mip's scan

I Wonder Who'll Be Around Longer

I'm almost embarrassed to be a Canadian and see this kind of article come out in a Canadian publication.  Macleans has published an article called The Internet Sucks and I must say that it seems like a desperate plea to get eyes balls and people talking about it, more than anything that is accurately describing the current state of the Internet.  I heard about this a while ago but refused to buy the magazine and get sucked into the hype that Macleans was trying to generate by running the article.  I finally read the article online, and now I can comment.

I'm not going to do a point by point rebuttal, but did want to point out a few things.  Firstly, I found their article on the Internet....does that mean that the article and their publication sucks?  If it does...it isn't because of the Internet. I mean, why post the article on the Internet if you think the web is useless?  Secondly, isn't this type of argumentative perspective one we've already seen....something like...ten years ago??  I remember these types of discussions back in 1996 when people equated the internet to CB radio, nothing more than a fad or an outlet for pornography hungry consumers.  It is sad to see that the author of the article can't see that in ten years time the Internet has become so much more than that.  Yes it has limitations and various shortcomings but it has truly revolutionized the way we work, interact with people, consume content and express ourselves. The internet remember isn't just web pages, it is blogging, instant messaging, emails, voice over IP (VoiP) telephone service, video streaming, discussion groups, mapping.  Does it all suck?  Yes, there are the dark elements of the web, like pornography, gambling, lies, theft and terrorism, but doesn't that exist outside the Internet as well?  You can find pornography in print and video as well...does that those mediums suck?  No...it means those elements of the medium might suck, but come on, the Internet is so much more than that.

I think that much of the article stems from a type of sour grapes syndrome as well.  For example, when talking about blogs and blogger we read

Google News, Craigslist and the world army of bloggers have devalued journalism just as surely as Napster poisoned the market for recorded music. According to the PEW Internet and American Life Project, there are now more than 12 million bloggers in the United States alone, and more than a third of them consider what they do a form of journalism, even though little or no reporting is involved. There are certainly some interesting and insightful blogs, on a wide range of topics. But, in general, the more substantive the subject matter, the less reliable the commentary is.

Hmmm...so now we've devalued journalism?  I'd say that Steve Maich, author of the article, is doing that all by himself.  Blogging hasn't devalued journalism anymore that Napster devalued music.  What it does is shift the power from the mega-corporations to the people and sets a fair market value for content. 

To me the article is very much like what you'd call a Comment Troll in the blogging world.  Someone who just wants to get noticed so they post an inflammatory comment on your blog.  That is what this article from Macleans is I think.  I'd be interested in knowing what Macleans readership growth has been like over the past ten years?  What about revenue based on advertising? Growing or shrinking? 

Finally, it'll be interesting to see who's around longer, the Internet or Macleans magazine.  My bet would be on the internet...what do you think?

Inquisitor for Safari

For all you Mac users (or soon to be Mac users ;-) ) here is a good little Safari web browser plug-in that is now free.  Inquisitor behaves a lot like Spotlight does in the Mac OS.  You begin typing in the word or words that you want to search on and it immediately spills down a menu of search result options that you can select.  You can of course ask to see all the search results as well.  I use Spotlight a lot and find it invaluable.  I've installed Inquisitor and it promises to be an often used tool in my bag of tricks for finding things on the web.  If you're a Safari user, click here, download and get searching.

midweek update - evening edition

Good evening everyone!  I hope you had a terrific Wednesday.  I know I did.  Busy, but good.  And now as things settle in the mip household, I've retreated to my small office/studio and sat down to collect some thoughts and chat with you about things in tech.  Listen to today's show and you'll hear me talk about:

• Apple's new MacBook Pro laptops
• Google's release of some new apps for the Blackberry (and other mobile devices)
• Google's customized web search tool
• my answer to a listener's question:  "What kinds of video podcasts do you subscribe too?"
• my final verdict on using NewsFire as my RSS reader

To listen to today's show, just click on the link below, or subscribe to us in your favorite RSS reader.  Of course, you can also subscribe to us in iTunes as well!
Ciao,
mip

Download midweek_update_oct25.mp3

Scrybe - The Future of Online Office Suites

You know me...I'm totally hooked on watching content on YouTube.  Found a real gem of a video that has me totally jazzed up on a product not yet released, but looks very (very!) promising.  Check out the video embedded below on a tool called Scrybe.  Thing I love about what I see:  1) it is online...this is going to give things like ZoHo and Google's office-like tools a real run for their money 2) the new approach to doing thing like the totally user-centric way the calendar behaves (you have to watch the video to really appreciate it
Enjoy!

Google Custom Search Engines

Google just recently released the ability/functionality to create a custom search engine.  The idea is that you can create a search engine for yourself (and others) that searches a single site or across many sites.  For example, let's say you were into news but only wanted to see news from certain sites.  You could create a custom search engine that only searches sites you've added to the list. 

To experiment with this tool and add value to you the faithful readers of mip's scan, I created a custom search engine for mip's scan.  You can see it here.   Now, if you've remember reading something here on mip's scan but can't seem to find it again, you can simply put the terms into the custom search engine and Google will present the results that match from this site only. 

For more details on this or to create your own custom search engine, just click here.

Tangerine - An Interesting Way to Create Playlists

I've been testing a great little application called Tangerine, which integrates with iTunes.  I have so much music on iTunes that I live and die by my playlists.  I create custom playlists like Kids Music for the Car, or Music For Writing.  I also create smart playlists like Andrea Bocelli that aggregates all his music across multiple albums. 

