Google’s super secret social networking endeavor, Google Plus, was released this week as a “Field Test.” Many from the Google Buzz crowd and FOGs (Friends of Google) were invited along and within 48 hours it opened up to a much wider group. It is estimated (albeit unscientifically) that several thousand people now have access. I’d like to let new readers know that I get excited about new web properties. I’ve pitched other new social networks that turned out to fall flat. However, Google Plus is the real deal and absolutely worth a serious look.

1. Google Plus was one of the best kept secrets of any large project I have ever seen. It’s truly remarkable that more information did not leak out about this project.  Sure, almost exactly a year ago, Kevin Rose tweeted “Ok, umm, huge rumor: Google to launch facebook competitor very soon ‘Google Me’, very credible source.”  But not very much was known about the details of the project. Now, Google in grand fashion has released “Google Me” as “Google+”.  Google has tight control over confidential information and plays its cards close to its vest. (In this regard, Google is similar to Apple.) However, people on Buzz knew something was coming soon because the few Googlers who supported Google Buzz was noticeably absent from Buzz for months.

2. Google Plus is NOT Buzz Reincarnated — Thankfully. I’ve seen people refer to Google Plus as “Buzz 2.0″ and I can barely see the resemblance. Although the Field Test includes many of the prominent Buzz users, the site is not similar to Google Buzz in many respects. It’s not baked into Gmail, does not have a chaotic feed that is difficult to follow, has an entirely different UI and includes MANY previously-unseen features. In hindsight, what kept Buzz from becoming a ghost town was the friendships that formed early in Buzz’s existence. In a sense, we were a people without a home. Just prior to the Google Plus launch, some of us were migrating to a site called “Namesake.” (Check it out if you haven’t.) In other words, we were collectively coming to our senses that Buzz was not a good platform.

Google Plus brings with it some amazing features but the best is “Circles.” Each user has the ability to create, edit and delete groups of friends in a simple manner. I’ll let Google explain with its own Youtube:

Google Plus is being compared and contrasted with Facebook, not surprisingly. Circles are far easier to use than Facebook’s “friends lists.” Almost everyone I know who uses Facebook shares everything with their entire friends list or the entire universe of Facebook users. Sometimes, rarely, they will send someone a private message too. Circles allow for people to easily group people by interest or topic. The ability to easily drop and drag people into and out of a Circle makes for relationships to develop (and end) quickly. No longer am I sharing everything with people I can barely remember from high school. But if I wanted to, I could. Circles enable users to better control the distribution of their updates.

And I’m barely scratching the surface by only mentioning Circles. There’s also Sparks (discovery by topic), Hangouts (group videochats) and some other features that are still in development like Questions and Games. (Yes, Google Plus has better feed control than other social networks and without a doubt we’ll be able to exclude unwanted classes of content from our feeds. Did you hear that Zynga?)

3. Google Plus is NOT Facebook Plus — Thankfully. While it looked like Facebook to me at first (perhaps even an older iteration),  Google Plus is substantially different. Already I see new relationships forming. Facebook, as I see it used, is primarily a tool for sharing brief remarks with friends from the face-to-face world. Google Plus can be used for the purpose but what I like about it is the ability to find interesting people who don’t exist in my face-to-face world. On Twitter these relationships can be formed by a series of 140 character tweets, but on Google Plus there are some more in depth discussions forming around topics, and we have the baked in ability to meet face-to-face (virtually) without even leaving the Google Plus ecosystem. In fact, as far as communicating with people online, Google Plus is a comprehensive platform.

In any event, I think the “Facebook killer” view is the wrong way to look at Google Plus right now. It could be used as a Facebook alternative (or Twitter alternative) or simply as a supplemental social network. It is not a case of Google just “one-upping” Facebook. Google has designed a unique social network with some features we have seen before but many new features which appear to be carefully considered (contrast with Buzz)  and extremely well executed (e.g., Circles, Sparks, Hangouts and so on). By running a limited Field Test, Google is working out some minor issues before the site is available to everyone but none of the minor issues I have seen have adversely affected my impression of what Google Plus is and where it is going.

There’s so much more that could be written about Google Plus and the blogosphere has exploded with posts about it. There are many different ways to analyze Google Plus but I suggest, as I wrote above, that Google Plus is unique. If you do not join up thinking Buzz+ or Facebook+, you will likely fall in love with it the way most users seem to be during the Field Test.

If you don’t already have access, you will soon. While you wait, minor annoyances are being resolved and Google Plus is improving. You’re in for an eye-opening treat and I hope you enjoy it at least as much as I have the past few days. When you get there, look me up (http://goo.gl/eA1ih).

P.S. The Android app for Google Plus, which can only be used by people who have joined and not those waiting for invitations to join, is icing on the cake. Truly spectacular.

