Cathy2dot0's Blog

The evergrowing Movie Database, IMDB

cathy2dot0 — Sun, 09 May 2010 13:01:58 +0000

The Internet Movie Database,

References: http://www.imdb.com/licensing/

Google’s tail is rather long

cathy2dot0 — Sun, 02 May 2010 13:00:32 +0000

Google is the premier search engine on the web today [x], its service epitomises long tail thinking with Google Ads bringing small companies and individuals together with small scale publishers.

Google search in itself is a way to “leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.” [x]

Google is the “Long Tail Company”, as CEO Eric Schmidt,explained “The surprising thing about The Long Tail is just how long the tail is, and how many businesses haven’t been served by traditional advertising sales,” he said. In 2005, Google had more than $1 billion a quarter in revenue, of which half was the product of Long Tail advertisers.

References: http://longtail.tGoogle is the premier search engine on the web today ypepad.com/the_long_tail/2005/02/googles_long_ta.html

Facebook, the changing face of social networking

cathy2dot0 — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 12:59:26 +0000

The social networking site Facebook has evolved significantly since it was released in 2004 as [thefacebook]. Originally as a way for college and then highschool students to make connections and share information about themselves the site became a platform in 2007 and the number of 3rd party applications exploded.

Now as the one of the most well known social networking platforms, Facebook has been continually added onto and reorganised to provide a richer networking environment for it’s users.

Reinventing the bookstore, Amazon.com style

cathy2dot0 — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:12:53 +0000

When Amazon.com first brought the bookstore to our desktop, shopping for a great read would never be quite the same. Fast forward 15 years and Amazon.com is Americas biggest online retailer, selling not just books but also DVDs, games, electronics, groceries, clothing and auto parts.

In 2007, Amazon.com lauched it’s Kindle, an e-book reader. Kindle is both a software and hardware platform, integrated into the Amazon.com webstore.

Kindle allows windows, mac os x, iphone/ipod touch, blackberry and kindle hardware users to download and read electronic books from Amazon.coms extensive range. This raises Amazon.com and Kindle to take itself above the level of a single device. The web by it’s very nature does this, but to extend the book and its store to a mobile phone, mp3 player or computer takes it up another notch.

With more acceptance of kindle software across more convergent technology hardware, the content available to users will only increase.

The desktop is now online, it’s Google Apps

cathy2dot0 — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 19:29:09 +0000

Grasping the idea of the mobile and collaborative world we now live in, Google Apps offers users a level of usability that was previously only offered on their desktop.

Google Apps is not tethered to a single machine, and does not come with the prohibitive licensing agreements some of it’s deskbound competition is known for.

In its range of products, Google Apps offers GMail, Google Calendar, Google Docs (covering documents, spreadsheets and presentations), Google Groups (covering mailing lists and content sharing) , Google Sites and Google Video.

In the world of online document creation and sharing Zoho is Google Apps most notable competitor. Offering not jut the standard Docs and Mail, Zoho also offers “Business Apps” for invoicing, databases, reporting and project management. It allows users with existing Google,Yahoo, Facebook and Google Apps accounts to use its service without signing up for a new account.

Issues surrounding the use of Google Apps for delicate or confidential material without the proven security of cloud computing were made public when Los Angeles City Council indicated it’s intention to use Google Apps as it’s office and productivity software.

Bringing it all together with Bloglines

cathy2dot0 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:22:12 +0000

With the vast sea of information, opinion and dubious ‘facts’ that form the internet, Bloglines offers a way to read all your favourite sources at a single location.

Based on RSS blog subscriptions and expanded to include news sites, weather and classifieds, Bloglines also allows you to track parcels through UPS, FedEx, the US Postal Service and DHL.

As far as RSS readers go, Bloglines has faced strong competition from both desktop and online applications. With its strong market share and popularity of GMail, Google is by far the strongest competitor and offers the connectivity of GMail’s address book to share interesting items with work colleagues, friends and family.

Through what could be blamed on corporate neglect, in October of 2008 Bloglines faced questions of its imminent end. A disenfranchised user base switched to competitors such as Google Reader.

Bloglines new focus is to utilise mobile internet technologies such as the iPhone.

Del.ici.ous – an exercise in the intelligence of the masses

cathy2dot0 — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:30:28 +0000

Del.ici.ous or plain old “Delicious” is at its most fundamental crux an online bookmarking service. It allows users to keep track of interesting sites they come across and unlike those bookmarks saved by their browser, they can access their links from any internet connected computer, anywhere.

A neat tool, to bookmark sites and tag them for later use. To give users the freedom of accessing these at work, home or school and from mobile devices. From this point however, Delicious takes it another step forward.

By compiling the collective links and tags, Delicious can serve up hot trends in internet phenomena. It also allows for more organic associations of categorises, providing a less rigid “tagging” of the links which can lead to a new angle on existing internet content.

From a business perspective, Delicious is providing a crowd sourcing and the predictive powers of the intelligence of the masses. What site is being looked at and has others wanting to share it?

From the perspective of a user, Delicious offers the opportunity to find links to sites that others with similar interests have found. In itself it becomes its own mini-google, providing relevant links to the topics you are most interested in.

Through a different method, digg provides a similar output service. By collecting the impressions of millions of users world-wide, digg tracks internet phenomena, trends and provides users with a list of relevant content but it does so within rigid boundaries.

Where digg has aligned itself with other web 2.o compatriots, Delicious is part of the Yahoo! Group and does not allow for integration with non-Yahoo! applications such as Facebook. By limiting the connection to the content held on its site to itself and the Yahoo! Group, Delicious could put itself out of the running. Despite it’s usefulness for tracking online trends, Delicious may end up being left behind.