I'm officially dropping out of the Twitter gab fest

Back from vacation and it's grand to see that the blabosphere's obsession du jour with all things Twitter remains as rabid as ever. For a while, at least, I suppose it elbows aside the other obsession du jour--the truly distressing state of newspaperdom--at least until word of the inevitable next bankruptcy hits the wire. 



But with all due respect to the armchair commentariat, I'm sure there's something more interesting to write about in the wider world of technology. You wouldn't get that impression after randomly scanning headlines on the tech news aggregation sites. That's where the usual suspects are again cluttering up the transom with their latest random brain farts about what Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone ought to do with their amazing little toy. 

And I'm not letting us off the hook, either. At one point on Friday, CNET had five--count 'em, five--posts on Twitter (and unfortunately, I'm No. 6). 

I can understand why certain folks might be drawn to Twitter--even to the point of pondering the existential import of Oprah's tweets, but come on already. Twitter's a terrific conversational and research tool. Still, can we get a grip? 

I'm so thoroughly bored by the mandatory wide-eyed wonder that now accompanies any news event where the story is that people actually post updates on Twitter. "Wow, they're tweeting about the earthquake;" "they're tweeting about the airplane in the East River;" "they're tweeting about the bunion on the president's left toe." Blah, blah, blah. 

Despite the outpouring of attention, not everyone is so enamored. I was recently at a dinner hosted by venture capitalist Bill Gurley, whose company, Benchmark Capital, is an investor in Twitter. The person sitting next to me that evening was only a few weeks into her Twitterhood. She didn't get what all the fuss was about. I did my best to convince her that Twitter was a game-changer but she wasn't buying. 

Maybe in time her opinion will change, but her lukewarm response offered a reminder. A lot of serious, smart people take a more sober view of Twitter, viewing it as one (possibly useful) technology tool among others in their daily routine. They're not close to drinking the Kool-Aid, and that's something the media forgets. 

Well, if Ev & Biz ever do figure out how to harness Twitter's financial potential, wonderful, that would rate as news, and at that point, I'll give a damn. Until then, I'm leaving the daily hand-wringing to others.

What's up, bot? Google tries new Captcha method

Google has released research results about a new test to foil computers pretending to be humans by requiring them to orient an image so it's upright. 

A persistent problem on the Internet is screening out automated computer systems that can be used, for example, to sign up for spam-sending e-mail accounts or post comments designed to improve a site's search results. Google, which already devotes a lot of resources to block e-mail and Web spam, has tried a new test to keep the bots at bay. 

The test is the latest variation on a screening technique called a Captcha (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart). The idea is that people can often tell which way is up in a photo, but computers have a harder time. 

Captchas are in widespread use today, usually in the form of obscured or distorted text that people can still read. But there's a lot of work in the area, including identifying 3D images and distinguishing between cats and dogs. 

Here's how Google authors Rich Gossweiler, Maryam Kamvar, and Shumeet Baluja described the image-orientation technique in their paper (click for PDF): 

This task requires analysis of the often complex contents of an image, a task which humans usually perform well and machines generally do not. 

Given a large repository of images, such as those from a web search result, we use a suite of automated orientation detectors to prune those images that can be automatically set upright easily. We then apply a social feedback mechanism to verify that the remaining images have a human-recognizable upright orientation. 

The main advantages of our Captcha technique over the traditional text recognition techniques are that it is language-independent, does not require text-entry (e.g. for a mobile device), and employs another domain for Captcha generation beyond character obfuscation. This Captcha lends itself to rapid implementation and has an almost limitless supply of images. 

We conducted extensive experiments to measure the viability of this technique...Our Captcha technique achieves high success rates for humans and low success rates for bots, does not require text entry, and is more enjoyable for the user than text-based Captcha. 


Images can be hard for people to orient upright, too. One 500-person test showed wide disparities in the opinion of which way was up for the left image but not the right image.
(Credit: Google)

The tricky part is finding the right balance between too easy and too confusing. Some images are hard for people to orient correctly, and some have cues--faces, text, blue skies, and green grass--that computers can use to figure out which way is up. 

To get around this issue, while being able to draw from the large number of images on the Web, the technique presents people with new images as well as those known to perform well. If people have trouble consistently telling which way is up, that image isn't included in the library. 

The researchers like their system in part because the image doesn't have to be obscured or distorted, as in text-based Captchas such as those Google currently employs. But image-based Captchas aren't immune from the bot vs. Web site arms race. 

"As advances are made in orientation detection systems, these advances will be incorporated in our filters so that those images that can be automatically oriented are not presented to the user," the researchers said. "The use of distortions may eventually be required."

The city where every arrest gets Twittered

For a short time, it seemed as if the Denton Police Department outside Dallas had been inspired by great communicators such as Ashton Kutcher and CNN.

A Twitter page, headlined "Denton Police," fed details of every arrest the department had performed, coupled with TwitPic mugshots.

This remarkable, real-time communication between the police and outside world surely was a futuristic forerunner to Texas' progression towards secession.

Until it was revealed to be the work of University of North Texas senior, Brian Baugh.

