iPhone reviews and ignoring Bloggers

The iPhone reviews are out and all the reviews are mostly positive. 

• USA Today
• WSJ
• NY Times
• Newsweek

Its on the top of techmeme and everybody is writing/raving about it. But what caught my attention is the difference in the strategy between a Apple and Microsoft on their respective product launches(Vista vs iPhone). Microsoft had handed out high end notebooks preloaded with Vista to various blogger during the Vista launch mainly to generate buzz and positive reviews. As usual some of the Bloggers didn't like it and it created a lot of flames in the blogging circles.

Compare that with Apple's strategy for the launch of iPhone. It didn't bother to send an iPhone to Gizmodo or Engadget. The reviews from WSJ, NYT etc are setting the tone for the conversation and most of it is positive. All the Bloggers are piling on the conversation and most of it is just a re-hash of what is written by the WST, NYT etc.

Apple generates the most interests from Bloggers, there are millions of blog post devoted to Apple and yet Apple ignores the Bloggers. Any ideas on why Apple didn't bother to send out an iPhone to its fan-base in the Blogosphere ? I am sure its nothing to do with negative reviews, since most of the A-listers are Apple fan's anyway and iPhone has got the best reviews from the likes of Walt Mossberg.

 It might be a brilliant strategy to ignore , since it is generating more positive buzz than the Microsoft  strategy of engaging with the Blogosphere.

On human powered search

Just last week Udi Manber, Google's VP of Engineering gave a presentation "Search is a hard problem". The top three reasons cited by him were

• Scale and diversity are almost beyond comprehension
• Expectations and needs will continue to grow
• 20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before

Considering that Google processes billions of queries and still 20 to 25% new queries is a huge number.  Consider this to the route taken by Mahalo, "Human Powered Search Engine". The NYT article on Mahalo says

Mahalo now has pre-prepared pages for 5,000 terms related to entertainment, travel, health, technology and other subject areas. The company plans to expand its coverage to 10,000 terms by year-end, and eventually to provide results for one-third of the most common search terms.

The common search term is a factor of time and its is a moving target. Paris Hilton might be the top search term on Mahalo today,but that will change in a quick second with another breaking news.

• Can a Human Powered Search keep up with the changes in the real world ?
• Can it correct itself if a page is broken ?
• What about personalization ?
• What about languages and user location.

To be called a search, Mahalo should provide at least these bare minimum functions before it can try to improve on Google's results. Otherwise one would have to categorize Mahalo as a directory and not a search engine.

At Mahalo and other “human powered” sites, the machine performs a first cut at the search in advance of a user’s request, and the results are then winnowed and shaped by human editors, then stored, a process that Mr. Calacanis terms “editorialized search.”

This feels a lot like the the "Google Answers" experiment, where experts were supposed to help you with searches. Users are smart enough to switch search engines if there is a lot of webspam  on one of the searches and compare a combination of results from Yahoo, MSN, Ask and Google.

Clip Blast has a long way to go

Tried Clip Blast after reading this post by Robert Scoble. After doing some searches, one can see its not yet ready for prime time. Did a comparison video search for "Matt Harding" on ClipBlast and Google Video search. Google video search has more than 300 results and clipblast has 12 results. Since Matt Harding was a very "youtube" thing, I tried  "Microsoft Surface". Same results. Google has over 200 video's  and clipblast has around 20.I guess Scoble was over-excited since all his video's are indexed. 

Great advice for startups and entrepreneurs

Yi-Wyn Yen has some great advice for young entrepreneurs who are looking for exit options. Writing about Zenter, which was recently acquired by Google.

On getting acquired

That's like being a single woman who desperately wants to get married. Of course you want it to happen, but 99% of the time if you purposely try to get acquired (or married), it won't

On founder's dilemma of getting killed by the market leaders

Big companies like eBay (EBAY) and Microsoft (MSFT) may have more manpower and financial resources, but they also have disadvantages. "Often times, they're not as driven. They're not willing to make the sacrifice, like two guys sleeping on air mattresses, to make their product really good," says Graham. "Microsoft has to think about web-based applications that don't threaten Windows. A company like Zenter doesn't care about hurting Windows.All they want to do is make the best application."

Great stuff and a must  read. 

Technorati Tags: Zenter

Ron Paul on Youtube, Myspace and Web2.0 surge

The last time Youtube and the Blogosphere etc had a big impact on the election was during the macaca incident with George Allen campaign for United States Virginia senate. Ultimately George Allen lost the election with a thin margin of 9,339 votes and if the macaca incident hadn't happened, perhaps George Allen would have been in the Republican presidential primaries. Even the Republican Senate Internet campaign handbook spelled out various ways to avoid future macaca moments.

