OK, I’ve really tried to giv e Google Buzz a run and see how useful it can be.  My problem is two fold. First is the lack of integration into my GAFYD (Google Apps for Your Domain) email, the second is lack of integration into the linked sites.

GAFYD:  Lack of integration is a source of constant frustration with this tool.  I personally love the Email, Docs, Calendar.  Don’t want to give it up.  The problem is feeling like a second class citizen because GAFYD does not include things like Reader, Voice or now Buzz.  (sure it’s coming.. but..)  What is the purpose of that little checkbox on the dashboard to get new features if we REALLY don’t get things early?  or at all?

Without Buzz being integrated into my REAL email account, it forces me to go to yet another location for information.  I now have Google Reader, Twitter, Buzz, Email, Facebook.. hmm.. too many.  It isn’t really a solution to fix that problem and just caused a NEW location to look.  If it was part of my email, it might be ok.

LACK OF TIE IN TO LINKED SITE:  My second beef is the lack of tie in back to the social site.  If I am following someone on Buzz, they post something on Twitter.. then I have to either respond in Buzz, and people using Buzz can see it.  The problem is the loss of conversation on Twitter?  I have now moved conversation from the main site (where presumably MOST people follow) to Buzz, where it is a parasite, leaching the good value off to allow itself to live.  Had it not been for the host, Buzz wouldn’t exist.. hell, even parasites provide SOME value back to their host (like cleaning bacteria, etc).. Buzz is just migrating traffic from other sites to their own!  If you are building a nice following on Twitter, it is detrimental to your core group of followers.. unless they all use Buzz.

Here is how I keep track of things.  I’d be interested to know if others have found Buzz to be useful in a way to help consolidate my current sources of news.

Google Reader:  I use this for my blog reading and following.  This link is to my shared items.. but I keep track of around 40 blogs.  It is a lot per day.. I need to find a way to remove dupes… too many people post the same news.

Twitter:  I have found this to be a great source of news.  I use Twitter to keep up with things.. not typically to reach out or communicate.  I’m a consumer, not a producer.

ReadTwit:  I use Readtwit to pull links from Twitter into my RSS feeds.  This helps me while on the bus and using Google Reader on my iPhone.  It finds links in the posts of people I follow on Twitter, pulls in the content and makes an RSS feed for me.  Nicely integrated.

Any additional news consumption is through random surfing, reading or links emailed to me.  My open question then is this.  How does Buzz help?  I would like to benefit from a tool.. I just don’t find this one useful.

People are going on about how the Kindle is at risk because of the iPad.  Personally  I have not seen how well the iPad works in daylight.. but I know the Kindle works like a champ.  That’d be the big risk I think.. but…

I think the iPad vs. Kindle is not the right question.  It is potentially impactful for both companies.  Now.. will Amazon suffer because of the iPad?  Maybe a little at first, but I don’t think significantly in the long run.  Here is why.

Hardware sales are not hugely profitable.  If Amazon were to lose ALL hardware sales for the Kindle, it would be visible.. but what if they do an update to the iPhone Kindle app and make it more iPad friendly?  What if it is competitive with the iPad eBook app?  Do they have exactly the same content?  No..  Will it breed competition?  Yes.  Isn’t this better for all of us long-term?

I think that Amazon will do just fine giving away a Kindle app and having sales through their Kindle store on the iPad.  It should be a fantastic opportunity for them.  If I was the product guy on the Kindle App, I’d be jumping for joy right now.  Yet another great platform for me to sell books through.

OK.  So Today Flickr rolled out their Face tagging option.  They are really excited about it and trying to make the social waves to get something to talk about.  I seem to be one of the few people who are not only not impressed, but think they got it all wrong.

First, tagging is up to me.  If I want to tag someone in a photo, sure.. it MAY be a Flickr member, but most likely they are not.  Another scenario which happens all to often, families have a Flickr account.  Not one person, but an entire group . The way photo tagging is set up, I can not tag photos of these people without Flickr wanting to spam them to join Flickr.  HEY.. they are already on Flickr, just a shared account!  Now let me tag a name!  Seriously!

