Ged Carroll

Category: technology | 技術 | 기술 | テクノロジー

It’s hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through it how transformation technology has been. When I was a child a computer was something mysterious. My Dad has managed to work his way up from the shop floor of the shipyard where he worked and into the planning office.

One evening he broad home some computer paper. I was fascinated by the the way the paper hinged on perforations and had tear off side edges that allowed it to be pulled through the printer with plastic sprockets connecting through holes in the paper.

My Dad used to compile and print off work orders using an ICL mainframe computer that was timeshared by all the shipyards that were part of British Shipbuilders.

I used the paper for years for notes and my childhood drawings. It didn’t make me a computer whiz. I never had a computer when I was at school. My school didn’t have a computer lab. I got to use Windows machines a few times in a regional computer labs. I still use what I learned in Excel spreadsheets now.

My experience with computers started with work and eventually bought my own secondhand Mac. Cut and paste completely changed the way I wrote. I got to use internal email working for Corning and internet connectivity when I went to university. One of my friends had a CompuServe account and I was there when he first met his Mexican wife on an online chatroom, years before Tinder.

Leaving college I set up a Yahoo! email address. I only needed to check my email address once a week, which was fortunate as internet access was expensive. I used to go to Liverpool’s cyber cafe with a friend every Saturday and showed him how to use the internet. I would bring any messages that I needed to send pre-written on a floppy disk that also held my CV.

That is a world away from the technology we enjoy now, where we are enveloped by smartphones and constant connectivity. In some ways the rate of change feels as if it has slowed down compared to the last few decades.

  • Google services

    When reflecting on Google services, it made me realise how much the internet has changed. Back in 2005 when I started work at Yahoo!, the internet was a very different place.  It was an exciting time, web 2.0 was a technological and philosophical step-change for online services. We had cleared our palates of the bad taste left by the silliness of the dot com implosion.

    Social networks weren’t mainstream in the way we would understand them now – though there were social networks prior to the the then nascent Facebook. Instant messaging was just starting to move on to mobile devices and were more a source of ‘presence’ information – whether someone was free or not than mobile messaging. Instant messaging on the desktop was big and everyone thought that Skype actually worked really well at the time.

    We were conscious of security, but again Skype promised privacy and security (except in China) through secure encryption.  The 800LB gorilla in the room was Google. Yahoo! had managed to survive the dot com bust and subsequent 30+% drop in online advertising revenues because of the Yahoo! Dating business. Even in a recession people still need love. By comparison, Google had been on a tear, Adwords promised marketers greater transparency where they money had gone and what action had been derived from their advertising spend. There were even some nice charts that they could cut-and-paste directly into a PowerPoint presentation.

    Google services impact was much bigger. Yahoo! had pioneered search with Jerry Yang and David Filo’s directory in the mid 1990s. You can still find an iteration of the directory at Yahoo! here. In 1999, the front page of Yahoo! still reflected that directory heritage, as you can see from this screen shot
    Yahoo! early morning of March 3, 1999
    By the time I joined Yahoo! we had a search page that looked much more like the clean design of Google’s search page. The product was comparable in performance to Google as well, it just wasn’t Google; which is what most UK web users wanted.
    Y! search late 2005
    We struggled to get media mentions for Yahoo! in comparison Google services coverage wrote itself: Google spots Jesus in Peruvian sand dune | The Register. Products like Lycos’ IQ service didn’t get the attention they deserved because if it didn’t come from Google the digerati weren’t interested.  At the time Google had 70% or so of the share market, rumours I heard at the time from colleagues were that up to 95% of searches from Yahoo!’s UK office actually used Google – which foreshadowed Google’s European dominance.

    Google’s dominance could be said to have peaked around 2006, social was starting to appear and consumers started to learn the downside of what beta meant as services started to disappear or become amalgamated into other products. Services that they wove into the fabric of their online life disappeared. Tools that helped them work became less useful as functionality was dialled back.

    I have compiled a list of Google services that have been launched and closed. I ignored US-only products. There are some specific omissions:

    • Deja News had been already shutdown by the time Google acquired the company, Google sucked the service’s Usenet archives into Google Groups
    • Google launched ‘Click-To-Call’ twice. It was closed down for the first time in 2007 and was trialled again in April 2010
    • Hello was a Picasa-based picture file transfer app similar to ‘send file’ on your favourite instant messaging platform, it was axed in 2008, but it always felt like a feature to me rather than a product
    •  SearchMash always was a testbed for different search user experiences. It was not a product by any stretch of the imagination
    • Google PowerMeter was a piece of software from Google.org – the charitable foundation set up by Google
    • Google Directory used data pulled from the Open Directory Project, it just ranked them using its algorithm
    • Google Pack was a marketing ploy and possible revenue generator rather than a consumer product per se

