As you may—or may not—know, the blog you are now reading belongs to the Weblogs, Inc. Network (WIN).
The Weblogs, Inc. network features over 80 independent, unfiltered bloggers producing over 1,000 blog posts a week
across 75 industry leading blogs that include Engadget, Autoblog, and TVSquad. We figured we would skim the cream and
give you some of the top posts from a number of these sites—as determined by our bloggers—in one easy to read post each
week.
Note: I'm cross posting this report from the D Conference to the Microsoft and Google blogs. This post is from the
personal blog of Jason McCabe Calacanis.
Gates just spent 15 minutes showing off maps at the D conference. It seemed that 75% of Gates' talk was focused on
would-be Google killers and the other 25% on Apple-killers. I'm exaggerating, since Tablet and Windows Media Center
having nothing to do with those companies.
He just showed mapping technology that included satellite images just like Google Maps. He then showed putting layers
on top of maps—just like the Google Mash-ups people are doing. No big deal, we've seen this before.
Gates said that in their satellite images today one pixel represents one foot. OK, great… we know about that as
well.
He then talked about a company he has partnered with that that flies planes over cities and takes photos at 45
degrees. He showed flipping a map from a drawing to a satellite to an amazing 45-degree close up photo of a building.
Everyone let out a big "ohhhhhhhh."
It was the first "ohhhhhhhhhhhh" moment of the conference. Steve Jobs' podcasts in iTunes got no "ohhhhh" except the
one that I did under my breath while blogging it.
For my money podcast support is better than 45-degree photos.
Gates also showed off a bunch of search stuff that I'll blog next.
I just installed and tested the new "Look for Map" feature on the Google Toolbar
everyonehasbeentalking about—I'm very concerned. We have a very
deep relationship right now, and I'm really happy to be working with all the smart folks over there. However, I'm
hoping that you'll take this post seriously not just because we are business partners, but because I'm also a huge fan
of your products.
It's clever how after clicking on a button on my Google Toolbar your software changes unlinked address information to
links to your excellent Google Maps page. I would have cut and pasted that information to Google Maps in many cases, so
you just saved me a couple of steps.
However, I don't like the idea of software companies changing our editorial content. You can make all kinds of logical
arguments about the page not be actually changed, but the result to the user is the links were added—that's a big
change. You can say that this is all to help the user, but that doesn't make it right. Heck, you could help me out by
editing the first two Star Wars movies—doesn't mean you should or have the right to.
If you come in and set the standard that changing a publishers webpages is legal then we—your business partners on the
Google Adsense side of the business—are going to be crushed with all kinds of companies creating tool bars that put
hyperlinks all over our pages. They are all going to use the GEFG defense ("good enough for Google"). This is going to
cause us a lot of pain, suffering, and revenue. I know you don't want to do that to us.
Can you imagine world in which software publisher felt free to alter the content on people's webpages?!?! It would be
total chaos. What if my Yahoo page turned Google Adsense links to Overture ones? Would you be cool with that? Is it the
users right to remove the ads on Google and replace them with ads they prefer? Would you stand for that? OK, I think
you get my point now.
So, I've come up with a very simple solution for you to add this functionality without setting a precedent that will
destroy—and that is not the least bit hyperbolic—our businesses:
Instead of changing the content on our pages why not just let the user right mouse click on an address and add
a link that says "Google Maps?"
This would work just as well for users, and you can keep doing amazing work without making us suffer, and without
straying from your mantra: do no evil.
Google's new video search is out, so I
searched for Sundance and found all
the inane coverage from Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, and other programs that make the public think that
Paris Hilton was actually on the Jury this year.
Seriously, the video search doesn't actually play the videos.. it just synchs the transcripts with still images,
creating a pretty good research tool for finding out who's been on
Letterman and
Leno before, during, and in the coming months after the festival.
The good folks at Google sent me a really cool glowing AM/FM clock radio as gift, and since we don't like to keep
gifts here at Weblogs, Inc. (that whole "ethics"
thingy) we've decided to give it to one of our readers in a joint contest with Engadget.com.
Now, you can't buy one of these, it can't be found in stores at any price (as least that we know of!). You could
probably turn around and sell this bad boy on EBAY for 20 large and finally get out from under (or not).
