Paul O'Flaherty

Google Hasn’t Built A Twitter Killer: Goolge Buzz

FYI: I started writing this before the Google announcement today and am writing it as I watch it live and as a product GBuzz looks great.

Google doesn’t want to build, nor is it trying to build a “twitter killer”. What Google wants is your information in order to better target advertising.

Every time you send an email, update your status, chat on Goggle Talk, share an item on Google Reader, post a video to YouTube or a picture to Picasa, Google gets a little bit more information about you that it can use to better tune the advertising you see in the hope that you will click on one of those ads.

Information like your status updates disappear as soon as they are used but by offering timelines where you can see the status updates of your friends Google  can keep you on in their service a little longer and in front of their advertising a little longer.

By associating Facebook and Twitter id’s with your Gmail contacts Google learns a little more about both you and your contacts. They have already announced that you will be able to import RSS streams from other services, connect with twitter, and there was a hint of facebook connect. It was driven home that the platform will be made as open as possible and noted that if you tweet and it gets imported into GBuzz then it could end up on somebody elses recommended list.

GBuzz is shaping up to be a wonderful looking social experience, but it boils down to being a content gathering service. It will allow you to pump information into Google from all your other services, consume information there and ultimately spend more time in from of Google advertisements while providing it with the information necessary to fine tune those advertisements to you and your friends.

At the end of the day it all boils do to gathering more information about you in order to target advertising. They don’t need to build a Twitter killer. Twitter and Facebook already do a great job creating the information that Google wants.

What they have built however, is a marvelous looking social experience for those people who already use Gmail and Googles mobile services and given them the means to pour information about themselves and others into Googles servers.

Who is Actually Live Streaming? Does Justin.tv Survive on Piracy?

Pirated sports. Bringing in the viewers?

Last week the announcement was made that CNN Live was laying off its four CNN.com Live anchors as well as “several production staffers,” and was shifting it’s focus to on streaming major live events, producing video packages especially for CNN.com.

Mark ‘Rizzin’ Hopkins asked “Is live video streaming dead?” and in his attempt to figure out where CNN is going wrong noted the fact that Justin.tv and Ustream.tv each have between 1.2 and 1.6 million uniques a month.

Those numbers are pretty respectable but a quick mental count of who is actually live streaming revealed that I know about less regular live streamers than I have fingers on my left hand (which is of course a pretty standard left hand with 4 fingers and thumb, although Sara says my fingers are magic).

This got me thinking about those 1.6 million uniques and I quickly realized that the vast majority of viewers on Justin.tv and similar platforms are there to watch pirated TV and sports events.

Just this week I was on Justin.tv twice to watch Ireland get robbed by France in the World Cup Qualifiers. I can’t access RTEs (Irish national broadcaster) streaming service when I am away but can usually find the matches on Justin.tv or Ustream.

I took the above screenshot during the first Ireland Vs France game. As you can see, when I took the screenshot there were over 5,204 viewers to that one channel alone. At one point there was well over 6100 simultaneous viewers of the stream and that was just one stream.

There were multiple streams covering the Ireland match, all with large numbers of viewers, not to mention a plethora of other streams covering the other matches that were underway at the time or any of the other sports events and live TV coverage that was being shown.

Chances are that if a sporting event is being shown and you can’t access it, or if a pay per view event is happening and you don’t want to pay for it, you’ll find somebody streaming it on sites like these.

Finding these streams, which are quite obviously displaying illegal content as the people doing the streaming do not hold the rights to the content, is a relatively easy and trivial thing to do.

If I can find the game I want simply by clicking on the sports section and scrolling down, then you can be sure that an administrator could do the same thing and shut down streams.

Yet, they don’t do it!

Why not? The only reason I can think of is that the vast majority of their viewers come for the pirated content and if they were to eliminate that then their numbers (and advertising revenue) would fall away to nothing.

The Future Of Multitouch Desktop Interfaces? 10/GUI

10/GUI

Just came across this very interesting video from Clayton Miller about 10/GUI, his vision for an innovative 10 finger multitouch desktop interface.

It’s definitely well worth the watch and proposes solutions to some interesting problems such as window manipulation and dealing with the fact that a large portion of the viewable area may be covered by the users hands.

