Doug Bowman, Frustrated Graphics Designer, quits Google

bobby said:

Mar. 21, 11:14 AM

Microsoft's Live Search has a similar culture, arguing over petty things and wasting valuable time

joe user said:

Mar. 21, 12:32 PM

It's an easy trap for engineering-driven company of any size to fall into: the inability to trust someone on something subjective like design because if it isn't quantifiable then everyone has an equal say in the matter. That is, designers as people and as experts do not receive the same respect as an engineer in such a culture. 

Fortunately, as Mr Bowman will (re)discover, alternatives exist where design has an equal place at the table with business/product management and engineering.

DJ Chang (URL) said:

Mar. 21, 12:40 PM

Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are all led by tech leaders, down to project groups. Yahoo's most recent round of downsizing eliminated 50% of the Semel business/marketing leaders in favor of tech leaders with business and marketing acumen. AOL is dying - over-influenced by the Time Warner culture. Myspace is a jumble of techonology chaos after the Fox purchase. Newspapers are drowning in losses and debt. 

What's the message? 

It's pretty clear. 

Design serves tech. 

Tech leads. 

NYC publishers should note that the center of media is shifting to Silicon Valley. Broadcast media may be next. Sorry to be so blunt about this obvious trend.

Why I Quit Google (GOOG)

Nicholas Carlson|Mar. 21, 2009, 9:41 AM Google's top designer Doug Bowman quit the company to join Twitter. Mostly, Doug didn't like how much Google depends on data to make design decisions. He's written a blog post to explain more fully. Here are the crucial bits:

When I joined Google as its first visual designer, the company was already seven years old. Seven years is a long time to run a company without a classically trained designer. Google had plenty of designers on staff then, but most of them had backgrounds in CS or HCI. And none of them were in high-up, respected leadership positions. Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. With every new design decision, critics cry foul. Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. “Is this the right move?” When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

I can’t fault Google for this reliance on data. And I can’t exactly point to financial failure or a shrinking number of users to prove it has done anything wrong. Billions of shareholder dollars are at stake. The company has millions of users around the world to please. That’s no easy task. Google has momentum, and its leadership found a path that works very well. When I joined, I thought there was potential to help the company change course in its design direction. But I learned that Google had set its course long before I arrived. Google was a massive aircraft carrier, and I was just a small dinghy trying to push it a few degrees North.

I’m thankful for the opportunity I had to work at Google. I learned more than I thought I would. I’ll miss the free food. I’ll miss the occasional massage. I’ll miss the authors, politicians, and celebrities that come to speak or perform. I’ll miss early chances to play with cool toys before they’re released to the public. Most of all, I’ll miss working with the incredibly smart and talented people I got to know there. But I won’t miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.

Photo: Fawny

Software Platforms Portal Launched

Collected photos, videos, and chats for the top 200 software platforms. Latest add is the NYTimes Times Open platform. Visit http://sw.tearn.com/

CLIP Twitter Moving To Make Real-Time Search More Central

Twitter is starting to test ways to put its real-time search front and center. It is just bucket-testing the change right now with a few randomly selected users, so you might not see it. But you should expect it to be rolled out to everybody eventually. The search and trend features, which currently exist on a separate page, are being placed on the home page of the test accounts.

Twitter’s search technology comes from its acquisition of Summize, so its integration into Twitter is taking time. But it is a major plank of Twitter’s business strategy. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone writes:

Searching over Twitter messages is like a filter for what is happening right now—it’s an interesting look into the real-time thoughts of people and organizations around the world.

It is more than interesting. Real-time search is a potential game-changer. I tried to explain this in a post on Sunday, “Mining the Thought Stream”. Here is the gist of that post:

What if you could peer into the thoughts of millions of people as they were thinking those thoughts or shortly thereafter? And what if all of these thoughts were immediately available in a database that could be mined easily to tell you what people both individually and in aggregate are thinking right now about any imaginable subject or event? Well, then you’d have a different kind of search engine altogether. A real-time search engine. A what’s-happening-right-now search engine.

