Paul O'Flaherty

Google playing with music search again?

I’d almost forgotten that Google has a search operator “music:” that when put in front of a query will bring up information about the artists, songs and albums you’re searching for.

However, what did surprise me today, was getting the same results as searching for “music: Nickelback” simply by searching for Nickelback on Google.com.

Check out the screen shots below to see what I mean.

1. The results I normally when I search from Google.com just for “nickelback” (click on the image for a larger view).

2. The results I get when I search on Google.com with the operator “music: nickelback” (click on the image for a larger view).

3. The results I got earlier today using just “nickelback” from Google.com (click on the image for a larger view).

As you can see searches 2 and 3 show identical results even thought the search query URLs are very different!.

So, is Google trying something new with their music search? We know they have rolled out free music links to users in China, might we see the same or something similar in Europe or the US? Doubtful, but we can hope

Only Twitter can say nothing with 134 words

Honestly I’ve seen more information conveyed in a single 140 character tweet than I have in the latest 134 word or 809 character (including spaces) blog post from twitter.

In a post titled “Whoa, Feedback”, Biz Stone managed to say almost nothing useful about the recent decision to change the way “@replies” work on the twitter service except to tell us that:

The engineering team reminded me that there were serious technical reasons why that setting had to go or be entirely rebuilt—it wouldn’t have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever.

Okay, so quick question. Why the heck did you guys introduce the feature in the first place if it never would have “lasted long”?

What are these “serious technical issues” and why does the engineering team need to “remind” the co-founder that they exist? Why weren’t these addressed before the feature was ever implemented?

You don’t need to go “brainstorming a way to surface a new, scalable way to address this need“, you just need to fix it.

You have a great method and system that people are not only using, but as you can see from the feedback, are familiar with and passionate about.

Quit wasting time. Just fix it.

An Open Common API for photo uploading?

Flickr, Picasa, Webshots, Photobucket. Everybody has their own API for uploading images to their services and the space is so crowded that it makes my head spin.

Sara asked me a poignant question today (as she usually does), just after I’d finished setting up the gallery software for this blog: “Is there an app like Picasa that will allow you to upload your pictures to your own web space?”.

I drew a blank.

To the best of my knowledge there isn’t one and the reasons for it are two fold:

1. Most apps are designed to work on services such as Flickr because most people don’t have their own (or enough) server space.

2. There is no common API among service providers.

I could write an application to upload to Picasa, but to get it work with Webshots would take extra work and the same would be true for every additional service I wished to add.

We’re missing an opportunity here. If we could develop and implement a common API for uploading images, (handling everything from naming and captions to resizing and Exif data etc.) then companies could focus on developing great photo organization and editing software without worrying about which platform to build their online service around.

We could see the development of software that might finally challenge the mighty Picasa and it would work everywhere!

The implications for services like WordPress, TypePad and other blog/CMS platforms are even better.

Gallery systems that don’t rely exclusively on the web interface or FTP to upload images could ship as part of each platform.

Developers could forget about focusing on building gallery systems from the ground up, and could instead focus on making the barebones shipped gallery functional, user friendly and awesome.

I’ve lost count of how many gallery plugins there are for WordPress alone and the vast majority of them are crap (sorry devs, but you know it as well as I do).

Users could edit, tag, add descriptions and assign rights to any image in a single desktop application and upload to any platform they choose if we just had a single, accepted, common API for image uploading.

What about it people? Are we going to see one anytime soon? Or are we going to remain in the one application for one service era?

It’s so easy to connect now

So, JayMonster got on to me about not adding OpenID to this site after me bitching about other sites not allowing me to comment with the usual “Name+Email+URL” combination.

Being the git I am, I couldn’t let that rest and even though I’ve had problems with OpenID implementations on this site before, it’s now up and running as a way to comment here without logging in.

Not only that, but while I was at it, I’ve added a whole bunch of other service providers from Google to Technorati, WordPress.com to Yahoo and beyond for you to easily identify yourself with.

But lets not stop there, for those Googelites among you (and who isn’t these days) you may see a new bar across the bottom of the site. That’s the Google Friend Connect bar, which will allow you get social with the users of this and thousands of other sites just by clicking the “Join” button and signing into your Google account.

See, I’ve been a busy boy around here today! Are you connected yet?

Just let me comment – as me!

When I read a great post, or see something interesting online I like to either twitter it, share it or leave a comment to show my appreciation.

Today i came across this “is it real or fake” post and got rather annoyed because I was unable to leave a comment.

Okay, let’s get this straight, it’s not that I couldn’t leave a comment, it’s that I couldn’t leave one as me.

In order to comment on the blog, I’d either have to comment as my Google Account, Live Journal, WordPress (.com), TypePad, AIM or OpenID.

That’s not acceptable. My site is PaulOFlaherty.com. That’s where I want my comments to be associated with.

I know you may be worried about spammers and such, but c’mon, the “"Email + URL + captcha” combination works fine for most other folks.

Don’t force me to associate myself with a site that is only a place holder pointing to my online presence because you’re too lazy to moderate comments or install an anti-spam system.

Opera, the whiney spoilt kid that only a mother could love

The numbers speak for themselves.

Microsoft are due to defend their IE policies to the European Commission after Opera lodged complaints about Microsoft’s IE bundling policies with Windows.

Opera (you know them, they’re the guys with the web browser that nobody’s heard of except for them lodging antitrust complaints) are simply being a bunch of whiney little bastards.

Their argument that Microsoft bundling IE with Windows hurts consumer choice is quite simply the wailing of an untalented spoilt brat who hasn’t been picked for the football team.

Lets be clear here. Anybody who has any idea how to use a PC is capable of downloading and installing a new browser. Don’t believe me? Just go look at the statistics of browser usage. Firefox is the dominant browser and doesn’t come pre-installed on a windows machine.

Further to that, forcing naive first time users to choose between browsers that they’ve never heard of is more damaging to the user experience that not giving them a choice. You may as well be asking most of them to touch their assholes with their elbows. They won’t have a clue how to do it, but will eventually end up installing any browser out of sheer frustration.

Regardless of Opera’s charges against Microsoft, am I the only one who thinks that government should stay the hell away from telling companies like Microsoft what they can and can’t bundle with their operating systems as along a it’s possible to install alternative software afterward?

They wouldn’t get away with this in the hardware world. If Panasonic wanted Sony (or vice versa) to offer all it’s stereos with the choice of a Panasonic CD player, do you think it would happen?

Finally, lets look at the statistics again. Firefox had 46.5% of the market in March, that’s more than all versions of IE combined. Opera had 2.3% percent.

I do believe that the people at Opera should take note of that.

Instead of wasting time, energy and money to force Microsoft give them market share, maybe they should get their thumbs out of their asses and deliver a killer browser that wins market share because it rocks.

Firefox did it, Google is doing it with Chrome! Why can’t you?

(Photo by Jill Greenberg)