LIVEdigitally

Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?  There was a time when you’d send off an email, and not have complete confidence it would reach it’s destination properly intact.  Web site developers/managers used to have to build multiple versions of their sites just to make sure the presentation was as desired.  Also, you may recall hearing about some new cool Internet company, but by the time you got home, can’t recall it’s somewhat goofy name.  Quick check, is it 10 years ago, or yesterday?

I really can’t believe how bad the state of email is.  There’s so much anti-spam safeguards in place that it’s now “the norm” to see an email from a very trusted source sitting in the junk box, or worse yet, killed by the ISP.  This problem is exacerbated for people like myself who have independent domain names, which inevitably get taken over by automatic spam “bots”.  I use the mass-BCC trick for sending my geek dinner emails, and each month one or two people send me a note telling me it got stuck in the trash.  It is absolutely pathetic that there is no way to guarantee emails between trusted relationships.  Shame on everyone from Barracuda to Microsoft to Google for not having a solution in place, or even on the horizon.  I especially don’t understand the 28 percent of users who say “spam is not a problem” in their worlds!

Next up: Web browsers.  There’s no doubt that Internet Explorer versions 4, 5, and 6’s near-complete dominance of the browser market had its down side.  But other than lackluster performance and a weak, outdated feature set, I’m not sure what it was.  The Web, for lack of a better phrase, just worked!  Now we have IE6 and 7 on the market, we have Safari (terrible), and Firefox, all with a distributed share of users.  Sure this sounds good - Democracy In Action, yay! - but all I know is I see more and more Web sites broken for one or more browsers, all the time.  I don’t know exactly whose fault it is, but at least when Microsoft ran the show building Web sites was straightforward and reliable.

Okay, that’s enough ranting for the day, but seriously - why are we (we being the technology industry as a whole) allowing the basics to drop into such a deplorable state?  Maybe we need a little less attention on the AJAX and Wikis, and a little more on the things that impact core productivity.  It’s analogous to the cell phone industry, building really pretty-looking phones that can capture and stream TV-quality video, but still drop calls and have terrible battery life. 

But I do have hope that by 2017 it’ll be a little better.  Not much, mind you, but a little.

In a flurry of Google-related news today (and even something from Microsoft), the company announced their intent to acquire the Internet-based custom clothes company CafePress.com.  Similar to the process with last year’s YouTube acquisition, the CafePress brand will remain intact as the company begins a multi-year technology integration.  With the acquisition, Google will also initiate a new service, dubbed AdWear, enabling personalized direct advertising on clothing.

In the AdWear program, advertisers have access to select the type of clothes they want to have their ads appear on, and may even select based on the sizing.  This flexibility and personalization is a “classic Google approach” as it allows the advertisers to directly target the markets they want to reach.  Thus a company such as Trojan could purchase ads on customized thongs and pajamas, while Krispy Kreme could focus on plus-sized clothing.

“Never before have advertisers had such control over asserting their brands on a truly individualized basis,” said Google’s Marissa Mayer.  “With AdWear, companies can finally reach out directly to the markets they have sought after for years.  We expect to see numerous cost-per-clothes campaigns begin shortly after the acquisition is closed.”

In a not-too-surprising move, Google further announced that all future products made by the CafePress team will ship to consumer for free.  Two sample designs are shown below:

For more details on this and other of today’s stories, read Nick Douglas’ thoughts here.

There’s a bit of a brouhaha about Digg right now.  I read an article by David Cohn (formerly of the LD!) yesterday on the so-called “Bury Brigade” (the people who apparently hide unwanted stories from getting well-Dugg) and then today started off with a band as a Wired reporter demonstrated the effectiveness of “buying” her way onto Digg.  This caused quite the stir across the good ol’ blogosphere (read more: Boing Boing, Mike Arrington, and Mathew Ingram).

