Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation

September 19, 2010 by JD · 3 Comments
Filed under: Internet, Musings, Self-Improvement, YouTube 

I enjoy visiting Ted.com on a regular basis, and now that I have a fast broadband connection, I enjoy watching the videos of their Ted Talks.

Today, I watched a presentation by Chris Anderson called How web video powers global innovation.

He gives an interesting and informative presentation on what he calls “Crowd Accelerated Innovation.”

Essentially, this means that we’re all learning at a faster pace because of the use of videos on the Web on sites like YouTube, Facebook, and others. In addition to learning more quickly, we’re also raising the bar on expectations and that means more, and faster, innovation.

I think he’s on to something.

The video is about 19 minutes long and worth the time to watch it.

He makes a very good point about video enabling world-wide face-to-face communications and how we are hard-wired to take in and evaluate all the cues surrounding what someone is saying or doing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much more is video worth?

So, what do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Is the Web dead? Of course not.

August 19, 2010 by JD · 2 Comments
Filed under: Internet, Musings 

Have you read the article in Wired magazine about the Web being dead?

How much hype is that? The Internet (and all it’s protocols) and the World Wide Web are growing at a prodigious rate and Wired has the audacity to say that the Web is dead. I don’t understand it. They’re usually much better at presenting the facts than this suggests.

What am I talking about? Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff wrote this article: The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet

Normally, I really like reading what Anderson has to say, but this time, I think he’s (they’re) missing the point when he tries to make a distinction between using a web browser versus a specialized app to retrieve information. How does having more options for accessing data mean that the Web is dead?

It may be true that the use of a general-purpose web browser — for some people, especially those who use their mobile devices all the time — is declining. For myself, about a tenth of the time when I’m at home and most of the time when I’m out somewhere else, I use apps on my iPod Touch to read and reply on Twitter, Facebook, and other sites. I check the weather forecast and view the local radar on it.

Those are options I use in addition to my normal Web use. If I didn’t have the iPod, or I were stuck in a doctor’s office with no Wi-Fi, I would not be accessing the net during those times, I’d probably have my nose stuck in a book.

At least in my particular case, using apps on my iPod doesn’t mean I’m using the Web less, it simply means that I have an additional option to interact online when I’m away from one of my main computers.

But, what Anderson and Wolff fail to point out is that most of the content they say is leaving the Web and moving onto apps is still being served by the Web. Other protocols may be used by some people to interact with the data, but most of it still lives on the Web. It’s a technical distinction, but it’s an important one.

Even though I can follow Twitter and Facebook on an iPod/iPhone app, I’m still limited in what I can do. If I want to take full advantage of Facebook, for example, then I have to go there using a Web browser. The app just doesn’t offer the full experience, nor full access to the data.

Is FTP part of the web? No. It’s a different protocol, but it does allow us to upload information that can be served on the web.

Is DNS part of the Web? No, but it’s an essential part of the Internet. Without the domain name service protocols, data packets would not go hither and yon over the network using TCP/IP and we would not be able to access data easily. DNS is a protocol for finding servers and IP addresses and is part of the process used to direct info packets. It is absolutely necessary for the World Wide Web, as we know it today, yet it isn’t really part of the Web. It is one of the ancillary, underlying protocols that make the Web work when we click a link, type in a Web address, or call up a bookmark.

Is email part of the web? No, and yes. If you’re using an email application to send and retrieve email using protocols like IMAP and POP3, it’s not being done on the World Wide Web. However, a great deal of people, possibly a majority, use their browser to read and send email, and that’s definitely part of the Web.

(If you’re interested in knowing more about this subject, Wikipedia has an article about Internet Protocol Suite that links to lots of technical data and explanations. It’ll get you started, but you’ll have to learn a whole lot more to understand how the Internet works.)

Now, do we really care if the information we want to access is being served on the World Wide Web or through some other protocol? For most people, the answer, most likely, is “no.”

But don’t we hold technical writers at a technical magazine up to a higher standard? I know that I do. I go to Wired to get straight information about technical subjects and this time, I believe, they let me down.

I’m one of those people who wants technical subjects to be covered accurately (and I sure hope I am doing that properly here — I hate the way my foot tastes when I get caught with it crammed in my mouth!).

