Voice Out Internet Epiphany
30/09/2005
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The great thing about having my significant other back in town is that we get to talk geek on the way home everyday. My friends aren’t really interested. I have few of those anyway. And the people at work think I’m nuts enough. Also when I was young, I didn’t have dolls or board games, just stuffed animals and my brother’s cast-offs.
And I realise I only want to talk geek in the evening after work. In the morning, I prefer quiet time.
But that’s not the epiphany.
Purgatory
We started talking about Steve Jobs. The man who sold the world (and me my Nano). He gave a possibly life-changing commencement speech at Stanford earlier in the year, and it got printed in this month’s Fortune Magazine. If you are so inclined, you can find the transcript here, and the audio download here.
We decided that the reason why the iPod is it, and the Zen (whatevers) aren’t, is because Apple had a bigger, loftier ideal which translated into a better, more cohesive strategy. I have no doubts Creative probably has a great mp3 player out there. But I think they completely lost the point, and various parts of their entire being just aren’t working together.
Inferno
Then we tried to figure out why the mighty Do No Evil (NASDAQ: GOOG) seems to have no coherent point. You’d figure with all those geniuses walking around campus, surely they can do better with smutterings of Gmail and Talk, Search and Blogger, Orkut, Maps, News and Froogle all flying off in 2 million directions at the speed of light.
Why can’t they even implement a universal login?
And then, it happened. Maybe they don’t want to implement a universal login. Maybe, just maybe, all these products are just different test beds.
Gmail is perhaps the biggest experiment on the threshold of privacy. I don’t know about the people who use Gmail as their primary mail account, but I certainly wouldn’t. I find it horribly, terribly creepy that the content of my mails are processed so “relevant” ads can be served to me. That’s sick. That’s an invasion of privacy. I don’t care if no human reads it, just machines. The fact that it can be read. Is just sick.
What next, are they going to process text – in real time – as I conduct a conversation on Talk? Talk about the next killer app for advertisers. Can you imagine, a typical conversation between friends on IM:
mrgates: What did you do this weekend?
thejobster: Caught a movie, Four Brothers.Watch movies at GreatMovie Theatres
www.greatmovietheatre.commrgates: Oh yeah? The one with Mark Wahlberg? From Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch?
Calvin Klein underwear – Marky Mark model at 50% off
www.cheapvintageunderwear.comthejobster: Yes, he was also the one in Three Kings, with George Clooney.
That’s creepy. Even more so that it’s not completely unrealistic. *shudder*
Still, we couldn’t figure out why they just won’t build a user database to store all that user information. Then it hit us. Maybe, they do have one. And just maybe, it doesn’t even require us to log in.
We’re all tracked. Cookie or otherwise. From our search results they can infer what we are looking for. From our email and instant messages, they get even more information about us. Far be it for Google to tread the path after others. Knowing them, they probably think tracking users can be more efficiently and impressively done completely with algorithms, without any human intervention.
Therein lies the difference between Yahoo! and Google. Human vs Machine. Now I rage against the machine. I think Google has a complete disregard for the humans who are their users. They’re out to push the boundaries on internet and information technology. As a company, I don’t think they have any real heart or emotion.
In fact, they might just be creating the Matrix, with their penchant for creating algorithms in machines that attempt to make a judgement call on what humans need to be served in their inbox. What’s worse, the machines they build will be snoops, being used to snooping in inboxes and im conversations and making inferences.
So does that make Google a ubiquitous, elitist, mercenary Big Brother?
Scratchy really got it right when he said this morning that a company with a negative mission statement is just bad news.
I said, well – Do No Evil isn’t exactly bad.
Scratchy replied, it’s not the same as Do Good.
Paradise
I don’t know about you. But I’m keeping my eye firmly on them No Evil Do-ers. I don’t trust them. I don’t think they know how to treat a user with respect. And I don’t think we should reward that behaviour.
I think Yahoo! and Apple are soulmates. I also think Steve Jobs can sell ice to an eskimo. I think there are some exciting times ahead, if you were into the whole information technology thingamajig.
What I really want to see is Microsoft and Google in a no-holds-barred, no-disqualification, hell-in-a-cell match.
