06.19.08
Posted in Technology News at 2:40 pm by Brandon Wirtz
I haven’t been posting near as much as I would like lately. The reason is that I have shelved development on my personal projects for something I think is much, much more interesting.
I’m working at a company ZillionTV What makes a guy drawing 6 figures from his home with the ability to work in his bath robe want to get up every morning fight commute traffic, and show up for a 9 to 9 job? Potential. I can’t tell you anything about Zillion, they are in stealth mode at the moment, and for good reason. These guys are the real deal, and when they hit they will be light years ahead of anyone out there, but I don’t want someone to critique, prejudge, or overhype what is coming. So all I’m going to tell you is what you can tell from the name. TV and lots of it.
Something is coming.
Permalink
05.08.08
Posted in Google, Microsoft, Responses, Search Engines, Technology News, Yahoo at 12:00 am by Brandon Wirtz
Microsoft is moving on to Facebook. Poor MSFT what are you thinking? Facebook isn’t getting rich on it’s ad strategy. If it was it wouldn’t have wanted your money the last time you invested in them. If you are shopping to compete with GOOG then quit looking at big players that aren’t competing, and start looking at little players who might if they had the money.
Despite agreeing with Scoble on the idea that the Google Model’s days are numbered, it is not because Social Sites like Facebook are going to replace them, it is because eventually people are not going to need to go looking, the tools will just know what you want.
I have been working on a Techmeme Style product that works off of your OPML file. Anyone can have their own Meme, bought the domain it is practically ready to launch. Only trouble, the CPU requirements are HUGE. Maybe I’ll convert it to run on Google’s servers…. Oh wait that makes Google Relevant again.
Robert is right the current model will become more like Techmeme and more like Mahalo.com and more like FaceBook… But Google is not going to sit there and do nothing. Google adapts and grows.
I can see all of the pieces being made ready to jump on any of us that are testing the waters, after WE figure out what works. Google doesn’t need to have a finished product just enough beta bits to make sure that whatever models start to look like they could work can be crushed.
Insert your favorite explicative, Google can crush me at any moment just by de-listing me, same for Mahalo. If Google said, "Hey Jason Calacanis your site is just a very pretty splog, or at least that is what we are going to claim so our stocks don’t fall on news that Techmeme’s crowd says you’re going to crush us in 3 years" well Mahalo revenue would drop 80% over night and the 3 years that it takes to recoup the cost of a post would now take 15. That would end the butt kicking.
I just found out about Google "Sets" which looks a lot like what I have been talking about for the last 3 months with figuring out what a set of words category is, so that you can tune the results contextually. If I know that the last 100 searches you did were about food, I know a Chili Dog is just a Chili Dog. If the last 100 searches you did were X rated I know that you are looking for something a bit grosser.
This is just one of the pieces that form the Lego’s that Google is building. And it is one of the public ones, we don’t get to see the ones they don’t care to share. Matt Cutts only tells us what it is in Google’s interest to tell us.
If you read my "rant" about Greatest Living American, you start to get where I’m going with this. This week the "right answer" to who is the Greatest Living American is "Brandon Wirtz" or "Steven Colbert". That is the only time it should be this. If my mom gives her 3rd graders the task of writing an essay on who they think the Greatest Living American is you don’t want them to write about Perry Como, Night of the Living Dead, or How to make grilled cheese because they used Mahalo. And I don’t want them to say it is me because they used Google And really Norman Borlaug may not be the "right" answer but it is the only answer I could find that wasn’t me or Steven.
Results that are free from the possibility of manipulation is part of the future of search. Results that are contextually relevant to the searcher is part of the future of search. Results that are contextually relevant to the events of the moment are part of the future of search.
When Oprah has someone on her show for the next 12 hours a perfect search engine would know that 90% of the people looking for that person wants to know about that person "through" Oprah. Similarly when "Don’t forget the Lyrics" is on searches for things that look very similar to words from a song are about a song, not about what ever the words are about. "Feet Down Below His Knee" is not about how one sprints, or trousers (isayhello gets this wrong too since I don’t have a large enough Lyric library to reference, but I get it right with a YouTube video).