In fact, the crude beginnings of this “now” search engine already exists. It is called Twitter, and it is a big reason why new investors poured another $35 million into the two-year-old startup on Friday. . . . For thoughts and events that are happening right now, searching Twitter increasingly brings up better results than searching Google.

By making search more central, Twitter will capture even more of those what’s-happening-right-now searches. I wonder how many Twitter users right now even realize that you can search it. The search feature is not easy to find (it is a link at the bottom of the page). This is an obvious move. It will open up new ways to explore Twitter for users and train them how to do real-time searches on a regular basis.

Apture Packs a Lot of Media Into a Little Pop-up

The most obvious feature of Apture is that it is a pop-up technology. Apture is a Javascript plug-in for publishers that adds contextual information to links - via pop-ups which display when users hover over or click on them. However, because of its association with pop-ups, Apture thinks it's gotten a bad rap. Many people dislike other pop-up products such as CoolPreviews, Snap and a new Microsoft product we covered recently called Gaze. Why? Because pop-ups can disrupt a user's browsing experience and are sometimes even regarded as a nuisance. We spoke to Apture co-founder and CEO Tristan Harris, to find out what makes Apture different.

Here at ReadWriteWeb, we've been skeptical of how pop-up technology has been used over the years. But we're also optimistic about the potential for pop-ups to present rich contextual information to readers, as long as it's done in an unobtrusive way.

Apture is a similar service to Panels.net, which pops up useful contextual data about companies and people. Probably what differentiates Apture is that it makes great use of rich media, such as video and audio. The product was created by 4 Stanford computer science graduates and it is very much targeted at media publishers, from small bloggers to big media companies. One of the customers using Apture is WashingtonPost.com, which we will take a look at in this post.

Examples: Washington Post & Brand South Africa Blog

Apture enables publishers to offer extra third-party content on their website, without the user having to leave the host site. For example in the screenshot below Washington Post has a link to Senator Amy Klobuchar - when the reader hovers over it, up pops up a new window with not only biographical information about Klobuchar, but details on what she's voted on and financial disclosures. Many of the links in the pop-up lead to more information presented inside that same window (the only links which open a new browser window are the blue official website links). It's rather impressive how much extra information is offered in just one little pop-up.

What stood out most to us about Apture though is its ability to present - and manipulate - multimedia. Not only can publishers add links to videos inside an Apture pop-up, but they can select which point in the video to jump to. For example if there's a quote from a Barack Obama video that is relevant to readers, and it starts 5 minutes and 10 seconds into the video, you can link to and start the video at that 5:10 mark. Below is an example from a government blog in South Africa. You can also see that it opens a separate Apture window for the video - you can have multiple Apture windows on the same page.

Human Choice Trumps Algorithms

Another interesting aspect about Apture is that it relies on publishers to make the ultimate decisions about which media items to add to a webpage. In other words, algorithms don't do all of the work - although they do select the sources for the editors to select from. This is a point of difference from products such as Snap and Adaptive Blue's SmartLinks, which are both fully automated. How Apture works from the publisher's perspective is that editors (at e.g. Washingtonpost.com) select related content, as suggested by Apture's algorithms. The editing work is currently done post-publishing, because Apture hasn't yet found a way to easily integrate into multiple CMSs - although it is working on solving that issue. Right now though, Apture works as a javascript plug-in on the host site, and editors can add pop-ups via their Apture account.

According to Apture CEO media Tristan Harris, Apture has "lowered the cost of inserting a [multimedia] link". He said that the majority of journalists are not technical, in terms of HTML and related web technologies, but that Apture is simple 'point and click' and so it makes it very easy for them to add multimedia. We asked Harris if there is much Semantic technology happening in the back-end. He replied that they do some "semantic guiding" - e.g. when on a book page, Apture pushes up book content in the results presented to editors. But overall, Harris likes to think of Apture as a "hyper-relevant web" technology, rather than semantic web.

