Yawn of the Dead: Ask Tries to Become Relevant

I am profoundly underwhelmed by all the buzz Ask is getting lately.

So they canned Jeeves. Good, that whole shtick was silly from the get go.

Gary Price, Ask’s Director of Online Information Resources (which may one day join Plaxo Privacy Officer in the job name hall of fame), has a good summary of why Ask thinks it can become relevant. Gary admits that Ask is a work in progress, but sets forth some things that he believes will give Ask an advantage in the search engine sweepstakes.

Granted, some of that stuff, like the answer engine concept, is interesting. But Henry Blodget nailed it again today when he set forth his version of one of my core themes:

My theory about the search business, moreover, is not that “users will immediately switch to the best search engine,” but that users will use whatever search engine they are used to using–unless the gulf between that search service and the leading search service becomes so great that it cannot possibly be ignored.

Chris Sherman has nice things to say about the new look, feel and performance, but the fact remains that Ask has a small market share in a pretty mature space.

I’ll give Ask a try, but from where I sit, I don’t see the revolutionary advance it would take to get significant user migration.

TIVO Deathwatch: Money for Nothing and the TIVOs are Free

nailcoffin I haven’t written in a while about my beloved and soon to be obsolete TIVOs. Recall that TIVO was number one in my Top 50 Gadgets list, but that I believe DirecTV for all intents and purposes killed TIVO when it abandoned TIVO in favor of its own digital recorder line.

Since then, TIVO has been floundering around trying to hook up with the old enemy, the cable companies, while making a deal a day or so in the hopes that one of those deals will be the lifeline it so badly needs.

Today I read another story indicating that TIVO may give its boxes away in order to gain subscribers (I sure am glad I paid a grand a piece for our three HDTV TIVOs so I can use them to prop open our doors).

TIVO’s plan is to give the boxes away in exchange for either a higher monthly fee (in which case, they really aren’t giving them away- they’re merely entering the rent-to-own business) and/or a longer contract.

Here’s the great, big obvious problem with that: how does the customer know that the box it gets will be compatible with the television service for the duration of this longer contract?

Rewind a year or so. If I’d know when I chunked down three large for my HDTV TIVOs that a few months later (a) DirecTV would dump TIVO and (b) DirecTV would move to MPEG-4, making my boxes little more that expensive door stops, I probably wouldn’t have bought them. Having experienced that little slice of gadget bliss, why in the world would I sign anything resembling a long term contract that might require me to pay for service that no longer works with my television provider?

What’s to keep the cable companies from doing what DirecTV did and dumping TIVO in favor of their own boxes? And even if they love TIVO, what happens when someone they don’t love or view as a competitor buys TIVO?

I would love to figure out a way to keep using TIVOs forever, but under the current state of affairs, I don’t see a safe and cost efficient way to do that.

It a shame, because TIVO brought life changing techology into lots of homes.

Origami: Will it Walk the Walk?

I tried hard not to write about the latest rumor craze in the blogosphere, I really did. But I failed.

I failed because it’s starting to dawn on me that, notwithstanding the dazed and confused manner in which Office Live was ramped up and released, Microsoft may actually have a marketing plan. Well, at least Scoble and the boys better hope they do. Because Microsoft is talking the talk about Origami. And after all this, if it turns out to be much ado about nothing, Microsoft might be about to set off one gigantic bozo implosion.

Everywhere you look today, someone is writing about what Origami is or is not. Scoble, who presumably knows, hints that it’s something Tablet PC-like.

The Buzz

The official Origami web page, in a goofy 2001: A Space Odyssey way, implies some sort of portable, hub-like, device.

John Markoff of The New York Times says there’s a video out there indicating that Origami is a hand-held, wireless touch-screen computer.

Some folks have suggested that it might be a media player aimed at the iPod market. Personally, I would love it, as long as it wasn’t hostage to DRM and other RIAA foolishness.

My Wish List

What I would really love to see is a device smaller than a Tablet PC and larger than a smart phone or iPod, that would allow you to play music files, access the net, take pictures, take notes (assuming they can actually get handwriting technology to work like it’s supposed to), synchronize all of that data with your desktop, and serve as a wireless modem for your laptop. Roll that out with some sort of national wireless broadband service and you’d get instant traction.

But There’s Risk

So here’s the thing Microsoft, you’ve built the buzz. You’ve got people interested.

You’re talking the talk.

Just make sure that when you finally pull up the curtain that whatever’s behind it can walk the walk.

Otherwise cover your ears, because the explosion, both bozo and blogo, will be loud.

Steve Rubel’s Social Media Tour Set

Steve’s Social Media Tour, which I talked about the other day, has been set. Here’s the schedule.

What a great way to knock down some gates. Candidly, I don’t understand why this isn’t getting more run in the blogosphere. People complain because A-Listers allegedly won’t give links, and here’s one giving interviews (and links, mind you) for 12 straight hours on a first come, first served basis.

If a few other A-Listers did stuff like this, all of the gates would fall.

