January 11th, 2011 by Chris Silver Smith
So, my prediction that the iPhone was coming to Verizon has finally panned out as the official Verizon Wireless iPhone page is now live! The CDMA iPhone was confirmed at a press conference hosted by Verizon at the Lincoln Center in New York today.
The planned arrival comes just a hair late for me. As my earlier prediction stated, I intended to get the Verizon Android if the iPhone wasn’t coming soon enough, and for various reasons, mainly involving timing, I went ahead and got an Android.
I’m actually still very pleased with my Droid X by Motorola, and I’ve been studying how applications leverage its various transitions and the overall user-interface style. The Android has one significant advantage over the iPhone in my mind, because of the Google operating system. While I am somewhat platform-agnostic, being fairly comfortable with Microsoft, Apple, UNIX, etc — I primarily use a Microsoft PC because I still feel the need to experience the internet on the same system/browser combos used by the majority of people out there. (I’m not at all saying that Microsoft is better than Apple!) Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Android, Android Operating System, Apple, Apple iPhone, cellphones, Droid X, geolocation, Google Android, iPhone, mobile marketing, mobile phones, Motorola, smartphones, Verizon, Verizon iPhone
Posted in Mobile Phones | Comments Off on The iPhone Comes To Verizon Finally!
January 7th, 2011 by Chris Silver Smith
A recent post by a member on WebmasterWorld alerted me that GeoTag is widening their local search technology lawsuits to include many more companies. WebmasterWorld sharply limits forum members from mentioning particular links, but I think the member was referring to this GeoTag Inc. v. Royal Purple Inc. et al patent suit.
The WebmasterWorld forum member refers to GeoTag as a “patent troll“, which I think may be deserved. He mentions that this company went after Superpages, YellowBot, Yelp, Local.com, Yellowpages.com, and many other IYPs in the past. I was aware of some of this where it concerned Superpages, but I will not comment upon that.
There has been some supposition that GeoTag might be going after relatively small targets before eventually working up to go against a major target such as Google. It’s my opinion that a number of these companies have likely settled in order to remove a nuisance or to avoid risk of an outright loss in court.
It’s also my opinion that a larger target such as a Google Maps or Bing Maps might eventually stand up to them if they were to go after them, and force a legal decision which could void out their ability to enforce this sort of claim any further. I think it may be that their claim might not have merit when considering the full scope of related prior art — although I’m certainly not an attorney. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: geotag, local technology patents, patent infringement, patent lawsuits
Posted in Law and Legal Matters, Local SEO, Maps & Mapping | Comments Off on Local Search Technology “Patent Troll” Expands Lawsuits To Target Hundreds Of Retailers
January 6th, 2011 by Chris Silver Smith
In a blog that SuperMedia operates to provide advice and information for businesses, they published this surreal post on “Employee Retention During a Corporate Restructure” at the end of December.
SuperMedia has been laying-off employees in droves over the past two years, as they struggled through revenue decline, heavy debts, Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, and subsequent cost-cutting (possibly paving the way for a three-way merger between SuperMedia, AT&T and Dex One). So, “corporate restructure” is an accurate term for what SuperMedia employees have been enduring for quite some time, if not an understatement on a massive scale.
So, publishing a post on how to retain employees seems downright… odd under the circumstances.
The article advises a number of tactics for employee retention (my interpretation/paraphrasing): Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: corporate blogging, SuperMedia, Superpages
Posted in Blogs & Blogging, Business Management | 2 Comments »
January 5th, 2011 by Chris Silver Smith
On December 28th, McAfee Labs unveiled their 2011 Threat Predictions Report, and they’ve listed Geolocation Services as one of the top targets for cybercriminal activity in 2011. Geolocation services particularly include services involving check-in activities which publish your location. Geolocation services include Facebook now, as well as Twitter, Foursquare and Gowalla.
From my perspective, McAfee’s inclusion of geolocation services is unsurprising and perhaps even overdue.
I wrote back in 2007 how geolocation technology is core to click-fraud detection, as well as for credit card sales, banking, and user profile verification.
Just a couple of common risks involving geolocation services involve criminals being able to use your current location information in order to victimize you. Obviously, if a criminal knows where your home is, and you’re involved in a geolocation service which is showing that you’re located in another city or across town, they could rob your home. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Facebook, Foursquare, geolocation, geolocation services, Gowalla, Twitter
Posted in Maps & Mapping, Social Media | Comments Off on McAfee Labs Lists Geolocation Services As Top Target For Emerging Threats In 2011
January 5th, 2011 by Chris Silver Smith
The year 2010 may have marked the demise of social media bookmarking services. Quite a few bookmark sharing services were discontinued last year. Simpy, Gnolia, and Backflip were just some of the best-known ones.
In their heyday, some of these services may have been considered to be the next big thing in online social media plays, but something changed in the past few years, making their usage begin to decline and they became less-preferred by venture capitalists.
