Disqus - Latest Comments for Vanessa Williams

Re: Is Sphere winning at blog search?

Vanessa Williams — Fri, 26 May 2006 11:46:13 -0000

Before I read this, I hadn't even heard of Sphere, but I've now started trying it out. One thing I'll note is that with blogs, search isn't everything. Though Technorati occasionally annoys me with poor performance, it's some of the other tools associated with the search functionality that are truly interesting.

Take for example the Buzz graph on Mathew's site for Myspace mentions. I have previously used this feature to try to get some idea of the relative traction of different technologies in the same space. For example: Sxip, LID, and OpenID in the identity 2.0 space. It turns out that LID has an order of magnitude more buzz going on about it, which means that if I have to choose only one to implement, it's probably going to be LID.

The bottom line is that I've never really thought of Technorati as a blog search tool. Also, I believe it's misguided to see blog search as a useless niche. What's relevant is that the blogosphere has structure and that structure can be mined to discover something about what's really going on in the public consciousness. Truly, Google has let a fabulous opportunity pass them by, perhaps because they prefer to keep the raw data about structure to themselves. For opening it up to the rest of us (at least in the blogging realm), Technorati still deserves some credit. If Sphere intends to be a Technorati-killer, let's hope they jump on the structure-mining bandwagon as well.

Re: Seth Godin likes the megaphone better

Vanessa Williams — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:40:25 -0000

It's always saddened me that Tim Bray is another one who doesn't allow comments on his blog (tbray.org/ongoing). I think at one point he claimed it was because he didn't have the courage, but if you're going to have one of the most popular blogs on the planet maybe you should just pluck it up, eh?

Re: Google-plex moves toward world domination

Vanessa Williams — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 12:01:46 -0000

According to Jonathan Schwartz (Sun's new CEO):

"talk to some web 2.0 startups, you'll hear many say their second biggest operating expense, after salaries, is electricity"

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan?entry...

Something has got to give, and Google's dreams of storing all the information in the world on their own servers is unrealistic (not to mention "gevil").

Re: Yahoo buys yournamehere.com

Vanessa Williams — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 10:58:03 -0000

Hey Mathew, I gotta say: I love MyBlogLog as a stats tracker for my blog, but... when they introduced the "community" thing, they TOTALLY lost me. I mean, I just don't get it. I have no idea what it's about. It seemed to me like a last ditch desperate attempt to cash in on the "social networking" thing that just didn't make any sense. Obviously, I'm just missing something here, but I wish someone would clue me in! How do other users of MyBlogLog in any way constitute a meaningful "community"?

Re: Hurray, it’s the “five things” meme!

Vanessa Williams — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 07:19:53 -0000

LOL. You're welcome Mathew. I figured I should share the suffering :) Doesn't this remind you of a chain-letter, Web 2.0-style?

Re: Hurray, it’s the “five things” meme!

Vanessa Williams — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 09:11:32 -0000

P.S. I would *love* to hear you sing "Alice's Restaurant" again. You didn't know me 20+ years ago, but I was a fan :)

Re: Yahoo buys MyBlogLog — but why?

Vanessa Williams — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 20:40:00 -0000

Ummm... put advertising on it? If Yahoo!'s business model is anything like Google's, they make far more money from ads placed on their own properties than on other people's properties. So if MyBlogLog gets lots of eyeballs, nothing more is required for Yahoo! to realize instant revenue. I keep MyBlogLog open all day long, refreshing as often as I remember to. Stickiness = $$$. Makes absolutely perfect sense to me!

Not to mention that by knowing which Bloggers are associated with each other in some way (most likely some shared interest), they acquire better ad targetting information through segmentation by "communities of interest." (Though who knows if they have the will to do that—it would require actual effort.)

Sorry if that's a downer viewpoint, but you gotta know it's ALL about advertising, baby. Media companies aren't in the business of innovation, as I've mentioned elsewhere ;-)

Re: Who, us? An Office suite? Never.

Vanessa Williams — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:38:50 -0000

I think Mary Jo Foley is dead-on about businesses not wanting to store data in the cloud. It's a fact. And while Paul K. may be right about SMB's preferring this over paying the full cost of MS Office, there are other ways to do this (OpenOffice, for example), which are a) free, and b) don't force you to turn over your business communications to a third-party.

There is surely room for all these sorts of solutions, and new types we haven't seen (much of) yet, besides.

It's tempting to search for a single, elegant, unified theory of network-centric applications, but unifiying the desktop and the web may turn out to be like unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics: a real brain-bender.

