CreepBook - When Its Time To Say "Enough"

"Privacy" - its a joke. Or it has been made into one. Every website has it though, most have i hidden or less prominent.

Try this - go to google.com, see where the "Advertising programs" link is and where the "privacy policy" link is, can you guess which is more prominent? and hence which is more important for google?

Markeeters want us to spend more time on their website they want to know more about you, about who you know, what you ahve or dont have, what you want, what you search for, what you view.

They want to know thsi so they can use it to better target their advertising, sell you something, create a economy.

Well that not the problem, problem is when the "data mining" thing gets too personal fro comfort.

If you are facebook or orkut you would know you get strange friends suggestions, people you dont have emails of, people who are not even in your addressbook or connected to someone you know...but they do..people have faced akckward situatiosn because of this..sometimes social sometimes professional.

Here are some ways facebook gets your "personal" data:

Its searches the general web for your name, email and tries to match them with other people.

It records every search for person and if someone searches for you, it matches (unlikely)

It searches twitter/myspaces/orkuts/hi5s and data mines publcily availables friends.

or maybe even browser hijacking..(unlikely)

but whatever it is, i wish facebook learns to "Ask" before it 'obliges".

Why Steve Ballmer Misses The Point Completely With Android

Steve Ballmer, chief of Microsoft, speaking at Telstra annual investment day said "I don't really understand their strategy. Maybe somebody else does. If I went to my shareholder meeting, my analyst meeting and said, hey, we've just launched a new product that has no revenue model!"

Sometimes its hard to believe this guy heads the largest technology corporation in the world. Its almost unfair that microsoft has to compete against the smarts of Larry page and Sergey Brin. A decade of seeing open source screwing up microsoft server business, he still needs to ask why they are doing it.

Ok Steve i know the answer and here it is. Its time microsoft gets screwed. Google wants to do that. Since they dont want you to control the third screen(mobile) and releasing a open source OS for which manufacturers do not have to pay for licenses its just the fastest way to do it.

So in short, they want to do to your mobile business what Linix did to your server business.

Clear? I think its time we switch jobs, o heck no, you will screw up my company and ask stupid questions in public conferences.

To Microsoft share holders, sell man sell.Fast.

How A Search Engines Conflict Of Interest Can Keep You Away From That Perfect Search Engine

We all dream about that perfect search engine. The engine that gives you answer for every question without trying your ability to think of imaginary keywords that might or might not exist. The search engine that will tell you where your kids are and what they are doing, the search engine that tells who you need to marry, the search engine that tells you if are going to become the next president.

But wait, it will never happen. 

There is a conflict of interest that arises in every advertising based business. Every content provider is serving a advertiser. They owe the advertiser a share of your attention. 

If search engines became perfect, you will hardly click the ad. If search engine became perfect, you will not visit a website, the content owner will not have any reason to share his content with the search engine.

Marrissa mayer, gave a seminar in web.20 summit in which she shared how increasing the number of search results on each page from 10 to 30 caused the traffic and revenue to reduce 20%.

When marrisa mayer equates people leaving their search results page early and not clicking ads to bad performance you know there is not much hope.

The chances are a user might might have more search results to view, he focuses less on ads, he finds a good result in 30 results and visits the website.  

Itsclearly understandable, irrespective of what google tells you, they want you on their website. That is where they get their revenues from.

I dont blame them, they are a for profit company. Its the entire business model that has conflict of interest built in.

Someday maybe they will start an ad free search engine and charge a fee for it. There they can give users the best search engine, because you are paying them for it. Simple.

No its not the software stupid: Google shows off Gmail on Android

Google inc showed off its gmail service on android on its blog recently and it seems everyone is happy to see the screenshots. Very happy.

Infact the screenshot looked so much better then gmail on the web i am tempted to use a android phone just to check my emails even when i am right infront of my computer.

But hey who ever complained about android, we just thought G1 design sucks. 

Nokia switches strategy, connects to internet

  

Nokia whos brand slogan is connecting people, has so far not connected to the internet too much. They were happy making cool phones and selling them. 

Nomore. Nokia has seen many companies come and play in its core domain. Every company that does anything at all has a phone to sell to us now. 

