Nouveau by Zaw Thet - Interesting New Stuff

A new miracle material...better than spam

I thought this was pretty cool:

Aerogel, one of the world’s lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.

BTW, not sure if the "silica" gel this originates from is the same as that for breast implants...but that would make it even funnnier. More here.

Digg killer? coRank

Read on VentureBeat about a new Digg killer/competitor called coRank that launched today. The idea here is that it's hard to game the system since your front page is built from news stories that your friends or trusted stories rank and comment on. I like the UI, takes a minute to get used to, but the white space is very friendly.

The problem is that I'm not sure my friends are really pro-active enough to post stories that I'm interested in. So will this work?? Digg works (I think) because it has a small yet dedicated group of users that do a lot of tagging/commenting that everyone benefits from. This coming on the news that Digg now has 1M registered users. Smaller than we all thought, right?

UPDATE:  More on social media from this week
- GigaOm: Is Social News the New Trend
- Mashable: MySpace News: The Digg Killer?

Blackberry 8800 is like gold...

Just traded in my Nokia E62 (which looked like a TI-82 graphing calculator) for the new 8800. I haven't had a Blackberry in 3 years, but I have to say the new software and email interface is great! Not as good as GOOD on my old Treo 650, but still damn good. For all you luddites out there, here's a link to this snazzy new phone / life device.

Ethanol on the rise..

Great CNN story on super ethanol: http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/21/news/economy/cellulose_ethanol/index.htm?cnn=yes

Did you know that over 14 million cars on the road are already capable on running on this kind of gas? Even better, it requires just one small change to the assembly line to make a car able to do this!

Cracking the Local Search Dilemma: MerchantCircle

My good friend and former Spoke leader, Ben Smith, launched his newest company last week. MerchantCircle is a new twist on local search. It doesn't aim to be a consumer destination site (at least that was the original goal), but I can see more and more MerchantCircle pages popping up when I do local directory searches on the web. In it's first week the company has already drawn high praise from industry pundits like John Battelle and Matt Marshall.

Ben and I first started talking about the idea behind MerchantCircle in 2004. It's a big idea. The end goal is to create a viral network of local businesses that support each other to acquire customers and drive folks into stores via newsletters and coupons. When we started 4INFO we did some informal focus groups with local stores to see if they would have any interest advertising on our mobile search service. What we found is the problem that MerchantCircle solves, the only real advertising local merchants do is in the yellow pages or newspapers. Trying to do advertising on the Internet is complicated because it requires them to have a web page that a customer can link on. Well presto, Merchant Circle has already created a web page with them, complete with blog, newsletter sign-up, coupons and more. That's value in anyone's book.

The question remains whether enough customers will find information on stores via Merchant Circle and request coupons or bring the MerchantCircle page into the local merchant to prompt them to sign-up for the service. Otherwise, the company will be dependent on other local businesses to walk around and recruit fellow merchants to join their newsletter groups. Hey, if it works it's going to redefine local search as we know it. I think the team is on the right track and this is the best solution I've seen. Kudos to Ben and the team for having the balls to try this.

The offical launch post is here.

1000tags.com - Stupid or Brilliant?

I was doing my daily blog read yesterday and came across an interesting post on TechCrunch. The website is called 1000tags.com and it is an interesting varation on the Million Dollar homepage. For those of you who don't follow this thing, the million dollar homepage was a website that sold a pixel of advertising space for $1.00, with 1M pixels on the screen.

1000tags is a different approach. It is based on the idea of tagging that is all the latest rage on the web today and with web2.0 companies. Companies sign up for either shared or exclusive tags and pay a flat rate to be included. When I was on the site yesterday there were 5 tags...today here is a screenshot (I count at least 100):

This is like Google allowing people to search AdWords keywords, but putting them all on one page. Half the time I have to look at the sponsored links anyways to get through the clutter of spam websites when I search for something like "search engine optimization." Why not just allow me to find those companies that are willing to pay for me right away? It's also an interesting social/advertising experiment. Speaking of experiments, I purchased one of the tags (not my own name) on 1000tags.com. Can you guess which one?

To my faithful readers I ask you: stupid or brilliant? Comment away.

