Google, the company which started 10 years ago as a Phd project, moved into a garage for a while, and then 6 years later went on public offering, turning half of it’s employees into millionaires over night. The company which was chosen as the strongest brand in the US, and best place to work for last year. That same company for the first time is not living it’s glory days from the start of this year, following several events:
Their stock price have gone down below the $450, after it was $700 3 months back. (This could be a right time to buy if you strongly believe in them. Most Analyst still do)
For the first 3 months in a raw, according to comScore, the number of Google sponsored Ads clicks is declining. This ofcourse is Google’s main stream of revenue, that is feeding everything else. So if that goes down, well, Good bye Gmail, Google Reader, and all other great Google services.
Decline of search volume on Google last month. Even though February was shorter than Jan by two days, and all other search engine volumes went down, in fact Google was the least declining from top search engines, analysts still think there is a decline in the amount of search done on the web. Why is that? Social networks? Blogs? Feeds? No answer yet.
Rise of new search engines. Now I know not every new search engine is a threat, in fact most aren’t. And the reason is that, it’s difficult to convince Googlers why your search algorithm is better. You need to find another way to draw their attention. Two new comers actually did and have been turning some heads on the web. One of them is Mahalo, the human-powered search engine. It’s still new, has lots of missing content. I mean, they don’t have pages for Arsenal F.C. nor Monkey Island (turns out they do now :). Where are you Arsenal and Monkey Island geeks! Well, Arsenal might have enough problems right now, but MI fans, quit playing S&M and do some stuff :). Anyways, I was impressed by the spam-free form of it, and the rich content you can find there for items that do have some content filled up. You can go the their main page and browse from their to the hot topics and results on the web. The other search engine that will draw some market-share I guess if they keep going straight is Searchme. The engine is still in private beta, invitation only (except this very moment, they have limited instant accounts, currently 970 left). What’s unique about this engine is the way you browse the results. Instead of getting text based results, clicking a link, waiting for the page to load only to realize it’s spam or useless page, here you browse images of the page instead of text only. So before clicking on any link, you have an idea about how the site looks like and what you could find there. It’s actually pretty similar in nature to browsing file thumbnails on Apple Finder. The engine is flash based and I assume people with low resources and connection will not find it most useful. I was personally very impressed however from how it works, and am looking forward to more from it.
So what now. Is Google going to die? I don’t really think so, but their growth I presume is not going to be the same as last year. I personally don’t agree with what ex-Google employee said after joining Facebook, that social networks are “Google of yesterday, and Microsoft of the past”. You will always need a search engine (or alternative) to reach your information, and a social-network is not the one ofcourse. Also, social-networks are more like bubbles than any other. People follow the hype, join their friends, want to have fun in new ways. Then suddenly, a new social-network comes with new fancy way of doing stuff. People will start jumping there, and the net-worth of the company will run fast down. Especially when their current social-network is controlling too much sensitive information and keeps abusing it. The other point is what some analyst said. People in social-networks are mostly after entertainment and socializing with their friends, and they are less likely to be interested in some ad on the side. On the other side, people are more likely to click on related ads when they are actually searching for that specific topic. After all, it could be what they need. But it all depends on the quality of the link, which Google’s been trying to push for real hard.
Google Reader for many is without any doubt the best feed aggregator and reader out there. Giving you the ability to read all your favorite feeds online, from any place, at any time. Using the shortcuts (J, K & S), you can easily browse next, previous, and star your item. This makes it extremely easy to go through the 1000+ items I have queued for me to read forever. The ability to merge all the feeds and browse them together is a feature not available in many other readers, where you usually have to browse every feed separately. Recently also, and finally, they allowed searching through all those feeds, turning your feed reader into a rich bookmark for all items you may want in the future. There is also the newly added ability to share items with your friends and blog readers. Simply mark the item as shared, and all your Gmail friends will be able to read it. So now, and instead of posting about any good article I find without adding any value to it, you can go through my shared items on the side menu, where I will be sharing lots of the useful articles I find.
