Category: Tech

More on Google Talk and IM

googletalk

Business Week is reporting that Google is reaching out to the other IM players in an effort to provide interconnectivity:

“Georges Harik, Google’s director of product management, says the company has opened communications with AOL and Yahoo, offering them interoperability on the Google Talk network free, and it will soon contact Microsoft.”

For the reasons I described last night, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft don’t want interconnectivity. This is another brilliant move by Google. One of two things will happen:

(1) these companies will begrudgingly agree to interconnect, fearing the bad press they will get if they say no. In the scenario, Google wins because it seems, based on early reviews, to have a clutter and ad-free interface that people will like.

(2) these companies will say no and continue the battle for the user base. In this scenario, Google wins because there will be a lot of bad press painting the other companies as bad citizens and Google as the great uniter.

Either way Google wins.

Bonus thought: Google would own the internet now if it had bought Flickr before Yahoo did.

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KN on IM

The web is in a tither about the pending release of Google Talk, an IM program by everyone’s favorite company. IM, or instant messaging, programs allow users to text message and share files over the internet more or less instantly. Increasingly, these programs are expanding their features to add audio chat, video chat and even VOIP telephone calls.

I’ve used IM programs a little. I started out with ICQ a few years ago, then migrated to AOL IM (or AIM for short), and ended up using Windows Messenger (now called MSN Messenger to fool the feds into thinking that it’s not embedded in Windows). Yahoo also has a widely used program. Now there’s a new player in the game, and anything by Google will quickly become a force to be reckoned with.

Why did I keep changing IM programs? It’s simple, I was chasing the user base. Since these programs do not communicate with each other, I kept changing programs based on which one I thought most people I wanted to communicate with were using. Let me be clear about this: generally speaking, these programs use proprietary protocols that only allow you to communicate with other users of the same program. If you’re using MSN Messenger, you can’t send an IM to someone who uses AIM, etc. This is why these programs have not and will not be widely accepted by adults and businesses. Some businesses use security risks as the reason not to implement IM, but companies said the same thing about email back in the day.

Why don’t they allow interconnectivity? Because they are competing based on user base and not on features and reliability. AIM has most of the AOL users (though you do not have to be an AOL customer to use it) and a large base of other users. Yahoo (the only company that can compete head to head with Google based on anything other than a large war chest of dollars) has a big user base. Microsoft has a program that is embedded into Windows, a large user base and a war chest of billions it can use to remain in the game. Each of these companies wants to win the user base war. Sharing protocols and allowing interconnectivity would turn IM programs into a commodity. These companies who are competing to become the one-stop internet shop for the masses do not want IM programs to become a commodity.

Kids are better at technology than adults and will go to great lengths to communicate away from the ears and eyes of adults. While this creates headaches for parents, it ensures a regular supply of users for all of the major IM programs. If a kid has to install 2 or 3 IM programs to communicate with her friends, she’ll do it. If the IT department at my firm has to do that, forget it. I’ll be told to use email and forget about the 2 minutes that I might save if I could use an IM program.

Then there’s the over-40 problem. For most people over 40 sending an email attachment or uploading a photo to Flickr is a major technological accomplishment. Trying to get these same people to understand and install an IM program and then to deal with it when they can’t communicate with Aunt Jane, who uses a different program? That’s a recipe for failure.

Until IM programs become like telephones, where the provider and the manufacturer of the telephone have nothing to do with who you can and can’t call, IM will simply not be adopted by grown-ups and businesses. At least not until today’s teenagers grow up and run companies or, more importantly, IT Departments.

So I may install Google Talk when it’s released tomorrow. But if I do, it’s only because I am curious. It won’t be because I think I’ll be able to communicate with anyone I know. To do that, I’ll have to use the telephone.

Dwight Silverman is blogging about Google Talk and Download Squad has a review and some screen shots.

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Solving the Technorati Index Problem

Technorati

Here’s a happy cure for my Technorati Blues. This page, which granted contains a lot of XHTML errors, was not getting indexed and I wanted it to be indexed so my posts would show up on Technorati. I don’t know if it was my pleading emails or some changes I made to the HTML on this page, but Newsome.Org is now being indexed by Technorati.

I approached the problem in 2 very different ways:

First, I sent a bunch of pleading emails to Technorati support. I got a response to my first one as mentioned in the prior post, but no response to my fiollow-ups. Nevertheless, there may have been a fix on the Technorati end that kick-started the indexing of this page. If so, thanks Technorati.

Second, I did a little research and added some tags to the html on this page that were designed to make it easier for the Technorati spider to find and index my posts. Immediately after I made these changes my posts started showing up on Technorati, but that may have been a coincidence (though I tend to think not).

Here’s what I did.

While searching for an answer to my indexing problems, I found the Publisher Guide in the Technorati help pages. It contains this paragraph:

How can I better identify each post?

Technorati breaks up your weblog’s home page into smaller sections such as posts and sidebars. You can help Technorati’s spiders properly identify a unique post and its proper link destination by adding a link with a defined relationship of “bookmark” for each post. For example:

<a href=”http://blog.bloghost.com/post1&#8243; rel=”bookmark”>Post title</a>.

