Sekiur My Thoughts » google

E-commerce and The End of Search

Jose Vicente Ortega — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 04:40:09 +0000

With the advent of the Internet and the massive amount of information available, we needed to find a way to make it accessible for consumption. Thus, the World Wide Web was born and gave us the capability to present different types of data including text, images and multimedia to the user through the web browser. As the amount of information increased exponentially, it became apparent the information needed to be categorized and organized.

Yahoo was one of the pioneers in this area, looking to create a directory of the Internet. Unfortunately this model was not scalable; others like Altavista and Lycos took a different approach, the same approach used by Google: Creating algorithms that searched and indexed the content on the Internet, providing consumers of information a central place to search that information. The search engine was born.

Most of us consider the Internet a bucket of miscellaneous tidbits, and the modern search engine our personal assistant. But is that analogy correct? You open your browser, bringing up the Google homepage, then enter whatever term you happen to be looking for at the time and bingo. You get a list of results you then have to “search” through to find what you are looking for. So in fact you are searching through the results of what Google searched for.

Google co-founder Larry Page once described the “perfect search engine” as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want”, far from what Google is today.

Searching is not something that comes natural to people. In fact, people actually hate searching. People like to know where stuff is. Throughout our lives we establish systems to store and retrieve information efficiently.

After running across a picture taken eight years ago, of my three-year-old organizing his loot on Halloween night, I realized that we “organize”so we can find. This is very important–we organize so we can later find.

It’s all around us. Our fridge has a specific drawer where we store our vegetables and another for the cheese and ham, the top shelf for the milk and the door for the juice. Our supermarkets have shelves and products are categorized and organized to make it easy for us to find. Imagine what it would be like to go to a grocery store where products weren’t organized in any way.

The search engine is just not compatible with the way people function, it is just a first step to deal with and filter the amount of information on the Internet. The reality is, it is rudimentary and primitive.

A recent study titled “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips” by researchers at Columbia, Harvard and Wisconsin-Madison universities studied whether the Internet has become our primary transitive memory source–basically an external memory system. These are the conclusions reached by the four controlled experiments in the study:

1) People share information easily because they rapidly think of computers when they find they need knowledge (Expt. 1).

2) The social form of information storage is also reflected in the findings that people forget items they think will be available externally, and remember items they think will not be available (Expts. 2 and 3).

3) Transactive memory is also evident when people seem better able to remember which computer folder an item has been stored in than the identity of the item itself (Expt. 4).

The effect on whether or not we choose to commit certain information to memory when we know the information is readily available on the computer is what is relevant here. We store specific things in specific places, like food in the fridge, but who remembers what is specifically in the fridge?

It is completely natural for people to minimize what needs to be encoded into memory by organizing and then encoding the location of the information, rather than the information itself. This is where search engines fall short of meeting the basic cognitive needs of humans.

The emergence of the mobile device has been remarkable and Apple’s vision in this space has changed the way people access information. There is data to support the notion that people are not mirroring desktop behavior on mobile devices.

People are not searching on smartphones as much as they do on desktops. Steve Jobs attributes this to the availability of mobile apps and the desktop lacking an app store. In reality, the availability of app, or the lack thereof, is not really the central point. What’s important is information is being categorized, compartmentalized and organized for consumption, and delivered more efficiently through mobile devices. This is clearly a step in the right direction in delivering more relevant and timely information to the user.

Artificial Intelligence will play a major role in the next wave of innovation, starting with Evolving and Adaptive Fuzzy Systems as classification algorithms and then matching the wants with the needs of the user. A recent example of this is an application that gives personalized restaurant recommendations called Alfred—it is all recommendations and no direct search.

GiftWoo takes the next step forward in the e-commerce space in a vertical market. Until now going online to find a gift for your better half involves a search, which results in thousands of choices. Currently, e-commerce websites are designed to deliver a high number of choices, rather than the “right choice” for the consumer. GiftWoo will give the buyer the unique and perfect gift they seek without the searching, by initially building a profile for the gift recipient, then utilizing a proprietary algorithm to match the ideal gift to the profile.

GrandCentral to Google Voice

Jose Vicente Ortega — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:29:07 +0000

In just under a minute I migrated a couple of GrandCentral account to Google Voice and I am very exited to see a transcript of a voicemail show up in my Inbox.

I will definitely miss the GrandCentral interface as its much more intuitive than the new Google Voice GUI.

A limitation currently in place on both platforms is the capability to have 2 different accounts ring one same number. I particularly like this to have a personal and a business number both ring my cell and landlines. The workaround for the moment is leaving an account with GrandCentral and on one Google Voice. Lets see how long that lasts.!

One thing that I have seen more and more recently is my GrandCentral dropping calls on me. Maybe its Google’s way of getting users migrated.

Google Voice Emerges from GrandCentral, Transcribes Voicemail (lifehacker.com)
Google Voice: Bells, Whistles, and Voicemail Transcripts (blippitt.com)
Google Voice: A New Approach to Voice Communications (littlegreenfootballs.com)
Google Launching GrandCentral As Google Voice (searchenginewatch.com)

Configuring Google Apps for Your Domain

Jose Vicente Ortega — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:47:17 +0000

In my previous post here, I went into the steps needed to bring up a Microsoft Live Exchange Labs environment.

Previously we had discussed the different options available when it came to hosted E-mail here.

Setting up a Google environment can be done it one of two ways. You can choose to maintain your existing domain to which e-mail is currently being delivered to or you can setup a completely new one like gapps.your-domain.com.

Allowing to pilot their offering using your existing domain sets you up for an easier migration path, if you choose to go with Google and this is the path which will be described below.

Once again after receiving a requested invitation from Google, we proceed to re-route e-mail.

