Ken McGuire

Category: Internet

Internet developments and advancements

  • Daft.ie worth €15 million?

    If you happened to read the Irish Independant on Saturday (don’t ask me how I was reading the Irish Independant on Saturday, but I was!) and turned to page 3, there was a very nice writeup on Daft.ie.

    Set up by Brian and Eamonn Fallon as a spin of a project of Brian’s going through the education system as we all do, Daft has become massive over the past few years and advertises around 140k properties a year for rent with a further 20k for sale over 45 countries.

    I remember using it myself when heading off to college first and was impressed by its relative ease of use. What I was amazed to read is that given the work on the site, its traffic and potential revenue that there was a price tag put on the site, estimated at between 10 and 15 million Euro.

    Thats a whole lotta euro!

    Of course, the brothers say that its not for sale, but nice to see an independant Irish website doing so well!

  • Bad Internet Habits

    At the end of what has been a very busy week I’ve got to ask a question…

    My family have got bad internet habits. Well, I view them as bad. Immediate family, distant family, friends – the whole nine yards. If you know the URL of a website, why do you insist on going to Google or Yahoo and typing the full URL, that you know too well, into the search box on either site and then wait for the results to appear before hitting the website?

    Isn’t that why they put address bars in IE or FF, or why we have a command prompt in DOS? Anyone else notice or get annoyed by that habit? I can’t crack them out of it!

  • Pixellance – a Scam?

    Following up on yesterday’s post it seems Mel Rogers isn’t the only one that’s been had… Mel’s also just set up a Pixellance blog over at blogspot covering and commenting on the whole issue, stop by and take a read.

  • Pixel Robbery

    A couple of weeks ago I was reading a post on David O’Neill’s blog concerning ‘missing the boat’ on the pixelad business. Still subscribed to the comments, I was amazed to read the case of one reply this morning.

    “I purchased a “large ad” at an agreed rental of $5 per month. It was stated that the site, and ad’, would be maintained for at least 2 years.

    My ad was recently removed and when I asked why I was informed I would have to pay $47 a month to have it put pack due to the fact that the owners had spend so much money marketing the sites.”

    The site in question is Pixellance, which recently joined forces with RentPixelAds.com… Looks like a con job (no offence intended to the owner of the site – just my opinion). Take a read of the comment for yourself but its highly disappointing to see something like that in any service. As soon as the site gets any attention at all they jack up the prices? Supply and demand at work or just a ripoff?

    Note : made a little edit to the original post, didn’t want to be offending anyone in general terms 🙂

  • Hacker Tricked Into Jail

    If you’re going to steal software, or download software – for the love of God don’t start selling the stuff as well! Microsoft just sent the US hacker behind IllMob.org to jail for a two year period, followed by a three-year supervised release which will be monitored by special software set up on his own computer.

    What did he do? He advertised, and twice sold, incomplete portions of source code for Windows 2000/NT, first selling to a private investigator before selling to an FBI agent which got him indicted under selling a company’s stolen trade secrets. The fact of course that he has a previous criminal record for trespassing, repeated theft and assault didn’t really help his case.

    “Basically, everything I do, I do ass-backwards,” Genovese said in an instant-messaging interview ahead of Friday’s sentencing. “I like drawing, so I spray paint. I like music, so I took some radios of kids I hated in high school. I like computers, so I hack.”

    You can read the full story here

  • Google Has A New Rival – Kosmix

    $7.4 million in venture capital funding and a bet that they can finally crack the “meaning” of a webpage based on its content sees two Stanford graduates (same college as the Google boys) launching Kosmix, currently alpha, as a new search engine with a different approach to results. Kosmix, like Google and Yahoo, is crawling and indexing the entire Web. It has come up with its own technology to rank pages by category, instead of by keyword. It’s two founders, Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan are both ex-Amazon (Director of Technology and General Manager respectively)

    nstead, Kosmix looks at what pages that link to other pages are saying — to take a bigger stab at judging the meaning or subject of the page. If the linking page is saying something similar to the page it links to, you can begin getting at its meaning, or at least muster up enough information to categorize it by topic. Harinarayan calls it “category rank.” Kosmix is essentially tagging pages with categories. “Auto-tagging the Web,” as Harinarayan puts it.

    Certainly an interesting read of an article for your Friday evening browse of the web!

  • Landmark Ruling for UK Filesharing

    Via BBC… High Court judges ordered two men to pay the British Phonographic Industry between £1,500 and £5,000 for making thousands of songs available online. One of the men said he did not know he was acting illegally, the other said there was no evidence against him. The BPI has launched 139 similar cases since October 2004, most being settled out of court for up to £6,500.

    “Your honour… I didn’t know that it was illegal and I should have been paying for the stuff”… I can see it now. Sets a good example though with IRMA currently in Phase II of its fight against the same. Also nice to hear that last years legal music sales finally outweighed the illegal!

  • Blogbeat Your Blog

    BlogBeat has launched recently enough and is offering 30 day trials to users to help you track statistics across both your blog and RSS feed. I’m already tracking with StatCounter which is throwing up some useful statistics, Google Analytics is in there too in the background so whats the harm in trying a third one?

    “Bogbeat provides all of the basic statistics including visitors, referrers, search engines, browsers, etc.., but also has great post detail stats, RSS statistics (for Feedburner), comment tracking, outgoing links, and more…”

    It’s going to cost $6 a month for blogs that are under a half million page views monthly, which I sit into just about right 😉 so what harm… The trial is up on February 27th so I’ll report back before then with the findings! In the meantime, SolutionWatch have a great review of the service, or you can try it for yourself at BlogBeat.

