Comments by Paul M. Watson

Oddly enough when I type “umbrella” into my Firefox location bar it takes me to a search for umbrella on Google, not to the first I’m Feeling Lucky result.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Common wisdom is “ask 5 people” and you’ll have a good distribution

I wasn’t part of the survey but it holds true for me. If I don’t see the result I want in the first three I modify my search, I don’t keep on scanning. I ignore the yellow-shaded “results” most of the time and the right-hand side ads all of the time.

I disagree with the I’m Feeling Lucky prediction though. Google won’t get paid if that happens and industry will kick up a huge fuss.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Couldn't crooks use old fashioned methods like paying off Khoi equipment suppliers to provide addresses?

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Nice application of QR codes. A friend in the UK has been using SMS shortcodes for awhile to deliver extra information for real-estate listings. Works with any phone that does SMS, you just SMS the four-digit number on the “for sale” sign to a shortcode and it returns either a link or extra info.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Confused about that last point. How do you watch TV on a 3″ screen and browser/text/game at the same time?

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

And yet porn has been available on the iPhone from day one for free; just use the web-browser built-in to the phone. No charge, no age verification and a lot more hardcore than these soft-porn apps.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Just wanted to say that there are whole companies that provide cake bases to other companies who buy in ready made icing to finally create a cake. Cake making is a componentised business. You can even buy un-iced cake bases in Tesco.

I get the metaphor though.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

I think you forgot the link (or my browser is borked.)

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

I don't see how Facebook as a company can scale up to handle a social-graph rich and complex enough to recommend a local doctor to me. To become the provider of doctor recommendations Facebook will have to link up more than my tech-savvy friends. It requires my friends to have a smartphone or a laptop to function. It has no presence in my local town hall meetings or sports clubs or down at the boat club. It would have to saturate these areas of life with Facebook representatives that get people hooked up. It isn't a technological problem, it is a feet-on-ground people problem. One company is not going to hook up the world, from Russia to China to India to Brazil to South Africa to the USA. It will take many companies working on a common social-graph fabric to make this work. Locking it all up in Facebook, invisible to Google and other web-miners, is a short-term idea.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Indeed, if anyone is going to achieve it then Facebook would be the one. My emotional response is negative to this though, I don't want Facebook being the sole technological social-graph provider of my community, province and country. I feel that we have a better chance of achieving a worthwhile technological social-graph if the attempt involves many partners in an open system than one company in a closed system. Fads will affect Facebook too as will internal problems. If all the effort is contained within one company then when the mood of the connected world changes that effort will be lost. If it is spread amongst a community of providers and technologies then much of the effort can be retained and transferred. It will take a humbler, longer-term thinking techno-oligarchy than Zuckerberg and FB for this to happen though. They will make their attempt, they may succeed for a short-while but ultimately the web and its connected people will outlast any one Facebook or Google.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Don't we have blogs for when 140 characters is not enough?

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

How relevant do you feel TechCrunch UK/Europe/Europa is? I'm not sure the TechCrunch US style of reporting works well in Europe. I had heard TC UK had relaunched but I'm not subscribed and I doubt I will as it is so closely affiliated with TC US. Must ask some colleagues if they have even heard of it.

Good luck anyway, hope it brings some meaningful coverage to dbTwang.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

One more banal comment for you; they should have called it the EMEAs, pronounced “emmys.”

As a South African I’ve got to say “Europas” is a daft name. First off, it is either a moon of Jupiter, a mythical Phoenician noblewoman, or a small island in the Indian Ocean, very little to do with Europe the area. And if you are going to lump Africa and the Middle East into Europe how about a less exclusive name.

Crunchies made much better sense.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

It was a 2001 reference. But you knew that.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

I think the kicker is the sheer volume of content Flickr *already has*. They don’t have to build up a new database of geo-tagged photos that have been “rated.” And they have first-hand access to it, no going through slow and flaky APIs. Competitors have to go through APIs that are slow impacting on their user experience.

But yes, nothing very innovative in Flickr’s approach.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

1. « Previous
2. Page:
3. 1
4. 2
5. 3
6. 4
7. ...
8. 17
9. Next »