That sounded promising so I found the BlogItemTitle section in my Blogger template:

“>/a>

and replaced it with the following text that does three things: makes my title a link to the post page for the particular post in question; adds the above referenced bookmark tag; and includes a second tag for the post title:

<a href=”” rel=”bookmark”title=””>

.Within minutes of pinging Technorati, my posts began showing up.

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Project Flickr Update

About 8 weeks ago I decided to try to drag my friends and family into the 21st century by sending them invitations to join Flickr and share photos. The friend group consisted of our close friends who we see several times a week. We do stuff together all the time, so the pictures I take of my kids generally include a few of their kids. The prospect of seeing and downloading my “friends and family” photos sounded like good incentive. The family group consisted of Raina, my sister and my cousin Janet. These are the only family members I know of that meet the requirements: (a) they have a computer and (b) I have their email address.

Part One (signing up): I sent out “friend” invitations to Arnie (I didn’t have his wife Christina’s separate email at the time), Greg, Yvette, Ray, Sharon, Kyle, Martha, Dave and Lenora and “family” invitations to Raina, Anne and cousin Janet. I figured all the moms would sign up and the other dads (except for Arnie, who is fairly tech-savy and always willing to try new things) would blow me off. I figured 2 out of the 3 family members would sign up.

The results were a little surprising. Arnie signed up right away, as predicted, but so did the rest of the friend group. Greg and Yvette (spouses), Ray and Sharon (spouses) and Kyle and Martha (spouses) each signed up separately and Dave and Lenora (spouses) signed up together. Raina signed up right away, but Anne and cousin Janet ignored multiple invitations. At last count, I had sent Anne 12 invitations. I suppose they are paying me back for many years as a poor correspondent family-wise.

Part Two (uploading photos): Here’s where the pack started to separate. In a big surprise, Ray was the first one to upload photos, uploading 5 shots from Russia right away. Ray travels on business a lot, so this is not all that surprising. Ray is also a guy, however, and my theory (perhaps now disproved) was that the moms would do the heavy lifting photo-wise. Arnie put a bunch of vacation photos up right away, and of course I have uploaded a lot of photos. So far the only mom to break into the scoring column is Yvette with 5 photos from the hottest (temperature wise) swim meet in recorded history. Nada for all of the other folks, demonstrating once again that you can lead a horse to water and all that.

Part Three (adding friends to your contacts): Because the invitations came from me, everyone who signed up became one of my contacts automatically, either as friend or family, as the case may be. One of the many wonderful features of Flickr is that you can upload photos that can only be seen by people in the category (family, friend, public, etc.) you select. So in order for our group to share photos, everyone else has to manually add the other group members as a contact (family for spouses; friend for everyone else). I sent out an email with instructions on how and why to do this. A few people tried. One or two succeeded, but based on the questions I got, most were either actually or conveniently confused about the process. These are 40 something year old professionals with graduate degrees. I can’t imagine how hard it would be with parents or grandparents (as an orphan, I am sadly exempt from that hair-pulling experience).

Part Four (where do I go from here): I would say that my Flickr experiment has been, at best, only a partial success. Raina and our friends can now view my photos (including many from our recent camping trip). Arnie and maybe a few others will explore and enjoy the wonder that is Flickr. But the fact is that most people my age and probably everyone older still think of photos as paper things- not digital things (more on our transition from paper to digital in a forthcoming post). You can teach grown-ups technology, but it’s not easy (watching the older lawyers in my office wage war with email attachments is further proof of this). My little group will probably use Flickr, at least a little, if I keep hounding them. But it won’t be easy for me or for them.

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Another Nail

nailcoffinI’m getting tired of my self-imposed TIVO deathwatch, but I simply can’t help myself. PVR Wire confirms that DirecTV will soon stop marketing TIVO.

DirecTV says people who ask will still be able to get a TIVO. Of course it also says “if you don’t have a (digital video recorder) from us, you won’t be getting the DirecTV experience.” You can also still get an 8-Track tape player if you want.

The bottom line is that this is going to end up either:

Crappy: DirecTV pushes some lesser box on its subscribers, but at least switches out existing HDTV TIVOs at no cost to the customer. Then all we have to do is pay Weaknees to upgrade that box like we did for the TIVO.

Really Crappy: DirecTV pushes some lesser box on its subscribers and makes us pay for it. This would be really stupid because it would lead to the loss of a bunch of subscribers, myself included.

My prediction: They will switch out the boxes if you agree to a one or two year contract.