Advertising web2.0 TechCrunch nouveau

Update: Riya

A little bird passed along the invite for Riya (see previous post below). I had a chance to play with it using a limited set of photos (17). I have mixed reviews. It was great at picking out faces against solid backgrounds, but didn't seem to be able to find faces automatically when from afar or with muddled backgrounds. For the example below I manually added most of these. Still, very cool concept that I am sure will improve with time.

Technorati tags: riyarocks riya photosearch

Tag Your Photos Automatically: Riya

I heard the gossip that Riya just got picked up by Google for a cool $40M (not bad for an alpha stage start-up). I went over to check out their site and was impressed. Another great idea that seems so simple once you stumble across it...and those are always the best ones.

Here's the concept: tagging your photos to make them easily searchable is a real pain in the ass. When you transfer files from your camera to your computer they usually come in some undistringuishable format like DSC10003332.jpeg. If you ever want to search your pictures for a person or text, there is no way to do that. I would use Flickr a lot more if I didn't have to manually tag all my pictures. Riya helps you avoid that problem by using face and text-recognition technology. You tell it what you look like and it will comb your pictures and apply your name as a tag wherever your face exists. Genius! This sort of technology has been around for a while, but this is the first good CONSUMER application that I've seen.

I don't have an account with Riya yet. Folks from Riya, help me out. A screenshot from their public search is below:

Technorati Tag: Riya

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IM on the road?

Just got introduced to one of the founders of a cool new project/company today called meebo. They have put together a great way to access your Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, or ICQ instant messenger accounts from the road without the need to download anything to a computer.

It's simple, all you do is go to the website and login to your preferred IM account. Then you can use IM inside of a browser window. I spent about 15 minutes playing with it, so not a deep dirt dive.

Seems to be getting some pretty heavy usage and great blog coverage (1, 2, 3, 4)  as well.

Technorati Tags: IM, Meebo, Instant Messaging

Google Talk needs some work

"I need another IM Client like a hole in my head." - quote from my friend Chris on the right.

Tried out Google Talk like every other good techo-nerd today. I came away pretty unimpressed. Google's beta launches have not had much substance behind them lately.

Google Talk was a very minimalistic IM client with VOIP as the only kicker. Sure the windows stack nice, but all the little things you've come to love in IM weren't there: avatars, smileys, easy way to search for friends, etc.

Let me repeat...they don't even have support for smileys!

One sneaky thing, Google is requiring people to sign up for Gmail in order to use Google Talk. My reccomendation, not worth the download.

Technorati Tags:
Google Talk, IM, Google

4INFO Mobile Search

We launched 4INFO last week. 4INFO is a mobile search service that gives users free access to local directory and real-time information via text-messaging (SMS). I’ve been working with a great team to get this company off the ground for the past several months, so it’s nice to finally see the fruits of our work on public display in such a short amount of time. Use 4INFO by sending your search in the body of a text message to the short number 44636 (4INFO on a phone keypad).

I’m not going to launch into a big piece on how to use the service. Instead, this is the first in a series of posts that will try to illuminate some of my core beliefs about mobile services in general. If you are interested in learning about product features please check out the 4INFO website: http://www.4info.net. It offers a live demo of the service as well as useful “how to use” tips and “faqs”.

What is Mobile Search?

Mobile search differs from web search in several key areas:

1. Mobile users are looking for actionable real-time information (i.e. I need my flight time, not the name of Pluto’s moon).

2. The mobile phone number acts as a static IP address. Search can now become much more personalized.

3. Search results are limited to a strict character limit (160 chars for text messaging on most carriers), therefore results must be much more accurate the first time around.

This makes the search process both easier and harder. It is easier because there are a finite number of actions a user probably wants to take. For example: find me a stock quote, show me movies playing in this location, show me yellow pages results for pizza in san mateo. For each information channel 4INFO offers, these specific set of actions can easily be mapped to a set of results.

However, 4INFO was built with the belief that users should never have to remember a complicated grammar or syntax when using our system (here comes the harder part). “United Airlines” works, same as “ual” or “united air”. There is also no need to put “flights” in front of an airline query. The natural language processing required to do this efficiently is complex, but we have a pretty good handle on it (all home-brewed with several patents pending). It is pretty good beta as it stands, but look for dramatic improvements in search quality and personalization over the next release or two.

