The Future of Finding Your Way
Robert Scoble was recently ripped to shreds again concerning his recent video. (Note, part II and part III in case you didn’t see them on the site.) I can understand why. His ideas are diametrically opposed to the current business view of finding things today.
I say Bravo. As a developer working with the intricacies, guesswork and sheer superstition surrounded the art of gaining rank with Google, Yahoo and MSN I have been dealing with many frustrations. You see, software engineers like to work in a couple of ways. First, they like to build something. In order to do that, you have to know what you are building. Trying to build pages that work with the algorithms in place today is guesswork at best. Second, we like to break things. We like to get the new gadget, tear it apart to understand it and then put it back together. Once we’ve done that, we know how to build something for it.
Today’s search paradigms do not fit within that mold. It is impossible, no matter what someone tells you, to be certain of what will affect the algorithms in what manner. Want proof? Just look at the great viewstate debate. From tests I’ve seen there is absolutely no evidence that search engines do not like it. In fact, in the test a co-worker of mine performed a page with a huge viewstate ranked highest out of other samples!
So what’s all this about? Maybe a shift in the way we think about finding credible information on the Internet. Finally entering the Circle of Trust. Scoble has some interesting points and let’s face it, this is what he does. He’s been deep into finding the new, better thing for many years now, he must know something! Is he always right? I doubt it. he’d probably admit that as well, but is it worth a listen? Absolutely.
Frankly, I hope he is right. I want to find my way easier, faster and with better success then Google lets me today. I am already starting to believe his hype about Facebook when at first I viewed it as just another “MySpace”. Now even my wife is using it! (Here’s my page if you want me to add you as a friend).
Oh, and check out Mahalo, it’s pretty nice.
Kent Couch with Jay Leno
Kent is certainly getting his 15 minutes of fame. I watched his segment on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno this morning (DVR’s are the ONLY way to go!) and I must say he handled himself very well. We was funny and appeared calm.
My coworkers Mark and Doug, good friends of Kent, flew down to Burbank to help with a special project. They constructed a lawn chair with about 80 balloons for Jay to take a tethered flight in. Mark and Doug even made it into the show holding the chair while Jay got ready to launch, way to go guys!
Still no recovery of the original chair, video camera and other equipment from Kent’s 193 mile balloon ride. Hopefully somebody will find it and claim the reward.
Lawn Chair Balloonist Update
For those of you readers that get my content through an aggregator that does not inform you of updated posts, here’s the latest on Kent Couch’s lawn chair ballooon ride.
[Update] Kent is going to appear with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show this evening. Tuesday July 7th for those of you that didn’t see the date 
[Update] His balloon and chair has been reported as seen over Michigan by two sources.
Side Note: Google Maps is just downright cool!
[Update] I just found out that the video has been posted on You Tube and can be seen here.
[Update] Looks like you can now digg this story as well.
Unusual Balloon Ride – Lawn Chair Flying At Its Finest
By now you have have heard of the clustered balloon ride of Kent Couch on July 7th. To date he’s had appearances on Fox, Good Morning America and CNN and has had press from MSNBC, FOXNews, The AP and more.
The Stop and Go that Kent owns is about a block from my place of work. I’ve known him for a couple of years. At Smart Solutions we decided to do a website commemorating his historic flight.
I must admit, when I first heard of his flight visions of The Darwin Awards began flowing through my head. After taking some time to learn about his desires and the preparation he’s put into this endeavor. I have to give props to Kent, he has more intestinal fortitude than I
It has been a fun project. My involvement has been converting the Mini DV video taps to electronic format for our creative department to use. I do not believe that we have a video on the site yet, but there will be a compilation soon chronicling his flight. It is these types of projects that make me wish I had more time to spend on my creative side producing videos and such.
I’ll keep you posted when some of the videos get published. If you haven’t read about Kent, it may just bring a smile to your face.
Oh, one more thing. If you are in Eastern Oregon or Southwestern Idaho and you happen across the lawn chair he rode in, you may want to let him know. He had to bail out of it before he could release enough balloons and it took off! There is a reward for it’s return.
[Update] I just found out that the video has been posted on You Tube and can be seen here.
[Update] Looks like you can now digg this story as well.
