Netizen

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Fred Wilson

Larry Ellison
JP Rangaswami, Utterly Confused Of Calcutta
JP Rangaswami, Utterly Confused Of Calcutta (2)

I got excited about Geocities when it came along back in the days. You mean I can have my own homepage? To this day my Geocities homepage is the first page I go to when I go online ea

Image via CrunchBase

ch day. When I jump to Twitter, Facebook, Gmail or Google Search, it is from my Geocities homepage. I was saddened to learn a few weeks back that Yahoo plans to shut down Geocities by the end of the year. I think that is a bad decision on the part of Yahoo.

I have been excited about Twitter most of this year.

Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas

I got taken by Disqus and Zemanta a few months back. They have taken my blogging to a whole different level. There is no blogging without Disqus and Zemanta as far as I am concerned.

Before Disqus came along, blog comments sections were a wasteland. Now it has becom

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e valuable real estate. The blog comments sections are microblogging territory just like Twitter. They are a better way to meet new people who might share your interests than even Twitter. And Disqus is the reigning monarch there. And it is one of those things where having the first mover advantage makes all the difference. Twitter has had that in its turf.

A few months back I came across a blog called AVC.com. A venture capitalist with a blog, and not a ghostwritten blog, or a blog because it was cool to have a blog. This was a guy who was really into blogging. This was no vanity blogger. This was a genuine blogger who also happened to be a venture capitalist. At that point I did not know of what stature.

Recently I started reading that blog regularly and commenting in the comments sectio

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ns. The blogger/VC replied to some of my comments, and even left a comment at my own blog.

I am a Deaniac from 2004. I moved to NYC summer of 2005. Howard Dean got to know me through DFNYC. I have been fast friends with the MeetUp CEO Scott for a few years now. And I am eFriends with Joe Trippi. Today I learned Fred Wilson is also associated with MeetUp.

Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0
Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds
NY Internet Week: NYTM Showcase

Image via CrunchBase

I have been honored to have exchanged a few emails with Fred Wilson this past week.

MeetUp is a Web 5.0 company. I could argue Geocities was a 2.0 company before that term got coined. Twitter needs no introduction, soon Disqus and Zemanta will not either.

NY Tech MeetUp Mailing List Web 5.0 Controversy
Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb
Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition

Mine is a 3.0 company. The semantic web is 2.1 as far as I am concerned.

JyotiConnect Inc.
Damien Mallen In Town

InRev TwitIn Now Does People Search

Image by Eloy Ricárdez Luna via Flickr

InRev TwitIn now does people search. I learned that a few hours ago from the CEO's Facebook stream. I think that is a great addition to an already impressive service. The ability to search through people's brief bio to look for people to follow is an enhancement I have missed from day one. To me Twitter's attraction over Facebook has been that on Twitter you can meet new people. I like the idea greatly. Although I have not enjoyed hitting my daily limits.

Space, Time And Twitter: Are There Plant Twitters?
My Twitter Suspension Lifted
Can Tweet Google, Can't Tweet Twitter
Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas
How To Increase Your Following On Twitter
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Real Time Search: Twitter Is Not Doing It
Google Falling Behind Twitter?
Eminem: The Relapse: Twitter
Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter

Data Rich Customer Service

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Businesses collect so much data on individual customers and individual transactions. Social media is becoming so very pervasive. Your social media profile is portable. Soon enough you could take it to Amazon.com and all sorts of vendors big and small.

Just like your Facebook experience is different from mine, your shopping experience at a site ought to be unique to you, unique and rich.

Chris Brogan sounds rather futuristic in his latest blog post.

First One to This Standard Wins Make your website all about me.

From The Netizen BlogRoll

First One to This Standard Wins Make your website all about me.
Wiring a City and the Internet of Place how come there’s no simple news feed for a city? Why can’t we not see immediately (or even with an hour delay) all the various goings on within our city? It’s not like the information isn’t captured..... the bus tells me it’s coming
Dunkin Run- Coffee Lovers Are Served
You Still Need a Frame they build a following on Twitter, but do nothing to reach out to them via email marketing.
I Still Rather Like Blogging

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Dynamic PageRank And Real Time Search

Google beat the old search engines back in the late 1990s with its concept of PageRank. The more sites that linked to you, the more valuable was your site.

