My Fantasy League Pick for Yahoo's Board: Steve Jobs

Over 11 years ago, after seeing one of the release candidates for Windows 98, I wrote “The browser wars are over, Microsoft won.” I took a lot of heat from the Netscape and Mac faithful, but at the time it was obvious that whatever the default was in the late 90s was going to win.

That was one prediction that I got right. But saying “the search wars are over, Google won” isn’t a prediction, but rather a statement of what already happened. Here’s a screen shot from a recent day’s worth of search traffic for TVbytheNumbers:

If search is the focus, combining Yahoo and Microsoft doesn’t really make up much ground. I’m mostly for Yahoo staying a separate entity because it has such massive scale overall. It’s lagging in search, but its other properties ranging from mail, to MyYahoo, to Yahoo sports perform very well. My theory, boneheaded as it may be, is with that much scale you ought to be able to figure out how to make more money. The one problem I have with the combination isn’t really Microsoft, it’s that combining the companies doesn’t seem like it will wind up increasing the scale that much.

Today Fred Wilson posted a list of board members he’d like to see in light of Carl Ichan’s recommendations. To be honest, I’d rather see Mark Cuban than a lot of Fred’s recommendations. Though I loved Fred’s pick of Bill Gross, overall there are too many deep-thinking smart people on his list. I’m not sure anything ever gets accomplished when you throw that many deep thinkers in a room. And with the mix of people Fred recommends I’d worry about the testosterone warrior mentality of making Google the target of all strategy. I think that would be a bad strategy. I’ve seen what happens when companies make their major competitor the sole focus, and it doesn’t usually work out well.

The one guy I’d really like to see on Yahoo’s board if we’re doing fantasy league is Apple’s Steve Jobs. Think about it. Apple stopped making Microsoft its direct focus, all doing so got it was the need to ask for Microsoft’s help to bail it out! Which Microsoft did.

It took a while, but then came the iPod and now Mac and its OS are very steadily gaining share too. The Apple Store? A retail hit! The Microsoft Store? Not so much. Jobs seemingly knows how to ride these things out better than anyone. Marc Andreesen may be a great product guy and Tim O’Reilly may be a genius at seeing the future. But Jobs has the practical experience of actually surviving something similar.

We Don't Care, We Don't Have To; We're GOOGLE!

First of all, mostly I love, love, love me some Google. Best search EVER. Even with its flaws. But other than YouTube and organic search, they have some products that do not work consistently as would be expected.

For now, it’s conjuring up memories of Lilly Tomlin as telephone operator “Ernestine”. “We don’t care, we don’t have to. We’re the phone company!”

I don’t want to speak out too harshly about the way Google News works (or doesn’t) for fear they’ll go all Gordon Ramsay on me and say, “TVbytheNumbers.com, give me your jacket and get out of Hell’s Kitchen!”, but..

1. It took me MONTHS to figure out why some stuff fed into Google News and some stuff didn’t
2. Even after figuring that out – stuff will feed in, disappear, show back up – without any rhyme or reason to it
3. I switched to Google Reader because within Google News you can search on: source:wall_street_journal , sort by date, click to RSS that search, add it to reader and have the full text of the WSJ as an RSS feed and clicking via GR will get you the full text of all articles (doing the same thing with other readers, doesn’t which is why I switched over to GR from Bloglines - a way to get FREE full-text access via RSS (though sadly, not full feed, but still FREE!)
4. Now that I’m in GR I can see that it does NOT update the feed for TVbytheNumbers frequently. Even though the feed is fine, works fine via Feedburner (which Google fracking owns!) is updated in Bloglines, etc., a post I wrote 2 hours ago as of this writing still does not show up in Google Reader!
5. Google has a nice “alert” service to e-mail you about specific things you’re interested in. Sometimes it’s immediate. Sometimes it’s hours after the fact. Sometimes, you never get an alert at all

I am guessing I don’t see more kvetching about this stuff mostly because outside of organic search and YouTube, relatively speaking nobody uses the other products. I discussed this with my TVbytheNumbers.com partner in crime, Bill Gorman (an exec at AOL in the 90s) and his take was:

I think that's always been a problem at Google. They have one thing that makes them all their money, yet they're doing these zillion other things that make them zip.

But it's not entirely clear to me how much effort they actually put into those other things. Yes, the list seems long, but how many people are involved in them or how much are they really spending on them.

While YouTube does garner Google a lot of traffic, even this they have yet to figure out how to monetize. Organic search is a gold mine for Google, but over time building a zillion products that don’t work as well doesn’t seem like a great strategy.

