LIVEdigitally

Monthly Archives: June 2009

How the Web Picks my Movies for me

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Back in the day…

  • It was all Siskel & Ebert or the guy with the crazy hair + mustache
  • The papers told you how long a movie’s been in the theaters
  • You had more than a week to decide if you were going to see a movie or not before it disappeared to DVD
  • If you missed it in the theaters, it was virtually impossible to know when you’d get to see it at home on tape

Today, we have amazing collaborative filtering systems (if you like Blah, then you’ll probably like Blah Blah), we know the exact gross a movie has made (even the ones that made, on average, $237 per screen), and every other little detailed stat imaginable.  And with the exception of reporting the revenue/gross of a movie, I think we’re mostly for the better.  These days, it only takes a little bit of trust “in the system” to weed out the good movies from the dreck. And as a father of two with virtually no movie-going times, choosing wisely is key for me.

Example one: picking a movie in the theaters.

rt-terminator

I don’t even really think about the $10 (or more) to go see a movie as much the 2 hours of my life I’m about to commit to something.  So when a movie’s in the theaters, I check just one site – rottentomatoes (RT).  On RT I see an instant score, which is the aggregate of all reviewers.  Anything under 50% and I assume it’s not theater-worthy.  The truth is, I don’t put much stock into any given reviewer’s thoughts, but the power of RT is reminiscent of fivethirtyeight.com’s ability to pull together order out of chaos.  BUT, that doesn’t mean I’ll never see the movie…

Example two: watching something On Demand (or just DVRing something)

imdb-terminator

After a movie’s made the rounds, I tend to put a bit more stock into the community/viewership as opposed to reviewers.  Movies like Caddyshack, Shawshank Redemption, and others that I’ve liked did terribly with the critics, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth seeing.  This is where the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) comes into play for me.  Anything above 7 is definitely watchable, below 6 is not, and in between is a judgment call.  But I never, ever DVR something without checking IMDB first…

Example three: adding to the Netflix queue

netflix-queueVirtually everything in my Netflix queue came through the internal Netflix recommendations system.  It’s just plain awesome. I barely even look at the 5-star score, I have gotten so trusting of it.  Granted, I don’t take every recommendation, but I can browse the “Movies You’ll 8>” and just add and add away.

And there you have it.  Movie picks, courtesy of the Internet, no thought required.

Am I too old a dog to learn a new trick?

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My music collection appears frozen in time somewhere in the mid-90s.

Despite knowing a boatload about them, I rarely buy new gadgets, almost never replacement gadgets (which is fitting in quite nicely to my shift in living a more sustainable lifestyle).

I use Office XP/NeoOffice (OXP is much, much better, but I don’t quite feel like booting up parallels all the time). The ribbon sucks.

I write long blog posts…

I was talking with Robert Scoble this weekend about blogging, FriendFeed, Twitter, online communities, and, of course, potty training.  On the call I mentioned one of my greatest stumbling blocks to writing a blog post is that as I research a given topic, I tend to find others have said the same thing I was planning to say (put enough monkeys in front of a keyboard…), and as a result don’t feel I’m adding more value, and tend to drop the post.  As constant readers have noticed, this has caused a drop-off in my blogging.

The problem for me is I really like the 5-7 paragraph “long post” format.  2-3 paragraphs aren’t enough for me to set things up the way I like, and I try to generally make some kind of point when I blog.  I’m actually fairly proud of some of the posts I’ve written over the years.  But these days I find it hard to muster the energy to get a “quality” post together.

I’ve experimented with some “roundup” posts – to good feedback, thanks!  So I’m going to try some more “quick blast” short form posts. 1-2 paragraphs on a given topic I encounter.  Don’t worry, I’m not planning to lifestream, just give more content with quick thoughts, opinions, and commentary on more things.

I’ll still keep the yawners flowing from time to time, but hopefully this will kick my butt into being a bit more regular with the ol LD.