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Web Sites in an RSS World

Steve Rubel has written an interesting post about the future of web design in the face of the RSS movement and the resulting increase in the use of news aggregators. Steve’s point is that the news aggregators currently have a lot of control over how the packaging and presentation of the content they aggregate. Here’s my take, from a slightly different perspective.

rsslogoI resisted news aggregators because, for me, part of the appeal of both a web site and the content thereon is the web site’s look and feel, as well as the little extras (music lists, book lists, Flickr badges, etc.) that give the post its context. I often find new web sites I enjoy by looking at links on the web sites I read. News aggregators strip down and re-package the content of a particular article or post on a web site, but ignore the other stuff. They are functionally very efficient, but lack the pizazz of the web page in its native and intended form. All of this is fine for straight news (Google News, Yahoo News, etc.). All of this is not so fine for blog posts and other more specialized content. If the source of the content is important (beyond being merely a trusted name for headlines, etc.), the packaging of the material should also be important.

But notice that I say only that I resisted news aggregators. The fact is that I use one. Onfolio is such a wonderful program that I stated using its news aggregator functions and have continued to do so. But not as a complete substitute for visiting web sites. More as an alternative to use when I am in a hurry and want to quickly see if the sites I enjoy have any new content.

All of this design and content re-packaging business needs to be worked out. And I agree with Steve that the owners of the content will eventually demand to control the presentation of such content (I learned that lesson many times over when developing ACCBoards.Com). But an equally important issue is the stripped down, sterile nature of the content delivered by news aggregators. Yes, I can change the way the content of a blog post looks via an aggregator. But if I want to see Flickr photos and linkrolls along with that content, I need to visit the page.

News aggregators are like Greatest Hits albums. Great for the casual listener or the person who just wants a Cliffs Notes appreciation of an artist. But the true music lover wants to hear the entire record- just the way it was conceived and created by the artist.

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Technorati Blues

technorati-784323I am very excited about the potential of Technorati. Technorati indexes weblogs. Recall that weblogs are much more than just some dude‘s online diary. Weblogs (or blogs, for short) are a new publishing mechanism that allows a lot more people to publish content to the internet more easily. The point being that just because you have no desire to read someone’s diary, don’t write off blogs as a source for great, real-time information. Check out the blogs listed on the left hand side of The Home Place for blogs that I read daily.

First the good news: I use Technorati for two purposes right now. To search for content on topics that interest me. For example I use it to look for people who are writing articles about camping. Right now there are almost 200,000 posts about camping (alas, none of my articles are there- more on that below). I also use it to see what other authors are mentioning Newsome.Org in their articles. For example, here is a post on a German blog that mentions this site.

The problem that is driving me nuts is that I want to use it for a third purpose: to allow readers to find my articles and posts via a keyword search, just like I did above with camping. Unfortunately, my site is not being indexed by Technorati. Not because Technorati doesn’t want to, but because of some technical problem that I cannot seem to overcome. Technorati is run by smart people, but like any new service, its support staff is stretched thin. I wrote about the problem, which is shared by others, including Improbulus, as detailed in this post. I got a friendly response a few days later, suggesting that I try to fix a horde of XHTML errors on my page. Without going into a lot a technical detail, my page, while reasonably compliant with most standards, does not comply with the stricter syntax of this newer markup language. There is nothing wrong with that advice, at least as a first try. Here’s the rub: I can’t create compliance without dumping the new look and feel of this site, and there are lots of other sites with more compliance issues than this one (i.e., that have more XHTML errors than I do) that do get indexed by Technorati.

So I have a hobson’s choice: dump the new look and feel in favor of a simpler look that would be more compliant and might get indexed or leave things the way they are and run the risk of never getting indexed.

I have written back to Technorati to show them other (less compliant) pages that are getting indexed and asking if there is another way to solve the problem.

I hope so. Technorati is a great idea, but if I’m not getting indexed, you can be sure there are a lot of others who aren’t either. And that’s a lot of content to leave on the table (or out of the database, as the case may be).

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Whatever's on My Mind

Interesting conversation over at Thomas Hawk‘s page regarding Scoblegate. I think a lot of Robert and I hope and expect him to prevail in what is now a cyber-spat, but may turn into something more.

We had dinner tonight (as we do most Tuesday nights) with the Veldmans at Pico’s. Very good crab quesadillas there. The dining guides say it has live music Wed.-Sun. I’ve been there a bunch, but haven’t noticed any music. I need to look closer next time we go on the weekend. Good discussion tonight about Iraq, politics, etc. I used to be considered somewhat liberal, but Sharon makes me sound like a fascist. I’d rather talk to someone who thinks my political views are insane than someone who agrees with me on every issue, and Sharon fits that bill. She thinks I (and everyone else who isn’t a rabid democrat) am nuts. At one point Ray got frustrated trying to argue with his wife and started arguing his point to Raina. That is called preaching to the choir.

Andy and Floyd got all mad at me at work today, saying I am difficult and don’t keep confidences. I told them I appreciate the heads up and that I would not tell anyone they think that.

And a school teacher shall lead them…. Battlestar Galactica continues to move up my list of all-time favorite shows. The scene this past week outside President Roslin’s cell blew me away. The writing on that show is truly amazing.

Fred Wilson has a good read about blogging. He is a really good writer. He also turned me onto Josh Rouse, who has some great songs (Dressed Up Like Nebraska being the best) on some good records.