Conclusion: Useful and Visually Appealing

We came away impressed by Apture, because of the amount of multimedia that can be packed into such a little pop-up. Also the end-user experience is sophisticated - readers on washingtonpost.com and other Apture sites can see rich, relevant, contextual content from the likes of Wikipedia, YouTube and Flickr without leaving the host site. Apture is positioning itself as "more than a pop-up site". Actually we still think it's a pop-up technology, but we have to say that it's a sophisticated and useful application of it!

Apture is free for bloggers and works via one line of javascript at the bottom of your site. Although Apture's business model was initially advertising, now the company has turned its attention to premium offerings for big media companies. It is looking for monthly subscription fees from large media companies, in exchange for premium services.

Tell us what you think of Apture - and indeed pop-up technologies in general - in the comments.

Ed: Instead of pop-up, a link to page with more info.

<a href="mysearchdest?q=term">term</a>

CLIP It's Been A Year Since AOL's Big Widget Play, But How Real Is The 'Widget Economy'?

This time last year, VC firms had already invested nearly $60 million into widget-related companieslike Slide and WidgetBox. AOL got caught up in the widget craze too, and gobbled up desktop and web app-maker Goowy Media. Was it a hasty investment—like the one the company admitted it made when it bought out Bebo for $850 million during the social media rush the previous year?

More on that later ... In the year since that acquisition, VCs have continued to invest in widget-related companies, with nearly $13 million worth of funding for startups like iWidgets, mEgo and SocialMedia in the past four weeks. And the apps have evolved from profile badges, to branded units that let users play games and videos, to price-comparison tools. But analysts are still expecting a shakeout, as advertisers are cutting back their budgets across the board, and investment firms are scrutinizing the business models of startups (and even established companies) on the hunt for cash. More after the jump.

—But how real is the widget economy?: The latest forecast from eMarketer only pegs widget- and app-based social media spending to reach $70 million this year—less than 6 percent of the $1.3 billion advertisers are slated to spend on social media overall. eMarketer Senior Analyst Debra Aho Williamson said the notion of a "widget economy"—at least one like last year's, with sky-high valuations for startups that aren't profitable yet—had no basis anymore. "This is still a developing market, and most of the companies are spending their resources on making the widgets smarter, more intuitive and improving their tracking capabilities," Williamson said. "Are many of them making a profit? I'd tend to say no."

—Widgets are evolving to better meet advertisers' needs: CNET, for example, partnered with Gigya to launch widgets that give tech junkies the ability to embed product reviews and video clips, and even a software downloader into their social media profiles and blogs. The apps are continuously updated—and since they're tied to products, they go beyond the glut of widgets that just look pretty or thrive on novelty (like throwing a sheep or a thong at your friend) that quickly wears thin. "Last year it was about the rush to just 'do a widget' that's fun but didn't have much use," Williamson said. "Advertisers have decided that they need to be more than just fun—they need to serve a purpose. If you can provide real-time pricing info on a product right on a review site, that's an interesting model."

—The shakeout is still coming: "There's going to be consolidation across the space, simply because there's only so much real estate on someone's social networking page," William said. "There are already thousands of Facebook apps available, and only a few that are going to do really well." Companies like Gigya, WidgetBucks and others that build in-depth analytics and other features into their widgets may survive, but a majority of the app development and distribution startups won't if they don't get more cash—or get acquired. Williamson also said some of the widget funding and development market might "siphon off to the iPhone," as startups take what they've learned (and their investors) and port it to mobile app development.

As for AOL (NYSE: TWX), the company folded Goowy into its Platform-A business in July, and then pulled the plug on the Yourminis customizable start pages—a feature the startup had been known for—so that Goowy could focus on developing brand-friendly widgets. According to a release touting the deal's one-year anniversary, Goowy widgets powered nearly 2 billion impressions over the course of 2008—but AOL didn't disclose the average CPMs for its widget ads. Since the company has to split that revenue with publishers (and display ad revs were down 25 percent in Q4), it's quite possible that the investment may not be as lucrative as they're making it out to be.

