PC Mag has a bunch of Google tips. Some are familiar, but some were new to me. E.g., I didn’t know Google could give us transit directions.

[Tags: google ]

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Jyri Engestrom, whose company, Jaiku, was bought by Google, is talking about “Nodal Points: The emerging real-time social Web.” About four years ago, I heard Jyri talk about “social objects:” at Reboot, a talk that really stuck with me. Now Jyri works on social tools at Google.

Nodal Points is an homage to William Gibson, he says, and especially to a character who can predict the future by seeing patterns in human amounts of data.

Jyri says that social networks don’t explain why people are connected socially. He talks about the importance of social objects — objects that connect people in a social network. “Good web services allow people to create social objects that add value.” Mobile devices can help because they provide sensors that let us capture more data. This will be increasingly true.

Then we need to think about the verbs that people perform on objects. E.g., Flickr’s aggregation of what people have done with your photos. We should be surfacing the available actions.

“Social peripheral vision” lets you see what’s next. If you are unaware of other people’s intentions, you can’t make plans. “Imagine a physical world where we have as much peripheral information at our disposal as in WoW.” Not just “boring update feeds.” Innovate, especially on mobiles. We will see this stuff in the next 24 months. Some examples: Maps: Where my friends are. Phonebook: what are people up to. Email: prioritized. Photos: Face recognition.

Structurally, there are “object lockers” and on top of that a set of “activity aggregators.” “What’s key is filtering out what’s irrelevant.” Pattern recognition matters … hence, nodal points. “It’s not that different from Web search,” except the query is constant and consists of contextual parameters, e.g., who is copresent in the space, what’s in the calendar. “Imagine it’s all funneled into one big query” that runs constantly.

Detecting nodal points: “What should I be aware of that’s happening around me? Was what just happened significant to someone on the network.” And then deliver it to people at just the right time, perhaps via push. “Discovery is becoming social.” “It is the end of the era of search,” i.e., of querying for stuff. From browser to search to share (citing former ceo of paypal). From pagerank to “facerank” where what counts is friends in common, physical proximity, shared taste, shared objects.

He points to OpenID (identity), OAuth (authorization), and OpenSocial (interoperability).

Whe you develop a social service, your questions shoudl be: What is your object? Whare are your verbs? What are your nodal points?

Are we creating echo chambes?
An empirical question. Still open. In my own experience, no. We can build into the software the ability to prompt you with what would be interesting to you even though you would never have thought so. [heavily paraphrased]

[Great talk. And undoubtedly giving insight into Google’s plans for socializing its software.] [Tags: reboot10 reboot jyri_engstrom social_networks google ]

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Jacob Kramer-Duffield at the Berkman Center explains the significance of Google’s new ability to search the copyright renewal notices for books published between 1923 and 1963. Publishers of those books had to file a renewal notice to hold on to their copyrights. It’s been very difficult to determine whether those notices were ever filed, so, when in doubt, we’ve assumed that they’re protected, even though most of them undoubtedly are not. This is known as the “orphaned works” problem.

But, thanks to a gargantuan effort by a whole bunch of people — thank you! — that information has been digitized and Google can search it. Google Book Search and The Open Content Alliance will use this list to provide open access to works that otherwise were kept out of the hands of the public because their copyright status just couldn’t be determined.

Project Gutenberg, The Universal Library Project, and the Distributed Proofreaders deserve a lot of credit, praise, and hosannahs for accomplishing this task. [Tags: open_access copyright google open_content_allilance project_guetnberg universal_library_project distributed_proofreaders ]

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I’ve found myself using Google Docs more and more. It’s about a Bronze Age word processor at this point, but it makes collaborating easy, I like being able to get at my work from anywhere (even when offline), and the continuous backup and versioning is comforting.

But, not only is Docs way under-featured and butt ugly, Google is fixing it up really slowly.

What would Google have to do to enable The Community to enhance it?

We presumably (i.e., I don’t know what I’m talking about) could write an enhanced system that uses Google Docs for storage, but that slaps a new UI on it and adds features. In fact, maybe this is something that Adobe’s beautiful Air-based word processor, Buzzword, should be (or is?) looking at.

Even better: Google could make Google Docs as amenable to add-ons as Firefox is. Of course, I have no idea how hard that would be, and what the possibilities of terminally screwing up your docs might be.

At the very least, while Google Docs is getting better at allowing us to redefine existing HTML elements, to create new classes, and even to create new elements (albeit without giving us a UI to use these classes or elements, other than entering into HTML editing mode), letting us attach CSS style sheets seems like an obvious and non-destructive improvement.

But, IDKWITA (I don’t know what I’m talking about … and why isn’t that a standard Web acronym?), so there may be obvious technical issues mooting all of the above. But I’m sure that won’t mute you from telling me what I’m missing.

Please. [Tags: google google_docs word_processors openness css ]

Marco Barulli at Clipperz (a password manager) blogs about what it would take to get more freedom and privacy from the providers of Web apps. He has a three-part solution…

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Goosh.org is a text-only interface to Google and Wikipedia that will make your inner unix geek giggle inappropriately. It looks like a unix shell, but it isn’t (which, as Zouden at slashdot points out, means that you can’t do unix-y, pipe-y things with the results you get back).

Alas, it doesn’t work on my Blackberry’s ultracrappy Web browser. On the other hand, Google’s mobile client works pretty well. [Tags: google ]

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The China Vortex runs the search log for Google China that dramatically shows the three minutes of silence China observed on May 19th in remembrance of those who died in the earthquake. It is, eerily, like the inverse of a seismograph.