Pilot Google Apps with email routing instructions are here.

Once you have verified your domain proceed to create an additional MX record in your DNS pointing to your existing mail server. This will be needed because as you route all your mail to Google, they will need to send e-mail back your way to accounts that do not exist in Google Apps.

DNS Record Type: MX
Host: routing.your-domain.com
MX server: server1.your-domain.com (your E-mail server “A” record)
TTL: 3600 or 1 hour
Priority: 0 (or High priority)

Setup Google to route e-mail back to your server.

Navigate to the Email settings page in the control panel. In the Email routing section, the default destination is Google Apps Email.
Click Add another destination to set up mail routing for your other system.
Enter the MX record you created previously. routing.your-domain.com
Deliver mail for: Select Unknown accounts only to route mail to email addresses that don’t exist in your Google Apps account.
Change SMTP envelope: Uncheck the box since your other mail system is already configured to receive mail addressed to this domain.
Save changes

Then you will need to change your MX records to route e-mail sent to your domain to Google mail servers.

Your configuration would go from something like this:

DNS Record Type: MX
Host: mail.your-domain.com
MX server: server1.your-domain.com (your E-mail server “A” record)
TTL: 3600 or 1 hour
Priority: 0 (or High priority)

to this

Priority	Mail Server
1	ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
5	ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
5	ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
10	ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
10	ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

You are all set. As you create accounts in Google Apps, e-mail will be routed to their servers and e-mail will be delivered to those accounts. Any accounts non-existent will be routed back to the original e-mail server.

The diagram below makes it easier to understand.

Again there are lots of customizations including adding CNAME entries to your DNS allowing you to change the URL users will use to access e-mail and all the other options.

Outsourcing E-mail

Jose Vicente Ortega — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:26:09 +0000

Higher Education and K-12 institutions have always either lead in the IT field with innovative solutions or been way behind in technology to the point of not having any.

Open source has always been an option, although generally for the technically inclined but several years ago the big guys (Google and Microsoft), brought hosted E-mail offerings to the table that would out perform any locally installed solution and without a price tag associated with it.

A new player recently entered the market with their very attractive offering. ZCS from Zimbra.

Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) is a groupware product created by Zimbra Inc., located in San Mateo, California, USA. The company was purchased by Yahoo! in September 2007.[1]. The software consists of both client and server components. Two versions of Zimbra are available: an open-source version, and a commercially supported version (“Zimbra Network”) with closed-source components. These software versions are available from Zimbra for download and independent use, from Zimbra-authorized partners, and included with service from a Zimbra-authorized hosting provider.

So what are the options?

Outsource
1. Google Apps for Education
2. Microsoft’s Live@edu Service
3. Zimbra’s Hosted Collaboration Suite
Maintain/deploy in-house

Even thought there are legitimate issues with outsourcing, like privacy of e-mails, loosing control over the capability to access logs in case of an incident and ads displayed to the constituents amongst others; the option to provide this same level of service in-house is not economically feasible.

Lets take a look what these services offer:

Features	Google Apps	Microsoft Live@edu	Zimbra

Mailbox size	7.1Gb	10Gb	7Gb
Attachment size	20Mb	20Mb	25Mb
Calendar (Private)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Calendar (Public)	Yes	Yes	No
CalDav compliant calendaring	Yes	No	Yes
Docs	Yes	Yes	Yes
Spreadsheet	Yes	Yes	No
Presentation	Yes	No	No
Forms	Yes	No	No
Messaging/Chat	Yes	No	Yes
Offline Feature	Yes	No	No
Workplace	No	Yes	No
Shared Drive	No	5Gb	No
SMS Scheduling	Yes	No	No
SMS Notification	Yes	Yes	No
POP3	Yes	Yes	Yes
IMAP	Yes	Yes	Yes
Access other accounts	Yes	N/A	Yes
Folders	No	Yes	Yes
Labels	Yes	No	No
Threaded conversations	Yes	No	Yes
Rules and filters	Yes	Yes	Yes
Built-In protection (Legal)	N/A	Yes	N/A
Apple Support	Yes	No	No
Spam Rating	10	7	7
Integration Rating	10	7	8
Site Management	9	8	8
Widgets/Web 2.0 Mash-up framework	Yes	No	Planned
Mobile Apps (BB, iPhone, etc.)	Yes	No	No
Data Portability (move you data to another solution)	Yes	Limited	Yes
Backups	No	Optional	Optional
Web Site/Portal	Yes	Yes	No
University Domain	Yes	Yes	Yes

Microsoft and Google are free provided that they can display ads for alumni and Zimbra costs $2 per year per student.

Resources:

Microsoft Live@edu:

Microsoft Live@edu video
Live@edu with Exchange Labs
Web Collaboration

Google Apps for Education:

Google Apps video

Zimbra:

Compare Hosted EDU Products

Google Maps For Blackberry Adds Street View

Jose Vicente Ortega — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:23:40 +0000

As I was driving home from the Blackberry Bold Experience Event last night, I received an upgrade prompt from my Blackberry 8820 for Google Maps. On the way home I upgraded to version 2.3.2 which to my pleasant surprise provided “Street View” giving you the capability of viewing imagery while driving or walking.

Google Maps for mobile makes it easy to see Street View imagery when you’re on the go. View imagery at each turn in driving or walking directions, and study a storefront’s facade so that you don’t pass it up while you’re moving by.

Street View is currently available for BlackBerry and some Java-enabled phones.

Using the trackball you can rotate the view 360 degrees and also expand the “street view” to fit the whole screen.

Watch the video below to see a demo.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IXC5A1ZoV4

If you already have it, then upgrade. If you don’t then you can pick it up by pointing your BlackBerry browser to: www.google.com/gmm