I think Google is to be applauded for leveling the playing field and making it fairly easy for the "little guy" to create some useful content and giving people ways to find it easily. But right now, while I wait for posts to show up in Google Reader I'm thinking, “One ringy dingy.."

Jason Calacanis: One Step Closer to Owning the New York Knicks

I’d kind of like to see it. I remember the glory days of Earl Monroe, Clyde Frazier, Dave Debusschere, Willis Reed, etc. The Dolans have run the franchise for far too long now. New blood!

I was going to go with the headline of: “Facebook to buy Mahalo for TEN BILLION DOLLARS?”, but I didn’t want to get the Dolans too excited. People will be all over Robert Scoble for this (watch the videos, they’re worth watching), especially the Web 2.0 dweebs who don’t understand that most of the world doesn’t think the same way as they do.

Scoble predicts in four years time, Techmeme, Mahalo, and Facebook are going to cause problems for Google.

Though I’m sure it won’t have any impact on Google’s stock price tomorrow and I’m not as convinced Google can’t compete well with what he’s talking about, Scoble is on to something. And hats off to Scoble, as I’d have placed him as one of those Web 2.0 dweebs.

I don’t yet buy as Scoble does that it’s just not in Google’s DNA to do something like Mahalo (and Techmeme and Facebook) itself or just buy them, but I loved where in part 3 he riffed on Yahoo for a bit as being the potential wildcard in all of this. “Watch out for Yahoo!” (about the only thing that would’ve made that any better for me is if he had said, this means YOU Kara Swisher!).

I’m still agnostic on Mahalo, but I like the premise of it a lot and want to see what happens when they have 25K human edited pages. Jason’s play here is the 80-20 rule. He doesn’t plan for Mahalo to be as all encompassing as Google, instead going for the 20% of the searches that probably represent 80% of the search market. Though why Mahalo already has pages on bacon and kielbasa and not TV Ratings is…interesting.

But c’mon, don’t you want to see Calacanis high fiving with Spike Lee during the NBA finals?

Scoble’s plan that you would only find out about the videos via social networking and not Google went south in about 10 minutes (very good natured of Scoble to post the link via twitter himself). If anything Google has gotten better and faster over the last 6 months.

Note to Scoble: More white boarding videos, less blogging. You’re a natural!

Not Optimistic for Tivo

Disclosure: I’m a long, long time Tivo user. I do not hold any shares of TIVO (long or short). I don’t use Tivo much these days but am considering the $299 TiVo HD product.

The primary reason I am not optimistic is this chart:

Click to enlarge

The drop off since late ’05 is primarily due to DirectTV dumping Tivo. That plus Tivo hasn’t been able to sell many boxes on their own. In the most recent reported quarter (new data will be available in about 1 week) Tivo’s net new “Tivo owned” subscribers was a measly 1000. It’s pitiful. The new boxes might help with HD lovers, but Tivo already has boxes (non HD) that are cheaper.

The current business model just seems doomed. You have to buy a box AND buy the program guide, and most cable companies will rent you a box with a program guide for cheaper than Tivo will sell you the program guide. The hardware may be inferior, but it’s FREE.

Om Malik’s NewTeeVee had a post about how one out of five homes now have DVRs, but mostly they are not Tivo, and in the comments section, I learned that Tivo’s prospects might not be all that bad. I wasn’t previously aware that a judge had awarded an $88 million judgment to Tivo in a case against Echostar. Echostar is appealing and oral arguments in the appeal are set for 10/4/07.

Still, when your business’ best revenue source is apparently based on lawsuits or the licensing of intellectual property that will likely come from other companies if Echostar loses its appeal, it’s just not that interesting of a business.

I can’t believe the Tivo technology (at least the software) and brand won’t survive somehow, but I don’t see it happening as a stand-alone business. Someone has to buy them. The current market cap is ~$600 million. That’s practically a rounding error for the likes of GOOG.

Making Money with Full RSS Feeds

I recently wrote about the struggle to get paid for free content and software, including the situation with full RSS feeds, it's going to be difficult to make money.

When Freakonomics recently moved to the New York Times web site, they switched the RSS feeds to partial feeds. When this happened, the small, but very loyal full-feed reading fans of the content shrieked like little girls who’d just dropped their ice cream cone on the pavement.

They’ll make their official decision on Monday. They need to get paid, and I don’t blame the NYT or the crew at Freakonomics if they say, “Sorry, you’ll have to live with it.” The situation with Freakonomics got me thinking about solutions.