Once more, with feeling
Back again to Apple and Jobster, where we started our earth shattering conversation. I really like Jobster’s speech. It’s simple, convincing, and engaging. I find myself thinking, man, if I was at school and I heard that speech, it could change my life. And that’s just it about Jobs, isn’t it. He knows who he’s reaching out to, and he knows how. It’s a gift. And it’s a wonder to behold.
Stay hungry, stay foolish. Good night.
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Copycats
15/05/2005
After some starts, stops and jumpstarts
The whole social networking thing has kind of rebooted itself back into the realms of cutting edge. Well sorta.
Remember the fuss when friendster came running round the mountain? And then the gamut of friendster-likes like Ryze (business social networking) and all ran round the block too? And the behemoth that made Yahoo! stop and look, and take do a double take – Orkut?
While we’re here let me just mention while doing my research I couldn’t resist and snooped around some more and the things you learn when you look down your friends of friends of friends of friends (sometimes more)! Eeeww! Like how some of your friends (of friends of friends and so on) are like the sad people on Eye for a Guy?
Anyway, 2 years late into the game Yahoo! 360° beta attempts to step it up a notch. Not my favourite Yahoo! product, for all their intentions I think the execution is somewhat lame. But hey, it’s got this nifty little blog thing. Not the fanciest blog system on the block, but certainly less complicated that the Friendster-typepad version. And it has a sweet little photo upload thingey, which makes photo-a-day slightly easier there than here.
Sorry. Got distracted reading other people’s profiles again! It’s funny – cos it’s almost like (how I’d imagine) sitting in a bar talking to people. Some try to impress you, some do it the fakely modest way, some do it the fakely modest yet somewhat kinda intelligent way, some outright do it, some come off sounding like a sixteen-year-old trapped in the body of a thirty-three year old, some sound like it all with strange grammar, you know them all. Yet it’s funnier reading it, because you know their profiles are pre-meditated, and they’ve had a chance to refine it. Endlessly. And you don’t have to really interact.
I need to go and do something vaguely impressive now, but since I’m trying to come across understated and nonchalant, I’ll just say I’m going to read a really thick book written by some guy who’s dead and leave out the fact that I’m only reading it because someone in that convuluted story shares my name, and not particularly because I find the book funny, or enlightening or both.
I must sound bored and lonely.
Is it just me, or
13/12/2004
Is it just me, or does Hotmail still suck?
250MB of storage, enhanced virus protection, a cleaner and faster UI later, I am unable to find the Sign Out link/button on Hotmail. Did they expect everyone to just close the browser window to log out?
It’s the Survivor 9 – Vanuatu Finale tonight
And I’m glued to it as usual. I still love Survivor, although I’m too lazy to blog about it. I guess what keeps it interesting is how Survivor’s like a nasty microcosm of life. In reality, we don’t really see the worst in people because there isn’t $1 million at stake, and you don’t get dumped on an island with 17 strangers who’ve been selected out of 60,000 applications to create drama and annoy you. That’s not to say that I’ve not seen integrity impaired dingbats stabbing others in the back for a couple bucks. I still am entertained watching human folly for kicks, and in it try to understand the whole mystery of life.
Obviously I’m not getting anywhere so maybe my strategy is flawed.
Marketwatch, Domainkeys, more storage
17/11/2004
Lots happening in Internetland
First Dow Jones announces they’re buying up Marketwatch.
Then Yahoo! goes on to jump the gun with an announcement about authentication and more email storage. Well, I’m still waiting for my account(s) to get upgraded.
And finally, a coherent argument to make the switch to Mozilla Firefox. If that url has expired, here’re key takeaways from the fine article by Rob Pegoraro of washingtonpost.com:
“… Firefox displays an elegant simplicity within and without. Its toolbar presents only the basic browsing commands: back, forward, reload, stop, home. Its Options screen consists of five simple categories of settings — most of which don’t need adjusting, since the defaults actually make sense.
One in particular should delight many long-suffering Web users: Firefox blocks pop-up ads automatically.