You might also enjoy:

--Google’s Game Plan: Google is not failing at hardware. It is succeeding at something else.

Brief explanation: I was flirting with the idea of shutting the blog down or allowing it to simply wither on the vine. I even considered posting a message that all of my blogging will occur in a micro fashion either on Buzz or Twitter (@JonMallin).  However, I have decided to keep the blog live, allow guest bloggers to participate (Thanks Louis Parker and Nick Waye), and to personally update it on a infrequent basis. These are my thoughts on technology that I’ve had bottled up (get the joke?) for awhile with a focus on Google.

On to discuss Google’s game plan… TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter because it threatened Twitter. TweetDeck was and is the most-widely used third party vehicle and Twitter was the destination. The problem for Twitter is that TweetDeck was also a vehicle that drove people to Facebook and Buzz, though to a much lesser extent. If FaceMashSomething popped up tomorrow, a Twitter rival, TweetDeck could propel it to instant stardom. On the other hand, if Twitter acquires TweetDeck then it owns and controls a vehicle, an especially popular vehicle.

Today I had a somewhat similar random thought that might sound somewhat conspiracy-like. Google has created Chome browser and Chrome OS to move advertisements from the web and into the OS (banner at the bottom, pop-ups, etc.). Remember the fundamentals? Google is, at its core, an advertising company… plain and simple.  This would insure advertising revenue regardless of the websites people visit. Websites come and go. There was AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, MySpace, etc. Websites tend to be short-term trends. What is intelligent about Google’s plan is that it would be immune to these trends. Facebook could beat Buzz/Google Me, Bing could become popular, Twitter use could skyrocket and guess what? If Google owns the vehicle, the OS it gives away for free, it has the ability to sell advertisers access to your eyeballs (remember, your eyeballs are Google’s primary “product”).

This is precisely the Android model.

So, Android = huge success by all accounts based on insanely fast widespread adoption.

Google owns the vehicle and it serves up ads through third party apps (note: in fact, no native Google apps have advertising banners AFAIK).

If they can move from handsets to desktops to other ways of catching your eyeballs, Google makes boatloads of cash.

If I’m correct in my thinking, Google should be patenting the heck out of an OS that overlays ads over internet accessed content or otherwise interjects ads into the user experience (brief pauses with animated ads or boot-up ads… whatever, patent it all). Furthermore, Google should give away computers. I previous wrote, “Chrome OS Netbooks — Hell Yes, Google Will Give away computers” back in December of 2009.  What happened?  Google beta tested a computer giveaway, the CR-48. The goals isn’t to sell computers. It never was. Every pundit who declares Google’s hardware experiences “failures” is an idiot. Google TV is a way to sell your eyeballs when you look at your television. Google’s web properties sell your eyeballs when you look at the computer. Google Android, YouTube… you get the point. The amount of revenue Google receives directly from the sale of a physical product is immaterial to Google’s plans. The only thing that matters is that Google win the vehicle war.

My belief is that Google may think it has nearly saturated some of its existing customers and maximized the value they can extract out of existing eyeballs. They now need new eyeballs. People who don’t have computers, smartphones, etc. If they give away computers, they may harvest up new eyeballs. Senior citizens and the poor are likely audiences.

This is not to say Google isn’t diversifying. Sure, it wants to serve up its productivity suite. But, I contend that line of business will be immaterial to Google’s revenue stream for a long, long time.

Google’s “master plan” is to be the vehicle through which your eyeballs travel. They’re not looking to pull money from your wallet by selling you a product. Instead, our eyeballs are being sold as the product and Google wants to make sure it is the largest, best eyeball store around.

You might also enjoy:

--Google Plus: Stealth Mode to Instant Competitor?

Originally posted on Blogs@RelativeProgress on March 12, 2011

Total Spatial-Social Awareness

We need to start thinking about the web as an interwoven fabric of three conceptual layers. First, the conventional web, or as I define it the ‘compute web’, what we define today as Web 2.0, constitutes the cloud computing paradigm allowing execution of instructions across distributed network infrastructure. The web moves, processes and computes. This delivers services like Twitter, Gmail and Google docs, and Wolfram Alpha. They are build on commodity hardware managed by Amazon, Rackspace, Google etc. It is the web build for machines to read and interact with so as to facilitate the computations necessary for us (humans) to interact among ourselves. Confusing as that may sound it is simply the many connected resources of the web utilized to crunch numbers, execute instructions and deliver services.

Next is the web of context. This is a result of interaction among human actors that represent the essence of human communication. Sharing, debating and forming connections around topics, trends and norms – the very definition of a tribe. This is the ‘social web’.  All the data that exist and that the ‘compute web’ uses to present information now requires human context and curation. The idea of curating what the compute web gives us algorithmically stands as the next nut to crack in human to computer interaction. The ‘social web’ is the human element of this interwoven web fabric.