Now, while I’ve mentioned Digg a couple of times (1 2), this really isn’t the kind of right/wrong debate I typically delve into.  Why?  Well, as I advise my clients, getting Dugg might bring you traffic, but it doesn’t necessarily bring you highly relevant traffic, and can be as much a distraction as anything else.  Also, unless you are a tiny startup trying to get said traffic, it doesn’t necessarily really matter in the long run anyway.

The reason I say this is because the demographics around Digg are so wide and so varied, with a clear leaning towards “high-tech” and, well, young.  Five minutes of reading comments on any random post shows the level of mature thought and discussion is about on par with your typical AOL chat room or MySpace profile.  Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it also isn’t necessarily a good one.

I’ve always assumed that Kevin Rose and the Digg team have good intentions.  Never met em, I don’t listen to their podcasts, I actually have no personal reason to think that.  But something about the techie nature of the site seemed to imply a certain youthful energy combined with a bit of an innocence that made me feel that they were trying to do some good (and not in the Google way of saying they aren’t evil, yet acting the opposite).

So when I first learned a bit about the concept of the ‘bury brigade’ and the ever-changing algorithms, I had assumed the Digg system was trying to evolve to follow a “Communist” structure.  All people can participate equally.  Those who participate more regularly become more noticed and influential, but ultimately anyone can rise/fall in the “esteem” of the masses.  UPDATE: while further researching this topic, I found Mike Arrington’s article “Digg should sue Wired” is presently the #1 Dugg story on Digg, and not a single negative-to-Digg article is anywhere to be found…

When I read Kevin’s blog post today, my feelings turned from being reminded of a Communist entity, into one more akin to the KGB.  Despite all the points made by so many different people regarding Digg and burying posts, Kevin manages to write an entire post that basically boils down to not providing any new information.  He doesn’t address most concerns, he doesn’t mention plans to fix problems, he basically says “spam is bad” and “the data on this page is inaccurate” (I paraphrased).  Note that Kevin’s post is a top-10 item on Digg (at this moment).

I guess in Digg land, all users may Digg/bury equally, but some do it more equally than others.

It’s pretty easy: Become a consultant/studio who provides services that get First Life companies onto Second Life.

I say this because it’s about the only way I see to actually be profitable off the site/game/world.  The guys at Linden Labs (the company behind Second Life, or SL as they call it) are possibly the best hype-masters I’ve ever seen.  For example, today their partner Universal Pictures issued a press release with the title “‘Smokin’ Aces: Second Life Assassin’ Game Proves an Unprecedented Hit in Virtual World.” Unprecedented Hit, eh?  There isn’t a single stat of any kind in the release text - no usage, performance, subscribers, etc.  Nothing.

I’ve watched two main themes emerge on SL in the past two weeks:

1. “Tech leaders” think Second Life could be a “gold mine” (discussion: BlackRimGlasses, CNNMoney)
2. Second Life is a pyramid scheme (discussion: ValleyWag, Capitalism 2.0, Duncan Riley)

I also enjoyed Mathew Ingram’s and Webomatica’s thoughts on SL and these issues. All stats below come from one of these or the above sources.

Now I don’t know if it’s a game or a world, and I don’t much care.  I know I believe the ~100,000 users number more than I do the 2,000,000 users number.  But fundamentally it doesn’t matter to me.  When clients come to me to ask my opinion on SL, I just don’t want them spending money on it today. When I see companies like ShowTime launch a show property in SL (congrats to Akela, a former LD blogger!), I don’t understand how they cost-justify it.

Today, like it or not, SL is a small number of people enjoying their free reign in a fantasy world.  They are, for the most part, very technically savvy. There’s a lot of gaming, gambling, and sex in SL.  When I read there’s a Second Life millionnaire, I want to see that person actually cash out before I get excited.  I’ve seen virtual press conferences and read about someone finding a job there.  That’s nice.

The bottom line is there are few users and it’s a very narrow niche.  Furthermore, in order to get in as a big company, you have to be willing to invest a lot of money, since it requires a very specific skill-set.  While some might say “sounds like 1995 and the Web all over again” I point out one quick difference: when new users try Second Life, most do not return.  The same was simply not the case 12 years ago. 

