Seeing Forests

Just saw a piece on Roximity on Denver Fox News. Impressed with the coverage they’ve gotten. Impressed with landing Ford as their industrial strategic partner. For those of us in this space, the automobile as a nexus for local has always been something of a holy grail. It’s been obvious but always assumed the auto companies would do this themselves or partner with one of the entrenched data providers. Amazing to see that this niche was actually open to start-ups. Hats off, surely. The real issue I’ve never been able to see how to overcome is the very real concern of the distracted driver. How is it that with all of the pressure against interacting with mobile devices while driving - which can be measurably shown to result in highway fatalities - are drivers supposed to deal with fielding offers while driving? I have a hard time differentiating among LivingSocial offers sitting at my laptop with a cup of coffee in the morning. How am I supposed to do that at 80 miles an hour (er, um, 55)? I’m generally uncomfortable cutting across four lanes of traffic to take an exit I accidentally missed. Doing so in response to an ad screaming EAT AT JOE’s might just make me want to test my Hollywood driving skills. Reminded me of the sarcastic presentation I made in 2008 for Where 2.0 about MapSpam in 2010. Looks like I was a couple of years too late: http://www.seeingforests.com/MapSpam2010Half.mov

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We’re in the midst of loading open source data sets like those from Factual and cross-referencing them to other data sets. This cross-referencing involves equating different “taxonomies” in different data sets to one another (amongst other things). I put taxonomies in quotes since, alas, creating taxonomies seems to be a dying art. What are called taxonomies are invariably just hierarchies of generally related concepts that might be useful in some browsing capacity or in some deductive computation but in reality are useful in neither. Since many people think that the actual end of human memory arrived with the initial introduction of Google Search, there seems to be really no need to organize information anymore. We can all just outsource that to Google and search for it later. No need to organize and discriminate one kind of business from another. Except, of course, when it comes to bars. We all desperately need to know whether it’s a “Dive Bar”, a “Hookah Bar”, or an “Oxygen Bar”. The “Restaurant” category should be just fine for all of those places people eat that aren’t “Fast Food”, “Bagels”, or “Internet Cafes”. But we have to get more detail on our Bars. Just seems to be that 20-somethings are designing these categories and are projecting the subjective over the objective. (I’m not actually talking about Factual’s hierarchy here, sort of.)

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Just got a great opportunity to participate on a discussion panel at BIA Kelsey’s Directional Media Strategies Summit for Small-Business (thanks Peter!). Was a lot of fun (or as much fun as a discussion on listing data can). I went on about us (Brilliant Arc) being all about Local “Knowledge” not just Local “Data”. I realized afterwards that I didn’t really quite define my terms. To us, data is just some string of symbols - a “keyword”, say Pizza. When you get a listing from most providers, you get a business name, a list of keywords, and a set of categories for that business. So, you get a listing for big box store “Target” that has Pizza as a “Product” and listed in categories like Department Stores, Grocery Stores, and even Restaurants. So, when you have the keyword “Pizza” associated with Target, you have no idea what is meant by just the keyword, Pizza. We add more information to the Pizza keyword, treating it like a concept and associating different definitions with it (Grocery Item and Dining Fare), creating more unique identifiers for it, like frozen-pizza and fresh-pizza, and identifying the source of this term (Acxiom). Adding all of this additional information turns data into knowledge and provides a differentiated asset.

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The competition for clever and funny Deals between LivingSocial and Groupon looks to park common sense in the interim. Love how a class for concealed carry of a handgun starts with: Are you a Calamity Jane? Channel you [sic] inner Wild Bill Hancock with today’s deal - a Six Hour Concealed Weapons Class. Oh yeah! How about something like, “Don’t be a Plexico! Learn how not to shove a Glock with the safety off down the front of your sweat pants!” Stupid.

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Google is replacing My Maps with My Places. With the introduction of descriptive terms in Local Search results, Google is edging closer and closer to The Local Graph. Glad we’ve got our patent pending.

