Seeing Forests

So, I guess I just hadn’t seen this in Denver until now but doing a search in Google Maps for a location in our local shopping Mecca called Cherry Creek, I saw that Google Maps has all kind of little icons for the businesses layered over top of the map.  Great for what I’ve always wanted, support for discovery, not just search.  I started tweaking some of the marker locations (to get them out of the middle of a block) and then got linked over to the “Map Your World” discussion forum.  This was what the New York Times was referring to in “Everyman Offers New Directions” the other day.  Perhaps not as interesting as Pakistan and India fighting over the borders of Kashmir, but it works for me.  The next step in discovery to me is to have some kind of layer that can you find similar Meccas when traveling.

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Another example of human vs machine - TIVO saying it’s going to change the channel I’m watching to what it’s been programmed to record.  If I’m watching something the default should be to NOT change the channel to what it thinks I should watch.  The default should be what I, the human, is watching.  It should give me the option to watch what the automaton wants me to watch, not the other way around.

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At the core of Google’s principle is to “do no evil”.  I submit the corollary holds - “do no good”.  I submit that Google is fundamentally an automaton.  A machine.  Differentiating from Google is to differentiate between machine and human.  Their greatest strength reveals their greatest weakness.

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Seems like the new “Mood Messages” feature on Skype could just as easily be called “What are you doing?”

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Greg takes Another Look at Google Places Pages and it’s a good one.  Realizing there was only so much you could put in a pop-up tabbed window, Google moves to creating a set of place pages at varying levels of geographic scale, from cities through neighborhoods to attractions and finally to businesses themselves.  Of course, it’s done in the “Google Way” which is like “when the student is ready, the master will appear” or “when the data is ready, the algorithm shall appear.”  And you get content accordingly.  Here’s a quick analysis of what content’s available at what levels.  Of course, the more you “zoom in” the more detailed information becomes available (cities just don’t have phone numbers).   We came at this from the user-generated side with Local Guides (aka Guidespot).  We provided tools users could use to generate place pages (or guides) like this to Copper Mountain that included adding descriptions, photos, videos, lists of popular businesses, directions on getting there, and related areas.  Of course the “Local Paradox” means that such strategies will continue to be challenged by providing highly relevant pages but generating relatively low traffic.  Having more such pages may push the traffic as people realize they will be more rewarded by conducting these kinds of searches.  I continue to think that the answer lies somewhere in-between the auto-generated and the human-curated.  Apparently you still can’t beat “Cats inside Sinks!” for traffic, though.

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I’m a little sketchy on this Techcrunch post about Centrl (where, oh where are all the poor vowels going).  There are a lot of claims in here about being first that I’m just not buying.  One thing that doesn’t seem to be a first is a business model.  I’m sure there’s one in there somewhere what with all the posting and sending and sharing and texting and browsing.

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I think that a new Skype Platform might offer something up in the near future like the Apple App Store to developers and particularly local developers.  As someone in the comments pointed out Andreesen is leading the buyout consortium and on the board of Facebook.  I’ve said something about the crossover between Skype and Facebook.  Looks like this might be a perfect little storm of opportunity.

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I think this is pretty funny but also somewhat informative as to what a fairly aware group of PR folks - along with some collaborative engineers - can do in this day and age to affect the blogosphere.  Putting up a feature that only certain IP networks can see is raft with possibilities.

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So, I was wondering what Google was going to do with all that white space on the right when I finally clicked on the Show Options.  Never saw this “Wonder Wheel” and “Timeline” views before (on Google at least).  Very nice.  Not exactly sure what the Local angle might be for the Wonder Wheel but it does make you think, I think…

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So, been out of it for the last month, training for this silly bike ride.  But, getting back in the groove and noticed this post on Google Voice from David Pogue.  Haven’t really looked at this service before (as I don’t quite have Mr. Pogue’s communication issues).  But interested in the impact on Skype and on Local in general where you have such a service with a single point-of-contact number with all of the features David outlines for local businesses: transcriptions, conference calling, low-cost international calling, web-based text message storage and retrieval, and ultimately, the inexorable push towards all calls are local calls.  Maybe this is more for the consumer than the SMB but it’s worth noodling over…

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