All the stats that I’ve seen show that the Internet is growing at a huge rate. And I am assuming that the use of most of the major application protocols (ftp, telnet, IMAP, POP3, http, etc) is growing too. In absolute numbers in terms of bandwidth, I’m sure that’s a true statement.

However, when looked at from a percentage of bandwidth perspective, then protocols that are very low bandwidth, such as http: and DNS surely fade away when compared to video and audio.

I don’t want to put too fine a point on this, because I don’t want to start making distinctions that aren’t important to most people, but even video and audio are accessed via the Web, using http: protocols. The server may hand off the information from Apache (or another web server) to a different server and stream the data using a non-web-based protocol, but without a Web browser being able to access the information being presented by a Web server, there would not be as much of it being served.

(Does that make sense, or should I just go back to sleep?)

I remember when information was much harder to find than it is now. There were no Web browsers and search engines. We used things like the Gopher protocol and applications like Archie to find and retrieve information. Those were not the good old days. Sometimes it would take hours to find information we knew existed, whereas, now, we can find just about anything in a few seconds by searching on Google.

Web browsers (Mosaic, Navigator, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and all the others) made it so much easier to read (and interact with) information when we found it.

Search engines and directories made it easier to find, but not nearly as easy as it is today. We tend to take Google for granted and not recognize how much easier it is to find and retrieve information than it has ever been before in history. I don’t use Bing on a regular basis, so I’m not qualified to have an opinion on their service.

Does it make a real difference if I’m accessing Facebook through an API with a specialized app on an iPod as compared to accessing it through Safari, my browser of choice for most things?

Anderson and Wolff say it does make a difference. I’m not so sure.

For another take on this article, Ken Evoy wrote about it on the Sitesell blog, Is The Web Really Dead?, and he approaches the deficiencies of the Anderson/Wolff article from their use of statistics and misleading graphics.

If this article was designed to stir up controversy and bring more readers to Wired’s magazine and website, it was a success. But, does that justify being technically inaccurate?

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

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I hate it when I lose a domain I want to keep!

July 16, 2010 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Blogging, Internet 

Back when I was so sick, earlier this year, I neglected to renew my MurphyNCCoupons.com domain and now someone has grabbed it, left much of my original, copyrighted content on it, and has linked to something I would never do.

Of course, the new owner’s identity is hidden in the registration. I’ve written the contact who is listed to demand that my copyrighted material be removed, but have gotten no response. When I feel stronger, I’m going to take additional actions against them.

I really wanted that domain and hate that I lost it. If you have multiple domains, be sure to watch your registrations and renew them in plenty of time so you don’t go through this.

I’ve been letting quite a few domains expire intentionally, because the original ideas I had for them proved not to be worth the effort. I’m narrowing my focus and have dropped to two dozen or so domains. Even with so few, I don’t have the energy and concentration to work on them now, but I’m hoping to be able to resume working on them in the future.

So, if you see a link on MurphyNCCoupons.com, don’t click it. It is NOT a recommendation from me.

Act on your dream!

JD

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I Can’t Believe It! Make Your Site Sell! 2002 is now FREE!

October 4, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Internet, Musings, Site Build It 

I don’t usually use three exclamation marks in a headline. That’s just not my style.

But, in this case, I’m going to make an exception and try to pass along my excitement about the announcement I just read.

I’m a few days behind on my email and I just now read an email Ken Evoy sent me last Saturday.

Among other interesting announcements, he told us that Make Your Site Sell! 2002 is now available as a free download. You don’t even have to give your email address. Just go to the link and get your free copy of what I think is the best information about earning an income with a website that is available at any price.

I bought the original version for $17 and was surprised with how much information was in this exceptional ebook.

Not only was there more information than I expected, the very format of the ebook was an example of how information should be presented in PDF format.

Make Your Site Sell! was updated in 2002 to a seven volume ebook with over 1,500 pages of outstanding information about building a successful website. The name was changed to Make Your Site Sell! 2002 in order to reflect this additional information. The price was raised from $17 to $30.

Now, I’ve seen ebooks selling for nearly $100 (usually $97) that only had a tiny fraction of what Ken offered for less than $30. Ken’s motto has always been to UNDERprice and OVERdeliver and this was certainly appropriate for Make Your Site Sell! 2002.

Go to the page and read what is in the ebook. Then, don’t waste any more time, download the ebook and start putting it to work for you.

