Tag: internet

The switch to Live Search is on

Post ImageRobert Scoble posted today that he thinks Microsoft’s Live Search has really improved and has closed the gap with Google. Despite that, he doesn’t think anyone is going to switch away from Google. He says he won’t because of the trust he’s built over the years using Google. I think he’ll revisit that strategy at some point.

Over the last couple weeks, I have been using both Google and Live Search. More and more frequently, I have found that the Live Search results are better than Google’s search results. Most of the time they are almost identical. This is really important. The quality of results has to be on par with Google before people will consider switching. Now that the quality is there, here are the main reasons I am switching:

  1. Switching is easy – there’s really nothing keeping you at Google except habit.
  2. Live.com is shorter than Google.com – sounds dumb, but it makes a difference! I’ve never been a big user of the search boxes in the browser.
  3. Live Search looks so much nicer than Google! Both are simple, but the extra color that Live Search does have makes it look better.
  4. The speed difference is no longer noticable. The main thing I liked about Google was its speed. Live Search is just as fast now though.

I am not saying Live Search is perfect, but neither is Google. Both have their quirks and both have room for improvement. For example, Google’s results seem to be extremely out of date at times, but their image search is far better than Live.com’s. Both Google and Live suck at feed searches – Ask seems to have the lead there.

I think most people will agree with Robert on the trust thing though. When I first started using both engines, I would always do a search with Live Search first, and then do the search in Google. The reason was basically to make sure Live Search wasn’t giving me crap. I trusted Google more. I probably still trust Google more, simply because I’ve been using it for so long. But that doesn’t mean I am not willing to give Live Search a chance.

Are you going to switch?

Read: Robert Scoble

So much for stealth mode!

Post ImageI think it’s funny when companies say they are operating in stealth mode, because it is really hard to do. Before this morning I had never heard of Powerset, so I guess they were in stealth mode, but the cat is out of the bag now. Here’s what they say about themselves:

Powerset is leading the next generation of internet search. Powerset is a Silicon Valley startup currently operating in stealth mode. Please check back in the near future for more information about the company and its products.

There are so many blogs covering this company today, it’s ridiculous (and I guess I’m included in that now too). Most of the coverage contains things like “so much better than Google” or similar comments. Is that really such a good idea? I wonder if the company is happy about all the attention or not. They say there’s no such thing as bad press, but when you are getting setup like that? It’s going to be hard to meet expectations.

Read: Powerset

Comparing Windows Live Search and Google

Post ImageAfter less than a year in beta, Microsoft is set to release the final version of Windows Live Search tonight (actually it’s no longer marked beta for me). The search engine will now power MSN Search too. With this in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to compare Live Search and Google (currently my default search engine). How does it stack up? Could it possibly be my new default search engine? Let’s find out.

First off, please note I am focusing only on the basic search functionality – load up the site, type something in the box, and press enter. Both Live Search and Google have a bunch of other options (and Live Search’s macros and other things are especially neat) but right now I am just interested in the search results I get. I will say however that I really like the look of Live Search. And that it loads just as fast as Google does.

1. hello world
First search is for what else but hello world (Live, Google)! This is a hard one. While the results are similar, I like Google’s better. Why? The top result is for a .edu site, talking about “hello world” program examples. The second result is for the Wikipedia entry on “hello world” programs. Live on the other hand, returns HelloWorld.com (which appears to be a streaming video site) for the top two results. Google has this one too, but at #3.
# of identical results in top 10: 5
winner: Google

2. mastermaq
Next up is a little vanity search, for mastermaq (Live, Google). I keep track of this search at Google fairly often, and it usually alternates between some Brazilian company and my blog as #1 (oddly enough my blog is down at #6 today). There’s a clear winner here, and it’s Live Search. Why? Well because all of the results but two are created by me. Google lists my profiles at other sites far higher than it does my own sites. Something created by me is far more important don’t you think?
# of identical results in top 10: 4
winner: Live

3. podcast spot
How about a search for Podcast Spot, since we’ll be releasing it soon enough (Live, Google). So these results suck on both sites, but that’s probably because you can’t actually get to Podcast Spot right now without a password. Despite that, Google delivers much better results. I don’t know how the first two results in Live even matched (some random color video and an article on GM podcasting). Google is at least smart enough to put our login page at #1. The category for Podcast Spot at the Paramagnus blog is #3 on both sites.
# of identical results in top 10: 2
winner: Google

4. britney spears
She used to be one of the most frequently searched for celebrities (Live, Google). The results start out almost identical on both sites, then Google goes downhill. “The Mystery of Britney’s Breats”, some crappy fan sites, and a Google page at #10 pretty give Live the win. With the exception of only the #9 result, everything Live returns is appropriate.
# of identical results in top 10: 6
winner: Live

And now for a tie-break!