[Tags: china google earthquake ]

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Google Maps now (well, I just noticed) lets anyone add a place marker that is visible to all other users. Their example is a spot in a SF park where there’s open air dancing.

I’ll be interested in following two questions: 1. How will policy evolve to handle abuse and edge cases? 2. How will the system be hacked?

1. What controls is Google going to have to introduce to keep maps from being polluted with markers such as “Best pizza in town,” “Marcie the Slut lives here” and “[enter your choice of slur]town”?

As of now, Google lists two types of controls. First, some listings are protected, either because they’re hospitals or government buildings, or because the owners of a business have “claimed” the listing; Google does some form of verification before awarding ownership. Second, there’s a “report abuse” button which sends the listing to a moderation process.

I hope that that’s sufficient. But what about edge cases? If grieving parents mark the spot on the road where their child was killed, will Google count that as abuse and remove it? Historical markers? Celebrity homes? Notices of where events will be held? Treasure hunt clues?

2. Related to the first: How will people creatively hack the system, not to bring it down (the bad hacking) but to use it in ways Google didn’t anticipate (the good hacking)? For example, maybe citizens will mark potholes, possibly giving the text a distinctive, findable tag. Or educational walks. Or the rankings of public schools. Or all the places there was a death by gun. Or a link to a Flickr query that aggregates photos from that spot. Or the ten million better ideas that everyone else will have.

It’ll be fun to watch. [Tags: google google_maps everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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On the heels of her splendid explanation of the outcome of the 700MHz auction, Susan Crawford explains Google’s proposal to the FCC for the “white spaces.” Here’s my take on her take. (The NYT also has a useful article.) (Note: All errors in the following are mine. I am in over my head.)

Congress has mandated the end of over-the-air broadcast of analog TV signals. This frees up some spectrum. (Spectrum = frequencies = colors) Actually, it frees up a lot of spectrum: the 700MHz auction was for just 22MHz of frequency, whereas we’re now talking about 300MHz of spectrum. So, what should we do with this newly unbound stretch of public airwaves?

We could slice it up and sell it off to private companies. That’s generally what the FCC does with spectrum. And that made sense back in the 1930s when the FCC was created. Radios were so primitive that broadcasters had to be given untrammeled access to a frequency to avoid “interference” with other broadcasts. So, the FCC sold swaths of spectrum to broadcasters, but, recognizing that spectrum belongs to the public, the FCC also placed some requirements and restrictions on broadcasters.

Radio technology has advanced since the day the Titanic’s signal wasn’t decipherable. Not only are radios better able to tune in to particular frequencies and strip out noise, they are also able to respond dynamically. They can, for example, hop around the spectrum to hold on to a particular broadcast, if the broadcaster changes lanes, so to speak, in order to find a less unoccupied frequency. Not only does this sort of “open spectrum” approach promise far more efficient use of available spectrum — more bandwidth, to put it inaccurately — but it means that the government doesn’t have to decide for us who gets to use the spectrum. (For more on this, see David Reed’s explanation.)

Google has outlined to the FCC how it would use unlicensed white space spectrum. It’s proposing conservative approach that moves cautiously toward open spectrum, providing the FCC with a vision for how the white space spectrum might bring enormous benefits.

Google envisions how wireless devices running the Android operating system — Google’s mobile operating system — might use the white space frequencies. Google points out that such devices could help deliver Net access to rural areas, a sore spot at the FCC since the policy of handing the Internet over to a duopoly has kept the rural and the poor in the dark. (Surprise!) But, as Susan writes:

Google suggests that *all* devices for unlicensed use of the white spaces should be required to receive an “all clear” signal for the particular channel where they wish to operate, by using geolocation, checking a database of licensees in that location, and getting permission in advance.

This would achieve some of the objectives of an open spectrum system, allowing for the dynamic allocation of frequencies. Google suggests that they could use dynamic auctions to assign frequencies for limited times and strengths, adding another element of extrinsic control (as opposed to a fully open spectrum approach that depends on the devices negotiating for the airwaves). Further, Google suggests that some channels be kept unavailable for all but some high-priority, specialized uses.

This is a calm and rational approach that could see an enormous blossoming of innovation. Think about how many devices exist because tiny ranges of spectrum have been left unregulated. Opening a big swath of spectrum is like opening up a big tract of land. Who knows what we’ll build once we have the space? [Tags: fcc spectrum susan_crawford google open_spectrum wifi ]

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Harold Feld thinks Google conceded too much too soon.

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Google is almost done scanning books at Harvard. Of the 15 million books in the Harvard collections, Google is only scanning one million because it’s excluded any protected by copyright or that are too fragile, too big, or too small to be scanned.

[Tags: google libraries everything_is_miscellaneous copyright ]

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There are lots of reasons Google is not only the most important single company on the Internet, it is in many ways the defining Internet company. Among the most significant reasons: It’s got the creative rhythm of a BS session among the five funniest people you know. Think it, say it, top it, move on. Except with code, not jokes.

Want to slow this process down? Acquire another company. Especially a really, really big company. Especially a really, really big company that is in strategic disarray.

I’d say that I don’t know what Microsoft is thinking, but I actually think I do. Microsoft is thinking about the economics of consumers. Google is in an economy of creators.

We all want healthy competition for Google. But it now feels more like we’re watching evolution than competition.

[Tags: google microsoft yahoo ]

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