Don’t add this to your collection of un-read ebooks. If you want to build a site that is successful, read this information, study it and put it to work for you.

Of course, a lot has changed in four years and parts of MYSS is starting to show its age, but I still refer to this information several times a month. I always find something I never knew or things I forgot in the interim.

So, why hasn’t this book been updated and why is it being given away now for free?

Over the last several years, Ken and the folks at Sitesell have been focusing their efforts into making Site Build It! into the the best set of tools for identifying your niche, designing a website, researching and creating the content, hosting it, and promoting it to the world.

The concepts that were presented in MYSS live on in Site Build It, so there really is no reason to update the ebook when Site Build It! puts those concepts into action.

I just renewed my subscription to Site Build It! a couple of weeks ago and it never even crossed my mind not to do so. I have dozens of websites and SBI offers me more value than all the others put together in terms of helping me do my best on the net.

But, you don’t have to spend $300 to get a Site Build It subscription to learn much about the concepts that lead to this outstanding tool.

You don’t have to spend a penny.

Just go download Make Your Site Sell! 2002 and put what you learn to work for you.

Yes, there will be some things that are no longer up-to-date in the ebook, but don’t let that distract you from all the good information and advice you will find.

I can truthfully tell you that I’ve wasted a good bit of money buying ebooks and following their advice.

But, that does not apply to Ken Evoy, Make Your Site Sell, and Site Build It. Everytime I follow Ken’s advice, I make more money. When I stray to other paths to test the waters, sometimes I make money, but much of the time I just lose my investment. That has never been the case with anything I’ve purchased from Sitesell.

My best advice is to tell you to subscribe to Site Build It! and give yourself the best advantage and the best tools to build a profitable online business.

But, if you can’t afford the $300 or if you just aren’t convinced, then put your credit card back in your pocket and download Make Your Site Sell! 2002.

See what created all the fuss a few years ago when MYSS was called “The Bible of Selling On the Internet.”

It helped me.

If you read it and put it to work, it can help you, too.

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BRMEMC.NET Launches High Speed Internet Technology Initiative

May 15, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Internet 

BRMEMC.NET Launches High Speed Internet Technology Initiative Focused on Advanced Data, Communications and Entertainment to Homes and Businesses

YOUNG HARRIS, GA – May 15, 2006 – BRMEMC.NET announced today that it intends to bring High Speed Internet Connectivity to Members of Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corporation. Service will be delivered by deployment of emerging Technologies such as Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH), Broadband over Power Line (BPL) and High Speed Wireless (Wi-Fi).

With this service, BRMEMC.NET will be addressing the growing need for widely accessible data and communications to homes and businesses. Currently, access is available only in limited areas due to the constraints of telephone lines and equipment. By deploying a wide-area fiber network in conjunction with BPL and Wi-Fi, limitations such as geography and/or distance can be overcome.

At the end of 2005, BRMEMC.NET purchased fiber that encircles the entire BRMEMC service area. This fiber will serve as the backbone of our new data and communications network. From this backbone, fiber can be run directly to homes and businesses or can be used to feed Wi-Fi Access Points and BPL.

Brian Anderson, Director of Internet Services for BRMEMC.net said, “Our investment in a regional self-healing fiber-optic network will help us provide broadband services to many of our members that have never before had the option of high-speed Internet.”

Members will have access to reliable, high speed Internet connectivity and new options for data, voice and video. Bandwidth can be used to simultaneously provide high speed Internet access, phone service, video, and a host of other exciting features.

Response to this new project has been immediate and larger than expected. Local Real Estate Developers are already requesting that fiber be installed in existing neighborhoods, and many are planning for fiber to be installed simultaneously with electric utilities in new developments.

High speed Internet service will be priced comparably to DSL, but will offer higher speeds. Additional services such as telephone service or Voice Over IP (VoIP), Video, etc., will be offered through strategic alliances and/or partnerships with other service providers. Pricing for additional services will be forthcoming as those projects develop.

An online form has been created to assist in planning the deployment schedule. Customers can submit a response form at www.brmemc.net/response which will be analyzed to determine areas with the greatest initial need. Areas with no high speed Internet access will be given priority, and the goal will be to serve as many members as is possible. Keep an eye out for announcements for a deployment schedule on the web site at www.brmemc.net.

Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corporation is a member-owned electric cooperative headquartered in Young Harris, Georgia, serving over 45,000 customers in Cherokee and Clay Counties in Western North Carolina, and Towns, Union and Fannin Counties in Northeast Georgia. Organized locally in 1937, BRMEMC has invested nearly $100 million in physical infrastructure in its mission to provide reliable electric services to its members where those services would not otherwise have been available. In 2002, BRMEMC.NET began operation with a similar mission in mind: to provide high-speed Internet connectivity to our underserved region. Now over 3,000 customers strong, BRMEMC.net is forging ahead in its effort to make the Western North Carolina and North Georgia region a leader in the technology age.

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Search It! Adds Five New Searches for RSS and Blogs, and Four for Specialty Hubs and Directories

December 5, 2004 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Internet, Site Build It 

Ken Evoy’s free Internet search utility has just gotten better, if you have any interest in RSS, XML, and blogs or for specialty hubs and directories.

Search It!, which does NOT involve downloading anything to your computer, is a utility that makes it easier to find information relating to business and ecommerce on the Internet. By using a multi-step process (usually three steps, but sometimes four), it will build the searches for you and go to the appropriate search engine, directory, or content site to find the information in which you are interested.

One item you’ll see in the Step 1 dropdown box is “Reference Library for Content.” By selecting that, Search It! will automatically populate the Step 2 box with appropriate choices. There is a link to get help for using the tool once you have selected your choices for Step 1 and Step 2.

The new searches listed in the Reference Library for Content choice in Step 1 are:

Yahoo! RSS Domain Search
Feedster Blog/RSS Search
Syndic8.com RSS Search
Google RSS Content Search
Yahoo! RSS Content Search

It’s taken me years to learn how to search for some of these things and where to go to find them, and Ken has just given you that power for free.

Not only that, but he just added four more searches related to hubs and directories. Select “Specialty Hubs and Directories” in Step 1, and you’ll see the following new searches in Step 2:

Google Wide
Google Tight
Yahoo! Wide
Yahoo! Tight

The help link below Step 1 and Step 2 gives information on how to use these new searches.

I use Search It! just about every day. It’s easy to use. Leave the small window open in the top-left corner of your screen so it will be available when you want to find something of interest. The more I use it, the better I like it.

I was surprised to see that I have several sites listed in the top 10 for both the Yahoo! Wide and Tight searches for the following keywords: Step 3 = “Murphy NC” and Step 4 = “travel”. It looks like the work I’ve been doing for the last several months is starting to pay off.

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Search It! Launches

September 19, 2004 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Business, Internet, Musings, Site Build It 

We’re approaching the end of September and people who run businesses are turning their attention from summer activities to gearing up for the final quarter of marketing before the end of the year.

Webmasters, marketers, home business owners, folks who auction products on eBay, and just about anyone involved in online commerce will find Sitesell’s newest tool, Search It! to be a very valuable addition to their online research tools.

How many sites do you have bookmarked that you regularly search? Do you remember all the different formats you must use to get the information you want? Let Search It! help!

If you open Search It! and park it in a window where you can easily get to it during your work sessions, you’ll find that it will become an invaluable tool to help you improve your websites, keep a close watch on your competition, look for ways to monetize the traffic to your site, look for more — and better — keywords and phrases, and do much more, easier than ever before possible.

The good news?

It’s free! Yep, Sitesell, once again, overdelivers and underprices.

Site Build It! owners get some extra functionality, but everyone can use this new tool as much as you want at no cost to you.

It’s a bit different, so be sure to click the help link and read it. One of the great things about Search It! is that the help (between steps 1 & 2 and steps 3 & 4) changes depending upon the type of search you are doing. This makes it easy to use without having to keep notes or just feeling your way around.

I’ve been searching on the Internet since before the World Wide Web even existed and I found some great resources by using Search It! that I never knew existed.

I heartily recommend this tool to you. If you’re searching for anything on the web, see if Search It! can help you.

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More adults are online — 73%

September 15, 2004 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Internet, Musings 

Harris Interactive reports that 73% of adults are now online, up from 69% eight months earlier, 67% in late 2002, 64% in 2001 and 63% in 2000.

That translates into 156 million users, up 7% from late 2003.

