TechnoCloud

Amid what Google describes as a potentially infinite web, the search engine has identified a landmark trillion meaningful URLs (unique URLs). This is quite some figure when you consider that they passed the billion mark only back in 2000.

The mind-boggling figure illustrates the challenge for search engines in trying to judge value among so many competitive sources of information and in an environment where there are both fair (white hat SEO) and foul (black hat SEO) means to present content.

Understandable is the emergence of social software to facilitate peer-review of content sources to better identify value. After all, value is in the eyes of the beholder, with part of that value derived from one’s own community.

The likes of Delicious and Friendfeed offer forms of community search both allowing you to apply search filters through your own network. From my experiments, I find these useful in finding quality content, but not for providing the comprehensive reach that the major search engines offer.

While Google uses your own search history data to improve search results, it does of course use the wider community through apportioning value to inbound links (what’s of value to the community is of value to you). That community is narrowed by attaching more value to links from related topic websites to better idenfity the kind of niche communities that you benefit from on social software.

As yet, neither offer the best combination of the personal and the comprehensive to find the ideal search mix for the individual. There remain challenges in key areas, such as privacy, simplicity, data portability and applying the right filters at the right times. Then we can start talking about finding that trillion-in-one URL.

As an update to my previous post, Google has announced the details on their blog and provided more details on the Lat Long blog, complete with some rather cloudy stills.

Note to Google: wait for a sunnier day, as it looks like there’s a stage in England after all…

Google’s Street View has crossed the pond and is winding its way down France’s streets.

Although the coverage is far from universal, they have taken the inspired decision to start withthe Tour de France route, including sections of Paris, Saint-Étienne and Brest. It certainly opens up the possibility of some excellent mashups of live Tour data to enhance coverage.

Fortunately, the route allows me to take my own tour down memory lane to re-enact my old walk to work down the Champs-Elysées and revisit an old holiday destination by taking a tour inside the city walls of Saint-Malo. Picture quality is perfectly adequate. To protect privacy, but not perhaps vanity, faces and number plates are obscured.

You can view it here (make sure the Street View button is selected). It’s also available in Google Earth.

Yahoo have followed up their initial trial with Google’s search technology in signing a non-exclusive deal to carry Google ads on Yahoo properties in the US and Canada. The deal also includes moves to improve interoperability between the companies respective instant messaging services.

Understandably the move has provoked a huge reaction in the blogosphere given the background of the failed Microsoft deal. It is sure to attract the attention of the regulators given the two company’s positions as the top two in search, even if it is non-exclusive.

For Google this gives them access to Yahoo’s massive traffic and for Yahoo a big potential revenue stream and a clear strategic move after the failed Microsoft takeover.

Regular readers will know that I admire a well executed viral marketing campaign. It’s a pity that I heard about it before I saw it denying the neat twist at the end as the brand was revealed, although it doesn’t really detract from the entertainment.

So, if you don’t want to know what it’s marketing (there might be a little clue further up though…), then watch the embedded video below, then read the rest of the post.

The viral stands out on several counts: although personally I hate musicals I have to admire the quality of the acting and singing; the hidden cameras capture the surprise of the unsuspecting public perfectly; it plays on the lack of human interaction in large public spaces like airports; and it’s a great fit for promoting a theatre booking service and doesn’t damage the brand by trying to stand out by being too edgy.

Best of all it works, it’s had me thinking I should go to the theatre more often, just not to any musicals…

Interesting to read that the Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have collaborated on standards for Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) - in simpler terms, the code you use to tell search engines not to spider a particular page or section.

The full details are available here.

Similar to Google’s guidelines for Webmasters, it would be helpful to have a set of consistent standards for the basics of search engine optimisation across the search engines. Obviously each search engine has its own closely-guarded algorithm that determines rankings, but with consistent guidelines on sitemaps, use/abuse of keywords and clear do’s/don’ts would be a big help in putting the emphasis firmly on supporting white hat practices.

A recent post seems to have struck a chord with Google with ‘Lies, damn lies and social networking statistics‘ currently among the top few positions on Google in a number of markets for the search term social networking statistics.

As an update, Wired claimed in March 2008 that MySpace had an average growth rate of 513%, moving from 20m users (2005) to 225m (2008), with Facebook’s equivalent figure 550%.

For me though, the interesting question is less the size of the overall market - we already know it’s big - but the next challenge of monetising those audiences. It’s somewhat ironic that in a sector where there is such richness of personal data, that ad targeting remains in its infancy and the low value network ad dominates.

So why is that and what’s holding back the full potential of the social networking ad market? Let’s summarise some of the key reasons:

• Concerns from advertisers about associating themselves with the uncertainties of user generated content.
• The shear size of the inventory available.
• Lack of relevancy of ads. It’s partly a technical challenge, but rightly, there are legal and privacy issues with processing user data as Facebook Beacon found out to their cost in having to scale back their ambitions.
• Mindset - are those surfing social networks in the right mindset to respond to advertising? Google Adsense works because it’s contextual and the better ads help task-orientated users solve a problem.
• Lack of innovative creative tailored to those environments.
• Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

These challenges can be at least partially addressed through ad targeting technology, informed consent from users and better data about what users respond to and what they don’t. Also the emergence of niche social networks offers more potential to provide advertisers with a targeted audience focused on a particular activity and in theory more receptive to relevant ads within that niche.

Get close to solving these problems and the really interesting statistics will be the financial ones…

So, Gears (formerly known as Google Gears) is a year old. I trialed using this offline-enabling application as a way to keep up with my Google Reader RSS feeds when on the move without web access and as backup for on some of the flakier days for internet access.

I used it for the first month, but what prevented me from keeping it up was the lack of integration with other products. Despite the plethora of social bookmarking services and Google Reader’s sharing functionality, I still use delicious. I’m so used to its design and functionality that although other pretenders may come along with more functionality, it acts as a hard drive extension for my brain!

The problem was that I’d read a post of interest, but wasn’t able to bookmark it to delicious as that is not offline-enabled. The result was an awkward process of keeping the post unread and going back to bookmark later when web access was restored.

Now that Gears is focused on spreading its open source technology to other services hopefully that will change and I may start using it again. For now, though Gears remains ‘offline’…

Update: delicious offline access may indeed be coming through Yahoo’s BrowserPlus branded as desktop capability for web applications…

Over the last few months, there has been increasing levels of buzz around user interface. From Microsoft’s Surface to the wii and iPhone, the trend is clear - the humble mouse and keyboard/keypad’s dominance are likely to fade as more intuitive and ultimately ‘human’ forms of interaction emerge into the mainstream through touch, motion and voice.

Therefore, it was particularly interesting to get a sneak preview of the next version of Windows which included many of the user interface innovations shown in the Microsoft Surface. Indeed, given the success of the iPhone, how long until we see this functionality coming to Macs?

Below is an early demo of the new Windows 7 OS in action:

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Although TechnoCloud doesn’t normally carry advertising, I’m going to make an exception to test out a new service, Pubmatic, for consideration on some higher profile sites. The service claims to optimise between ad networks you are a member of as well as ad colour to calculate the highest return.

I’ve selected a small ad unit in the sidebar in a prominent enough place to notice, but small enough hopefully not to be too obtrusive.

I’m signed up with Google Adsense to get underway, but will try to add another ad network or two to make it a more effective test. Update: AdBrite now also included.

So far, so good. It’s working and is showing some particularly garish colours which I certainly wouldn’t have chosen as part of my design, but do at least stand out.

As payback for seeing the ads, I’ll update you with the results.