But so far Nokia has focussed on its core. It made phone and only phones while others like Sonay and samsung ventured into anything that has a silicon chip inside it. And then along came Google android to give its recently acquired symbian mobile operating system a run for its money.

Everyone just wanted to take what bill gates did to the PC and do it to our mobile phones. Everyone wanted to control the third screen as they call it.

While Steve jobs is too arrogant to learn from his mistakes which is evident from the fact that he steal wanted people to buy a phone that has apples software, apples hardware and design, Google is actually doing what bill did by releasing a operating system and not making a mobile handset.

Now since Google would be shown a middle finger if it just came along with operating system and told everyone to switch over cause it says so, it follwed a better strategy of releasig this softare as open source which is less threatening to most handset manufacturers.

It seems nokia realises, with android becoming the default operating system it will be forced to offer its phones in android os too. More threat coming from other handset manufacturers.

Nokias new strategy is to save its market share by providing more internet based services. Services that are not easily portable creating a tall barrier to entry for other handset providers.

With its recent dozen acquisitions it seems nokia is thinking ahead of a lot of other handset manufacturers.

Obviously not everyone, Steve out thinks everyone, but then he wldnt sell anything to you that isnt apple made. Its so not steve. He makes his own screw when he build his house, he makes his own medicine when he gets a fever.

Acqusitions is for kids. Apple is differenent. If you want the apple, buy the whole tree you cheap skates. 

ValueClick executive joins a startup

Reuters reports one of the early executives of valueclick, an online adnetwork has joined a startup called gigya. 

Gigya apparently lets application developers distribute their applications in their publisher network. It also lets advertisers advertise in these widgets and shares earnings in advertsing with publishers and developers.

Good business model. Distributed content is surely the next big thing on the internet. 

I wonder if these recessive times will allow senior executives of more public cmpanies to take the plnge venture backed startups.

 

Sprint ceo says Google android sucks

Ok he didn;t actually say it sucks, i just read between the lines. 

CEO Dan Hesse, whom you may remember from those classy black-and-white commercials on the teevee, recently told the National Press Club that as it stands, he doesn't think Android is "good enough to put the Sprint brand on it." Sure, he probably just meant that he'd like to see Android's kinks ironed out before Sprint puts out a handset of their own, since he has committed to support Google's OS in the future. It's a little surprising coming from Sprint, given their close ties with HTC, but once Android gets a little more polished, we're sure Sprint will jump into the fray. [via Reuters]

Amazing wordpress plugin to manage comments from desktop

I came across this amazing wordpress plugin called moderator. Its built on top of adobe air and needs the adobe air runtime. 

Moderators lets users manage their wordpress comments right from their desktop. Cool.

Facebook shows some of its users the middle finger and goes ahead with redesign

I firmly believe you cannot keep everyone happy. Its essential to make some people unhappy. Its important to pick the people you are goin make unhappy really well.

Facebook faced stiff opposition from around 1 million of its 100 million users to the site redesign. Facebook has gone ahead with the prposed redesign and it seems to be working well for now. 

I like the new design. 

I'm glad facebook went ahead with redesign. Listening too much to your users can lead to a painful collapse.

So many times what users say to you is based on illogical baseless factors that its best to logically decide what you want to do with a product. So any products have failed because they asked for solution from users.

Never ask a user for solution. Ask them what their problem is. Propose a solution. If you believe its best for the kind of users you want to keep, go ahead and do it.

Sometimes you just need to show them the middle finger, because the problem with us is that e really dont know what we want most times. We just want to be heard. Paid attention to. That doesnt mean i dont wnt the redesign, i just want you to know i have a point.

Consumer is a strange animal. But its ok we love animals.

Faceboook gets generous, releases thrift, scribe

It seems all companies including Google, Yahoo and facebook understand one thing well now. They need to keep the developer community close to them to be able to create standards and be in a position to control the industry.

In its attempt facebook has released a framework they call thrift in the open source and followed up with releasing a service for thrift called scribe.

Both are aimed at developers who want to use various technologies to aggregate and display data from multiple servers. While thrift allows developers to run programs written under various languages like c, php and java, scribe lets developers aggregate data from many servers and process them.  Scribe is a service that runs inside thrift.

Keeping open source developers is a good strategy. Demonstrated by microsoft and sun for many years. This is why Google chrome sucked for most firefox users. This is why opera isnt tht widely adopted dispite being a terrific browser. They havent been able to woo the developer community.