5. ventureprize
Let’s see what turns up for the business plan competiton we competed in this year (Live, Google). What a terrible query for the tie-break! Anyway, it seems that Live is really showing Paramagnus the love, with five of the top ten results from sites belonging to us (I include my Flickr page here). Google seems to prefer the University of Alberta and City of Edmonton sites. While I love being higher in the search engines, I have to give this one to Google, for having the most relevant first result.
# of identical results in top 10: 4
winner: Google

So there you go, a very unscientific comparison of Google and Live. I am impressed enough by Windows Live that I’m going to try and use it for a week or so, to see if I feel anything is missing. The thought of not using Google does seem strange though! I am really happy with the speed of Live, because one of the main reasons I started using Google was that it is damn fast. The Live Search team was wise not to ignore this.

What has your experience been with these two search engines?

Telus finally upgrading broadband network

Post ImageDickson sent me this story today about Telus. I recently got rid of my Telus landline and while I am not a big fan of the company, I have been pretty happy with their mobile phone service, and until a couple years ago when I lost my static IP, I was happy with their ADSL service too. That said, the Internet offerings have always been truly “North American”, and by that I mean slow and expensive relative to the rest of the world. Finally though, Telus is going to make some changes:

Telus Corp. says it is investing nearly $800 million over the next three years to beef up its broadband network so it can offer its customers a wide range of new services, including high-definition television.

The company said its proposed infrastructure will allow it to double internet access, to speeds of 15 or 30 megabits a second.

That’s still a far cry from the 100 megabits/second you can get to your house in Hong Kong, for example, but it is markedly better than what we have now. Apparently the entire project will be completed by 2009 (at which time, the rest of the world will probably be faster still).

Read: CBC News

Amazon EC2

Post ImageI’ve been meaning to post about this for some time now, but haven’t had a chance. I was really excited last Thursday when I read about Amazon’s new web service called “Elastic Compute Cloud” or EC2 for short. After seeing what they did with S3, I was particularly interested in the how EC2 would fit in. And boy does it ever fit in:

Create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) containing your applications, libraries, data and associated configuration settings. Or use our pre-configured, templated images to get up and running immediately. Upload the AMI into Amazon S3. Amazon EC2 provides tools that make storing the AMI simple. Amazon S3 provides a safe, reliable and fast repository to store your images.

Nicely integrated with S3. The other great feature? Bandwidth between EC2 and S3 is FREE. I cannot even imagine how much cost savings that could equate to. With EC2, you pay only for instance hours used. Each machine instance is equivalent to “a 1.7Ghz Xeon CPU, 1.75GB of RAM, 160GB of local disk, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth”. Pretty darn sweet.

I’m already thinking of ways we could integrate this into Podcast Spot (we’re already using and loving S3). I’ve only taken a cursory glance at the forums, API and other documentation, but it seems to me there are two missing features that are extremely desirable: persistent storage and support for Windows (currently it only supports Linux). The AWS guys seem to be pretty on top of things though, so if enough people request them, I’m sure the features will get implemented.

I can’t wait to see what Amazon releases next!

Read: TechCrunch

Internet Explorer 7 RC1

Post ImageInternet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 was released today by Microsoft. This is supposed to be the last test release before the final version of IE7 is made public, though more release candidates could be added depending on the feedback Microsoft recieves. I hope someone from Microsoft reads this post.

I just installed the browser, and had nothing but problems. Compared to beta 3, the installation for RC1 was a total nightmare. I downloaded the setup, closed all my programs (knowing I’d have to restart), and launched the setup. It did its thing for a while, then said I needed to restart, so I did. Upon restarting, Windows XP did something in the DOS-like blue window before the login screen, then booted normally. Right after logging in, the setup opened again (which required me to click Yes on the security box because the file came from the Internet). Almost immediately, svchost and the Generic Process Service crashed. I had to kill the setup as it was then stalled (no CPU activity whatsoever), and launch it again. After a second restart, the browser was installed properly.

After the first restart, when the processes crashed, my audio didn’t load (I only noticed because Skype popped up an error message). That was fine after the second restart. Worse though, is that something happened to my external hard drive. Maybe it was just a coincidence that it happened at the same time as the install, maybe not, but Windows thinks the drive needs to be formatted. I am currently running chkdsk on it now, and it’s found a bunch of unreadable segments. I can’t imagine that the IE setup would have touched the drive, but you never know. I didn’t have anything on the drive that I couldn’t afford to lose, but still, it’s very annoying. I’m hoping chkdsk will fix it (it’s fixed a ton of errors so far it appears…and as I type this, I see that chkdsk just encountered an unspecified error…so much for fixing it…).