The easiest metaphor we’ve been able to come up with is: think about the 4INFO search engine as a pre-processor to a web search engine. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could type “ual sfo jfk 10pm” into a search bar and get results for United flights going from SFO to JFK and arriving at 10pm? We give users the ability to do that via their mobile phones, but could easily do this on the web (see our live web search demo). For now, 4INFO uses proprietary data feeds from our partners as sources for our information channels, but it would be very easy to add in a web search engine as an additional information channel. Then we could truly tell you the name of Pluto’s moon: Charon.

Next week: Why 4INFO was initially built for text messaging (SMS)

PS: The word on 4INFO is spreading (if you send me your blog I’ll add it to this post):

• Auren Hoffman’s blog

• Tod Sacerdoti’s blog

• Andy's blog

• One of our own: Garth's blog

• From BestKeptSimple: A Mobile Search Service That Works

• Smart Mobs: Mobile Search 4Info

• Mobile In Denver: Mobile Search 4Info

• textually.org: 4INFO - Mobile Search In The US

• Tony's Tech Blog: 4INFO.net

• SearchEngineWatch: 4INFO.net Enters Mobile Search Space

• Blogerrhea: Cool New Tool

Coming soon...

http://www.4info.net

Yahoo! Video Search launched

Yahoo! released its new Video Search tool. While not as cunning as other implementations we've been hearing about, it still does a pretty good job of finding interesting video clips on the net. Not sure what people will use this for...but be sure to remove the "safe filter" for more interesting search results.

Yahoo! seems to be searching contextually rather than looking directly at the context of the video. It looks like it is searching on links or video titles, but not for what people are actually saying in the video. Google has plans to launch a video search engine that acutally uses close captioned text to allow users to search on what people are actually saying. This is more useful when you are looking for video content (news, etc.), maybe not as useful if you are looking for all the stuff that the "safe filter" is supposed to filter out.

Read more about Google's video search plans here.

Artificial Brain controls Flight Simulator

A scientist at the University of Florida has created a living "brain" made up of 25,000 living neurons extracted from rat's brain. This neural network interacts with a F-22 flight simulator using a multi-electrode array at the bottom of the dish that contains the brain.

Click here to read more.

What do you use text messaging (SMS) for?

For those that are reading...I'm interested in how you use text messaging (SMS on your mobile phone) or what you might be interested in using it for? What would you like to do that you can't do today on your phone? For example, would it be better to send a text message saying "ual 1795" and getting instant flight information back than having to call united's number (and calling 411 and paying $1.50 to get united's number)?

Text messaging is an asynchronous channel that is slowly starting to pick up steam in the U.S. In China there will be over 550 Billion (yes Billion) text messages sent next year. Now that US carriers have made their networks inter-operable we should start to see the same explosion in the U.S. as well.

Please feel free to post comments on why you do or do not use text messaging and what you might want to use it for.

The Evolution of the Web - Refernet

Lately I've been talking with a company called ReferNet (http://www.refernet.net).

Here's why I think this company is interesting and why it will change the game:

The Web has evolved drastically over the course of the last decade. Once just a source for information, it has now become a medium where we (like it or not) live much of our lives. From email to sports to news to commerce - the web reaches into every part of our daily life. Thankfully, many of the things we do still require human interaction. We go to the dentist, bookstore, lawyer, or massage therapist. Finding the right people to go to is sometimes a difficult proposition however. I recently moved to up to San Francisco and I am clueless as to what dentist to go to. Does looking up dentists in the yellow pages really provide a good solution?

The answer is of course no. I'd much rather be able to instantly find out what dentists my friends use so that I can go to one with a high degree of confidence. The problem is that finding out this information is tedious.

The web has moved from a) a large information directory (movie times, stocks, etc.) to b) more personal information on what books to read (amazon reccomendations, user reviews) and what things to buy (epinions). Finally it is starting to move towards c) an information directory that tells me what my friends/acquintances are reading, viewing, buying, and most importantly what service providers they are using. This is where a company like ReferNet comes in.