Re: Not being evil remains a challenge

Vanessa Williams — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:57:10 -0000

I also found it a little surprising that Google was singled out as "the worst." Surely the others are no angels, either. More interesting in general is the recognition of the rising risks of using SaaS in inappropriate ways.

It's not that free (read: ad-supported) SaaS is universally bad, only that one should be mindful of what content one releases to which services and under what terms. Some things maybe do belong on an encrypted thumb-drive on your keychain and nowhere else (health records?) Or on your laptop's hard drive (that brilliant business plan you've been working on for months.) Landscape photos you took on your trip to the Grand Canyon? Flickr/Yahoo! can have 'em, right?

Re: News flash: I agree with Seth Finkelstein

Vanessa Williams — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:41:30 -0000

The big deal is, IMHO, that they're modifying content. A kind of man-in-the-middle attack on your communications with a website. It's just wrong. And it's a slippery slope towards just denying you access altogether (after all, you should be using Yahoo! for a search engine if you're a Rogers customer, right?) Or inserting content of their own wherever and whenever they please. Whether it's ugly or not is irrelevant. Nothing good can come of this (other than it being a goad to making this kind of thing completely illegal.)

Re: Seesmic: Still don’t really get it

Vanessa Williams — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:56:34 -0000

I have to agree with you, Mathew--although I'm one of those weird old farts who reads *books* voraciously, so I'm biased towards print as you are. But the fact is that videoblogging has zero appeal to me. I have a camera built in to my laptop and was annoyed to discover I had to explicitly tell all my chat apps *not* to broadcast my image! I mean, my God! I haven't even had my coffee yet! And I have bed head! Bottom line: I prefer to be read and not seen.

But despite the fact that some of us are shy or self-conscious or have self-image issues, I think your point about asynchrony is key. If I'm already chatting with you on IM, I might turn on my camera and make it a video chat. But the critical mass of connections that the Internet enables between people is predicated on asynchronous communication: email, blogging, comments, shared media, etc. Synchronous video comm is a sideshow to all that.

But if someone can make some dough out of it, more power to 'em....

Re: Google Engine: Competitor or knock-off?

Vanessa Williams — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:36:24 -0000

Amazon is very far ahead, it'll take some effort to catch up and Python-only will slow their momentum down. So will the fully-integrated thing: all or nothing. Though it doesn't sound like a big deal I think this is a major differentiator between Amazon and Google's offerings. I still say Amazon gets it more than Google does. Independent services that can be composed is the right way to go. Google's just playing the lock-in game. (Or else their architecture isn't as good.)

Re: Google Engine: Competitor or knock-off?

Vanessa Williams — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:58:55 -0000

One is playing the services game, the other is playing the application environment game. In other words, one is playing SOA and the other web hosting. In the enterprise, Amazon will rule over Google. In the Web 2.0 space... it will largely depend upon four things 1) marketing, 2) price, 3) reliability, 4) stage of growth of app--I believe at a certain size any app will outgrow a closed sandbox.

On the other hand, if enough vocal Python developers get on board and like it, the buzz for GAE may become deafening.

Re: Google Engine: Competitor or knock-off?

Vanessa Williams — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:19:43 -0000

Sorry for replying to myself, but there ain't no trackbacks and I thought this summary might interest: http://www.fridgebuzz.com/2008/04/08/amazon-vs-...

Re: Oh Canada — not too bad, eh?

Vanessa Williams — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:40:35 -0000

It doesn't get any better than this!

Happy Canada Day :)

Re: Wrong — Steve’s health is my business

Vanessa Williams — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:20:42 -0000

I love Apple, but it has a single point of failure: Steve Jobs. The company is just one more big stupid computer company without the man. When he goes (he's not going to live forever), our beloved Apple goes with him. That's the sad and sorry truth. (And a reason I'm glad I'm not holding AAPL stock.)

Re: Delicious 2.0: Who bookmarks any more?

Vanessa Williams — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:09:20 -0000

I often do have trouble finding things that I previously came across. It's not always as easy for me as just searching for it again. I'm a research-hound, which is part of it. However, I use del.icio.us much less now. Instead I use DevonTHINK Pro and save and file both bookmarks, web archives, PDFs, images, documents, etc. I really do find I need a permanent database of important sources. I can't afford to waste time searching for what I need anymore!

Re: Social Media Break: 5 Cute Animal Sites to Make You Go Aww

Vanessa Williams — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:12:22 -0000

Don't forget "I can has cheezburger" (http://icanhascheezburger.com/). Cute and hilarious. Has a daily twitter post, too.

Re: How to run Groovy unit tests in Netbeans

Vanessa Williams — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:12:48 -0000

Thank you for this. You saved me a great deal of time. Cheers.