Google Zeitgeist Look at the usage charts on the right. Americans surf more at night than Europeans. Insomniacs, stay-at-homes, or porn addicts. Or, more likely, Google is counting some international users as Americans.#
The Guardian: The weird world of Hollywood finance I've always wondered how the talent manages to capture such an inordinate slice of the movie industry's revenues. And how movies cost as much as small companies to create. Digital video has half the production cost of film, but film makers claim the colors just aren't lush enough. Remember, however, that is just what typesetters used to claim ten years ago as desktop publishing made its first unsteady steps. Desktop video production. Soon now.#
Monday, August 27
Weblogs for librarians, and their admirers I don't know when it was that librarians became sexy. And I don't mean in the take-off-the-glasses way. Librarians, the most progressive of them at least, are at the center of business efforts to capture and utilize the information produced by modern management systems, and made accessible by the internet. Were I to do a degree again, I'd go to the School of Information Management and Systems at Berkeley, which is a library science school by another name. So, unashamedly, a collection of weblogs for librarians that are useful reading for anyone in the internet or intranet information game.#
Thursday, August 23
A tale of two cities: SF v. LA Nothing like the passion of a convert. Ken Layne and Charlie Hornberger, founders of the Tabloid online news site, were among my first friends in San Francisco. And, ever since, they have made it their life's mission to trash Northern California. They started while still in SF, living and working in the same miserable hovel in Lower Haight. They had every right to feel cheated. Now that they both live in Los Angeles, in houses that are palaces by comparison, they have less about which to feel bitter, and more to feel smug. And they are still railing against San Francisco from their latest venture-hobby-publication, the L.A. Examiner weblog. They've launched a meme. The mainstream LA papers are gleefully documenting the latest arrivals from an over-priced and under-employed Bay Area. And here's a link to the San Francisco Bay Guardian as the SF radical weekly gets in on the act, touting LA as the refuge not just for dotcommers bounced out by the downturn, but for the weirdos bounced out by the dotcommers. "Yes, San Francisco, it's awful down here" [Ken Layne] And previously: Tale of two cities [San Francisco Bay Guardian] Dooce: Sham Francisco#
Thursday, August 9
Weblog search For a while, I've been interested in weblog search. It seems to combine personal publishing and information retrieval, and those are the two activities that the web has changed beyond recognition. Forget about e-commerce. Forget even about supply-chain management. Forget about the current orthodoxy among the venture capitalists. Weblogs and search: there is still so much to be done. For a while, Blogger ran a search directly off its database of posts and sites. Unsurprisingly, this worked until people started using the feature, when the requests killed the database. I'm collecting other examples of weblog search. Blogdex has attracted attention, although at present the service just presents lists of the most linked-to pages, and the weblogs that linked to them. Interesting. One could imagine browsing through a weblog, finding an interesting post, finding posts from other authors on the same subject, browsing through their posts. An even more effective way to lose oneself in an infinite loop of weblogs. My list: Linkwatcher NewsIsFree Daypop Blogdex weblogs.com Bloggle Google directory search Blogger search Am I missing anyone? Email me. [Thanks already to Alexander Fritz and others.]#
Salon.com Cheats Death With New Funding John Warnock, the retired CEO and cofounder of Adobe Systems, and William Hambrecht, the CEO and chairman of investment bank WR Hambrecht & Co., are among the existing backers who have reupped to save Salon Magazine. [Inside.com]#
Was Gates fired? Dave Bank of the Wall Street Journal digs through Microsoft emails to uncover an internal feud between Windows loyalists and internet fans at the company. That isn't new, but Bank also apparently concludes that Bill Gates was eased out of the CEO slot. I always thought as much. Despite all of the Microsoft rhetoric of Bill wanting to spend more time with his software.#
Wednesday, August 8
PCWorld on specialty search engines Apart from a reference to Moreover, saying the service indexes stories a day or two old, which just ain't so, a good tour of specialty search.#
Startup bets against P2P [News.com] This just has to be the way to go. I've always thought P2P was a phenomenon driven by legal arbitrage. Piracy by individuals is harder to attack by copyright holders than is piracy by corporations. The downsides - interrupted downloads, inconsistent metadata etc - are evident to anyone who has struggled with a large download on Gnutella or one of its clones. What is so wrong with downloading from a central location?#
Finally, I'm one of the popular kids Blogorama makes it to number seven in NewsIsFree's chart of the most popular news channels. I have no idea how this ranking is calculated, and don't believe the number, but I'm strangely flattered.#