Here’s the Technorati link numbers for the people who get tour stops:

53
182
109
4
6
1
34
1
60
112
73
9
14

Lots of people, including me, have had lots to say about all the gatekeeper business. Now it’s time to give credit where credit is due.

I’ll be covering this earth flattening event, and am looking forward to reading and hearing what Steve has to say, and ask.

I’m going to do what I can to help Steve open the gates a little, and I hope others will think about what they can do as well.

Mapping the Technorati Genome

Improbulus, one of my favorite bloggers, is trying to map out the Technorati genome and cure the indexing problems that she and others, including me, have experienced at one time or another.

Reading her post got me thinking about Technorati and the challenges facing it as it becomes the backbone of the blogosphere. Nothing in this post is in any way a criticism of Improbulus- she is only addressing her version of the issues I have already faced and wrestled with. These are just my current conclusions based on my experiences and what I have read about those of Improbulus and others.

I’m certain someone at Technorati will get her indexing problems worked out, because they always do. Granted, their email support is not going to win any awards, but the problems generally get fixed and Dave Sifry takes an active role in identifying and responding to problems.

Dave and Craig Newmark are carrying the banner as far as hip and proactive CEOs go. If I were some young guy just getting started, this blog would be devoted to convincing one of those guys to hire me. Proactive and involved CEOs set the tone for the entire company (I’ll write more on this another time).

Though I’m not on the payroll, I am still the self-appointed customer evangelist for Technorati. As such, I have to believe a couple of things where Technorati is concerned:

1) The engineers behind their hardware and software have had to deal with scale, both rate and amount, in a big, big way. That simply cannot be completely planned for and there’s simply no way to do it without hiccups and interruptions along the way. I remember the deluge of scaling problems we had when we first went live with ACCBoards.Com and our scale then was a drop in the ocean compared to what Technorati is facing.

2) Given the foregoing, they are doing one hell of a job keeping things running, improving reliability and adding new features.

3) Technorati continues to be, by far, the most accurate at finding tagged content, inbound links and other information bloggers and blog readers want and need. I use Google Blog Search and Technorati to search for content and to monitor my inbound links and mentions. Technorati does a better job, hands down. It shows more content faster than Google or any other search engine or database I’ve tried.

So while I have blogged here many times about the problems I’ve had getting indexed and while those problems are very frustrating at times, Technorati is doing about as much as can be expected given the enormous task it has undertaken.

Technorati is still a baby company. There’s lots to be done, but on the whole I’m pretty impressed with what they’ve accomplished so far.

And Dave, while you’re here, how about hiring that new spokesman I recommended?

Why the Blogosphere is Still a Growth Area

Frank Ahrens of The Washington Post takes his turn today at the latest old media one question meme: has the blog movement peaked?

This is one of those questions where the goal is not to find the exact answer, because the exact answer cannot be found. It’s more about expressing your opinion about the status of the blogging movement and wondering aloud where it’s headed.

Blogging and the Bubble

blogosphere I think too many people get blogging confused with other troubling memories of days gone by, such as Bubble 1.0 and all the non-companies that made the lesser fools wildly rich and the greater fools more poor back in the nineties. Yes, I think we have a lot of people huffing and puffing beneath Bubble 2.0 in the hopes that a new investing frenzy will permit a second generation of lesser fools to get rich, but that has very little to do with blogging.

For every lesser fool blogging about how the next social bookmarking service is going to change the world, there are two others blogging about how it won’t. Blogging doesn’t discriminate between the absurd and the realistic. And blogging is no more a cause for bubble growth than the pen or keyboard.

So is the Party Over?

I don’t think the blogging movement has peaked and I certainly don’t think it has entered its twilight. I think it’s simply maturing a little. This is about math, not rejection.

When anything new is invented, manufactured and first sold to the public, there’s always a ramp up as the pool of existing customers buy it. Whether it’s a car or a DVD player, millions of people who already travel or watch videos, are out there ready to replace their inferior tools (wagons and VCRs) with the better technology. The result is a ramping up of market penetration on the front end, which tapers off as the market is saturated. It certainly doesn’t mean the technology is losing its relevance or mindshare.

It simply means that most of the current customers have already bought it. Millions of new people (younger people; people in other parts of the world, etc.) are still moving into the customer pool all the time. Frank points out this possibility:

And it could be that the people who wanted to start a blog already have. Like settlers joining the land rush to Oklahoma, bloggers charged into the ‘sphere, chunked down their URLs and set up shop. Everyone else stayed back East.

All those people back East may one day get on the wagon train and become a citizen of the new media state. And if they don’t, many of their children will.

Blogging is Not New, Just Easier

Blogging is not a new and different activity. It’s merely an easier way to publish and manage internet content. Sure, it makes it easy enough that someone who wouldn’t otherwise have tried to create an internet presence might do so now. But unless and until people lose the desire to put content on the internet, blogging is not going to lose its relevance any more than video cameras or word processors will. It’s a tool that helps satisfy a need that was there years before anyone combined the web and a log into the Reese’s Cup we know and (sometimes) love.

Growth Potential is Obvious

Oddly enough, the one thing that is clear to me is that there is tremendous growth potential for blogging. That’s not the same as saying it will grow, but it certainly makes it harder to say it’s in its decline.