It is those sort of acts that make me regret respecting any copyrights on digital content. Region locking is the typical example. Many commercial DVDs come encoded with what’s called the Region code, restricting play of that DVD to certain regions, relying on the fact the commercial DVD Player specifications enforces single-region play only per DVD player. So if you buy your DVD somewhere, and your DVD player from somewhere else, you’re out of luck. Unless ofcourse if you don’t wanna obey by their pointless rules.
So why is that Region locking there? “The purpose of this is to allow motion picture studios to control aspects of a release, including content, date and in particular, price, according to the region. “. (Wikipedia)
Isn’t that just annoying? At a time where all those motion picture studios are at the mercy of honest people who buy the original copy for tens of dollars, as opposed to just pirating it from BitTorrent for FREE, getting it faster, cheaper, and easier to throw away if you don’t like it, as you didn’t pay for it. Yet, they chose to have some manners and respect to the content owner, and pay them for it. Why do you need to give them another reason not to respect you, and pirate it! My story here is simple. I got The Blue Planet from Amazon, and got the LG RH299H from Kuwait local showroom. What do I find out? It’s region 2 only! Even though the seller confirmed it’s multi-region.
Ironically, even the DVD Player manufacturers are not convinced of this single-region locking at all, that they make it so simple to break this locking. So damn simple I just had to follow those easy steps the seller gave me. Those steps work for the RH299H DVD Player, and your player may be different keep in mind. You will find loads of hacks on the net if you just search them:
Click on the Home button of the remote control.
Using Left & Right arrow keys on the remote, browse to the Settings menu.
Move down over the Lock icon, don’t click it, just move over it.
Enter “0000″.
That’s it. And not only you have broken the region lock, but the player actually gives you a “Congratulations, you have enabled All Region Playback” message! So DVD Player manufacturers have made the locking to match the specs, made it too easy to break, and they’re happy you did :).
Ohh, and what did you get out of that motion picture studios? Just more hate and reasons for piracy I presume.
I’ve posted before about the Brain-control headset and how it could revolutionize the way of gaming. Well, now we read about an adapted Harry Potter version of the game where you lift boulders and throw lightning bolts using only your mind. That would be something right? But is it fun to just use your brain while playing? I don’t really know, but I think about it and feel, I must do some action during the game, and brain signals are not the physical actions you may wanna have. Would it be too tiring to play for long, since it’s purely focusing on your brain rather than your acts?
A Nintendo Wii fan made this clip to show how he wants the Wii technology to be applied to the new Star Wars game. I’m not sure if the current Wii controller can handle all it requires, but it’s an amazing concept he should be paid for doing it :)
To be frank, except that mind-control is something more techy and new, I feel the Star Wars Wii concept appeals to me more. Would the mind-control turn out to be just a fancy way of gaming that would be used for showoff for a while and then just die? Or would it really be a replacement to Wii and traditional controls? What do you think?
This is my main concern as I went through the technology news today. My 6600 (yeah old) has been begging for the bullet of mercy for quite a long time now. More than a year back, the zero button stopped working twice. Every time I show unmatched laziness to buy a new phone, and my phone somehow feels sorry and resumes it’s function few weeks later. For over six months now, it’s been going damn pretty slow I can hardly open any message, and friends ask me to accept MMS and applications from them! :). Pretty embarrassing for a geek!
So what’s holding me up from changing it? Well at first, I had many other stuff that I wanted more, and every time I buy one of them I feel the guilt, or sense of responsibility to save some and buy the phone the next month. The other thing is, I’ve been waiting for the phone that grabs all my attention. iPhone could’ve been a good candidate, but I like a camera on the go, I don’t wanna use a hacked phone that might stop working any day, I was expecting new release of it in a year, and then came the SDK announcement to stop my dreams. Nokia phones are good for a year or so, then you probably can’t sell it for 10 KD. Sony Ericcson’s got some good phones as well, but I never liked the button layouts. And then there is the HTC phone I kept thinking about. I didn’t like the fact it’s Windows based, but all have spoken great deal of it so far. You can get Google Maps on it and enable the GPS. Pretty good. But some HTC don’t have 3G with them, which is a shame not to have with a modern phone, and the ones that have are costly. Android ofcourse was a candidate, but it’s taking long time to come, so I wasn’t thinking of waiting for it. Also, I am a bit hesitated about the initial release of it. But…
Today I read this. HTC is coming up with their “dream” Android phone at end of this year. This seems like the best choice of mix for me now. But the big questions is “Can my phone hold up until the end of the year!?”. I doubt it.
