Google labs is testing a very interesting new feature within the Google search results which lists and ranks content from people that have connections to your own social networks, websites, blogs, etc.   It’s called Google Social Circle and I think this approach has a lot of potential.

Google labs writes:

We’ve taken steps to improve the relevance of our search results with personalization, but today’s launch takes that one step further. With Social Search, Google finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results. When I do a simple query for [new york], Google Social Search includes my friend’s blog on the results page …

Filtering the massive oceans of content is what Google has been doing so effectively for some time, but the social media explosion has created a new kind of relevance Google’s basic ranking system has not been taking into account.    The content of trusted friends and associates is often going to be more relevant to us than that of, say, internet marketeers in a foreign country.     If, for example, my pal has travelled to Morrocco I’m going to trust his stuff – and probably be more interested in it – than information from strangers.    Google Social Circle will incorporate that relevance into the search results, and I think by doing this they may succeed where Facebook and Twitter have pretty dramatically failed.    Facebook’s search system and layout – in my experience – makes it very hard to search for information.  It can even be difficult to find a person you know, let alone find content they have created that is relevant to your search.    Twitter lists are something of a step in the right direction of targeting for relevant information, but Twitter search is severely lacking and I don’t even know if they they are particularly interested in providing the kind of contextual content mapping Google is testing with Social Circle.

Another interesting – some would say sinister – aspect of this approach by Google is to create internet environments filled with “trusted online information sources” that have been endorsed by different networks of friends.    Clever use of the data flowing in will allow Google to better screen sites based on human input, which is much harder to spoof than manipulations commonly done as part of aggressive “Search Engine Optimization” tactics.

The Social Circle reminds me of an advanced version of “del.icio.us”, a tagging and bookmarking service aquired (and largely abandoned?) by Yahoo a few years ago.  Delicious allowed users to tag and label sites and content, creating link lists of things relevant to them and giving them the ability to share these links with others.    By automating that process and using their brilliant search algorithm to slice and dice individual information, Google has pushed us one step closer to the holy grail of search – a system that shows us exactly what we want/need to see even if we cannot clearly state exactly what we want or need.

Google, SEO, Social Networks, Social media, internet, search del.icio.us, Google, google social circle, search, yahoo

Original by Joe for the Dell Digital Nomad Blog:

As a digital nomad myself I’ve found that despite the wonders of an “almost always connected” environment there remain challenges in the motivation and attention departments. The ability to do work on the road pretty much from anywhere andactually doing work from anywhere are not – exusing the pun – even remotely the same two things. In fact it is important to be mindful of one of the classic pitfalls of being a digital nomad which is using the power of the ubiquitous workspace to put off “until later” work that is best done from the office – e.g. work that may require paper or personal documents or information histories that are unavailable online.   The ability to work 24/7 should not distract you from the fact you cannot work 24/7, and need to manage your time effectively regardless of your work environment.

Yet the productivity pitfalls for the remote workforce pale next to the productivity advantages. A workforce of digital nomads can use downtime in airports and waiting for meetings to check email, make calls, and conduct other follow ups. Unlike their counterparts who are chained to an office desk at a single location, the digital nomad travels fully equipped to handle most if not all the demands of their job from pretty much any location.  A Customer complaint needs handling in real time? Call them and email follow up online information and links to support the troubleshooting.   Here the customer will be impressed with your “”From the road” response, knowing that you are there for them all the time.   Is a server down?  Remote reboot from a laptop with EVDO card or over coffee at a WiFi hotspot at the coffee shop or airport.

An example of a digitally nomadic benefit I experienced last year came while covering CES 2008 – the massive Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show.  I often worked  from the blogger lounge, using online tools and blogging combined with Treo picture uploads to cover several sessions and product launches almost in real time.  In some ways I was working faster and covering more topics  than most of the thousands of “old school” journalists at the event.

When GM CEO Rick Wagoner released the Cadillac Provoq on the Keynote stage I was one of the first – if not the very first – to have pictures online since I could take the shot and then upload and caption it from my second row seat at the Venetian Ballroom.

In summary I’d suggest that productivity is more a function of the worker and how they are motivated than which tools they choose to use, but certainly companies large and small should always look for the best ways to digitally enable their workforce, empowering them to work effectively … anytime and everywhere.

CES, companies, conferences, internet business, digital nomads

Via this Forbes article we hear from Joshua Michel-Ross at Oreilly Media that the internet is transforming social activity into what he calls “The Rise of the Social Nervous System”.     It’s a provocative concept that is appearing more and more in the technical and sociological literature.   Although clearly part of the comparison of the collective mental activity to a “hive mind” stems from Science Fiction such as the Borg in Star Trek, it’s also true that human social relationships are of profound importance to the species.   Online social networking has clearly reached a high enough level of use and social interactivity that “virtual socializing” is poised to eclipse “real socializing” in terms of how many hours we spend with each in a day.   Although I’m sure on average we still spend more “real time” than “virtual time” with friends and family, I’d predict this will change within a decade or so, in part as passive TV viewing habits shift  to more interactive online social activities.