But Firefox’s security goes deeper than that. It doesn’t support Microsoft’s dangerous ActiveX software, which gives a Web site the run of your computer. It omits IE’s extensive hooks into the rest of Windows, which can turn a mishap into a systemwide meltdown.
Firefox resists “phishing” scams, in which con artists lure users into entering personal info on fake Web pages, by making it easier to tell good sites from bad. When you land on an encrypted page — almost no phishing sites provide this protection — Firefox advertises that status by highlighting the address bar in yellow. It also lists that page’s domain name on the status bar; if that doesn’t match what you see in the address bar, you’re probably on a phishing site.
To keep Firefox current with any security fixes, the browser is designed to check for updates automatically.
A “Find” bar at the bottom of Firefox’s window lets you search for words on a page without blocking your view of the page itself; as you type a query, the first matching item is highlighted in green. “Find Next” and “Find Previous” buttons jump to other matches, and a “Highlight” button paints all of them in yellow.
For searches across the entire Web, a box at the top right provides a shortcut to Google queries, and a menu lists five other sites, including Yahoo, Amazon and eBay. Downloadable plug-ins offer access to such resources as the Internet Movie Database.
What if that Google search yields four interesting sites? Hold down the Control key as you click each link, and they will open behind separate tabs in your existing window. This tabbed browsing — a feature shared with almost all non-IE browsers — is far more efficient and far less cluttered than the old one-page-per-window approach.
Busy readers can also use Firefox’s built-in RSS (Really Simple Syndication) newsreader to fetch updates from Web sites that publish their content using this standard. This “Live Bookmarks” feature lacks the flexibility of a stand-alone newsreader, but it’s also simpler.
Web addicts can customize Firefox to no end with browser extensions that add functions and themes that alter its looks. Find the Options window’s settings too limiting? Type “about: config” into the address bar and you’ll see about 600 preferences to tweak…
Switching from IE to Firefox is nearly painless. Download a 4.7-megabyte installer, run it, and let it import your existing IE data. Your plug-ins, bookmarks, browsing history and even cookies should transfer over (IE’s home page and any saved passwords should be imported, but were not in my tests); you can then pick up in Firefox exactly where you left off in IE.
I think anybody using Internet Explorer should switch to Firefox today. Seriously. Even if you’ve loaded every IE security update, Firefox will give you a faster, more useful view of the Web. If you haven’t — or if you use a pre-XP version of Windows ineligible for Service Pack 2′s security fixes — it would be lunacy to stick with IE.”
Getting Yahoo!ed
24/10/2004
Bloomba too
After the Oddpost acquisition, Yahoo! made the unlikely purchase in Bloomba, the small desktop client that’s oh-so-cool that Netjackal found and got Mozz, Rozz and the rest of us using at one point or another.
Donnie – this one’s for you
Quick update
The last couple of weeks was a little crazy. We just back from San Francisco, again, and I’m frantically trying to finish the stuff that I was meant to finish a few weeks back. Annual performance reviews are also in the air, and this year we’ve the dubious honour of having it done by the Walking Carcinogen, so we’re not quite sure how that will really affect us.
In the meantime, Mr Walking Carcinogen figures himself too important and big for the miserable role he’s been given, and weaseled his way into a larger regional role, leaving the mess he created for someone else to figure out. See, school was a waste of time – or maybe it’s just local education in my time – but all that talk about being honest, cleaning up your mess, being fair, and the world being just; that’s probably what the tired civil servants we call teachers want it to be, but not necessarily how it really works. And maybe in school they could gain control of a tiny smidgen of life and run it that way, but they’ve bred a heap of students who expected life to work that way, and it doesn’t, and we wonder why these jerks like WC walk away with the prize money.
The prospect of a new boss is not sinking in properly yet, but it is imminent and a little unnerving at the same time.
What would we do without the Internet?
18/07/2004
It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon
Taken December 03, Lomo-ed July 04
And here I am sitting in front of the PC like I do on any other workday. Lovely. The scary fact is that it is – it’s something I enjoy. It sure beats going outside with 4 million people in your face who really need to get out of their homes and just live a bit.