The last piece that makes up the fabric of the web is the ‘spatial web’. it is the extension of the context web, but brings a piece of the real-world to web. After data is computed and curated there requires additional context to give information a 3rd dimension.

Imagine a social network that allowed you (with complete control) to broadcast all your objective data, subjective thoughts, and spatial context. I take a picture of my house with the associated metadata of GPS location, any associated address and other locations nearby (like the Walmart up the road). With that information we correlate that with weather conditions at that spot where the image was captured. Go even farther and say that the device I took the picture with has a built-in weather station in it that instantly collects weather data as the picture is captured. Correlate that with information with friends and family who are nearby. What you get is a truly social tool that can capture a moment in time with total spatial and contextual awareness. I think in time people will want to share that. On a new, hip cutting social network? Maybe? But the spatially, contextual aware social network of the future is coming in one form or another. The ability to capture every data point in ones life every second of the day would be compelling to some. I know it sounds a bit like ‘Big Brother’, but I feel that is simply our generation. Young folks half my age have not shame in being total exhibitionist.

This idea manifested itself while listening to an episode of Fourcast on the TWiT Network with Read Write Web’s David Kirkpatrick. Fast forward to the 12 minute mark and you’ll hear a fascinating back and forth on this subject. This jibes well with my dataspaces concept, because all this data needs to be stored somewhere and owned by you. I encourage you to read up on the Locker Project or try out the service Greplin and you’ll begin to conceptualize what a mean and why the Dataspace is pivotal to the next evolution of the web.  Other projects out there that are building bits and pieces of this concept are Activity Streams and Backupify.  This has been a area of intrigue for me for a while now (I blogged about back last year in “The Social Web We Need“).  Let us hope a developer with idle hands was listening and started build this utopia. We can dream can’t we?

No related posts.

The Rest of the World

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Admittedly, it’s been a long, long time since I last updated the Tech Bottle blog. It’s not that I’ve fallen months behind on technology.  I have been reading and interacting with tech enthusiasts but I haven’t been posting here.  A New Years resolution is to keep the blog updated on at least a semi-regular basis. Here’s what I’ve been doing and what’s caught my eye:

• I’m still a big supporter of Google Buzz. I think it is intelligently designed and well executed. I tend to read much more than I write on Buzz but I have been getting back in the swing of things. It’ll hopefully be rolled into the rumored Google Me service which apparently goes by the code name Google +1 now.
• I’m also liking Quora and Diaspora quite a bit. Quora is a Q&A forum of sorts. It’s like Yahoo! Answers, in a way, but Quora is populated with real techies and entrepreneurs.  Diaspora is the “open” alternative to Facebook.  Readers of my blog know that I’m not a big fan of Facebook. Diaspora has better privacy settings and it’s more intuitive to use than Facebook.  Quora is open to all but Diaspora is by invitation only (I think… I tried confirming but they are upgrading their servers… a much needed chore for them).
• I’m still running Ubuntu linux at home.  I am pleased to report that I haven’t had to boot Windows or virtualize Windows even once since converting to Ubuntu nearly six months ago. Oh, in Ubuntu I’ve been toying with MythTV which is pretty darn cool but difficult to set up.  I also revitalized a 333 MHz old Dell machine with 256 megs of RAM by installing Ubuntu. It’s usable but, well, not quite snappy enough for my liking.
• I’ve downloaded the Dell build of Chromium OS but I need to clean up and fix a USB stick to try it out.
• I’m eagerly awaiting the HTC Thunderbolt, which is rumored to be Verizon’s first 4G/LTE phone.Tell me this isn’t a great looking Android phone?  I have an upgrade saved up on my account.  The only thing that would keep me away from the Thunderbolt would be an encrypted bootloader that would make rooting and custom ROMing the phone impossible (or, at the very least, extremely difficult).
• Also in the mobile industry, I see RIM slipping further into irrelevance.  They announced a switch to a completely new OS built from an operating system designed for touchscreen GPS standalone devices. The new OS won’t be available for a long time (my guess, over a years… 2012) yet they’re still selling OUTDATED Blackberry OS devices like the Torch (major flop) to keep revenue going. Goldman Sachs downgraded RIM’s stock not too long ago. Oh, and RIM has a dual core tablet in the works that some are touting but others are already criticizing (mostly re: battery life).
• The CR-48 Chrome netbook looks great to me but I haven’t been able to score one. I’ve been reading about it on Buzz from those lucky few who received them.

That’s all folks.  Expect more in 2011.  Have a happy and healthy new year.

You might also enjoy:

--Google Plus Ate My Blog, Find Me There… --Google wants to kill your amateur blog… but that’s OK. --Google’s Game Plan: Google is not failing at hardware. It is succeeding at something else. --Google Plus: Stealth Mode to Instant Competitor?