Google Is starting to get this, as Two days ago above search results for Greatest Living American was a link to CNN’s article about the Colbert Webby. All of the points that I and Scoble make about the future of search, and what our "Dashboards for Life" will look like Google is building.
The people who aren’t getting this seemingly is Microsoft. They are in such a race to show they get it by cutting a check they are missing all of the small innovative companies that are making it work. I would encourage MSFT to buy Mahalo. (Jason if they cut you a check for $300 million I want 1% for putting the idea out there) Because Mahalo brings a piece of the Pie that is needed, Human summarized results. There is not enough CPU or a large enough database to classify things the way an army of volunteers/cheap labor can. Mahalo can take the 100 things each hour that people are looking for, and sort them, compile a headline, and find the source of the trend in record time, and if MSFT wants me to use Live.com as a Landing page that is part of what they need.
If Microsoft wants to by Techmeme, I would root them on. Gabe Rivera has proven that he can create Meme’s for various subjects, and I’m sure if someone paid him he could create 300 Meme’s that fit personality profiles for 80% of the people out there, and that would make them happy to start their day on a Microsoft site, and you know what most of those people’s search results could be filtered through the sites in their Meme.
I’m sorry I don’t support the Facebook buy. They just don’t know how to make people happy. I thought Facebook Apps had potential, but they are all such time wasters. I really wanted to like them. Stack on that Facebook doesn’t really know how to monetize their users, and I don’t see anything in Facebook that isn’t in LinkedIn. If LinkedIn goes the way of Facebook, I’m dropping it.
This is a response to:
Anders Bylund: Microsoft is probing Facebook’s merger interest
SmoothSpan Blog: Is Microsoft Playing Possum for Yahoo? It Could Be Much Worse!
Jim Goldman: Microsoft’s About Face With Facebook—Is It In Writing?
MG Siegler: The Microsoft buying Facebook rumors commence, again
Joel Evans: Is Microsoft still shopping?
Nicholas Carlson: Microsoft’s plan for Web growth, minus Yahoo and Facebook
Permalink
04.29.08
Posted in Technology News at 12:19 pm by Brandon Wirtz
Several people canceled appointments with me today. While it is possible they all came down with rare 24 hour bugs, that struck at 10am… I think it more likely that these people scored a copy of GTA4 at the last minute and are racing home to earn some achievements.
A quick visit to the Xbox Dashboard confirms this for the ones on my friends list… and 360voice.com provides incriminating evidence for the others… If you are going to use the same Screen name on Yahoo, and Xbox you might think to go offline when you are "Sick".
If you can’t beat them, join them. I’m off to conquer Liberty City. Since it is hard to do real work with everyone "Out of Office". Grand Theft Auto 4, stealing productivity across the nation.
Permalink
04.22.08
Posted in Site News, Technology News at 11:45 pm by Brandon Wirtz
I’m obviously biased, so when I win don’t be surprised…but I’m going to try and skew the results in favor of the other guys because well, if my product sucks I want to fix it.
The Test:
I’m going to search for Jason Calacanis on each of the services. I haven’t hand modified my results for Jason Calacanis on my engine so it should be a reasonable test.
Speed:
Wikia: And I thought the 800ms ISayHello.com’s search results took was too long. You can go get a Starbuck’s in the time it takes for Wikia to return results. I clocked 14 seconds, for most results a few came in at 8 some at 20, but 14 seemed to be both the Mean and the Mode.
Mahalo: Blazing fast. It aint Google fast, but it is fast.
ISayHello.com: It feels slow especially compared to Google, but on par with Live.com maybe a tiny bit slower than Yahoo. I think I take a hit from Youtube and Metacafe loading.
Stumpedia: Reasonably fast, doesn’t take long to load 3 results.
Quality of Results:
Wikia: Not too bad, but not great. Calacanis.com, Searchenginewatch,ReadWriteTalk, Mahalo, Twitter, Webpro news, TechCrunch, WebanalyticsBook, WebProNews, Beet.tv…. No Photo even though that is supported.
