Google Base Launches, but the critics don’t like it

Google Base is their first attempt at organizing user content. It doesn’t matter what type of content, if you want to share grandma’s recipe, you now can.

 

What is Google Base?

Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that we’ll host and make searchable online. You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle, Google Base and Google Local.

Quick Facts about Google Base

• Cost: Free
• Item types accepted: All types of online and offline information and images
• Languages: You can submit your information in many languages; the Google Base interface, however, including the Help Content, is currently available only in English, English UK and German.
• Reach: Items you submit to Google Base can be found on Google Base and, depending on their relevance, may also appear on Google properties like Google, Froogle and Google Local.

How it’s different: Google Base enables you to add attributes that better describe your content so that users can easily find it. The more popular specific attributes become, the more often we’ll suggest them when others post the same items. Similarly, items that become more popular will show up as suggested item types in the Choose an existing item type drop down menu.

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The official Google Blog explains Google Base a bit more in depth.  Michael Arrington at TechCrunch says Google Base Launched. Yuck.

Bottom Line: This is not a very interesting application in its current form. It’s like a 1985 dBASE file with less functionality. It’s ugly. It’s centralized content with less functionality than ebay or craigslist. The content is not integrated directly into Google search results, but “relevance” can bump it up into main and local search (and froogle).

 

In a webbed world where content is king, Google has extended their content distribution channel to index more and more data. Microsoft needs to counter this measure, because this is going to make Google’s search far more relevant than it ever has been.

Windows Vista Beta 2 Delayed

Paul Thurrott:

Sources at the company told me this week that Microsoft will soon delay the release of Windows Vista Beta 2 from December 7, 2005 to sometime in January or February 2006. However, because the Vista development schedule is extremely time constrained, the company will try and make up lost time by eliminating one of the planned release candidate (RC) milestones that were planned for later in the process.

Microsoft hitting delays now on Windows Vista is exactly what the company is trying not to do. One of its number one goals is to ship faster, and missing milestones now is going to make Vista less feature rich, stable and secure when it ships. It’s too bad that the company is so large and vast, because now it’s being forced to do something it hasn’t had to do before, focus as much on the development of the "Windows Internet", as it does it’s own operating system.

It just seems like the predicted software consolidation era has left Microsoft in a position to be so vast and so overwhelming that it’s getting tougher for it to focus on anything at all. To make matters worst, Microsoft needs to catch on and counter what ever database-Ebay type of market cap building monster Google has lurking just beneath radar.

I do think Microsoft has hashed out a rough plan which could end up working. By leveraging Microsoft’s next web based protocols and making the difference between web and OS less obvious but more cooperative and also splitting up its OS’s offerings as mandated; Microsoft will be enabling so much in it’s operating system and presenting to developers a hard to pass up write-once combined platform. You combine that with what’s going into the living room this Christmas, Microsoft might be just about everywhere in a year, throw a few text advertisements into that and you could see the stock price go up a bit. Do you think the PS3 could overcome an XBOX 360 that is sold for 100 dollars right before it went on sale?

Sun Outlines Open Office Plans with Google and GDRIVE

Jonathan Schwartz says:

The two features every single user needs are: Save, and Open. So wouldn’t it be interesting if rather than exploring your local file system on your local PC, the Save and Open panels simply looked to a network account on Sun’s Grid? Shareable like any of the mainstream photo services are today? Or how about saving to that 2.5Gb allowance Google gave you in your GMail account? And wouldn’t it be great if you could save to ODF, or translate to Microsoft Word, or generate a podcast or mp3 file – on the fly? From within any app?

If I understand this correctly, it’s a very impressive line of thought. The idea is that simplicity is a powerful weapon. If someone sends you a word document, you save it to your www.GDRIVE.com account (google) and then open it up with Open Office or Star Office. This makes things a bit more simple. These are two services that the SUN grid currently provides which will help users deal with many problems faced today. Data being on different computers, data not being able to be read by other clients. Coverting Text to Podcast on the fly for free is enough to make anyone without enough time on their hands, and a long ride home, happy.

Newsvine to Launch Soon

According to Mike Davidson:  Newsvine is:

 

Just like your favorite news site, only smarter

Newsvine is a large-scale news media site which gives you almost all the same stories you read on sites like MSNBC and CNN but presents them in a much more attractive package. Attractive not just in looks but in function as well. At Newsvine, we feel strongly that an article’s life only begins the second it is published. It is only when readers interact with it that it achieves its full impact.

You just read an Associated Press story about the fiery riots in France on a major news site. Why shouldn’t you be able to comment on it like you would on a blog entry? At Newsvine you can. Why shouldn’t you be able to chat about it with whoever else happens to be reading the story at the same time? At Newsvine you can… right within the story itself

 

Add this to the list of sites I’ll be checking out: After all of them are out. I will have had enough time to see which service adds the most value to my day, and then stick with it. Memeorandum won’t be easy to bring down.

