Mark August 14, 2010 /blog 0 comments full post »

Are You Ever Shocked by Google Autocompletes?

I was playing around on my XBox, trying out different plugins for PlayOn, a service which allows you to watch podcasts on your TV via your XBox.

I was watching an interview Kevin Rose did with Marissa Mayer. The first question Kevin asked was whether or not any of the search terms that comes through the system ever shocks her.

Of course, her answer dodged the question, and she played up the fact that the most popular searches on Google truly reflect the Zeitgeist of the world.

I’m reminded of that when I saw a post shared out by someone on Google Reader showing what pops up from Google’s “autocomplete” feature when you type in the phrase “Obama is ”.

I wound up trying it out myself to make sure it checked out. Below is a screenshot from my computer.

It’s unclear if this is generated from global, national or state algorithms, or if Google generates these based on my social circle. In most of the likely sample-sets, they’re supposedly predominantly liberal-friendly, or if popular media is to be believed, at least Obama-friendly.

Nowhere on the list is the obvious query: “Obama is the president,” or “Obama is the leader” or anything of that nature. All the queries are 100% negative in their connotation, in the context of polite political discourse.

There’s something to be said about the fact that to create the negative Google momentum around former President Bush, a Google-bomb was required. These queries are all natural, folks.

Mark July 17, 2008 Uncategorized 0 comments full post »

Reason #8,232.551 Politics and Technology are Inseparable

I got an anonymous email just now from an unhappy HTC subscriber from Israel.

“I can’t contact HTC. It appears they’ve removed my country. I live in Israel, which is no longer listed on their support form.

Apparently Palestine still exists.

Check it out: http://www.htc.com/www/CS_Mail.aspx

Signed,

Not happy! (((“

I’m guessing it’s an error of some kind, and likely not politically motivated. It’s 3AM for me right now, so my friend at HTC I could call on this is asleep, but I imagine I’ll hear from him tomorrow for confirmation.

While there may not be a grand Muslim conspiracy to exclude Israelis from getting tech support from HTC, it emphasizes how politics can always infiltrate everything. Hopefully they’ll get it fixed before it becomes an international incident.

Mark May 4, 2007 politics 0 comments full post »

MSNBC's Republican Presidential Debate

I watched the debate, and I must say I was impressed with the aptitude that the Republicans handled themselves. I suppose that after years and years of being exposed to Republican ineptitude, its refreshing to be exposed to the flip-side of it.

Here’s the most interesting thing to come out of this debate; given the huge field of the early Republican lineup of candidates that prevented Paul from elaborating much more on what makes him so very different from the rest of the pack, and the scant 90 minutes afforded the public to know who they are, Paul did as well as he possibly could going from near last to FIRST place.

This shake-up is very interesting.

BEFORE the Republican “debates”:

Giuliani 41%
McCain 31%
Romney 28%
Huckabee 14%
Thompson 11%
Tancredo 10%
Brownback 10%
Paul 9%
Hunter 7%
Gilmore 4%

AFTER the Republican “debate” at 9:28am the next morning:

Paul 35%
Romney 30%
Giuliani 25%
McCain 20%
Huckabee 16%
Tancredo 10%
Brownback 9%
Thompson 9%
Hunter 8%
Gilmore 7%

Mark May 4, 2007 politics, YouTube 0 comments full post »

RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech EP 37

RizWords: Daily Politics and Tech RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 37 – download now – subscribe now – iTunes subscribe

A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it’s Tech, it’s here.
Remember, if you’re listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
If you like the podcast (and you haven’t already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don’t forget to sign up for the discussion list.
Other Podcast Plugs:

TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast … it’s good times!
Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I – has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.

Sponsors:

Try GoToMeeting for 45 days! Visit www.GoToMeeting.com/podcast to start your free trial today.

AACS – Guaranteed improved credit – http://aacsnet.com/ – Mention RizWords and get $50 off your entry to the program.