    A number of businesses that Google got involved with where acqu-hires:

    • Aardvark
    • BumpTop
    • DocVerse
    • Dodgeball
    • fflick
    • Gizmo5
    • Jaiku,
    • Meebo
    • Picnik
    • Postini
    • Quickoffice
    • Slide
    • Zingku

    Spun-out / rebranded  products

    Product name Date of launch (DD/MM/YYYY) Fate
    Google body 15/10/2010 Google Body was part of Google Labs. It was handed over to Zygote Media Group on October 13, 2011.  It is now called Zygote Body. The source code is available under an open source license
    Google gears 31/05/2007 Removed from Google’s product set, Gears was released under a BSD license. News of Google’s migration away from Gears broke in November 2009

    Discontinued products

    Product name Date of launch (DD/MM/YYYY) Fate
    Google answers 04/2002 Google has taken a number of runs at Q&A services. Google Answers shut down was announced on November 28, 2006
    Google deskbar 06/11/2003 Google Deskbar came out of Google Labs; it put a Google search box inside the chrome of the operating system, allowing consumers to Google not just from inside the browser, but also productivity software.  It was discontinued on May 8, 2006. A similar feature was incorporated into Google Desktop Search.
    Orkut 24/01/2004 Facebook-like social network that used to be popular in India and Brazil.
    Google desktop 14/10/2004 Searched across the computer similar to Spotlight in OS X and a web search box a la Google Deskbar. Desktop also had Konfabulator-like web applets that provided information on weather, news etc. It was announced that it would be discontinued on September 2, 2011
    Google Notifier 2005 I can’t find a specific date in 2005 when Notifier was launched. It let desktop users now when an event was due on their Google calendar or an email available in Gmail
    iGoogle 05/2005 Discontinued on November 1, 2013
    Google talk 24/08/2005 Google’s VoIP client, replaced by Google Hangouts on May 2013
    Google reader 07/10/2005 Google closed down Reader despite the outcry from users. According to Google it had a loyal but declining user base so shut it down on July 1, 2013
    Google page creator 24/02/2006 A simple way of web publishing, which Google replaced with Google Sites in September 2008.
    Google notebook 10/05/2006 Google Notebook was a bit like a proto-Evernote. Content was exported to Google Docs on November 11, 2011 and the service disappeared by July 2012. On March 20, 2013, Google launched a similar service called Google Keep
    Google brower sync 08/06/2006 Rolled out of Google labs as a way of synchronizing settings, passwords and bookmarks across say work and home computers running the Firefox browser. Google’s Chrome browser has a similar function and shutting this function down would have been designed to persuade consumers to jump ship when it was discontinued in June 2008.
    Google image labeler 31/08/2006 Google copied the idea behind Carnegie Mellon’s ESP game to find a better way to teach its search what images were. Since it depended only on common answers from two random players, it prevented foul play so to speak. It was shut down on September 16, 2001
    Google code search 05/10/2006 Vertical search looking at open source code on the web, announced for shutdown on January 15, 2012
    Google website optimiser 10/2006 Free website testing tool to enable site owners to get more value from their site. Discontinued on August 1, 2012
    Google question & answers 28/05/2007 Google’s latest attempt at a Q&A service was ran as localized services in Russia, France, international English and China through a partnership with Tianya. It was closed down on June 23, 2014
    Knol 13/12/2007 Kind of similar to Squidoo in that it allowed experts to develop a sphere of content as user-written articles. It was announced on November 22, 2011 that it would be shut down.
    Google friend connect 12/05/2008 A social media profile that was exportable (possibly as a widget), what Wikipedia called a social networking script. Google signaled it was killing it off on November 23, 2011 to make way for Google+
    Google health 20/05/2008 Centralised personal health record service. It didn’t get to the UK but did influence David Cameron’s thinking on health IT. Discontinued January 1, 2012
    Google lively 08/07/2008 Google Lively was a way of creating a SecondLife-type environment for conference calls – one of the reasons why IBM was so interested in SecondLife in the first place. Lively was discontinued on December 31, 2008
    Google insights for search 05/08/2008 Google Insights for Search was merged with Google Trends on September 27, 2012
    Google latitude 05/02/2009 Location aware social application, similar to Dodgeball that Google had acquired and closed down. Latitude itself was shut down on June 10, 2013
    Google squared 12/05/2009 Google squared provided some of the functionality of Wolfram Alpha, in particular adding structure and relationships to apparently unstructured data sets. It was shut down on 05/09/2011
    Google wave 27/05/2009 Google Wave was a hybrid communications platform that allowed document collaboration and a mix of email and messaging. Google Wave was culled in a batch of ‘spring cleaning’ announced by Google in November 2011. Source code from Google Wave was released under an Apache license.
    Google fast flip 14/09/2009 Provided a flip board type of experience aggregating content from 39 news partners. It was axed on September 5, 2011
    Google building maker 13/10/2009 Allowed users to model existing buildings for inclusion in Google Earth as a 3D model. Shut down announced on March 13, 2013
    Google dictionary 12/2009 Google Dictionary was launched as a standalone product after being a feature in Google Translate. It was shut down without warning on August 5, 2011. Google has a dictionary function build into search using ‘define:”
    Google buzz 9/2/2010 A social network that integrated into Gmail, it was discontinued on December 15, 2011.
    Google cloud connect 24/2/2011 Google Cloud Connect was a Microsoft Office plug-in that allowed you to easily save documents to Google Docs. It was discontinued on April 30, 2013
    Google schemer 18/11/2011 An invite-only clone of 43 Things was shut down on February 7, 2014
    Quickoffice 05/06/2012 (date Google acquired the company) Quickoffice was an established mobile application when Google acquired the company, discontinued on June 29, 2014