If something like real time search were to become possible, the concept of a dynamic pagerank would emerge. It would not be about how many sites linked to your site alone. It would be about do people actually click on those links to get to your site? Google's search algorithms have gone through so much evolution, and since they have been secret about it all for understantable reasons, it is hard to figure out what they have already done.

Google has been smart about constantly finetuning its search algorithms. They try to beat the so-called Search Engine Optimization people. It is a constant tussle.

Another thing would be content itself. After billions of search queries from people, Google should be able to figure out what sites and pages best delivered for what queries, and the number of search terms are for the most part finite. So if you can measure satisfaction, would that affect the way you do PageRank?

What about the content of the page itself? It might be a brand new page, but what if it is the most relevant page to my particular query? I guess search engines are not that good at reading yet.

Content creation and searching content will stick around for a long, long time.

And Bing's recent launch showed presentation is a whole new ballgame altogether. Microsoft decided they can't beat Google at its secret sauce of search, so they decided to take a bite at the other side of the coin: presentation of search results. Calling itself "a decision engine, not a search engine" was also a good marketing move.

They did not beat Google, but they did beat Yahoo, looks like. Now Bing is number two. Shoots for the stars, and you will get the moon.

Microblogging Search: What Took Google So Long?
Square Search
Blogger Search Gadget: What Took You So Long?
Wolfram Alpha: An Answer Engine, Not A Search Engine
Real Time Search: Twitter Is Not Doing It
Distributed Search
Google Is Working On Search
Search Come Full Circle: That Human Element
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream

From The Netizen BlogRoll

So, you want to be a Gmail ninja?
The Link Builder’s Guide To Analyzing SERP Dominators For Link Opportunities
First One to This Standard Wins
Learning from Singer
All for Good: Bringing search, scale and openness to community service
A new landmark in computer vision
Search by Author on Google News
Blogger is Turning 10
Designing a lounge for the Day in the Cloud

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Kevin Marks Departure

First Facebook stole the buzz from Google. Well, before that Google stole the buzz from Microsoft. Then Twitter stole the buzz from Facebook. And now Google is back on the bleeding edge with Google Wave. But Google Wave was created by a small team inside Google. That t

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eam acted like a startup. And I think it is marvelous that Google Corporate nurtured that team and incubated Google Wave. But one persistent question will remain. At what point does Google become a Microsoft, an IBM, still big but no longer on the bleeding edge? One way to know Google has become big and old is that people with the newest and boldest ideas start leaving. I don't think that has happened to Google yet, but you can see some early signs.

This Reminds Me Of The Web 3.0 Definition Fight
I Did My Part
Google Wave API Google Group: Got To Undo The Ban On Me
Google Wave Protest
Google Wave API Google Group: Stalinist Mindset

Engineering leader Kevin Marks leaves Google for the social web VentureBeat

A Social Force Departs Google Washington Post

Social networking advocate Marks departs Google Brand Republic

Google social-tech evangelist leaving company CNET News

Google's OpenSocial Evangelist Leaves Google GigaOm Kevin Marks, one of the leading voices on Google-backed OpenSocial and Friend Connect, has left the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine, he announced on his blog. ..... Google might have lost one of its most visible evangelists ...... Kevin, who in the past worked at Technorati, is one of the smartest guys I have met ....... I wonder if it has something to do with Google’s inability to totally grok the social web. ;-) OpenSocial was launched with much fanfare but seems to be lagging behind Facebook and its Facebook Connect effort.
A Social Force Departs Google TechCrunch Marks says he is working on a bunch of things “related to the social Web” and “activity streams” ...... Asked why he is leaving Google, he responds that his work is pretty much completed: “Over the last two years, we have built out the infrastructure for the social Web. Now it is time to build things on that infrastructure.” ..... is ready to work in a smaller company ..... The action, anyway, is moving to real time activity streams and Marks now seems to be pointed in that direction.
Farewell to Google My first taste of Google was to work on orkut, before starting the project now known as Google Profiles ....... Realising that Google had thousands of engineers, but very few comfortable speaking in public, I became a Developer Advocate, working to bridge external and internal developers, explaining the Social web to Google and OpenSocial and more to the wider web community. ......... build social infrastructure to make the web more social. ...... I'll be coding, writing and speaking on the social web via several new projects ..... If you want to get hold of me, I'm kevinmarks on most social networks, domains and of course Twitter. Or just google me.