Viewstate – Search Engine Update
I’ve been out of town for a bit so I’ve been behind on checking the test Dave has been running. If you haven’t read the original concept, please do so.
Today I noticed that page 4, one with a large viewstate, is showing up #1 at Google. To my knowledge, this is the first time one of the pages has received the #1 spot.
I’m not sure why the other pages are not showing up. Perhaps they are being marked as duplicate content or something, but it is interesting that the page with Viewstate is the one ranking right now.
Viewstate Effects on Search Engines – Part 2
It has been 12 days since Dave put up his viewstate test pages with the keyword Arkliode. Watching Google each weekday has brought about a few interesting thoughts
- Initially the index page with a link to each of his tests ranked #1. This went on for most of last week.
- One of the tests ranked under the index page when you click on the “View similar results” link on the initial Google search.
- My original post was ranking #2 for most of last week. It only had the word “arkliode” once in one of the comments.
This morning, my original post shows up #1. Yes, that is the post with the word only displayed once in a comment.- Google gives more weight to blog posts. This has been generally accepted for quite a while. That explains the change in #1 ranking.
- Incoming links play a large part in the role. I am attributing that reasoning to the drop of the one page that was returning in the results. The incoming links simply go to the index page.
- Duplicate content has been assumed to have a negative impact. Since most of the test content pages have the same or very similar content, I am theorizing that Google is recognizing them as duplicate and since the only links going to them are from the index page.
The next question is, how do we begin to make the test valid? I suppose we would have to post the different pages on separate sites to try to get a better idea, yet the popularity and ranking of the sites would undoubtedly play into the ranking.
Dave has changed things up a bit, which might account for the changes over the weekend. Should people begin linking to the pages on their sites to see if indexing begins to happen? That’s what Dave did. Here are the links to the pages.
I will check back in later this week or early next week. I’m sure Dave will have at least one update in that time-frame as well.
New CEO at Joost
Joost recently hired Mike Volpi as the new CEO of the Internet TV startup. Some people are focusing on the fact that he is “not fully acculturated” since he will be steering a company hoping to revolutionize the television viewing paradigm.
Personally, I think it’s a good thing. Mr. Volpi was the person in charge of mergers and acquisitions at CISCO during its rise in the 90′s. I believe that Joost will need a solid business man to help them forge ahead in the technology realm and a person that has the ability to break through the legal issues regarding copyrighting and licensing that is sure to ensue.
Some people have knocked Joost for its resource intensive client, while others have pointed to existing P2P Internet TV networks. I will say that Joost is still early in development. Applications usually have not been optimized in the stage they are in. I am willing to give them a chance to correct that. Yes, there are other networks that have been around. Why haven’t they taken off the way Joost has? Marketing? Maybe. Interface design? Maybe. How about content? Possibly. Not having tried the others yet I just can’t say. I will tell you that my opinion of the user experience in Joost has been very positive. The bugs that are there will be worked out, I believe. At this point, Joost is still my pick.
Go Mike!
Viewstate Effects on Search Engines
I’ve read and discussed the effects that the hidden ViewState variable used by most ASP.NET applications may have on page rank. To the best of my knowledge there is no definitive answer to this question. Most in the SEO industry will tell you that it “should almost never make a difference” yet those same people will want it yanked as one of their first steps in optimizing a page for Google, Yahoo or MSN.
Ugh!
As a software developer, I cannot begin to tell the frustration. First, it should not make a difference. A spider, bot, whatever you want to call it should know to ignore most hidden fields. There is an argument that some hidden fields dilute the page content. C’mon, why?
Ok, let’s say that it does. Even given that, shouldn’t the major engines be aware enough of the technologies being used to realize that a lot of sites out there use this standard field? Shouldn’t they ignore it?
The fact is, none of the search engines will come out and tell you anything about their algorithms. They will not confirm that the VIEWSTATE variable is ignored or if it, along with other hidden variables, are considered. They will not tell you that those values dilute your content. They will not tell you that their bots are “smart” enough to ignore them. What is a software engineer to do!?!?
A colleague of mine that was present in a recent debate within our company about ViewState decided to do something about it. He’s performing a test with a made-up word that currently returns no results to help decide if there are any adverse effects of having the ViewState variable in your page.