I really enjoy full RSS feeds and someday I believe a significantly larger portion of the world will as well though this might still be a ways out. In the meanwhile we will see less and less full feeds. Unless someone designs (and this could be done in-house as well) a product to work with blogging software and other content management/web publishing services where when new content is “posted” it’s done in such a way that the following happens:

1. On your site, things work exactly as they always did
2. Somehow there is a mirrored version of the content that is automatically served up with advertisements in the body of the actual posted content. This would become the feeder for the full feed RSS content.

I don’t think this is a huge challenge, but it’s also not a teeny tiny one either. It has to work with various content publishing systems and with various ad serving technologies and not add anything to the administrative overhead.

I hope it gets built. I really love full RSS feeds on the iPhone. If it doesn’t get built, ultimately everyone will go partial feed.

Hopefully Google and others are already working on something like this.

Is a WYSIWYG Front End Tool For Blogger Coming?

I know it's not right to get my news from Valleywag, but...it's fun. The Wag is reporting that the chief architect of Six Apart (makers of Typepad/Moveable Type) is bailing on Six Apart and heading to Google.

If true, I'm delighted by this news. Why? There's no good software tools available for easily managing the free Blogging tools (like Blogger). Sure, what Blogger gives you with the layout manager is fine. But CSS is a pain in the butt (as in one errant space will screw up your web site). For very basic stuff, the Blogger tools are fine, but when you get into anything outside of the standard 2 column world -- you're on your own.

I've thought for the last 3 months as I've struggled through learning CSS why doesn't Six Apart punt on Typepad and Moveable type and create a great front end for Blogger and WordPress. Moveable Type is supposed to be the best,but it requires server side software that most of end users are never going to be interested in. Just give us a very good front-end WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) tool for managing what Blogger already offers on the server side and it will be a very powerful and useful tool. More powerful than Moveable Type simply because of the reach of Blogger/Google.

I think Six Apart missed the opportunity to do this and now it's too late. I can't say I blame them. When I sat around thinking about "Why isn't somebody selling me something for $250-$300 to make this EASY!" the only answer I came up with is, "Google will get around to doing it itself" and I'm sure that's probably what they thought at Six Apart. Looks like they were probably right.

But Google is Number One at Making Cash

They can take up a new mantra at Google: "Ratings? We don't need no steeenking ratings". Google figured out how to make money with its scale. It has become the biggest advertiser in the world. Seems like these days there is no site with any scale that doesn't run some Google ads. They just keep improving, they have statistics to optimize and cash to buy expertise and even more ad space. It's good to be Google.

Hello Yahoos!

i ran my Google analytics and saw a little traffic in Sunnyvale and because Feedburner provides ip addresses I got curious. And damn if you can't run NSLOOKUP from a DOS command line just like you could in the 1990s. Yahoo! I'm guessing a little tiny mention from Kara Swisher goes a long way. But as long as you're here...

Google won. Really. The whole thing. However...

I'm thinking about this like I am thinking about the TV business. Did you know that in about the last 11 years (1995-2006) the combined "share" during primetime for CBS, NBC, ABC has decreased by a full 2/3rds? That's right, there are about as as many eyeballs on ABC, CBS, NBC combined now as each used to have. But guess what: ABC, CBS and NBC are worth MORE today than they were 12 years ago (even adjusting for inflation and whatnot).

So even though Google won, it's not over for Yahoo. Not by a long shot. Good luck!

Stupid Google Searches

analytics aren't always a good thing. Some chucklehead searched on the following: how to lose 80 pounds in 80 days and landed on my post about how to lose 80 pounds and keep it off (and of course, seeing no 'magic pill', left immediately).

Even if you work really hard at it, you'd struggle to gain 80 pounds even over a 2 year period, but people want to lose it in less than 3 months.

So, here are some options:

1. fast for 80 days (you won't likely lose 80 pounds, but you'll probably lose more than 50!)
2. start cutting parts of you off
3. death

I don't find any of those options practical, but nobody likes the "change my lifestyle so that I consume only as much as I burn' after burning more than I consumed to lose the weight."

The magic pill is going to make a lot of money.

More Google Product Ideas

I am fascinated with Nielsen ratings data, but there are lists Google could produce that would fascinate me more.

The first idea is that within Google they should have a "Billion Dollar Idea" program where if you come up with a billion dollar idea they just pay you a $25 million commission for your good work. I don't actually work for Google, but I think they should extend this program to me anyway. I do think this is a billion dollar idea even though it's a very simple one. I 'm not sure the one below is worth anything, but oh man, I want it anyway.

