I love this quote.
“We concluded that although we weren’t wild about the restrictions, it was even worse to not try to serve those users at all,” Schmidt said. “We actually did an evil scale and decided not to serve at all was worse evil,” he said, referring to the company’s famous “don’t be evil” creed.
Perhaps at this point, its time to change “Don’t Be Evil” to “Don’t Be More Evil”? That should be easier to hold to and more realistic. Also, can we get a visualization of this new Evil Scale in the Google lobby, right next to the search query display?
Oh, and can people stop calling the motto “Do No Evil”? It’s “Don’t Be Evil”, and it always has been.
(via Andy Beal)
January 30th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Controversy, Culture, General |
9 comments
So, I’ve been running an ad from NBC on my Blogads (they submit, I approve, no significant editorial decision involved). Now, NBC has sent a letter to the bloggers involved, asking them to post about the subject of the ad. You be the judge.
Dear Bloggers,
NBC would like your help in raising awareness about the dangers to children on the Internet. On Friday, Feb. 3 at 9 p.m., NBC will broadcast part 3 in a Dateline investigative series called “To Catch A Predator.”
Earlier this month Dateline wired a house with hidden cameras and watched as members of an Internet watchdog group, Perverted Justice, pretend to be 12 to 13 year old children chatting online. Within hours, adults solicited the undercover operatives for sex. Some sent graphic sexual images to what they believed were minors. Soon, many of those same men actually show up at the house for a rendezvous with the child. In just three days, this hidden camera investigation exposed 51 men, giving viewers a frightening glimpse at how widespread this problem is.
NBC is also adding an interactive element to this broadcast. Dateline correspondent Chris Hansen will participate in a live blog during the show, offering anecdotes, behind-the-scenes information and answers to viewer questions. In addition to the live blog, NBC has prepared an information page that including online safety tips, links and an Internet safety contract for parents and kids (scroll to the bottom of http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10912603/).
If your blog’s subject matter is in any way related to technology, family or the Internet, NBC would like to encourage you to start a conversation with your readers about the dangers of the Internet for children. Please don’t feel obligated to promote Dateline. All we ask is that you help raise awareness around this issue. And if you have any comments you think NBC or other viewers will find useful, please participate in the live on-air blog.
Thank you.
Jon Accarino
firstname.lastname@nbc.com
Forget about the subject. I realize that this is about protecting children from predators, but NBC didn’t send this out of the goodness of their heart, but for PR. Its not a bad idea, assuming some major blogger decides to do it. However, what if a blogger you respected, who blogged about an unrelated subject, like baseball, interrupts you with a post about a Dateline interview? What if you realized that there was a paid ad for the interview in the sidebar? Would you trust that blogger to honestly draw the line between paid and editorial content?
I’m not sure I would.
I don’t fault NBC for doing this. I think every advertiser on my blog should send me a pitch when (or better, before) they buy an ad, with no expectation of payback. I hope that if someone were to write about that pitch, they be transparent and point out the ad in their sidebar. I think NBC should have went the Marquis route, financing the discussion, so it was clear that the content is sponsored. I don’t think anyone can write about what the email writes, without mentioning the letter, and retain their credibility.
And I realize that by writing this, I’m playing right into their hands. I’m being upfront, and I’m not interested in what they wrote about. I find the idea interesting, especially since I was in the Marquis program, and, more importantly, I’m hoping other find this interesting enough to discuss and link to (:-)).
And here’s the free plug: Perverted Justice rocks! They do a good thing, and are hilarious while at it. Opie and Anthony turned me onto them.
Oops. I think I gave NBC’s plug to someone else. Sorry, I’m all out.
UPDATE: Responding to Steve Rubel’s post, I realize I left out something very important: The email was sent by Nick Faber, an employee of Blogads, by Blogads on behalf of NBC. A less savvy blogger might think that he was somehow obligated by taking the money from NBC to do what they say.
January 30th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Blogs, General |
4 comments
Today I had to dig a little deeper into the world of RSS. I’m preparing a Live.com environment for a potential customer and I needed tools to convert dynamic HTML pages (search queries) into RSS feeds so I could add them into Microsoft’s feed collector. I haven’t found the perfect tool yet, but here are some nifty things you just got to try out:
RSS2PDF (Beta): Free Online RSS, Atom or OPML to PDF Generator, just insert a URL or address and select the options you want, then enter a title for the .pdf file. The tool works although the title I entered was replaced by a standard ‘doc’ which I had to alter after I selected the download location. No biggie. Here’s an example of the pdf of my feed (12kb, 3 pages) - I didn’t select ‘images’, but you can do it if you want to.
On that same site, there’s a link to an RSS2PDF for Flickr, to easily create PDF archives based on any Flickr newsfeed. (The photos must be made PUBLIC.) Enter information for a particular user on Flickr (such as yourself) and/or Tags separated by commas for photos relating to a specific subject. Too cool !