This was a PACKED episode… FULL of news. Art Lindsey is still on Medical Leave. See www.artlindsey.com for more information. On Monday, Bill Grady from You Are The Guest Podcast will be joining as co-host, and Derrick Vann, longtime personal friend, will be joining us on Tuesday. Do not fail to miss these shows, if you can. Hopefully, Art will be re-joining us next week soon.

But now, the news! The big talks today center around re-opening of merger talks between Microsoft and Yahoo!:

Massive: Microsoft, Yahoo Talk Merger
By Nicholas Carlson

Microsoft and Yahoo are talking at the merger table. And this time, Microsoft is said to be willing to pay the heavy price it would cost to acquire Silicon Valley’s most successful Web portal. Some wonder whether that’s wise.

According to unnamed sources cited by the New York Post, Microsoft broached the merger topic months ago and Yahoo quickly rejected the deal. A Yahoo spokeswoman told internetnews.com the company refused to comment on “rumors or speculation.” Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.

But since, a series of Google successes — its launch of Web-based applications for small businesses, its outbidding of Microsoft for advertising firm DoubleClick and another quarter of spectacular financial results — has Microsoft hot for Yahoo’s Web presence once more.

ahoo’s current market capitalization is $44.75 billion. In morning trading, Yahoo’s share price rose five points, or 17 percent, to a near 52-week high of $33.23 per share.

Apparently, merger talks are just the cure for Yahoo after weak first-quarter financial results caused investors to bail on the company in mid-April. The problem then was that Yahoo did not exceed expectations for its new advertising platform, code-named Panama.

When reporting Yahoo’s 2006 financial results, CFO Susan Decker said Yahoo did not expect Panama to positively impact its profits until the second quarter of 2007. But early reports of the advertising platform’s success raised investor expectations. Despite positive reviews from Yahoo advertiser customers, however, those expectations were not met and the stock tanked. Until today’s merger talks.

In other Yahoo! related news:

Yahoo Photos going dark as Flickr shines on (USA Today)

LOS ANGELES — At Yahoo, Web 2.0 has won one battle with stodgy old Web 1.0. — Yahoo is shutting down Yahoo Photos — for years, the No. 1 or No. 2 most-visited photo site on the Web. Its users will be directed to move their pictures to Yahoo’s hot upstart, Flickr.

And on the flipside, two interesting Google-related stories:

Google Scholar Added to Google’s Homepage
There’s a new link to Google Scholar in the list of services from the “more” box. Google’s search engines for scholarly papers was available on the homepage only if you visited Google from your school.

Google Scholar includes a big list of scientific publications and some of them aren’t available in Google’s main index. “Google Scholar covers peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research. You’ll find works from a wide variety of academic publishers and professional societies, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.”

And the other:

YouTube Users Get Paid. Tomorrow.

On Friday, YouTube will begin revenue sharing with top users including LisaNova, renetto, HappySlip, smosh, and valsartdiary using the same system they’ve used for TV networks. They’ll also be sharing revenue with thousands of medium-sized content content creators like small production houses and universities.

These “top users” have been picked from the “most subscribed” list, and YouTube is spinning this as a way to put ordinary users on a par with professional cont

ent. I’m going to guess that this is partially related to the Viacom lawsuit, which alleges that YouTube is almost totally reliant on copyrighted professional content: just like the bizarrely late YouTube Video Awards 2006 (held in March 2007), this may be an attempt to highlight the importance of user generated content. (”Look, we make so much money from Renetto that we can pay him!”).

The top users were plucked from the “most subscribed” list, which may be a little worrying based on the fact that YouTube doesn’t really regulate these numbers. Even more worrying: they still haven’t fixed the bug that allows you to get more views by refreshing the page: when there’s money involved, that trick will be even more enticing (look at all the crappy videos on the Most Viewed list with very low ratings). Nonetheless, we now know that the YouTube rev share program is being tested on many more accounts that just the Afterworld trial we mentioned earlier.

More on the YT blog.

Embedded below: LisaNova, whose good looks almost make up for a lack of talent.