Mahalo.com: Calacanis.com, Twitter, Wikipedia,Weblogs Inc, Forbes, Jensense, TechCrunch. A picture of Gallery of Jason from Flickr, links to a Google Video and Jason’s Ustream
ISayHello.com: Calacanis.com, Wikipedia, TechCrunch, Twitter, Valleywag. Youtube of Jason Calacanis at his home, MetaCafe of someone talking about Jason’s Keynote at Affiliate Summit, 3 good Flickr Photos of Jason, and one odd one.
Stumpedia: Tinpig, Calcanis.com, Wikipedia. No Pics, no video, nothing of note.
Summing the Jason Search Up:
None of these results sucked except for Stumpedia. Mahalo Kicked ass with its hand edited results for its CEO. And it should. Wikia was slow but didn’t suck, Stumpedia just plain fails. 3 Results? I mean Jason is not Britney Spears but he isn’t a nobody, and you would expect that anyone in the search engine business should have something for him. (Matt Cutts only got 2 results)
But lets say you dislike Jason. I don’t dislike Jason, I think he is a smart guy, and he left a comment on my blog or someone using his name did, so hey, I’d buy him a drink, or a dinner, but lets say you didn’t like him. His start up crushed yours or something like that…
So you search for Jason Calacanis Sucks, because lets face it sometimes you aren’t looking for "Happy" search results.
Stumpedia: Zero Results
Mahalo: You get google results, and they all say Calacanis and Sucks but none of them are about how Jason Sucks.
iSayHello: Digg-Why it Sucks to be Friends with Jason Calacanis. That counts as a "hit"
Wikia: Jason Calacanis Sucks by MorningCoffeeNotes.com that Counts as a "Hit"
So what does that say….
Wikia doesn’t suck. It is slow but there is promise, I don’t think it offers any improvements over Google, but maybe someday.
Stumpedia, yeah it sucks. Too Few entries 4500 or so.
Mahalo, Good but only if you search the way it expects. You can’t get hits on a lot of phrases. I actually got better results doing a site:mahalo.com search in Google than I did using their search bar.
ISayHello: You knew I was going to declare victory, it’s my site. Mahalo is faster. And if you are the CEO you definitely get better results than my Generic Template can give. But I also had results for Jason and his level of Suck which I count as a victory because you aren’t always looking for "encyclopedic" results.
This is a Response to:
Venturebeat - Search Wikia takes a step closer to the promise of ’search meets Wikipedia’
Mathew Ingram - Wikia Search: Edit anything and everything
CenterNetworks - Wikia Search Launches Major Enhancements to Search Alpha
Permalink
Posted in Money, Responses, Technology News at 3:15 pm by Brandon Wirtz
The problem with entirely human powered results is the amount of time it takes to build a library of results. At www.ISayHello.com we are focusing on finding the best places for categories of results, and then working to categorize every search term so that you get good results. We are also creating content for top results. This allows us to be relevant for everything, and great on the most popular results.
Granted with only 48 hours of being live we don’t have a huge assortment of customized results, but we are able to move much faster than most, because we aren’t focusing on re-writing 300 words from Wikipedia for every result, we are instead focusing on finding the best results on the web for large categories of data, and so tomorrow when we add 24k results for prescription medications those 24k results will be much better than they were today. And unlike Mahalo or Stumpedia the improvements to those 24k results didn’t cost us even a dollar an entry.
The model is in a lot of ways like Google’s where you "tune" the algorithm, except that we will also be tuning the layout of results, what items are on the page, and how we present data.
It is our goal that you could use ISayHello.com as your primary search engine. You can’t do that with ChaCha or Stumpedia, or Wikipedia.
This is a response to:
TechCrunch: Miss Tormenting ChaCha Operators? Let Me Introduce You To Stumpedia
Edit: Stumpedia has 3,981 links - 803 members - over 4,500 search terms… We launched with 108k tuned results, 1million links, and I have no idea how many search terms… and I expect to add 10k a day.