I also have to question their lack of ability to license any facial recognition software to this point.  It is 2009.  I expect more.  Maybe you are worried about scale..can you have that many users?   Make sense, sure.. but make it an opt in option maybe.  Hell, sell it as a premium service.  Upsell me Flickr . Get more than the $24 a  year from me by providing more value!  I’d buy in for a good product.  I am already a pro member.  Let’s grow this service.  Add in a backup service maybe?  Allowing downloads, archives, etc.  I’d pay.  I already do!  I pay $5 a month to ensure my photos are protected. I only pay you $24 a year to show a small selection.

OK.. I am ranting here.

I do have to say I think they thought well about the permissions issue.  But at this point, it is like having a fantastic alarm and security system on a car that I am not driving? How will this help me?  eh.. not sure.  I have been waiting for a LONG time to be able to tag people in photos on Flickr.  I had really had my fingers crossed for facial recognition.  At this point, I will just ignore this feature.  It is not helping me at all.

Flickr.. you disappointed me.  You took WAY too long to add a sub-par service that really doesn’t meet the needs of your customer base at large.  It does serve somewhat of a purpose.  Maybe this is a .73 BETA version. Not sure.  Not happy.  Not using the new feature . SIGH

The news of Bing this week was not overly exciting to me.  I tried it, sure. It has some neat things like the video search that plays back movies as you roll over them.. and the perpetual scrolling of images with no next button.  Do these really help me solve my search issues? I think not.  Eye candy and UI wizardry do not make my life easier.  Don’t get me wrong.. I LOVE me some eye candy.

So what is this new search product?  If you have not heard of it, it is called Google Squared.  What is Google Squared?  It is essentially a dynamic spreadsheet that brings back search results and helps you organize things, here is why I like it.

Sure, if you spend a little time you can come up with some goofy results, but the potential for an amazing thing is here.  Heck, I would even call it damn fine at this point if you understand what it is doing.  If you are looking for data that could be identified as somewhat structured, you may have a need for squared.  If you are into researching and comparing things, you may have a need for squared.  If you search and put various results into a spreadsheet, you may have a need for squared.  (ok, I really hate redneck jokes, so I’ll stop)

Check out my search for Digital SLR cameras.

Notice how it automatically brings back a set of results for certain cameras. compares things it knows about those cameras and presents it in a nice format?  Amazing.. right?  Watch.. even better.  What if I know there is a camera I wanted to see, but it is not on the list?  See that ADD ITEM on the bottom?  I just don’t want that simple ADD NEXT 10.. I am more clever than that. here goes.

Type the name of the camera in that box.  The Camera you knew did not exist.  Were you thinking of the Nikon D90?  Me too!  Here goes..

Notice how the D90 is now there, filled in and ready for my evaluation?  Fantastic.  No more trying to dig through DPREVIEW page by page trying to compare the right cameras.  OK.. one thing that was killing me was the Sony camera that showed up.  Seriously, who buys a Sony Digital SLR?  Nobody.. that’s right. Do you see that X?  The one by the name?  Yup, click it and you can kill an individual entry!  Wow.. nice.  Buh bye Sony!

OK, lets go back to the original image in the post.  This time let’s look at the columns.  See the COLOR SUPPORT?  That looks a little wonky.  Let’s kill that by clicking the X on the COLUMN this time. OK, getting better.  Now, I am interested in knowing what type of sensor each camera has.  CMOS? CCD? Maybe for me it matters.  Let’s see if Google Squared can help.

Google Squared is now recognizing that SENSOR TYPE is an attribute of Digital SLR cameras.  Amazing.  Lets do that, click sensor type and WHAM!  all filled in.  Did you notice something cool?

