohn.org/blog/tags/barcamp/ (there is some actual code there) - scroll down to "Presentation 2: Subverting Social Networks (4:45pm, Sunday)" or just hit the slides directly: http://ejohn.org/files/social.pdf .
Wasn't Chris DiBona at SourceForge prior to Google? It's nice to see those non-compete agreements are not enforced. Good thing he didn't work for Microsoft, or he'd get a chair in the head.;)
You may be right about the TOC and maintenance. RoR really does make creation of CRUD apps simple and fast. However, it's hard to tell what the TOC and maintenance of RoR is like yet, as RoR only recently started getting heavy use outside the country of its origin, Japan. It's too early, I think. In other words, we have to wait for a few years to pass, let some people build non-toy RoR apps, and then look back and try to judge what maintenance was like. A pile of new Web 2.0 companies are using RoR to get their products out quickly. We'll see how many of them survive long enough to tell a maintenance and TOC story.:)
The VERY relevant site that Jack Herrington forgot to mention there is Pingerati. That is THE site through which all these Microformats are shared. The system is based on pings, much like the rest of the blogosphere. Both Pingerati and Microformats have a major force behind it - Technorati.
I support the idea of using Simpy for the backup (or even real) store of Opera's bookmarks. Firefox is already heading in a similar direction with their bookmarks revamp, and Flock is already there.
For what it's worth, I just spent a few hours reading MacBook reviews, researching whether I should buy one or go with a regular Wintel laptop. Here are the MacBook problems people wrote about: 1. the bottom gets very hot (one person compared it to a vulcano), not suitable for laptop work 2. plastic around the screen likes to come off 3. the white MacBooks get "stained" where people rest their hands. These stains cannot be cleaned with any kind of a cleaning agent. 4. trackpad problems like this one.
Guess which type of a laptop I'm now leaning towards?:(
It sounds rather simple, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it ain't that simple. The difficult part is scaling. With advertizing rates being as low as they are, you need a LOT of page views to make any decent money. In other to have a lot of page views, you need a lot of users, and a lot of regular/active users (Slashdot is a good example). Once you have a lot of users your expenses go up - more bandwidth, more CPUs, more app servers, more NAS, more clusters, more failover this and that, replication... and then you have to answer all those emails that start pouring in, you've got to have a blog to keep people updated, etc. And there are only 24 hours in a day. And you want to have a life, friends, and family. So you need to hire people. But you need money for that. So you go to VCs because your ads don't cover all these expenses. So, you see, it's not that simple.:) Moreover, some crazy people like me give away money from their advertizing.
This is where "meme trackers" like TailRank come into play. Their goal is to use the "wisdom of the crowds" as a filter that lets only the good stuff bubble up, while the less interesting stuff stays below the threshold, much like the threshold here on Slashdot.
Indeed, more heads are wiser than one. An old concept applied on a massive scale, and so far it works. The piece I personally like best in this article is from Craigslist's founder who points out that the reason his team is so scalable is because they provide self-service. Everything I ever built (including the latest Simpy) was like this, and I've always been happy not to have to hire a team of people to manage something that users of the system could handle themselves, or amongst themselves.
The other piece I like here is also from Craigslist guy, about not having to charge everybody. This reminds me of what I did with Simpy (see this Simpy + AdSense bit, and pay attention to the Q&A towards the end of the entry). People have been very happy with the simplicity of this concept, and no user has complained about ads - they don't see them... but others do!
I'm in San Francisco right now, and can vouch for that. When was the last time you heard the word recesion? When was the last time you heard it mentioned in the same sentence as the U.S. economy? People are very positive, there are a lot of new ideas, new startups, and money to fund them. Sure, most of them will fail, but that is how it's meant to be.
Did we really need a survey to tell us that? Good thing it wasn't a full-blown study! Next time they can just ask me, I'll charge them half the cost of their pricey surveys.
Slashdot Mirror
This is to be expected, and Google is right. Of course they won't stop storing all this information about us. Sure, it can be used for all kinds of evil purposes (but they don't do evil, right?), it could be misused, as in the recnt AOL example, or it could be used for all kinds of good things, such as having a search engine that knows what I want before I have time to enter my query.
Interesting, but wouldn't it make more sense to have a neutral party do the analysis instead of Google, whose bulk of the revenue comes from those same clicks they analyzed? Having Google do the analysis and reporting is like having Microsoft do Vista benchmarking. That is, if Vista were actually ready.
This should be no surprise. About half a year ago I went to one of the BarCamp gatherings where a couple of people presented the results of their study of MySpace, where they found similar behaviour. But they found a lot of other interesting stuff. Here is the link: http://ejohn.org/blog/tags/barcamp/ (there is some actual code there) - scroll down to "Presentation 2: Subverting Social Networks (4:45pm, Sunday)" or just hit the slides directly: http://ejohn.org/files/social.pdf .
