Google Sky
By Grant | August 23, 2007
Their mission: “is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Well, it looks as though they’ve taken it one step further and are now organizing the universe’s information and make it accessible and useful to the world. Google has brought together thousands of star maps, glass plate photos, Hubble data and photos from observatories around the world and embedded them into their product, Google Earth. The new features require a free download of the new version of Google Earth.
Have a look at their promo video below.
Topics: Topical News, Webhead | No Comments »
CNN - YouTube.com Presidential Debates
By Grant | July 22, 2007
As you may or may not know, the 2008 United States Presidential race is underway. In recent years the effect of the Internet on elections has been increasingly hyped in the media, starting primarily with McCain’s Republican Primary surge in the 2000 election. And now tomorrow, July 23rd, the US 2008 election, the media, and the Internet shall converge in a fully orchestrated manner.
The July 23rd debate is especially interesting for those of us in the Web 2.0 space and interested in seeing how the interactive Internet can be used in the political arena. CNN will host the debate in conjunction with YouTube. New Media YouTube teaming up with Old Media CNN, you say? It allows for some interesting interactivity- namely, American Citizens can make videos of themselves asking questions of the presidential candidates. Anyone can ask a presidential candidate a question by submitting a video here.
I write this on the eve of the debate, July 22nd; there are over 2384 submissions so far tonight. After sampling a few there appear to be some genuine quality questions. You can have a look at a number of the submissions by hitting this page on YouTube. The opportunity exists to really revolutionize and engage the electorate in debate- talk about hands on “grass roots” politics on a national scale. This is the stuff the Internet was made for. I truly hope this can become a new and established format so that all us little guys can engage large networks and new media giants and connect with leaders of all types, from politicians to CEOs.
The debate is for the Democrats and will air for two hours starting at 7 p.m. EST. The next one will air on September 17th for the Republicans. Anderson Cooper has been slated to moderate and is reported to offer between 20 and 30 questions. In an elaborate campaign that equally advertises CNN, YouTube, and parent company Google, the debate will feature geographical locations of questioners on Google Earth maps; and oversized projector screens streaming questions by visitors to the site.
I look forward to watching the event, which takes place in Charleston South Carolina, to see exactly how these YouTube user questions are integrated into the CNN hosted event. Will they air the truly challenging questions or will they stick to easy ones and simply emphasize the YouTube “questions from the mouths of the electorate” angle as a Web 2.0 novelty and publicity stunt for those companies involved?
Topics: Topical News, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »
What is iGoogle?
By Grant | May 7, 2007
Howdy all, sorry for not posting more regularly, it’s been a busy few weeks at the ol’ day job! Speaking of which, I have created a personal homepage with Google that imports interesting information and “widget” apps onto a Google-branded homepage. A few days ago I noticed a little green lower-case “i” in front of the standard primary colour Google logo. Welcome to iGoogle your customizable personal portal from Google. You can now crowd Google’s elegant search box with widgets, apps and aggregated content while checking out the sports scores and upcoming weather patterns. You could actually do this for quite awhile, they just decided to brand it as iGoogle recently.
Now, I’m one of the first people to line up and praise Google for being innovative and brilliant, etc. — but for some reason I felt a little unhappy that Google is heading down this personalization path. I got attached to their search above all else brand. They went the path of basic white for a reason. I like that. I don’t want my Google page to be cluttered with widgets and weather. I just want my Google search box. Akin to the roll-out of New Coke, which was a disaster. Most taste test groups enjoyed New Coke over the Classic Coke, it was better as a product. However, Classic Coke was a brand that people identified with, it was their brand, their taste. Who were the Coke executives to take that away from them when it was part of their identities? The Wikipedia entry on New Coke is a great read if you have a minute.
Anyway, likewise, Google is my brand, my search engine. Google executives- stop tinkering with it. It works fine, yes iGoogle may be better and provide information that I may find useful, but it deviates from the original Google brand that I developed a relationship with all those years ago.
Topics: Topical News, Webhead | 3 Comments »
Exclusive Beta, Web 2.0
By Grant | April 29, 2007
Well, Joost still hasn’t given me any more invites. (I’ll let you all know when I get some more). So, why invites? Do the makers of Joost simply want to be elitist? Many Web applications these days offer a limited beta release where anyone can sign up for their app only to follow by locking down their sign-up pages in favor of getting current users to invite their associates to use the program. Why do this? It seems like extra work to manage invitation and exclusive sign-up lists.
It turns out that the exclusive beta process is actually quite selfish, companies tend to do it because they haven’t fully developed the infrastructure they require to properly scale their application. The infrastructure could include items such as servers, customer support teams, etc. — exclusive beta allows them to determine how much bandwidth 1 addition to the user base takes off the servers. As the app development team works the kinks out of their technology they release more invitations to more beta users and are able to throttle the growth of that base as much or as little as they need to as they flex their muscles and build the systems required to deliver their app without any major customer service failures.
In short, exclusive beta is a great way to eliminate an unknown as you go to develop your web app. With the ability to throttle your exponential growth you are able to experiment with your user base without the fear of becoming overwhelmed by a huge influx of popularity. Simultaneously you create buzz for your application by keeping it exclusive- encouraging bloggers such as myself to at least comment on having invites available for people. The one gamble lays in not refining the value proposition of your app to the degree that would encourage people to invite their friends or associates to test it out. Developing an elaborate system to throttle growth is next to useless if no one is inspired to help you grow your user base.
Topics: Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »