Web 2.0 Ideas
I was discussing this morning, with a couple of co-workers, the future of the Web. One of them postulated that search engines will eventually cease and decease, not for the reason cited earlier, but because eventually searches will be built in to a browser. I disagree as it would require every major search engine player to release a browser if they want to be able to compete.
I do, however, think that most search engines will die someday as the Big Three take over and almost in monopoly style take over the industry. This was seen in the past, can you say
Altavista,
Lycos, and the likes. Though the companies are still around, they have shifted their efforts onto greener pastures beyond being just search engines. Most have followed the route of
Yahoo! by offering News, shopping and other services as their main goal.
Ask.com has tried to rebrand itself in an effort to come in to play, but even with the massive ad campaigns, they haven't been very successful.
With the search engine market cornered and every topic already discussed on the Web, how can a company enter this market? Well today I found something that has not yet been done. I will share this with you, as I know I don't have the resources to produce it. I was reading an article and wanted to forward to my friend. Most reputable sites provide the email to a friend icon. The do this for two reasons:
1. It allows them to get a second page view out of their visitor
2. Provides a service which will yield yet another page view when the friend comes to the site to read what was forwarded.
A very simple, but yet well designed concept. However, as I went to do this, I could not remember my friend's email address. I went to my outlook, but remember that his contact info resides in my home pc and I was at work. Then I asked myself, with so many resources in place devoted to toolbars, Web pages, how come no one has figured out a way to tie in a global address book accessible with the click of a button in the browser. At the bare minimum provide, the google toolbar should show me my gmail address book. They can detect keywords and target the ad-words accordingly, therefore, they should be able to see that I'm in an email page and present me with the option.
The bottom line is that with so many brilliant individuals out in the world looking for the next business opportunity, how come this thought have never crossed their mind. It doesn't seem that difficult to implement. I look forward to this option soon.
Why Google will die!
Search engine are a great resource for anyone looking to find content on the Web. As of this writing, 60% of Web traffic to the majority of blogs and most sites comes from Google. This is due to that most people are not loyal visitors to any particular site with the exception to search engine sites, and in some part to news providers.
The problem is that search engines don't care when was the last time a page was updated. My point was proven today when I was doing searches to detect the small version of the Firefox browser and was unsuccessful. Granted I was only doing my searches in google. No matter how I slice or diced my search terms I was coming up with the same pages and no answers.
The bottom line is that search engines better start caring about detecting page updates. Google's mission is to organize the Web content, however, they have better refine their mission as to organize the Web content, but provide the most up to date information. It is a big problem when all the code I found does not reflect answers to Firefox as it is a newer browser. The algorithm is very good, but is still flawed and full of gamed content. If it continue down this pattern 20 years from now all the search results would become obsolote, better start tackling this task now, the Web is still fairly young and yet it is already cluttered wih obsolote garbage. People design and create Web pages and quickly forget about them and mve on to their new venture, I know I'm guilty of this and I suspect there are millions who also have comitted this sin.
A Good Deed Deserves Publicity
I no longer watch the news on TV. I used to be a news junkie, I used to turn on the tube and flip around from CNN to MSNBC to ending my night with the local news. Those days are in now in the past.
I now only watch morbid shows such as
CSI Miami,
Nip/Tuck and my all time favorite, hope the season begins early,
Rescue Me. I also enjoy
CBS Monday night line-up of comedies, except for the odd show they always seem to stick in there, this season that show is the class.
Anyhow, I deviated from my main point here, the reason why I stopped watching the news is because there was nothing positive ever presented. There is only so much I can take about a CEO scamming its customers or his/her own company. Murders happened everyday, we should stop spreading the word about them and instead start doing something about it. The solution is not in putting fear into the communities, but in doing something about fixing the problem.
I read this blog entry today on the gadgets blog and it truly sounded like a great idea. Apparently David found this 30GB black iPod in one of his flights and decided to put up a blog post to reunite the owner of this expensive toy with the gadget. If you recently flew on United Airlines and lost your iPod, please
visit this blog.
With so much negative news, it would be great if the networks did a cover on something like this.
The bottom line is that we are so obsessed with seeing others suffer that we forget the good we could provide to society. A lot of today's most popular shows are designed to attract the masses into seeing characters be conniving and ruthless. Reality shows are all the same and we tune week after week with great anticipation to find out who will be sent home next. I guess this is no different than living your life through others. I like my own life so I guess I'll stick to just getting the entertainment factor out of the tube.
New Era of Spam
Today I received what appeared to be an undeliverable message. This is not strange as I have been known to produce a typo or two. However, this particular undeliverable email was different.
Typically the message would come from the outgoing mail server, however, the server name that produced the message is "mail.rivernet.net", a server which I did not recognized. This prompted my curiosity, I read the message an apparently
lisa@rivernet.net did not receive my message. The problem is that I have never heard of
rivernet.net or Lisa for that matter. This developed my curiosity even further and I decided to open the attachment to see what this was all about.
This was the message:
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As you can see this is clearly a spam message.
The bottom line is that for every block that is created, one clever individual finds a way around it. This is one of the reasons why spam will never cease. Billions of dollars are spent on wasted productivity due to the volume of spam received by the white collar sector. We have been informed to death by marketers. Isn't there someone out there who can put a real stop to this kind of nonsense?