So, want to take advantage of the Second Life “gold mine”?  Jump on the bandwagon and ride the gravy train as long as you can.  That is, until the pyramid begins to crumble…

I’m a big LinkedIn fan.  I’ve used it to hire people.  I’ve used it to get work.  I’ve used it to reconnect with people.  I’ve used it to help make introductions.  With the small exception of some privacy concerns, it’s one of my favorite Web applications.  And based on their growth rate, I’m not the only one (Mark Evans agrees, Robert Scoble doesn’t).  I like Plaxo too, although I use it very differently (Plaxo is ideal as a contact manager, especially if you move to a new PC every year or so like me).

LinkedIn tends to start as one of those annoying emails you see from recruiters and headhunters, as well as people who you meet once at a party but they save your card and ping you a few months later.  Over time you get a request from an actual friend or two, then a coworker and colleague.  Eventually, you start getting the emails multiple times per week or per day, then you tend to either blacklist it or succumb to the overwhelming pressure.

I saw Guy Kawasaki’s recent post on his LinkedIn profile refresh, and last night I decided it was time to spam people update my network, so I decided to try something a little different.  Rather than the standard LinkedIn greeting:

I’ve started using LinkedIn to keep up with my professional contacts and help them get introduced to people they need to contact. Since we’ve worked together and know each other well, I’d like to invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn.

I’d be glad to recommend you and put you in touch with anyone in my network. In fact, I’ve found quite a few people we both know on LinkedIn.

Basic membership is free, and signing up takes less than a minute.

Double-Yawn! Here’s what I sent out (with the subject line: “Standard LinkedIn invite”):

This is your official invitation to the worlds biggest party. Please RSVP now. It’ll be a lot of fun, I promise!

- Jeremy

ps - there appears to be a typo above, when I wrote “worlds biggest party” I meant to write “my network on LinkedIn.” Sorry for any confusion.

pps - and then, naturally, the whole RSVP thing really doesn’t make sense when taken out of context, does it? just go ahead and ignore that part. (blog note: I fixed a typo)

ppps - strike the last sentence too.

Here’s my LinkedIn page - it could probably use a little more work, but I know it represents me pretty well.  I recommend reviewing the seemingly defunct LinkedIn Notes blog for more thoughts on maximizing the use of the site.

The talk of the town today (recommended reading: IP Democracy, PhoneScoop, TechCrunch) is the announcement that Verizon and YouTube are doing a deal.  Quick summary: you have to be a VCast subscriber and from the NY Times:

YouTube said its editors would select short videos from its library for the Verizon Wireless service. Verizon Wireless said it would vet the videos to make sure they met the company’s editorial and taste guidelines.

“We’ll select content that has the broadest appeal and the highest entertainment value,” Ms. Liang said.

 The funniest read on it so far comes from fellow Canadian Mathew Ingram:

I know that Forrest Gump said “Stupid is as stupid does,” but there’s really no other word for what Verizon is doing with its much-heralded launch of YouTube video on cellphones. I mean, really. How much stupider could this get? The answer, to paraphrase Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap, is none — none stupider. Fred Wilson sums it up in a single word: Lame. In fact, this deal is right off the lame-o-meter. How do I lame-ify thee? Let me count the ways.

Now I agree with this as lame, but not for the same reasons as others.  Fred wrote “This deal violates the entire ethos of YouTube, not free, not open, exclusive, no community, limited, censorship, etc, etc.” and over on LostRemote I read “I don’t see this as being an especially tempting offering - it goes against the free spirit attitude of YouTube.”  These are fair points, but not what I perceive as the most important flaw in the plan.

People don’t surf to YouTube because it’s free or open, nor because of the site’s free spirit.  Actually, people don’t really surf to YouTube much at all.  Whoa, slow down - I know they serve a kajillion videos a day (or is that bajillion?).  What’s key about all this is how people use YouTube. 

They share.  They link.  They blog.  They email.  They don’t surf.

