It looks obvious

I run ads in this blog mostly because they are there. I don’t pay to much attention to them, nor do most of the visitors of the blog - which is fine with me. But today I couldn’t not notice how Google’s matching algorithm was able to Associate the title of the post, or the content of one of the links, to Davy Crockett and to the Alamo, which I find pretty impressive.

Do you remember the first ads for cellphones? In the US they were selling the idea that cellphones liberate you, while in Israel they were more honest with the slogan “…make a lost hour to a working hour”. They use to show people to be pretending to be at work while actually being on the beach having good time. As it turns out cellphones were the opposite of liberating and the reality is that most often people on vacation keep working while on the beach when they should have fun.

I wonder what people use to do on the train before the cellphones arrived with all the applications and e-mails and calls. It is pretty rare to see people reading books on the train nowadays. On the other hand I’m very impressed with how important so many people are, as it seems that their workplace simply cannot survive without their immediate response to e-mails. People seems to be unable to make the distinction between the ability to do something immediately, and the need to do it.

It is probably one of the clearest signs that I’m getting old, but I don’t understand why people find it beneficial to subject their time and priorities to someone else? I don’t understand what is the great achievement by checking your e-mail while inline in the coffee shop, on the train or during the intermission in theater.

I’m not a luddite, I don’t thing that technology advancement is bad. I can go here over a long list of technologies that improved our life. I also like cellphones, really. I like the idea that I can make phone calls whenever I want. However, I don’t like the idea of subjecting my schedule to someone else priorities, and therefore when I’m not calling my cellphone is usually turned off. I’m lucky enough not to have cellphone from work, mostly because I clarified that I have no intention of keeping it turned on after office hours.

I love watching TV, sometimes. I love listening to music on my Ipod, sometimes. I love using the internet, sometimes. I also love spending time with my family, I love to read books, I love to travel and being with friends, and many other things. I don’t like the idea of being enslaved for technology that should serve me and I certainly don’t like the idea that it is appropriate to expect from me to keep working after office hours, or while I’m on vacation, simply because some technology enable it.

And why do I tell you all this? because it seems that I’m not alone and that there is a market for cellphone that being marketed as Anti Iphone. And while I’m not anti Iphone I do love the fact that someone is going to make money from selling me a $10 cellphone that is only for making phone calls.

This post is a translation from Hebrew from a popular Israeli blog 

Is might seem as a technical problem, but I feel it may teach us something about the way Google behaves. 

Introduction: it started with a story in Israel’s channel 2 news, describing a Star of David that has been engraved into the Dahniye airport runway, now visible from space via Google Earth. The report stated that the Star of David was engraved “lately” by IDF tractors during Israeli operation in the area. I decided to check the issue and contacted Israeli Google PR, who directed me to the Digital-Globe layer in Google Earth that shows the date during which the picture was taken. But is it indeed so?

One of my editors in “Yedioth Ahronoth” newspaper was the first to notice something was wrong: he couldn’t recognize certain details in certain images. According to the date shown by the layer, those details should have already been visible. How could this be? He first asked himself and then me. His speculation was seemingly impossible: perhaps Digital-Globe, that takes the pictures for Google, uses this layer in order to offer their service. They sort of say: “we took a picture of this area in the date shown right here. You can’t see the newest picture, but we’ve got it. If you want to buy it, call us and we’ll be more than glad to sell you the picture for a thousand dollars or so.”

I told the editor it doesn’t sound right to me. I told him it can’t be that Google lets Digital-Globe use their platform in order to sell their service, and that there isn’t any other way to see a picture’s date using the program. I also told him this was the explanation given to me by Google representatives. Nevertheless, I contacted Israeli Google PR once more. They agreed that the editor’s idea wasn’t likely, but moved the question on to Google’s European PR. The Europeans agreed with Israeli PR that agreed with me that the idea wasn’t too likely, but they turned the question to Google Earth guys.

Google Earth guys said my editor was right.

Ladies and Gentlemen, there seems to be no way to know when was a Google Earth picture taken. Google doesn’t offer this information in the program itself. You might be seeing a picture taken during 2007, or perhaps during 1997. There is no way to know. The Digital-Globe date layer is a commercial having nothing to do with the visible picture you see – and if there is such a connection it is purely random and unverifiable (hence the Dahniye airport Star of David might have been engraved 5 years ago).

