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: *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 4th 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.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
More Google Product Ideas
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Google “People Like You” Part II
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