I like to write about startups. Among others, I’ve written about Miio.com and Leftos.com. Well, one of the Leftos guys just started YaIupload.com as a side project. It’s a little bit like FailBlog and peopleofwalmart had a child. YaIUpload hosts photos that users snap of funny stuff. After the photo gets uploaded (hence, the name), users can suggestion captions and vote on which caption is best. Good times.

Here’s a photo from YaIupload to give you a taste:

The leading caption:

“Ya My Sleigh Got Delayed!”

If you want some laughs, check it out at yaiupload.com.

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No, I haven’t given up blogging. The odd thing is that I’ve written very little this past month and blog visitors has steadily increased, driven primarily by my review of the Droid X. Here’s what is going on in my tech world.

1. I rooted my HTC Incredible before the OTA upgrade with Unrevoked3 and Unrevoked Forever (S-OFF). Following the root, I downloaded Titanium Backup and ROM Manager from the Market. ROM Manager is terrific and shows all the latest ROMs available for your device. I installed the SkyRaider ROM because I couldn’t get Cyanogen to stream music by bluetooth (known bug). While I get all kinds of goodies by rooting and running this ROM, what I particularly like about it is the Kingklik kernel which has dramatically improved battery life when combined with an app killer and JuiceDefender (UltimateJuice).  I also flashed the new antenna after flashing Froyo (S-OFF required). The best set of instructions I could find for rooting and ROMing an Incredible are at Jonamerica. That post includes all things root that you need to know, including how to make nandroid backups.

2. While I really like DropBox (please sign up; it’s free and I need referrals), I also signed up for Evernote which has some added features. The primary difference is DropBox is great for online storage (I drop APKs in there all the time and then install them on my phone through the app) but Evernote actually makes everything searchable, including voice notes. Evernote is a cloud-based journal of sorts.

3. I was granted access to Google’s App Inventor. If you are interested, you can sign up here. In a few hours, I was able to put together a paint program, a phone dialer, a whack-a-mole game and a trivia game.,. and I don’t know the first thing about programming. The online tutorials are awesome. You might want to check them out even if you don’t have access yet to Inventor because they’re easy to follow and you’ll have a head start. Here’s my buzz about App Inventor.

4. Semi-breaking news, that was announced on Google Buzz: My6sense released an Android app for social networking. It learns your behavior, I hear, which enables it to prioritize content.

5. If you haven’t seen my “Google, My Best Guess at What it Will Look Like” post, it’s generating a ton of traffic. While I could be way off, I think you might find it interesting.

6. Samsung is on fire lately. The Galaxy S is a smashing success and the Verizon variant will be released tomorrow. The Galaxy Tab is also generating a lot of buzz. Speaking of which, SamsungUSA is actually on Google Buzz. Follow SamsungUSA for product announcements.

7. Facebook has given me access to “Facebook Questions,” a new feature on the site. It’s much like Yahoo! Answers and should roll out soon.

You might also enjoy:

--Google wants to kill your amateur blog… but that’s OK.

Miio is a mixture of every hot property on the web right now. It is a little like Facebook, Twitter, Buzz and FriendFeed. In other words, it is a social networking site. Do we really need another? The answer appears to be a resounding YES. Miio brings in the best of each of the hot properties and it is really gaining traction. The service is so polished that TheNextWeb entitled a post “Early adopted alert: miio is here, and it’s looking really slick.”

I’m a big fan of Google Buzz and I’ve been vocal about it. The CEO of miio, Richard Lusk, is also a Google Buzz fan. I’m not alone in saying that I plan to shift some of my social networking time to miio.

I’m not going to attempt to reinvent the wheel. There’s an excellent review of miio in the blogosphere entitled, “Why miio isn’t Twitter or Facebook: And why this is a good thing.” The post contains a video demo and a terrific overview of the service. It’s recommended reading.

If you check out miio, add my profile to your network. It’s at http://miio.com/jon.

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So, I was planning on writing a post about a service called “Readness.”  I read about it on TheNextWeb (“Readness: A Last.fm for News. Now why hasn’t this been done before?“). Readness is a browser extension that pays attention to what you read online and then recommends further reading. As TheNextWeb post points out, it’s Last.fm for written content. I was pretty excited to read about this and was really looking forward to checking it out… until I decided that I won’t be checking it out any time soon.

Readness like some other web apps relies on Facebook Friend Connect and for it work, you must permit it to:

I don’t write anything juicy on Facebook; in fact, I rarely contribute to Facebook. However, I don’t understand why I would authorize this Readness app to access my information, post on my wall or access my data at any time. I won’t turn this into a full blown Facebook rant (like I have in the past) but I won’t use the service until it disengages from the Facebook ecosystem or, at a minimum, allows me to use the service without handing them control over my Facebook account.