OK. Spotlight is definitely one of the coolest features in Leopard, if not the coolest of them all. However I am always amused by the lack of configuration options from Apple products. I have my takes on the iTunes, but that’s the topic of another post. For now, my MacBook is burning indexing my Flash drive, which I am just plugging to backup some data and leave. File transfers gave me estimated 2 hours for 10 MB of data or less. Ofcourse it’s finishing faster, but the estimate seems to be affected by the indexing time. I searched the System Preferences, and Googled for a solution on how to disable indexing removable drives. Let alone configuration per device, I want a general option for now. All I could find was this Spotless thing. Which is, as expected, a 3rd party shareware costing $17 just to overcome the limitations of Spotlight. Flash memories are meant for fast transfers. I put a file there, hand it over to my friend to copy it. I don’t want my friend to index it, and neither does he.
Does anyone have a clue on how to fix it? Or why the hell would Apple not allow us to cancel it? Not even configuration, just let me right click the indexing bar and cancel!
Woopra is a new analytics tool that provides two version of analytics. One light-weight web-based ajax version, and another live full desktop version. I’ve tried it on my blog for the past few days alongside Google Analytics, and I have to say, it’s not bad at all. I’m not fancy of desktop apps and prefer online solutions, I plan to give the desktop a try and possible give it a separate review, but for now, I will be talking purely about the online version of it, and mostly comparing it to Google Analytics, which is probably the most famous.
Pros:
Fast: Compared to Google Analytics, this one is much faster to browse for the results. It is strongly ajaxed, and results show up real fast. You will also feel how lighter it is than Google Analytics.
Simple: The interface is pretty simple and easy to follow. I think some people would get confused with Google Analytics, but this one is rather too simple. Results are mostly rows and columns, simple graphs upon request.
Cons:
Simple Graphs: Compared to how Google Analytics lets you visualize the content, and see on the world map where people are coming from, this one lacks it.
No Segmentation: Unlike Google Analytics, you can’t say here you want the to see the traffic sources based on browser type or user location.
No Goals!: This is a great feature in Google Analytics and you can’t have it here. Setting a goal based on user browsing session. If he does certain action, it counts as a goal.
Visitor Details: Google Analytics gives more information on number of visitors, trend, loyalty, network properties and more. Woopra has a separate page for Overview, Countries, Members (?), Browsers, Platforms, Screen Resolutions, and Languages
Site Overlay: This is another neat feature in Google Analytics not present here. It shows you the page of your site, with bars near each link showing how often people click on it.
BUGGY!: This I just found out as I was writing the article. I tried to change the date and all data was gone. All date changes I tried enforced To Date field to 2n of March for some reason, and no results are found. That’s maybe a small issue to fix, but big to have live.
All in all, it’s not a bad thing to have for small sites, like a blog I guess. But for a real business where you want the most details you can get, Google Analytics still seems the best online tool out there. So here are some pics from the stats I got for a period of approximately 1 week.
Top Pages
And here it is on Google Analytics showing different numbers!
And here is a snapshot of referrers from search engines on Woopra
I had to scale the image size down, but you can see sample of how graphs are
and look, MS Live is getting more 50% of my search traffic, while Yahoo! only got me 2!!!
And see here Google Analytics suggesting otherwise. Google is giving much higher referrers than Woopra says,
and Live is barely making any traffic. As a matter of fact, the difference between Google in both reports is around 40 (111 - 70)
and Live difference is 35-1 = 34. Now isn’t that almost the same difference?
Is Woopra having a taste for Live and faking Google referrers as Live?
Anyways, offline version seems to have much richer features, but I will give it a look at some other time. I will also try to figure out the number differences. I suggest sometimes one of the scripts to count the hits or the other fails to load in time.
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