Tag Archives: Google

Day 9 – 31 Days to an Even Better Blog

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Day 9 is about joining a forum related to your niche and participating over a long period of time with goal being 1.adding value to your readers 2. piquing the interest of the forum readers enough to drive them back to your blog (by learning more about you in your forum profile.)

Directly joining a fishing forum and attempting to drive traffic away from it to your own blog seems a little shady. I know I would not want it done to me. (I did join a few newspaper sites and link back to roundvalleyfishing.com though)

Instead I have google alerts set up for every possible scenario concerning my niche and depending on the story i either link to it, comment in it or blog about it. I do leave comments in my local paper comments sections too but i really don’t see any value in it as far as the analytics data shows. I do join facebook groups and participate there, so this is the new “forum” for 2011.

I do have my own forum but it sees little activity. Facebook has killed the forum model for newer publications.

I believe this day 9 suggestion was more relevant pre facebook and google+ where sharing and filters were harder.

Google To Become YellowPages

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“I think Google is going to be the new Yellow Pages,” [local business owner and Google advertiser] Mr. Cowie said. “More and more of these younger kids are used to Google. They are looking at their phones rather than opening up a phone book.”

Google’s new enhanced business listings, which it started to test quietly in Houston and San Jose, Calif., early this month, have an obvious competitor: the Yellow Pages. -read the entire post at NYTimes.com

Here is the link to Google Map’s Enhanced Listing page (the yellow tag option is probably not available in your area yet though.

Where was Google all this time? – Great story about information dissemination

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William Kamkwamba recounts his mission to overcome famine and poverty in his village by building a windmill from a picture in a library book.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
William Kamkwamba
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Google Fast Flip – News Visualization

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I’m sure the newspapers are hating Google Labs’ new Fast Flip user interface but at least they are sharing revenue .  I like visualizations.  The current user interface of search portals and websites in general are certainly in their nascent iterations.  For Fast Flip, Google went for the grid user interface hey… it really works for tastespotting.

googff

It remains to be seen if it works for Google.  Here’s how Google explains the site:

“Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables users to follow friends and topics, discover new content and create their own custom magazines around searches.”

Bing “Decision Engine” Review

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Bing.com is a new search engine that advertises itself as a “decision engine” becuase it helps you make decisions I guess.  The site is not up and running yet but they have a video you can watch to see what they’re offering.  I always like to try new offerings which may make my web experience more enjoyable, like Wolfram Alpha’s comparison feature, anyway so I sat through the Bing video.

…they need to redo the video.  Why?  Because right as the following is being said, “…instead of spitting out search results by popularity we break them into logical categories and bring the best match to the top… and show related searches right there in the results page”  The picture below is being shown.

See that?  In the search history.  Colbert Report… what the hell does that have to do with anything? Nothing!  It’s distracting.  The running search example in the video is Home Depot, so colbert?  Take it out!  I’m still looking forward to seeing how Bing will actually work though.  Will it help me realize self actualization? It better because that is how high the bar is set.

UPDATE:

Bing is now up and running.  I did a simple search comparison for “NJ Boater Safety Course”  on Google and Bing and Bing came out on top.  It came back with the most relevant sites.

Google – Results 1 – 10 of about 1,130,000 for nj boater safety course. (0.17 seconds)

Bing – 1-10 of 80,500 results

What Google Maps and Everyblock’s iPhone App means for Established News Media

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EveryBlock’s iPhone app -from Everyblock

If you live in an EveryBlock city and have an iPhone you can now have more news access than you ever thought you needed.  The app is available for free at the App Store.

Here’s how Everyblock explains the features of the app:  The EveryBlock iPhone app lets you explore news that’s happened recently in your immediate area.  We publish dozens of different categories of local news, drawing from hundreds of sources. Much of it is updated every single day. Examples of the information we publish: Continue reading →

Google to offer Premium Advertising for Select News Sites

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Eric Schmidt on Google’s New Plan for the News -from TheWrap

Sharon Waxman who writes Waxword for the Wrap… ugh, we get it we get it, has an interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt who reveals that in about 6 months Google will launch a premium ad service for “premium content”.  The pilot news outlets to get this treatment will be the NYtimes and WashingtonPost.

The participating news outlets won’t get direct revenue bumps but the theory is that they will enjoy greater traffic from search.

In my opinion and Google’s too, websites need to figure out a way to better connect with their audience to create a community and lessen the reliance on search for revenue generation.

Topix Creators Brag about Creating a Large, Useless News Site

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Topix is a news aggregator which categorizes news stories by topic and geography.   Topix LLC is a privately held company.   Gannett, The McClatchy Company and Tribune Company own a 75% stake in the company.

Today Topix announced that Topix becomes #1 news site of Gannett, Tribune & McClatchy Internet Portfolio -from Topix blog.  I have a few problems with this:

1. This sounds like a made up category,  ie. Metaprinter is the #1 news site of the Metaprinter Inc. portfolio!
2. Topix is ranked #32 in the news category on Alexa.
3. Compete doesn’t show Topix beating USAToday as stated in the above article.

