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Remember the site I linked to a week ago with the comment, “Countdown to Takedown”? (http://www.rexblog.com/2008/07/22/17761) – Well, the countdown has commenced.
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According to this analysis of my browsing history, the liklihood of me being male is 100%. I think it was fark.com that gave me away.
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Google is adding a link to its SERP (search engine results page) that will allow you to see how they’ve tried to customize the results to you. It’s all a part of their efforts to be transparent — and to dominate the planet. It’s working.
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July 31st, 2008
July 30th, 2008
Philipp Lenssen has a post that displays some hilarious image results that are occurring on Cuil.com, the heavily financed new search engine that all those mean bloggers are ganging up on. Philipp’s results are so amusing, I thought I’d do another ego search on my name to see what happens. And whoa, the screen-grab below is what I found. While not me, the guy on the left is my friend, Joi Ito. He’s taken my photo a few times, and I his. So, other than him living in Japan and me in Tennessee, I guess I see the relation. As for that photo on the right that accompanies a Nick Bradbury post that mentions me, if it looks like a pregnant man, well, it is. Huh? Oddly, the pregnant man image shows up on a Google Image search for me, as well — thanks to this post related to my annual warning before April Fool’s Day. I guess the April Fool’s joke was one me. 
July 29th, 2008
A little less than an hour ago, I received a phone call from my 17-year-old son who is attending a month-long program at the University of Southern California. “There was just an earthquake” he said. “I’m okay,” he said. “It was legit.” I’m not sure exactly what the legit part was referencing. My mind was pausing on the “Okay” part. “Call Mom,” he said, “I gotta go.” (If you have a 17-year-old son, you’ll recognize that phone call. “Hello, I’m alive, everything’s okay, gotta go.” It’s the same call he makes to us each night whenever he’s away from home. Earthquake or ordinary day, it works the same way.) I would typically immediately tune into CNN when news like that breaks, but today I figured that Twitter would be the best place to monitor the breaking story — from the scene. MG Siegler explains what I mean in this post about how Twitter search (formerly, Summize) allows you to track people who are ‘tweeting’ about the earthquake. For me, however, this is a case where it’s great to be following lots of specific people on Twitter, not just a key word — people I know (via Twitter) who live in LA and who thought first to let those who follow them via Twitter know their status. It’s situations like this that help make Twitter easier and easier to explain.
July 29th, 2008
Pardon me while I place two historic firsts in the record. Early this morning, my wife starts off a conversation with, “I disagree with something you wrote on your blog.” “When did you start doing that?” I respond. “Disagreeing with you?” “No, reading my blog?” Second, today Gawker placed the phrase “Media and Marketing Guru” in front of my name. (Note to self: Add a side-bar blurb: “A Media & Marketing Guru,” says Gawker.)
July 29th, 2008
Today, he’s having a little fun demonstrating how people will join “tribes” they think are exclusive. If you pre-order his new book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us (due out October 21), you can “join Seth’s new tribe.” But hurry, because, “Membership is numbered, with low numbers getting prestige, first dibs on various assets and bragging rights.” Wait, I’ve heard of this network before: It’s Melin Mann’s award-winning startup concept, “FlockdUP” — the maverick network for thought-leaders. Okay, Seth. I’ll play along. Since I would purchase your book anyway, I’m also signing up for your maverick network for marketing thought-leaders — the receipt for my pre-order is in the e-mail. 
July 28th, 2008
Earlier today, I out-sourced to Danny Sullivan a review of the new search engine, Cuil.com. In a comment on that post, Bob Sacks (BoSacks) observed that he uses an ego search to decide if a search engine is any good. That makes sense to me. If I want to find out about someone, chances are the first thing I do is Google them. So I did as Bob suggested and ego-googled “Rex Hammock” — and this is what I got on the first search engine results page (SERP):
Pretty good job, Google, except perhaps, I’d kick that Dave photo to page 2 or 3. From that SERP, you can one-click to about anything you’d ever want to know about me — and way more. Compare that to the results you’ll get on Cuil.com:
Bottomline: Cuil is not going to be a go-to source for people who want to find information about other people — or themselves. Bonus link: Rafe Neddleman writes how Cuil shows how not to launch a search engine. I couldn’t agree more. Later: I just saw that Chris Brogan did the same thing with his name and discovered the same results. Says Chris, “Call me egotistical, but if you can’t find yourself in a search engine after a decade of littering the web with your presence, I’m thinking it’s not much of a search engine.” Okay, you’re egotistical. And you’re right. Bonus video: Ouch! The WSJ’s Digital Daily puts Cuil through the meat-grinder. Title of video: How do you spell Cuil? F-A-I-L. This will be my last comment about Cuil. I think the response is looking like “piling on.”