Tangerine adds a whole new dimension to creating playlists.  What exactly is it?  Well, from their blog we read

Tangerine lets you easily create playlists with upbeat music, or playlists for relaxing. It does that by analyzing the BPM and beat intensity of the songs in your iTunes library. As mentioned in the previous post, it analyzes the songs blazingly fast to the tune of more than 3 per second (on an 1.83 Ghz Core Duo iMac).

Ok, descriptions aside, here is a scenario that worked wonderfully for me.  We had some family over on the weekend and my wife asked me to put some quiet background music on.  Now I have a playlist for this that I've built over time (playlist name Dinner Music) but I hadn't updated it in a while.  So I fired up Tangerine and asked it to create a playlist  with a low range of BPM (that's beats per minute by the way) and a lower beat intensity.  Because I'd run Tangerine before it instantly created a playlist for me pulling from all my music only the tunes that matched my criteria.  I'd asked for the playlist to be 2 hours in length and it pulled 33 songs into the playlist for me.  And that was it.  We had nice, relaxing background music that was dynamically pulled together for me.  In a word.  Awesome! 

Tangerine is currently in beta but as far as I can tell, it is a solid little application.  You can download the current version here.

the midweek update returns!

Hello dear listeners!  Nice to be back after being away last week.  There is always so much to do when you come back from vacation!!  So it feels great to be back in front of the microphone this morning and recording this week's show.  Join me today to hear me talk about:

• a brief shout out to Santa Barbara and the folks at the Simpson House Inn who made my recent vacation out there absolutely perfect
• Google and YouTube, a good match or doomed to legal woes?
• a response to an email question I received with regard to video and audio editing on the PC (I talk about Windows Movie Maker and Roxio's EasyMedia Creator
• an interesting approach to creating a job search site as I talk about Jobloft
• my initial impressions of the MacPro I received last week

How's that for content after being away for a week?!? Ha!
I hope you enjoy today's show which you can download by clicking on the link below or subscribe to us in iTunes.

Download midweek_update_oct18.mp3

A Good Article on Google's Experimental Attitude

While setting out on vacation, I stopped in one of those airport convenience stores, you know the ones that have no idea how much products cost in the outside world and charge you $2.50 for a bag of chips...ha ha....ok...I digress....so I stopped in to buy a magazine to read on the plan and picked up an issue of Fortune.  There was a good article call Chaos By Design and it provides an interesting look into the petri dish environment that exists within Google.  I liked it because it addresses the whole idea of innovation which I've written about several times before.  What struck me from the article was that theme of trying things out, experiencing many failures to hit on that one success.  Google is always balancing the corporate needs (i.e., make money for themselves and shareholders) and the needs of innovating which in turn, if done well, feeds the corporate need to make money.  What is also clear is that this type of environment needs to be fostered from the top down - management and leaders within a company must make this the corporate culture in order for it to be successful.  The article was a good read and I'd strongly recommend it if you are interested in this type of leadership style.

Some Thoughts on YouTube

Ok...I'm finally back.  Was away, as you know, on vacation last week and this week had been a short one due to the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday.  Needless to say, I've been swamped and haven't even had time to read, let alone write.

But now this fine Saturday morning I'm sitting back with some coffee and catching up on reading.  I'd read the news that Google bought YouTube and have had the week to think about it.  As you know, I've been experimenting with the YouTube service, amongst others, through my other site mip teevee and I have always really liked the YouTube experience as a means to publish content. I also really like YouTube as a source for accessing and consuming content.  There is a lot of great content there. 

So how did I feel about the Google news?  I had mixed feelings.  On the one hand it made me worry that the overall user experience might change.  The community aspect of it.  You can see people already on the site commenting their "good-byes".  This feeling I had though, was a small one, and a brief one.  The other side of me was thrilled for a few reasons.  Firstly, it gives YouTube a lifeline.  There is only so long that a service can run for free.  They needed some cash behind this stellar offering.  Google has that.  Secondly, as the continued popularity of YouTube grew and grew, there were infrastructure cracks starting to appear.  Slow downs in performance, site unavailability, videos embedded in other sites taking a long time to load occasionally. Video is a bandwidth intense thing - it needs sound, robust, redundant infrastructure.  Google has this in spades.  Thirdly, Google is an innovator and that makes me feel good about YouTube as well, because as one of the two YouTube founders said (see video at the end of this post) "Two kings have gotten together...the king of video and the king of search."  Reflect on this a minute and you'll see that Google can turn YouTube into an even stronger player.  YouTube dominates but with deep pocket competitors like Microsoft trying to muscle in with offerings like Soapbox it is important for YouTube to keep outpacing the competition. I think the Google YouTube deal will allow the offering to do that. 

My other concern was a legal one.  There is content on YouTube that is copyright.  As of late YouTube had been closing deals with content providers and that is good.  I thought initially that as soon as Google bought YouTube, that the lawsuits would startup right away because Google has money.  Seems I was wrong in this initial thinking and it looks like the content providers, like Warner for example, figure, they can either get their money through partnerships or lawsuits...and partnerships might be the better way to go.

Anyway, my congrats to YouTube.  I look forward to seeing what the future holds.  Check out the video in the continued part of this post - it is the founders of YouTube posting a video just after the acquisition.

Happy 10th Anniversary

I've been away this week.  Why?
My wife and I are taking a vacation to celebrate 10 years of marriage.
So this post is dedicated to her on this special day.
Happy 10th!