Bing + Wolfram|Alpha

More Random Internet Musings, November 7, 2009

Pretty funny coincidence. Even mentioned Wolfram|Alpha too, and what do you know, Bing with Wolfram|Alpha results coming soon. Yes, it can be said I didn't see anything, because Wolfram|Alpha already existed. For clarity, Smarter Mainstream Search Engines.

With each new transition, the new overshadows, but does not entirely eliminate, the old.

(Yahoo!)
First it was the portal. The internet was small, there wasn't a ton of information, people wanted to see everything that was the internet, thus portals were created. They pretty much contained all there was to see.

(Google)
But the internet grew and portals became unwieldy. Search engines became necessary to sort through all the content portals could no longer contain. This marked a decline in portals.

(Facebook)
People are tired of searching the internet all alone, and want to know that other people are also surfing and whatnot. Social networking sites are "overlaid" on existing websites to create a social, interactive component.

As for search engines, there is still so much that can be done to improve them. While the above are trends that encompass the entire internet, there are also trends within each of these individual categories.

Search engines are ever so slowly undergoing a transition of sorts. They are becoming "smarter" in the sense that they understand what you are searching for. Now you can type "weather", for example, and Google won't just give you results, but it will display the actual weather in your area based on your IP. Wolfram|Alpha is an example of an attempt to create search engines that provide accurate answers to what you are looking for. But the weather example is just the most basic example of what could be carried out on an even grander scale.

Why will this happen? While there's lots of great content online, there's also far too much garbage and with SEO, the system can be gamed. This means users are not getting what they want. More and more for common basic queries, search engines will generate their own results that will dominate more of the page, rather than having third party results as is currently the case.

Create a web application to determine the degrees of separation between two websites using data from Quantcast.com. Type in two website URLs. The program will then input those into Quantcast, and using the Audience Also Likes output, input those for both websites until there is a common website.

Super chill unrelated song. Amazingly smooth voice.
    


Motorola DROID Commercial
   

This seems to happen over and over again. I fill out the Windows Live Feedback form, typically for spam or something.

There are dropdowns and boxes that ask you to fill out the link to the offending profile as well as the type of violation. Then the feedback team responds and typically asks, "What's the problem?".

It's great that they're actually responding. It really is. Without a doubt the most responsive feedback team of any website probably. But can't they read the form?

It seems like there is a transition to a less anonymous internet with Facebook. Everyone's got a Facebook, and a growing number of websites are utilizing the Facebook login feature.

Too many different platforms are competing - Windows Live, Google and Yahoo!. On a recent group project, every group member used a different platform, when someone suggested online collaboration. Ultimately, some people had to setup Google accounts. However, everyone had a Facebook. If productivity tools were added to its list of apps, Facebook would have some serious clout. Unlike other platforms, Facebook focuses on communication rather than services, making it a perfect platform for collaboration. Facebook also creates a real digital identity because everybody is identified by their name, and it might be the best new platform for productivity apps rather than Google or Windows Live.

Also, Facebook apps are big monies. I don't understand why the top games are so popular though. The mafia game has zero interactivity. It's just a screen with stats and you click away. It's like crunching numbers in a cubicle. Lame. There is no real element of competition. The winners are the ones who spend (waste) the most time playing the game. The gardening game is lame too. Why would anybody waste time growing a digital garden when they could grow a real one? Lame lame lame.

All these games use the social element to become popular. However, there is a terrible lack of a competitive element. There's a vaccum, a need for interactive, competitive games on social networking sites like Facebook. There is huge potential here. Games like Everquest and World Of Warcraft are notorious for their addictive qualities. Now add that and social networking (also addictive), and there's an even bigger opportunity.

About time. Finally got crestind.com after it was parked for a year. Kind of a stupid luxury purchase, but at least it won't get snapped up by someone else. Got some exciting plans for the site. Lots of cool open source apps I can finally test out.

So I was reading Wikipedia, and as usual one entry led to another until I stumbled upon the online disinhibition effect. I have definitely noticed that people tend to act differently online and become more wild in general, whether it's the stupid, inane YouTube comments or forums. But I guess that's the great thing about the internet.

I had definitely noticed two of the causes - the illusion of anonymity (which can be pierced with even a little digging) and a certain degree of equality. And boom, out of the blue, there's a full fledged article with all the different factors. Fun read. And more.

Nothing too new or exciting from Apple

Storage Upgrades And Price Cuts
obviously to fend off the upcoming Zune HD, which now looks rather pricey in comparison. Very nice, but not a dealmaker. I want an iPod Touch, and it still lacks a camera.

Genius For Apps And Playlists
Added a Genius feature for apps to rake in more cash. Lame. I wonder how long this new "feature" took. Probably all of 1 hour with one coder.

iTunes Gets More Bloated
Woo.

iPod Nano
Voice recorder is great. It's got a radio and allows pausing of radio, but no radio recording, which my Sandisk Sansa has. It has a video camera, but it can't take stills for some reason. But I was right about design "reaching a limit" of sorts. This time around, no major design update, just a change to a glossier coating. The new finish is repulsive though. Instead of the clean brushed finish every other Apple product has, they chose to give it a glossy coat this time around, which gives it a rather cheap and ugly look. The only reason this change was made was probably for the sake of change. Just for that, I would not want to buy it. Plus I'm sure it would scratch much more easily.

No Upgrades to iPod Touch
I was hoping for a camera at least, but nothing. I'll probably get an iPod Touch once it has a radio, video camera, camera, voice recorder and radio recorder, to match the features on my Sansa.

Yahoo! rolled out a cool new search engine results page. I have to say, such a drastic change was long overdue for search engines.

Interestingly enough it has a few of the elements I thought could be useful when I posted about it a while back. The new design is centered, it has a sidebar with a notepad. The best new feature is the ability to search any website from within Yahoo!. There's awesome tabs on the left that appear to be dynamic, and change based on your search term. Brilliant! Ads are also closer to the center, and should be good for increasing profits.

Nice new search engine results page, but too bad all of Yahoo!'s other internet properties are an absolute mess.

I use Meebo simply because it's a webapp, and won't be slowing down my computer. For some strange reason, Meebo thought it would be a brilliant idea to make chatlogs public to everyone. A simple search with some keywords will bring up plenty of results. Just search for

site:http://chatlogs.meebo.com/ "keywords"

And all that stuff will be brought back. You can narrow things down as well if you add a separate "username" part to the search. While you can't see the usernames straight out, a simple View Source will solve that, which makes it even worse. Of course it's dependent on the fact that the individual uses Meebo, but whatever. Digital records are great, but only if you're the only person who can see it.

The weather reporting is a bit too broad. It's bright as day out, and the theme is showing some sort of cloudy doomsday.

Woot got a new phone. LG Rumor 2. Its UI is surprisingly polished and is on par with the iPhone's. Nice battery life too. Definitely beats my old Motorola KRZR.

Messed with a Palm Pre the other day at a store. Still doesn't match up to the iPhone. It has a rather flimsy feel because of the plastic body, but it was better than most other phones.

Commercials themselves were pretty strange already but...

  

Bit of reorganization. New Business and Ideas And Concept Design categories. The business will eventually be ported to a new blog once I hit my profit goals.

It appears YouTube is doing some split testing on designs. The other one is even more bland, and with less call to action on the upload button. It seems like they want to decrease the amount of videos uploaded. Just a random thought though.

Vista's Windows Movie Maker leaves a a nasty watermark on all the videos you make, which is frustrating to say the least. The OS is around $200, and yet the movie making software leaves a watermark on your videos unless you use a period as the file name, as I later found.

So I made the bright decision to download the fancy newfangled Windows Live Movie Maker. It has an extra word; it must be good. So the first time I run this, it asks me to update the program. Why wasn't this update included in the installer? I had to download the update, install that, and then run Windows Live Movie Maker. Who are the twits that code this garbage? And worst of all... it didn't even have a storyboard. Sure, it's beta software, but how are you supposed to make videos without a storyboard. This isn't beta. Maybe alpha. So basically, everything you can do in Windows Live Movie Maker, you can do in Microsoft Office PowerPoint. In fact, it was worse than PowerPoint. It had fewer transitions, timing features, and everything. It's embarrassing that they even release this. I'm having doubts about Windows 7 now too.

It seems that the Windows Live Movie Maker team's idea of "new" is changing the color scheme, adding a dynamic resizing scrollbar at the bottom (OMG it's animated resizing, so Vista-y and impressive!).

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:expandcategory?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=1BBF8032E5314C7BACC6315B57622815&tab=3#tab-container-3

Better design by... Lenovo? Unexpected. Don't care about the hardware that much. It's hard to find a PC that looks this good. Mac good looks, with PC style.
Want!

Haven't been able to post in the longest time. Lots of stuff happening all at once. Totally destroyed my macroeconomics grade, my brain is mush, the end of my twelve arduous years of schooling is almost at an end.

The internet is going to be huge. You would think it already is, but all of this is just the start. You need to get involved somehow if you aren't already. There's so many opportunities here in terms of business or just changes. The internet is so incredible in that it completely destroys distance. It simply doesn't exist. You can pretty much do anything, short of talking to someone face to face.

Eventually everything will be linked up to the internet. Refrigerators, homes, ebook readers, printers, etc. There will be even more mind blowing changes to come.

Paper will finally die. People will carry around "digital paper". Like ebook readers, but more awesome. All documents will be stored on your reader device, which will download files from the cloud. You lose the reader, it's not a problem since it's all in the cloud. The Amazon Kindle will eventually become this product.

RFID tags will be pretty much everywhere, including food packages. The tags will track basically everything about each product manufactured. Your fridge will be able to scan its contents thanks to the RFID tags, and people will easily be able to check the status of their fridge. The "home delivery" model of grovery will finally be successful (Webvan), especially with urban sprawl and increasingly stressful and busy lives, people aren't going to go to stores themselves anymore. Feature bloat will cause less useful items to be hooked up to the internet, like ovens.

A sorely needed change will be the digital home. It's 2009, and most homes have no features that integrate them with the internet. But eventually all homes will have their own websites. You'll be able to access your home through the internet to check on its status.

Incoherent post as usual. I'll see how accurate these are. On a side note, it's so irritating to see people write email as "E-Mail" or Web-Site. That's about as bad as writing "teen-ager" like back in the day.