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Microsoft’s Office Live is now up and running for everyone to poke around. Here’s my take on it: it looks promising if you can tolerate the Office 2007 ribbons. If you can’t tolerate the ribbons, stick with Google Docs for cloud word processing.

Try it out:

http://office.live.com/?docsf=1&wa=wsignin1.0

Discuss it on Buzz:

http://www.google.com/buzz/jonathan.mallin/bnN3Rwnjnn1/Anyone-with-opinions-on-the-new-Office-online

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Do you like personalized radio players? Check out Last.fm. You’ll be glad you did. Like Pandora and Slacker, Last.fm builds personalized radio stations. Last.fm, which is entirely free in the U.S. and many other countries, offers the following advantages over the competitors:

• The Android Last.fm player will also play your own mp3s.
• Last.fm uses “Scrobbling” to build your custom radio stations. Many mp3 players can report to Last.fm the tunes you like.
• Unlimited skips. Can’t beat that! This is a big advantage over the free versions of Pandora and Slacker.
• Ability to completely ban a song from ever playing again.
• Ability to network with friends and share music interests. My Last.fm name is jonmallin. Feel free to send me a friend request.

This is where Last.fm can improve:

• Larger music library. While Last.fm does have a vast library of music, it does repeat some songs including some you may not want to hear again.
• Last.fm tends to overemphasize groups that are currently on tour. While this is a good way to monetize the app, it can be annoying.
• Better music preference prediction. Pandora uses the Music Genome Project which seems to predict my music tastes somewhat more accurately.

All in all, this Last.fm is my favorite personal radio player. Check it out at www.last.fm.

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You might be thinking, “what the hell is this about?” Well, the Salmon Protocol is a solution to a problem. The problem is we have fragmented conversations across the web on multiple platforms. I blast out TechBottle on Twitter, Facebook and Buzz. I have personal accounts on all three too and sometimes cross-post to my personal accounts. So, although my blog shows very few comments, many of my posts have sparked full-fledged conversations, particularly on Buzz. Sometimes they even spark comments that do not come to my attention. Well, the Salmon Protocol is the solution to this problem.

While it is not yet deployed, the Salmon Protocol will use PubSubHubBub (which stands for something but I don’t know what). PubSubHubBub is used for, among other things, pushing out TechBottle’s RSS feed to Google on a real-time basis. My blog signals to Google that it has new content to syndicate. Google does not need to crawl my blog at predetermined intervals to check for new content.

So why is this a problem worth solving or worth reading about? The Salmon Protocol will unify conversations. We will be able to choose any platform we like but participate in a broader discussion with a wider circle of people. The internet will be more connected and less disjointed when the Salmon Protocol is deployed. It will be quite interesting.

For More Information: http://www.salmon-protocol.org/

[via Buzz via John Hardy's comment on my Buzz Question]

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This is just plainly ridiculously amazing.

Wicked; Bad/Good, depending on your vernacular; Sweet; Awesome.  Pick your favorite superlative. You get the point.

Watch the video and do it in full screen mode. Crank it up to HD resolution if your bandwidth and monitor can support it.

Told ya so.

[via MobileWack]

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Last year, Detroit hosted two successful tech conferences, TechNow and Module Midwest Digital Conference. This year they have combined forces to form the region’s largest technology conference, FutureMidwest 2010. The conference takes place April 16-17 at the Royal Oak Music Theatre.

What’s FutureMidwest about?

It’s an event much like the popular SXSW that takes place in Austin, TX each year. FutureMidwest will feature tech presentations mixed in with networking opportunities, panel discussions, a demo pit, breakout sessions and workshops. The full agenda is available online.

Who’s speaking at FutureMidwest?

The keynote speaker is Detroit-native Jay Adelson, formerly CEO of Digg. Other speakers cover a wide range. Some are social media strategists from large publicly-held companies. Some are young entrepreneurs. If you have aspirations of making it big in the tech, the region’s largest players will be in attendance offering up sage advice. The full list of presenters  is available online.

Any impressive sponsors?

Yes, corporate sponsors are equally as impressive as the roster of presenters. Notable sponsors include: Read Write Web, Mashable, Verizon Wireless, GM, Ford, blip.tv and Yelp.

Ticket Information

Full registration covering the entire event is $100 for a student / $200 all others. Networking and entertainment Friday night only is $25. Corporate discounts are available. Proceeds benefit the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Tickets are available online.

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I started Tech Bottle six months ago and I find myself now blogging about blogging. I did a quick Google search for reasons to write a blog and it returned 44.2 million hits. I’ve opted to write about my own experience and not parrot back what others have suggested.

