Google Continues to Fascinate

By Mark Evans in Google No Comments

We’re all obsessed with Google and find ourselves using a growing number of Google services on a regular basis.

And we’re fascinated with Google because it’s a fascinating company. A couple of things popped today:

1. Google has decide to make a huge investment in exploring alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal. In 2008, it “expects to spend 10s of millions of dollars on research and development and related investments in renewable energy”. Given how much energy Google uses within its data centers, it’s a smart move, and a very good thing for the alternative energy industry. And it makes for great PR.

2. Nick Carr has an interesting article in strategy + business magazine in which he argues Google’s madly off in all directions strategy actually makes sense. It’s based on the idea that “everything that happens on the internet is complementary to the company’s core business. When looked at in this light, Google’s strategy is revealed to be at once simple and extraordinarily unusual – so unusual that it’s probably of limited use as a model for other companies.”

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Canada: The Wireless (CDMA) Backwater

By Mark Evans in Wireless 2 Comments

Okay, it’s bad enough that Canada’s wireless market is an oligopoly, and that prices, including data, north of the border are higher than many places around the world.

Now, Verizon is making Canadians feel even worse by announcing a new initiative that will give its customer the option to use “wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company”. Early next year, it will publish the technical standards that developers will need to design products to work with Verizon’s CDMA network.

Imagine that, consumer choice for devices if you’re using CDMA – hear that Bell Canada and Telus? And consumer choice for applications – you hear that pretty much every single wireless carrier?

“This is a transformation point in the 20-year history of mass market wireless devices – one which we believe will set the table for the next level of innovation and growth,” said Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless president and chief executive officer.

Translation: Verizon needs a way to make its CDMA network a lot more user-friendly at a time when GSM has started to dominate the wireless landscape because it gives consumers more flexibility when it comes to buying/using different devices. In turn, device makers such as Research in Motion are happy to launch GSM products before CDMA ones.

Another point: it interesting to see the wireless market rumble forward in the U.S., while Canadians are still waiting for this new, cool device called the iPhone from some hot-shot company called Apple. And while Bell Canada recently put the spotlight again on an attractive wireless data plan for the HTC Touch phone, Canadians are still getting killed if you want to do a lot of Web surfing, e-mail, instant-messaging, etc.

Of course, if there was real competition among the wireless carriers in Canada, things might be a little more interesting. Until then, we’ll just have to be content to watch the action from the sidelines, while a few brave souls take things into their hands by unlocking these iPhone gadgets so they can work in Canada.

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GPS Should be a Standard Laptop Feature

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod 5 Comments

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My brother the musician had his apartment burglarized last week. The bad guys had probably cased the place because all that went missed was his MacBook and his girlfriend’s laptop.

My brother isn’t oozing with extra cash so it’s not like he can just lay down a cool $1400 for a new MacBook. Needless to say, he’s upset for a variety of reasons – mostly that awful feeling of being violated when someone breaks into your house.

The loss of his MacBook got me thinking that GPS should come as a standard feature in all laptops as a way to deter their theft. It would only involve some software and/or a GPS. This could help the police track down the laptop or destroy the data on it if the laptop couldn’t be foud. This kind of service is available now through companies such as LoJack, which offers a LoJack for Laptops service for $49.99 a year.

It’s a solid option but the reality is these services should come as a standard option on all new laptops given a laptop is apparently stolen every 53 seconds. If it meant adding an additional $20 or even $50 for the software and/or GPS, I’m think most laptop owners would be happy to pay for it. I mean, if Apple offered a iLocateMyLaptop service for $20 a year, you’d likely get a lot of people signing up.

The lack of a GPS/theft protection service as something that just comes with a new laptop is puzzling given it would give a laptop maker some great goodwill if they embraced it. Strange.

Of course, this is little consolation to my brother, who is now sadly MacBook-less. If, on the odd chance, someone’s got an extra MacBook lying around collecting dust, let me know.

More: Thomas Hawk had a nice rant about this issue last year that included this quote: “So answer me this. They can put GPS in a cell phone. Why not put GPS in your laptop? And why not also put GPS in your car DVD player (I’ve had several break ins with my car at West Oakland BART and as such no longer park there)?”

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What If No One Actually Visits Blogs?

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Blogs 11 Comments

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Last week, I installed a WordPress plug-in, Open Web Analytics (aka OWA), that provides a pretty good snapshot of how much traffic a blog receives and how it gets there.

OWA isn’t significantly different from Clicky, Mint, Google Analytics, etc. but, for whatever reason, it hammered home the message that the number of people visiting my blog is fairly insignificant. Rather than be disappointed, this reality is interesting because, I think, there are lots of people are reading my blog judging by the 1,600 or so FeedBurner subscribers.

What’s happening is most people who take the time to check out MET – and I thank them for investing some of their time to do it – are doing so through an RSS reader. And I think you could make the same argument for many tech blog readers. Of course, the widespread use of RSS readers should not be a surprise given tech blogs attract tech-savvy readers who should know all about the benefits of RSS.