Other than that, I really like IE7. It does a great job of rendering CSS and the other standards (in my opinion) and RC1 feels much faster at loading pages than beta 3. Perhaps my only complaint right now is the find feature (CRTL-F). Why doesn’t IE7 have the inline search that Firefox and Opera have? That stupid, useless little find box feels so 1996.

Overall though, I quite like IE7.

UPDATE: I ran chkdsk one more time, just for kicks, and it seems to have fixed everything! As I said I didn’t need anything on the drive, but there were a few things I wouldn’t have minded keeping. I am now copying them to network storage, just in case the drive dies again.

New Speed Test Service

Post ImageAnother tool gets Web 2.0-ified (well sort of, it’s just Flash, though it is marked beta). No longer are speed tests boring! Thanks to Speedtest.net, you get an interactive map and speedometer-like gauges to see how fast your Internet connection is. From Blog Esoterica:

The site allows you to select servers to ping from around the country on an interactive map and graphically displays connections as they travel with varying speeds along the way. It also lets you store results of tests for your computer and sort them by date, time, speed and distance.

I tried it out, and it seems pretty good. I wish there was something more to the service though. Basically it’s just a flash interface on the same speed tests that have been available for the better part of a decade. That said, if you like fancy graphics, Speedtest.net might be just what you’re looking for!

Read: Speedtest.net

Mainstream Media Meltdown III

Post ImageI started reading Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail a little while ago, and so far it’s really good. I still remember reading the original Wired article, and thinking it was pretty darn smart. One of the best things about the book is that Chris has sort of continued it online, using his blog. A couple days ago he posted an update on the state of mainstream media:

A couple times a year, I take a statistical look at mainstream entertainment and media in decline. All figures are year-on-year comparisons unless otherwise noted.

He has some really fascinating numbers, though I suppose less fascinating once you grok the long tail. TV, Music, Radio, DVDs, and Newspapers are all down. Magazines and Books are mixed (and The Long Tail itself has cracked the top ten). Only Videogames, Internet advertising, and the Box Office are up (and the box office is still down from 2004).

I am pleasantly surprised to find that, at least so far, the book is more about economics and less about business. The idea of the long tail just makes so much intuitive sense to me – it really is about economics. I’ll hopefully post a review when I finish it later this week.

Read: The Long Tail

Internet Discovery

Post ImageSome say I spend too much time on the computer, but I say bah! Some say I spend too much time on the Internet, but again, I say bah! Why do I say bah? Because I know there’s still hope for us geeks, as demonstrated by Rory Blyth (who works for Microsoft):

[Google.] I owe you in a very big way. There are six billion people in the world, approximately five zillion web pages cataloged in your little magnetic platters, and you somehow managed against the odds to deliver a highly intelligent (major: aviation science / minor: journalism/creative writing), dynamic, gorgeous human being to my doorstep. I’m willing to pretend for a few minutes like our two companies aren’t out for each other’s jugulars with piano wire.

Seriously, it’s a great story, you should go read the whole thing. Rory is an excellent writer too.

So what kind of hope does he give us? Well, not necessarily that what happened to him will happen to the rest of us (although that would be cool, the girl is gorgeous!), but hope that there lies within the Internet a great potential, still waiting to be discovered.

All the good domain names are gone!

Post ImageI came across a really fascinating article yesterday about Dennis Forbes, who has been studying a huge list of domain names in his spare time, making him something of a domainologist. Some of the things Mr. Forbes has found by looking at the list (which he got from someone at VeriSign) are truly amazing:

All of the 1,000 most common English words have been snatched up. The word “a” appears more than any other, though most of the time, of course, it’s just a letter in a longer word. The least-used common word is “consonant,” Mr. Forbes says, which is in just 42 domains, including “consonantpain.com,” which isn’t a misspelling but a word game.

Mr. Forbes checked the U.S. Census Bureau’s 1,219 most-common male names, the 2,841 most-common female names and the 10,000 most-common surnames; all were booked. Not only that, but when you link the top 300 first names with the top 300 last names, 89 percent of the resulting combinations are taken for male names and 84 percent for female ones.

And more generally?

For example, for every possible two-character and three-character combination, including both letters and numbers _ all possible domains are taken. Virtually all English words with four letters are claimed; those that aren’t are usually contractions, and Web rules don’t allow apostrophes.

Half of all domains are between nine and 15 characters long; the average length is 13. A domain can have, at most, 63 characters, and there are 550 such domains. In fact, some people have made a haiku-like art out of 63-character domain names.

Told you it was interesting! I’ve been known to buy domains on a whim, but there are people who have turned it into a multi-million dollar business. Digital real-estate is valuable as well it seems!

Read: NFD News