It’s not a replacement for getting out and having fun, no. Nothing beats the feeling of walking through the malls and whipping out the plastic. The rows of perfectly lined skincare products. The smell of essential oils and all the other goodstuff that’s jampacked into each little jar, tube or bottle. The thrill of trying out that top you just saw in the window display and having it look just like you want it to. The familiar strains teenybopper chart toppers at best, muzak or techno at worst, over the sound systems that strangely make you happy and excited and willing to buy close to anything.
But it sure is a lot of fun. It’s like the bestest, fastest, most convenient way to find out what’s happening, and to find out how to do with what you want to do. And the more you read, the more possibilities there are.
In the last four hours, I’ve checked my primary email, and from news alerts I set up I went on to read about Oddpost and checked out what life was like for them. After blogging that article (among others), I go on to catch up on my friends’ blogs and phlogs. Inspired, I decided to read a photoblogging tutorial I came across some time back, but after the second paragraph, I decided it was a larger undertaking than I was prepared to put up with (which was, incidentally, the same outcome the last time I read the tutorial).
While writing this blog, I’ve caught up on Abraham Maslow, his hierarchy of needs, local news about the DPM taking over on Aug 12, and how he has to handle China being sensitive, and how if I had the time to start that lifestyle channel at work, we could blow crap like this out of the water.
It’s endless fun on the internet!
Going the way of the behemoth
16/06/2004
Yahoo! Announces “New and Improved” Yahoo! Mail, Introduces Major Increase in Storage Space, Makes 50 Million Additional E-Mail Addresses Available
Tuesday June 15, 7:55 am ET
Yahoo! Mail Gets a New Look and Feel, Continues Robust Security and Commitment to Privacy, Filters More Than 95 Percent of Spam
SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 15, 2004– Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO – News), a leading global Internet company, today unveiled a new and improved Yahoo! Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com), the No. 1 e-mail service in the country, measured both by reach(1) and by the percentage of people who identify Yahoo! as their primary personal e-mail account(2). Yahoo! is leveraging years of customer insight with key innovations to deliver a product that responds precisely to what consumers want and need in an e-mail service.
Yahoo! is introducing a number of exciting enhancements to Yahoo! Mail including a major increase in storage space for both free and premium users. Free e-mail subscribers will automatically be upgraded to 100-megabytes of storage, 25 times more than the prior free offering. Premium customers, including subscribers to SBC Yahoo! Dial and DSL, will have virtually unlimited storage at 2-gigabytes, far in excess of any major e-mail service and 200 times the amount offered by most other Internet service providers. All users will benefit from the new design and improved search capabilities, and graphical ads will be removed from Yahoo! Mail Plus and SBC Yahoo! Mail, all of which make Yahoo! Mail easier and faster than ever. Additionally, the company is opening up more than 50 million Yahoo! IDs, giving consumers more address options for their e-mail accounts.
The company is focused on continually innovating and improving Yahoo! Mail, and a number of additional product enhancements are expected to follow in the coming months.
“Our unique experience as an e-mail pioneer and innovator in the communications space – coupled with insights gleaned from our tens of millions of loyal customers – helps ensure we are delivering the best e-mail product possible,” said Brad Garlinghouse, vice president, Communications Products, Yahoo! Inc. “With the new Yahoo! Mail, consumers won’t have to think about mailbox size. When they judge webmail value, they’ll continue to look at all the things that make Yahoo! Mail No. 1 – including privacy practices, superior spam and virus protection, and integrated calendaring and alerts.”
Yahoo! Mail: No.1 and Now Better Than Ever
The overall goal of the improvements are to extend Yahoo!’s position as the market’s leading e-mail product – which means adding useful new features, while maintaining and even improving the experience for the company’s millions of loyal e-mail customers. Key elements of the new features being introduced today include:
Streamlined design – Although still comfortably familiar, the new look of Yahoo! Mail is easier than ever to use. Yahoo! has developed an even cleaner design that allows consumers to quickly and easily read and compose e-mail while eliminating graphical ads for premium users entirely.
