In this week's episode of Om and Niall PodSessions we discussed the current state of online privacy and the options presented to users with their choice of product and features. Do users pay any attention to EULAs? Does anyone realize what data is being stored about them online and shared with advertisers and potentially governments? This week's podsession, Online privacy: who's watching you?, is 29 minutes long and a 13 MB download. Tags: privacyonlineprivacy...
MSN Search is giving away prizes to searchers who pay close attention to ads in its search results. If you see a sponsored link with the words "MSN Search & Win" and click on the ad you may have won a new snowboard or maid service. A pretty clever way to get users to pay more attention to ads in search results. Users may change their search behavior to try and trigger a prize response for sponsors such as Bugaboo, Crate and Barrel, and Design within Reach, an average $2.50 CPC on Google AdWords....
I've been digging into a few new areas of interest over the past few months I feel still need improvement in search, discovery and tracking. I've spoken about most of these topics in my podcast series with Om, but it's worth mentioning again in text. I'm interested in continuing my work in these areas and perhaps helping to solve some existing problems. Feeds We have RSS 2.0, and Atom 1.0, the world is starting to understand how syndicated content makes sense, but I don't see a lot of future thinking for handling multiple locations, personas, and personalized content. Advertising is...
I am leaving Technorati to pursue new opportunities. I submitted my resignation letter this morning and I will be a free agent on March 1. I joined Technorati in February 2005 excited about changing the world of weblogs and introducing people to a new kind of search. Almost a year later my passions at work have eroded and it's time to find new horizons. Valentines Day is the perfect time to rekindle lost flames. The company has accomplished a lot in the past year, emerging from what many people viewed as a commodity space into a market leader. The Alexa...
Odeo introduced some new features last week including extended profiles and the ability to send any Odeo member an audio message. I've been asking Ev for audio comments for a few months and I'm glad it's finally here! Anyone with a Flash player can send an audio message to an Odeo member. You can add a special button to your podcast site and instantly collect audio comments for each episode. Choose from over 20 pre-made buttons to include on your site and you can enable audio comments in minutes. I added a "Send me an Odeo" button to my contact...
Do you use Movable Type and want to submit forms using an image? You'll need to edit your Movable Type installation to work around a 4 year-old bug. Movable Type is listening for the "post" or "preview" parameter but if you use an image as a submit button these parameters have x and y values corresponding to your mouse click. You need to teach Movable Type how to listen for these different parameters before your comments will work. Fix it Open MT/App/Comments.pm inside of your server's Movable Type installation. Search for "So we hack it" to find the commentary around...
I spent a little time today playing with Ma.gnolia, a new social bookmarking site currently in beta. Ma.gnolia was built in San Francisco by Larry Halff using Ruby on Rails and some design help from Jeffrey Zeldman and Happy Cog Studios. Ma.gnolia includes standard bookmarking features such as a title, a description, and some tags but the application does a good job of connecting those bookmarks to other groups of users with similar interest. You can browse groups to find like-minded users and subscribe to a group pool of interesting links. Groups allow members to stay involved even if...
Om and I discussed the latest startup companies that caught our interest in our latest episode of Om and Niall PodSessions. We talked about some companies presenting at the DEMO conference as well as companies who are bootstrapping to deliver an interesting new product with a different approach. The startup round-up podsession is 22 minutes in length, a 10 MB download. A full transcript is also available. Tags: podcastsmallbusinessstartups...
Google employees confirmed in person today plans for local advertisements within Google Maps, including their Web APIs. Google will overlay blue markers on the map to highlight local business advertisements directly within the graphical search result. A corporate logo and advertising message will be displayed inside of marker info windows complete with a paid link. API developers will have the option to display the ads or to signup for a commercial relationship with Google. Combining local search targeting with graphical ads should yield extremely high payouts for Google. Google is currently paying data fees for maps used in a...
I had lunch today with the Google Reader team and learned a bit more about the group, their success and challenges, and how new projects at Google are sometimes formed. This is the story of how a side-project intended for someone's blog became a feed aggregator integrated into one of the largest Web properties in the world. It all started with a love of blogging. Jason Shellen and Chris Wetherell were both members of the Blogger team and working on different ways to trick out their personal blogs. Jason kept various blogs including a link blog and wanted a way...
Niall Kennedy is a web technologist in San Francisco, California in the United States. I am very interested in the world of... MORE »