ReferNet allows service providers to link with each other to provide referrals and leads to new clients. In addition it allows people to search for new service providers that their contacts use. The site is interesting because it also provides CRM like applications for people like real estate agents. Giving agents an easy-to-use application that is beneficial to them is what will drive usage of this site.

A spin on the social networking concept, ReferNet is one of several companies attempting to change the game for consumer facing service provider businesses today. Next post we'll get to some of those. I promise.

Why blogs could be bad for business

Why blogs could be bad for business

Interesting piece that focuses on a company called Traction. As the article pointed out, it is hard to manage external blogs where it might be possible for employees to accidentaly leak trade secrects. However, many firms (including Spoke) are using controlled blogs as a form of PR for their firm.

I believe that companies such as Traction that are creating "Internal" blogs are much more interesting because they create another form of a network accelerator similar to Spoke. Employees would be able to post new ideas or collaborate in an on-line medium without having to have any specific knowledge of html or other formatting methods. Although I believe this cannot be a stand-alone product I would bet heavily that most product development organizations will be adopting some form of this tool in the near future. This technology may eventually replace Wikis as it is easier to use and has a simpler interface.

Visual Search Engine - Grokker

Lately I've been playing with a new search engine technology called Grokker. We've all had our problems with Google and every other search engine out there...and the next year or so will be an interesting time as new search engines start to come to market.

Why should you care? Everyone searches for some sort of information everyday. Whether trying to remember where you left your car keys or the name of your 2nd grade teacher...you are conducting mental searches for information all the time. In fact, your brain is one of the most amazing search engines there is. Searching on the web is a different story. People have been searching for the holy grail of search since the early days of the internet. The one service that was fast, reliable, and scalable. Now that the Internet has grown to tens of billions of static web pages and 10X more information retrievable through dyanmic searches (like the US Census website), finding a way to efficiently manage and find answers in this information maelstrom is becoming more and more important.

Google was supposed to be the holy grail. It quickly became the undisputed leader in search (using pure hits as the metric) after it launched in 1998. However the quality of Google's search results has started to significantly decrease over the course of the past year. Ever a darwinian process, spammers and internet marketers have been able develop ways around Google's algorithms and now many search results pull up useless or cluttered information.

Try searching for “Dell Computer” on Google. It has changed over the course of the past day, but you’ll notice that in the top 5 links at least 1-2 of them are way off. I got results that landed me on the webpage of a German firm. This indicates to me (and to many others in the search community) that Google is having some real problems stabilizing their service.

So what's next? This is the first in a series of posts examining new search engine companies like Grokker. Grokker has been around for almost a year, but its latest release (Grokker 2.0) is what has generated buzz.

On the Grokker site they claim that you will "never wade through unorganized lists of search results again. Grokker analyzes each of your results and groups them visually so that you can understand and manage information easily." The picture gives you a pretty good idea of what it looks like when you search.

Pros:
- Breaks searching down into visual topical categories
- Allows you to save searches (called saved maps)
- Also searches your computer for documents and files
- Filter searches by domain or source
- Navigation is done via the program and not by clicking on webpage links

Cons:
- Search time is 5-10X greater than any regular text-based search engine
- The categories are not specific enough and the information requires too much time to process
- Doesn’t have a toolbar and thus is not integrated into my regular web usage
- Requires start-up as a separate program (again not part of my regular usage)
- The interface if confusing and non-trivial

Grokker was built for the serious internet enthusiast, not your everyday web searcher. I use Google 50-100 times a day and there is absolutely no way I want to start-up Grokker every time I’m doing a search. Also, call me old-fashioned, but I’d much rather see 10 quick text links that I can quickly skim rather than a large map of circles and squares.

I think Grokker is an example of a great idea that won’t be able to turn into a great opportunity. Sure they will be able to get early adopters to try the service, but I wouldn’t bet on them converting more than 10% of these early adopters to paid subscribers. Since there is no advertising on Grokker their current business model will never work while free search engines still exist.

One possibility is that they use the algorithms they have developed (which do a great job of building topical categories instead of keyword categories) to build a text-based search engine with the traditional syndicated search and advertising revenue model.

You can download a free version of Grokker here.

My next post (coming soon!) will be on another visual search company called Kartoo.