Firefox on the other hand is a developers best pal. In turn developers have given the firefox users some amazing applications that make their lives easier and more productive. Even though chrome is faster than firefox in both rendering visited page from sites and executing javascript, firefox users have not stopped using firefox.

Why? because firefox is not a browser. Its a platform.

It lets them pick from thousands of free firefox extensions that do a great job of making their lives easier. Like the firefox web developer plugin or the elasticfox extension to manage amazon web services.

First Microsoft live and now Mahalo: Another fool pays its users to spend some time with them

Mahalo, a self proclaimed search engine has launched a program that will pay its users to browse their shit. The more shit you browse the more you get paid.

Interestingly this is not the first company to do this. Microsoft live is also bribing users to use its search engine. I doubt that works.

I used to feel web users are extremely finnicky customers, they act pricey(me including) and are disloyal by nature.

We would flock another site for the slightest of reasons. But my beliefs have changed since people havent changed their default search engines yet.

Infact i havent even tried microsoft live yet. I will never try Mahalo till it doesnt stop calling itself search engine.

But the point is, web users need quality too. If google promises they would better their search engine by twice as much in on year i bet me and all other users would pay a fee per year to use their search engine.

50$ per year? I am ok with it. Gimme a good search engine. Stop bribing me to browse through shit.

TuneCore gets $7 million

Tunecore a provider of online music distribution secured a funding of $7 million from opus capital. Tunecore has a simple busines model, music creators upload their music on tunecore, it charges them a fee to store thei music and retail it on many retailers around the web.

The business is so simple its almost delicious. I have no doubt this will work. 

What do you get when you take a tech news site and minus "news" from it: Techcrunch

Once upon a time a read techcrunch, because they actually kept me in the know. I never commented, but i read it. Then the web grew up and i figured there is web outside of silicon valley, the web is in places where micheal arringtons will never report about because they have never heard of these places heck they have not heard of any place outside of palo alto.

Now when i visit them once in a while mostly courtesy techmeme. Its that friends promoting friends thing. that hope that if i send you traffic and you send me traffic, in the end maybe we can still get people to believe all the web is in silicon valley thing you know.

I still like techmeme, atleast they do silicon valley well. But in the recent past techcrunch is really trying hard to find something to write about. And then they make up stories that should be going on someones personal blog.

They recently reported about how google is using a competitors name to get traffic to its website and how it uses its own advertising platform to advertise itself. 

So google is supposed to use someone elses advertising platform to promote its product and not its own because that somehow is unethical?

I tell you what is unethical, bad reporting is unethical, reporting for the sake of reporting is unethical.

Techcrunch, time for some self searching guys, maybe you can fire a people or two yourself. Why not firing is in, isnt it?

Google launches Gmail For Mobile 2.0 and it works

Google inc launched the new version of gmail for mobile. Sometimes its hard to believe we are trying this hard to please the consumers of free applications as developers. 

There was a time when developers treated the free application market as a hobby something you do in your excess time and now we see the heavy weights fighting it out for the free applications. The free applications are as good or better than enterprise level applications.

So the only differentiation between a free application and an enterprise application is that a enterprise application comes with more fined tuned control for the enterprise while a free application is for a individual consumer.

Though something don't change much, years ago a company called gave operating system and software at throw away prices or free just to make it so part of a consumers life that it becomes a standard and then enterprises have no choice but to buy licenses for this application, a company called Google is dooing the same now.

I guess successful economics principles don't change much. 

 

Orkut On IPhone, A "Time Waster's" Dream Come True

Vellas, by the way are people who have too much time and not enough stuff to do. And like the word "guru" this should be included in the english language because there are so many of them.

Unlike most people who cannot seem to find enough time to do things that are really important to them, like read a book, meet an old friend, spend time with family, these people always have excess time. Lucky them.


Orkut.com recently wrote a blog post about this new feature where you can access your orkut.com service from IPhone and they called it "Orkut on IPhone: A Socialites dream come true". Sometime, or most times, i wonder how do people make time to scrap each other the whole day.

I have also seen people scraping each other when they could easily IM(both being online), or email, or call.

