Feb
20

Why Cloud Computing Doesn’t Make Sense For Me

Ever since the term ‘cloud computing’ became popular, I have failed to see what all the hype is about. With the recent talk about Chrome OS having no onboard programs, only webapps, and Google’s Nexus One focusing so much on web services, I began thinking about it and I realized that–the fact is–I hardly use the internet. Allow me to enumerate what I do on- and off-line.

Good-bye, Google (Part II)

By Eric Shull // Blog Post // 3 Comments

In Part I of this post, I gave my reasons for abandoning Google Search (as a step to abandoning Google as a whole). In reality, those reasons were only the spark that got me looking at alternatives, and if the alternatives hadn’t been so good, I would have probably returned, but the fact is, there are some other good search engines out there.
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Dec
7

Good-bye, Google (Part I)

By Eric Shull // Blog Post // 7 Comments

Last week Google announced they would be personalizing everyone’s searches regardless of whether they were logged in or not. I’m not a privacy nut, but this just seems wrong to me. I know, you can opt-out of the service, but how many people even know their searches are being personalized are are internet savvy enough do it? (Almost anyone who reads this blog probably is, but that’s not to say you’re the average internet user.)

Google news of late has gotten me thinking about search engines and what they’re supposed to do. As I mulled it over, I realized I’m not really interested in which web pages tell me what I want to know, I’m interested in what I want to know. Google only gives specific answers if you ask for something Google Calculator knows how to deal with. (Additionally, I often have the problem that a lot of results Google gives me are irrelevant to my search–many times I cannot even find my search terms on the page using the browser’s Find functionality.)

At the same time, I am starting to be concerned about putting all my eggs in one basket: Google Search, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, the list goes on. Earlier this year, Google broke the internet (which could happen to any search engine) and accidentally shared Google Documents with contacts users hadn’t given permission to access (which could have happened to any online text editing service). Incidents like this are subtle reminders to me that it may not be a good idea to put too much trust in a powerful company.

A testamonial about interviewing for Google changed my perspective on the Mountain View company. The number of questions the interviewers asked that focused solely on advertising revenues (2 out of 4) made me associate Google less with internet services and more with advertising companies like Lamar. It struck me that they’re less interested in providing great products and more interested in providing products that increase their ad revenues, which, while perfectly fine, makes them seem lame.

It hasn’t taken long for me to start relate to articles like this one which question whether Google is friend or foe, and articles like this one and this one sparked my interest in Bing, which I’d played with when it premiered but didn’t find much different from Google. As the second article points out, Bing is starting to provide answers where it can rather than mere links, a tactic Google might avoid, since its business strategy is so wound around advertising revenues. It might not be a good business decision to start giving the answers rather than driving traffic to sites with the answers. While Bing makes its money from advertising, it’s backed by Microsoft, which has a pretty good source of revenue through other means; Google doesn’t.

Those are the high points of my case against Google, the points that have convinced me to start looking at alternatives. I’ve abandoned Google Search (which I’ll discuss in Part II of this post), and my experience with Google Wave lasted all of a week: it sounds cool, and it looks cool, and I want it to be cool, but it’s just not. I’m sticking with GMail and Google Reader for the moment, but when I start a new job in a couple weeks and no longer have wireless during the day, being able to access my RSS feeds on my iPod Touch will be much less important, and I’ll probably switch to a desktop aggregator. In the meantime, GMail is awesome, but I do hope a Google Glitch doesn’t start showing my emails in Google Search results, and if I find a good alternative, I’ll have to seriously consider making the change to it (if you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments).

For a rundown of alternatives to Google Search, jump to Part II of this post.

Dec
7

How many users on Twitter?

By Tom Schultz // Blog Post // 1 Comment

Twitter has been pretty strict in making sure that the public is not aware of how many users they have and this is probably for good reason. I really think the amount of hype that Twitter has had is not justified. So then, the question I set out to answer is quite simple and that question is, how many twitter accounts are there?

So from that point there is another question that must be asked and that is, who would know the information I’m looking for, other than Twitter?

So first I google’d around a little and I found this article on TechCrunch which had some excellent information on the subject. Information about how user ID numbers on Twitter do not reflect the number of users that are on Twitter.

LeapFish

By Eric Shull // Blog Post // No Comments

I came across LeapFish this morning. It’s a new search engine that promises to aggregate everything that’s touted about the new web, web 2.0, real-time web, whatever you like to call it. While they have “an introductory video that can only be described as epic,” I think that LeapFish has a fundamental problem.

It’s not that it’s slow (it is, even when typing in the search box). The problem is that the term that comes to mind to describe it is not “search engine” but “distraction engine.” The front page is littered with News, Celebrity News, Mashable, Popular Videos, Facebook, Twitter, Weather, and Deal of the Day. Ultimately, LeapFish shows me a bunch of things I don’t care about, but will probably get distracted by anyway. I know where to find the things that I want, and at present I’m not interested in finding more things to do online just for the sake of doing things online.

The LeapFish video quotes Charles Darwin in observing that the organisms which survive are those that adapt fastest to change. I take a much more Boyd-like approach when it comes to people: he who makes the change survives. If businesses are trying to keep up, they’ve already lost. This is why no one has yet become a Google-killer: Google changes the game faster than others do; that’s how they stay on top. I remember watching Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail play catch-up with GMail’s storage and archiving capabilities. Google constantly innovates, changing the game, not playing catch-up. If LeapFish thinks it’s ahead of the curve because it adapts fast, it’s already lost to those who are creating the change it’s adapting to.

Sep
13

Myth of the Genius Programmer

By Eric Shull // Blog Post // 1 Comment

While I was setting up a GoogleCode Project the other day, I stumbled across the video The Myth of the Genius Programmer, a presentation put on by a couple of guys from Google. They’ve got a lot of good stuff to say about open source projects, getting them underway, and making them successful. The most useful advice for me (at this point in time) is to get out there–nothing will happen if you never show anybody what you’re working on. What are your tips for working with open source?

(Kudos to Steve for actually having contributed to open source projects.)

Aug
21

Week In Links – 8/21/2009

By Tom Schultz // Blog Post // No Comments

Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed a few things,

I always have a lot of links open in FireFox that I haven’t looked at yet.
Blog traffic drops like mad on Fridays

These are just some sites or articles that I found interesting or helped me in some way this week.

So here’s what I have this week! (other posters can add to this page as they wish)

Pointless Rants