Notice how it quickly fills in the items, but it does so by searching out the answer.  Sure.. it goes back to some structured data somewhere, but that my friends is some cool magic.  If you didn’t like of the entries, you can have it search for more options, or just manually put one in.  For me, I am sure the Canon EOS came with a Kryptonite sensor.. so I corrected it.  (lets hope I don’t add to their database this way)  :)

Go crazy, try a couple things.  Squared is really making me happy.  Want to see if they know about bracketing on the camera?  Or price?  try it.  I was surprised by it’s success rate.

Squared is really pulling through for me.  I added in some columns I wanted, deleted things I didn’t, added in cameras that made sense and removed the ones that said sony.  Interesting addition I tested, I could have searched for Digital SLR -sony and it would have excluded those for me, but it is a little to selective.  I think it does a -sony search on ANY result and not on the fields.  All in all, quite an impressive set of results.

OK, now what would I change?  Or add?  I am sure these things are in work, but here was my initial set of frustrations.

1. Why can’t I open this in a Google Docs spreadsheet once done?  or export to Excel?  That should be an option

2. Re-ordering, I’d like to be able to move rows up, columns over, etc.

3. Advanced searching with modifiers on each field.  Search for the -+and ” modifiers within ONLY that subset of structured data.

4. Change / Add an image.  That’d be helpful when it messes up

5. alternate row colors?  If it gets big, it’s hard to read.  Some styling might help

6. Widgets, why can’t I embed this anywhere?  That would be amazing

7. Sorting live based on a column, as you click it re-orders, as data changes underneath, it reorders.  (think live price searches embedded on a page that update over time)

So, you can see why I like Squared.  Sure, it has some quirks.  Most things do, but for an amazing search concept, something I would use on a regular basis for research, etc.. I gotta give it a two thumbs up!  Nice job to the team behind this work.  I am impressed.

Check this out.. embed music right from drop.io

You can find out more here http://playlist.io

Seems like “real time” is all the craze these days. Everyone wants to talk about real time this and that.  I don’t want to rant too much here, but just a little clarification on the importance of real time vs. the misleading facts and or outright confusion.

Real Time Vs. Ajax
Sometimes I see “real time” being used in replacement term of what Ajax has done for us for quite some time. In the background, the “real time” features are using Ajax for their refreshing. Ajax is a way for the browser to keep a channel open back to a search result.  That results may or may not be returning updated data. To me, this is what Facebook is doing with their release. This saves you from doing a page refresh to see the new content.  Nothing different from an old skool Ajax call to retrieve data.

The Real “Real Time”
Now this is where the rubber meets the road in my book. Real time search.  As the web grows older, so does the amount of content we have access to.  Worse yet, links to articles that are 7 years old are useless in some circumstances;  yet in others, this old data is king!    I am sure I’m not the only one researching data, getting excited about a data point (or sad) only to realize it is a decade old!  :)

Bringing time in the search continuum is important if you can decipher user intent, see what the searcher is actually looking for and provide the most up to date information.  I don’t necessarily agree with a reference in this article about Larry Page and “real time search”.  It implies that Twitter has something over Google by beating them to the punch with Real Time Search.  Twitter and Google are two different things.  Indexing billions of pages (google) vs. Twitter, selecting from your own database and sorting by time stamp. These are NOT the same.  No where NEAR the same. Not even close.

The New York Time has released a Real Time News page.  What does this mean?  It means they caught on to the trend of the buzz word and are bring the news to you immediately.. no page refresh needed.  Hmm.. how useful is this?  Check out this screen grab.

Is 6 updates in the last 20 minutes in “real time” really that helpful?  One could argue for REALLY slow readers maybe.  Or dial up users?  Not sure, I just don’t find it valuable.  Again.. NYT morphed the Ajax call in their web page to a market buzz word beyond the buzz of Ajax itself.  (or for those who just want to call out the XML HTTP Request Object as the real thing and Ajax is just as buzzy).. ok, rambling here.