As I noted over at my personal blog, Twitter is very important as its simple intervace and explosive growth bring millions of mainstream users into the social media maelstrom.    It’s certainly not clear when all this socializing is going to take humanity, but I’d argue it’s already clear that human relationships are undergoing one of the most significant transformations since the rise of the types of social interactions that came about as cities began to replace rural living, and associating with others of like interests became more important than associating with your neighbors.    On balance these changes are not necessarily good, but I think they are inevitable as people tend to flock most easily to those of like mind who share the same general sensibilities about the world.   Ironically the very technologies that are theoretically connecting us to billions of others may also serve in part to advance our tendency to practice “group think” and only associate with the niches that suit us.   On the optimistic side we may find that the global  social network and ubiquitous interactivity will – for the first time in history – present us with opportunities to collectively solve problems we could not possible solve alone.    As with most technologies it’s up to us how we choose to use the power, so let’s use it wisely.

Artificial Intelligence, Science & Technology, internet hive mind, Social Networking, twitter

Only in Silicon Valley could a CEO get away talking about their brand “kicking ass”, but Yahoo’s in Silicon Valley and Carol Bartz is their new tough talking CEO, who today wrote in Yahoo’s official blog “Yahoo Anecdotal” that Yahoo is “Getting our house in order“.  Among other thing Bartz says she is :

….rolling out a new management structure that I believe will make Yahoo! a lot faster on its feet. For us working at Yahoo!, it means everything gets simpler. We’ll be able to make speedier decisions, the notorious silos are gone, and we have a renewed focus on the customer. For you using Yahoo! every day, it will better enable us to deliver products that make you say, “Wow.”

When former Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang (Yahoo was co-founded with David Filo) left the company a few months ago Carol Bartz stepped in aggressively, presumably tasked by Yahoo’s board to either turn the company around or prepare for a sale of Yahoo Search, or perhaps even the entire company, to Microsoft.

Given that turning Yahoo around is considered by most to be extremely challenging and long term,  I think we should assume Bartz is working the Microsoft sales angle even though much of the tough talk is more along today’s lines of restoring the second most recognizable internet brand to at least a shadow of Yahoo’s former glory.     Note though that even assuming a sale to MIcrosoft is in the goal, it’s probably in Yahoo shareholder’s best interests for Bartz to talk and work towards shoring up the brand, hoping to encourage Microsoft to offer more of a premium over the current share price than they might if they knew a deal was inevitable.

We can get some insight into what Carl Icahn – one of Yahoo’s largest shareholders and board members -  is looking for in this deal thanks to this excellent report on his stock holdings and pricing.   With an average share price is in the neighborhood of $20-25,  I would argue that Icahn wants Microsoft to come in somewhere north of that for him to agree to a sale.     Microsoft offered $31 officially last year before the stock meltdown and most fell they would have paid about $34, but clearly that deal is long off the table. However given Microsoft’s lackluster online performance and the chance for a crack at Google’s dominance, look for Microsoft to make an offer soon.  Look for Yahoo to probably take it.

DISCLOSURE:   Technology Reporter Joe Hunkins is long on YHOO

companies, internet, search, technology, yahoo Google, microsoft, msft, yahoo, YHOO

Techmeme is a favorite of many in technology for pulling together technology stories and the conversations that often swirl around them.  Unlike a simple “ranking” system, TechMeme surfaces the top stories and then links out to blogs and sites that are discussing those “hot topics”.     Thus a quick review of TechMeme can give you a very fast orientation to the stories that are making their rounds in the blogs.    That does not always correspond to stories that actually *matter* to real folks, but it’s a great start.

TechMeme’s new story editor Megan has a list here of the top 10 for 2008.   Number one was the Microsoft – Yahoo aquisition saga, number two was Apple quitting MacWorld, and number three was Google Chrome.

Disclosure: Long on YHOO

SEO, Social Networks, Uncategorized, Websites, blogs, internet, search blog rankings, blogs, internet ranking, links, tech, Top Tech Stories

When Google Chrome launched several months ago I think a lot of folks assumed they’d be switching to that browser, which uses several excellent innovations to enhance online navigation.     Google even issued a nifty comic book to help explain the innovation, and blogs were buzzing for weeks with mostly neutral or favorable reviews.

So what happened?    Why is Google Chrome market share so small compared to Firefox and IE?