When YouTube serves 200,000 streams of a video, it’s not because 200,000 people come over to YouTube.com, and go find videos to watch.  It’s because people were sent there by friends, colleagues, and blogs.  YouTube is viral, not programmed.  And that’s the key flaw in the Verizon/YouTube relationship.

They should scrap the budget on the ‘editors’ and instead invest on building a simple technology that allows people to SMS the clips they watch to each other.  Not only will this increase usage of the service, it’ll also increase SMS traffic (something the carriers like a lot) and will also help incent new users to pay for VCast.

John Markoff stirred up the pot this weekend by launching Web 3.0, even while good ol’ Web 2.0 is still in beta (or alpha).  And I didn’t even get to go to the launch party, although I did get to spend some time in the halls of the Web 2.0 conference.  And the halls were the place to be for the conference - that’s where all the cool kids were hanging out (although I did cheer on Sling Media’s Blake Krikorian as he spoke with Beth Comstock from NBC - unfortunately John’s moderation of that session left a little something to be desired in my opinion).Nick Carr is applauding the 3.0 upgrade with his own personal style:

Personally, I’m overjoyed that Web 3.0 is coming. When dogcrap 2.0 sites like PayPerPost and ReviewMe start getting a lot of attention, you know you’re seeing the butt end of a movement. (There’s a horrible metaphor trying to get out of that last sentence, but please ignore it.) Besides, the arrival of 3.0 kind of justifies the whole 2.0 ethos. After all, 2.0 was about escaping the old, slow upgrade cycle and moving into an age of quick, seamless rollouts of new feature sets. If we can speed up software generations, why not speed up entire web generations? It doesn’t matter if 3.0 is still in beta - that makes it all the better, in fact.

Now the whole blogosphere is abuzz debating 2.0 v 3.0 v ???  Nick Bradbury states: “This weekend much of the geekosphere was buzzing about the “Web 3.0″ article in the NY Times, but from where I stand, Web 3.0 does not validate.”  Tim O’Reilly, Mr. Web 2.0 himself, isn’t on board, and Robert Scoble wrote a fun piece referring to it as Web 2007.  Dan Farber seems to sit on the fence a little bit, but then Nick at Valleywag (nice redesign) goes straight for the jugular:

In short, the Times wants to announce a trend just in case that trend actually materializes in the next few months. But don’t bet on it — Google smelled a dud and didn’t touch this story, and neither should anyone looking for the real next big thing.

Here’s a summary of what I think, in easy to digest bullet form:

• The term “Web 3.0″ will not gain general acceptance.  Web 2.0 is too nebulous on its own, and since it’s more like an “era” than it is a “version number” it makes more sense that it’ll be identified further into the future as we look back on the era past Web 2.0.
• Agents are coming.  If Web 2.0 is (roughly) all about AJAX, XML, and open APIs, then the logical evolution of implementing these technologies are intelligent agents.  Agents don’t just tell me when a stock hits a price, agents tell me that I should buy some GOOG because my peers and my portfolio reflect that I’d be interested in it.  Agents figure out that this weekend I am most interested in restaurants X, Y, and Z, and should hit a club where the DJ I like (because he spins the same music I have in my collection) has a set.  Agents use the open datasets and figure things out for me.
• Data mining technologies are important.  Anyone can collect data.  Anyone can present data.  Anyone can sort alphabetically.  Building intelligence requires much deeper data analysis where datasets are viewed as a matrix of data, where seemingly unrelated information finally comes together to make sense.  These technologies become the building blocks for the next generation of web services (agents, remember?).
• Buzzwords are getting more obnoxious.  Even if there is a new era right around the corner (which seems doubtful), do we really need to label it???

I still miss the days when you had to design your Web site to ask users whether or not their browser could support tables.  Sigh.

As is becoming more and more of the case these days, a new site or service launches, and it’s all anyone is talking about.  And here I am, following in the footsteps.  Sigh.