In more reasons to hate the RIAA news:

RIAA Drops Yet Another Case
Given just how many cases the RIAA has had to drop after it was pointed out that it’s sued the wrong person, why isn’t anyone questioning why the RIAA is allowed to file thousands of cases in a single shot when it’s clearly not very careful about the process? The latest is that the RIAA has dropped a case after it was pointed out to the RIAA that the person being sued wasn’t actually a subscriber to the ISP in question at the time of the observed file sharing. Oops. At some point, you would think that someone would point out that the RIAA appears to be abusing the legal system as its personal plaything in suing whoever it wants whenever it wants on whatever flimsy evidence it can find.

In EVEN CHEAPER laptop news:

India Hopes to Make $10 Laptops a Reality
sas-dot writes “We all know Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 OLPC. India, which was a potential market, rejected it. India’s Human Resources Development ministry’s idea to make laptops at $10 is firmly taking shape with two designs already in and public sector undertaking Semiconductor Complex evincing interest to be a part of the project. So far, the cost of one laptop, after factoring in labor charges, is coming to $47 but the ministry feels the price will come down dramatically considering the fact that the demand would be for one million laptops.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is quite a big deal… lots of big deals in the news today:

AOL Slips to No. 3 on Internet
After more than a decade connecting more Americans to the Internet than any other company, AOL has given up its title as the leading Internet service provider, a reflection of changing consumer habits and its own strategic shift.

I’m interested to hear what Todd Cochrane will say about this:

THE END OF MILITARY BLOGGING
The most excellent Noah Shachtman of Wired’s Danger Room has a great article with lots of milblogger reaction to the new OPSEC regulations that will end military blogging as we know it. Yes, that’s right – the end of soldier blogging from the war zones.

In purely political news:

Bush vetoes troop withdrawal bill
WASHINGTON – President Bush vetoed legislation to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq Tuesday night in a historic showdown with Congress over whether the unpopular and costly war should end or escalate. — In only the second veto of his presidency …

Condi, and why it’s legal for her, and not Pelosi:

Rice to Meet With Syrian Foreign Minister
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to meet with Syria’s foreign minister here later today, United States officials said. The meeting would be the first diplomatic contact at such a high level between the two countries in years.

This story set me off:

Is Virtual Rape a Crime?
cyberianpan writes “Wired is carrying commentary on the story that Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen’s allegations of rape in Second Life. For reasons of civil liberty & clarity we’d like to confine criminal law to physical offenses rather than thought crimes but already threats, menace & conspiracy count as crimes. Could we see a situation where our laws extend?”

Read mor of this story at Slashdot.

Mark May 3, 2007 politics 0 comments full post »

RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech – EP36

RizWords: Daily Politics and Tech RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 36 – download now – subscribe now – iTunes subscribe

A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it’s Tech, it’s here.
Remember, if you’re listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
If you like the podcast (and you haven’t already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don’t forget to sign up for the discussion list.
Other Podcast Plugs:

TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast … it’s good times!
Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I – has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.

Sponsors:

Try GoToMeeting for 45 days! Visit www.GoToMeeting.com/podcast to start your free trial today.

AACS – Guaranteed improved credit – http://aacsnet.com/ – Mention RizWords and get $50 off your entry to the program.

We had a lot of news to cover today, and no co-host to slow me down. Make sure you tune in to Monday’s show, when I’ll be accompanied by Bill Grady of You Are the Guest Podcast. But now… the news! This from our ongoing coverage of the Vonage Crap….:

1. Vonage asks for a new trial
Last issue, I alluded to an upcoming Supreme Court case that might have an impact on the Vonage/Verizon appeal. Sure enough, the court on Monday handed down a ruling in KSR vs. Teleflex, finding that the combination of two commonly known elements into something obvious is not patentable. Vonage has seized on the ruling, asking an appellate court to throw out the verdict against it and order a new trial. Verizon, of course, is opposed. Vonage is already appealing its loss at trial; the appellate court has set a June 25 hearing on that appeal. Vonage wants the appeal to be put on hold pending the results of the new trial. If it loses that second trial, Vonage wants the existing appeals process to resume. Even though Vonage was convicted of infringing three patents, the courts are letting the company operate pretty much as normal while the appeals are being heard. If this gets any more complicated, they’ll have to hand out copies of Dickens’ Bleak House with the appellate briefs.

