Archive for October, 2007
I recently sat down with Channel 4’s Steve Garagiola to talk about internet and text message slang. Channel 4 is doing a special on the topic, and it seems pretty interesting so far. It aired last night at 11pm (my bad, should have announced that earlier eh?) but if you missed it you can find a recap of the story on clickondetroit.com Check it out!
If anybody saw the full 11pm feature, please let me know. A family member said they taped it, but I have to go buy a VCR before I can see it.
October 11th, 2007
I was cleaning up my Gmail inbox today (it’s down to 115 unreplied messages now - not counting spam) and I got sidetracked and decided to break down my spam by time received.
So far today (it’s only 11pm) I’ve received over 2500 spam messages.
1800 during the 7 hours I was asleep last night.
9 while I showered.
500 while at work today.
17 on my drive home from work.
90 during dinner.
200 during the red wings game.
That’s 2616 in total, and there’s still an hour left to go in the day.
Update: 6 more between 11 and midnight for a total of 2622 today
Of course the only way I noticed these was by checking the spam filter in my Gmail box, but it’s easy to see why many of today’s youth aren’t using email anymore in favor of social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter where one has to know you before they can message you.
October 8th, 2007
I’ve never understood why Columbus Day is still a holiday. Despite growing evidence that Columbus wasn’t the first to discover America, there’s even better reasons to stop celebrating this holiday.
First of all, he didn’t land in what we currently call America. In his efforts to find the Indies, Columbus mistakenly ended up discovering the Carribean Islands and Mexico. In fact, it’s his flawed navigational skills that gave us the term “Indian.”
Believe it or not, Columbus actually made 4 voyages to the western world. In his first voyage he basically discovered Cuba. On his second he explored more of the Caribbean islands. His third voyage took him to Trinidad, and his fourth voyage landed him in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Some high school text books fail to mention this. All high school text books fail to mention what follows:
It was here in the Yucatan Peninsula that Christopher left his mark on the world. Inspired by the Mayan riches, it wasn’t long before he started looting. Determined that there must be vast riches, Columbus enslaved “Indians” and sent them off into the desert digging for gold. Those who came back empty handed were accused of stealing and had their hands chopped off. Ironically, this actually caused many to steal gold to give to Columbus.
Recapping, Columbus gets lost, discovers a place that others had already discovered, steals everything in sight, mutilates the locals, and we give him a national holiday!
Maybe I’m just jealous that some of my friends get to take the day off and go golfing while I have to work, but I still don’t see why we continue to celebrate Columbus day. Maybe it’ll rain.
October 7th, 2007
As soon as I wrote the previous post, I headed over to Sphinn and submitted it there too. Within 30 seconds of submitting it to Sphinn, my post started showing up on splogs like this one.
30 seconds!! I knew duplicate content and spam blogs were a problem, but at this rate I can see how the search engines have problems deciding which version of the content came first.
October 3rd, 2007
Microsoft.com just tweaked the Live.com search engine relevancy algorithm in an attempt to compete with Google, but instead ended up with what I think are some of the poorest search results out there.
It only takes a few searches to realize that the biggest change Microsoft made was to give a heavy weighing factor to domain names and keywords in URLs.
Let’s take a look: Searching for the term text message Live returns a top result of textmessage.cc - a GoDaddy parking page! That’s right, the most relevant result here is a freaking GoDaddy parking page!! You’ve got to be kidding me.
Looking at another result, viagra we can see that the #3 result here is viagra.name - a thin affiliate site! It’s easy to see that adding a product to your cart on viagra.name just takes you to another site with an affiliate ID.
If we were to run a search for another highly competitive term: payday loan we’ll see that every result returned has the term in the URL. This simply doesn’t happen over on Google where the algorithm returns more reputable loan companies (that have physical locations) as well as the ftc’s website and news results.
Clearly, Microsoft still has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to search.
October 3rd, 2007
There’s a lot of talk in the industry about the fore coming Google Phone, but there really hasn’t been any proof. People have stated that Google wants to compete with Apple, and others even swear to have seen a prototype.
So is the Google phone coming? Who knows. Here’s what I think:
I don’t think Google wants to get into the hardware business. They’ve had plenty of opportunities to do so with various other things, and they haven’t. Likewise, they aren’t trying to get into the offline software business.
Google is in the services business. Things like Maps, Mail, Search, etc.
Services like the above on cell phones typically suck really bad right now. Even the iPhone still has tons of room for improvement.
It seems like it’d be a natural move for Google to sell it’s services to the current cell phone providers. The providers could benefit from the cool features, and Google benefits from the advertising. Remember, advertising is Google’s main business model.
That’s where the Google phone prototype many of you talked about comes in. If you’re going to sell services to a company, you have to demonstrate the possibilities. It would make sense to see Google develop it’s own phones so they can show off their latest and greatest mobile services. Remember, the article just mentions that they have a prototype phone - not that they’re going to try to sell it.
Sure, there could be a Google phone coming, but I don’t think there will be. I don’t think it’s a market that Google wants to get into. With that said, it is a possible direction they could go if adaptation of Google services among current providers turns out light. One way or another though, Google has got to get their services (and ads) on mobile devices if they want to remain on top of the digital advertising industry.
October 1st, 2007
I put my 2 weeks notice in today at my current job, and as of October 22nd I’ll be joining the team at Demoxi. My official title will be Senior Manager, Product Marketing which is basically a fancy title for “doing some really cool stuff in a really cool area.”
I wasn’t really looking for a career change at this time, however certain opportunities presented themselves after my trip to Seattle and I couldn’t say no.
Demoxi is a rather new company focusing on online identity and privacy - two areas that are constantly becoming concerns for many individuals. It’s all about “connecting with confidence.” There’s a lot of potential here, and I’m excited to be part of it.
I’m going to miss working with all the people at Brand Labs. It’s been a lot of fun over the past 6 months or so, and I’m really sad to leave. I feel bad about leaving Brand Labs, but joining Demoxi is the right career move for me, and I hope to benefit from the countless opportunities it will provide.
I’ll post some more updates later, and no I’m not moving to Bellevue (yet!) For now, I urge you to check out the Demoxi homepage.
October 1st, 2007
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