Permalink
04.21.08
Posted in Site News, Technology News at 10:35 am by Brandon Wirtz
www.isayhello.com went live last night. The front page is ugly, I don’t have as many human edited pages as I would like, but it is day one, and this is the first step. In the coming days you will start to see better and better results pages, and more "Category" templates.
Not all results will be hand edited, but more and more topics will get classified into a category which will give results tuned to that category type.
What is ISayHello.com?
It is a hybrid of traditional computer generated results, human classifications of results, and human generated content. Keep in mind that ISayHello.com was built in about 150 hours by one guy. (Brandon Wirtz).
What isn’t ISayHello.com?
A replacement for Google, Yahoo, or Live.com Search results. Because we don’t index specific pages you will never be able to find a specific phrase on a site, but you will find specific phrases in titles, topics, and categories.
A Mahalo.com clone. The biggest difference between our results and Mahalo.com results is that we have results for pretty much everything on the planet. Mahalo.com only has results for topics that people have written results for. Much like Mahalo, iSayHello.com creates relevant links to sites that we think would best help you find answers to your searches, but our results change dynamically based on trends for the topic. For example if your favorite actor gets hit by a bus, we will switch from being 100% links to that actors works and biographies to a blend of links about that actors works, and news results about the recent incident.
What will ISayHello.com become?
ISayHello is working hard to add features almost hourly. Things like Game Walk Through / Cheat Data Bases, and Biographies of everyone on the planet. Some of these will just be willed in to existence and improve all of the results they are tied to, and others will be a process. (we can’t have a biography of everyone until you submit yours now can we?)
ISayHello is also working on relationships with other "engines" so that we can bring you results for the best price on products related to your searches when appropriate.
How does ISayHello.com work?
ISayHello.com works like many search engines, but is a "Just in Time" search engine. We Scour a huge number of places based on the type of search we think your topic is, and return results on that topic. We cache those results for a time, but if you come back in a few days you may get different, likely better results.
Our results take a little longer to "come back" than other search engines because of this, but we think we get better results because of this extra time. If you are doing a search that someone else has done recently you will be served a cached results and should get a fast response. As this is the beta very few speed optimizations have been made, so expect that results will get faster over time.
How can I help with ISayHello.com?
We will be posting various ways you can contribute. So check back every so often. We will also be running contests, and posting full time positions.
Permalink
04.18.08
Posted in Site News, Technology News at 2:57 pm by Brandon Wirtz
For a long time I was competing in my own way with Mahalo.com Jason Calacanis’s human powered search site. The formula was simple, take the Google.com/Trends data, then sort through the most "ownable" terms which was basically defined as anything with fewer than 10k competing pages and have a girl in India create a blog post about them. This is not quite Jason’s model, he was creating pages for every term, but as he has Sequoia’s VC money behind him, and I only have my own money, I had to generate revenue to pay for the content creation.
The model worked. I could recoup about 10% of the pages the first day, and 40% the first month, and the rest I’d lose money on, but taking a 6 month average all pages would break even and begin earning money. The problem is I don’t really have the bank roll to sponsor 6 months worth of posts to make $5 on each of them. The model doesn’t work that well.
If I write the posts most of the time I can make $5 the very first day, and for several days after that, but my time is worth more than $15 an hour.
So I needed a solution that would create pages at least equal to the quality of a Mahalo.com post, and created at zero cost.
Using nothing more than my server and content that is available through various web API’s. The results are a bit slow if you are the first person to search a term, but caching makes the results fast for the next person.
If you’d like to be in the beta, contact me (Brandon at XYHD.tv) I’ll point you to the site.
I’m still in the process of picking a domain, all the good ones are taken, but likely I will have several, each tuned for different types of searches.
I was blown away that there is not a good "classification" tool on the web, basically just to sort, this X term is of type Y. Like Britney Spears is a Person, Paris France is a Place.
My results could be a lot better if I had this because then I’d know where to look for types of queries. No worries I can build that in to the logic later, or make that part of the human part of the equation.