Probably the biggest impact to them was the growing dominance of Facebook. People are using Facebook to share links with one another, and also using the “Like” button more to collect connections to content. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bookmarking services
Posted in Helpful Tools, Social Media | 2 Comments »
January 4th, 2011 by Chris Silver Smith
Back in September I predicted a merger between SuperMedia and Dex One. However, there’ve since been other developments and rumors coming out of these yellow pages companies which lead me to suggest a possible “trifecta” — a three-way acquisition/merger could be in the works between AT&T’s Yellow Pages (NYSE:T), SuperMedia (NASDAQ:SPMD), and Dex One (NYSE:DEXO).
These three companies operate some of the largest print and online yellow pages in the country, with AT&T Interactive operating YP.com, SuperMedia operating Superpages, and Dex One operating DexKnows. Read on for more speculation and observation on my part. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: acquisitions, AT&T, at&t yellow pages, company rumors, dex media, Dex One, DexKnows, directories, directory publishing, mergers, phone companies, SuperMedia, Superpages, telcos, telephone companies, Wall Street rumors, Yellow Pages, yp.com
Posted in Directories, Yellow Pages | 19 Comments »
January 1st, 2011 by Chris Silver Smith
Google’s “doodle” logo for New Year’s Day today has the “OOGL” of the logo replaced with Roman numerals for two-thousand-and-eleven, and the background of it is full of fireworks going off:
Though not as well known, the letter “G” was also used as a shorthand Roman numeral in the Middle Ages to represent four-hundred, and the uppercase “E” was used to denote two-hundred-fifty. If we included these two numbers, the sequence might be read as 2011 – 400 + 250 = 1861. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 2011, Google, Google Logos, Great Expectations, new year's day
Posted in General Commentary, Google | Comments Off on Happy New Year’s Day 2011!
December 27th, 2010 by Chris Silver Smith
Google sits upon a simply huge amount of usability data, and I think it could benefit a lot of webmasters if they were to publish it. My New Years Wish is that they might begin to periodically release some of the tantalizing tidbits they may have.
Google frequently will recommend best practices to webmasters, based upon their internal research, particularly in cases where that information might be mutually helpful to websites and endusers. For instance, Google’s Browser Size is a very handy tool which shows you graphically what percentages of online users are likely to be able to see areas on your webpage when they initially land upon it, without scrolling.
Here’s a small handful of usability-related stats I’d like to see them publish:
- Does Google Suggest help improve spelling of searchers?
- Did introduction of Google Suggest increase or decrease the numbers of searches?
- Does addition of the date to the listing snippet improve CTR evenly, or do entries with older dates get clicked upon less? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Google, Usability and User-Experience (UX) | Comments Off on New Years Wish: That Google Would Publish Usability Research
December 7th, 2010 by Chris Silver Smith
I was lured into reading a TechCrunch story tonight which purports to expose a new social media utility called Google +1, and I happened to see that they had blurred out the Google username in the upper right corner, likely intending to obscure the identity of their informant who leaked the screengrab image to them.
When glancing at the leaked image fully expanded, it appeared to me that the blurring of the name was somewhat insufficient, and the letters appeared tantalizingly near to being recognizable. I couldn’t help but wonder: could the blurring be reversed?
With extremely minor image manipulation, I found that the blurred name indeed could be reversed, perhaps just sufficiently to make identification possible. Of course, the image could have been taken by a different employee, so I have redacted the altered picture.
[Image redacted upon consideration, because I do not wish to accidentally impugn a possibly-noninvolved person.]
Curious, I thought to cross-reference with LinkedIn, and indeed, I found a Software Engineer at Google whose name resembled the de-blurred pic.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: blurred images, censored documents, digital photography, image manipulation, image technology, leaked documents, secret documents
Posted in General Commentary, Images, Law and Legal Matters | 4 Comments »
November 17th, 2010 by Chris Silver Smith
Ok, this may be a first – Google Maps has now inspired a man in the U.K. to diet and get fit after he saw an image of himself in Google Street View:
Bob Mewse saw himself in Google Maps’ interface, and said he was “stunned” at his side view saying, “I was massive. My belly was sticking out and I looked huge.”
He was inspired to lose the weight, so he started dieting and exercising, eventually losing roughly 98 pounds (7 stone)!
Street View and the Street View photo car have been magnets for criticism and privacy complaints. In this case, it seems that it has been the catalyst for someone to adopt a self-improvement regimen.
Tags: dieting, fitness, Google Street View, Google Streetview, wierd news
Posted in Google Maps | 1 Comment »
Happy New Year’s Day 2011!
January 1st, 2011 by Chris Silver SmithGoogle’s “doodle” logo for New Year’s Day today has the “OOGL” of the logo replaced with Roman numerals for two-thousand-and-eleven, and the background of it is full of fireworks going off:
Though not as well known, the letter “G” was also used as a shorthand Roman numeral in the Middle Ages to represent four-hundred, and the uppercase “E” was used to denote two-hundred-fifty. If we included these two numbers, the sequence might be read as 2011 – 400 + 250 = 1861. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 2011, Google, Google Logos, Great Expectations, new year's day
Posted in General Commentary, Google | Comments Off on Happy New Year’s Day 2011!