mostly research stuff
okay, so i’m reading about all of the controvery surrounding elGoog’s new ‘my search history‘ offering for users…it’s kind of endless, so i’ll spare you the regurgitation (even if we all love a free hot meal!)…what i’m really wondering about is the long term value of re-storing the internet as a series of slices and dices on remote servers…uh, why not just do a back up of the internet (you know, like the wayback machine folks)?
…more importantly, is this in opposition to the loss of control over user experience data that search engines forfeit as they promote their desktop search tools? i’m a bit confused…you want me to download your desktop search tool, use it to record my search engine activity on my local machine, store all of the web pages i visit and then since you can NOT have that data, you’d like me to ALSO run another utility from your own interface and give you a copy of all of the data? hey, message to search engines ceo’s considering this dual-offering: fuck off.
…and more important then more importantly, it’s already being done in a more valuable way by the giant bookmarker communities…these include furl, spurl, del.icio.us and others..and they’re doing it for the benefit of everybody, not just the advertisers…message to search engine ceo’s: “creativity is about knowing how to hide your sources” (read: get your own damned ideas, stop copying giles and gislason)
…and then i heard about filangy!! have you seen this startup (battelle brought it up months ago) ? their original name was, “company being built for sale to elGoog competitor” but that URL was already taken…appears (per “whois“) to belong to chirag chaman in nyc…their idea: completely copy the elGoog ‘my search history’ model by using open-source nutch (the future of free search engine sw), pretend that it’s something different, then obviously sell the firm after requiring your zip code and email address for registration…come on, get real…they’ve even made a provision in their privacy policy that accounts for “acquisition by or merger with another company” - that’s just pathetic…hey, message to filangy, change your home page greeting to “help us build a company for sale and win a free ipod” and maybe, just maybe, i’ll stop suggesting that your site looks like a lotta stuff that’s already been done…
btw, if i’m correct, this is the exact same chirag chaman in nyc who recently served as cto of nextresponse, they were taken over by “active response” and chirag is no longer with the company (confirmed it this morning by telephone folks, just to make sure)…chirag is ex-oracle and banyan, ms cs from stanford and a creator of one of the first web operating systems (as an undergrad no-less)…my point? filangy is being built for sale by a guy who understands the buy side and the whole build-to-sell approach to business…
this blog is mostly safe for work, though i sometimes throw around a 'fuck' or two. you'll find a bunch of my articles from CI Magazine, SCIP online, other research pieces and some other crap. enjoy. there's lost of content here related to getting information about, around, from and through people and organizations...
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