Permalink
02.14.08
Posted in Technology News at 2:35 pm by Brandon Wirtz
Reuter’s says PS3 is going to lead growth in 2008…. but then you read past the headline.
Worldwide sales of the PS3 are expected to be 10 million units this year, compared with 12.2 million units for Nintendo Co Ltd’s (7974.OS) Wii and 7.5 million units for Microsoft Corp’s(MSFT.O) Xbox 360, iSuppli said.
(The Analyst at iSuppli didn’t seem to have read Sony’s own projections. They lowered their estimates from 11 million units world wide to 9.5 million.)
But I read 12.2 Million as more than 10 Million, which would imply Nintendo is going to lead growth. If you look at it by percentage increase you could call it growth. But you wouldn’t say a baby mouse outgrows a baby hippo.
My readership grew 1Million percent yesterday. I went from no readers to Me, Dave, and a Splog reading my posts. I didn’t have Industry leading growth.
Sure if you look at January and February Xbox is lower than PS3, but I actually believe Jeff Bell, when he says Microsoft misjudged demand and that the 1.3 million units sold in December left them short handed.
The Analyst at iSuppli didn’t seem to have read Sony’s own projections. They lowered their estimates from 11 million units world wide to 9.5 million.
Related to this story: Microsoft acknowledges Xbox 360 shortages in US
Permalink
02.13.08
Posted in Technology News at 11:22 pm by Brandon Wirtz
Dave sent me a link to a site called Spock.com that has scraped a whole bunch of sites to create an all about Brandon Wirtz page. Only problem, is that I don’t want to have my Name and Address and current social status some where other than where I put it. Since I didn’t agree to share that information. So I sent the below letter to privacy@spock.com .
Hello,
It has come to my attention that your site has "Scraped" many of my pages hosted on numerous social networks.
This kind of Activity would be a violation of the Terms of Use of these networks and potentially of federal and state laws.
Please confirm that in the future you will not scrape or otherwise attempt to obtain in any manner information pertaining to Brandon Wirtz, and that you will immediately delete and not use in any manner any such information you may have previously obtained.
I reserve the right to take any appropriate action in connection with any activities that violate the Terms of Use and/or applicable laws, including the pursuit of legal remedies.
Please reply to this email.
Brandon Wirtz
We will see if they respond, but over all I dislike the dis-service. If I have a Myspace page and want to make it private I can. With Spock I have no control over how my information is used. And while Myspace and Facebook have detection built in to prevent scraping to some degree, any information that ends up on Spock is beyond my control.
The Image I wish to put out on LinkedIn, Yahoo, Facebook, a Myspace are all slightly different versions of me. I only agree to share the information I do in those places in return for the benefit that I get from them. LinkeIn.com offers me an opportunity to grow my business. Facebook is where I keep track of my co-workers goings ons, and Myspace is where I interact with my highschool friends. Each of these services have a TOS to protect my information from non-members. Spock.com violates these terms of use and I would be personally very happy if Facebook, Myspace, and Linkedin enforced those terms with legal action.
Some what related to this post Facebook disabled my account
*Update
Hi Brandon,
Please reply with the URL of your search result so that we can look into the matter. If you would like to have your search result removed, please make private the page from which we crawled. This will ensure that we do not crawl your page again in the future.
Best,
The Spock Team
So I sent the following:
Follows are the two URL’s on your site. I have no obligation to make private any of the services I am using, as the terms of their service grants them right to the use of my image and text with-in their copyright. I have a similar agreement with Google for the use of images on my site. I have no such agreement with Spock, and as such view the use of my Images and Text as an infringement on my copyright, and the copyright of the photographer.
http://www.spock.com/Brandon-Wirtz-I49aH1bw
http://www.spock.com/Brandon-Wirtz-RXUZU1iQ
Doing some searches through Spock it was not hard to find definite copyright infringements. Somehow I don’t think Spock has permission to use images from ABC
Heath Ledger image from ABC linked on http://www.spock.com/Heath-Ledger
Permalink