The upside is you have lots of readers even if only a handful of them actually visit your blog. The downside is many people never see your comments, the plug-ins you’ve diligently hunted down, your cool blog design or any advertising. For those of us not trying to make money from blogging, this is alright. But for people looking to make money from blog advertising, this is far from ideal.

Here’s an interesting scenario: what if RSS readers become more ubiquitous?

What if people who read political, gossip, entertainment, automotive, health, sports and science blogs start doing so through RSS readers as opposed to visiting a blog. How would that affect blog-vertising if, at best, all a reader sees is a small ad in your RSS feed? Would these ads generate enough revenue to make blogs viable economically? The answer, I think, is no.

The question that begs to be asked is whether RSS is a bad thing for blog-vertising? If people stop visiting blogs, do advertisers think twice about allocating some of their dollars into blogs? Maybe.

Let’s look at the counter-argument to the evilness of RSS.

While RSS is an efficient way to read blogs, it doesn’t give you the full experience. If you believe that comments are as interesting and valuable as a blog post, an RSS feed is going to be unsatisfying. If you want to see a blogger’s personality and things like their blogroll and interesting widgets, RSS ain’t going to do the trick. If you’re into fashion or celebrity blogs that feature large photos, RSS might not fit the bill.

Still, I do believe RSS is moving into the mainstream at a rapid clip as services such as Google Reader make it easier than ever to read and subscribe to a variety of content. At the same time, content producers are embracing RSS as a distribution vehicle.

This means blogs and advertisers using blogs will need to quickly adapt because the landscape is changing as we speak – and read.

More: For some thought-provoking perspective on blog traffic, check out Rob Hyndman’s post looking at quality vs. quantity.

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Weekly Wrap

By Mark Evans in Main Page 1 Comment

Stuff that caught my eye this week….

1. A-lister blogger Fred Wilson complained about Techmeme going mainstream and his disappearance off the Techmeme 100. This prompted a couple commenters to recommend alternatives such as TechWatching and popurls. I’m sure there are others. If you know some, pipe up.

2. Anyone really believe Facebook could get into the browser business? I do. In fact, I predict Facebook will buy Flock to create the FBrowser. Just remember, you heard it here first. :) By the way, how often do you change you Facebook user status? You can participate in a poll here – provided by polldaddy, a very cool polling service.

3. Razzle.ca launches. Canada finally has a deal of the day site – a la Woot. Maybe this is a sign Canadian e-commerce is gaining more momentum. ITNewsLink and StartupNorth have more on Razzle’s founders.

4. Apparently, the InterWeb could have service brownouts by 2010 because people just love YouTube too much darn much..or something like that. The study, done by Nemertes Research, sounds like something those net neutrality-hating ISPs would have commissioned to encourage a new, multi-tier system where Web sites have to pay to be on the super highway. By the way, you have to love the title of Nemertes’ report: “The Internet Singularity, Delayed: Why Limits in Internet Capacity Will Stifle Innovation on the Web”.

5. Speaking of Net Neutrality, Rabble.ca’s Wayne MacPhail has a terrific column that spells out the issue and what’s at stake. A must-read for anyone who loves the Internet.

6. Anyone use Mahalo on a regular basis? Just wondering.

7. For Leopard lovers with time on their hands, you may be interested in this post on 200 hotkey shortcuts. You mean, there’s life beyond F9 and Apple-Shift-4?

8. Anyone into favicons – those tiny, little logs that sit just before “http” in your browser’s address bar? To create one quickly, check out favikon. (Hat tip to Steve Rubel)

9. New to my evolving blogroll this week: Daily Bits, a little geeky but lots of good thinking/ideas over there; Daring Fireball; Lorelle on WordPress, good resource for any into the world’s best blogging platform.

10. I desperately need a new header image for this blog. Any help/tips would be much appreciated.

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Facebook’s Most Useful Feature

By Mark Evans in Web 2.0 6 Comments

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For all the recent hullabaloo about Facebook removing the “is” from a person’s status updates, the fact of the matter is that the “is” is Facebook’s most useful feature. (You’re still with me, right? And just to be crystal clear, the issue is on removing the word “is” rather than the status update box.)

Huh?

While you may skim through all stories posted, who’s become friends with who, who has joined a group or left a group, who has written what on someone’s wall, etc., what most people do check out is your status update. As a result, it’s can be a very effective space to communicate what you’re doing, what you need/want, etc. You need help finding a new office? Put something in your status updates. Need to hire someone? Put it your status updates.

So, stop fooling with all those time-wasting applications (other than PlanetEye’s My City). What you really need to do is focus on your status updates because it’s very valuable real estate.

Questions: What the appeal about writing on someone’s wall. I mean, it’s a message that can be seen by everyone’s friends so it’s not like anyone is going to say anything worth reading. And can anyone explain the function of Facebook Groups? What do you get for joining one other a notice to everyone that you’ve joined one, and eventually that you’ve left one?

Update: TechCrunch has a few posts on Facebook today, including one on whether Facebook is censoring search.

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