For more about the Supreme Court, Vonage, Verizon, and the rest of it:

– read this from Internet News
- check out this DailyTechRag report

I tried out Joost this morning. I wasn’t incredibly impressed. I’ll give it a fairer shake later this weekend and talk about it again on Monday. Meanwhile, Joost should be available for everyone. Want an invite? Anyone present at Friday’s TalkCast will get one!.

Joost (almost) Launches
Updated: It won’t be for another few days before anyone can join Joost, but the company has officially announced that it is launching commercially. Starting today, existing beta testers can now invite anyone to join Joost. Beta testers visit the “Invite Friends”

In “should-this-really-be-criminal” news:

Student Arrested for Writing Essay
mcgrew writes “The Chicago Tribune reports that an eighteen year old straight-A High School student was arrested for writing an essay that ‘disturbed’ his teacher. Even though no threats were made to a specific person, 18 year-old Allen Lee’s English teacher convened a panel to discuss the work. As a result of that discussion, the police were called in. ‘The youth’s father said his son was not suspended or expelled but was forced to attend classes elsewhere for now. Today, Cary-Grove students rallied behind the arrested teen by organizing a petition drive to let him back in their school. They posted on walls quotes from the English teacher in which she had encouraged students to express their emotions through writing.’”

No one is really talking about this story, which is amazing considering this is probably the second largest e-currency provider for the American markets:

e-gold® Founder Denies Criminal Charges
In an interview with Kim Zetter of the Wired Blog Network, E-Gold owner Dr. Douglas Jackson stated this morning that the Federal indictments announced by the US Department of Justice last Friday are a “farce”.

Associated Content first released the news of the indictments on Saturday in this news story.

Dr. Jackson, E-Gold, and the other owners were charged with:

1. conspiracy to launder monetary instruments,
2. conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business,
3. operating an unlicensed money transmitting business under federal law,
4. money transmission without a license under D.C. law.

According to Jackson, E-Gold is one of the good guys in this crime-fighting saga and its ensuing fiasco. Not only did they cooperate with law enforcement officials regarding suspicious E-Gold accounts, but they also developed software which effectively tracks criminals trying to launder money through E-Gold, and prevents use of the E-Gold system to aid and abet their criminal activities. They were waging their own war against the very things they have been accused of aiding: terrorism, child exploitation, and more.

This is a story that KenRadio has been talking about for a few days. I worked for 5Tribe Marketing as a consulting for more than a year, so I’m more than familiar with these numbers, and have been for a while:
>Newspaper circulation continues to fall
Newspaper circulation continued to decline nationwide but many individual publications and a trade group countered with figures showing that the papers’ audiences were growing online. Weekday circulation at 745 daily newspapers dropped 2.1% to 45.9 million, and Sunday circulation at 601 newspapers fell 3.1% to 48.1 million, according to the Newspaper Assn. of America. The figures compared the six-month period that ended March 31 with the same period a year earlier. The trade association sought to counter those figures by re- releasing recent research that showed use of newspaper websites increased 5.3%, to 59 million people, in the first quarter of 2007 compared with the same period a year ago. Newspaper owners are so intent on including the broader view of their total audience that they have helped persuade the organization that tracks newspaper performance — the Audit Bureau of Circulations — to incorporate online usage into its figures next year. The Los Angeles Times was like many of its big-city counterparts in continuing to experience circulation losses. The newspaper’s daily circulation fell to an average of 815,723, a 4.2% decline, compared with the same period a year earlier. Its Sunday circulation dropped 4.7% to 1,173,000. The Times attributed much of the decline to the continued scaling back of programs that distributed free papers in schools and at hotels. Executives at the paper said they were encouraged that “individually paid” daily circulation — papers delivered at homes and sold at newsstands — increased fractionally to 779,256. The Times hit its print circulation highs in 1991, with more than 1.2 million copies of the paper sold each weekday and nearly 1.6 million on Sundays. The use of latimes.com increased 15%, to 65 million page views, in January over the year before. “Even as we are rapidly growing our online audience, it’s clear that great print journalism still plays a big part in the 24/7 multimedia world our advertisers, readers and users want,” Times Publisher David D. Hiller said in a statement. Other papers in Southern California suffered even sharper losses. Daily circulation of the San Diego Union-Tribune slumped 6.6% to 296,000. The Orange County Register fell 5.1% to 285,000, the Riverside Press-Enterprise was off 6.7% to 173,000 and the San Fernando Valley-based Daily News dropped 7.3% to 146,000. One of the biggest declines in the region was experienced by the Santa Barbara News-Press, where owner Wendy McCaw and some of her employees have been feuding. They have accused her of meddling in news decisions. News-Press circulation during the week dropped 9.5% to 38,000.