Blogging was once seen as a “look at me!” activity involving only the most self-absorbed people. I think that subset, like nearly the rest of world, has moved to Facebook. It’s definitely become the preferred platform for narcissists (but not all Facebookers are narcissists, of course). I considered blogging anonymously back in November and decided against it. I never intended to write anything controversial on Tech Bottle and I didn’t see a need to pretend to be someone else. Although I write under my own name, I blog for the reasons given below (not to draw extreme attention to myself) and I think they’re compelling reasons for people to consider writing a blog.

There are probably around 200 million blogs in the world covering virtually every topic imaginable. I chose technology as my primary theme but some people blog restaurant reviews, photography, travel, karate, knitting (5.6 million Google hits for “knitting blog”), etc.  Last year, I found myself renewing my interest in technology. I like tinkering with computers, mobile phones and other gadgets. Right out of the gate, I knew I’d have fun playing with WordPress and creating the infrastructure for a blog. I’m frequently tinkering with the blog. Also, I found myself talking people’s ears off  in “real life” about technology. I was more interested in these topics than some of the people with whom I associate. I decided to blog to find other people with similar interests (geeks, I suppose) and share my thoughts. I also “mashup” or repost items that I find interesting from other sources with attribution. Between the various social networks, primarily Twitter and Buzz, I have been able to meet people throughout the blogosphere who also share some of my interests. I discovered new blogs to read and we don’t talk each other’s ears off. Blogs are entirely on-demand; you can tune into things that interest you and tune out to things that don’t. The blogosphere is something like the world’s largest newspaper with every blogger serving as his or her own editor-in-chief.

Blogging is a good recession activity. WordPress (start at WordPress.org, not WordPress.com) and other blogging platforms are completely free. Domain names and hosting are cheap. If you’re willing to allocate a little bit of space to advertisers (Google AdSense is pretty easy to set up), you’ll come out ahead even with a modest following. In my first few months of blogging, I’ve covered my annual expenses.

I’ve enjoyed blogging more than I thought I would. If you’re passionate about something or willing to become passionate about something, you’ll likely enjoy blogging too.

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This afternoon Matt Cutts buzzed the following:

Here’s a new trick that hasn’t been blogged yet! Google’s url shortener at goo.gl can generate QR codes (which are 2D barcodes) just by appending “.qr” after the goo.gl url. So the url http://goo.gl/727X does a redirect to http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ and the url http://goo.gl/727X.qr will generate a QR code that also goes to http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ . Pretty cool, huh? Please share this trick widely. :)

If you are unfamiliar with QR Codes, you can read my primer entitled “Blackberry Messenger Code ‘Decoded’: QR Code Explained and Free Generator.”

The easiest way to use the goo.gl URL shortner is to install Chrome MUSE in Google’s Chrome browser.

This is an example of a QR Code, one that would take the scanning device to the @techbottle twitter page:

@techbottle on twitter

[via Google Buzz]

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Professor Matthew Weathers of Biola University attempts to lecture his math students but is interrupted by his own shadow. With over a half a million YouTube views, this April Fools joke is worth sharing.

He also has an entertaining blog.

[via UrlEsque]

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Google pull out of China by April 10? Nah. March 28, today, Google began redirecting all traffic from google.cn (Google China) to google.com.hk (Google Hong Kong) which allows Chinese language searches without any form of censorship. Chinese citizens have the entire internet available to them as of this afternoon via Google Hong Kong.

David Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer and SVP of Corporate, posted to Google’s official blog this afternoon. The post is entitled, “A new approach to China: an update.” It basically states, in an artfully drafted diplomatic fashion, exactly what I wrote in the first paragraph of this post.

Mike Elgan posted on ITWorld.Com at 4 pm reason why this is a total slap in the face to China. He writes:

It leaves the Chinese government with three options:

1. Block mainland access to Hong Kong, which exacerbates frustration with Hong Kong’s special status and creates resentment on the mainland

2. Shut down the Hong Kong site, which creates resentment among powerful elites in Hong Kong

3. Allow Chinese citizens access to an uncensored Internet

None of these options are acceptable to the Chinese government.

A couple of hours later, China responded to Google’s crafty redirect. Again, Mike Elgan was on the story. The quotes from Chinese officials are as follows:

Google’s move is “totally wrong,” said a government spokesman, described as the “official in charge of the Internet bureau under the State Council Information Office” through the official Chinese news agency Xinhua. Further, he said, “Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks.”

The spokesman said: “This is totally wrong. We’re uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conducts.”

This in a year where the Internet is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize! :)

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LEssons For The Opposite Sex, a/k/a Leftos, is a community-driven website where users ask questions, offer opinions and anonymously network to improve their social or sex lives. It’s a beta web app offered by a Detroit-based startup that launched the site approximately one year ago.

