Ray CHOW

Obsolete Trackback Policy and Suggestion about Trackbacks blended with Tags

Many people still rise up against what they think to be a kind of 'Trackback Hacking'.

Say for example (A) has published a post that supports Trackbacks by way of comment. Any time later, a blogger (B) might write a related post, not necessary wholly  ‘dedicated’ to (A) post but with enough relevance so that (B) post can go as a Trackback in (A) comments, full stop.

Many people don’t like to receive Trackback on their blog if the (B) post doesn’t include full link and reference to their (A) post (e.g,.) while they accept ‘manual’ comments which in general link to the author's blog, precisely this kind of links which are ABSOLUTELY NOT RECIPROCAL.

I really don’t care about this obsolete Trackback rule and what I can see as a possible improvement (not only in bloggers’ mind) is a mechanism that will tie up Trackback and Tags in the wake of the Blogsphere development.

Indeed, with the development of 'standardized' Tags, one suitable application can consist in allowing Trackbacks on the basis of a (defined) level of Tags matching.

As an example, my configuration (for this post) would automatically accept any Trackback matching 75% of Tag list below.

Tags: open trackback 2.0,tags, blogging, web2.0, trackback

New Top 500 Feature – [[[[[ ACTUALLY ]]]]] See Everyone!

What would/will it take you Mr Feedster (or anyone else in this field) to bring next the TOP 500 BLOGS by community of language ???    

I do like the current [english only] Feedster TOP 500 version but I am seriously worrying - as a french mother tongue reader – about the fact that I am certainly missing, more than ever

,  some of the other crusty (non-english) blogs.   

Tag: Scott Rafer

Thanks …

2 substantial blogs I liked to read over the past decade, in particular the following two posts:

   Indeed, online file storage is in my view (one of) the next Internet success to come.   

   How really advanced are these guys?  (don't miss the excellent interactive comments in this post)  How naïve are them or why would they want to appear so naïve? Anyway, it’s a great suspense and a fabulous [open] debate.

Thanks …                                                                                                    Tags: techcrunch   riya

Bill's Weather ... (what so many clouds ...)

One step back

Google Book Search has replaced « Google Print » project name.

“ A more descriptive name …” says Google but above all it looks more a less provocative name and I congratulate the MontainView firm for having been not only a pioneer in many areas - including the challenge of massive digitization projects - but also for bringing piquant in many of their initiatives.   

Grant (Google product manager) referred to the confusion that some users might have with the « Google Print » name since some people could think the project was made to help them to print out their document or visited web pages, hum … although he said it was one factor among others, the fact remains that this (unique) example looks like derisory considering the fraction of users who where actually confused.

More importantly, it was highly preferable to remove the “print” word from any designation. What was the actual meaning of « Google Print »? Not to allow end users to make any copy but really (for Google) to “virtually” print the whole traditional supports of knowledge through the Internet screen so that Google would become the first XXI century publisher .

Google's re-christening aims to feign to be back in this project (rather) as a pure Search Engine.      

Google Print Massively Plagiarized (Update)

Google definitively opened a Pandora’s box.

In a previous post I already mentionned  Yahoo and the Microsoft MSN Book Search - newly unveiled - digitization projects.

Google Print yet again triggered off a new mission for massively digitizing books, lately at publisher Macmillan, which have decided to launch their own project (source http://www.iwr.co.uk/ ).

Undoubtedly, it would be opportunistic to initiate soon an aggregator site which will allow book searches through ALL the different virtual libraries (in progress and next) and from a single interface, (among one of the best examples of XML usefulness).

Why Google should not buy TiVo

The present speculative idea that would see Google as the right cannibale for buying TiVo is in my opinion a wrong forecast.  

It would be unprecedented for Google to invest in the $500m range to buy a company though Google’s war-chest represents now 14 times this amount. Google’s appetite for dominating the chaos arisen following the growth of information technologies is still 100 times beyond such acquisition.

It would be surprising to see Google entering a hardware distribution market while the company is keen to deploy advanced online services (only). Without depriving TiVo of innovative features, the current DVR concept is still governed by old marketing rules. It is required to buy or rent a box (yet an other one) to managed downloaded content. One thing Google can offer soon is (online) space to store your video – CORRECTION – this is already done, the actual next service will be to store your TV SHOW selection somewhere on the Internet – far more easy to manage since, contrary to private photos or videos, TV SHOWs are generic in that sense it is not needed to duplicate the same selection each time a user wants it (i.e. a true Google indexing work). It is not excluded that TV companies decide before all to make all their TV SHOWs (streaming) available on the Internet. It would cost Google  $100 per user and more to buy TiVo customer base in the television market while for instance people would certainly accept to pay $10 to sign up an online recording TV SHOW account provided that they can easily display their selection on any screen at home. Basically it should be possible to fix this issue for less than $50 per user with a kind of WiFi adaptor for TV screen.

Google’s main added-value will certainly be in the TV SHOW programming domain where TV SHOW selection and retrieving SHOWs will actually be user-friendly+ (worldwide!) and it’s not guaranteed that Google needs TiVo know-how to make a name here too.

Now how sponsored-links will enter the TV Ads market is an other story. Finally TiVo’s box could be of Google’s interest if it was just a universal  WiFi video adaptor + remote control. Sounds like there is a useless disk in TiVo (which was initially the heart of this system) that becomes leaden for making such deal attractive.