2005 July

Jul 29 2005
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Power Law coefficient deviations and the Long Tail

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[physics/0506213] From old wars to new wars and global terrorism Reading this gruesome study into fragmentation of ‘attack units’ in modern warfare, that Kottke linked to, it is clear that this is the mathematical model that should be used to examine niches in the ‘Long Tail’ debate. I.E. The change in power law coefficient over time and its trend compared with G-7 terrorism or non G7-terrorism could be applied to standard co-efficients for low inventory mass market retail, bricks and mortar, vs unlimited inventory, niche market retail, the Internet. I wonder what the standard power law coefficients are for these. I still have a hunch that there are some non-linear affects and that fractals play a role in revealing the same pattern for niches within niches etc.

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Jul 29 2005
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IE7 shows why Google must develop a browser.

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Microsoft has always owned the UI, whether that be the command line or desktop – owning this is their unwritten mission statement. Google owns the command line for the web, so they directly step on Microsoft's territory. IE7 has search built into the browser – although it lists several search engines, it will not include saving Google search over MSN as a default setting. This tiny detail is a passive aggressive masterstroke – everyone is equal but MSN is more equal than others. It forces a minute ‘switching cost’, changing the dropdown every single time you do a search if you really like Google. Web savvy people will do this, but would your mother? Moreover, it is rumored that IE7 will not allow Google or Yahoo toolbars. This steps on Google's territory. If web search boxes go from being embedded in a web page to being embedded in a browser,…

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Jul 26 2005
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Iran executes gay teenagers.

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Lest we forget, this is not a Persian crime, but a religious one, and one based upon opinions that are shared by some people from all the Abrahamic religions. Some people email me wondering what I have against religion: I think belief is an abrogation of our moral responsibility as human beings to reason and empathise with other people rather than passing the responsibility to a text which cannot be reasonably challenged or ammended. I do think that religion makes good people better, but it makes bad people worse – and it is easier to destroy things than build them. Until someone disproves the 2nd Law, religion and humans are a volatile mix. I think that the more secular a society is, the more moral, creative and innovative it is. In America people are not arguing about whether gays should be executed but whether they can marry, I am not…

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Jul 26 2005
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Mac OSX for Free

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If I were Steve Jobs… I would use the Gillette model (free fancy handle, pay for the blades) to sell value-add products like iPhoto on top of a free OS. I would make power PC and the Intel version of OSX which has been worked on for a while – free. Particularly in light of this: Everyone wants ‘free’ Windows… | CNET News.com

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Jul 26 2005
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Why the battle between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo will involve maps.

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

Number of households in US: 101 million. Local Services market value: $600 billion annual. Household services: $180 billion annual. Amount spent on local offline advertising by contracting and real estate businesses: $25 billion annual. Dotcom investment in 10 online services during boom: $250 million [they were keen but too early] Amount spent on advertising local services to households: anywhere between $50 -$90 billion annual [this is the biggest untapped revenue opportunity for search] Largest category of services posting on Craigslist (taken by looking at a sample 2 days of postings): Sex services, 40% [i.e. Craiglist not a player yet, outside of jobs and real estate] Largest category of Yellow pages advertiser: Attorneys, $856 million in 2001. Largest single event resulting in Yellow Pages use: eldest daughter gets married [personalized search and user profiles will be important] Number of Overture searches that explicitly have a city in the search: 4% Number…

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Jul 26 2005
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Slate article gives up civil liberty argument half way through

Posted by | media | No Comments

I wonder if this Slate article, Are Subway Searches Legal? – The rules for searching bags. By Daniel Engber was written by someone that : thought he had a point then realised that his argument was flawed; added the paragraph at the bottom marked ‘bonus explainer’ which tries and fails to defend against the flawed logic in the main piece; ran the story anyway. There are very real civil liberty concerns post 911, they highlight the fact that democracy is built from a peaceful society. But cummon, screening bags for bombs before travelling is not one of them. There is nothing that takes away your liberty more than being blown to pieces. Summary – piece highlights a claim that searching subway bags is ‘unconstitutional’, realizes that could be argued that is no diff from air travel searches. Tries to say that air travel is different because: 1. You have other…

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Jul 21 2005
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How many blogs are spam blogs?

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Verisgn estimate that at least one in 50 new sites is a spam site. Given that the total number of weblogs is normally measured by those that are actually posted to, this does not account for the growing number of spam blogs. I suspect that spam blogs actually account for an alarmingly high percentage of the total, and people like Technorati have to index them. A reputation system for blogs could effectively weed out this load. Verisign reports that it: “will change the way it reports the size of its domain name business, in terms of active registrations, because of the amount of speculation going on. It will reduce the size of the reported registrations by about 2%” “Names are being bought and then tested against traffic analyzers,” Sclavos said. “The ones that can generate more than the $6 or $7 [registration] fee per year are kept, the other ones…

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