We don't really live longer now than our ancestors used to. We just die a slower death.
Wasn't Chris DiBona at SourceForge prior to Google? It's nice to see those non-compete agreements are not enforced. Good thing he didn't work for Microsoft, or he'd get a chair in the head. ;)
You may be right about the TOC and maintenance. RoR really does make creation of CRUD apps simple and fast. However, it's hard to tell what the TOC and maintenance of RoR is like yet, as RoR only recently started getting heavy use outside the country of its origin, Japan. It's too early, I think. In other words, we have to wait for a few years to pass, let some people build non-toy RoR apps, and then look back and try to judge what maintenance was like. :)
A pile of new Web 2.0 companies are using RoR to get their products out quickly. We'll see how many of them survive long enough to tell a maintenance and TOC story.
The VERY relevant site that Jack Herrington forgot to mention there is Pingerati. That is THE site through which all these Microformats are shared. The system is based on pings, much like the rest of the blogosphere. Both Pingerati and Microformats have a major force behind it - Technorati.
How timesly. TechCrunch just reviewed this:- adware-to-myspace/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/10/zango-brings
I support the idea of using Simpy for the backup (or even real) store of Opera's bookmarks. Firefox is already heading in a similar direction with their bookmarks revamp, and Flock is already there.
I think China already holds patents and trademarks for all things *wall, other than the Berlin wall.
Ouch!
The Blue Screen of Death takes on a whole new meaning!
Apple's MacBooks come with iSight, and Sony Vaio SZ series also comes with little built-in cameras.
For what it's worth, I just spent a few hours reading MacBook reviews, researching whether I should buy one or go with a regular Wintel laptop.
:(
Here are the MacBook problems people wrote about:
1. the bottom gets very hot (one person compared it to a vulcano), not suitable for laptop work
2. plastic around the screen likes to come off
3. the white MacBooks get "stained" where people rest their hands. These stains cannot be cleaned with any kind of a cleaning agent.
4. trackpad problems like this one.
Guess which type of a laptop I'm now leaning towards?
I'm still on FC3. So can one go form FC3 to FC6 directly?
That's all there is to it. (Almost) anything for money.
I'm a happy user of Orca, which I use to graph all kinds of aspects of the system that runs Simpy's cluster.
Here is how search engine shares and growth compare over the last few quarters: chart. Doesn't look peachy for Ask.
It sounds rather simple, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it ain't that simple. The difficult part is scaling. With advertizing rates being as low as they are, you need a LOT of page views to make any decent money. In other to have a lot of page views, you need a lot of users, and a lot of regular/active users (Slashdot is a good example). Once you have a lot of users your expenses go up - more bandwidth, more CPUs, more app servers, more NAS, more clusters, more failover this and that, replication... and then you have to answer all those emails that start pouring in, you've got to have a blog to keep people updated, etc. And there are only 24 hours in a day. And you want to have a life, friends, and family. So you need to hire people. But you need money for that. So you go to VCs because your ads don't cover all these expenses. So, you see, it's not that simple. :) Moreover, some crazy people like me give away money from their advertizing.
This is where "meme trackers" like TailRank come into play. Their goal is to use the "wisdom of the crowds" as a filter that lets only the good stuff bubble up, while the less interesting stuff stays below the threshold, much like the threshold here on Slashdot.
Indeed, more heads are wiser than one. An old concept applied on a massive scale, and so far it works. The piece I personally like best in this article is from Craigslist's founder who points out that the reason his team is so scalable is because they provide self-service. Everything I ever built (including the latest Simpy) was like this, and I've always been happy not to have to hire a team of people to manage something that users of the system could handle themselves, or amongst themselves.
The other piece I like here is also from Craigslist guy, about not having to charge everybody. This reminds me of what I did with Simpy (see this Simpy + AdSense bit, and pay attention to the Q&A towards the end of the entry). People have been very happy with the simplicity of this concept, and no user has complained about ads - they don't see them... but others do!
How is OCFS2 comapred to, say, Redhat's GFS? ( http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/gfs/ )
Thanks.
I'm in San Francisco right now, and can vouch for that. When was the last time you heard the word recesion? When was the last time you heard it mentioned in the same sentence as the U.S. economy? People are very positive, there are a lot of new ideas, new startups, and money to fund them. Sure, most of them will fail, but that is how it's meant to be.
Did we really need a survey to tell us that? Good thing it wasn't a full-blown study! Next time they can just ask me, I'll charge them half the cost of their pricey surveys.
How timely: Jason on YouTube. How do they pay for bandwidth? Beats me!
What's the big deal? Simpy has been giving away AdSense cash for a while now. Mike Arrington covered the topic on TechCrunch the other day.