It needs a different name but to keep in the theme of what I've been writing about the placeholder is the top 10: Capitalism isn't Self Destructive but People Are list. Paris, Britney, Lindsay, John Travolta, Tom Cruise – it's just another way to capitalize on people acting like dopes, but with this sort of dopiness the intersection between capitalism and dopiness seems to be high. We eat this up like candy and Google could figure out some exact ranking based on the # of news stories about dopey behavior.

They could further segment the lists. I'd want the sports list. In fact this is the reason I am so consumed with ESPN's 5pm-6pm EDT hour and love ATH and PTI. Effectively these shows create the list for me. I don't know the actual ranking but this week the top 2 for sure would be:

1. Kobe Bryant
   
2. Pacman Jones
   
3. The Cincinnati Bengals*
   

*I had to add this because ANOTHER Bengal got arrested for something. I actually DO believe in coincidence, but when what seems like about a 4^th of the 45 man roster has been fingerprinted in the last year I don't know if that's coincidence, Cincinnati, or something specific to the Bengals.

I know this though: Roger Goodell had some sort of "OMG, you have to be kidding me!" moment when he found that out.

Google “People Like You” Part II

Ok, I'm a lousy capitalist mostly because I'm too lazy. Too lazy to look up to see whether this idea has been patented so I could live the dream of extorting Google for cash someday and too fearful to go look it up on Google and find out that 47,000,000 articles have mentioned this idea already.

I can design a very high level product spec for Google social networking based on actual data very simply. The Google user opts in to a service that tracks searches and once (pick a number 10, 50, 100, whatever) people who have also opted in have done the same search, Google creates an on the fly page for this group of people to communicate with each other and then Google sends an e-mail alert that the group exists. The group grows over time.

This is a very simple product. Google Groups doesn't seem like the right implementation and this is not as robust as what I envisioned here because it lacks information (in that example case that the search had been done from someone browsing on the Nintendo Wii). But it's still kind of a cool product.

People Like You: By Google

Google has a really cool social networking opportunity. Some sort of natural selection for finding people who are just like you.


The Google Analytics are pretty nice for free, and coupled with the Feedburner stats (which I hope will not go away now GOOG has acquired Feedburner) you can find out a lot of good info. I saw on Google that somebody searched on destructive capitalism and found part 1 of my rantings on that topic. And I'm pretty sure they read the whole thing because they spent 15 minutes on the site. But here's the really neat thing (and Google Analytics doesn't include this functionality yet though, at least not in this way but it certainly has the data to do so) in Feedburner I could see where the person came from, how they accessed and what browser they used.

They used the browser in the Wii to do a Google search on destructive capitalism! I have not done a Google search on the Wii yet. I haven't on the XBOX 360 either. I have done it on the PS3 (and on the PSP). But anyone out there surfing the Internet on a game console and doing Google searches on destructive capitalism -- that's someone I want to know. I'm not sure I need any other piece of data at all. In the future, Google will have some way of connecting anonymous random strangers with each other in a way that MySpace, Facebook, etc. can only hope to. I know there are all kinds of privacy issues, but Google really can broker the anonymous connection.
That's power and power that still hasn't quite caught up to the legal system. Microsoft felt it needed to settle an antitrust claim Google placedt by making some changes to Vista regarding Google desktop. What the problem is though is lost on me because the only machine I have with vista on it, came with Google desktop preloaded on it and it seems to work with Vista just fine. The Google desktop, aside from being a good search tool for the stuff on your computer is similar to Microsoft Vista's "Sidebar". Vista and Google’s sidebars have gadgets, can pull RSS feeds, and display quite a bit of info. It's a lot like the "Dashboard" products that were available for earlier versions of windows. Only Google's and Microsoft's versions are both, much, much better.

It wasn't any harder for me to figure out how to bring Google's sidebar up than it was to figure out how to get Microsoft's sidebar off my desktop. But you know what? I don't want either of them on my desktop. I have a 24" widescreen monitor so I have plenty of space. But I don't like these tools being on my screen at all. I'd much rather use Google's browser based counterpart and I am very quickly becoming a huge fan of iGoogle. Not just because they too are capitalizing on Steve Jobs by stealing his small i. It's the best "my" page I've ever used. Weak on sports though. Yahoo is still better for presentation of sports score data on a personalized home page in my opinion.