Okay Facebook, it's time to do the right thing…

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You remember that feeling when you’ve done something kinda wrong, and you kinda get caught doing it, and everyone yells at you for doing it, and instead of just shrugging your shoulders, admitting you goofed, and moving on, you back yourself into a corner and fight tooth and nail for it?  As far as I can tell, this is Facebook’s situation with not removing Holocaust Denial groups.  Before I dive in, I want to thank Michael Arrington for keeping this topic alive and his ardent support of the issue.

Here are the key issues as I see them:

First, regarding Holocaust Denial.  Here’s the results of the Google search for “is holocaust denial the same as anti semitism?” The answer is a resounding YES.  Fundamentally, while there are many anti-Semites who do not deny the Holocaust, there are no Holocaust Deniers who are not anti-Semites.

Second, regarding Censorship/Freedom of Speech.  Freedom of speech is a government issue, not a private company issue.  Private companies may censor away, and they may do so legally.  Facebook can choose to do whatever they want.  Further, even free speech advocate Alan Dershowitz agrees.

Third, regarding precedent. Facebook doesn’t allow the Ku Klux Klan to have a group.  Breastfeeding women pictures are banned.  In other words, Facebook can identify hate groups and content they don’t like and has already taken it down.  This is a crucial issue to me.  Had Facebook never taken any proactive content cleansing actions in the past, I think they could sit safely on the sidelines.  Instead, they are basically taking the position that the KKK is bad, but a Holocaust Denial group is not.

Fourth, regarding actions. I’ve seen numerous commentators (on TC) ask the equivalent of “are we supposed to monitor every conversation for anti-Semitic content and delete those too? Nope. This isn’t about one-to-one discussions, nor even private groups.  This is about public groups, which rapidly turn into breeding grounds for hate crimes (which is why FB turned off the KKK’s groups).

Fifth, regarding public vs private discourse. Another issue I’ve noticed is the claim to the effect of “why bother taking down the group, this kind of hate happens anyway, and it’s better to be out in the public.”  The argument here, of course, implies that if we can see the discussions these people are having, we can keep an eye on them for potential actions they might take.  This is one of the silliest positions I can imagine taking, as if those who are about to commit hate crimes are just so unbelievably stupid they would do so in public. Utter rubbish.

I’ve been trying to rack my brain as to why Facebook would continue to maintain their position on this one.  It certainly seems odd to me that the decision-makers here really believe leaving the groups up is the right thing to do.  As I’ve looked back on other actions FB’s taken in the past, I’ve noticed one trend that seems to make the most sense in this craziness: FB doesn’t like being told what to do by anyone.  They do a (crappy) site redesign, get told by the media and users alike, and stand proud.  They take down pictures of nursing moms, get vilified by the press and women’s groups, and stand proud.  And here we are again, doing a wrong, getting caught, getting called out on it, and again, standing proud.

On one more tangent here: personally I don’t get how anyone can be proud that they are standing up for some of the worst people on Earth.  I wish they wouldn’t.  There’s enough places for hateful people to rally together and commit atrocities.  Facebook could decide they stand for the right thing, not the wrong.

I think they either need to do the right thing and take down these groups, or stop taking down the KKK groups and nursing moms pictures.  As was eloquently said, you can’t get a woman half-pregnant.

Thoughts on… Dell Buying Palm, Facebook Vanity URLs, Building43, Project Natal, Content Consumption

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Kinda enjoying the “wrapup” post concept.  I feel less pressure to blog, and take a bit more time to collect my thoughts (instead of jumping on board any given meme as it happens).  Would definitely like to know from my reader(s?) if this is harder content to consume than more frequent, shorter posts.