Amazon Launches Mechanical Turk Beta

Thanks for checking out Amazon Mechanical Turk. We’re currently experiencing extremely heavy traffic to this beta site, mturk.amazon.com.   To read about Amazon Mechanical Turk and its web services APIs, go to www.amazon.com/webservices (where page load times are fast).   Also, send a blank email to aws@amazon.com if you want us to email you when page load times recover at mturk.amazon.com.  

– Amazon Mechanical Turk Team  

Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it. Learn more.

Choose from thousands of tasks, control when you work, and decide how much you earn.

If you are a software developer and would like to learn more about using Amazon Mechanical Turk APIs, click here.

Wow, a way for me to get extra money for Christmas and maybe have enough left to buy myself an Xbox 360. One thought though, am I going to be competing with Chinese Labor Prices? If I am, no thanks, I’d rather grind in a MMO for that amount of money. 

Microsoft Gadgets: There’s Over 50 of Them Now

There are currently 52 gadgets a person can install. Well, 51 if you don’t count the Get Firefox Bean Counter Gadget. My current new favorite is the Pac Man Gadget. Considering Microsoft is giving all of it’s VS2005’s away I wonder how many college kids are building new Gadgets now.

OPML Needs to Evolve

OPML, is great and perfect for what it’s intended to do. Create an outline that is usable by more than one service, of the links and RSS feeds that are important to you. Of course, with the new "RSS Bleeder" services that are appearing, that outline is parsed by a proprietary algorithm, which supposedly will let the service know what you are interested in, and thereby present or Bleed that info to you. OPML is great for Start.com, Live.com, NewsGator, and all of the other outliner/organizers, but I think we need more relevant and structured metadata input for services, which are going to ignore my outline, and "Bleed" to me what it thinks I will like, or create an A1 Page if you prefer.

 

Here is how the formula currently works.

My Links + My RSS Feeds + Your Algorithm = My A1 Page.

 

Well, How about this for Evolution?

My links + My RSS Feeds + My Interests + My Hobbies + My Location + My Gender + My Age + My Culture + My Musical Tastes + My Sexual Preference + everything else" + Your Algorithm = My A1 Page.

 

What are your thoughts? Of course OPML has a specific use, and the evolution of it would need to be named something else? Hey Dave Winer, how about an OPML 2.0?

 

UPDATE: I didn’t see this before, but Alex Barn already has been talking about OPML and where it should go but everyone seems to be missing my point. Attention.xml and OPML will only tell a service where I have been, and where I like going. It will not tell a service what I like, and what I would go to if I knew it existed. This is why I have posted this article. Human input is nessasary to get human output.

TailRank beta looks promising

TailRank just launched their public beta of their RSS Bleeder/Community site. I’ve only played with it for about an hour but I must say it looks interesting. Having said that, I really need to work on my OPML file, because–like I was saying yesterday–moving forward, it seems your OPML file is the most important information a service can use to customize a portal to you. My profile is here, if you want to check me out.

 

If I were to take the functionality of an OPML file, and add to it hard coded meta data about my interests that were easily and universally used by online services to customize a hub-site/rss feeder and outliner/RSS bleeder to my tastes, what could we call that file? We would need to change name and the attributes of the file so that each service on the web would be able to add it into it’s algorithm in a meaningful way. I need to give this some thought. 

Google Employees to get Hybrid Car Credits

Business 2.0 is reporting that:

 

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., offers its workforce a two-tier bonus system: $5,000 for buying a new hybrid car and $2,500 for leasing one.

 

Google Joins Hyperian Solutions, a database/accounting software provider in becoming–as far as I know–the first companies (Timberland is offering a program as well) to offer a program of this scope. I really hope my company does this soon, and I do think this marks the beginning of a trend of companies doing just that.

Microsoft says they will sell a million Xbox 360’s a month for the next three months.

Cnet:

"We think through the first 90 days of launch…we expect to have sold 2.75 (million) to 3 million consoles worldwide," said Bryan Lee, chief financial officer of Microsoft’s Home and Entertainment unit. Lee’s comments came as part of a speech at the Harris Nesbitt Media & Entertainment Conference in New York. Lee said the prediction should translate to about $1.5 billion in sales of Xbox devices, games and accessories during that period.

Microsoft plans to launch the Xbox 360 in the U.S. on Nov. 22. The company will follow up quickly elsewhere in the world, with the goal to have devices on store shelves in Europe on Dec. 2 and in Japan on Dec. 10.

I simply have to wait until they get their next gen HD into these units before I buy one. There is nothing more annoying than yet another component, in my living room. I can’t wait though, and I hope it’s soon. Bah, who knows, maybe I’ll get one if they come down in price.