The first reason of course is simply  … habit ….   It’s very hard to get people – even innovative online folks – to change from one good application to another.   Contrary to a lot of silly suggestions the Internet Explorer browser was not broken and even though FireFox has slowly been gaining market share it is clear that the rapid demise of IE was greatly exaggerated.     I use FireFox but I’d hardly say it’s dramatically superior or even all that different from IE.

Although it’s hurting Google Chrome, our habituation works very well for Google in the search sphere where people tend to use Google for search without even testing against other engines – that game is over and until we see a major new semantic search innovation Google’s likely to be the search of choice for years to come.

Interestingly Google Chrome really does “feel” different to me and on balance I liked the differences, yet like millions of other onliners who loaded up Chrome I did not switch over and rarely use that browser now.  I know one of my concerns was the uncertainty that still surrounds Google’s treatment of the data I indirectly share with them using Google products.   As a regular user of Google search, Gmail, blogger, and more watching Google both become dominant and also struggle to maintain their legendarily high online revenue I do worry that Google has too great a potential to become “the boss of me”.

Still not sure what’s up with Chrome, but as with many things internet it’s good to head over to Matt Cutts’ blog to get a very well informed opinion.     Matt is one of a handful of Google’s veteran search engineers and writes what for many is the key blog discussing issues relating to search, especially Google search.

Matt’s Five Reasons to Use Google Chrome

Matt’s Ten Reasons Not to Like Google Chrome

Hmmm – I don’t think it’s fair to use the 5 vs 10 math here, but maybe Matt’s on to something.   As creatures of habit we tend to settle in to the familiar and with the new we quickly look for things that bother us.   Google Chrome may in fact be the best browser, and I think I’d want to take the Crhome side in a debate even though I’m not using it, but not sure if I’ll be able to break the old browser habits.    Will you?

Google, Web 2.0, internet browser, chrome, Google, internet

Today Facebook launches a social media initiative that is significant enough to possibly become a web milestone, depending on how the developer community views and uses all the new capabilities that Facebook is offering to them.

Rafe Needleman’s got a video of the conference today and Techcrunch will, as usual, have insightful summary of the implications of all this.

Based on my quick first look into what they are up to this really looks like a brilliant move, and a sign they won’t be selling to a bigger player, rather trying to rise up and eat the bigger fish.

If Facebook can capture the imagination of enough developers and become “the” key platform for social media they’ll likely be very glad to have turned down the billion+ dollar buyout offers earlier this year.

At the least Mark Z and his crew deserve huge props for going for the gusto and offering to take the development community along for the ride.  This is not only great stuff for Facebook and social media evangelism, this appears to be consistent with the grand and open internet community vision that one hopes will ultimately prevail.

Social Networks, Web 2.0, companies, facebook, internet

This story is just in from Business Week about early adoption of new internet protocol IPv6 in Harrisonburg, VA.   That’s great because I’m in Bridgewater / Harrisonburg every other year for our big Glick Family reunion and it’ll be fun to follow the story and maybe check out the service next year when I’m in the lovely Shenandoah Valley.

internet

Paul Graham is ridiculously suggesting that “Microsoft is Dead“.

I remember back in the 90’s when many where suggesting how IBM was dead, and how obvious it was that the Apples and Microsofts and clever upstarts would make IBM obsolete.

As this chart shows IBM has thrived since that time, and though they hardly make the news much anymore it’s very important to note that IBM is a bigger company (measured by capitalization) than the following “big winners”: Google, Apple, Yahoo.

Also notable is the fact that what is probably the best search algorithm in the world belongs to … IBM. It’s called “WebFountain”. It’s not scalable and therefore not an alternative to Google at this time, but one can’t even count IBM out of the *search wars*, let alone Microsoft.

Microsoft isn’t dead. Not even close. Of course it is suffering from the inertia that naturally springs from huge success and dominance, but like IBM it will find new markets, new niches, and will benefit (eventually) from the innovations of it’s competitors as they were able to benefit – hugely – from Microsoft innovations (e.g. free internet browser software on all PCs).

Don Dodge corrects the foolishness, and Tony is right to suggest that MS has plenty of life left.

It’s even possible that Microsoft will win the big game. With the LIVE project, Microsoft’s neural network approach to search may be more advanced than Google’s and although search result quality continues to lag Google’s by a notch it’s simply not clear how search will evolve over the next few years.

Artificial Intelligence, Web 2.0, Websites, companies, computers, internet

USA Today reports that China has the world’s second largest online population after the USA. With 94,000,000 online they’ve decided some of the gaming fanatics might need a bit of electrical incentive to stay offline.

Ha – I kind of like this idea, but I don’t think I can get my son to sit still long enough to attach the electrodes.

But seriously folks, these symptoms sound pretty intense:
“… depression, nervousness, fear and unwillingness to interact with others, panic and agitation. They also have sleep disorders, the shakes and numbness in their hands.”

Science & Technology, internet