Dell Buying Palm

This rumor’s been floating for a while. At the Building43/TechCrunch party I was told it was a certainty, though the NY Times thinks it’ll never happen.  At this stage in the mobile game, I think Palm does need an acquisition if it wants to survive as a big player, either that or needs a drastic overhaul/downsizing until they think like a startup again (which really is the position they are in). Dell’s a decent suitor, though I’d doubt they’d really escalate the brand to the level it needs.  I’d rather see a merger with Motorola’s mobile group, as they have the true infrastructure needed to compete at the high stakes table, and could really use an injection of creativity and new technology (no more RAZRs guys).

Facebook URLs

This whole week Facebook did a replay of Oklahama in the late 1800s (including allowing “key journalists” in sooner than us lame users). The stats last night were impressive, though I’m still sitting here scratching my head on the whole thing a little.  I’m assuming FB plans to do some serious SEO work, enabling those who grabbed useful terms like “carpenter” (no, I don’t know that guy) to generate a little business out of them. That said, some useful terms like “sanfranciscosushi” are still up for grabs, so enterprising folks should put their creative hats on and get going.  I didn’t take my name yet (having a unique name makes that kinda easy) because I just don’t get the value to me personally.  Googling Jeremy Toeman always gets me, as does the first page or two for just Toeman.  Not to say I didn’t try a few names to see how they’d feel…

gefiltefish

nah… not quite right.

Building43

My friend Robert Scoble started working at Rackspace (the place where we host Legacy Locker, btw) a few months back, and he’s been dropping hints about this “Building43” thing for a while now.  This week he formally unveiled it during the TechCrunch 4th birthday party down in Palo Alto.  First and foremost, thanks Robert and Mike for some amazingly good BBQ food – oh, and your contributions to the tech industry blah blah blah ;). So Building43 is designed as a resource for entrepreneurs and big companies alike to participate and gain feedback and insight from the tech community at large.  It’s an ambitious goal, and I wish them a lot of luck.  My biggest advice to them is to really focus on the user experience, as right now I found the site a little confusing to navigate (despite my personal familiarity with all the technologies they are using, like FriendFeed).  If it’s tough for me to find things, I can’t imagine what it’s like for those new to it.

Project Natal

Microsoft introduced “Project Natal” at E3, and there’s a rumor circulating that instead of thinking of it as a new component to the Xbox 360, it might be its own console. I love the idea of using motion capture as a video game controller (or remote control or any other kind of interface), but I think that’s where my love ends. As an idea.  Here’s the issue – it’s not good enough if it’s 99% accurate. Why?  Because the 1 time in 100 that you shoot instead of duck, or block instead of jump, or whatever mistake it makes is going the about the last time you play seriously.  Fundamental to every good user interface is absolutely perfectly reliable controls, with proper feedback mechanisms to the user.  With a motion controller, the moment the game doesn’t do what you wanted it to do, it’s all over.  Trust is lost, and the “magic moment” is replaced by dislike, then eventually anger. I saw a tweet that I think encapsulated the issue perfectly: “Project Natal is headed to the uncanny valley.”

Content Consumption

I recently realized I don’t read any blogs anymore.  I do a lot of searching.  I follow some folks on Twitter and/or FriendFeed.  But I almost never just go to sites like Engadget or TechCrunch nor friends of mine like Dave Zatz or Michael Gartenberg and just read.  And based on looking at the analytics for many of my clients’ web sites, I’m thinking I’m very much not alone.  There’s too much content, and just not enough ways to organize it.  If I were an enterprising lad, I’d be spending a lot of time figuring out how to help people deal with content overload in a very useful manner.  The right tool needs to combine all the potential sources a user wants, and give lots of ways to customize and filter it.  Google Reader isn’t enough, nor is FriendFeed, nor is Facebook.  I’ve got a hunch there’s a lot of opportunity for an excellent “get signal out of my noise” service, and it’s probably something people would pay for.

Have a great weekend everyone, I’m heading back to toil in the garden where I can be really productive.