Related

• Widget Ad Firm iWidgets Nabs $4.1 Million First Round; Adds VP Of Business Development
• SocialMedia Raises $6 Million For Widget Ad Network
• mEgo Gets $2.5 Million Second Round For Avatar-Based Widgets

CLIP Google: "We're Not Doing a Good Job with Structured Data"

from ReadWriteWeb by Sarah Perez

During a talk at the New England Database Day conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Google's Alon Halevy admitted that the search giant has "not been doing a good job"presenting the structured data found on the web to its users. By "structured data," Halevy was referring to the databases of the "deep web" - those internet resources that sit behind forms and site-specific search boxes, unable to be indexed through passive means.

Google's Deep Web Search

Halevy, who heads the "Deep Web" search initiative at Google, described the "Shallow Web" as containing about 5 million web pages while the "Deep Web" is estimated to be 500 times the size. This hidden web is currently being indexed in part by Google's automated systems that submit queries to various databases, retrieving the content found for indexing. In addition to that aspect of the Deep Web - dubbed "vertical searching" - Halevy also referenced two other types of Deep Web Search: semantic search and product search.

Google wants to also be able to retrieve the data found in structured tables on the web, said Halevy, citing a table on a page listing the U.S. presidents as an example. There are 14 billion such tables on the web, and, after filtering, about 154 million of them are interesting enough to be worth indexing.

Can Google Dig into the Deep Web?

The question that remains is whether or not Google's current search engine technology is going to be adept at doing all the different types of Deep Web indexing or if they will need to come up with something new. As of now, Google uses the Big Table databaseand MapReduce framework for everything search related, notes Alex Esterkin, Chief Architect at Infobright, Inc., a company delivering open source data warehousing solutions. During the talk, Halevy listed a number of analytical database application challenges that Google is currently dealing with: schema auto-complete, synonym discovery, creating entity lists, association between instances and aspects, and data level synonyms discovery. These challenges are addressed by Infobright's technology, said Esterkin, but "Google will have to solve these problems the hard way."

Also mentioned during the speech was how Google plans to organize "aspects" of search queries. The company wants to be able to separate exploratory queries (e.g., "Vietnam travel") from ones where a user is in search of a particular fact ("Vietnam population"). The former query should deliver information about visa requirements, weather and tour packages, etc. In a way, this is like what the search service offered by Kosmix is doing. But Google wants to go further, said Halevy. "Kosmix will give you an 'aspect,' but it's attached to an information source. In our case, all the aspects might be just Web search results, but we'd organize them differently."

Yahoo Working on Similar Structured Data Retrieval

The challenges facing Google today are also being addressed by their nearest competitor in search, Yahoo. In December, Yahoo announced that they were taking their SearchMonkey technology in-house to automate the extraction of structured information from large classes of web sites. The results of that in-house extraction technique will allow Yahoo to augment their Yahoo Search results with key information returned alongside the URLs.

In this aspect of web search, it's clear that no single company has yet to dominate. However, even if a non-Google company surges ahead, it may not be enough to get people to switch engines. Today, "Google" has become synonymous with web search, just like "Kleenex" is a tissue, "Band-Aid" is an adhesive bandage, and "Xerox" is a way to make photocopies. Once that psychological mark has been made into our collective psyches and the habit formed, people tend to stick with what they know, regardless of who does it better. That's something that's a bit troublesome - if better search technology for indexing the Deep Web comes into existence outside of Google, the world may not end up using it until such point Google either duplicates or acquires the invention.

Still, it's far too soon to write Google off yet. They clearly have a lead when it comes to search and that came from hard work, incredibly smart people, and innovative technical achievements. No doubt they can figure out this Deep Web thing, too. (We hope).

The Time is Right to Kill Google (If They Don’t Kill Themselves First) - Fees for Customer Service

from louisgray.com by louisgray@gmail.com (Louis Gray)

Guest Post By Matt Dickman of Techno//Marketer (FriendFeed/Twitter)


In your opinion, what is Google’s differentiator as a company? Can you remember when you switched from Yahoo! to the new, fresh upstart Google? For me, it was seamless. One day I woke up and was just using it. I do, however, remember why I started using it. Google put users at the center of their business. They added value to the search experience by cleaning up the interface and presenting information in a clean, concise manner. They learned early that search was a replacement for the directory-based engine that Yahoo (still) hangs on to, not a supplement. 

