According to Ari Balogh, Yahoo’s CTO, “I can guarantee you there will be some acquisitions, and we will do some stuff in-house.” Yahoo’s also not doing so hot financially. According to the article:
Yahoo’s profits are down, as are most search companies in the current economy. Yahoo earned $118 million in the first quarter of 2009, a drop of 13% year over year with sales totaling $1.58 billion.
While the article points out that Google has overtaken Yahoo as the destination of choice for people conducting web searches, one and a half billion dollars of sales still gives Yahoo quite a bit of weight in the search arena, right?
I’m not sure how a presence in the social networking sphere is going to help Yahoo at this point. While it may lend Yahoo some credibility in terms of social networking, there doesn’t seem to really be a real plan as to how that social networking presence is going to translate into increased profitability.
OK, I admit it. I don’t like FaceBook. I know it’s hard to believe that there’s someone who actually doesn’t enjoy using the incredibly popular social networking tool — but I don’t.
It’s not that FaceBook isn’t useful or doesn’t allow me to keep up with people — it’s actually been quite useful for that. I’ve reconnected with people that I would have never had the chance to meet up with again otherwise, which has been fun. It’s also fun to check out people’s pictures and connections and see who knows who.
My problem with FaceBook is that I can’t really keep up with the messages and notifications. A long time ago I just assigned all FaceBook messages a particular priority in my email (which essentially is ‘I will never actually look at this’). Instead, I occasionally log in to FaceBook to see if I have any messages — which I often do. I then have a ton of non-personal invites to things (like associations’ groups I belong to on FaceBook, don’t ask me why), which I try to ignore.
I’ve been going through some of the videos from the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference that I talked about last time. While I’ve come across some interesting videos, one of the coolest videos I’ve seen was sent to me by a reader (who wishes to remain anonymous). The video below is Pattie Maes demonstrating a wearable technology that could allow you to physically interact with the web (and web-based metadata) in the real world.
One of the most interesting things about this demo is that the device she talks about is really just assembled from a bunch of technologies that already exist. It’s a good reminder that innovation and invention are not always the same thing, but are still sometimes tough to tell apart.
As you can probably guess, I love gadgets. So while Canadian telecom companies like to lock you into 3 year cellular phone contracts, I usually find myself getting tired of the device I have after about a year. So much to my delight, I decided to geta new HTC Diamond (after a great deal of hassle) from Rogers (my phone provider).
I was upgrading from the HTC Touch — and in many ways the Diamond is just a (very) upgraded HTC Diamond. There are quite a few improvements in Windows Mobile 6.1 as well (the Touch had 6.0), as well as some great new features on the Diamond that the Touch didn’t have (GPS is a nice touch, as is 4 gigs of internal storage, a much better browser etc.).
I always end up loading a bunch of games and DVD movie backups onto my phone to play or watch during those mandatory down-time moments (waiting at the doctor’s office, taking the bus, those kinds of things), and as I was loading up a copy of an old version of SimCity, I realized that this was the same version of the game that I once played on the PC about 10 years ago.
Poor Mark Ghosh. As someone who uses a ton of different email accounts, online community profiles and social networking tools, I really feel for this guy. Having any account compromised just plain sucks (I’ve had it happen to me, and I totally understand Mark’s reference to ‘panic mode’).
I thought this was a particularly relevant narrative about Google’s security, as I just posted a few days ago about GDrive (which could effectively store any file you’ve got on your computer). So while online storage may be convenient, it’s no fun when your convenient online storage account suddenly becomes a grab bag of personal information for malicious attackers.
I guess this is also the danger of the tendency that Google has to consolidate accounts under the umbrella of the Google Account. One login to everything means that only one set of login credentials needs to be compromised for attackers to get access to all your stuff.
Anyway, I hope you gets control of your account back Mark, as well as some kind of useful response from Google about the security of Orkut.
GDrive’s been spotted again! I’ve been excited about Google GDrive product for quite a while now (yes, I actually do get excited about new products from Google, it’s a sickness). I think I first heard about it around two years ago (as you can see from theseheadlines, this is not the first time the product was believed to be launching ’soon’), and I’ve been hoping for a Google launch of the product since then.
If you haven’t heard of GDrive before, it’s basically an online hard disk — you can store whatever files you’d like, with (allegedly) pretty much infinite storage capability. GDrive also marks a significant shift in thinking in terms of computer storage, moving away from the ‘things are stored in my computer’ approach to a cloud computing approach.
While this is a great thing for all of us who would like a ton of storage at little or no cost (and be able to access those files from any internet-connected computer), there are a few potential glitches. Privacy’s one issue that has come up over and over again whenever the GDrive rumour (yes, I’m still very much classifying a launch of GDrive as rumour).
I think Patrick’s point here is an important one — both IT and non-IT folks need a remember now and then that technology is not going to solve all their problems. While it may seem obvious that all three of these factors need to be considered in any technology rollout, it’s surprising how often only the ‘technology’ part really gets considered.
So while I agree that lumping these three things together has certainly become clichéd, there still exists a decent reason for putting them together, as Patrick has suggested in his post.
It’s also worth remembering here that unwilling people and poorly-conceived processes can break even the best technology, and that conversely, even inferior technologies sometimes take hold because of a dedicated group of a people.
I came across a post over at ClappingTrees this morning that pointed out the rise in content creation among young people on the web, as well as an increase in their use of social networking tools.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project survey (in .pdf) found that 93% of teens use the internet, and that teens tend to post and view more videos and pictures than adults (interestingly, they also tend to limit access to their photos and videos more than adults).
Email, in the eyes of teens, has dropped to the bottom of the list in terms of the preferred way to contact friends. Take a look at the technologies they prefer to use in order of most preferred to least preferred:
There was a time (which seems like many years ago now), where I thought wasteful publications (and I think you can guess what I mean by that: flyers, catalogues and other things you get, but never asked for) would become extinct.
So I was rather dismayed by an announcement made by the City of Toronto (where I live) that they are going to publish a new publication, called Our Toronto, up to four times a year, which would incorporate ‘newsletters’ that would go out to city residents about things like crime, garbage and taxes. The publication is going to cost about $800 000 per year.
While those familiar with Toronto might already know that the city is almost 3 billion dollars in debt — and wonder why close to a million dollars is being spent on this publication — something else came to mind as I read this story.
Most Canadians, like most people around the world, are relying more and more on the internet for information and transactions — so why is the city trying to turn back the clock and publish a newsletter that will almost certainly end up going straight in the recycling bins of most city residents?
I don’t want to sound like I’m always picking on Microsoft. I use their products every day, and I can’t really say I have too many complaints (I have some, but this isn’t a post about any issues I might have with Microsoft’s products).
I’ve done my share of complaining, however, about the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld team-up that went so horribly wrong — but it would seem that Microsoft has managed to salvage something from the wreckage. Check it out:
