…And lo, the grateful townspeople watched as Windows XP struck a match, lit a half-smoked cigar, tipped his hat and rode off into the sunset. Roll credits, cue theme music by Ennio Morricone…
You know it’s funny how things change. When XP first arrived on the scene I’d recently just finished a Windows networking course. I was used to working with Windows 2000, 98 and NT4. XP, with its shiny new look and Fisher Price Start bar didn’t appeal to me, nor did the OS itself when I started using it. After Service Pack 2 things started to settle down and I began to appreciate its merits more and more.
The greatest improvement XP provided was its plug and play functionality. Back when I started off in the internet cafe business, my first business, the majority of client computers were still running Windows 98. Windows 98 SE was a lovely OS for its time but as technology moved on its shortcomings were becoming more and more apparent. At the time floppy discs were still the most common media but then every so often a customer would arrive with a USB stick or a digital camera and a good portion of time was wasted installing drivers, rebooting the computers and generally battling to get 98 to recognise the devices we all now take for granted. Simply being able to plug in a USB device and not have to muck around in device manager and reboot every two minutes was an enormous plus for XP.
I’ve been running XP myself for five years and can use it blindfolded. I’ve implemented numerous XP networks with ease and repaired countless XP systems in several languages including Polish, Russian, German, Norwegian, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic. Yes, Arabic; I know XP so well I can literally use it backwards. (more…)
The field of journalism and publishing in general has never really enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Internet. The Web, with its enormous user base, free content and open-ended architecture, where people can comment on content, and in some cases even edit existing content or create their own, is seen as an enormous threat to their business model.
One of the most vocal opponents of this is media baron Rupert Murdoch. Last year Murdoch announced that he would charge people to access online content from his large portfolio of publications, such as the Wall Street Journal Online, and that he firmly believed that people would be happy to pay for quality content.
I’ve read a lot of articles over the past week or so on the new Google Instant engine, some people liked it, some hated it and some, actually quite a few, quickly panicked, foreseeing the end of SEO and Internet marketing as we know it. I have decided, therefore, to hold off on commenting on it, to digest the various pros and cons, as well as the portentous prognostications of numerous SEO blog Nostradami and deliberate for a while whilst conducting a few tests of my own. In this, the first of a three part series, I’ll be discussing Google Instant and what advantages it has over regular Google.
For those who don’t know, Google Instant is a new service that’s currently being rolled out worldwide. The idea behind it is that it speeds up searches by suggesting search terms to you as you type. Essentially it’s the same principal as the autocomplete function which has been a familiar part of the Google search experience for some time now, but extended throughout the page.
So, for example, when you type in A the familiar dropdown menu appears showing a number of possibilities for A based on popularity. Usually when teaching the alphabet we say “A is for Apple” but in Google.com (USA), no doubt much to Steve Jobbs’ chagrin, the top of the A autocomplete list is Amazon, based on the site’s enormous popularity. All that Google Instant does (though Google make a huge deal of it) is automatically serve results based on the autocomplete data. So, when you type in “A”, it not only shows the main A-results with Amazon at the top, it also shows results for Amazon at the bottom of the page.
Instant really isn’t anything new or revolutionary, it’s basically the same basic Google search engine with a new front-end tweak that helps speed up searching. At the end of the day Google want to retain their number one position. They want to ensure that as many people as possible use Google and that they all find what they want as quickly as possible. As long as they manage to stay ahead of the posse in terms of the quality of search results and ease of use, they’ll retain it. And from that point of view, Instant delivers.
At this point I should mention that, personally speaking, I don’t really like Instant. I’m an incurable geek, of course, a web-veteran who’s been a Google user for over a decade. I’m used to performing my own searches, using functions where necessary and I’ve picked up a lot of tips and tricks over the years to make information retrieval as swift as possible. So for me Instant serves as an unnecessary and somewhat irritating distraction whereas original Google, with its familiar minimalism, reassures me that I’m the one telling the search engine what to search for, not the other way around.
Website redesigns almost always provoke negative reactions from a significant proportion of users, we don’t like when something we’ve gotten used to using gets changed. That’s why I’m sure the new Twitter is going to provoke a similar reaction and it’s also why I decided to reserve judgement and give myself more time to test Google Instant before weighing in.
Whilst I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had this reaction I am no longer in the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” camp regarding Instant nor do I regard this as Google’s New Coke moment. First of all, if you don’t like using Instant, you have the option to disable it by clicking on a clearly marked link on the right-hand side of the search bar. Secondly, though it may not be for everyone, for most people Google Instant does offer many advantages over regular Google search and the more I used it the more I began to appreciate just how ingenious it really is.
My first business, way back when, was an internet café. I dare say operating such a business has given me an enormous advantage over other web designers and developers. Why? Because it firstly gave me the chance to view (and often times assist) a diverse range of users, of all ages and skillsets, and secondly – and this is the clincher – it allowed me to see how they performed on various websites. When I started thinking in these terms I suddenly I saw how much of a game-changer Google Instant is really going to be.
I’m going to introduce you to a character called Joe, who is the ultimate benchmarker.
Joe is a composite character of various people I came across working whilst running my internet cafe. My café was based in Ireland, but I’d say everyone who has ever worked in an internet café before has had a Joe of their own and when I describe Joe, I’m sure you’ll probably know somebody just like him.
Joe doesn’t believe in calling repairmen and never took his car to a mechanic. The doctor keeps telling him he should slow down a bit but then what does he know? Joe comes from that that hard-working, hard-as-nails generation; fiercly frugal, doggedly determined and self reliant. And he certainly isn’t going to let a thing like mild myopia (it’s not as mild as he’d care to admit) or not having the first clue how to use a computer stand between him and a good bargain. For seven decades of his life computers were non-existent, then he heard about eBay, found some great deals on tools and hardware, and since then got hopelessly hooked.
Getting to the eBay website, however, is a constant battle.
Joe represents all those squinting, one-finger typists out there who can’t see the screen as well as they’d like to and to whom the QWERTY keyboard may as well be the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Now, Joe just clicks on the big blue E which he associates with being “The Internet”. (We’d like Joe to use Chrome or Firefox instead but one step at a time). Internet Explorer opens up with the homepage set to Google. Joe now only has to press one single, solitary key – E – before eBay appears automatically top of the search results. One key press and two mouse clicks is all it takes to bring Joe to his destination.
Both Ebay and Amazon already have an autocomplete function on their site and I’m sure they can see the potential of Instant-like technology and how they might adapt it for their site so people, regardless of their level of computer literacy, can find, and purchase, the items they’re interested in as quickly and easily as possible.
This is the thing that I’ve been telling people since day one and it especially applies to ecommerce sites of all sizes; the easier you make your site to use, the easier it will be for you to sell. If you’re not sure how, Google Instant can help show you the way.
When in doubt, try to think of a Joe-like character you might know and try to envision how that person might perform on your site. How easy, or difficult, would it be for them to locate key information or perform a transaction? Now imagine that, unlike Joe, the person doesn’t have that same determination, and will give up very easily if they can’t find what they’re looking for and go to one of your competitors instead. Now think about Google Instant again, think about how long it took Joe to find what he was looking for. Under one second to find it, under two seconds to get there. There it is, that’s your time to match.
Google already offer a Custom Search Engine service so that you can use Google technology to allow people to search through your site’s content. Although Google haven’t released official Custom/Instant search code yet I did come across this Instant Google Custom Search Engine with information on how it was done here. I’ll be looking into that myself to see how I can adapt it for clients.
So, that’s it for now. In part two I’ll be talking more about Google Instant and what it means for your business. I’ll be going into detail about Instant search results and how to position yourself on them. I’ll also be debunking many of the myths and misrepresentations which have rapidly propigated throughout the blogosphere in the last couple of weeks.
It’s official, Yahoo are out of the search engine business.
Anyone now searching on Yahoo won’t really know the difference, but essentially all they’re using is a rebranded version of Bing.
As many of you may recall, Microsoft have been trying to get their mits on the web portal giant for years, five, by my count, with Microsoft once offering a whopping $46.6 billion US for the company, only to be rebuffed.
Then, last summer, Yahoo announced that it was getting out of search completely and turning over control of the search engine side of their business to Microsofts then-new Bing search engine. The deal would leave Yahoo as a completely independent entity albiet one which essentially oursources its search engine operation to Microsoft.
Yesterday it went live.
This is nothing new for Yahoo, who’ve had similar deals in the past, including a search alliance with Google. Traditionally Yahoo were always more interested in web directories and didn’t understand all the fuss about search engines. When one recalls the early days of search engines it’s easy to understand why. They were still a relatively new phenomenon and, until Google came on the scene, nobody had really cracked it.
Unlike so many others, Yahoo emerged from the Dotcom Crash intact, its market share bolstered by several aquisitions including search provider Inktomi, but by that time it was too late, Google were already leaps and bounds ahead of Yahoo in terms of search engine technology. Yahoo instead began to concentrate more on pay per click advertising and emerging social technologies, once again through aquisitions, such as photo sharing site Flickr and the social bookmarking site Delicious.
The Microsoft deal marks the end of an era for one of the search engine industry’s biggest players and leaves Microsoft now the second largest search engine though still far behind Google which presently enjoys over 70% market share. [source: search engine market share statistics]
Whether or not Bing can ever catch up with Google is unlikely. Though with new social rivals such as Facebook stealing Google’s thunder both in terms of traffic and ppc revenue they may want to rethink all those millions of little side projects they keep announcing and start to concentrating more on their bread and butter; pay per click advertising and search.
Internet Explorer 6 was the default browser bundled with Windows XP and has been around for nine years now. Since then there have been two new iterations of IE; IE7 in 2006 copying Opera and Firefox with the introduction of tabbed browsing, and IE8, released last year.
As more and more people upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 7 is beginning to loose ground and Internet Explorer 6 has begun its slow slip into obscurity.
I am writing this on behalf of all the designers and developers out there who wish to speed up the process.
Back at the beginning of IE6’s life cycle rival browsers like Firefox and Opera didn’t have a fraction of the amount of users they have today. As IE6’s rate of adoption increased, however, so too did the adoption rate of these new rival browsers, as many people jumped ship and never returned – much to Microsoft’s annoyance.
(In fact the company often went to some rather sneaky lengths to protect its market share.)
In addition to its long history of security flaws which didn’t provide a back door, so much as a wide open front door, to hackers, IE6 was also a web designers nightmare. For one it had issues displaying .png files correctly plus a whole host of CSS styling issues, such as its own unique interpretation of positioning rules.
In short, the browser didn’t always display pages the way it was supposed to. So whenever somebody designed a website and wrote the code to proper international web standards, the result, when viewed in the Microsoft browser, often looked terrible. This meant that web designers (including yours truly) often had little choice but to design separate stylesheets just so the design would look “correct” in the broken browser.
As for web developers… the poor people, they have suffered so much for too long.
The good news for those in the industry, now that Google has officially dropped support for IE6, is that the rest of the world is bound to follow suit. Apple are halfway there already and ongoing issues with Flash also mean that Adobe would undoubtedly be more than happy to dump the browser too. In other words, Internet Explorer 6 has become the new floppy disc drive. (more…)
It has been tried before. And it has failed miserably. Still, with more TV sets out there than computers and smart phones combined, and with lots of new markets emerging in developing or BRIC countries (though in Google’s case not China), the rewards, for whoever can crack it, are enormous.
So no marks for originality this time, Google, but full marks for aggressive assertiveness.
For the last quarter Google have reported revenues of $6.77 billion – hardly a figure to be sneezed at. Despite this the web advertising behemoth is hungry for more and have clearly been watching a lot of TV, just not in the way you might think.
Television has, thus far, been perhaps the only traditional medium not to have been directly impacted by the web. Whilst publishers of books and newspapers, the music industry and Hollywood have all seen their market share, and to some point, their entire business models, decimated by the ascendancy of the Worldwide Web, more eyes are glued on the telly than any other media format, as this article by The Economist explains. So, logically, for a company that makes its money from providing access to content and services provided on the back of selling ad space, such a move was predictable and, one might even say, inevitable.
As I said the vision of combining the TV and the Web is hardly new one. There have been plenty of attempts so far, all unsuccessful, with one such product from 1995, called WebTV, listed as a runner up [scroll down to see entry] on PC World’s worst products of all time.
WebTV was later snapped up by Microsoft becoming MSN TV. Though even with the massive resources of Microsoft behind it, and through partnerships with Sony, Phillips, Samsung, RCA and Mitsubishi, the product never really took off. What it did do, however, was lay bare the hunger that the big corporations all have to merge the world’s two most dynamic and influential mediums.
All things considered, WebTV and its progeny were, in essence, an idea whose time had come but the technology had not come along with it. In the mid-nineties websites were often designed quite badly and browsers were fickle, to say the least. CSS support was often poor or non-existent. Cast your mind back to the first websites you saw, with all those awful gaudy, low-resolution graphics and insipid animations – now imagine how those websites would look, not on an old VGA monitor, but on a big screen TV. The result would be blockier than Legoland. As for watching online videos, forget it. Flash had only just arrived on the scene when WebTV did, and the idea of using Flash for YouTube-style streaming video was ten years away. Using the web for streaming video back then was sort of ridiculous anyway, as everyone was still crawling along on dial-up modems. Though it is humorous to imagine an entire family sitting in the living room reading the words “buffering…” off the big screen impatiently awaiting a low-resolution, minute long Real Player video.
Things have moved on since those days, and rapidly too. We now live in an age of high speed broadband and high definition TV, with 3DTV just around the corner, spurred on by the success by films such as Avatar. Google, like Microsoft and WebTV before it, have already wooed the electronics industry. Sony have signed up and are building Google TV-enabled HDTVs and Bluray players, peripheral manufacturer Logitech has also signed up to make special Google TV set top boxes, Intel has also been announced as a partner and invariably more will be announced soon.
The idea is that these devices will come with an integrated browser/system (Android/Chrome-based) which can access online content direct through your TV. Such a system also makes it easier for people, young and old, to access content. For the older generation in particular, the ability to use the familiar remote control, rather than the alien mouse and keyboard, could make the Web more accessible for millions. (That is presuming they are not the sort who believe that flipping channels too quickly will break the TV.)
Laziness, in the end, is the name of the game. This is television, after all, and so the easier the technology makes it to do things the better. Personally I don’t watch much TV but I do love to watch movies. I’m what you’d call a film buff, actually, and what happens me often (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) is I’ll be watching a movie and see an actor and go, “oh, it’s that guy” and will not be able to enjoy the movie as I’ll be sitting there racking my brains trying to figure out what other film I’ve seen him in lately. With Google TV a quick flip of the remote and I could be on IMDB getting the answer in a matter of seconds all without missing a second of my movie – wonderful. So basically what this offers, amongst many other things, is the ability to access information without having to get off one’s ass to turn on the laptop or pick up the phone. In other words, this is the holy grail for couch potatoes everywhere.
It’s a dream come true for the younger, more net-savvy generation, too. For example, you could be lying back in your living room watching TV and, when your favourite show is over, jump direct onto your Facebook or Twitter account to discuss it with friends during the commercial. This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is a rapidly growing trend. The hit TV show Lost, for example, boasted a massive fanbase who would jump online straight after each show to discuss the episode they just watched. Along with other shows such as American Idol, it was one of Twitter’s top trending topics of last year.
Clearly Google are clearly taking the “children are our future” maxim to heart. In this case the device-hungry multitasking children who, although they’re constantly flipping between their phone, their laptop and their games console, are, for the most part, whilst not glued, at the very least passively consuming TV more than any other medium.
What Google are trying to do, in essence, is to provide all these distractions on one single device and keep people there and presumably, to wean a whole generation of new customers within the Google umbrella. Considering Google’s broad spectrum of services on offer; Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, Picassa, YouTube, Buzz, Google Talk, to name a few, and most importantly of all, Google Search, one need never turn on their computer again. Making all these available from one’s armchair at the flick of a remote is a brilliant, if somewhat unoriginal, strategy.
Google really aren’t doing anything new here. They’re simply porting their business model from one media platform to another, something which they’ve already done quite successfully by taking their services from the web to the mobile phone. Now they’re going after TV with the same concept; access to content offset by advertising – plain and simple. Who creates the content is irrelevant.
The reaction from TV networks to this announcement is bound to be mixed. Rupert Murdoch, for example, has no love for Google, and has never missed an opportunity to express his ire at a company he considers to be content thieves. Google also faced an enormous backlash from the major networks when it purchased YouTube in 1996, most notably from Viacom. Whilst Google does police the site regularly to remove copyrighted content the sheer scale of videos and users on the site means it’s people can’t be everywhere at once and such content almost always slips through. Add to this the ease of online piracy and you can see why the majors are clearly worried by any or all threats emanating from the Internet. Thus far they have had little to any success in providing alternatives.
Providing customers the ability to view TV shows online has resulted in various different approaches from paid to completely free. One such example is the TV streaming site Hulu, a collaboration of US broadcasters Fox, ABC and NBC. Although Hulu is highly popular it has not exactly proved to be the revenue generating monster they had hoped for. Not least of which because, in an impatient, attention-deficit afflicted medium like the Web, even 30 seconds of advertising is considered way too much. In North America commercial breaks of an average of 2 minutes occur three times during a 30 minute show, first after the main credits, then halfway through the show and then again before the end credits, shaving what was once a half hour show format down to around 20. People have come to accept this with TV but on the Web it’s unacceptable. The reason is simple, because the Web is an active medium whilst the television is, neurologically-speaking and otherwise, the most passive medium we’ve got.
Still, the major dilemma the networks face is that, whilst more and more people are tuning in, advertising revenues are dropping. What Google offers them is an ideal way to tap into countless unseen methods of generating new revenue through new forms of advertising, by becoming resellers of said advertising platforms and also by keeping the spotlight on themselves by offering increased interactivity with their audience. If you ever watch CNN you’ll see they’re always asking you to join in on the discussion on the Twitter or Facebook pages. But who’s really going to do that? You have to get up off your ass, walk over to your computer, switch it on, wait for it to boot up… ahh forget it! Whereas now you can just flip the remote and open the page direct. With this technology the possibilities for connecting with one’s audience are endless. For example the kids they could watch their favourite cartoon and then, when the show’s over, play an interactive video game starring that cartoon character. Or imagine the possibilities of a fully interactive Who Wants To Be A Millionaire type show where you can be a nationally televised contestant but playing from home.
When it comes to mobilising the masses and providing extra revenue through interactivity nothing beats reality TV, the most successful of all being Simon Cowell’s fleet of interactive talent show franchises and its infinite stream of imitators. Love him or hate him one cannot deny that Simon Cowell has stumbled upon one of the smartest business models in the history of television. Not only does he have this enormous TV juggernaut with all its advertising revenue, there’s also the interactive side of it, the weekly SMS text-in, resultant tours and record sales, etc. You can take American Idol or X-Factor as an assembly line where every part of the process generates revenue, in hundreds of countries simultaneously. Factor in Google TV into that and you can take it even further.
Now imagine that you are afforded even more ways with which to involve your audience, such as through social media. Imagine that instead of having regular TV advertising spots between shows for recording artists and tour dates, you can actually flip your remote and download the music (for a fee or for free, the choice is yours) direct to your set top box or pay to watch additional behind-the-scenes footage on Hulu. Later, when videos go viral on YouTube, like Susan Boyle last year, you can generate even more revenue by specially tailoring your YouTube channel for Google TV. Imagine that the TV networks can also get a cut of the enormous pay per click advertising revenue served up directly to customers. No doubt the network heads, even Rupert, are beginning to see the enormous potential for additional (and in many cases much-needed) revenue.
Now the channel, network or provider (cable company/satellite broadcaster) can sell even more advertising and localise it far more than was ever previously possible. Not just by country or region, but by actual address. Such a service would also be a huge boon for small businesses making TV advertising far more affordable and also far more effective by targeting specific regions only.
How this would work is similar to how the web targets advertising today; by detecting your IP address and using it to determine where you are located based on your local exchange/provider. So, let’s say, for example, you own a local auto dealership or restaurant. There’s really no point in having a national or even regional advertising market campaign carpet bombing the airwaves when your target area is much smaller. With this technology, however, you can create TV advertisements for broadcast but pay far less and only serve those ads to people in your particular catchment area during relevant shows. So the auto dealership could advertise during the Top Gear, the restaurant during Jamie Oliver and the local town sports bar can now advertise directly during the World Cup, only just to a very small audience. You could also, in theory, have live links that then allow people to view the company’s website, read company reviews, see its location in Google Maps and even download those maps to their Android phone’s satnav software. Throw a microphone and some VOIP capability in there and you don’t even need a phone, you can just press a button on your remote control and you can make voice calls or send SMS text messages .
In other words, if this technology takes off, it’s going to turn conventional broadcasting and TV advertising on its head and forever blur the edges between electronic media of all forms. And if anyone has the leverage, the know-how and the ambition to do achieve this, Google has.
And even if Google don’t manage it, and I can’t imagine why they couldn’t, Web-enabled TV, like 3DTV, is bound to hit the market sooner or later, it’s simply a question of when. In the meantime it’s a good idea for business owners to start thinking about how best to prepare for it so they can take advantage of it when it finally arrives.
Broadcasters are going to have to think really hard about how they retain their audiences. This is difficult enough right now, with hundreds, if not thousands, of channels to choose from. But soon they’ll not only have to contend with fickle audiences flipping from one channel to the next, in linear form, from channel one through to channel 999 and beyond, but also with hyperlinks which warp them right out of the telly dimension completely and onto the worldwide web. That’s a ratings war you cannot hope to win without being able to provide compelling, interactive diversions with which to keep them in your orbit. Oh yeah, and anyone working in the field of Teletext, it’s time to start looking for a new line of work, so start sending out your CVs – now.
As for the Web itself, that’s arguably going to have even bigger changes ahead. One obvious point, which I touched on earlier, is how to optimise one’s website for television. In essence, you simply need to think of it as a really big monitor (which, is basically, what it is). So in design terms that means accessibility becomes more important than ever. The last thing you want is to have your web content display as a small box in the centre of a huge blank space of a wide screen, or have graphics that aren’t optimised for the format and look gritty. Other considerations include fonts and colour settings. Colour is of particular importance as televisions are more prone to colour saturation. Google also reiterates that you must always keep in mind that you are now designing not for the web as you know it, rather web for the “living room environment”. You can read Google’s hints for designers and developers here.
One thought I also had is that .tv domains might well become more important now, just as .mobi domains have for mobile devices. This could well be important because, since people will now also be using a remote control, rather just than a mouse or touchpad for navigation, menus will have to be greatly simplified, and, depending on your existing website’s design, or content, it might be a good idea for you to have a specially designed TV-friendly site, once again, for the living room.
Having said that, the living room is not the only place in the house you’ll find a TV set. Indeed the TV set has become like the fireplace of old; always on in the background, often in several rooms at once. In Britain the average number of TVs per household is between 2-3 sets, according to the BBC. Many British households also have more than one Sky Box (or similar set-top box). A large amount of people have a second TV room for children, a TV in the kitchen and/or in the bedroom. So whatever about Google’s advice on designing a webpage for the living room environment, you might also want to consider the other rooms the TV is in.
As for marketing for the bedroom environment? Well, to borrow a phrase from Billy Connolly, we’ll draw a discrete veil over that one shall we?