Realtime Google [Eric Schmidt in News.com] Q. "How much better can search technology become?" A. "There are lots of ways. Let me give you an example: If you write a story and it goes up on the Web and gets onto Google in the next couple of days. Wouldn't you like it to be accessible right now? We'd like Google to be real time. You make a change (to the Web) and it goes up immediately." email to a friend#
Search by Date at AltaVista and Google - Web Search Tip of the Day "Recency" - as Eric Schmidt of Google rather clumsily calls it - is attracting the attention of the search companies. Unfortunately, timely search results are not just a matter of speeding up the crawling of specific sites. With rapidly changing content, it is hard for a standard crawler to recognize what is new against what has previously been extracted. Even if the frequency is increased.#
Tuesday, August 7
Metadata makers, a list Lee Greenhouse on the rise of metadata. "That's why technology, operating alone or in concert with human labor, is gaining popularity with publishers and aggregators. New software from companies such as ClearForest, InXight, Whizbang, and Autonomy can scan large volumes of text, extract important terms, and build files of meta data."#
Thomson Corporation to Acquire NewsEdge Thomson, since the acquisition of Dialog, is strong in archival information. With NewsEdge, it adds current awareness to its portfolio. The question now: what will Reed Elsevier do? With Lexis-Nexis, the company has a powerful archival database, but a more spotty range of information services than competitors such as Thomson and Reuters. The next phase of consolidation: information services companies adding web search to their portfolios. Watch out for who buys Northern Light.#
Google's new boss puts priority on recency "Q: Should users expect to see anything different on Google? A: I hope everything just gets better. The next interesting thing going on in the company is recency. If you are going to write a story, it will be some number of days before the index is updated to include your story. We would like that to be done in a few hours and properly ranked. That will be technically hard."#
Monday, August 6
Ixiasoft XML database company mentioned in Catch of the Day. I'm trying to get my head around this area: specifically, how do companies such as Ixiasoft relate to parametric search and XML database technologies such as xyzfind, Mercado's IntuiFind and Ripfire? Rafe Needleman evaluates Ixiasoft in Catch of the Day. I also just came across this article on xyzfind and candidates for XML databases.#
Saturday, August 4
Blogdex Ever since Blogger took down their search, there's been no easy way to search across multiple weblogs. For a second, I thought Blogdex would allow that. Instead, this MIT project just lists the most popular links published by blog authors. As far as I can see. Still work to be done.#
Moreover Technologies demonstration news search Although Moreover's main focus is the corporate intranet market, we do still provide a demonstration of the power of the technology. Click to search across 3,000 sources in near realtime. Registration required, so we can market to you.#
Deconstructing "You've got blog" Further proof, were any necessary, of the self-referential loops of the weblog world. Analysis of Rebecca Mead's New Yorker article on Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan and the their wonderful world of weblogs. I only just found this, even though it was posted back in February. How many layers of commentary before the foundation of fact crumbles under the weight? Disclosure: Jason and Meg have at times worked with me at Moreover Technologies. And Rebecca is a friend from university. More self-referential loops.#
Swissnetbank Forget about Paypal. Here's a secret Swiss bank account, available online, which links by Swift to a fleshworld account in any country. And all you need to start it up is a credit card.#
Moreover webfeeds Finally, live, a new online application that allows web developers to add live headlines to their sites. Customizable subject matter, look and feel. Pink headlines about Madonna, if that's what you want.#
Google Zeitgeist Search patterns, trends, and surprises - from Google.#
Wednesday, August 1
So what do we do about the cesspool that is San Francisco? Finally, someone asks the question. Amazingly, it's the usually complacent San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco is so mind-numbingly liberal that locals and recent immigrants dare not raise the homeless issue. Truth is that San Francisco has the most neglected, most in-your-face, most heartwrenchingly sick street people of any city I've ever lived in. There is something wrong with a local political system that can't respond to such widespread suffering - and disgust. Bourgeois? I don't care.#
Nothing like the passion of a convert. Ken Layne and Charlie Hornberger, founders of the Tabloid online news site, were among my first friends in San Francisco. And, ever since, they have made it their life's mission to trash Northern California. They started while still in SF, living and working in the same miserable hovel in Lower Haight. They had every right to feel cheated. Now that they both live in Los Angeles, in houses that are palaces by comparison, they have less about which to feel bitter, and more to feel smug. And they are still railing against San Francisco from their latest venture-hobby-publication, the 