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So, I took the liberty of scanning all 280 reviews on Yelp about Cafe Grumpy in the Google announcement on descriptive terms in local search. The terms showcased in the post included, cup of coffee, no laptop, latte, great coffee, and french lemon ginger. Eliminating the “entailed” terms for a coffee shop - cup of coffee, latte, and great coffee, we’re left with no laptop and french lemon ginger. Kudos on the no laptop as that’s clearly a differentiator (you pick on which way you want to go with it). But the scan told me that, yes, these people craft artisanal coffee, they sell expensive coffee ($12 for the top-of-the-line), it’s got a Portland atmosphere, the place is usually crowded, with occasionally long queues, is frequented by a hip crowd, but apparently features preparation using Clover machines, whatever those are. Didn’t see a single mention of french lemon ginger. Now, admittedly, this is a grossly unfair counterpoint on my part. I’m a human, after all (well, working on being one). But there did seem to jump out a lot of things that might rightly be more relevant for the coffee connoisseur (like the Clover thing) that I’m certain would have been mentioned in any of the other sources for le Cafe even without cross-referencing to a richer, more human way of characterizing a coffee shop. Still, it’s a start.

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Google just announced “descriptive terms” in local search results. They give examples for a Cafe Grumpy, a coffee shop, with terms like “cup of coffee”, “no laptop”, “latte”, “great coffee”, “french lemon ginger”, and for a Rose & Crown English Food “fish and chips”, “trivia night”, “british pub”, “great beer selection”, and “pub atmosphere”. Certainly seems like some nuggets are in here, like the “trivia night” at the Rose & Crown (to avoid), and “no laptop” at Cafe Grumpy (also, to avoid). But a lot of redundancy too, “cup of coffee”, “latte”, and “great coffee” - really, at a Coffee Shop no less? Shocking. Still, good start down the discovery path. But, honestly, still need some intelligence to balance out the statistically significant from the really relevant.

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Nice summary post from Kin Lane over at Programmable Web about Yellow Pages Group in Canada and their emerging developer ecosystem (digisystem?) built around their YellowAPI. This is the way things are going and sure worth a nod to YPG Canada (Yellow Media, Inc.) in showing leadership here. Still have some concerns over the amount of control exerted in the use of the API. Need to be approved by a selection committee to use the API for example. Somewhat at odds with more open approaches but somewhat understandable. The availability of resources to assist in development from design to beta funding is encouraging. A primary concern is with the richness of the results from the API calls. Looks like you can only provide a search term and get the basic business data back. Doesn’t look like there is any access to more structured results or additional keywords. Have been kicking around putting a track together with a colleague for a conference on these emerging Local digital ecosystems and their APIs. Something with both a technical and a business dimension to it. Be interested to see if you’d be interested in something like that.

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Been thinking about the future and the ramifications of The Internet of Things and Database of Intentions and the What-Nots of As-If and So On. Not always in synch with TIOT - not sure I want my ammo box automatically posting re-supply requests for example. Still, I envision a time soon where more and more of the things that satisfy your intentions will come to you in a more pull rather than push environment. I think it’s all going to get to the point where there’ll be a fairly standard way of expressing your intentions for things and the environment will respond. We’ll someday look back and be shocked that we would tolerate all of this blathering advertisement blasting all around us. It’ll be so much more civilized - and quieter - while simultaneously being much more efficient. I’ve come to look at different business categories as merely ways of packaging up a set of things with a high probability of satisfying related intentions for consumers. The trick has been to get it into the consumer’s mind to think of businesses in certain categories as the broadest potential source of satisfying intention. And the consumer has been trained to think this way - I intend to satisfy a need, what potential business categories have the highest probability of meeting those needs? I can’t help but feel that a lot of this is going to go away. I can simply start stating my intentions - now, later, someday - and the environment will respond, regardless of business category. I think real Local Discovery will start happening soon.

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Not that I’ve actually download the app and tried it - don’t think that’s necessary these days. Read enough to know that it’s about taking pictures and sharing them instantly with other Color user (Colorictims?) within 150 feet. Clown about at a friend’s birthday, share the moment she says “I do”, toss the roses on the casket, you know, the highpoints, and instantaneously share the moment with potentially complete strangers (or estranged relatives). Reminded me of the presentation by SCVNGR at #ilmeast talking about a promotion with Wild Wings Buffalo Wings. Apparently, taking pictures of yourself with BBQ sauce all over your face and sharing that with everyone was worth its weight in free coupons. Imagine the score you’ll get to get an entire restaurant filled with people with BBQ sauce all over their faces merrily taking pictures of themselves and others. Color has definitely tapped into the absolutely perfect SoLoMo target market segment - raving lunatics.

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