One thing that I’m not so sure about is the entirely linear window manager. It could be advantageous to have it operate vertically as well, although I do see how it could also be quite confusing, especially for the less experienced of users and lead to it again becoming difficult to locate windows.

Thoughts?

Hat tip: Linux For Designers.

Google Readers Secret Ninja Mode

Matt Cutts demonstrates Google Readers secret ninja mode Easter egg on the Google Webmaster Central Youtube channel.

I’m wondering if we should all start being worried that it features ninjas and love hearts?

I mean ninjas and love hearts don’t exactly go together. Not unless the ninja is stabbing you through the heart, or ripping your heart out for messing with his girlfriend or something! Right?

The Social Media Guru (Video)

Trust me!

Social media experts, gurus and witchdoctors! You can’t turn a corner on the internet without running into 10 of them. Each and every one of them pimping their own regurgitated brand of “unique” insight that will do everything from save your business to turn you into a superstar with all of the perks and track marks as proof!

They’re like pigeons around old people at the park -- annoying, everywhere and covering the place in shit.

Have you ever wondered what it is most of these so called “social media experts” actually do for companies? This video tells all…

Hat tip to “New Pair Of Goggles“

No More Techcrunch 50? Did Arrington And Calacanis Have a Lovers Tiff?

Arrington and Calacanis

I know it’s hard to believe a lot of what you see in Loren Feldmans satirical puppet videos but there is sometimes truth buried in them. Especially in this one which features a very real Jason Calacanis saying that there will be no more Techcrunch 50 event.

Calacanis looks a little more than rather sincere when he says it.

So, if there is any truth to this, why have Calacanis and Arrington thrown in the towel. Feldman alludes to a falling out between the two?

There is a second video posted a little later that features Calacanis and an Arrington puppet where Calacanis says that there might be another Techcrunch 50 if they “make up tonight”.

Again, Calacanis looks a little too serious.

Here are the two videos so you can see for yourself.

First up Calacanis with the Feldman puppet:

Now Calacanis with the Arrington puppet:

It’s all conjecture and “reading between the lines” at this point.

It may be nothing, it may be everything.

Opinion?  Did Arrington and Calacanis have a lovers tiff? If they did, what does it mean for the future of Techcrunch 50?

Update: It’s been confirmed that there will be no more Techcrunch50’s!

Wolfenstein Official Launch Trailer

Wolfenstein 3D

I’ve been a Wolfenstein fan since the very beginning, way back in 1992, in fact I’m sure I still have the original knocking around here somewhere.

With that in mind, it goes without saying that I am very much looking forward to getting my hands on the new Wolfenstein when it’s released, which should be next Tuesday, August 18th.

You can check out the trailer for the new Wolfenstein below and i’f you’re feeling a little nostalgic you can download the original Wolfenstein 3D and have some “old skool” fun kicking Nazi butt!

Googling with Bing

As tongue in cheek as this College Humor video maybe, it raises a very important question:

How will search engines like Bing cope with the fact that the act of searching on the internet has now become a verb, a verb that is synonymous with their competition – Googling?

Grammar Police: They have me wound up again

Yeah, the Grammar Nazi’s have been at it again lately and I’m sure you all know that they really chaff my ass (almost as much as the PC crowd), so I felt the need to have a little rant about them.

Sorry for the poor lighting, but this was just a “get it off your chest” video…

Brighten up your day by FAILing

Some days are simply tough to get through! Then someone sends you something, that makes you giggle like a hyperactive smurf high on a massive laughing gas binge and all is well with the world!

Cruel as it may be, there’s nothing quite like laughing at other peoples misfortune and idiocy to bring a smile to your face.

Thanks Sara, for brightening my day and introducing me to my new favourite site: FAIL Blog.

Here’s a little taster of things on FAIL Blog that will surely brighten your day!

Because video is scary

It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on make up artists, plastic surgeons, lighting technicians and air brush the final result, video can and will make you look like a complete tit!

I spotted this on the “Most active videos” part of YouTube today! (I added the zoomed picture of course!)

What can I say, “Shakira never looked so sexy?” ROFL

Maybe she sat down without looking to see where the microphone was?