I don't like the sidebars on my desktop because I find them distracting and invasive. I don’t use either of them. I feel like I have full control in the browser and it’s not invasive. I love the gadgets though from both companies and use some of each. But both Google and Microsoft know that “what’s default” is king in the matters of the desktop and once your sidebar is up, it’s going to be a little hard to get it off – even if they want it off. I may or may not be in the majority when it comes to whether people want tons of information on their desktop, but I know I’m still in the minority (less than half) when it comes to people who alter the default settings. I can live with being in the minority.

My media card reader is broken (shakes fist at air), but here’s a fairly recent picture of my desktop with some of the gadgets (the media center window with PTI is not a gadget. Not yet anyway).

You Have to be Kidding Me! More iPhone, PSP, ORB, Streaming Video, etc

A couple of years ago I met a young woman and I took a very strong shine to her because her response to almost every travesty in the world, no matter how major, no matter how minor, was exactly the same: you have to be kidding me!

I realized after a short time that, "Goodness, that's my response to every travesty in the world, no matter how major or minor."

I have been attempting a shift where I reserve that response for other things. Not necessarily major travesties. I can tell you right now that performance enhancing drugs in professional sports are not considered any real travesty by the masses, and that's why they are still in use today. If you could blood test all the MLB players right now, I predict more than half of them would test positive for HGH (human growth hormone). You can't test for HGH without a blood test, and blood testing is not currently a part of MLB's collective bargaining agreement with the MLBPA. If anyone really cared to actually fix the problem right now, they'd find a way to get blood testing right now. This doesn't happen and likely won't until someone besides me, in a real position of power views it as a travesty and is hell-bent on fixing it. Let's face it Bud Selig and the players are not hell bent on fixing the problem, they are more bent on "not being stained by it". It's human nature. Ever it was…

It's no travesty, but I am ok with a "you have to be kidding me!" response to it because, especially in the coming weeks approaching the MLB All-Star game here in San Francisco, home of Barry Bonds there will be lots of talk, talk, talk with no actual "fixing of the problem". Fans are decidedly not voting with their wallets based on ticket sale trends over the last ten years. And it's the rub of trying to fix the problem. If we found out the real results are that more than half the players are using HGH who is that information good for? Not the players, not the owners and not the fans. I think we're in some classic "ignore it until it goes away" scenario with a lot of jibber jabber about doing something that really just amounts to jibber jabber. So of course, travesty or not: you have to be kidding me!

Then there's stuff like having a nice Playstation Portable (PSP) that would be able to receive wifi streams of all my media, except the nefarious scoundrels at Sony don't want you to have that much capability for their ~$150 device. You have to buy either a ~$200 add-on (Sony's Location Free Player) or a $600 add-on, the PS3. There's no reason it has to work that way at all, Sony set it up that way on purpose. So of course, "You have to be kidding me!" I bought both the add-ons though I didn't buy the PS3 with that in mind. Someday there definitely will be a very cool portable device that streams video from your home media library very nicely for less than $200, but it might be a few years. I don't really fault Sony as I do not believe they would have already sold millions more or even a 100,000 more PSPs if they had done this.

Here, it's me who is the hypocrite because I just contribute to the problem. Sony is a unique company in that it's business decisions really do make it look like it's run by a bunch of scoundrels, but their products are so good, people by them. I have a high end Vaio sub notebook, the PS3, the location free player, etc. That I sometimes view the Sony Corporation as a bunch of evil imperialists doesn't matter at all. If someone said they could only buy one Microsoft Windows based laptop, I would recommend the Vaio brand. Of course when the Apple Store moves into its Chestnut Street location, I'm for sure going with an Apple based laptop when it's finally time for me to upgrade. Take that Sony!

One of the most interesting things to me is that when I was writing ten years ago, Microsoft was a very interesting company to follow and write about. I don't know whether it's just me, but I no longer find this to be the case at all. I use Microsoft products, Vista and the Xbox360 and they are both fine products, but Microsoft the company, like Sony the company just isn't all that interesting. I like their products but don't find anything they're doing particularly notable. On the other hand, I find Google and Apple absolutely fascinating.

Google it seems is out to optimize everything. I'm not sure I'll live long enough to see OY.Google.com (with the OY standing for "Optimize Yourself" rather than a kvetchy oy), but I don't doubt they are on that trajectory at all. Apple, well, Apple seems way better at optimizing portability/remote access than anyone else with the iPod, and presumably with the forthcoming iPhone. When you couple some future version of the stand alone ipod that is an 80GB (or more) version with wifi? In 5 years when all that is hooked into the 3^rd generation of "Steve's Little Hobby™, AppleTV – I won't be the only one in Starbucks watching TV on my iPod. Steve will take an "aww shucks' approach to that success. If I had to pick right now who is going to own the "media server" space that will stream your content wherever you want it (whether it's your HDTV, the TV in your office, your computer at work, your iPod..) I don't see it being Microsoft or Sony.