Over the last couple of years I’ve met senior executives from virtually every major electronics (and mainstream) retailer, and have learned a tremendous amount about consumers and how they shop (both online and offline).  For example, did you know that in traditional, married households the so-called “head of household” (read: man) makes less than 5% of all major purchasing decisions alone, whereas almost 90% of the decisions are made solo by the wife?  And I’m not being sexist here, I know there are tons of people and lifestyles that don’t fit this pattern.  But in the majority of US households, most spending in the home is done by the woman, without consulting the husband. 

Want another neat data point?  Men buy things based on features, descriptions, etc.  Women buy things visually.  You know how most online retailers work today?  Lots of descriptions, text, features and benefits, complemented with a few pictures. So what does this all add up to?  Most online shopping sites today are missing out on the majority of buyers.  What’s missing? The visuals.  Welcome to like.com.

Like.com (from Riya) is a visual shopping system.  There are a few hands-on reviews and commentary you can read (pick your favorite: ZDNet, GigaOm, TechCrunch, BusinessWeek, Robert Scoble, Thomas Hawk).  I’m going to skip the usual rigamarole of anaylizing how good their algorithms work, go check out one of the others’ for that.  Whether it’s perfect or not today, I generally have enough faith in engineers and entrepreneurs that they’ll continue to improve it to the point where it works as promised.  And if they don’t, well, someone else will come along instead.  Instead, I’m a bit more interested in the launch itself.

Right now, they have focused on fashion (a move Don Dodge likes).  If you go back and read above and recall that the biggest category of shoppers in the US is women, I think this is a phenomenal move.  I’ve seen other newfangled attempts to launch online stores, with wikis and whatis and kiwis and whatnot, but at the end of the day, in my opinion there is no opportunity for doing this in the tech market.  If you want to buy a digital camera or a Slingbox or a plasma, buy.com + amazon.com + cnet is sufficient for 90% of the market. 

But if a woman wants to buy shoes or purses online, the current offerings are in every way unsatisfactory.  Yeah, there’s some pictures and all, but it’s not enough.  It approaches the sale from a male perspective.  Like.com is the right approach to this huge, untapped market.  So now the question is, can they market the service correctly?

Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington give them praise for their methods of swamping the blogosphere (more details from the CEO himself).  I agree with them, they did hit the bloggers and hit them perfectly.  But my question is - did they hit the right blogosphere?  They sure got the Web 2.0 and technology bloggers abuzz.  And I’ll bet they got a ton of guys to hit the site today.  But I have a hunch their sales numbers are going to be dismal compared to their traffic.

Like.com needs to do some very aggressive viral and traditional marketing, and they need to do it to the right audience.  The traffic from today’s spike may well diminish to nothing very very quickly, unless all us technophiles are out there telling their wives and girlfriends about the site.  I’m sure they’ll own the term “visual shopping” in Google for a while, but who cares?  It’s not as if there are flocks of women googling that term right now (otherwise you’d already see different results from that term than you do today).

So congratulations on the launch, team Like.  You have built a potentially huge success.  Executing on it is a big challenge, and hopefully you’ll set your sights on the right market, because the one you are after did not hear about your site launch today.

UPDATE: Robert Scoble pointed out that in his interview with Munjal Shah, Like.com/Riya’s CEO, Munjah mentions an extensive press tour with fashion and consumer magazines.  Scoble also did a video demo of Like.com which you can check out as well.  But unlike Maryam, my wife does buy stuff online (and sells stuff too), however she didn’t have a great Like.com experience today - but I’m sure I can get her back to try again… 

When I first registered with Technorati (the de-facto standard service for tracking the so-called blogosphere), I had about 1 incoming link, and my ranking was about 1 millionth.  David Sifry, Technorati’s CEO, gave his “state of the Blogosphere” report today, in which he claimed the site is now tracking roughly 57 million blogs, and revealed the following statistics:

• The blogosphere doubles roughly every 230 days
• As of October 2006, about 100,000 new weblogs were created each day
• The total posting volume of the blogosphere is showing about 1.3 million postings per day

My first reaction: holy freaking crap!  Where are all these blogs?  Does this count every new entry into Vox, MSN Spaces, MySpace pages, and all the other “quick havens” where people get their feet wet blogging?  What are they writing about? 

