Seeing Forests

Mobile: “Synch or Stream”

admin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:33:06 +0000

ReadWriteWeb discloses Nokia To Debut Mobile Lifestreaming App. It’s an app on your Nokia phone (I used to have one of those) that will upload geotagged images, video, and music to a map whenever you synchronize your phone. I wouldn’t exactly call this streaming as you have to wait to “synch before you stream”. This misses the whole point about streaming - real time, here now, doing this. It might still be useful but let’s not call it what it’s not.

Updated Local 20

admin — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:47:43 +0000

I updated Local-20 following Greg’s Resource: Local-20 post. Added an RSS feed, which had I known would have taken 12 minutes with RoR, I would have done so much earlier. Made a few other modifications and updated some sites. Lots of interesting knowledge representation issues (how to best represent historical tours of sites, how to cross-reference sites by business model). Wish I could worry about that instead of the mechanics of site management.

People As Programmers

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:53:09 +0000

I was bouncing around a post on Web 3.0 and reflected a bit on my more juvenile post on this. I’m throwing my hat into Eric Schmidt’s ring where Web 3.0 will be people as programmers, mixing and matching their own applications together without the need for “professional help”. Web 1.0 was about people as consumers, 2.0 about people as producers, and Web 3.0 about people as programmers. Kind of like Bug Labs let you build your own mix-and-match gadgets, seems like the same will happen with the Web. The quote I found from Eric was:

My prediction would be that Web 3.0 will ultimately be seen as applications which are pieced together. There are a number of characteristics: the applications are relatively small, the data is in the cloud, the applications can run on any device, PC or mobile phone, the applications are very fast and they’re very customizable.

It’s from the Seoul Digital Forum over a year ago but, hey, I kind of liked my “people as” progression and thought I’d at least post that. Plus I’ve been downloading all the latest iPhone apps (but don’t understand why I can’t seem to find an international time conversion app). B)

Connectoring to the Connectory

admin — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:52:49 +0000

I do like this phrasing that Whitepages.com is using to describe itself according to Greg’s Directory to Connectory post. Too bad The California Network already owns Connectory.com. It seems like once you start out with “Pages” in your name, the brand just never seems to follow. Pages Jaunes (they in France) seems an exception. They’ve managed quite nicely to roll in their “Ville en Direct” local search service quite nicely under the main brand. And they’ve had something like a “connectory” under Pages Blanches as Espace Perso. I just don’t quite get the brand proposition for Whitepages.com. You can give them your personal cell phone number and then you can “be connected when you are on the go” or “choose to receive direct calls”. I thought that’s why you got a cell phone in the first place. These guys are in a perfect position to become a national identity and location manager. If they would start connecting OpenID identity and FireEagle location to cell phone management they would really be on to something. Of course, it would have to be under a new brand but that could be under or driven from Whitepages.com. Ah, but for the wont of a directory go I…

The Fat Body of Local Product Search

admin — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:19:31 +0000

Two posts come together for me. One, Finding Products in Local Stores Now and the other Debunking ‘The Long Tail’. I’m all about de-coupling of products and services from the businesses that provide them (I like disaggregating but I’ve realized that’s just my vestigial MBA speak). I’ve always been a little suspicious of the Long Tail - and I’m a little suspicious of it’s debunking. I think the sweet spot is neither the “big head” or the “long tail” but that juicy middle part ( sexy body ;). I think it comes together with product, specifically. I’ve just got the perspective that what we really need is a service for finding things like “Sports Sandals” before finding the “Sun Trax Sandal from Columbia, Size 10 1/2, Espresso Color.” There’s a process that most people go through to figure out a product category first and that needs to be tied to the businesses that provide that category. Then, it’s appropriate to start promoting brands and finally the SKU. Seems like a couple of layers are missing. Something off the shoulder perhaps?

Imagine Every Vertical as a YP Category

admin — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 15:21:05 +0000

I couldn’t resist a little turn on Greg’s phrasing for Imagine Every YP Category as a Vertical. I wholly agree with the basic premise that YP categories are an anachronism and that they merge together into what we may as well call verticals (although on a many-to-one rather than on a one-to-one basis as his title implies). As Greg points out what makes them work is additional content and functionality relevant to the immediate consumer buying need. While this is a good thing I don’t think that it’s necessary that this added value has to be delivered in a dedicated “vertical” site. I think that there’s a lot of value that can be delivered by a site that helps you manage both your auto and home repair needs; That in fact, there’s a lot of scale in that there scope (a repair business is a repair business is a repair business). The trick would be in developing common functionality across these “horizontals” and then adding the unique content relevant to the “verticals”. Then, I would get a site that could conceivably help me decide whether I should fix my car or relocate to somewhere near the light rail. It would be like a Web 3.0 YP site. Just maybe without the YP part.

Cue record and outro: “Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.” - The Who, Baba O’Reilly (no relation to Tim).

Google Maps - More, Not Richer Data

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:59:50 +0000

Tammy Stern from Google posted on the Google Lat Long Blog about Bringer Richer Data to a Local Search Near You. I sorted of hinted at this on my iPhone post yesterday. More is not necessarily richer. Sure, it’s great to have pictures and reviews but consider this search for Nespresso I was referring to yesterday (on mobile). There’s only one Nespresso retail outlet in NYC on Madison. The corporate offices were on 5th but they moved to Long Island. And they’ve never had any offices on 52nd. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Google Maps. But more isn’t necessarily richer. I’d at least like location results de-duplicated, I’d like my retail results come up first, and I’d like accurate information related to occupancy. What I’d really also like to know is that I can get Nespresso at Bloomingdales too. Now THAT’s rich local search (and a rich brew too).

iPhone GPS and Google Mobile Search

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:09:09 +0000

As widely suspected Apple announces GPS support in the new iPhone according to MacRumors. The only saving grace in this is that Google Maps still really doesn’t do mobile search particularly well. For example, I was recently looking for a nearby FedEx branch. The nearest one to me turned out to only do commercial work. I was also recently in NYC looking for the Nespresso outlet. I got the corporate headquarters. I wonder if Google will ever really care to make this more accurate. Certainly having GPS on the iPhone is going to push them to make it better.

Real-Time Local Activity: Citysense Heat Maps

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:46:03 +0000

Brady posted up Citysense: Let’s You Know What Everybody’s Doing at O’Reilly Radar. The time is coming when we are augmenting reality with anonymous aggregated data showing where people are actually going. Right now, the Citysense application gives you real-time heat maps of Blackberry users in San Francisco only. My first impression is: My God, everyone’s downtown! My second impression is: Eew, they’re Blackberry users. Still, this is just going to be everyday content very soon and it needs to be factored into Local strategies. What I did find valuable that Brady pointed out is that Sense Networks, parent company, has segmented users into different “tribes”, like the Night Life tribes using Machine Learning. You have to play the animation to look how they get this picture. As always, I find “Machine Learning” as just another way of saying “Bayesian Statistics” but I’m still bitter about AI.

The Buyer Klein Bottle

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:24:35 +0000

Greg’s post: Marchex Unveils ‘AdHere’ Network included a “Consumer Purchase Funnel”, something that guides a lot of strategic thinking in Local which Greg feels might be largely a fiction. It’s the simplicity of Greg’s conceptualization that’s the problem. I’ve provided the correct conceptualization here.