Leftos is broken down into six main categories: Single, Dating, Sex, Relationships, Marriage and Divorce. While the entire love spectrum is covered, the demographic appears to be primarily college students and recent graduates. This may seem like a turnoff if you’re outside of that demographic but users can follow one another (think Twitter) and create an experience to their liking.

The interface was recently redesigned and offers many improvements over the prior version. What I like most is the main global news feed which can show either the most recent comments or the highest rated comments. If you frequent the site, the most recent comments feed will keep you coming back; if you’re new to Leftos, the highest rated comments are a good place to start.

Overall, I think Leftos has the potential to serve a niche market but it needs to grow its number of active users. Perhaps a piece in a significant publication would really drive traffic. The infrastructure is terrific (better than anything remotely similar) and it has been designed, programmed and promoted exclusively by a team of three 20-somethings. If you are curious, you can check it out at http://www.leftos.com/ or follow @Leftos on Twitter for some of the most entertaining headlines.

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FUNNY! Click to Enlarge

Google unveiled its latest lab today, Google Play (http://www.google.com/reader/play/), a magazine-style RSS reader. It shows thumbnails along the bottom edge and the viewing window enlarges images and makes them more prominent. A slideshow mode also makes Play dissimilar from Google Reader. Play includes the ability to “like” an item, share an item and star an item for later viewing.

The recipe for Play seems to be two parts Google Reader, one part Google Fast Flip and one part StumbleUpon.

A touchscreen device would be the ideal platform for Play; readers could simply flick ahead to the next snippet. Perhaps this product was developed primarily for the upcoming touchscreen tablets.

I found the funny image [points up and to the right] using Play. One of the people I follow on Google Buzz shared it.

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This post was inspired by Stan Schroeder’s post on Mashable entitled, “Bing takes on ‘Goliath’ Google with Huge UK Advertising Campaign.” Apparently, Microsoft will spend up to $2.0B on an advertising campaign in the U.K.  To put this “huge” campaign into perspective, Microsoft current has a market cap of approximately $253B.

65 Google buzzers replied with comments. I commented: “Microsoft is pushing Bing prematurely. Wired ran a very good article about Google which, among other things, compared the accuracy of results between Google and Bing. Bing was pathetic.”  The Wired article is entitled, “Exclusive: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web.” In that article, Google’s accuracy is compared with Microsoft Bing’s.

I have no doubt that Google will dominate internet search, perhaps in perpetuity, but this has less to do with the algorithm Google uses than the Wired title suggests. Google is womping the competitors because it has something they don’t… better data and a steady flow of it.  When I say better data, I don’t mean that Google knows about web pages that other search engines don’t (although it’s quite possible). Google search is the smartest around because it has a phenomenal algorithm, no doubt, but also because it has been collecting data generated by humans (clicks) for a very long time. Between the data and the algorithm, Google can predict what content you want to view. In a sense, Google search is the high watermark for artificial intelligence. It can predict human behavior based on a person typing a word or two.

According to the Inside Google special on CNBC, Google saves everything typed into Google indefinitely. Your own search results are identified with your Google account and IP address for a period of 18 months and then anonymized. This information makes Google smarter. Now, a full 20% of Google searches are actually tailored to you and differ from Joe Schmoe’s search results.

Enter Bing.  Bing is an outgrowth of MSN Search.  MSN Search was never a dominant player in the search business. AltaVista, Yahoo and others were Google’s chief competitors. In the early days, search was dominated by who had the biggest map of the internet which was a function of the “spidering” software.  Another factor was the algorithm used to produce results. Google won the search war but it did it by being innovative and leveraging data. It learned if you clicked the what you were looking for and didn’t return to Google for another X seconds.

Microsoft is trying to play catch up. It needs to brand Bing but it also needs Bing to accurately predict what you want to click. How can it accomplish this when Google has virtually monopolized the search market? Maybe spending $2.0B in the UK will bring in $2.0B+ worth of data (clicks). Then again, maybe it won’t.  It will be difficult to leverage this localized data because Google will generate more and arguably better data in the same period of time globally. It’s data where Google excels; even if Bing had precisely the same algorithm and the same map of the web, it would lose the search war on data alone.

Bing’s strategy seems somewhat outside of the box. Colorful graphics and promotions seem to be in Bing’s playbook. These seem like mere window dressing to me. When it comes to getting accurate results, Google wins. It knows what I want to click. Will Bing ever be smart enough to be a viable alternative? I’m not sure but spending $2.0B in advertising off in the U.K. won’t propel it ahead of Google.

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Gmail users can now enable “Refresh POP Accounts” in the Labs section. Once enabled, the refresh link (pictured) will check all POP accounts for new mail.

