Archive for July, 2008
Most Emailed Story at LATimes.com: “You’ve got too much e-mail”
July 31st, 2008
How’s this for irony? I was reading the LA Times site this morning and glanced over at the Most Viewed, Most Emailed, and Related News module and noticed that the Most Emailed story is “You’ve got too much e-mail.” Nice of people to flood their friends’ inboxes with that one. On a related note, what exactly does the “Related News” module do on this site? Related to what? It appears on the home page, section pages (eg. California), etc. It seems like you should be reading a story before they start pushing related stories to you.
Track Firefox 3 Crashes
July 8th, 2008
I’ve found Firefox 3 to be much more stable and less memory intensive than previous versions. However, if you’d like see how many times Firefox 3 has crashed (assuming you submit crash reports), all you have to do is type “about:crashes” into Firefox’s address bar. It’s interesting that they keep this information on a publicly accessible server. I’ve always assumed software companies don’t really do much with this information (eg. Microsoft) but it looks like Mozilla actively combs through this data. Pretty cool!
Tip from Lifehacker.
Sphere: Related ContentIs Google Stuck in the Middle Ages?
July 6th, 2008
Google’s announcement this week that it will begin to index Flash content is a giant step forward for the search company which has historically left multimedia rich sites made in Flash out of its results. However, I often wonder if Google is stuck in the Middle Ages? The company is the king of text based indexing but has little capability when it comes to indexing multimedia.
Image search seems like a logical starting point. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? To date, Google’s Image Search has relied on examining the text around an image and then determining what the image is about algorithmically. This works to some extent (I use Google’s Image Search all the time) but what about actually analyzing what’s in the image? There are several companies out there that already do this. Take Toronto based Idée. Give their TinEye Image Search Engine a JPEG and they’ll find other JPEGs that are similar to the original. I tried this out with a photo of the Eiffel Tower and they returned several images that contain the Eiffel Tower but weren’t the same as my original. Pretty cool! Their Visual Search Lab is also worth noting. Select a random photo and they’ll return other photos with the same colors. In both these examples, they’re actually analyzing the contents of the images.
Another image search technology Google should note is what Evernote has built. The service lets users collect links, photos, notes, and other multimedia and then search through it. If you upload a photo, Evernote will automatically add tags to the photo from text it recognizes in the photo, essentially indexing it. For example, uploading a photo of a Canon camera box with the Canon logo on it tags the photo with “Canon” automatically. The technology can read all sorts of fonts (the text doesn’t have to be boring) as well as handwriting unless you write like a doctor. Why isn’t Google investing in technology like this?
Google is even more behind when it comes to video search. Their video search is seriously lacking in sources (they only appear to index a couple of the top video sites) and their approach to video has been similar to how they index images by looking at the text around the image. There are a variety of more robust video search engines such as Truveo and Blinkx. However, none of the major ones appear to be taking advantage of speech to text engines, object recognition, facial recognition and other technologies that actually examine the content of the video. Companies like Everyzing, Viewdle, and Digitalsmiths all offer these technologies.
Maybe Google is waiting for the technology to mature or for another large company to take the first step but if they don’t move beyond just examining text, another company could take their place to dominate a growing multimedia search market.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Media Loves Its Slideshows
July 5th, 2008
It seems that slideshows are all the rage these days on big media sites. The LA Times appears to be no exception. This morning I went to their site to check the status of all the wildfires burning in California and the headline “San Onofre’s nude sunbathers will have to take cover” caught my eye. First of all, I went to San Onofre several months ago to take pictures of surfers and had no idea it was a nude beach. No one there appeared to be nude but maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. Anyway, next to the headline, the LA Times offers — guess what? — a slideshow. Judging by the photos, it’s a good thing it’s no longer a nude beach.
Vimeo, The Real UGC Video Site
July 3rd, 2008
I’ve been following Vimeo for awhile now, especially after they announced last October they’d offer videos in high definition. However, until now, I’ve mostly been looking at the Vimeo player and supporting features and not really at the content. Last week I started to go through the Vimeo HD catalog and spent several hours watching videos that people had created, the key word here being created. Vimeo appears to have built what YouTube should have been, a user generated content site for people to share and discuss videos they’ve made. The site itself is beautiful, feature rich, and full of really interesting videos. I just pulled up the most popular videos on YouTube right now and about half are clips from television or other sources (not created by the user who uploaded them) and the other half are comprised of girls dancing around in skimpy clothing. Skimpy dancing has its place but I’d hardly consider that creative. Vimeo on the other hand is loaded with student films, video experiments, and all sorts of other creative content. Vimeo’s player is also much better than YouTube’s both in quality and ease of use and if the content creator allows it, you can download the video in it’s original format. How cool is that?
I’m starting to notice more and more blogs embedding Vimeo videos and it will be interesting to see if Vimeo will start to take a bite out of YouTube’s dominance.
Here’s my favorite Vimeo video that I’ve come across so far:
Sleeping Beauty - City lights / Music video from Benjamin Taft on Vimeo.