Mr. Baugh studies photography and is clearly fascinated by the plethora of things that can be seen online. One of them is the Denton City Jail Custody Report, which Mr. Baugh happily transposed to the unofficial Denton Police Twitter page.

"I just thought it would be a thing between me and my friends," he told the Dallas Observer. 

Perhaps you might be thinking that he is to be awarded a commendation from the Denton Police for his ingenuity. And perhaps you might be thinking that all humans should have three feet, two noses, and hair made of recyclable plastic.

Yes, the Denton city attorneys are trying to get the feed shut down, which seems a little peculiar as it isn't as if Mr. Baugh is tweeting anything other than perfectly public information.

"The only way they might shut it down is if they wanted to use the account for themselves," he sagely declared.

But would they use it well?


You see, the Denton police has a MySpace page. It could, perhaps, be this one. However, according to Denton police spokesperson, Ryan Grelle: "It hasn't been updated for months."

Facebook vs. Twitter: How will you stream your world?

The future will be streamed. And streamed some more.

Earlier this week, Facebook unveiled a few notable product revamps: "fan pages" for brands that look and act more like regular member profiles, and a redesigned home page that emphasizes a real-time version of the site's iconic news feed. The keyword here is "streaming," encouraging an even more extensive flow of information with a status update prompt that asks, "What's on your mind?"

Needless to say, "What's on your mind"--which also allows the posting of links, videos, and other content to news feeds--bears quite a bit of resemblance to Twitter's "What are you doing?" prompt. So, especially in light of more rumors and reports about Facebook's spurned attempt to acquire Twitter, expect comparisons between the two services as means of ultra-customized media consumption to escalate.

When Facebook unveiled its redesign I predicted that we'd hear a lot more about the news feed as the new personal portal. That's sort of what many prolific Twitter users have turned the microblogging service into, too. Our Twitter feeds, after all, deliver a whole lot more than updates about what kind of beers our friends just ordered at happy hour: Depending on what you subscribe to, you can get ski reports, links to news headlines and blog feeds, mini-recipes, and celebrity-stalking intel.

But for all the talk about brands building presences on Twitter, Facebook may have gained a slight lead here. I spoke on Thursday to Dan Hart, senior vice president and general manager of MTV Digital, about how the Viacom-owned entertainment brand is using the new Pages to push out more content to members' news feeds. For the first time, brands using Fan Pages can set "status" messages, too, which MTV plans to use for news and updates.

"The status update function is effectively becoming a publish function, and that publish function is text, photos, video, a variety of media," Hart said, "and that media is experienced more as a real-time stream by a Facebook user, and the Facebook user has more control over what occurs in that stream."

That's basically what media companies do with Twitter accounts. And Hart said that MTV has no plans to abandon its presence on Twitter. "I don't think it's a zero-sum choice at all," he said. "We've done really interesting things on Twitter."

But Facebook's advantage is that the revamped news feed can handle different types of content, too: it'll have actual photos and event listings instead of TwitPic and TinyURL links. Filtering controls won't require a third-party app like TweetDeck. On the other hand, Twitter is obviously more open-ended. The messages on it are public and accessible, rather than hidden behind a log-in wall. As useful and innovative as the Facebook news feed may be, it's not searchable--and Twitter clearly hopes that its search feature, which it built in with the acquisition of Summize last year, will be a sort of secret sauce. (Maybe it'll even make money with it.)

Honestly, though, with the amount of buzz about both Facebook and Twitter as the future of real-time information, I give the advantage to whichever one can make all this content less of a mess.

On a related note, this gives aggregation services like FriendFeed a run for their money--why join an external "all-in-one-place" service when the same content is available on Facebook? FriendFeed is better optimized for longer discussion threads, true, but you don't hear a whole lot about marketers jumping on the feed-aggregator bandwagon. If anything, I see FriendFeed moving more toward a message-board role rather than another player in "the stream." But that's a tale for a different day.

Amazon’s Affiliate Program Ends PPC Arbitrage

Maybe I’m not the best qualified to make assumptions about why Amazon Associates–the online retailers affiliate program–just pulled the plug on allowing affiliates to send referrals via paid search, but that doesn’t stop me from making an educated guess.

PPC Arbitrage.

I suspect that Amazon finally realized that it could do its own keyword bidding and cut out the middle-man–those bidding pennies on long-tail keywords and making dollars in affiliate commissions. Here’s the email that Amazon just sent out to its affiliates:

Dear Amazon Associate:

We’re writing to let you know about a change to the Amazon Associates Program. After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you’re not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs.

As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search.

This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America. If you are conducting paid search activities in connection with one of Amazon’s Associates Programs outside of the US and Canada, please refer to the applicable country’s Associates Program Operating Agreement for relevant terms and conditions.

We appreciate your continued support and participation in this advertising Program. If you have questions or concerns, please write to us by using the Contact Us form available on Associates Central.

Sincerely,

The Amazon Associates Program

Is this the end of search marketing for Amazon affiliates? Yes, and no. While you can no longer send traffic directly to Amazon via paid search, I’m assuming you can still send searchers to a landing page and THEN send them to Amazon.com. Also, there doesn’t appear to be any restrictions on using search engine optimization (SEO) to send referarals, but good luck trying to get your own affiliate link to rank in Google.