So, the reader who comes up with the best answer to question "what you would do if you were in charge of
Google?" will get this bad boy.
Brian and I will use our judgement, or sick sense of humor, to judge a winner. All decision of the judges are final,
so don't go emailing Sergey or Larry and start complaining.
The fine print: Any ideas implimented by Google will result in a royalty payment of 5% to Weblogs,
Inc. — just kidding. Think outside the box… like maybe Google should buy Tivo, fund a trip to the moon or do something
crazy like… mmmmm…. launch a
browser.
We've been building HackADay.com in stealth/beta mode for the past couple of
weeks , and today I noticed a really important post
regarding Google's new Desktop Search.
It turns out some clever people have figuring out how to search another person's desktop. Now, you have to have access
to that computer, but you can imagine the implications of this if someone did it on their manager desktop at their
office, or their kids desktop.
Sure, you could have done this with key-capture software any time in the past twenty years, but combining this with
the power of the Google Desktop is really dangerous.
I guess users are going to have to get even more careful about what they store on their machines, what software they
install, and who they let use their machines!
NOTE: I am not getting paid for this in any way, shape or form.
The first 100 people to link to this blog post from their blog will get a free version of
X1.COM—value=$74.95!!!
I wrote about how much I love X1 yesterday and
how it blows Google Desktop software out of the water. X1 has really changed my life… much in the way Firefox
did.
My main man Bill Gross from idealab checked out the post and I suggested to him
that we give some copies away because too few people know how great this software is.
So, I'm sitting on like $7,500 worth of software here. If you link to this post and put the URL in the comments I'll
email you the serial number (note: I can see your email when you put in your comment so you don't have to add it to the
post and worry about spam).
Let the games begin!!!
NOTE: I am not getting paid for this in any way, shape or form.
I'm taking some notes on the search panel at Web 2.0 conference, but I thought I would give you the MP3 file and
some photos first. Here is part one in
MP3 format, and here is part
two. This page will be updated with the second MP3 file and some more notes.
This is a licensing agreement through our marketing department. It's
just another component of a licensing program that we've had in place
for several years for a variety of items such as computer peripherals
and we're now extending to additional items such as those you see in the
photograph.
The manufacturer is Diamond Electronics and we will be providing our
branding and logo. The manufacturer is working to sell these products
into major retailers.
It's an exciting extension of the Yahoo! brand, but it won't be a
significant announcement for the company as the blog suggests.
Strange thing going on over here at the WIN HQ. All of our sites except for two have page ranks.
www.Bloggingbaby.com and www.Joystiq.com
have tons of backwards links but Google hasn't ranked them yet. Strange.
David has a really interesting post on the
"value a blog." He brings up various measures like mentions in the press, traffic and of course the elusive and
mysterious Google Pagerank.
Turns out the excellent PVRBlog.com, the best niche of a niche blog of all time, has a Google Pagerank of NINE.
For comparision EBAY, Engadget.com and Boingboing.net have an eight; Gawker, Buzzmachine, Curbed and my blog are all
sevens; DailyCandy is a six. The higher your page rank the higher up your pages come up under Google searches.
(Check out our Google and SEM
blogs for more info on this topic).
Anyway, right now I would estimate that 20-50% of the hype/traffic around blogs is driven by Google deciding—for
whatever reason—that blogs are more important than other websites (which they are). Thanks Google!
For example Tivo.com has a page rank of seven and Tivocommunity.com has a page rank of
So I was just on Slashdot and saw—for the first time—Google AdSense's new big box ads. Google was showing off this
house ad. Unless of course this ad was bought and placed on Slashdot.
Either way, interesting to see them courting the tech crowd, and I'm really interested to see what the impact of
them creating the largest advertising network in the world is.
Engadget has
Creative Zen Vision about Microsoft "breaking some new
ground" with a… Battlebot (?!) walking around with Sony
Ericsson's new W600 Walkman Phone and chatting up how the
Nintendo Revolution won't support HD.
AdJab covers
AutoTrader's attacks, on
Heinz one-liners,
marooned on Gilligan's
Island and then
David has a really interesting post on the
"value a blog." He brings up various measures like mentions in the press, traffic and of course the elusive and
mysterious Google Pagerank.