July 28th, 2008
 During the past week, I have become a fan of the AMC series Mad Men. It’s well written, directed and acted and captures the zeitgeist (granted in a caricature way) of an era that I find fascinating. (For anyone watching the program, I would have been about the age of the Draper’s daughter at the time during which the show is set). I won’t write here in detail about the show for fear of including spoilers — there are too many things about the series I enjoyed because I went into it cold — I only knew it was about advertising in the late 1950s / early 60s. Placing the show in that period and using the names of real products allow for exploration of cultural trends during a period of radical change. The writers and director magnify the cultural differences with our own time to make them even more jarring: the sexism, the ubiquitous smoking, the continuous drinking, the clash of generational mores and old and new media — print and radio, the old, and TV, the new. The writing is so clever, one must have a range of awareness that goes from Cheever to Kerouac to commercial jingles to truly appreciate how great it is. But with no such awareness (although he has read Kerouac), my 17-year-old enjoys the show and watched the season with his highschool friends. (Another post for another venue: Why do teenage boys identify with the 1960-era men on Mad Men?) My wife and I watched the first season (12 shows) during the past week (an easy iTunes purchase via my Apple TV), but last night we watched the first episode of the current season on the cable channel AMC. Unlike other premium channels, AMC has commercials, so I recorded the show and was ready to fast forward through them. However, the advertising on the show was nearly as brilliant as the show, itself. Some “pre-roll” and “post-roll” ads from a single sponsor, BMW sandwiched the program. And at the middle of the program, one commercial appeared — a one-minute “documentary” — that looked at 1960s era BMW advertising accompanyed by a voice-over interview of the creative director who developed the “Ultimate Driving Machine” tag line. At the end of the program, the BMW advertising was focused on current and future developments by BMW, including a hydrogen car, but still had a texture that tied it back to the past. It was brilliant advertising that kept me from fast-forwarding through it. It was the type of TV advertising that works in any era. 
July 28th, 2008
[Later: I posted this early Monday morning. Now, it's mid-afternoon. After using Cuil a little, I've decided they should shut it down and give any money left over back to the investors. All it has done for me is make me realize how wonderful Google is.] When I see a new online service announced, say, Cuil, a new search “challenger” to Google, I typically go to the site and click around. Seeing what it is, I seek the insight of someone I know follows closely the developments in that category. For instance with anything related to search, I look for what Danny Sullivan has written. Sure enough, sometime in the middle of the night, Danny has posted his quick review of the Google killer. Because Danny is a professional guru of how search works, he has a battery of tests he can immediately run a new search tool through. From reading Danny’s, I have learned that having benchmarks can help someone compare any “new” thing with some valid comparisons, rather than some knee-jerk opinion. Read Danny’s review for a real review. As for my personal review of Cuil, I’ll say this: I have five words and phrases in my benchmark tests that I know get the results I have learned will appear on page one of Google’s SERP (search engine results page). These five searches involve words and phrases related to my work, so I track them very closely. The results I expect to see don’t show up on Cuil — they look more like Microsoft’s results. I know the information found on the sites I expect to see will be more helpful to someone searching for information about the topic. So, at least for this morning and for me personally, Cuil is not doing well against my benchmarks.
July 28th, 2008
There is a tiny percentage of Americans who feel about their Sunday New York Times the way Charlton Heston used to feel about his guns. Those people love nothing more than to spend a Sunday morning sipping coffee and getting their fingers ink-stained. I used to be that way. It was about as wonderful an experience as you can imagine. All that great writing. All that coffee. All that feeling of superiority over the vast percentage of the world who wasn’t as smart as I was for reading all these articles. All that caffeine. Of course, I no longer read the Sunday morning New York Times that way. By late Saturday night, I’ve typically had headlines from the next morning’s Times — and a vast array of other dailies — delivered to me via an RSS-powered newsreader called NetNewsWire. It delivers headlines to both my computer and my iPhone and syncs the two, so that if I read a story on my iPhone, it won’t show up on my computer later. For the past week, I’ve also been using a new iPhone “app” provided free to me (advertisers pay for me to get it free) by the New York Times that delivers headlines, photos and full stories to my iPhone. (So does Bloomberg and other news organizations). Since I now have my early Sunday mornings free to read stories from, potentially, hundreds of papers, I find another way to enjoy my coffee. But for the small slice of the total population who still luxuriate in the print New York Times Sunday morning experience, there is nothing more delightful that reading a long article about reading. And so, the New York Times is running a series of articles, that’s right, a series exploring the topic of whether or not reading online is actually reading. The first article is titled (at least the online version is) Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? and is filled with “on-the-other-hands” — as in, “This expert says one thing, but on the other hand, this research says another.” Of course, it makes no sense to me, as I’m reading the news story story online, so I already know the answer to the question, “RU really reading this?” It also makes no sense to me as I average reading about a book a week — using a Kindle — including literary novels I learn about reading the New York Times Review of Books online. Of course, it also makes no sense to me as I don’t need the New York Times to tell me: Reading is reading. 