    The closure of Google Reader felt to me like a water shed moment. Google Reader had come along and eviserated the current marketplace for RSS readers, though the size and reach of the Google network. Names like Fastladder and Bloglines disappeared. Once the competition was demolished Google then withdrew of the sector and a scramble of cottage industry services sprung up to try and fill the gap; my personal favourite being Newsblur.

    I suspect and have heard others suggest that Google has a problem getting users to use and commit to new services. I don’t think that Google Wave’s issue was consumer commitment, but poor product design, but the lack of adoption for say Google+ screams consumers and early adopters could be indicative of a wider wariness of the general public to invest their data and time in a new Google service. This maybe part of the reason why Google seems to be gradually extracting Google+ from its product matrix; just a few days ago no longer using Google+ author ranking in search.

    If one looks at Google+ versus other services in Google Trends we can see a similar level of interest to say Google Reader, something that Google has already admitted was a non-viable product.

    Google finds itself in a more normal internet brand marketing position: asking consumers for brand permission to innovate so that consumers will engage with their new products and services. Having been on the other side of that fence I realise what a challenge that can be. More Google related content here.

    More information

    Lycos IQ
    Lovely Jubii-ly | renaissance chambara
    IAC | Ask and the social web | renaissance chambara
    Open source intelligence | renaissance chambara

    Google Click To Call
    Google Tests Phone Numbers In AdWords Ads | SearchEngineLand

    Google Reader
    Reader May Have Died To Feed Google+’s APIs | Co.Labs

    Google Answers
    Adieu to Google Answers | Google Official Blog

    Google Deskbar
    Google’s Deskbar; Search Engine Forums Spotlight | Search Engine Watch

    Google Lively
    Be who you want on the web pages you visit | Google Official Blog

    Google Questions and Answers
    Baraza turning read only | Google Help

    Google Groups
    How to Search Today’s Usenet For Programming Information? | Slashdot
    Google’s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles (UPDATED) | Wired
    Google Begins Fixing Usenet Archive | Wired

    Google Wave
    More spring cleaning out of season | Google Official Blog

    Google Gears
    Stopping the Gears | Google Gears Blog

    Google+
    It’s Over: The Rise & Fall Of Google Authorship For Search Results | SearchEngineLand

  • Nearables

    Before we think about nearables; lets go back a few years. Back in the day shops and businesses where digitised using RFID tags that covered everything from lose prevention in shops and libraries (shop lifting to you and I) to providing payment systems like the Octopus and Oystercard. RFID tags are passive devices with a small amount of information on them; electromagnetic waves from a reader ‘powered’ them allowing the data to be read. In essence RFID is rather like the magnetic strip that used to be on the back of credit cards, bank deposit books and on some passports.
    My Oyster card for LDN & my Octopus card for HKG
    Estimote’s Wearables product takes the RFID tag and asks what could be done if the tag became active, self-powered. It is compliant with Apple’s iBeacon standard using low-powered Bluetooth LE radio transmissions to interact with a smartphone.

    Estimote defines the nearables as:

    … a smart, connected object that broadcasts data about its location, motion and temperature.

    The information that nearables can provide can be dynamic, based on simple sensors included in the electronics package. At the moment nearables in sticker form cost some $33/unit and a default battery life for three years.

    This initial version of nearables might be of interest for high value package tracking, like a consignment of vintage wine, fragile museum pieces or high end cigars.