How I'd Build a Search Engine

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Over the past year, we’ve seen no fewer than three major attempts to compete with Google come to market, with mixed results.  Cuil’s disastrous launch last Summer all but killed their chances of success.  Wolfram is in murky waters trying to remain distinctly not a search engine. And Microsoft is presently trying to buy their way onto the scene with Bing. I think there’s little-to-no debate that we should not let our entire worldview and information dissemination be in the hands of a single company (a recent study showed over 70% US market share – that’s just plain dangerous).

But how does one out-Google Google?  I’ll start with the “don’t”s, the things that should be avoided.

  • Bigger ain’t better. Nobody, and I mean nobody, cares that your search index is 17.37835% deeper than Google’s.  Search is at worst a semi-solved problem, which means the average person looking for something online probably perceives Google will have it.
  • Don’t confuse simple with simplistic. If you didn’t know, Google’s design is as simplistic as it is because they didn’t really know HTML when they started!  For some reason, this has caused legions of lookalikes, despite plenty of better examples of usability design.
  • Overhype can be bad. It’s a tricky challenge, but to even play in this space it is essential to set, then meet or exceed expectations.  Wolfram is doing this fairly well, Cuil did it badly.
  • Don’t enable spam. If there’s one evil Google is blatantly doing, it’s enabling spam.  Spam blogs. Spam news sites. Spam landing pages. The sheer ability to create and profit from a hosted domain with nothing but uselessness is a horror Google has unleashed upon us, and is unfortunately financially motivated to continue to enable.  I believe this is the weakest chink in Google’s armor, and there’s at least some opportunity to someone promising “spam-free search results.”  Be the ball.

Now for the “what would I do” part…

  • Launch with a great vanity search. When I read peoples’ experiences with Cuil or Bing, they invariably mention the egosearch they did.  It’s a fairly safe bet that most people will search for their own names within their first few searches, and this experience should rock.  When I google myself, I find my blog, my linkedin profile, my Flickr page, and other things I’d expect to see.  The first day I Cuil’ed myself, I saw nothing, due to a technical error.  A very very costly technical error.  When I Bing myself, I see much of the “correct” results, but 2 entries for FriendFeed, 1 for Ether, and some other seeming obscurities – and I don’t want obscure first.  I genuinely believe a good vanity search experience is a make/break issue for a new search player.notjeremybing
  • Do more than search. Part of what makes Google such a great product is the way it encompasses everything from a calculator to a flight tracker to movie listings and more.  These extra features make it stickier, and make me as a user less likely to leave.  So you have to play a similar game and offer services well beyond search.  Personally, I’d do this through some form of open API that enables third parties to do the work, thus reducing your need to innovate across the board and build a richer community around your product.
  • Enable opt-out of purchasing (and more). Ever try searching for a product to find information, yet find nothing but sales links?  Not only the Google product listings, but the first few pages tend to get dominated by companies who have mastered SEO to the point where they own virtually any search for a product.  How about enabling the user to disable showing anything related to sales, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they just might want to do something other than a transaction?  Now let’s take this further, and create a rich search experience that truly lets the searcher weed out the wrong kinds of results for the search they are conducting.
  • Understand context. Sure, Google’s great at surface-level context filtering. If you type in a stock ticker symbol, you get finance information. Search for a movie, you’ll see local playing times.  But that’s about the end of the depth.  Integrate services like Yahoo! Answers, Wikipedia, Wolfram, and more, and enable much deeper context about search.  The biggest challenge people have with finding information is sifting through the data, so the more they are provided with usable results, the more they’ll like, trust, and rely on your service.
  • Deeply engage with the community. As far as I’ve seen, the forces behind other search engines have built their products, then invited people to come use them, and sometimes provide some feedback.  I’d take a different approach and get the outside world involved in my product at an early stage, and keep it up well after the launch.  Don’t confuse community engagement with a lack of product vision/direction, but take feedback from developers, advertisers, content creators, and other key sectors to help make sure you are building the right services all along the way.  It’s important that any potential stakeholder (i.e. those whose efforts can directly contribute to the product’s success) have a mechanism for involvement.
  • Cross-program. I talk about this concept a lot, but you don’t counter CSI with another crime drama, you counter with a comedy or a medical romance or a quirky soap opera.  Rather than be a different Google, be a different search concept.  Go entirely visual.  Go radically deep into data.  Find information and surface in early results.  Use more smarts.  Provide more customization.  Etc.
  • Oh, and build a good spidering and indexing system, blah blah blah.  It’s probably important too.