Of course I may well be hugely wrong. Ten years ago there was no Google and I didn't think the future looked bright at all for Apple. But Steve Jobs came back, then the iPod, now the iPhone and…because of all that, Apple, in my opinion is likely to grow its market share in the personal computer space (and while it's not exactly a zero sum game, improved market share for Apple will come almost entirely at the expense of Microsoft).

These are exciting times.

For now Orb on a Microsoft Media Center machine provides a vastly richer and better experience than Steve's Little Hobby™, but in a few years there will be more options, all of them much better than any of the options.

Until then: getting all my media wherever I want it, whenever I want it, on any device I want it: miserably hard to do!! Please note, there are many good solutions in place if all you want to do is stream your video to a laptop, but if you want it wherever you are whenever you are, it's going to be a pain in the butt probably at least until version 3 of Apple TV (~5 years).

The stories I will be able to tell about "the old days" will have a strong resemblance to, "I had to walk 10 miles to school, through the snow, without shoes…" People will say, "You have to be kidding me!" I won't be kidding at all.

For now, having seen today's battery life announcement for the iPhone, I think I may well pass on passing on the iPhone. But I will definitely pass on being a fool standing in line on 6/29. You have to be kidding me!

One Last “Steroids Rant” for Old Time’s Sake

Thank you for reading this...

The primary premise of this essay is that if you wish to actually fix a problem, say, cheating in MLB, you must fix all sides of it. In this case, the player's side plus the management's, owner's and the commissioner's side.

While I believe Barry knew what he was doing, and that Mark McGwire knew and that Sammy Sosa knew, Bud Selig also knew, Tony Larussa knew about McGwire, Dusty Baker knew about Bonds and Brian Sabean (Giants general manager) knew as well. This seems to be a witch hunt for Barry -- that's OK, if what you want to do is simply fry Barry. But if you want to fix the problem of cheating in baseball, all sides must be investigated.

What I am trying to do is encourage people to think about "the problem" in its real context. Barry is a problem for the MLB, for sure. But really, he isn't the problem but a symptom of the real problem (people cheat when the stakes are high). Management was OK with the cheating as long as it was lucrative and the President wasn't crying about Barry Bonds in his State of the Union address (2003 -- this set the stage for the congressional hearing).

I would like to see the problem fixed (and personally, I would be ok with legalizing performance enhancers for professional athletes, we LIKE superhuman feats, and we are willing to pay for it -- that's why it went on as long as it did as well...we liked it). Bud can say, and I'd applaud him, "Hey, we were just trying to give you what you want!" He isn't saying that. It is probably much closer to the truth than anything you'll hear. I am trying to encourage people to think about all sides of the problem. To that end...

Google will let you create an ad that basically says "Bud Selig is a Liar" and then link it to the search term bud selig.

So I did exactly that. A couple of hours later I checked the stats and nobody in the USA had done the bud selig search other than me. I had to do the search to see if the ad would run. Nobody was running ads on Bud Selig. Probably a smart thing as nobody was searching for Bud either. I had to do something. Nobody came to my site today via the search pacific catch iphone and now I was coming up empty with Bud. What to do?

I added the keyword barry bonds. I checked a while later and – nothing happened. That's because my default CPC was $.20 and barry bonds cost $.50. Tired of coming up empty, I said what the heck, and I took Barry for the $.50.

Predictably he performed way better than Bud. Checked back a few hours later and Barry had generated 500+ impressions and 5 clicks. It was soooo worth the $2.50. I'm going to leave the campaign running until I post this.

It made me happy to be able to do a search on Mr. Bonds and see a Google ad for "Bud Selig is a Liar". I was also the only person running an ad against the search barry bonds.

I can't believe nobody but me had a campaign up and running to capitalize on Barry. That's so shocking only because…Barry capitalizes on Barry, the media capitalize on Barry, the Giants capitalized on Barry, the guys who wrote the book about how Barry cheated capitalized on Barry, the guy who leaked the grand jury testimony was trying to capitalize on Barry, the federal prosecutor(s) try, try, try unsuccessfully to capitalize on Barry, etc. I can't believe there is not an ad. It does make a little sense though because surprisingly (to me) it's not generating that much traffic. But if he ever hits a few more home runs and gets closer to Aaron, that will change and it will be like searching on the "Sopranos" after the finale. You may remember I generated about 200 clicks via 65,000 impressions in about 10 minutes to an ad saying Time Warner chief Richard Parsons needs to go.