After 1-3 weeks we are hoping that the pages ge indexed via the ViewState Index page. I’ll link to the results after the test is complete.
Way to go Dave!
Early thoughts on Joost (and invites!)
I’ve been a member Joost beta program for a couple of days now and I have had the chance to browse through the early content and watch some of the offered shows. I thought it only fair that I share some of my initial impressions.
*** Edit – I thought I’d reorganize this a little so the people just looking for invites could get to that quicker. ***
Invites
I almost forgot. If you need an invite, please feel free to leave a comment. Make sure to enter your email address, it will not show up in the comments and I wil not give it to anyone other than Joost when I send your invite to you.
*** /Edit – On to the review ***
Getting Joost
The sign up and installation was a snap. The client is a fairly small download in install, it’s nice when that is the case. The invite itself had a serialized link that let me get to the download page. The sign up itself was in the software, not on the web page so I could have downloaded it and waited for a while had I been so inclined.
Next was the initial experience. Loading it up I now had to create my account. It only required basic information, again easy and simple. At this point my thoughts on the interface were that it was very “Flash” like in its operation. So far it was clean and simple, good job!
Joost Interface
Once I was logged in I was able to look through the offered channels, available programs, recommendations and more. I must say that the interface continued to impress me. It is quite simple and intuitive. Objects fade in or out rapidly, but with enough delay to make it look smooth. The same goes for objects that slide in or out from the side. Nice!
There are some customization features that allow you to keep widgets active while you’re viewing a program if you like. The clock of course is my favorite one, however the inclusion of embedded Google Talk is nice.
Joost Content
The early programming is nice. There is a decent variety from documentaries (The National Geographic Channel) to music videos (Warner Bros. channel), comedy (Comedy Central), sports and more. I hope that more become available as this gets closer to a production service.
At this point I had to start remembering that this is still in beta. Some of the programs I tried to access simply did not seem to work. I would get the message that it was “Coming up next”, however it would just sit there with no indication of what was going on.
Other programs did work and they were nice. For the most part the video was smooth, the controls were once again nice and easy to use. In my opinion the quality was better that other streaming video content I’ve interacted with.
It also seems as the content is in constant change. That is nice and a huge plus for a service such as this!
The Hiccups
As I mentioned, this is a beta phase and as such one should expect small anomalies. So far that’s all I’ve had, is small ones. First, it did not remember my personal information the first 3 times I went in. It was a minor annoyance since all I had to do was type my name and email address, but still it was an annoyance. Now it seems to have that information tucked away just fine.
Next, as I mentioned before, is the phenomena of some of the shows just sitting there is a bit annoying. It would be nice to have a little more information about what’s going on. It’s crashed on me twice so far. that’s not too bad for beta. Once was during one of those moments of “Coming Up Next” episodes.
Summary
It seems that Joost is trying to become a serious TV content provider / alternative to satellite and cable. I am not certain that the general population is ready for that, I think there will be a subset that will embrace it. If Joost is able to keep the content fresh and expand the offering they should succeed in that niche. If they really want to go after the average television market, they will need to get their hands on “Prime Time” content.
It is a beta product and there are minor issues as expected. I think that they are easily worked around. The interface is inviting, people will like it. They do include commercial content, which I assume is how they are paying for it. The ads are not bad however. No worse than what is currently on broadcast television. For the ability to watch what you want when you want it, that’s not bad.
How does this play into the DVR market? My current TV watching habits include recording some shows each week, then sitting down and watching them on a couple of nights with my wife, skipping through any advertisements to maximize the viewing experience. It is nice and it is almost an on-demand type of lifestyle. The one thing I cannot do is record a show that ‘s already started to get the beginning that I may have missed, or record more than 2 things at once. Granted, the last scenario rarely occurs, but it does happen on occasion. Add to that the fact that DVR’s are about as complex as the old VCR was. It’s not difficult to operate, and the ability to schedule a recording is much easier than the old VCR days, however there is a large population that simply does not want to mess with it. The ease of the Joost interface and the on-demand and search-ability may make it a nice alternative.
Overall, I am excited about Joost and I hope they live up to their goals. It could change the way I watch television again, the same way the DVR did when it was introduced. Bravo!
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