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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I have been trying to reserve an iPhone for a couple of days now. I keep getting this frakkin screen. Seems like every day, Apple becomes more like M$.
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Oh, so sad to see this domain transmigrate from its original manifestation. Good News Now as TechCrunch points out seems to be the new Readers Digest for the Net. As those of us who were there we remember when GNN was the Global Network Navigator from O’Reilly. It was a “new experiment in online publishing”. Alas, AOL has teamed with Sears to bring us the latest breaking news about a boy finding a 7 leaf clover and a teen nearing a perfect school attendance record. All supported by ads for Kenmore Grill. At least that ad is a little more interesting than the First Internet Ad on GNN from the O’Reilly lawyers for Heller Ehrman.
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So, Greg points out Google Squared but doesn’t bring up the local aspect that much. You have to check out searches for Sushi Denver or Plumbers Denver as below. Damn. ”Category” specific property/value comparison. Where have we heard that before? Of course, Local Matters has had comparison as an offering to its platform forever, taking advantage of the structured data of its customers. It’s amazing how Google keeps deconstructing this space, picking apart what seem to be solid competitive differentiators. This is currently kind of a “one off” experimental tool and it’s unclear if this will be integrated any time soon into the main results. It seems this would nicely fit alongside a local results map view (and it would be nice to be able to toggle between the two). My, my…
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I just took a bike ride but before I left I thought I’d get a GPS app for my iPhone (which took about 5 minutes from formal need recognition to cognitive dissonance resolution). I opted for the most downloaded app from MotionX. I was just looking for something to track my route around the lower southwestern quadrant of Metropolitan Denver. I wasn’t quite banking on all I found on this app, notably my ability to login with Facebook and to follow the company on Twitter. I mean, come on. I’m just riding a bicycle. But it does point up how applications are being deconstructed into focused, value-added services and kind of “websourcing” all the other needed services for identity (Facebook), status (Twitter), and images (Flickr). It’s the theme of Gluecon (which I think use to be Defrag). Pretty soon 9 year olds are going to be able to build apps.
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I know this was a typo, Turing YP Sites into Recommendations Engines at Screenwerk but I wouldn’t hesitate to say Greg is not only purposefully but accidentally prescient. His post was precipitated by Sebastien’s post I Have Seen the Future of Local Media (and it is us, if I might say, with a little nod to Pogo - we have met the enemy and he is us). Yep, no doubt the time is coming where it is as easy to ask for recommendations from friends online as it is in person. As we go online we have the benefit of asking progressively larger and proportionately more socially distant groups of people for their opinions. What you gain in numbers you lose in relevancy as the larger and further you go the less people know about you and the particular relevance of recommendations to you personally. This is why I do agree that building a recommendation framework within YP sites is the way to go. I see the future distinction between YP and Search Engines like Google in much the same way I see the distinction between Google and WolframAlpha. One does text search through documents the other does query resolution through databases. A simplification, for sure, but it points in the direction of how YP needs to move from business name lookup (already lost to Google) and simple category perusal (rapidly losing to Google and verticals) to more of an on-going problem-solving partner. In that case, YP has an advantage if it’s able to leverage more knowledge of its users, to become one of their trusted partners, to become the hub of the recommendation network for consumers. I see a combination of a social recommendation network and a problem-solving recommendation engine that can support word-of-mouth, facilitate merchant participation and provide a place for an intelligent third-party broker. I doubt such a thing would pass the Turing Test, but it would be an intelligent step forward.
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