This Reminds Me Of The Web 3.0 Definition Fight

I Did My Part
Google Wave API Google Group: Got To Undo The Ban On Me
Google Wave Protest
Google Wave API Google Group: Stalinist Mindset

I thought I had done a good job of explaining here: Google Wave API Google Group: Got To Undo The Ban On Me. But I never thought I was indispensable to the group. Although vision is a specialty all its own. And just like every Tom, Dick and Harry feels like he is an expert on politics, people think great coders are by extension also great visionaries. Not true. Some are, but it is not by extension.

I think I have come to my conclusion: I Did My Part. I will have to do in the blogosphere what I was hoping to do through this Google Group.

I have a feeling a lot of glass is going to be broken in the fight on the 3.0 definition down the line. Google Wave is not my baby. But the 3.0 fight will be my own.

NY Tech MeetUp Mailing List Web 5.0 Controversy
Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb
Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition
Conceptually Diligent: Web 5.0 Is Repackaging Hello
Defining Web 4.0

From The Google Wave Developer Blog

TwilioBot: Bringing Phone Conversations into Waves
1 Wave Sandbox, 5 Hours, 17 Awesome Demos

Image by niallkennedy via Flickr

The Making of the Sudoku Gadget
Google Wave API Office Hours
Google Wave team heads to Google Developer Days in Asia
Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build?

From The Official Google Blog

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave

I Did My Part

I protested. I did my part. If the protests are not going to work, and the ban on me at the Google Wave API Google Group is not going to be lifted, I move on. I guess I will have to find out other ways to spot trends in Google Wave development. I am sure there will be several good blog options. We are at the early stages of seeing blogs dedicated completely to Google Wave. Maybe some of those bloggers will do the reading for me in those Google Groups.

A great way to follow an open source project is in the very open perhaps.

Google Wave API Google Group: Got To Undo The Ban On Me

Monday, June 22, 2009

Google Wave API Google Group: Got To Undo The Ban On Me

Google Wave Protest
Google Wave API Google Group: Stalinist Mindset

Einstein was attacked by some with anti-Jewish leanings. When a pamphlet was published entitled 100 Authors Against Einstein, Einstein retorted "If I were wrong, one would be enough."

The name is clear enough: Google Wave API. It is a group about Google Wave API. So if

Image by dailylifeofmojo via Flickr

you are going to post messages about viagra ads and Nigerian dictators who need help with money transfer, then you don't belong in the group. So I am not trying to argue it is my human right to belong to the group.

The initial protest was that it was a group for hard core code talk. I respect the sentiment. But there were numerous threads about spam, t-shirts and invitations to Wave. Noone seemed to have been bothered, bothered enough to protest and ban people.

The Google Wave Developer Community Will Be Vibrant
Five Blind Men And Google Wave
A Little Trouble At The Google Wave API Google Group
Lessons From The Open Source Community For The Wave Community
Google Wave Developer Community: Asking For A Culture?
The Google Corporate Culture

The third thing I established was that code and community/culture are both on par, they are both important. You can not expect to have strictly technical conversations and still exp

Image by niallkennedy via Flickr

ect to create waves with Google Wave. And then I offered to stick my vision, culture and community talk to one out of the 300 plus threads in the group.

Then they said, it is not what you are saying, it is how you are saying it. Why do you post links to your blog posts in this group? People who don't "get" links and blogs should voluntarily walk away from a group about Google Wave development.

The slam dunk was I said but my primary interest is in code talk. That is why I joined the group in the first place. I wish to follow all the code related conversations so I can spot trends in Wave development over the coming months as we prepare to unleash Wave upon the world.

And so I am going to keep protesting until they undo the ban on me in the Google Wave API Google Group.

