May 2007 Archives

On May 16 Google started to roll out it's "Universal Search" system which aggregates results from across many of Google's properties including images, video, news, blogs etc. And while the general public is just starting to see universal search show up on their searches, industry insiders have been able to see some of what Google has been up to on a public but not very publicized web site Searchmash.

As soon as Google rolled out the new service some analysts were saying that this could spell the doom of the vertical search market. Blogs posting title's from some prominent blogs were provocative like these: Google Universal Search - is Vertical Search Space Finished? and Will Universal Search Mean Universal Domination?

So is the vertical search market doomed? No, and in a word here's why, innovation.

I needed to find a document on my hard fast and since I use an Apple Mac Pro I clicked the Spotlight icon to start my search. However it was talking too long so I decided to try the Google Desktop search. What a difference, it came up with the needed document within seconds. I'll keep testing both and see what happens. My main concern with Google Desktop was with the amount of resources it uses when indexing.

I'm doing some research on social networking and in particular Twitter. So if you Twitter please forward me your thoughts or post your comments on it here. I'm curious to know how it affects your daily routine, how many of your friends or colleagues use it, do you use it with some mobile technology etc. Thanks.

Revised: I've decided to expand my focus on this questions to other social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal or blogs in general, Stumbleupon, Flickr etc.

So what results when a small group of entrepreneurial space ventures get together to talk about commercial space opportunities in Canada? Well after several years of informal meetings at various events across the country you get the idea to start an organization to help the nascent Canadian space commerce industry. And after a year and a half of planning the Canadian Space Chamber of Commerce is born. Here's the official description of the organization:

"The Canadian Space Chamber of Commerce is a collaboration of Canadian entrepreneurs interested in the commercial opportunities available in the development of space and opening the space frontier. The Chamber exists to advance a favorable economic, legal and political environment for Canadian entrepreneurs in this field, and to promote positive public recognition of the socioeconomic benefits to all Canadians from investing in this development."

This is a follow up on my earlier post on Show me the Money: Web 2.0 Expo where I talked about Jeremy Liew's talk. Here's an overview of his talk;

"Many recent startups have relied on online advertising business models. AdSense and the many other ad networks have made it much easier to get to a level where cash burns are minimized or eliminated through the addition of basic online advertising from third parties. But this is rarely enough to build really big businesses.

To reach $100m in revenue, unless you think you can get to be one of the top 10 web sites in the world, you need to find other ways to monetize. What are the ways to drive double digit CPMs? When can digital goods make a meaningful contribution? What are other ways to get consumers to open their wallets and pay for either atoms or bits? When the new online behaviors map to offline behaviors, there is less friction on the transaction and the opportunity to charge becomes greater."

And now available is the powerpoint presentation.

It's worth going through if you plan on starting an online business.

The answer of course is search, although most people who will read this will have never heard of Nitin Karandikar.

Search is in my blood these days, more specifically vertical search and project Phoenix which I'm currently working on. Every where I turn these days people are talking about search. Today I've come across a trio of interesting blog postings related to search and offer them as worth reading.

In the first Tim O'Reilly talks about "What Would Google Do?" and it's more about innovation, Web 2.0 and less specifically about search but the core of the articles comes from data gathered from Google services including search. Web 2.0 is more than just a buzz word, it's a fundamental shift in how we interact online. Quoting Tim;

... it goes right to the heart of what makes Web 2.0 applications so interesting: they are alive, or as close to it as you can get with a computer. They learn from and interact directly with their users (and more specifically, provide services to individual users that benefit from the aggregate interaction of the system with all of its users.)

We've been working on this for several months now but we just put out the first press release. We decided on the target landing site at the PRIME science team meeting the Mars Institute hosted in January in Vancouver.

Canadian Mission Concept to Mysterious Mars moon Phobos to Feature Unique Rock-Dock Maneuver

"The science team has tentatively selected a feature on the surface of Phobos as the landing site. Known as the “Phobos Monolith”, it is a building-sized object. The mission intends to use a new maneuver coined rock-dock, to dock with Phobos."