OK, time to hand this over to the Pilgrims that live for affiliate marketing. What’s your take on this move by Amazon?

Google’s Voice Recognition Improves; Please Keep Some Searches to Yourself!

I’ve not had a lot of luck with voice recognition technology. My Acura MDX tempts me to use the built-in voice commands, but my request for "Nearest Mexican restaurant" ends up with the mind-boggling confirmation that my "Air conditioning is set to 74F."

So, you can imagine just how easy it had been for me to resist using the voice command feature of the Google search application on my iPhone. I simply didn’t have the time to make a fool of myself repeating the same search query over and over again. However, just last week I ended my Google voice virginity and finally used a voice command, instead of typing. The result? A surprising–and satisfying–success!

Apparently I’m not the only one switching from typed searches to voice ones. According to Vic Gundotra, VP of engineering for Google:

"We launched it on the iPhone and have seen a 15% jump in accuracy because, as more people use it, we collect more data and our accuracy gets better."

He also went on to tell San Francisco’s Web 2.0 Expo audience that Google sees a bright future for voice search:

"We believe voice search is a new form of search and that it is core to our business," said Vic Gundotra.

Some people are not so optimistic though. Take the BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. He tried the service last year and claimed the results were "pure gibberish."

For example, his query about the next train, West Ealing to Paddington "delivered some useful information about ‘neck strain’ - but no train times".

The misunderstanding came due to Google struggling to understand non-American accents–in this case the Queen’s English–but those issues have since mostly gone away. (Heck, if it can understand my American/British mongrel accent, it can understand anyone’s!)

The big question is, just how many of us will switch to voice recognition for our search queries? And, do we really want to stand next to some guy at a train station while he asks Google: "How do I treat my hemorrhoids?" 

Google Hate Is in the Air

We live a world that talks about winners and losers all the time. Trouble is it’s OK to lose big because “Hey, we’re only human and we love to give second chances. Here, have a boatload of taxpayer money to pay your executives who don’t deserve it and have a nice day!” Meanwhile, when a company actually does well there are those to who simply can’t stand a winner that has earned its power. We citizens of the Internet world know that the biggest winner, and as a result the biggest target of haters, is Google.

I read a bit of a rant from a journalist over in the UK and I encourage you to do the same. It is likely to polarize readers pretty quickly. The author uses the following terms to describe the search giant:

WWM – World Wide Monopoly

A threat to the livelihood of individuals and the future of commercial institutions important to the community

A classic monopoly that destroys industries and individual enterprise in its bid for ever greater profits

Delinquent and sociopathic, perhaps the character of a nightmarish 11-year-old

Having a brattish, clever amorality

Well, you get the picture. He is apparently upset about how Google uses its weight to get things done. I can see how that is annoying in many cases but the name calling bit is kind of over the top don’t you think? In North Carolina where I live, if you said those kind of things about anyone you might hear a good ol’ fashioned “Them thar is fightin’ words!” I’m sure Google considers these kind of evaluations like that of a gnat and ignores them or swats them away. What’s interesting to me is that in this world, you can be successful but don’t you dare go past whatever standard of “enough is enough” that some group somewhere has established to fit their own agenda. We want success but if someone else gets it in a way that we don’t like we whine. You can only be as successful as I think you should be. Huh?

I see Google differently. Sure they’re the 900 pound gorilla. Sure there is a bit of bully in them. This bully however is created in many cases just from sheer size. Oh and by the way, they have competition. I look at search like the Big 3 for automobiles in the US. There are huge barriers to entry and the competition is not large in number due to the very nature of the business. Google, however, unlike the automakers who apparently have adopted the Three Stooges as their mascots, has simply done a better job at search than Yahoo, Microsoft, Wikia Search, Lycos, Alta Vista etc etc. by creating a product that helps people get more done at the time that it was needed. They have simply done a better job. Because of that they have won big.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have a business if Google hadn’t done what it has done. So as for the destruction of industries that is called progress. It’s called change. If there was nothing created as a result of the destruction then there is a problem. That’s not the case with the Internet though. The world economy is shifting and Google is helping it happen.

In this world of business, if you create a better mousetrap then you catch more mice. Google catches a lot of mice but they do a lot of good too. Last year, Google’s gift to me for the business I did with them was the chance to help out a local school through DonorsChoose.org. I have an incredible book of letters from kids who benefited from them “forcing me” to help. I would not have done this on my own. They could have sent me a box of t-shirts but no. They helped me to help someone. I am grateful and the kids were ecstatic. No mention of these kinds of things from Google haters is there?

I am not a Google apologist. They are far from perfect. We all are. I just don’t see the point in sitting around and wringing our hands about fairness. Nothing is completely fair. Why do we want it or expect it? Google does a pretty good job in making sense of the Internet for a lot of people. That is actually a good thing. Are they not supposed to make money along the way?

So where are you? Google hater, supporter or do you just tolerate them? Is Google a bully, an enabler or amoral? I bet you have an opinion so please join the discussion.