You get my point.  Check out Google Trends comparing Ajax Search to Real Time Search

Holy cow!  Look at that spike starting in April!  I’ll go back to a use case that make sense for the types of Real Time being hyped.  Twitter real time could be useful.  I don’t want to diminish the power of users in “real time”, just clarify it.  FAR more people are contributing to the web as a whole than the number of global Twitter users.   I used WolframAlpha to get a guess on number of Twitter Users.  It is a dated number from last year.  I took the number, grew it a bit and it places it in the millions… it is FAR below what you would see for overall content contributors on the web.  Think of all the webmasters, writers, bloggers, forum users, commentors, social network site users.. Even if you took a percentage of the internet users in the US only at 10% contributors, you are still a magnitude above twitters user base.

So.. my point.  Real time search of Twitter users can provide value.  It is MUCH easier to get this type of data.. This is real time power of crowdsourcing your own site.  Up to the minute data from a small user base.

For a real search engine to index the billions of pages world wide and have a real time search of that index.. without clogging the internet trying to keep up with updates.  Hell, I am not sure how you would even do that.  I just think overall value of the collective real time web publishing traffic could yield more useful information over what real time Twitter search could do. Both could have uses for sure.

I just think that “real time” only matters in the context of a search.  If you are bringing back a page and using a background call to load fresh data to the page, you are just doing a fancy “F5″.. and it’s umimpressive (cough) Facebook.  If you can solve real time data collection from billions of pages.. You win!  :)  If you could couple Google real time with Wolfram Alpha computational site.. hmm, crazy!

UPDATE:  This was initially a list ONLY out of Twitter book, as people suggest updates, I validate and add to the list, then I will place the update below.  * means it is NOT in the book

I was one of your typical people who did not “get” Twitter back in 2007 when I signed up . It took me a while but I got there.  Once #TwitterBook came out I was anxious to see what else I could learn.  It was a great read for showing value in what most see as a social toy at best.

I had asked Sarah Milstein and Tim O’Reilly about a list of links from their book.  They had compiled a good set of tools for Twitter.   One did not exist, so I will start to compile their list here as well as add to it over time.. for now this is the URLs mentioned in #TwitterBook.

General Links

• Accessible Twitter – Twitter that works with assistive technologies
• Twitter Help – If you need help, get it from the source
• Twitter Search – Search things in Twitter like #FollowFriday
• Yiying Lu – Original creator of the Fail Whale
• GetSatisfaction – Twitter Customer Service
• Spam Issues? – Twitter Spam reporting
• Widgets? – Widgets for Twitter

Twitter Tools

• Hashtags – Tracks and shares hashtags from Twitter
• Tagal.us – Find out what hashtags are all about
• Twtvite – simple event management from Twitter
• TweetBeep – Free Twitter Alerts
• BackTweets – Search links on Twitter
• Twitturly – Top Twitter links Real Time
• TweetMeMe – The hottest stories on Twitter
• MicroPlaza – popular Twitter news
• TwitterCounter – Ultimate Twitter Stats Tool
• Twitalyzer – Track your influence on Twitter
• TweetBrain – Crowdsourcing Questions on Twitter
• TweetChat -
• TweetGrid – Create a search Dashboard
• TwiMailer – Advanced Mailing solution for Twitter
• TwitterFeed – Feed your blog to Twitter
• TipJoy – Get tips on Twitter for charity
• TweetStats – Get stats on usage
• TweetReach – How far did your tweet travel?