July 26th, 2008
Alan Kay (who I’ll get back to in a moment) is credited with a great quote: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” I’ll add to what Alan said: The second best way is to keep predicting it until someone else gets around to inventing it. And the third best way is to predict something and then spread every rumor possible that is remotely related to that prediction. When it comes to one of the oldest Apple rumors I can recall, I have clearly done all I can to do the third best thing I can — to echo-chamber it. The rumor is that Apple will one day offer a device that is somewhere between a MacBook and an iPod Touch/iPhone. The device, now being labeled “The MacBook Touch” by the rumorosphere, has once again taken center ring at the Mac Rumor Circus. (Some latter-day rumorists are calling it a “Tablet Mac,” but that’s a rumor of a different color. Steve Jobs will never chase the tablet laptop market for reasons so obvious — even John Dvorak could figure out why.)
Strangely, for the past two years, if you Googled the phrase, “Rumor #3,” the #1 result has been a link to that list. To you, it might be called a MacBook Touch. But to me, it will always be Rumor #3. For past rumor posts, I’ve even Photoshopped up a version of what a Rumor #3 could look like (right). But I have a deep, dark confession to make: I’ve never really thought Apple will come out with the product. It has been more wishful thinking than anything else whenever I echo-chambered such reports as this “patent” post on AppleInsider.com. My “rumor” posts have been more fantasy and speculation and desire to have the product I have called an iPod Touchbook (and here), than belief that Apple will offer such a product. Even today, I’m quite cynical and, frankly, don’t believe that such a product is going to be announced anytime soon. (Or, perhaps, I’m tired of being disappointed when these rumors I help spread never pan out, and I’m taking a new tact.) 
My lust for a MacBook Touch
started with a 1987 video about a concept product called the the Knowledge Navigator. I’ll credit Apple (and in this case, the then “Apple Fellow,” Alan Kay) with first establishing the benchmark for my desire for such a device — and my willingness to serve as conduit for spreading any rumor which comes close to suggesting Apple will one day offer such a product. It started with a concept video Apple produced in 1987 that oozes with Alan Kay concepts. I’ve written about how that video describing the concept technology, “Knowledge Navigator,” set an expectation in my mind — and a generation of those of us who reside among the hyperlink-obsessed — of what one should expect to have one day. Today, now that all of the technology, infrastructure, pricing scale and marketing channels are in place for such a device, many of us are wondering: Where’s my Knowledge Navagator? (In 2003, Jon Udell posted a great item about the Knowledge Navagator concept video.) A rumor is somewhat like abstract art — until the artist explains exactly what everything means, it can be interpreted anyway one wants. Until Steve Jobs strolls out onto the stage and explains exactly what this device is and what space in our mind it is to occupy, it will be all things to all geeks. For me, Rumor #3 is about recapturing a little piece of 1987, when the promise of the future was not about feature sets, but about the cool things you could do if you have a device that goes with you everywhere and allows you to travel anywhere. Note: One thing I didn’t like about the Knowledge Navigator was the “talking head” interface. I’m more of a touch interface person, myself. Bonus link: The eBook people are finally catching on that a Rumor #3 device makes having a separate device merely to read books rather redundant.
July 26th, 2008
July 25th, 2008
Google is oogling over its numbers today. Not the numbers related to financial performance, but the numbers that math majors get goose bumps about. Granted, I may be misinterpreting what exactly the Google blog post is reporting, but I think it says that when Google started 10 years ago, they could index 26,000,000 web pages over the course of about 2 hours. But now, they can simultaneously index 1,000,000,000,000 unique URLs on the web at once. As I was not a math major, at first I was impressed with that 1,000,000,000,000 number. But then I read that the U.S. House of Representatives today passed a bill that enables a potential government rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who together own or guarantee about $5,200,000,000,000 of the nation’s $12,000,000,000,000 in mortgages. To accommodate that potential rescue, the bill raises the national debt limit to $10,600,000,000,000, an increase of $800,000,000,000. While you may think all of those 0s make for some big number, I’ll remind you that Google’s name is actually a play on the number, googol, which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes. So, when you start wanting to be impressed by how many URLs Google can index or how much potential debt Congress can instantly commit you and me to, just remember: Compared with a Googol, a trillion is like, well, 1.0 × 10 to the negative 91st power, give or take a few rounding errors. Or, for those of you who were better at art than math: Here’s a trillion: 1,000,000,000,000 Here’s a googol: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000, When Google can google a googol URLs at once, then I’ll be impressed. As for Congress, they may as well go ahead a raise the debt limit to a googol, as that’s where they seem to be heading anyway. 
July 24th, 2008
July 23rd, 2008
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You don’t need me to tell you that 
A couple of years ago, I posted 
