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The personal homepage of Michael Morisy, technology journalist.

Topic “google”

Google Buzz and the commoditization of conversation

Submitted by michael morisy on Thu, 2010-02-11 18:58

Maybe I'm daft (ok, we all know I am daft), but what new features, really new features does Google Buzz bring to the table? For the end user, it really seems like something that could have been cobbled together with a clever Greasemonkey script, which is an unusually low bar for a Google product.

It just pulls Google Reader into GMail. Oh, sure, there's some location-aware nish-nosh and something about better thumbnails, but the conversations I see on Buzz are identical to the ones I was seeing on Reader. A while back, Reader even let you put up aimless updates, basically creating Buzz without the buzz.

With pre-Buzz Reader and some simple RSS magic, you could even pull in and share you Twitter feed, your Flickr photos, and whatever the hell else they're now trumpeting, and you already saw updates pre-selected by your friends and colleagues. Buzz just pulled together (quite nicely, I might add) a lot of elements that were already there for power users and forced them down the world's unsuspecting throat.

Still, it's not a bad move at all.

Google Reader only scales so well

Submitted by michael morisy on Tue, 2009-10-27 16:12

I really don't know how I ended up being subscribed to 1369 RSS feeds, but I did. A lot of it is probably Twitter feeds, which I subscribed to using Dave Winer's Twitter OPML exporter because I wanted a backup of this stuff.

So when I went to clean up my RSS folders today (how geeky can you get?), using Google Reader's organize function crashed by browser and almost the OS. Reboot, and it barely pulls the page up, but only about a third of it. The rest: The abyss.
Google Reader only scales so well: And then, the gaping void.Google Reader only scales so well: And then, the gaping void.

In other news, I've been hacking away at SpareChangeNews.net. Still a long way to go, but we should be rolling out a calendar system (yeah!), slide shows, and more in the next week or so.

Also, most of my blogging is over at ITKnowledgeExchange's IT Watch Blog now, so if tech news is your thing, try over there instead.

Comparing Bit.ly, Google Analytics, and Drupal website logs

Submitted by michael morisy on Thu, 2009-07-02 16:56

Bitly FishBitly FishEvery Twitter user loves bit.ly. It's simple. It's pretty. It's quick. It makes it easy to jump right into getting click through metrics and see who's actually reading your posts. But is it accurate?

Particularly as compared to more "professional" tracking offerings out there, like Google Analytics or even a website's original logs, there have been concerns raised about how accurate those instantaneous numbers bit.ly gives out are. I've increasingly heard, for example, that bit.ly does a relatively poor job of parsing out bot traffic, which presumably just spiders through Twitter links looking for sites to spam.

I to test these services with an informal experiment: I would compare Bit.ly traffic against Google Analytics against my website's Drupal logs. I wasn't looking for the perfect solution, just to see how different the numbers these three reporting methods were giving.

The ground rules were simple: I would send out a bit.ly'd link to Twitter, explaining the test, and asking my followers to click if the wanted to. Polling would be closed at midnight, EST, but then I would look at the next few weeks to see if these alleged bots continued to inflate numbers.

The results were interesting, if not shocking, but some specific points about bit.ly, click tracking, and Twitter analytics should be noted:

  • It's a rapidly emerging field. If there is a problem with bots or something else inflating numbers, bit.ly will probably correct it as quickly as a public fuss is raised about it.
  • There's a lot of complicating factors that will leave Twitter click analytics a volatile field for a while. Already, I'm sure the rise of URL elongating services like Longify have given these services a huge headache.
  • Even if Bit.ly isn't perfect, it's pretty damn good, and I think it's a reasonable question to ask if there is a "perfect" Twitter Analytics solution, or if there are just solutions better fit for your needs. Either way, I'm grateful they don't put obnoxious framing like Ow.ly does. And I don't mean to detract from Google Analytics, which is also a pretty powerful tool once you have it up and running.

But enough chit-chat, let's get to the meat: How did bit.ly stack up to Google Analytics and Drupal's own web logs? See for yourself:

Service # of recording hits on June 19, 2009
Bit.ly 12
Drupal web logs 26
Google Analytics 5

So Bit.ly is more than two times higher than Google Analytics, but Drupal's logs (which I know for a fact are all too happy to count every last spam bot and betty) are twice that, and five times higher than Google Analytics.