4. I don’t know anyone who uses or likes Topix.  In fact, reading through the comments at the above post, it seems most people suspect the site is full of flame wars, trolls and hate speak.
5. For their size, Topix does not have a vibrant hyperlocal online community.
6. Where are the local advertisers?

I’ve contacted them for an interview.  We’ll see if they can clear some things up.

UPDATE:

An anonymous tipster has revealed to me that some news sites use Topix for their article comments section.   See for example this Gannett owned news site: citizen-times.com

Note the ‘comment on Topix forums’ option directly below the social bookmarking tools in addition to the Pluck Sitelife comments option at the end of the article.
“If you choose the Topix comment option, and enough discussion is generated on topix, it presumably bubbles up the story on Topix and the inbound links to the news site generate page views and more discussion”.

A little more digging on my part revealed that Tribune is using Topix.net to link to “Related News From the Web” as here below the Google Ads box in the body on their Baltimore Sun site.  The purpose here again is to increase pageviews and links.  It seems that Topix is nothing more than a solution for member newspapers to game the system and/or get more Google Juice.

Newspaper Publishers – Disallow:/

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Google’s Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It

Let me help you with that, Rupert. I’m going to save you all those potential legal fees plus needing to even speak further about the evil of the Big G with two simple lines. Get your tech person to change your robots.txt file to say this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Done. Do that, you’re outta Google. All your pages will be removed, and you needn’t worry about Google listing the Wall St. Journal at all.

For more on this:

User-agent: *
The asterisk (*) or wildcard represents a special value and means any robot.

Disallow:
The Disallow: line without a / (forward slash) tells the robots that they can index the entire site. Continue reading →

Web-Only Newspaper Map is up on Erica Smith’s PaperCuts Blog

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Web-only newspapers
Newspapers that have stopped publishing a print edition and have moved to the web

This map and project was inspired by Metaprinter — let Erica know if you have an idea for a project.

How did this turn into a project?

Metaprinter reader Eric Cox director of national sales for PNG Laboratories LLC was looking for a list of related information.  I started the list, then started a google maps mashup, realized it would look and act much like the one Erica Smith already has on her papercuts blog.  I contacted her about collaborating on the project and she was all for it!

The result is a dynamic map which will provide information about newspapers who have switched to online only publication. Hover over the markers to find detailed info about the newspaper.

Google Takes Out Newspaper Ads to Find Authors

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A Google Search of a Distinctly Retro Kind -NYTimes.com

Google was recently sued in federal court by a large group of authors and publishers who claimed that its plan to scan all the books in the world violated their copyrights.  As part of the class-action settlement, Google must locate the authors and grant them the opportunity to opt out of their scanning ambitions, but first they must be found.

Since the copyright holders can be anywhere and not necessarily online — given how many books are old or out of print — it became obvious that what was needed was a huge push in that relic of the pre-Internet age: print.

Google is reportedly spending millions of dollars taking out print newspaper ads in every single country in the world.  Crazy.

Why Is Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, Worried About the Newspaper Industry?

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Follow Up to Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Interview With Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky This has all the background information on what is coming to be known as Google’ refusal to bail out the newspaper industry.

After a Twitter exchange with Jay Rosen he brought it to my attention that perhaps instead of me asking “why should Google help newspapers?”, I should I ask, “why is Schmidt worried”?  Rosen is the man.  He always gives me good jumping off points for further investigation.

So, why is Eric Schmidt worried about the failing newspaper industry? Here is the final question and response from the Fortune interview. Continue reading →

Follow Up to Eric Schmidt’s Interview With Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky

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Here is my follow up to: CEO Eric Schmidt wishes he could rescue newspapers. By Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky

Click and read the article above if you have not already, but the gist is that Google (GOOG) doesn’t have a business plan for newspapers and at this point is not interested getting involved.  At the same time, Schmidt doesn’t “think bloggers make up the difference” so it’s a problem for the citizens of this free nation, USA.

We’ve heard this before from Schmidt when Rachel Maddow interviewed him in August 2008 at the DNC.  Watch the video. He seems to be towing the company line in regards to the newspaper industry.   Continue reading →

What Is A Newspaper’s Greatest Asset?

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I have been contemplating this a lot for the past couple of months now.  In light of all the changes in information delivery, what is a newspaper organization’s greatest asset?  What differentiates it from other forms of information delivery?  What does a newspaper do that Google can’t do?  That CNN can’t do?  That news aggregators can’t do? That the internet alone can’t do?

Newspapers deliver a physical product to people’s homes and businesses.  And not only that, the product is invited into the home or office by the subscriber.  No one else can do this.

The big problem for newspapers is that although they hold this monopoly, they haven’t evolved their product to serve their customers, hence the migration online – away from print.

The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction Colorado has a unique spin on this conundrum.   Instead of innovating their newspaper, they decided to offer a delivery service to anyone in their newspaper distribution area.

The Sentinel Express operates by using existing trucks and delivery logistics to deliver packages overnight.  The courier service is almost 3 times as cheap as using DHL, Fed Ex, or UPS.

I like this kind of out-of-the-box thinking, however you are now moving further away from your core competency.   I wonder if that’s what parent company COX thought too, because they announced last week they are selling the newspaper.