Increased storage & message attachment size – Leveraging consumer insights around what users want and need, Yahoo! has introduced new storage levels. Yahoo! inboxes now allow message sizes up to 10-megabytes, and 100-megabyte mailboxes for free users and virtually unlimited storage for premium customers with 2-gigabyte mailboxes. The new mail storage sizes follow last year’s changes to Yahoo! Photos, when the company began to offer unlimited free storage for photo files.
Faster search – Yahoo! Mail inboxes are easier than ever to manage, thanks to even better search capabilities at faster speeds.
More account names – Yahoo! is releasing more than 50 million Yahoo! IDs allowing consumers more freedom to pick the Yahoo! e-mail ID that best suits them. These Yahoo! IDs include a number of highly sought after names that have been dormant for many years and are just now being put back into circulation.
Safer, More Secure Inboxes
These enhancements supplement Yahoo!’s industry leading virus and spam protection. Protecting people’s inboxes has been a key priority – and as a result, Yahoo! Mail automatically scans e-mail attachments to help protect consumers from viruses and consistently filters more than 95 percent of spam(3) thanks to SpamGuard, Yahoo!’s proprietary spam filtering system.
“We know that the longer a consumer has an email account, the more likely they are to be targets for unwanted e-mail, which is why we are constantly fine tuning our spam controls to tighten the noose around the necks of spammers,” continued Garlinghouse. “We don’t think consumers should or will accept an e-mail experience that degrades over time. Yahoo! Mail enjoys high regard among tens of millions of long-standing and loyal customers and we think that is thanks in part to our unending vigilance in protecting their inboxes.”
About Yahoo! Mail
Launched in October 1997, Yahoo! Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com) is one of the Web’s largest, most popular free e-mail providers. Yahoo! Mail helps people stay in touch at home, at work or while traveling for business or pleasure. Yahoo! Mail is fully integrated with Yahoo!’s many other popular services to make it easy to access all the Internet services people need. Yahoo! Mail has received a variety of prominent industry accolades including “Best Free E-Mail” for three years by PC World, and CNET Editors’ Choice awards.
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading provider of comprehensive online products and services to consumers and businesses worldwide. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and the most trafficked Internet destination worldwide. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo!’s global network includes 25 world properties and is available in 13 languages.
(1) Nielsen//NetRatings, May 2004
(2) IPSOS-Insight, Sept 2003
(3) Internal Yahoo! data
Manic Monday
04/05/2004
I can’t remember the last time I really laughed at a comedy
Until The Office. I know I’ve been talking about it so much that by the time you watch it you’d be cringing in your seat wondering what the hell is wrong with me.
The wicked witch is dead
Heard news today that Goggles is leaving. Break out the champagne! He’s living proof that life is not fair, and if he here to drive that point home to me, does it now mean I get the point? Do I really?
More Gmail vs Y! Mail
Short answer: If you’ve already a Yahoo! account, and are using multiple services (addressbook, messenger, mail) then the frills you’re used to would probably irk you enough to not use GMail as your primary account.
If you need lots of space and would go and check your email all day, and don’t mind a spartan, utilitarian interface, go for GMail.
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Been there, done that, bought the tee shirt.
30/04/2004
Welcome to the other side, Google
Much as they resisted selling out, Google finally filed their IPO plans. Welcome to the world of short term revenue, and slow sinking beauracracy. Hope you make it.
Right, I know what I say anywhere about Google would probably be tagged sour grapes, but I’m confident I can be objective enough to dish good stuff. I still like Gmail, their ugly excuse for a free email service (well, 1 gb of storage can be very convincing), Orkut was fun for a while, and when you get them to define a term in the search box (eg: define googol) the result isn’t truncated like Y! Search‘s is. And they even have time for a quirky sense of humour.
What does get on my nerves is how the wannabes like to refer to Google like it’s the best thing invented since sliced bread. Yes they’re a great search engine, yes, they set their priorities right and I’ve no doubts they’ll potentially build fabulous world dominating products. Especially since everyone at Why-bang is busy writing documents and having meetings about why they should be doing this and that instead of doing it.
Yes, they’re now a Cultural Phenomenon. You’re a smartie pants savvy internet user if you Yahoo!ed way back then, and want to go to Google today.