I also noticed another stat in the report: About 55% of all blogs are active, which means that they have been updated at least once in the last 3 months. Which means, if I do my math, that my blog (with a Technorati ranking of ~22K at the time of writing) is in the top 1% of all tracked, active blogs. 

Here’s where it gets crazy: my traffic and links don’t even come close to 1% of the Top 100 ranked blogs.  Maybe I don’t post enough (thoughts on post frequency here and here)?  More thoughts on Sifry’s post over at IP Democracy.

My second reaction: Really now, where are they?  According to Sifry’s stats, about 40% of blogging is in English (more on language here), which means I should have the ability to discover about 40,000 new blogs every day.  But I don’t see em anywhere.  Sure, every now and then a new blog appears to gain some momentum and link traction, but at the end of the day, the discovery process for new blogs is pretty bad.

Maybe Technorati (or someone else) should introduce new services to get new blogs “on the radar?”  It’d be nice if there was a way to gain some attention, other than hoping/praying that Robert Scoble reads (and links to) one of your posts. Sifry does make a variety of points on the notion of a blogger’s “authority” but, other than by writing some Top 10 list, it ain’t easy to get noticed these days.

Back in the late 90s, workplace boredom often led to Web surfing.  The only thing is, the “discovery” element was pretty tricky, and you pretty much had to rely on word-of-mouth or links from Yahoo!.  Well, with the fun of Web 2.0, we have a bunch of new services that let people help each other find new and interesting stuff online.  Well, maybe not interesting, but at least new.

The top of these social bookmarking (as the term is called) services are Digg, Delicious (now owned by Yahoo), and Reddit (now owned by Conde Nast/Wired). I’ve recently started using both Digg (here’s my Digg profile) and Delicious (more on that in a few days), and find they really can help cure the “I’m bored and I want to surf for 10 minutes” syndrome. With each of them you can track your friends’ favorites and there are a variety of methods to see what’s new or what’s popular.  Only thing is “what’s popular” isn’t necessarily what the term typically implies.

If you want to to know the most popular movies, you can read the box office reports.

Most popular TV shows, Nielsen (which nobody really trusts, but nothing else is out there just yet).

Web sites?  Well, now you have a variety of unreliable services.

But for “Links of the day” you have things like the Digg home page.  Which is built dynamically based on some mysterious algorithm.  In the first era of Digg, the home page was pretty much dictated by the “Top 100” users.  The specifics of how to become a Top 100 weren’t exactly clear, but it basically was a self-rewarding process.  Once in, it’s nearly impossible to get out, and a new user has about 0 odds of getting in.  And the Top 100 were happy. 

Then team Digg decided to change their algorithms, to try to make it a bit more “fair and balanced.”  Sounds good, right?  Well, to everybody not in the Top 100, it’s quite good, as the “What’s Popular” list no longer reflects what they think is interesting, but what the entire Digg community thinks is interesting.  Which leaves the Top 100 feeling a little left out.

I do understand their feeling this way, as they spent countless hours contributing to the site.  Maybe they should have their own special section, or be an automatic filter of the home page or something.  They should get a little kudos and “thank-you” (and not just a T-shirt).  But the site has evolved, and its for the better.  It ain’t exactly a democracy just yet, but we’ll call it a Diggocracy and move on.

Hopefully they’ll work on fixing the “disappearing cookie” problem now…

About a year and a half ago the blogosphere was, shall we say, all-a-twitter, about a new startup called Odeo.  They were founded as a “podcasting company” and that was pretty much the last we ever heard from them (which could be because they seem to have annoyed Mike Arrington, which is apparently a curse worse than death in the Web 2.0 world).  Although if you’d ever had the chance to run into someone who worked there, you’d generally get lectured on end about how amazing they were and how much they were going to change the world.  I even recall a Stanford intern who visited my office and was choosing between working for them or for Google (my hunch is that he chose… poorly).