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Geographic-specific search results – hype or coming reality?

April 8, 2004 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Advertising, Internet, Small Business 

Will Local Search Live Up to its Hype?

The potential exists for more geographic-specific search results and advertising, but meeting Web users’ needs and getting local businesses to advertise remain challenges, say executives of search and online directory companies.

“About 98 percent of the 22 million businesses in the United States are small or midsized, and they spend about $22 billion a year in local advertising, Greg Sterling, a program director at The Kelsey Group, said in an opening address. While these businesses are familiar with buying traditional ads, such as print yellow-page listings or newspaper ads, many remain unfamiliar with search-based ads that involve an auction method for bidding on top keywords in search queries to return a sponsored link.”

[eWEEK Technology News]

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Google puts one more nail in the yellow pages coffin

March 31, 2004 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Advertising, Internet, Murphy North Carolina 

About a year ago, I started recommending, to anyone who would listen, that it was important to put full addresses, city, state, zip code and phone numbers with area codes on their websites.

Sharon Fling has been predicting the importance of promoting small local businesses on the Internet for a couple of years now, and those who have followed her advice are very well placed as we see more of the major search engines incorporate local searching in their arsenal of search tools.

Google now offers local search results — something they’ve been working on for months — and their implementation is coming along nicely.

For example, I just entered “restaurant 28906″ on their search page, and at the top of the results it shows a heading link for “Local results for restaurant near 28906″ followed by three local restaurants with their address and phone number.

If you click on the link just mentioned, it brings up a page of restaurants near Murphy, NC sorted by distance. It even lists the mileage and direction to the restaurant with a link for directions.

At the top of the page are other categories related to restaurants.

Right below that is a compass icon with a link to see the listings on a map of the region.

Clicking the link brings you to another page with a Mapquest map showing numbers indicating the restaurants. There is a legend to the right of the map showing the restaurant indicated by each number, with a link to the restaurant.

Mapquest maps for our mountain area are not extremely accurate and I often get erroneous results, but this map looks mostly accurate — although not 100%.

If I click on my favorite restaurant in Murphy, Shoebooties Cafe, next to its number in the legend, it brings you to a page dedicated to Shoebooties, with its location noted on the map and a button for getting driving directions.

I’m less satisfied with MapQuest’s driving directions, since they give you a 23 minute, 12 mile drive to get to a location that is about a 30 second walk from the main intersection in downtown Murphy. The last two or three steps in the directions are accurate, but I have no idea why they start where they do, way out west of Murphy a long way from the town.

Regardless of the deficiencies of the MapQuest directions, the Google implementation of local search is accurate and fast.

Let’s try another. How about “antiques 28906″ or “real estate 28906″?

For antiques, it lists three shops in the local section at the top of the page, but misses Pickled Parrot Antiques which is right in downtown Murphy and starts with a shop over two miles away. Pickled Parrot Antiques is listed first in the regular search results, right below the local results — so there are still some bugs to be worked out for the most accurate results.

For real estate, the link to the full page is more accurate than for antiques. It correctly lists the downtown real estate agencies and extends outwards from there. This is clearly useful.

While the Google local results feature is not as accurate as being listed in the yellow pages, it is free and fast. As time goes by, I’m assuming it can only get more accurate as Google improves their algorithm and cross-linking.

I think you’ll find this to be a very useful tool.

Looking for a bagpiper near you?

On a lark, I tried searching for “bagpiper 28906″ and learned that Clay Will lives about 40 miles southeast of me on the north shore of Lake Rabun in Georgia. I bet I never would have found him in the local yellow pages!

But, just when this looks great, I tried searching for “musician 28906″ and got results that were not very good. I know there are hundreds of excellent musicians within a 20 mile radius of here and none of them are listed.

“pizza murphy nc” correctly lists Downtown Pizza Co (where I had lunch a couple of days ago and enjoyed it) and branches out from there. It misses Papa’s Pizza To Go in Murphy, but finds the franchise in Blairsville, Georgia, which it says is about 15 miles south of Murphy, but I’m pretty sure it’s a good bit farther than that.

While still a work in progress, Google’s local search is decidedly useful, especially for businesses that are most likely to have a website or which may be listed in various directories.

I could probably spend the rest of the day playing with this, but it’s time to move on to other tasks!

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