Interesting the Internet is helping second rung candidates like Ron Paul to reach a wider audience. Ron Paul has been consistently winning the post debate online polls, because a huge boom in his online popularity. The mainstream media has mostly ignored Ron Paul and this has driven his supports to use the Internet for propagating his message. Ron Paul has huge following in Youtube, Myspace and Facebook.

His  supporters are using Eventful for organizing meet-ups and rally's. Ron Paul videos are making it to the top Youtube and his name is one of the most searched terms in technorati consistently. It will be interesting to watch his progress over next few months and see how much impact the grass root strategy of using Internet has in the long run. 

Technorati Tags: ron paul

Interviews conducted on Second Life ?

Am I missing something here. WallStreet Journal as an article about how recruiters are conducting virtual interviews on Linden Lab's second life.

Some employers are experimenting with Second Life, the online virtual community owned by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, to screen prospective hires. The program allows job seekers to create a computer-generated image to represent themselves -- known as an "avatar" -- and communicate with executives of prospective employers as though they were instant-messaging.

What kind of Job requires Second Life Avatar's for screening process. Is all this for real ? The article gets even more hilarious

Mr. Dowler didn't have any major technical problems, although during the job interview, he couldn't figure out how to manipulate the avatar to sit in the chair -- so he sat it on top instead. (Others at the event began floating in the air while doing their interviews.)

Are these jobs for real ? Or are they jobs in Second Life virtual  world.

Without a WebDB, Google Office far from complete

I don't quite agree with OM, when he implies that Google Office is complete with Google's acquisition of Zenter and they are in equal footing with ZOHO. Web Office is different beast when compared to "Desktop Office". The paradigm has shifted  away from "personal productivity". I don't think most users have a "personal productivity " problem which Microsoft is not able to solve and Google is solving by putting all the office products online. Sharepoint and office deliver a far superior experience compared to any online application. With regards to ZOHO, the product that sets ZOHO apart and ahead of Google ZOHO Creator, which truly changes the game on how applications can be developed and delivered over the web. It has the potential to create a SaleForce AppExchange like ecosystem. A Web DB or Zoho DB with JSON API's can allow anybody to create dynamic web pages which can be delivered via blogs or even Google pages.  

Technorati Tags: ZOHO, WEbDB

Zoho Meeting, one more app from zoho's portfolio

ZOHO has been consistently impressing all with its agility and the speed at which it is launching new app's in this ever changing landscape.  Zoho has now announced the release of ZOHO meeting.

We announced Zoho Meeting in March and it was in Private Beta till now. Today it steps out as a Public Beta where anyone with a Zoho Account can use Meeting. The application is free while it is in Beta.

Of all the applications from ZOHO, the one which has caught my attention is ZOHO creator, which is a Form Based Database application. It can be used to create online database and HTML forms to leverage that data in a matter minutes. I had written about this in the past and even took Zoho creator out for a test drive and was impressed with intuitive UI. ZOHO Creator opens up the opportunity for community to develop complex CRM or ERP applications with ZOHO underneath, much like SalesForce's AppExchange.

ZNET has a an article quoting Raju Vegesna (Zoho's chief evangelist)

More near term, Zoho is working on a higher-end database solution. Unlike Creator, which is a forms-based database application builder, Zoho DB will handle search and import and export of data and tables from a variety of formats, including Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server, Vegesna said.

ZOHO should open up ZOHO Creator/DB  via JavaScript API's and thus making it more flexible. Right now (atleast when I last checked) the ZOHO Creator forms had to be embedded as IFRAME in HTML pages. Had published a white paper on WebDB and Javascript enabled online DB.  It would be great if ZOHO offered API to their data base apps. This would provide more flexibility to developers to add database driven application via Javascript in HTML pages. This way users can create widgets, mashups etc of their own. Web based applications can now be reduced to just HTML pages, which can be hosted on blogs or even Google pages or geocities etc.

Apple Safari Beta Proxy Support ?

So I decided to download Apple Safari Beta for Windows XP. There is no proxy support for this beta launch and there is no help/message regarding how you can set your proxy.

The proxy button is "disabled" and there is no text indicating this feature is disabled. Either this is a bug or this is by design. Either way, Apple lost the initial curiosity or wow factor. With all the security scares surrounding the launch, I have un-installed Safari.