While doing a little research, I found a great article on GigaOm where the founder of the company, Evan Williams, espoused on some mistakes they made.  Notably absent from the list are things like “generating revenue” and “have a sales and marketing plan.”  That said, I do applaud anyone who takes the time to reflect as such, especially in a public forum.

Today Evan announced that he is now founding a new company, called Obvious Corp, and they have purchased Odeo’s assets (which is marketing-speak for “bought the chairs, desks, servers, logos, a little software, and the foosball table”).  So the question that comes to mind for me is: what is going to change?

From Evan’s blog:

The Obvious model goes something like this:

Build things cheaply and rapidly by keeping teams small and self-organized.

Leverage technology, know-how, and infrastructure across products (but brand them separately, so they’re focused and easy to understand)

Use the aggregate attention and user base of the network to gain traction for new services faster than they could gain awareness independentlyAs services mature, the goal is to get them to profitability with advertising and/or subscriptions, so they can add to the network (and fund more building). 

As Fred Wilson stated, this is, in fact, fairly obvious.  It’s the classic Idealab model, and it’s definitely a fun way to run a company.  But it’s also an extremely expensive model.  Roughly 9 in 10 startups completely fail, and then roughly 9 in 10 of the ones that “make it” have minor acquisitions that make a few people a nice chunk of change, but leave the majority of the teams involved unsatiated.  This leaves us with about 1% of companies that can “pull a Youtube” (although Idealab did start the company which eventually became Overture, which Yahoo bought, so that’s probably a pretty good win in the long term). UPDATE: I originally posted that Google acquired Overture, but Ryan pointed out it was Yahoo - thanks for the comment Ryan!

So the question at hand is (it’s a 2-parter): how much money does Obvious have to run (and where is it coming from) and how big is the team they are building to create all these new services.  Hopefully they can spin something out fast enough to generate enough revenue to pay for the development of the rest of the services - I do like the model of aggregating all these types of resources together.  Maintaining Google Labs is a lot easier when you have an Adsense to pay the hosting fees.

For those of you who live in caves, up on trees, or under rocks, Google launched a Custom Search feature this past week (lots more coverage here). The basic concept is this: anyone can go to Google co-op, login, and create a new custom search with their own favorite sites and some predefined search categories (called refinements).  So here’s the LD Gadget Search:

Try searching for some kind of, well, gadget.  Go ahead, it won’t hurt.

Ok, if you don’t want to do so, I’ve gone ahead and done some searches to try it out.

For my first test, I tried PPC as my search term.  In gadgetland, we know PPC means PocketPC (search results here), but check out if you search for PPC in all of Google.  Pilgrims Pride??

Second try, searching for the Slingbox.  LD Gadget vs Google general.  Well, in this case the search sites are basically news/reviews/blogs/pricing sites, and don’t include any manufacturers, so my custom search did not outperform the generic one.

Third test, searching for iPod prices.  I used the ‘Prices’ refinement (which I built with a few comparison and shopping sites) to get these results, versus searching for ipod prices on Google.  I think my customization here gave significantly worse results, and will need to go see if its something I should do different (bad grammar out of courtesy to the Apple marketing department).

Fourth up, looking for Zune news.  I figured I’d try a hot term, and built a ‘news’ refinement (results here) to compare against Google.  Now these results are quite interesting, as the generic search surfaced the dozens of new Zune news sites which have popped up.  Personally, I prefered the custom results, as I am more interested in Engadget’s update than I am in adding ZuneNation to my news sources (no offense or anything to that site, I just don’t feel like adding more sites to my already overlong bookmarks and links lists).

I’ll keep working on the LD Gadget Search to see if I can make it a really useful resource over time.  In the meantime, please feel free to add any suggestions to the implementation.  Also, in the very nature of the “co-op” it’s easy to have additional folks come in and edit the sites and settings, so come on in, the water’s fine!