    Although this seems like limited technology at the moment, imagine what improvements could be brought in over future evolutions of it. If I had been told about this in my 20s, I would have thought that nearables came out of the wild imaginings of a James Bond film or similar. Now its aimed at high end supply chain management and logistics.

    More related content here.

    More information
    Nearables are here, introducing Estimote stickers | Estimote Blog

  • Domain registrars + more things

    Anti-Piracy Lawyer Wants Domain Registrars to Silence Critics – interesting approach to the takedown to use domain registrars as a reputation management tool. Governments occasionally take this approach when dealing with websites based overseas, but its rare for a non-state organisation to try and manipulate domain registrars like this. It will be interesting if boutique shops like Consulum or San Frontieres start using domain registrars in this way.

    Android Fragmentation Report August 2014 – OpenSignal – looking at this gives an idea of the kind of challenges devs face

    WPP shares rise as profits come in ahead of forecast | City A.M. – as usual Sorrell’s business forecasts are more interesting than the results.

    The fashion case for mobile phone covers – FT.com – Keely Warwick, contemporary accessories buyer at Selfridges, which has increased its investment in phone and tablet cases by 30 per cent for autumn/winter 2014, says tech accessories are one of the store’s “most rapidly expanding categories” – are cellphone cases the new affordable luxury alongside make up and perfume? Back when I worked on the Palm V there was also luxury cases back then: Jean-Paul Gaultier, Mulberry, Coach et al (paywall)

    The Rise and Fall and Rise of Virtual Reality (The Verge) – this feels more like a Wired magazine piece than a Verge piece, interesting nonetheless

    Behind Bold Designs, A Thin Skin: Zaha Hadid Sues Publisher For Defamation | Co.Design – this could be the architectural PR home goal equivalent of the McLibel trial

    The story behind the shrinking ranks of Goldman partners – Quartz – shrinking partners as it tries to cut its cloth to suit the new size of banking

    Kay Tye, Maryam Shanechi, and Other Pioneering Young Technologists | MIT Technology Review – its a shame that there isn’t great industrial designers in the group, but some great technologies

    Facebook Assault on Google’s DoubleClick Coming This Fall – The Information – (paywall)

    Adult Women Now Make Up Half of All Gamers, Outnumber Boys Under 18 Years Old – Gamers gonna game. – which moves gaming back to where it was when Atari made consoles. I wonder if the proportion of men over 30 playing games is still as high as it was

    Tony Alva Interview / Slam City Skates Blog – interview with one of the pioneers of skateboarding

    Smart wristbands gaining traction for site-specific payments and passes | JWT Intelligence – Disney showed the way, though it could be considered to be an evolution of the likes of Octopus and Oyster cards

    Jolla boss says mobile innovation has stalled | Marketing Interactive – stalled probably isn’t the word that I would use, I would say that we’ve hit a lull in mobile innovation and that innovation in general is ‘lumpy’ More related content here.

    The Internet of Things will be vulnerable for years, and no one is incentivized to fix it | VentureBeat – keep your home dumb

    Chinese internet censors target collective activities more than sensitive subjects, says Harvard report | South China Morning Post – implications in this for crisis monitoring

    Why John McAfee Is Paranoid About Mobile | Dark Reading – probably a reason why the US Government is now investigating stinger usage

    Most smartphone users download zero apps per month – Quartz – it kind of makes sense once I find something I tend to stick with it, am sure my app downloads would be below one a month now unless something with compelling utility comes a long. But then I don’t game

    Sony selfie camera pictures leaked ahead of launch | BGR – interesting idea. I know some people who have a Chanel perfume bottle shaped iPhone case so the look and feel makes sense. Would they use this alongside an iPhone though?

    Amazon China to Deliver Foreign Products Directly — China Internet Watch – Amazon is less than 3% of Chinese e-tailing

    Promiscuous media: News needs to go where the people are, not the other way around – Media companies like BuzzFeed, NowThis News and Fusion are increasingly creating content that is designed to live on other apps and services rather than just including links to their websites. – Web 2.0 model repeated with attribution being the important thing since that will bring people in to then see advertising

  • Nokia E90 Communicator

    The last time I was excited about anything coming out of the World Mobile Congress was 2007 with the launch of the Nokia E90. That year the World Mobile Congress  was held in early February 2007, some four months before the launch of the first iPhone. At that time, Nokia was king of the world, their beautifully made hardware was made with magnesium alloy chassis’ on the E-series business handsets. Symbian was a user friendly if flakey operating system.
    Nokia e90 and 6085
    It took business smartphones to the next level with the Nokia E90 Communicator; a powerful handset with a full sized keyboard hidden beneath the exterior of a candy-bar phone.
    Nokia e90 and 6085
    The Nokia E90 was a leap forward from the previous 9X00-series communicators in computing power and connectivity. The E90 supported Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, numerous bands of GSM, UMTS cellular radio and HSDPA – which heralded a near broadband web experience – network permitting. Beyond connectivity, the phone sported a decent-sized screen some 800 pixels wide, a full keyboard that I managed to type blog posts on in real-time and a GPS unit that allowed you to tag photos on Flickr or use Google Maps.