These are amazing statistics… look for similar numbers in America soon:

45% of Europeans watch TV online
A new study from Motorola has found that an amazing 45% of Europeans now watch television online. — The survey covering the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain found that the French lead Europe in terms of online television consumption …

The sociological backlash against positive Google press continues:

Google’s Evil NDA
An anonymous reader writes “Google’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil” — but they sure have an evil non-disclosure agreement! In order to be considered for employment there, you must sign an agreement that forbids you to ‘mention or imply the name of Google’ in public ever again. Further, you can’t tell anyone you interviewed there, or what they offered you, and you possibly sign away your rights to reverse-engineer any of Google’s code, ever. And this NDA never expires. Luckily, someone has posted excerpts from the NDA before he signed it and had to say silent forever.” At the bottom of the posting are links to a few other comments on the Web about Google’s NDA, including a ValleyWag post that reproduces it in its entirety.

One word: Proxies.

Pandora To Shut Out Non-U.S. Users Thursday Evening
If you live outside of the U.S. and enjoy listening to customized radio stations on Pandora, brace yourself for some bad news. The site will be shutting you out starting Thursday evening. Registered users who access the service from outside the U.S. received a warning email yesterday letting them know that this will be happening.

Pandora operates under Section 114 of the DMCA, which gives them a clear process for paying rights holders in the U.S. There is no international equivalent of the DMCA, and so to operate legally in other countries, Pandora must sign deals with rights holders directly. That means separate deals with labels and publishers for each song, an extremely difficult and time consuming task.

Pandora has always made it clear on the site that it is for U.S. users only, and requires a U.S. zip code for registration. That didn’t stop many international users from registering anyway, using “90210″ or another famous zip code to get access to the service. Now, with IP-based filtering, users will be forced to go through proxy servers or other complicated mechanisms for getting to the music.

I spoke with CTO Tom Conrad this evening about the change. He says Pandora has been working on international rights deals for nearly two years now, and they hope to have enough deals done in the UK and Canada to launch in those countries soon. Other markets will take longer, he says.

The email sent to users is below.

This isn’t the only bad news recently for Pandora. Along with other Internet radio companies, they have also been fighting the RIAA over revisions to the fee structure they must pay for playing music online. The rates they pay are significantly more than satellite providers pay, and terrestrial radio stations pay nothing to play music. Two very brave congressmen, Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL), have proposed legislation that would require Internet radio startups to pay no more than satellite providers, which should allow many Internet radio startups to stay in business. Read more about the legislation on the Pandora blog and SaveNetRadio.

We’ve covered Pandora since their launch in
the summer of 2005. Our coverage is here.

In “0wn3d” news:

Internet2 Knocked Out By Homeless Man?

The original purpose of the internet was supposed to be a network that the government could continue to use even after a nuclear attack. The whole point is that it’s supposed to figure out ways to route around damage. However, when it came to Internet2, apparently designers didn’t pay as much attention to that kind of stability. The news today is that a homeless man in Boston tossed a cigarette on a mattress, setting off a two-alarm fire that happened to knock out the Internet2 connection between New York and Boston. It’s true that Internet2 is supposed to be experimenting with different methods of building network infrastructure, but you would think that redundancy would have been considered a feature worth keeping.