The tools have been made available in handy bookmarklets, which you just have to drag to your favorites for quick access later on.
You can also add the RSS2PDF Module to your Google Personalized Homepage for instant access:
Visit Google Personalized, Click on the link on the top left marked ‘Add Content’, then enter the following URL into the ‘Search by topic or feed URL’ textbox:
http://rss2pdf.com/rss2pdf.xml
Next topic : Google2RSS
There’s two sites that I’ve found where people are using the API to produce an RSS feed that is based on a simple search query:
Ben Hammersley’s tool allows you to subscribe to a search request, so you can see things coming in and out of the Google top ten. Easy to use too, simply add your search request to the end of this URL:
http://www.benhammersley.com/tools/googlerss.cgi?q=
for example
http://www.benhammersley.com/tools/googlerss.cgi?q=coolz0r
and subscribe to that URL in your favorite newsreader.
The other tool is GooRSS where the RSS is generated by instantRSS, and you find an RSS link on the bottom of the returned page when you’ve done a search query.
Then there is also GMailRSS, where you can use GMail as an RSS reader. That’s something I like a lot. You’ll have to have some programming knowledge though.
- Since GMail stores all state on the server, it doesn’t matter where you login from to get your RSS fix! You can read a couple of feeds at work, a couple at home from a different machine etc. and everything is synchronized. This was the killer feature I was missing in all RSS readers.
- GMail’s infinite archiving capability effectively creates a personal news archive for everyone.
- GMail’s search helps you search easily through RSS feeds.
- Individual messages can be marked as read and unread, so its easy to track what you are reading.
To get this to work you need to convert RSS feeds into some form Gmail can understand. Karu’s rss2mail convertor, GMail labels, and filters are coming to the rescue. Read the basic strategy for implementation here.
Last but not least is the Feed2Podcast tool, an engine that instantly turns your blog’s RSS feed into a Podcast. There’s nothing more to add. Listen to a sample here. This tool kind of is the same as Talkr, something I reported on in july last year. To be honest, this Feed2Podcast voice sounds better, especially when you have to listen to long texts. Compare : here’s the old voice edition of that blogpost about Talkr. I’ll check out the ‘Talking Blogs later this week to do a decent comparison.
We have improved the back end of our text to speech engine. We hope you love the improvements this upgrade has made. We are getting very close to the AT&T Natural Voices quality level. We would also like to announce that in the comming weeks we will have a choice of voices for our bloggers to choose from. We are adding a female voice to our already popular male voice.
Cross-posted on [Marketing Thoughts]
January 30th, 2006
Posted by
Coolz0r |
Services, Search, Tools, General |
10 comments
Google is about to release a new version of its toolbar. According to this features page, it will include:
- Enhanced search box - will suggest spelling corrections, popular searches, bookmarks and search history as you type into it
- Add custom buttons for favorite websites, or add one from the forthcoming button gallery
- Bookmarks - remember when I broke the bookmarks in Google Search History? Here’s why they were important. Now you can get your bookmarks, tagged any which way you please, in your Google toolbar
- Send To - send a web page via email, SMS or blog (
no word if its Blogger, or other services)
Sign into your Google Account from the toolbar
More in the morning, when I get to play with it. Expect the download link to go active by then. There’s more in this Bloomberg article.
I’ve got a theory on why Google is releasing this at this point (assuming Google holds onto product releases until strategic times), but I am prevented by Non Disclosure Agreement from sharing, and I have to see how the toolbar interacts with other software to confirm my suspicions.
UPDATE: ZDNet says that there will also be an enterprise version of the the toolbar released with features for IT adminstrators. Good way to foster goodwill and make sure admins allow install of the toolbar on their systems, no?
UPDATE 2: The button gallery is live. Buttons are available for Slashdot, CBS Sportsline, CNET, MP3.com, among others. According to Search Engine Watch, site owners can create their own in under ten minutes. As for the Enterprise version, they say:
Separately, Google has also released a toolbar for the enterprise, that offers the ability to centrally deploy the toolbar, create group features, and create custom buttons specific to an enterprise’s own internal intranet or network.
UPDATE 3: It’s live! Installing now…
UPDATE 4: Thoughts: The new Toolbar is 627k, 76k larger than Toolbar 3. When turning on the translation feature, you are warned that it has privacy implications. You might as well turn off the “Go” button, since it no longer has the handy drop down to choose different services. The drop down is now within the G logo inside the search box, which is efficient yet makes the “Go” a waste of space.
The toolbar comes with two buttons, News and Button Gallery. You can add site search, Images, Local, Groups or Froogle from the settings, and anything else from the Button Gallery. [you can also add “I’m Feeling Lucky”, if you really like four-leaf clovers] The Google logo on the left hand side now takes you to Google, once again cutting out a handy drop-down menu.
I’ve turned off the “Send To” button, since it only works with Gmail and Blogger. Buttons I’ve added (click to add): Mood Ring and weather.
January 30th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Toolbar, Tools, General |
10 comments