Trends and Advanced Searching Tools

• Twist – See and compare trends
• WhatTheTrend – Find out what is trending on Twitter
• TwitScoop – Tag cloud of current Twitter Trends
• Twopular – Popular Trends
• TweetGrid – Create a Twitter Dashboard
• Monittor – Realtime live Twitter monitor

URL Shortners

• 140it – One of the many URL Shortners
• Bit.ly – Customize and track short URLs (What I use)
• Is.gd – Another popular shortner
• Twi.bz – hints at the underlying domain while shortening
• tr.im – track URLS as well
• TinyURL – One of the original URL Shorteners

Picture / Video Services

• TwitPic – Post pics to Twitter
• yFrog – Share pics from Twitter here too *
• Twitvid – If you want to share videos *

Scheduling Services

• TweetLater – schedule Tweets for later

Twitter Themes

• TwitterGallery – Free Twitter Themes
• TwitBacks – Create Twitter Backgrounds

Twitter Directories

• PeopleBrowsr – view your account in a variety of ways
• WeFollow – User powered Twitter Directory
• Twellow – Twitter Directory
• MrTweet – Personal Networking Agent for Twitter
• WhoShouldIFollow – Following Recommendations
• TwitterHolic – Top Twitter Users
• Retweetist – Retweeting lists
• Retweet Radar – More retweeting goodness
• DoesFollow – Find out who follows whom
• FriendorFollow – Who is not following you back?
• TwitterSheep – Tagcloud goodness of your peeps
• TweepDiff – Find out who your missing

Twitter Clients

• Twhirl – Social Software Client
• TweetDeck – Personal Twitter Browser
• Mobile Twitter - small Twitter for small Browsers
• Tweetie – Mac and iPhone Clients
• Twitteriffic
• TwitterBerry – Blackberry Twitter Client
• TinyTwitter – tiny java twitter client

Other

• TrackingTwitter – Find out the top brands using Twitter
• ExecTweets – Top execs and brands on Twitter
• StockTwits – Real time stock tips built on the API
• CoTweet – How business does Twitter

UPDATED June 12th
Added yFrog and Twitvid per Dennis

LTE is to Wi-Max as VHS was to BetaMax.  OK, I could go on here but you get the picture.  I am not really seeing a future for Wi-Max beyond 3-5 years at best.

If I look at the demise of both Betamax and HD-DVD, it really came down to who had backing from not only the consumer market, but where did hardware manufacturers choose to place bets.  Recently you all remember Blue-Ray starting to succeed due to backing from the Movie Industry for a format to support, then large companies like Best Buy placed bets on Blue-Ray for stock and finally hardware manufacturers started placing their bets to follow.  Betamax was a very similar story.  In both cases there was a good competing technology yet someone had to win.

Fast Forward to 2009.. We are starting to see early decisions around two competing technologies for the next generation of wireless data transfer.  Verizon is making progress in getting out specs for it’s LTE network and plan to have 25-30 markets by next year..  Vodafone and AT&T are two other big players who are pushing for versions of LTE as the standard, even as far back as April of last year.  Even small carriers like MetroPCS are pushing for LTE to be the standard and planning on releasing phones based on this technology.  Fred Wright, who is an exec for Motorola on 4G networks has stated that not only are  80% of the carriers world wide moving to adopt LTE as a standard, Motorola is also pushing to make 70-80% of the work they are doing on supporting Wi-Max today  re-usable by LTE in 2012.

Wi-Max is supported heavily by Clearwire Wireless.  Nokia and Intel have also put some backing into support for devices through the chipset, or embedded support as in Nokia’s case.  I won’t call this level of support insignificant however; when you see stories like Alcatel Lucent making a clear stand on re-focusing all Wi-Max resource over to support LTE it makes you question the long-term viability of Wi-Max.  Alcatel-Lucent even goes on to state they don’t believe the market can afford to support two competing standards. (I agree)

Some people think that the “sibling rivalry” will bode well for both technologies. I can’t help but go back to the earlier analogies I was mentioning with VHS and Blue-Ray winning out.  Their competitors were not horrible technologies, as a matter of fact they had some actual backing in the industry.  The problem is once the balance starts shifting to one or another technology, companies are less and less likely to place bets on the “underdog”, and almost nobody today has the budget to fund two technologies.