Sometimes i feel people use messaging  on social networks in cases when they "sorta want to be in touch" but not "too much".


I mean hey i messaged you, once, on orkut, i like to stay in touch you know. Its like an excuse, a formality.

People who really care would much rather have a meeting, a call, an IM or email. And in that order.


This is one reason why marketeers do not want to reach masses on social networks, they don't want to reach out to this segment of consumers, they sorta, don't wanna be in touch with you much you know, but hey maybe they will scrap you. Just maybe.

Aren't There More GTD Blogs Out There Than Readers?

I have started to wonder lately if there are more getting things done blogs in the blogoverse(short for blog universe).

On last count Google blog search turned out 1,818,289 blog posts mentioning GTD, there is a whole bloody website by the name of GTDtimes that has many contributors writing on the same topic.

I mean isnt that getting a bit too much, if there was so much content to write about on this topic David Allen would have written 10 books by now. So what are these guys writing anyways?

Frankly it seemed to me they are all writing the same thing over and over and over again. I wish someone would tell them to stop. People are reading so much of this getting things done stuff, they dont get time to practise what they learn.


So what is this fad? Lifehacker hangover.

The popular blog style website that started writing about productivity online years ago and was probably the first ones to evanglise DavidAllens GTD method online has written about GTD and tools for long now.

There huge popularity has egged all other wannabes to think writing the stuff lifahacker writes about will get them popular. And then we end up with 1,818,289 blog posts and no readers. Its funny.


From what i could understand by reading Davids book is this

1. Take all incomplete tasks/ideas/actions outside your head and write them somewhere, anywhere paper or a word document or god frickin anywhere
2. Plan on how to complete each one of them by wriitng down next actions and keep completing them
3. Keep your bloody information documented so when you need them you can find them
4. Dont be a egoistic dog and delegate when you cant do something


GTD bloggers, please stop, find a new topic to blog. If you have no topics, Read more books. Write less. Fine?

Google and Yahoo Ad Deal Delayed By A Month

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google Inc, will not be pleased by a delay in the ad deal with yahoo because of a inquiry by justic department as reported by washingtonpost

The justice department is looking at the deal to see if it will create a monopoly in the online advertising market. Not yet, it wont.

If Yahoo marries Google, it would.

Will it happen? Yes.

Don't be evil, what about being outright stupid?

Recently i have been running a Google adwords campaign and saw some silly mistakes in my account. I am kind of sure, i am not the only one who has faced this issue, i am also sure Google would compensate for this.

So what happened here is this, i have bid a maximum of 0.04$ for a keyword. So ideally each click should cost me 0.04$, but Google has charged me anything from 0.04$ to 0.06$ for each keyword.

Its easy to understand by just looking under the Current Bid, Clicks, Avg. CPC, Cost columns for all keywords in the screeshot i am presenting below.
The question is if i have bid 0.04$ for each click, and i have recieved 1 click, how can the cost of one click be 0.05$. Or am i getting my maths wrong?

I have uploaded a screenshot you can click to see in full screen below. Take a look at this screenshot here

The bigger  question is that this is not a startup company who has just started operations and facing some operational glitches, there have been billions spent on Google adwords, most by folks who are not that analytical or tech savvy to look at the data Google provides in great detail. How many millions have passed through to Google this way?

Incase i have just got something horribly wrong please let me know!

Google's Got Charity On Its Mind With Project10to100 Or Has It?

Google Inc. has announced a new initiative called Project10^100 . Its home page says "Project 10100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible." Here's what Andy Berndt, Managing Director, Google Creative Lab has to say about this intiative on google blog from Google Inc.


And The Reactions..

I was reading Thomas Claburns this article on InformationWeek's in which Thomas says "If you have a good idea, a really good idea, the sort of brilliant idea that might win Google's contest -- a way to produce a $0.01 straw that removes all impurities from contaminated water, for example -- why give that valuable idea away when you could commercialize it? You could start a company to support your idea, provide jobs to people, and help humanity at the same time."

Thomas gets pretty much bashed up by most commentors in the article and you gotta salute InformationWeek for approving those comments but i feel sorry for Thomas since he mentions a valid point and still gets bashed, a point that has not been addressed by Google Inc.'s terms and service agreement for this particular initiative.