I believe this story is important for two reasons. The first is Google Earth: I can’t recall reading that there actually isn’t any way to know when was a picture taken. The second is Google itself: it’s obvious that the company knows exactly when was every picture taken, but it decides not to give it away, not to expose it. You’d better bear this in mind whenever dealing with a company whose ethos is “visibility and organization of information”.

Ethos my @#!*.

I’m used for OS upgrade and pretty much loath them. I can’t recall even one Windows upgrade that went well, at the end I always needed to format the hard drive and install the new version of Windows on clean system. It is also took several months until everything that use to work in the previous version was fixed and worked again. Not for nothing it is common habit among Microsoft’s user to wait with new software until the first service pack is released and make the software usable. 

So it was no wonder that, despite the great reviews and the general enthusiasm, I took a cautious approach when I prepared to upgrade to OS X Leopard. Although, cautious or not, I’m an early adopter by nature and I rushed to upgrade on the release date. Before upgrading I backed up my entire hard drive and made a complete list of my applications and setting - ready for the unavoidable formatting and reinstalling as I’m used too.

Several hours of preparations and all for nothing! I started the installation, went to upstairs to get a cup of coffee and when I went back it was all done. And it was the cleanest installation I ever experienced. Since I was skeptic I performed a careful and extensive checking of the system and my applications and every thing is working perfectly. Even more surprisingly Leopard is all what the reviews promised. Unbelievable!

In the last post I rant about the epidemic flood of social networks, and the lack of added value they providing. But I need to correct a wrong impression I might created. I do think that their is a vast use to social parameters in the Internet, most of it is yet to be developed. It is not, however, a replacement for the neighborhood bar. Companies like Last.Fm or Outbrain making pioneering steps in understanding how one choice of content (music, or blog posts) can be a recommendation to others based on very sophisticated matching. This is not involving broadcasting to the world every time that One doing something rather by aggregation of certain patterns.

I’m following some of these developments with great interest since they are, to my humble opinion, where the future of the Internet is  - not the passing fashion of twitter and its sort.

I really don’t get it. I’m probably already way to old but I simply don’t understand the excitement about online social networks. I was tempted few years ago and opened an account in LinkedIn, and since than my only activity is to approve occasional contact. All my contacts are people I knew before, and my relationships with them isn’t based on anything in LinkedIn. I never joined another social network, and I have very little desire to try facebook. Here is my, completely personal, impression - there is nothing social in online social networks. Those people who knew how to network before still know how to network now, and those who didn’t (me included) still don’t know how to network now. I guess that when the hype will comedown, most people will realize that they have better things to do than be informed about the whereabouts of their contacts constantly.

And don’t let me start with twitter…

I have two Invitation to hand for Skitch,  a pretty cool and somewhat useful application for Mac. If you are interested, drop me a note.

I like Microsoft’s SQL Reporting Services. It is a nice tool that allow me to roll tools to users fast. I usually use the reports at the beginning of projects as a way to understand the real needs, while providing a first phase useable tools. The relative easiness producing report also allow me allocating developer times better by building the report by analyst and not by programmers.

That being said I really don’t understand why can’t Microsoft get over themselves and avoid producing confusing, and unnecessary, additional functions and buttons. If someone will be able to explain why does any user need two different button - "refresh" and "View Report" button beside of the obvious reason of confusing the hell of them?

I really like new software. I find software creation, when done well, an elegant and beautiful. It is not always visible, sometimes its the architecture of the database, or some very nice solution for a problem. And sometimes, just by looking at the results, the elegance and talents of the development team making me excited.

Here is a great example for such case:

And by the way, you can try it yourself, it is really worth it.

(H/T from this Israeli blog)

I got today a link to this BBC documentary about the global warming and I watched it with great interest. Surprisingly the BBC production line is that although we are told that the reasons for the recent global worming are because of our technologies, and specifically the increase of CO2, the scientific evidence doesn’t support these theories. In other words, the inconvenient truth might be mostly inconvenient  because it isn’t true. But what is worse is that the global worming theory is a crusade. Skeptical views of the Theory are unwelcome and can prevent grants or further research.

I Don’t know when it was aired, or what was the reaction for this documentary - and if anyone knows I’ll be very interested to know about it. 

So free 75 minutes of your time and watch this well done story of science, political agenda and ideological motivation.

Tags: Global Warming Politically Correct Ideology The UN