Friday I was complaining about the previous method for checking POP accounts to a friend who hasn’t yet become a Gmail convert. The 1 hour POP times were driving me nuts and the manual POP checks were cumbersome. This new Lab is a dandy.  Anyone who uses Gmail to POP mail from other accounts should activate this.

[Official Gmail Blog]

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I believe the web has a new anthem, replacing the Black Eyed Peas Now Generation, depending on your taste in music. The video featured below has already been viewed on YouTube over 32,000 times and has scored a five star rating. It’s entertaining and it is the most web-centric of any music out there… as well as a great parody.

The New Dork ~ The Entrepreneur State of Mind.

And if you missed the Black Eyed Peas Now Generation, here it is:

[via Mashable]

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I’ve been writing about the cloud lately and remotely hosted files. Quite a few Blackberry users already use the cloud to backup contacts and calendars either with Google Sync or mIQ. I recently discovered two new Blackberry cloud apps that have significant potential… one for managing cloud hosted files and another for streaming your Mp3s or discovering new music.

Glide Engage

Glide Engage v. 1.0 is a free app for the Storm, Tour and Bold 9700 (as well as an Android flavor). It is intended to operate somewhat like Twitter but with a much higher character limit and the ability to post multimedia (a la Google Buzz). Frankly, I wasn’t interested at all in the “engage” element of the app. Instead, I noticed that you can browse the 30 free gigs of cloud storage they give each user that I wrote about four days ago. This is nifty…

…but you can’t seem to do anything with your files through the Blackberry. I thought I’d be able to download, attach, delete and rename files. Nope. You can view thumbnails of the documents that are too small to be legible on the Blackberry screen. Maybe someone can figure this out and comment on this blog post because I’m really curious why these features aren’t baked into the app. I assume that they’re in development.

To create a Glide account and claim your 30 free gigs of cloud storage, visit http://glideos.com/. To download the free Blackberry app, point your Blackberry’s browser to http://glideos.com/download/glideengage.jad.

GrooveShark Mobile

GrooveShark mobile requires a premium GrooveShark account ($3/month, discussed below) and allows Blackberries to tap into GrooveShark’s music library and a user’s own cloud-hosted music library. It streams the music with high sound quality and creating playlists is a breeze. (I’m listening to Roger Waters’ Radio Waves as I type this.) You can also create your playlists on the computer and launch them with the app. Also, this app, like the desktop web version I wrote about yesterday, allows you to play a “Radio” mode similar to the Pandora and Slacker apps. GrooveShark mobile allows unlimited skips.

The GrooveShark mobile app is well designed and easy to use. It is much more polished than the Glide Engage app.  Where I think GrooveShark is going wrong is the “pay $3/month to play music you already own” model. Frankly, most Blackberry owners can accommodate their music libraries on their MicroSD cards and preserve battery life by not streaming data.  For this app to take off, I think GrooveShark should follow the UberTwitter and IM+ app model and have visual advertisements in the app and drop the monthly charge.

To get started with GrooveShark, visit http://grooveshark.com.

Closing Remarks

These apps have the potential to be really cool. Even without the apps, I recommend both services even if you only intend to use them on the computer. If you have any opinions on the Glide Engage or GrooveShark apps, leave a comment. I’ll see if I can get the developers’ attention.

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Click to visit GrooveShark.Com

GrooveShark is a cloud-based music service that works in two different ways. First, you can use it like a custom radio similar to Pandora and Slacker but with unlimited skips (yes, even in the free version). Second, you can upload your MP3s and maintain a cloud library of music that you can stream from any browser. There is a paid version of GrooveShark that eliminates visual ads on the web interface and includes apps for streaming your tunes to your smartphone.

There does not appear to be a quota on the size of a user’s library but I found the upload process which is entirely Java based to be very, very slow. (The uploader estimates my remaining 956 songs will take about 7 hours and 20 minutes to upload. Yikes!) If you choose to upload a song already in the collective GrooveShark library, it will appear in your personal library without actually uploading it. Also, uploaded songs augment the collective GrooveShark library.

Wikipedia speaks to copyright issues surrounding GrooveShark and points out that the EULA does not indemnify users from copyright violations. Nonetheless, many people feel comfortable using the service which streams 50 to 60 million songs per month and was growing at a rate of 2% to 3% per day as of April 2009.

Sound quality is very good over a cable internet connection. Not that I’m an audiophile but I couldn’t distinguish my streamed music from the original MP3s even on good speakers.

Although having cloud-hosted music is convenient, I wouldn’t use it as a substitute for a backup because music stored on GrooveShark can be streamed only, not downloaded. If you want to backup your music to a cloud, I recommend using Glide which offers 30 GB of free storage and can sync your music folders regularly. Files stored on Glide can be downloaded later.

[via Gerben van Erkelens on Google Buzz]

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