Concerns that are raised(or should be raised if they are not raised yet)


1. Will Google make or can make its own commercial product from the ideas  submitted?

2. What happens to the ideas that are not selected, can Google or its partners or employees use     that data to spin off products for commercial interests without the original creator getting     anything?

3. Google gets publicity worth a billion dollars, while the guy who gave the idea, gets "Good     Karma"(as mentioned in the faqs here)

4. If something of commercial interests spins off the ideas(winner or not) do they get anything at     all out of it?

5. Why are the orginal creators not part of the implementation plan?

6. Why isn't this sounding like a incubation thing when it is in a way?

7. There seems to be something about this things that is "half baked" and "hurried"?


Anyways the better part and the most interesting are the Intellectual property rights, it says


Google Says:

1. As between you and Google, you retain ownership of any intellectual and industrial property rights (including moral rights) you have in and to your submission.

Which means:

If you already have an IP right you retain them, for most submissions, they will just be ideas and will not hold any IP rights. So to answer the question, Do i own the idea?. Well, No.

Google Says:

2. As a condition of participation, you grant Google, its subsidiaries, agents and partner companies, a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non- exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, distribute, publicly perform, create a derivative work from, and publicly display your submission and the proposal provided therein (1) for the purposes of allowing Google, the advisory panel and users to evaluate your idea for purposes of the call for submissions, (2) in connection with advertising and promotion via communication to the public or other groups, including, but not limited to, the right to make screenshots, animations and video clips available for promotional purposes and (3) for the purposes of putting your submitted proposal into effect.


Which means:
Google can take your idea, modify it, claim it, use it. Ok not just Google but even its partners, employees, door cleaners, chef etc etc. Ofcourse there are chances they won't but this atleast is not taken care off in the terms of services.

Google Says:
3. You agree that Google has final authority regarding this call for submission and the selection of the ideas to be considered for implementation. You acknowledge that your submission might be similar to ideas submitted by other participants and/or proposals independently developed by Google, and that Google does not need to recognize your submission should your idea not be the source of the proposal or proposals ultimately implemented. You further acknowledge that even if your proposal is selected by Google, Google is not compelled to implement your proposal in its entirety, or at all. Google reserves the right in its sole discretion to incorporate your proposal or any other ideas into the project or projects finally selected for implementation.

Which basically means:
We can take your idea and develop on your idea and commercialise it. They also mention that Google might choose not to implement even the winning idea. After all the billion dollar publicity, 10 millions dollars could land back to google bank account.

What Worries Me
I am actually worried, not about the ideas that win, but about the ideas that will not see the light of the day(and those will be millions of commerically viable ones being submitted). I get a feeling those will indeed be used for building a commercial product without the original creator getting anything. Not even acknowledgement.


Just to be fair here, it could be that none of this happens and Google doesn't use any of those ideas. But i still feel the idea winners should atleast get some monetary benefit and the ideas that don't win should be protected.

Google inc. could have used an outside neutral agency like KPMG to validate the process and make sure the ideas that do not win get disposed off in the right way and not become the personal property of Google employees or owners.


What Ideas You Should Submit:

Lastly i would say you should only submit your ideas in the contest if you have a philanthropic idea that's non commercial but would benefit a lot people and is difficult to implement by yourselves.

That's the only way everyone can benefit from this contest. DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR COMMERCIAL IDEAS.

But you know what, i get a feeling, Google has a lot of legal issues coming its way next year. Wonder why..hmm..still wondering...

Who Really makes money online?

Its funny but the people who actually make online are the ones who tell others how to make money online(go problogger.net, johnchow.com etc.) and these guys make money by doing just that "telling people how to make money online.

Confused?


Well these guys make money off the guys who come to their website looking for a get rich quick schemes and since the population of lazy people is so huge, they get immense traffic and revenue from advertising.

The fact remains that they dont teach anything spectacular that someone with a little common sense would not know but they just keep writing the same old stuff again and again stuffing some more keywords they want to rank for in search engines.

I can bet 99% of people who come to their sites and read their stuff do nothing at all with their advice and even if they do they do not see any results.


But its not a fair world, in anycase if you really wanted advise and tips on making money online i have just one advice to give.

Even if you have never even made a single dime for yourself, start telling people how to make money online and soon you atleast will be rich.