    There was also a built-in camera that was ideal for use with Skype when you had a wi-fi connection. Setting up an IMAP email account was a doodle. And unlike one of the current crop of phablets I could fold the clamshell case and put in the side pocket of my carpenter jeans. I used the E90 Communicator as a lightweight laptop replacement, similar to the way I currently use the MacBook Air.

    The achilles heel of the E90 Communicator was the Symbian software. I had some 3,500 contacts at the time in my computer, when I attempted to synch it across to my phone it bricked. I had to have it reflashed. It was not a memory issue, but that the OS seemed unable to handle a business contact book. I managed with a sub-set of the contacts on there. Eventually while in Hong Kong on business, the phone stopped holding a charge, it would chew through a battery in 30 minutes. I got a replacement battery for it but it made no difference. Given that mine was a developer programme model phone, no one in Shenzhen would attempt to repair the device.
    Nokia E90
    The sticker in the back of the phone was like kryptonite for the most hardened shanzhai hardware hacker.

  • Oris Aquis depth gauge + more things

    Oris Aquis dive watch with built-in depth gauge

    IWC Aquatimer Deep 3 vs ORIS Aquis – Gear Patrol – Oris’ approach to its depth gauge on its Aquis dive watch is a really elegant design solution. In the Oris Aquis there are are no moving parts, or complex surfaces to waterproof. Instead the Oris Aquis relies on Boyles law and the different refractive index between glass, air and water to form a meniscus. You might worry about dust getting into the depth gauge of the Oris Aquis, but the risk is relatively low and would be likely to be cleaned out by water action. More related content here.

    Consumer behaviour

    China’s Growing Gray Market for All That’s Foreign – haitao – searching abroad

    Number of Cars Per Household Stagnates in Japan | WSJ – peak car in Japan (paywall)

    More Than a Third of Americans Have No Retirement Savings | TIME – shocking and astonishing

    Marketing

    BlueFocus Hires Holly Zheng To Oversee International Expansion | Holmes Report – Because the industry landscape is changing, people are looking for more integrated solutions. We want to be a solutions company — a one-stop shop when it comes to digital.

    Tumblr to start searching images for brand info | PR Daily EU – interesting use of image recognition

    Media

    Orange Bear | Facebook for Business – is it just me or is anyone else trying to see the business case / causality in this case study? It looks like a press release with bursts of numerical tourettes

    Online

    Giving You More Reasons to Share on SlideShare – explains why they weren’t taking premium subscriptions

    Google Made 890 Improvements To Search Over The Past Year | Searchengineland – competitive advantage right there in the headline

    Twitter now officially says your timeline is more than just tweets from people you follow – Quartz – interesting changes

    Google Is Planning to Offer Accounts to Kids Under 13 – WSJ – interesting restrictions and opportunities for marketers willing to play ball

    Telegraph “Forgets” Its Own Stories Documenting Google “Right To Be Forgotten” Removals | Marketingland – something recursive in the nature of this and straight from the pages of Franz Kafta

    Security

    Researchers find it’s terrifyingly easy to hack traffic lights | Ars Technica – no real surprise

    Technology

    Sales of wearables set to rocket despite current ‘chaotic’ stage of development | Marketing Week – nothing particularly insightful

    Are processors pushing up against the limits of physics? | Ars Technica – the struggle to extract greater parallelism from code. Even low-end smartphones now have multiple cores, but we’ve still not figured out how to use them well in many cases.

    A portable router that conceals your Internet traffic | Ars Technica – inexpensive pocket-sized “travel router”

    A brief history of USB, what it replaced, and what has failed to replace it | Ars Technica – I found an ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) connector keyboard at the weekend

    VCs suck (but there’s a way you could prove me wrong) | Fortune – issues in data transparency

    Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet – Atlantic Mobile – one of the nicest pieces I have read in a while. Lastly other forms of communications are harder to search or keep a record of.

    Wireless

    Lenovo becomes China’s top smartphone supplier: IDC – interesting that Lenovo managed to get a jump on the likes of Xiaomi and Huawei

    The simple reason smartphones are getting bigger | Quartz – APAC market preferences dictating global move