The fact that we have empirical data demonstrating that so few people currently read blogs is proof positive that market saturation is not complete. It sounds more like the web back in the mid-nineties. I was on it then, and many of you were too. But to almost everyone else, it was a novelty. Today, even those who have never read on word on a blog use the web daily. For news, email, etc.

If you believe, as I do, that old media will move away from current distribution models towards distribution via RSS feeds, then you have to believe that RSS feeds will become more mainstream in the coming years. Once people know how to use RSS feeds (whether they know they’re RSS feeds or not) then blogs will become just another selection on the information menu.

I think blogging, along with reading RSS feeds, will take its place beside email in the mainstream. It will take a while.

But it will happen.

Web 2.0 Wars: Round 8

It’s time for Round 8 in Newsome.Org’s Web 2.0 Wars. The contestants and rules are here.

This is the final heat of the first Round. The playoffs will be next.

Other Rounds:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

Here are the contestants for Round 8:

Memeorandum
CalendarHub
Superglu
Pando
Zigtag
Findory
Backfence
Clipmarks
Wayfaring
gOffice
Fleck

Memeorandum is the King of the Meme Trackers. I use it every day.

CalendarHub is yet another web based calendar application. It looks nice, but what is it with a million online calendars.

Superglu is an application that aggregates your information from other services like Delicious, blogger, etc. It gathers your content from popular web services and publishes them in one convenient place.

Pando is an online application that lets you email any size file or folder to anyone, free. It’s not yet live, so I can’t say much more than that.

Zigtag is not yet live. They aren’t saying much about it on the web site.

Findory is a personalized newspaper that evolves, quickly, as you click and read. It creates personalized content as you read. Sounds like a web version of TIVO suggestions. Cool idea.

Backfence is a group of community based citizen media sites. It has sites now for cities in Virginia and Maryland. Where’s Bellare, Texas? Interesting idea in its early stages.

Clipmarks is a people-powered search engine where users rate web content, talk about it and connect with other people who share similar interests. There is a Firefox extension you install that lets you capture pages or parts of pages to Clipmarks.

Wayfaring needs a new logo. It looks like Wayfanng. This site lets you build maps, annotate and share them. You could use this to show all 10 Starbucks within 50 yards of you house, or something. It’s actually a neat application with lots of potential uses.

gOffice is a free online office suite, with word processing, desktop publishing, a presentation maker and a spreadsheet. Alas, no calendar.

Fleck describes itself as a “patent pending, world changing, paradigm shifting and user experience enhancing technology.” I think that’s a joke, since the same description saya “every Web 2.0 hype is covered.” It’s not live yet, so I can’t say much more about it.

Before Today I’d Heard of:

1 out of 11

And the Winner of Round 8 is:

Memeorandum in a landslide. Even with a scoring discount since I already use it, it still wins going away. Findory finishes second.

Technorati Tags:
newsome.org web wars, web 2.0

This and That

Dave Winer posts a copy of an email he sent to the other side. As I’ve said before, I don’t know who’s right or wrong here, but this seems like a pretty reasoned letter.

Scott Karp has a good read on the sweetspot between old media and new media, which correctly says:

Old Media has the audiences, but doesn’t know what to do with them. New Media knows what to do, but doesn’t have the audiences.

Thomas Hawk demonstrates why he’s my favorite photographer. I absolutely love looking at one of his photos while reflecting on the name he gave it. You have to experience it to understand it, but the way he names his photos makes experiencing them like a little mini-movie. I love the way he names his photos.

Please join me in voting for JK’s excellent blog in the IT Community Choice Awards. JKOnTheRun in on the list as “OnTheRun,” so look in the O’s, not the J’s.

An Ad I’d Love to See

billblog-713338

For those who don’t know this great spokesman.

MPAA: Grabbing for the Cat, But to What End?

Today comes word that the MPAA has filed a new round of lawsuits in a continuing effort to stuff the cat bag into the bag.

I have a few questions.

Do the MPAA and its even more aggressive cousin the RIAA really think they can curb file sharing by suing a bunch of random people once in a while? Do they also think it’s possible to make water naturally flow up hill?

I don’t think anyone at the RIAA or the MPAA really believes they can curb file sharing. It’s too late and they have to know that. So what is the real goal here? Are they trying to slow down the growth of file sharing while they come up with some technological solution?

Do they understand that the only people they are hurting by mandating DRM-infested product are themselves and the remainder of their once loyal customer base? Surely they know hacker technology will trump copy protection every time.

Is the plan, or part of it, to force us to buy the same thing over and over? Is that how they think they can save their dying business model?

If it’s OK to sue a search engine that allows someone to search for pirated material, where’s the line? Is it OK to sue the companies who make the computers that allow someone to access the search engine that allows someone to search for pirated material?

I want someone of importance at one of these organizations to tell me what the real goal is here? Not the scorched earth campaign to spread fear of litigation, but the realistic one that they must have talked about.

So tell me, exactly, what is the end game in this futile effort to stuff the cat back into the bag.

I really want to know.