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MSN should just give up the race now. Hotmail is an inferior piece of crap (2mbs of storage? What – Bill can’t afford the extra disk space? Or does the OS take up too much of it?), MSN Messenger is a promise of something better, but mostly fails to work for me because I didn’t do my stupid Windows updates. They should just do the honourable thing – get out of the market while they still look scary.
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What a difference a couple of years makes
Look, the point is, Google isn’t the first Internet pin-up, they aren’t the first Internet company mentioned on TV, yeah they’re now a verb. But they’re not the only ones with founders from Stanford who found a better way to organise data on the internet. In the beginning, there was Dave and Jerry.
<useless trivia>
From 40 under 40: Richest (Fortune Magazine, Sep 15 2003)
#5 David Filo
#6 Jerry Yang
#7 Sergey Brin
#8 Larry Page
That article also highlights these facts:
1. “Chief Yahoo!” sounds infinitely better than “President”
2. The Google dudes took the spaces held by the Yahoo!s the year before (though this year they’ll probably blow the whole list out of the water)
3. Jeff Bezos is doing really well for a guy who’s not showing any profit
4. Michael Dell looks like Richard Kind from Spin City
</useless trivia>
And it’s a load of crock that Google “took the internet out of geekdom and made it cool”. In my book, instant messaging and Napster did that.
Lest we forget how the road to hell is paved with good intentions, lemme put this out there. They all started the same way – wide eyed, hopeful that they’re working on great inventions, products that will change and define the way people live.
To me, the real question is how long they stick to doing no evil.
Oh and by the way, no one really knew who they were until Yahoo! used them to power a previous incarnation of the Yahoo! search engine.
So there. Take that. Send your little bots and index this page or do I have to post this on blogspot (watch out for the exciting nasal spray addiction ads)?
Gee whiz
27/04/2004
Finally got what I was hankering for
That elusive G. Gmail to be precise. Yay! 1 gigabyte of email storage. Now I just need to find something to do with all that space… I can’t wait for the fallout in the free email space. Will Hotmail do something? Will Y! Mail do more than just not count my bulk mail and trash in my miserable 6mb quota? Such exciting times.
I haven’t really used GMail yet, but so far it seems really quick. Reply and forward functions are already loaded onto the page, so you won’t have to wait for the page to refresh to do something simple like forward an email. The addressbook is a bit pared down, just simple name and email format.
On the other hand, it’s a bit spartan. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think it looks like Y! Mail (maybe with the exception of the colour scheme). Sure there are some similarities – the navigation on the left, the pull down menu to report spam etc. But engineers haven’t been known to be big fans of reinventing the wheel, so I’m not surprised at that. I don’t know, for now I think I’m still used to Y! Mail so I miss the nice extras like getting notification on Y! Messenger when I get new mail, and the disposable email addresses. It also can be argued that with 1 GB of storage, who needs it? I don’t know yet.
Cube Curios
The night before I left for Hong Kong I did a bit of research so we’d have an idea where to go. After taking in a couple of walking tours from Frommers, I made up my mind to head to Hollywood Road to check out the antique and curio stores. I decided that I was going to get a wooden Guan Gong figurine.
As the patron saint of beancurd sellers and according to Pantheon.org “He opposes all disturbers of the peace. He is charged with the task of guarding the realm against all external enemies, as well as internal rebels.” Hokey, I know. But nonetheless I thought it would be a nice addition to the office alongside the toys and books and essential oil lamps and curios from all over the world.
Most of the stores only had old ones – what did I expect shopping at antique lane – and they were way large, I think they were meant for altars. But I did find a suitable sized Guan Gong eventually.
Guan Gong, settling in with my books and files
So I settled for this one – it’s not wooden nor carved, but close enough. One of my co-workers mentioned in passing over breakfast that he knew for a fact in some companies figurines like this which can be construed as religious would probably not be allowed. My boss, in his usual fashion, said it wouldn’t be an issue in this office.
More cube curios
I just found out that they sell the cube tee shirt thing at the local Muji across the street. So I bought another 2.
Saying a lot of nothing I wanted to say
I originally wanted to comment about The Office Season 2, but got distracted and dished out a whole heap of other crap in this post. Only 1 word describes Season 2: painful.