A couple other things worth noting:

  • The Drupal test page was exclusively promoted through Twitter. It wasn't linked to from any other site, except through my Friend Feed which automatically aggregates my Tweets.
  • As a counter to the bot argument, after that first day of posting my Bit.ly link only registered one more click, and that was the next day, a completely reasonable time frame for a user to see the post.
  • Google Analytics registered 0 clicks after the first day of posting.
  • Drupal registered a handful (maybe 5) after the first few days.
  • In each of these three services, I made sure to remove any click I might have accounted for.

So, what do you think? Is Bit.ly still a useful tool? This is obviously a fairly small sample, but I'll keep an eye on how these tools stack up against each other over the next months, and hopefully have more data to share.

Besides, even at its worst, Bit.ly has got to have Conan O'Brien's "Twitter Tracker" beat:

Further Reading:

Nada Bada Bing? Microsoft search "porn" easily blocked by schools

Submitted by michael morisy on Thu, 2009-06-18 05:38

BadaBingFound via BingThere are a lot of things not like about Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, but children getting access to porn through its video preview shouldn't be on the list.

The fact is, every filter (read: porn blocker) is going to have loopholes or workarounds, or else it will signal so many false positives as to make the Internet useless. Blame it on pornography's subjective nature. Blame it on how big and complex the Internet is. But all this logic seems to get thrown out the window as soon as someone whispers "But think of the children," and soon you have not only TechCrunch issuing warnings about Bing's video porn preview (they should know better), but also CBS News ("Parents Beware" the headline warns) and, inevitably, Fox News.

Please. Microsoft has too much riding on this to let it stay a black eye for long, and indeed, shortly after the Bing porn previews became public knowledge, Microsoft offered one way to close the porn hack, and then another.

Most telling, however, has been the response on an educational IT listserve I'm on. One administrator issued a challenge: "For those that have really good filters, try logging on as a student then BING and go to video - search porn - then put the cursor on one of the videos. Preview time."

Not so fast, one respondent who, you know, actually did this:

Our filter, Web Gateway by McAfee (formerly Webwasher by Secure Computing) appropriately blocks the content. Web Gateway enforces "safe search" and students are not able to change the option to turn off safe search. Additionally, searching porn related terms resulted in content that stopped the pages from being displayed.

And then three other school administrators, all using different filters, reported similar blocking success. One had to tweak some manual settings, but the other two worked fine blocking errant Bing queries out of box.

If school IT administrators aren't worried about Bing porn when it's their job to stop this stuff, why the hell are Fox and CBS News in an outright, end-of-days panic?

Oh, right. Ratings.

How would you build your iGoogle homepage without Google?

Submitted by michael morisy on Fri, 2009-06-12 20:11

For years, I've been telling people I want to get away from Google, but I keep finding myself using more and more Google products: Gmail, GoogleTalk, Gchat, Google Analytics, Google Docs, Picasa ... The list goes on and on. Oh yeah, and Google search.

But while Google's certainly convenient, I'm not really comfortable with having all my data in one company's hands, even if their motto is "Don't be evil." So I've started building my own iGoogle-like dashboard right on my very own site, using Drupal. It's been surprisingly easy, and with about 2 hours work, I could embed my RememberTheMilk to do list, package tracking, my upcoming stories for the week, check Facebook, and more:

iGoogleA Google-free iGoogle

And it's all within an interface I have complete control over, can back up easily, and can modify to the smallest detail. Drupal even makes it easy to sort things into neat columns.

Full disclosure: I'm kinda cheating a little bit, because I'm still using Google Gadgets for my webpage, but at least it's a step in the right direction, and much of that functionality wouldn't be hard to reproduce piecemeal in a 100% Google-free way.

So, what would you put in your own custom Google-free iGoogle page?

WolframAlpha thinks I need to drop 25 pounds

Submitted by michael morisy on Mon, 2009-05-18 18:40

Actually, just 24 pounds, but it still stings.

I tried a lot of queries without success on WolframAlpha, the new "computational knowledge engine," ranging from rates of homelessness and AIDS in various regions to salaries for college graduates. None of the first 20 or so queries gave me back meaningful results. Then I decided to hold myself under Wolfram's unflinching light by putting in some of my vitals. After all, Googling oneself is a time-honored tradition, so why shouldn't Wolfram'ing oneself become the same?