For the past two years I have written a blog post about the ways that Google attaches itself to my life on a daily basis (here is last year’s version). I’ve welcomed this life-integration with the company because I felt they were adding value. They weren’t doing any evil. 

Lately, however I’ve felt a disturbance in the force. I still use all of the same Google products that I mentioned in the post, but something had changed. The company that innovated search by focusing on the user has lost its focus on the user. Here are two examples that you may, or may not, have noticed and I welcome your feedback.

First, Friend Connect. *sigh* This really was my tipping point with Google. (You’ll notice there are common threads between this example and the next one.) Back in mid-December I came across a blog post on this new Google platform extension. On the surface, I liked the idea. Everyone with a Google profile (most of us) could join the site and engage with each other through what Google calls “social gadgets”. My plan was to add ratings at the end of each post, however I ran (and continue to run) into a problem. 

The initial set up was cake. I added the community widget to the side of my blog and waited for people to join. 

My initial experience with that module was poor. The invite function wouldn’t let me add new users. Actually, I just checked and it still won’t. Worse yet when I tried to invite my friends and the page gave me the error, something weird happened. All of my Gmail chat contacts disappeared. My Google reader contacts as well. Not cool. I’ve been rebuilding this over time, but some people I have been permanently severed from. To add fuel to the fire, when I try to add the social widget to the post, I get the image below where the widget should be. I have everything set up right, it just doesn’t work. 

You would think that, upon launching a new platform extension, Google would be all over the support site. Not the case. From when I submitted my post to the next Google rep to answer any questions was about three weeks (and they didn’t answer my question). 

Scenario #2, FeedBurner. I think the entire blogosphere has a love/hate relationship with this service. From the time Google acquired the Chicago company until now it has been a rollercoaster.FeedBurner started out with a narrow focus and they executed well. Google acquired them to extend their advertising/analytics offering. However, subscriber stats would often fluctuate wildly, dropping to zero on some days, bouncing back if you were lucky. Google always claimed that they were “working on it”, but I didn’t believe it until a while back when I saw that they were transitioning to the Google platform. 

In theory, this is a good thing. More scale, more stability, more happy people. Wrong. The transition was not explained well and I saw a wave of panic slowly crushing the blogosphere. A couple of us took the plunge and made the move (I even recorded a video to help people understand the process). In the process, my subscribers dropped by half. No explanation. Hundreds of posts to the support forum and no replies from Google. My stats did bounce back, but the service’s reputation is shaky now. People use this as a key metric, companies track it and people get paid based on it. Sadly there is no alternative (yet). 

Google has lost sight of the user. They have neglected us for too long, concentrating instead on advertising. I get that it is their lifeblood, but what good is an ad that nobody sees because you alienate your community. I think that a company that attacks with the right mission and focus on users could make a dent in Google’s armor. Killer customer service powered by social platforms could allow a new set of players to emerge.

I would love to get your take on this. Have you seen the same trend? What would you do if you were Google to stand up and put your foot down?

Read more by Matt Dickman at Techno//Marketer.

Ed: Google Apps wants to charge fees for service. Yahoo has made slow progress with fee-based services. For both companies, they have a culture to avoid direct interaction with millions of users. Tough to switch to fee-based without a fundamental change in attitude. 

10 Reasons Why This Is A Great Time To Invest In Innovation

This is a great time to invest in innovation:

- The next big thing always comes out of downturns.

- It is easier to find great people.

- Salaries are lower.

- Office space and other resources are more plentiful and less expensive.

- Capital startup costs are lower.

- IT costs are lower thanks to cloud computing and web services.

- Programming languages and development tools of various kinds are simpler and more powerful.

- Marketing costs are lower (if done right).

- Work can be virtualized across time zones and regions.

- Most importantly: As bad as this recession will get, the upturn that follows will be even larger.

