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Saturday, August 7, 2010

There goes Google Wave

is SEO killing search engines ?

John Dvorak seems to be convinced that Google, Bing, and their likes have lost the current battles with SEO techniques.

He claims that techniques which are used to make a webpage, more popular, for advertising purposes, have overcome the search engines smart algorithms, and more and more surfers find themsevles reaching unpleasant pages, crowded with lots of commercials and little content.

The techniques he refers to, are such as finding bizzare reasons to add sexy content, such as celebrity names, and keywords that have a high probablity to appear in user queries. an example for that would be a page with the following astrological-informaton:
Did you know that Barak Obama's astrological sign is a Leo ?
And Did you know that Britney Spears is a Sagittarius ?
That Michael Jackson was a virgo ?
3 simple questions, have created a seemingly innocent page, with not-so-bad external links, which should come quite high in web-searches, due to the imprinting of those so-popular names...  
 
Personally, I haven't experienced a decline in my ability to find good content on the web. And I really doubt that this post will become more popular because of my venerable guests... after all, this post isn't about porn, it does not deal with sex, it does not contain images, and it sure doesn't mention really important search terms of the last year, like iphone or smartphones... oops. now it does (:
 
More seriously: it is clear that SEO and Engines are in an ever-lasting battle. it is clear that our interest as surfers is that engines win. What caught my eye was Dvorak's suggestion to add into the engines a rating device based on the percentage of content compared with the percentage of advertising. I was sure this is already done. Isn't the first thing a smart algorith does is check the content ?

Thursday, August 5, 2010

אריק שמידט: אנשים לא מוכנים למהפכת המידע

אריק שמידט הצהיר בכנס טכנולוגיה כמה הצהרות שכדאי להכיר.

Google's Eric Schmidt: People aren't ready for the technology revolution

In an interesting piece from ReadWriteWeb, I've learned about a recent staement by Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt. He states (in a manner reminiscent of Mark Zuckerberg's 'privacy is dead')
"People aren't ready for the technology revolution". I must admit that while finding unneutral Zuckerberg's assesment annoying, but had to agree with him that privacy concepts are changing along with the information revolution, Schmidt's statements somehow hit a more sensitive nerve. The predictions -
  • "There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003...but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing...People aren't ready for the technology revolution that's going to happen to them."
  • "If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence...we can predict where you are going to go"
  • "In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."
  • "In our lifetimes...we'll go from a small number of people having access to information, to 5 billion people having all the world's knowledge in their native language." 
might foresee a safer, more comfortable world, but they also bring with them a definite atmosphere of a sea of information that is very hard to navigate for the individual, and greater power than ever before to some who will control the flow of information and its uses.

I don't know what you make of it. I think I'll clear some time for another reading of Roger Zelazny's "My name is Legion".

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

FBI has an issue with Wikipedia....


seems like the FBI has a problem with Wikipedia. The beaureu isn't happy about Wiki's usage of their seal in the wiki article about the FBI.... some people think this isn't a claim without merits, as the high resolution of the image of the seal on wiki's site, might help counterfeiting... it seems to me that the FBI guys had better read their own website, with its accurate verbal description of the seal, and maybe they should also try  searching their own website ... a nice result of that search can be seen here. FBI's facebook profile might have also been a good place to check, before complaining about free information sources....
shame, really... seems like someone hasn't really learned the ropes of this confusing digital era...

developing world as a patent-free zone

an interesting bit regarding developing countries (such as the BRIC states (Brasil, Russia, India, China)), as the best site to develop new technogoloes, as so few patents are registered in those places, and thus R&D is greatly less limited. interesting to read, but requires more thinking, in my mind.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

פייסבוק כאתר דיווח על עבירות תנועה

עוד שימוש ברשת החברתית הגדולה בעולם: פייסבוק כאמצעי-דיווח על עבירות-תנועה.

Windows 7 already passes Vista

Windows 7 already passed Vista, and is in a very good pace. still, XP has more than 60% of the Microsoft-based computers... and the Web is still visited by a computing world which is more than 90% based on Windows operating system...

Wired is claimed to proclaim: the open web is dead

Wired is claimed to proclaim: the open web is dead. This proclamation, in regards to the impact of close shops like iTunes and the Apps convention, might be the another tip for the creation of a snowball, which the singer prince started. However we view these claims, one can't ignore that fact that the current directions of the web are quite reversed to those happy open times of the 80s. It is really hard to tell how web #5 will look like, but I for one would like to envision giant, multi-platform app-stores and music/media-stores in operated by various players...