Here's why:

WolframAlpha thinks I'm fat

While I know I could afford to drop a few pounds, 186 lbs for a 6'3" male sounds pretty downright unhealthy, and is about 20 pounds south of what my doctor recommended with his weight chart.

Obviously, WolframAlpha's databases could still use expansion (that or I really am a lot worse off than I thought).

But while these results weren't exactly pretty for anyone involved, I still see some strong potential for the service (which is NOT, as has been reported again and again, a "search engine," at least not as the term is commonly used today).

Mr. Wolfram's introductory screen cast alone was enough to get me excited, even if, as a friend remarked, playing around with it for a few minutes shows just exactly how close you have to stay to its databases to get meaningful results.

That said, the empty handed results on AIDS, homelessness, global warming ("Functionality for this topic is under development..."), post-graduate pay, etc. etc. shows not the engine's weaknesses, but how much potential it has as more databases, licensed or under public domain, become available. Having an engine that calculates and beautifully displays previously impenetrable data sets could be a huge asset to journalists, researchers, and everyone else with an inquiring mind.

In the meantime, there are plenty of cool things WolframAlpha can do. I suggest:

I really disagree with Silicon Alley Insider founder Henry Blodget's thoughts, that WolframAlpha's just another search engine destined to fade:

Our prediction: Wolfram Alpha (terrible name) will see a nice spike in traffic for a few days, then it will disappear unnoticed along with all the other "next-generation" search engines.

Why?

Because search isn't broken. It can be improved, yes, and companies like Wolfram Alpha will show Google how to improve it. But no search engine we've seen, including this one, comes close to making the quantum leap in performance required to get real volumes of Internet users to switch.

Specialized data base search engines have actually done quite well. Orbitz, Travelocity, and Priceline are some prime examples (and ones with great business models to boot), but Zillow's also a fan favorite, despite supposedly terribly inaccurate house price estimates that realtor's routinely gripe about.

Is Google broken? No, but neither was Yahoo or Lycos, really, when Google burst onto the scene, and to be honest, calling WolframAlpha a "Google-killer" mostly misses the service's point, which is not to search but to calculate specific results based on verified data.

Further Reading:

My first panel

Submitted by michael morisy on Sat, 2008-11-15 14:29

Photo courtesy of Duncan Hayre, Cornell Club of Boston

Well, my first panel went off without a serious hitch Thursday night, for which I'm eternally grateful to both panelists, Rich Miner of Google and Duncan Perry of Treedia, and particularly to even chairperson Julie Son who basically pulled the whole thing together, twice, and made sure things ran without a hitch.

Rich and Duncan had a great dynamic, parrying questions between them with largely similar views on what the future of mobile marketing held: More targeted, more interactive, with lots of experimentation on the way.

Both said a key was to provide value and not annoy your customers, which might seem basic but is oftentimes overlooked in practice. Rich said Google was largely holding back on map ads, for example, while they experimented with a way to make them useful.

The crowd of about 50 people, a mix of Cornell alums and Boston Googlers, was great: Lots of audience questions, and lots of mingling afterwards. Interestingly, few of the questions had anything to do with marketing, but the panelists and audience seemed happy to delve into the greater world of mobile so it worked well.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to set up my video camera, so as far as I know there is no recording for posterity. Given Google's somewhat Big Brother-ish NDA everyone signed going in (the only thing that got somewhat low marks on the panel evaluations), maybe it's just as well.

Event pictures, etc.:

Adsense leading to censored stories?

Submitted by michael morisy on Thu, 2006-08-03 05:19

So theorizes Chris Thompson, a columnist for the East Bay Express.

He says that Google's practice of not running ads on risque pages with the word "kill" (and dozens of other unknown, proprietary blacklisted phrases) leads to stories being sanitized or outright spiked. One (anonymously cited) web publisher claims to have lost $7,000 in revenue because of a word infraction. Not quite chump change.

A simple solution is presented in the article, however:
"What we found in working with Google was that because some of our content violated its 'family-safe policy,' as a result we had to work with other partners such as Yahoo," says Kathryn Surso, Salon's vice president of business development.

Long live the free market.

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