The next upturn will be led by what I call New Rules Enterprises, these are organizations that are highly efficient and have made the most of the economies of Internet 2.0. More on this in future posts.

CLIP Google Puts The Squeeze On Free Apps

Ed: Not impressed. We have 6 clients using Google Apps for domain name only, not mail, docs, calendar, and web hosting. How many do you have?

Google says the vast majority of the 1 million businesses that use Google Apps opt for the free advertising supported version. To make the free option less attractive they’ve been quietly lowering the number of user accounts that can be associated with a free account. Now as businesses grow, they’ll be forced to move to the paid version much more quickly than before.

Google Apps is a suite of online applications like gmail, Google calendar, Google Docs, etc. that are packaged and tailored for business use. It’s growing fast - in a recent post where Google announced the opening of a reseller program, the company said that more than 1 million businesses and 10 million users use Google Apps today, and 3,000 new businesses sign up daily. The largest business user, Genentech, has 20,000 employees on Google Apps.

When Google Apps first launched in August 2006 it was free and described as “a service available at no cost to organizations of all shapes and sizes.”

Free for everyone lasted until February 2007, when Google announced a premier edition of the service with more storage and an uptime guarantee. The cost was (and is) $50 per user per year.

When Google Apps first launched up to 200 user accounts could be created for each business under the free version. But that limit was quietly reduced to just 100 user accounts. And then when the reseller program was announced earlier this month, the limit was cut in half again, to just 50 accounts.

CLIP Cisco in The Cloud: Application Extension Platform (AXP)

Ed: Network problem for retail chains and large enterprises with regional sales offices.

One doesn't tend to associate Cisco with Web 2.0, social media or cloud computing. Cisco equals routers, the plumbing of the web. In other words, vital and hugely profitable; but not the 'new, new thing' of the Internet. It turns outwe have written before about how Cisco is using social media to reach enterprise clients and playing in the enterprise social networking space. Now Cisco wants to position its Application Extension Platform (AXP) in the cloud platform space and is encouraging developers with $100,000 in prizes for the most innovative applications.

The product AXP is not new. Cisco launched it about 4 years ago. But it is now ramping up the marketing. Read on for a rundown of AXP's positioning in the market.

The Networking Problems In Branch Offices

On the consumer Internet, we connect directly to big server farms running our favorite services. In the Enterprise world, most users connect via a branch network. In this more complicated world, there are three concerns that are not well addressed by the platforms that emerged in the Web 2.0 era:

1. Security at the branch level. Security at the data center or server farm may be great, but the branch is often a back-door threat.
2. Performance. If a hundred people are working in a branch, dealing with some network traffic locally would improve performance.
3. Survivability. Losing connectivity to the cloud is still a significant issue. If it happens to a single consumer, you shrug it off and say "Oh well." If it stops a bank branch from functioning, well, that's another story.

Cisco AXP aims to address these challenges in branch networks. The $100,000 contest is part of this, as it asks developers to think of what apps can run at the branch level within a Cisco network router (aka "the box") - which is really a Linux server with the network services exposed via an API. February 27th is the final deadline for submissions, if you're a developer interested in this challenge. Finalists will be announced in May and the winners will be announced in August/September.

For more on the technology, current usage cases, and competition rules see Cisco's presentation on Slideshare.

Cisco Media Briefing Developer Contest V4.3
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Engadget Integrates Photo Gallery with Blog Post

Ed: Engadget is a leading technology website. They have integrated their photo gallery into the body of their posts. Previously, most present the gallery in the sidebar and with content that does not reinforce the story.

The code is a hack job, with no platform nor scalability. Photokit^tm is going to be hot! (http://boomer.exitmercial.com). Stay tuned.

by Darren Murph, posted Jan 10th 2009 at 3:12PM

WiFi cameras are far from new -- over the past couple of years, we've seen P&S after P&S arrive with minimal functionality that would allow it to sync pictures with one specific online photo portal (or similar). Sony has stepped up the game for cameras to come with the Cyber-shot DSC-G3, which is the first of its kind to include a web browser for logging into pay-hotspots and uploading to practically any photo sharing site on the web. Popular Science got to handle one for a few weeks, and in the end, they were in love with the idea but hesitant to praise the execution. The T700-turned-wireless took satisfactory pictures, but the browser experience was less than awesome. You can hit the read link for all the dirty details, but unless you're willing to deal with "agonizingly" slow load times, you're probably better off waiting for the next revision. Or for some other company to whip out a bona fide competitor.