For me, seeing "Bud Selig is a LIAR" next to the search results for barry bonds – it cured what ailed me.

Steroids in baseball is almost the perfect hypocrisy. Everyone participated in it. Players, management, owners, media, fans, everyone participated. The hypocrisy was uniformly distributed with no side taking blame and all sides either lying to each other or themselves. I have no objection when the hypocrisy is "fair" like that, and really, here, it was. I'm over it.

But Bud Selig is a liar, and this is the one place where the hypocrisy is not quite fair. See, all the investigations, the Mitchell investigation, really all of this seems like a ruse to catch players, specifically Barry Bonds. I wouldn't have so much of a problem if I heard Mitchell on TV saying, "We are trying to find out which players cheated, but I am also personally committed to finding out what role management had, even the commissioner. What did they know and when did they know it?" But that's not the investigation. The investigation is all about the players, Mitchell isn't trying to find out about conversations Selig had with McGwire, and Sosa, and LaRussa in 1998. Bud's guilty, and he lied. Barry's guilty and he lied. Why does only one side get investigated?

Bud knew, Barry knew. But the investigation isn't about Bud. But, the problem is as much about Bud as it is Barry. Because when there is an incentive to cheat and the stakes are very high, cheating happens. Bud and the management are as much of a part of that problem as McGwire and Sosa (who hit a grand slam on Friday night for his 599^th home run, Bud must be loving that), and they all participated for the very same reason: it was lucrative. So lucrative that Mr. Selig and the rest of MLB looked the other way.

Jason Giambi may be a cheater, but he's right, it's time to say MLB screwed up, we're sorry and move on. Bud Selig and management is part of that "we" and baseball won't heal until all sides accept their roles, and figure out the best way to move on from here.

Right now, that's not happening. That's because Bud Selig , the commissioner of MLB, is a hypocrite and a liar.

I miss the Bowie Kuhn days something awful.

Satisying My Pacific Catch & iPhone Curiosity

it's not satisfied yet, but if you want the commercials go here. The whole thing just fascinates me. the most fascinating thing is this: why aren't Apple and Pacific Catch themselves very, high (say #1 and 2) on the list of results if you do a Google search on "pacific catch iphone"? I'm talking straight up Google search here, the big Kahuna, not Google "Blog Search".

I am now in the top 5 search results with these silly posts. But if it's giving people what they want (the commercials) I can understand why Goog would give me relevancy. Actually I DO understand why. There is a higher correlation than normal for people searching on "pacific catch iphone" to be more interested in my other content. On some of those searches people wound up looking at 4 or 5 pages on my site and stuck around a while. I'm all good with being #4 & 5 with my little anonymous blog, but Pacific Catch's OWN site (which certainly DOES mention the iPhone now) is on the THIRD PAGE of results. By then I was too tired to find out where Apple's site ranked.

But I am wondering why even Google, from both a relevancy and an editorial bias wouldn't rank Pacific Catch much higher. I'm a little upset here because you know how I feel about geniuses who have synergy and don't use it, but Pacific Catch DID leverage the synergy and still is on the 3rd page of results. I find it...odd.

Over/Under: 2012: How Long Before more Antitrust Fears of Google than Microsoft?

Mark me down for under.

Also, in the "who you got?" department with the Google vs. Ebay drama?

I'm going for Google. Why? Google really IS trying to optimize EVERYTHING (and as a result will optimize its profits). EBay is more of a traditional company which focuses on optimizing profits.

Is it OK to Capitalize on God? Yes: But You’d Better be GOOD at It!

I ran a little ad campaign tied to keyword “God” linked back to just this lousy landing page from a few days ago.

Google’s system is fair, and early in the game, “God” could be had fairly cheaply. $.25 a click for God. That’s not freaking bad man –for GOD!

But this God is fair and just and so is Google. People think some of the ways Google adwords work is nefarious. Those people are DOPES, do not listen to them. Google just works very well and is set up to constantly be optimizing on its own. .Here’s how it works: it can calculate the performance of your ad. If my ad tied to God resulted in clicks where every click left the page pretty much immediately (which was the case in over 80% of the instances), Google views that as a “low quality” ad. Here’s what happens as a result: the cost of the keyword gets jacked up. What happens then? Well then what happened is the campaign stopped.