Sure the two technologies are relatively close, some even believe at some point they could work together and devices could switch between them.  The reason I think Wi-Max is doomed in a few years is this.  History shows that technologies DO end up having clear winners when it comes to a Battle Royale.  As technology pushes wireless to faster speeds, the lack of need to attach physical lines to a house for Broadband connection.. where am I going to go for this type of technology?  I have already given up my land line for a Cellular only household.  I know some people who already use Air Cards from Sprint, Verizon or AT&T for their PRIMARY internet access.  Why would I want to pay yet ANOTHER bill to someone?  The market will mature, price pressure will occur and at some point I will have my carrier wanting my Cellular Voice traffic, My Cellular phone Data traffic as well as a tethered primary home connection, All for one low price.. and at speeds faster than I have now!

The question in my mind really is around how Comcast, DirecTV, Verizon DSL/Cable, etc.. are going to compete with my new found wireless, ultra fast and bundled play with my cell provider?  How can they compete to get all of the rural customers with the capital expense of running cables when LTE will get that “last mile” customer at no additional cost!    If I were a “wired” broadband provider these days, I’d be concerned about my business model and what the 5-7 year revenue charts are going to start looking like.  I don’t think “Down and to the right” is the chart you want to be showing your board.

As for me?  I am waiting for that AT&T bundle for my LTE based iPhone/Tethered connection that is with me at ALL times.  I can throw my Dell Mini9 running OSX online anywhere and forget the fact I live rural and had issues in the past even getting  cable operator to call me back.  Hulu over my Cellular connection is working just fine in 2011 for me thanks and I am thankful for the geniuses behind 4G and beyond!

- Jeff Torgerson

Photo Courtesy of AlicePopKorn

I am torn on the battle to get things to market vs. create good product.  As a product manager you are always working with engineering to make trade offs.  Can I get my product to market in time?  Can it make it at least in time for CTIA? No.. hmm, can we cut a couple of features?  No.. don’t worry.. no need to test that right now, we won’t demo that piece.  Seriously.. how many times have people either been a part of this.. or used a product that they can predict is a result of this exact way of life for us.

Market timing is essential in most any case.  My concern for companies is really around two areas.  One is what Google does.  Keep everything in BETA, set expectations low yet deliver a fairly competent product.  (or great in some cases).  I am not saying I agree with perpetual beta.. but after a while crutches even start to rub you the wrong way.  The other area where I have concern is around rushing product to market to a “release” that is not solid.  In many cases you can get away with it, in most you cant.

In a recent article about Smart Phones, Jim Balsillie was quoted saying that buggy phones are the “new reality“. (Another RIM Article Here) He not only admits that they got it a little wrong on their first touch screen, but most people get it wrong the first time around.  The issue with this in my view is two fold.  Mr. Balsillie was coming to market with his touch screen 1.5 years AFTER the killer touch screen came to market, and not only did it come late.. it had many issues with it.  Sure, Apple had some serious issues with the original version however they were competing with nobody in the market with this phone.  It stood alone.  RIM also had a problem with RIMs stellar reputation.  Sure it is good to have such a solid reputation with “enterprise class” devices, but it makes it impossible to hit the market with a flawed device without severely damaging the brand equity they had built up.

I came across this great chart showing RIMs market share in the corporate world of smartphones.  Sure.. the chart shows Apple passing Palm for market share, but look at the separation between RIM and Apple.  Significant yet starting on the closing trend.  Why give your strongest competitor another advantage by releasing a device that is NOT ready for prime time.  Sure.. I am coming down hard on RIM here but if I were in charge of the brand up there in Canada, I’d be worried about the next device.  Do you come to market 6 months earlier?  With Issues .. since your CEO already set the stage for you.. or do you refine it and release a knock down Apple iPhone enterprise killer to help keep your secure placement in the worlds of corporate IT gods.

HTC, RIM, Microsoft, Samsung.. face it.  Apple did the right thing.  They drove a product through proper design and testing, they have fantastic people and you are NOT going to replace the iPhone.  Find your niche and focus there.  Do not lose sight of your core business… bad reputations are hard to repair.