The Google Corporate Culture
Google Wave: Organizations Will Go Topsy Turvy
Google Wave: Enormous Buzz
Possible Google Wave Applications And Innovations
Google Wave Architecture: Designed For Mass, Massive, Global Innovation
The Google Wave Architecture
Google Wave Ripples
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Of Waves And Tsunamis
Google Wave: Wave Of The Future?
Google Wave: If Email Were Invented Today

From The Google Wave Developer Blog

TwilioBot: Bringing Phone Conversations into Waves
1 Wave Sandbox, 5 Hours, 17 Awesome Demos

Image by niallkennedy via Flickr

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Microblogging Search: What Took Google So Long?

Google has had a blog search for a while now. But it has stayed away from Twitter search for too long. I am glad finally they are doing it, because nobody else is.

Google to Launch a Microblogging Search Engine Google prepares to launch a service that indexes and ranks content from microblogging services like Twitter. ...... Twitter's search engine has two important drawbacks: it's limited to Twitter and it sorts the results by date. While there are other search engines like Tweefind that try to sort Twitter posts by relevancy and search engines like Twingly that index multiple microblogging sites, none of them does a great job. ...... will sort the results by relevancy

About time this happened.

My expectations have been low. I want to be able to find everything I ever tweeted. Is that too much to ask? Has been for the native Twitter search engine.

Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas
Real Time Search: Twitter Is Not Doing It

From The Netizen BlogRoll

Obama To Iran's Leaders: Stop 'Unjust' Actions
Iran Election Crisis: 10 Incredible YouTube Videos
AOL’s PoliticsDaily Quickly Surpasses Rival Politico, MediaGlow Sites Continue To Grow after being launched only a month and a half ago ..... received 2.4 million unique visitors compared to 1.1 million unique visitors on Politico.com in May. ......... primarily focuses on in-depth political commentary as opposed to breaking news, provides only original content, from long-form analysis to blog posts on issues in the U.S. political landscape ......... the MediaGlow team is looking to pick up the remnants of the dying print magazine business and digitize this content ......... The Huffington Post saw 5.3 million unique visits in May ...... HuffPo’s a content aggregator
Not Only Was Steve Jobs Sick, He Had A Liver Transplant Jobs has long been thought to be perhaps more important to his company than any single figure is to their’s. But his time away has seemingly proven otherwise
Flip Has Little Chance In An iPhone World The video capable iPhone ........ Along the way Pure Digital fought ridicule from the big video camera companies, who said nobody would want the device. Then, once Pure Digital proved the market, all those competitors jumped in with their own offerings. There are now many devices with similar tech specs as the Flip, but Pure Digital has managed to stay ahead of them all by innovating faster. ......... the iPhone has something that the Flip will never realistically have, cellular and wifi connectivity that lets you upload your videos immediately. .......... You can do basic editing right on the iPhone, and publish it to YouTube immediately. As an added bonus, that video can be geo-stamped via the phone’s GPS capability. ......... iPhone users will be able to stream video in real time from their phones to the Internet. ........ within a couple of years video will be as ubiquitous on those phones as photos are today
Google Flipper Is About To Jump Out Of The Water
Don’t be surprised if Amazon has to raise the price of Kindle books
AdSense: The (Weak) Elephant in the Room AdSense is 30% of Google's revenue ........ Facebook just hired the guy who masterminded AdSense
IPhone 3.0 is Coming Tomorrow: Here is What You Can Expect
Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran The western world's most feared government is shaking with insurrection in the streets ........ the extensive use of Twitter by Iranians in the uprising. ....... real-time, online, crowdsourced media is the best place to keep up with current events
Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time
Dear Wanna-bes, Your Twitter Stardom is Coming to an End
Google to Launch Microblogging Search Engine? the Google Operating System blog reports that Google will be launching a new microblogging search service that will sort results by relevance and integrate those results with its own web search engine to trigger a "microblog universal search group", closely related to the way Google Blog Search works. If it turns out to be true, this is great news to those of us who constantly search Twitter for the latest news and trends.
Want to Work for the City of Bozeman, MT? Hand Over Your Social Network Logins and Passwords

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Google Wave Protest

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Monday, June 22, 2009

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Saturday, June 20, 2009