Gallery: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3 launches: world's first WiFi camera with web browser

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CES: Does the future of TV lie in gesture-based control?

from VentureBeat by Dean Takahashi

Gesture control is one of the most exciting new technologies at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week.There are a variety of companies — inspired by the Nintendo Wii’s gesture control and the iPhone’s multi-touch screen — that are developing new ways to interact with gadgets. Hand, arm or figner gestures — like waving your arms around in circles to make something happen on the screen — are being used in everything from phones to game consoles.

But the TV may be a big market for these technologies. TV remote controls are getting so complex that consumers need a less-intimidating way to navigate through all of the data — movies, stored TV shows, music, and pictures — that they can access on their connected TV sets.

“Gesture control is going to be the next big thing in TV remote control,” said Paul Liao, chief technology officer of Panasonic’s North American division.

Panasonic has its own EZ Touch remote with touch screens on both ends of a remote where you swipe your fingers across a screen. That’s a pretty simple use of gestures. But it’s quite possible that these remotes don’t go far enough. Some radically different approaches are being tried by the companies in the videos below. These new technologies require the development of sensors, user interface software, and hardware for making sense of the data coming in from the sensors.

Here are videos I took that may show you the future of TV. Are you ready to say goodbye to the remote control? These three demos at CES show how to use gestures to control the TV. The first video shows the Hitachi TV that is connected to a Canesta 3-D depth camera, which senses a moving object. You can wave your hands around in front of the camera to make things happen on the TV, like changing the channel or navigating the menu...

eMail war between gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail

I've been having difficulty sending and receiving mail. Too many messages get lost. So I thought I would look into it. It's a silly war among gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail.

Gmail In Yahoo Spam Bucket

Here is a return message from gMail, sent to Yahoo's spam bucket.

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com. I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

savethebigcat@gmail.com

72.14.205.27 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or unnecessary spaces. Learn more at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6596 Giving up on 72.14.205.27.

Microsoft Live Mail in Gmail's Spam

Here is a lost message from Microsoft found in gMail's spam bucket.

Windows Live ID to me

Hello djcxxx@gmail.com,

Thank you for signing up for a Windows Live ID.

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Countless Lost / Misfiled / Not Working Messages

Yahoo has had problems - period. In particular, the problems seem more acute when using Google's Chrome browser. I've switched from Classic to Modern mode to work around the problem, wasting time.

Every so often, friends don't get my email. Occassionally, incoming mail goes into the spam bucket - including my own copies to myself. What a joke.

Ultimate Stupidity

Here is the ultimate farce. I sent email from my Yahoo account to my gMail account.

failure notice

From: "MAILER-DAEMON@yahoo.com"

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<djcxxx@gmail.com>:
209.85.133.27 failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 552-5.7.0 552-5.7.0 Please visit http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6590
552 5.7.0 to review our attachment guidelines. 

Yahoo never sent the message to gmail. Further, Yahoo's own error message ends up in it's spam bucket. 

Too many games. Too many mistakes.

Switching to Facebook

I've asked important contacts to switch to Facebook and LinkedIn. I don't want to be the casualty in war among the giants.

Have you wasted similar time?

Report: Cloud-Based Email Cheapest Option for Most Companies

A new report from Forrester presents a cost analysis of cloud-based email systems in enterprises, such as Google Apps or Yahoo!'s Zimbra. In the report, Forrester argues that cloud-based email services are cheaper than running email on-premise for all companies with less than 15,000 employees. What's more, Google Apps is significantly cheaper than both on-premise solutions and other cloud-based email services - even for very large enterprises. This could spell trouble for Microsoft, as we explain below...