Posted on July 20, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
$165 million is tossed into an incinerator…
There are a few problems with this:
* spreading $165 amongst a handful of companies means there will be a complete disconnect in their r&d
* by having so many different parties involved, there will likely be competing interests, making organization of their efforts cumbersome and costly
* the motivation seems entirely misplaced: “for research on Internet search-engine technologies that could someday challenge U.S. search giant Google Inc.” I have two problems with this. First, if there was a particular search problem they were trying to address, I would understand this project. Second, yes, Google was started in the US, but I tend to feel that Google’s values are quite different than many other US companies I’ve worked for — and if you look at the makeup of Google employees, a good percentage aren’t even from the US…
Posted on July 19, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
After a number of news outlets wrote about the availability of Harry Potter online, Scholastic decided to send cease-and-desist letters to many of them claiming copyright infringement, even if the website wasn’t actually distributing the book. Many people think this is ridiculous, and a typical example of lawyers over-extending their interpretation of copyright law. In reality however, people squinting to read the words on jpg photos of the book pages are the same people who will be first in line to buy the printed book, so this clearly won’t have a negative effect on sales. Instead, by making a big deal of the fact people are supposedly reading and illegally distributing the book online, Harry Potter just gets more PR about the incredible demand for this final book of the iconic series and will probably go on to sell even more copies.
Posted on July 11, 2007 @ 5:13 pm
Posted on July 3, 2007 @ 4:53 pm
Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for Maui and in advance of the trip I decide to search online to find the best beach on the island (aside from Ka’anapali beach, where we’re staying).
Considering that we’re going to Hawaii, I decided to try Mahalo.com, and found the results to be quite useful. For example, I searched for Maui beaches and the last link in that section is a great resource that describes all the beaches on Maui:
Maui Beaches
Part of the usefulness of Mahalo is it’s display of related content on a single page. While I was initially only looking for Maui beaches, I scanned the rest of the page and found myself interested in restaurant and nightlife reviews. I find this page design similar to the layout of the aggregated reference material on Answers.com I go to Answers.com for a definition of a term, but then find myself reading an encyclopedia and thesaurus entry for it as well. I had a similar experience on Mahalo.
Out of curiosity, I compared this to a search on Google for best maui beaches“”: and Google ranks that page on hawaiiweb.com first. I wonder why Mahalo lists specific beaches above a page that describes them all? I suppose this is one of the differences that you get from hand-selected results… Not bad, just different.