Internet in the Classroom
I was just reading
this article about social networking and how people have finally started to loose interest in novelties such as
myspace and
facebook. Further reading there was some analysis from an University professor who preaches less blogging and prohibiting Internet in the classroom.
I don't agree with these final two statements. Let me start by defending my point on the first statement, "True friends, need to learn when to stop blogging and go across campus to help a friend." First off, what does blogging have to do with been a true friend. Friends are those who listen as well as share their experiences with one another. Blogging is sharing once experiences with the world. Blogging is also an emotional outlet for those who don't have any other way to get their message out. Lastly, how could an educator encourage individuals to stop sharing their knowledge and know how.
On the second topic at hand, "banning students from surfing the Internet during lectures," I don't suggest putting a stop to these, but more encourage educators to engage their students in conversation and discussions in the classroom. No one wants to spend an hour listening to someone ramble on and on about a specific subject matter. If you want your students to listen, you also have to listen to them. Share your thoughts, but allow them to share theirs as well. Banning computers/internet from the classroom sounds like ignoring the problem more than finding a solution to the problem; in the sense that, students start surfing the Web during classroom time when they are curious about something the teacher just said, or they are bored and the teacher has failed to engage the user into the lecture.
The bottom line is that we can't take back what is already in place, instead, we need to identify the problems that we face and locate a solution rather than punish. If being a parent has thought me anything is that you can punish your child countless times, but if they enjoy the action that got them to the punishment they will continue to perform it. The same can be said for our prison system where there are more repeat customers than new ones. In other words, you can offer a temporary solution, but the problem will reoccur. Instead, we need to find other methods that truly address the issues.
High Capacity Discs are Here
The news this morning from Sony studios is that it has release three movies on 50GB Blu-ray discs. WOW! This is huge, you will soon be able to buy not only high definition DVD's to enjoy in your new High Definition television, but you will also be able to see a lot more features included in these high definition discs.
Can you imagine been able to watch all the content of a traditional DVD then some all in one disc. There are promises of a lot more extended and deleted scenes, all and all this is a movie director's dream. However, this is probably not a big thing for those folks who traditionally go out and buy the DVDs. For folks like me who rent them via
Netflix or other movie rental outlets, this is big news as we will no longer need to crowd up our queues for double or triple the amount of items.
Further, this will have big implications in the not so distant futures, because these disc will virtually allow you to backup your computer data all in one thin DVD. This might actually mean the end of backup tapes and other storage media.
The bottom line is that the DVD industry still in its infancy and with prices still quite high for High Definition Televisions and other High Definition Components, I don't foresee a big leap for this, but at least there are items to look forward to in a year or two. To find out more about these movies coming out check out
this article
Innovation in the Real Estate Market
It seems to me that the Real Estate market has remain stagnant for the past couple of hundred years. You can argue that selling a home can't be change. The process is designed to be straight forward. The realtor pulls a listing for the client, the client finds the home of their dreams (or similar that they can afford) and the deal is close.
Granted they have been some technological innovations along the way, you have
realtor.com allowing buyers to find the home without the need to wait for the realtor, you have
zillow allowing buyers to estimate approximate cost of the houses in the area and comparables. This Web sites are quite well designed and allow the user to customize their searches. Then, you have the technology to drive by the home and listen to the audio tour from your car, etc... However, the process still remains the same, find a home and buy it.
There is nothing wrong with the process, except for the difficult task of finding the home. Comes the Realtor, this is where the problems begin. I have bought my share of homes in the past; I have experience good agents, bad agents, and of course snotty agents. However, nothing compares to the agent I encountered this past Sunday. There is a house in my neighborhood which recently was purchased, remodeled and quickly placed on the market up for sale once again. Although I'm not currently in the market to buy a house, I was curious to see what they had done to this home. After all, they purchased the home for $299 and now have place the house up for grabs at a astounding $429K. This is unheard off, after all, they did not change the size of the house and simply resided and fix up the kitchen. I needed to see this house.
We were driving by on our way to the store when we noticed the open house sign, we thought we had our opportunity. We get out of the car to find a very downward slopping porch, we continue to walk in through the already open front door and find ourselves in the very disjointed kitchen. There we encountered the Real Estate Agent. This lady was not having a good day. She quickly asks us if we are in the market or are we from the neighborhood. We replied, we are from down the street and were interested in... We didn't finished the sentence when she quickly states, the owner of the house has requested that neighbors not disturb the open house and please come back when she is present. I thought to myself, how rude! I then proceeded to state that although we are not currently looking, we know people who are looking, in addition, although a drive-by potentially is not looking they could potentially fall in love with the place and choose to buy! At this time, however, I have become quite aggravated and have started to head out the door. The Agent, flustered, follows us out and I'm quick to say, sorry lady, you should not be profiling first and second should now how to talk to potential clients.
The bottom line is that it doesn't matter what business you're in, referrals, referrals, referrals, is the name of the game. If I behaved in the manner this lady did, I be out of a job, before I could say "WAIT." Here is
the listing, not that I want you to buy it, but I feel for the poor homeowners who have put their confidence and trust on such an agent.
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