So there are the first few steps to get going, mystery super-stealth search company 3.0.  Please get the ball rolling, we need you soon.  No offense to Google or anything, I just feel the world should not be so utterly dependent on a single company for any one thing.  Just pretend it’s a semi-decent Bond flick (100% Lazenby-free), and the bad guy (let’s give him a scar, but no weird accent) really controls the links to all the information we consume.  Okay, that metaphor starts falling apart right about now, but I trust you to see it through to it’s natural end.

Five Random Thoughts: Beatles Rock Band, Social Gaming, beeTV, CrunchPad, Palm Pre

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I’ve been told I’m a ‘long format blogger’ – most of my posts are fairly long (typically overly so). As a result my posts tend to take a while to write, which means I need to block out (too much) time to get them up.  And I seem to have less and less free time all the time these days, plus by the time I’m writing something, it seems like a thousand others have already written something related to what I’d write.  While I know I shouldn’t feel biased by others’ writings, at the end of the day I feel that if I’m not saying something original, what’s the point?

So in an effort to get some thoughts across, I’m going to try to do the occasional “roundup” post on a few topics all at once.  This is the first of said posts.

  1. Rock Band, Beatles Edition
    I’m not sure which game I’m more excited about, this or Modern Warfare 2.  I love The Beatles music, and I love Rock Band, so that’s a huge win. Plus I like the idea of a non-hard core version of Rock Band.  If you haven’t seen the preview, check it out here:

  2. Social Gaming
    The new enhancements to the Xbox Dashboard include integration with Facebook and Twitter.  I have a feeling most of the features will be overkill and rarely used by the majority of Xbox owners, but there is a clear improvement needed to integrating social networking and gaming.  The key missing element in my opinion is an easier way to find your friends within the Xbox Live experience.  Hopefully direct integration with the services I use for networking will help me find and connect with people in my gaming world.
  3. beeTV
    A startup raised another $8 million to provide recommendations for watching TV shows.  This is now 10 consecutive years of me watching companies try to enter this space and fail.  Further, these guys are doing deals with cable and set-top companies, two segments notoriously perilous for relying on for a business to succeed.  Who knows, maybe these guys will find that magic touch, but my hunch is (a) there isn’t a real problem in this space, and (b) making a sustainable income stream will be extremely challenging.
  4. Crunchpad
    I applaud the crunch team for their efforts on building the Crunchpad.  But I have concerns over the device itself.  First, the market – I don’t see a web tablet (at any price) effectively replacing a laptop for simple surfing, it doesn’t make sense.  Second, the usage – it’s either going to be tiring to hold it up, or it goes into the lap, which again, brings the laptop back into the scene.  Ultimately I see it as a “bread machine” type of gadget (purchased, used for a little while, then slowly migrating out of daily life until it gets regifted). I’ll be curious to see what comes of it.
  5. Palm Pre
    Reviews are saying it’s solid. Sprint’s said they anticpate a shortage. I believe both statements are accurate.  But I also believe it will never supplant the iPhone or BlackBerry, and I also believe the initial orders placed by Sprint are in low volumes relative to those products.  I think the product is probably going to be pretty solid, but I think it’s too-little, too-late for Palm.  I know back in the day I didn’t think people would switch to AT&T for the iPhone (I was wrong), but I can’t imagine iPhone people switching to Sprint for the Pre.  Maybe I’ll be wrong again…

Well, that’s my first attempt at a “ripped from the headlines” kind of post.  Feedback, comments, and spirited debate are very welcome.