It’s a good system. People don’t want to be paying for lousy ads (even @ .25/click) and moreover, Google wants ITS users to get good results. If its users continually click on your ad and then bail immediately, your ad (in this case my ad) isn’t giving Google users what they want. Google wants to continually optimize to produce better results (period), this sort of optimization is good for everyone.

For purposes of experiment, I don’t mind blowing $20 to see how it works. But how it works is because the site they landed on was not what the people who clicked wanted –and I could’ve experimented around with landing pages to see if one without a picture of Paris Hilton would’ve done better – is Google deems the ad “low quality”. Google will let you run low quality ads, even for God, but, there’s a price premium. In my case a 25X price premium! That’s right, because my ad was lousy they jacked up the CPC on God to $5. That is a CPC that is outside the bounds of what I am doing here (which is trying to learn and satisfy my own curiosity). I’m $.25/click curious, but not $5/click curious

I could have started over and had God at $.25 again, and when I create some content that would likely please God (and Google) for $.25 I may try again. For now,I think this system works really, really well. For you, for me, for Google – and maybe even for God.

Calling a Slimeball a Slimeball

aye yay yay.....

These scumwads at http://hoodiagordonii.offshelf.com/wp/weight-loss/17201 stole my post on how to lose 80 pounds and keep it off and are using it as content to SELL the magic pill.

My post on losing weight the way that makes sense (eat less, exercise more -- the only way that ever, ever, ever is really going to work EVER) being used to sell Hoodia! Freaking Hoodia!

My little plan is to generate thousands and thousands of clicks to their ads without ever purchasing anything. They will "pay" for it -- it will just work out that they pay it to Google, instead of me. I don't care where the pain comes...as long as they feel the pain. I want to see these guys dead more than Paulie Walnuts.

And the More I Find Out, the Better I Did.

“My interest in Science is simply to find out about the world..and the more I find out, the better I did.”

- Nobel prize winning physicist, Richard P. Feynman (this clip requires the RealPlayer).

My brother recently gave me 2 books by Feynman who died almost 20 years ago. But thanks to the books and the Internet, he is still with us. My old friend Ted Leonsis recently got the gourmet deluxe tour of the National Archives and you can read his thoughts about that as well as preserving the historical record.

My bias towards preserving is probably stronger than most. Once upon a time, not all that long ago really, as far as the world itself goes there was a fabulous library in Alexandria (think Alexander the Great, not Alexandria, Va.). While there is vast and spirited debate over the cause of the destruction – and nobody seems to agree – the one thing that is agreed on is that hundreds of thousands of papyrus scrolls were lost. This doesn’t really get played up enough because what it means is that almost ALL recorded history up until a couple of thousand years ago was destroyed. Almost the whole thing.

Imagine some Internet disaster that left only ESPN, Fox, CNN, and the New York Times up and running with everything else destroyed. That’s pretty much what happened in Alexandria. We still have Aristotle, Plato, Homer, etc – which was pretty much the New York Times of all that stuff, but we lost so, so much as a result of losing those hundreds of thousands of scrolls.

I do not really believe that between the archive, the library of Congress, etc, that a systematic approach for preserving everything (all forms of media) that involves double, triple and quadruple redundancy will be developed. Sadly, politics come into play and personal agendas and self-interest factor in far more than they should.

Normally this would probably have me panicked and I would be e-mailing Ted with some impassioned plea that “you have to DO something!”

But there’s one entity – even at the macro level consumed with finding out all about the world – and measuring themselves EXACTLY like Feynman did (the more they find out, the better they did). That entity is Google. I have faith that they will advance the preservation of the historical record regardless of the politics. I am not panicked.

Gaming the System: Pacific Catch and the iPhone

There are a lot of people searching on the following search: pacific catch iphone. Aside from my ad campaign experiment, which did generate a lot of traffic from the search engines, the #1 way my blog has been accessed via Google searches is: pacific catch iphone .

If you are reading this that’s probably why. I am trying to guess WHY so many people are doing this search. Perhaps it is just to see the commercial that ran for the iphone. If that is what you were looking for, you can see it here on Apple’s site in Quicktime, or here on Youtube.

If that’s NOT why you are doing the search would you please either leave a comment or e-mail me at robert.seidman at gmail dot com? I’m really curious!

There is a Cingular store (where the iPhone will be sold on 6/29) very close to Pacific Catch. I am also curious to see whether Pacific Catch does record business on June 29. But I’m curious about everything. I still like the chili encrusted calamari at Betelnut better if you happen to be in the neighborhood already.