    —
    Update: Emailed a friendly guy at BlogBeat who also informed me that the tracking has the same blocking cookie function as StatCounter, just not seen yet when you login, but kindly sent me the link – and it works. Snappy response, I like it!

  • DeviantART Kicking Out U18s

    Interesting points are being raised in relation to DeviantART’s recently published “Terms of Service”. I know that myself, John, Rob, and other ‘Deviants’ will recall the uproar over their last range of legal documents published. But now, they’re kicking out the under 18’s which I think makes up the mainstay of DA’s userbase….

    “To register as a member of the Service or purchase products, you must be 18 years or lawfully permitted to enter into and form contracts under applicable law. In no event may minors submit Content to the Service. You agree that the information that you provide to us upon registration, at the time of purchase, and at all other times will be true, accurate, current and complete. You also agree that you will ensure that this information is kept accurate and up to date at all times. This is especially important with respect to your email address, since that is the primary way in which we will communicate with you about your account and your orders.”

    From Jark’s blog…

    Minors, which make up the vast majority of the userbase of deviantART, are now no longer allowed to submit content to deviantART. Not only are those under 18 not allowed to register for an account but they can no longer submit their art to the site or interact in areas where they will ultimately be submitting information to deviantART for all to view.

    My thoughts…. ridiculous. I really, honestly don’t know what they’re trying to achieve with this. Don’t they know that kids are the future of today, tomorrow…. No bloody wonder everyone is flocking to MySpace!

    Bring back Jark! 🙂

  • MySpace, MySpace, My Space!

    MySpace! Its the word on everyone’s lips at the moment. What’s so bloody great about MySpace? I’ve taken a gander at it a few times and most recently last week found more of my friends on it than I cared to find. Is there some secret about MySpace that has everyone crawling there or is it just “the” place to be at the moment?

    Running a gig (I run gigs under another one of my ventures… KilkennyMusic.com) recently I was speaking with a member of one of the bands who was constantly taking the piss out of one of his own band members for all the profiles he has on MySpace. Another one was greeted by “Jesus…. you’re not another bloody MySpace band are ya?” (in reference to a band that wasn’t appearing on the night).

    Sure enough, the more bands I get through Kilkenny Music, the more they’re sending me to their ‘MySpace’ page. Seems to be nothing more than a glorified blog of sorts except you get ‘friends’, similar to the way you get ‘watchers’ on DeviantART. Now it seems that if the US wasn’t enough, they’re going to hammer the UK market as well.

    They’ve got over 50 million users, 32 million of which are reportedly active and driving the site. I wasn’t exactly blown away by it myself but I’m guessing that the advertisers are well impressed!

  • Yahoo’s Fighting Words

    In a follow up to yesterday’s post about Yahoo giving up the race against Google, they’ve come along and issued this response to address the issue and the blogstorm that rained down yesterday….

  • Yahoo hold their hands up

    Yahoo are holding their hands up and finally conceding the search engine race to Google

    “We don’t think it’s reasonable to assume we’re going to gain a lot of share from Google,” [Yahoo] Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview. “It’s not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share.”

    Funny how things develop. I remember getting online for the first time back in 1995 with Yahoo just starting out and it was the best thing going to find anything you want. Over the years through Yahoo tried to nail you with the kitchen sink while Google presented a simple search box. Yahoo! handled 19 percent of global Internet searches in November, a drop from 27 percent a year earlier, while Google’s share rose to 60%.

    Where to next for Yahoo?

  • How an IT startup raises money

    So Meebo is out and about now as an AJAX powered IM client and the official meebo blog has some great honest posts about how the set upon raising money for the startup, a point of interest to some people around here!

    1. milk money, part one
    2. milk money, part two
    3. milk money, part three

  • Keeping an eye on your website

    Myself and John have been keeping an eye on various web statistics over the past seven days. With my blog averaging around 100 hits a day for the week, it was interesting to note, via Statcounter, the high percentage of visitors who stick around for 10 seconds or less, whether its not what they’re looking for, or not what they want to look at.

    The latter raises a point covered by CNN.com where users/browsers/surfers etc can judge your website in the blink of an eye, actually quicker than that.

    In just a brief one-twentieth of a second — less than half the time it takes to blink — people make aesthetic judgments that influence the rest of their experience with an Internet site.

    The study was published in the latest issue of the Behaviour and Information Technology journal. The author said the findings had powerful implications for the field of Web site design.

    Very interesting stuff indeed. My NFLView.com blog (which, coincidentally is being redesigned this weekend) seems to get visitors to stick around a little longer, different audience, different country, different topic, different blog design. The next week of stat-tracking should be interesting as I notice my own content starting to build.

    My question – you arrive at two websites that have the same content you’re looking for. Why do you choose one over the other, if the content remains the same?

  • Free Stock Photos

    In the line of work that I’m in, its essential to get good stock photography when you can’t get out and take your own. I’ll keep this brief because the site can speak for itself.

    If you’re looking for free stock photography, pay a visit to the Stock eXChange over at this address (sxc.hu). I’ve an account with BigStockPhoto and its not too bad, some nice photos but you can be quite limited. That said, sxc.hu has a huge amount of photos from some very talented stock photographers and if you’re looking for ideas for a shoot, photos for web or print content then I suggest looking no further than here. Its quickly become my favourite haunt for stock photography…seen as its free and all 😉

  • At last… old music online!

    I’m not too picky about the music that I listen to. But I hate most modern pop crap that fills our airwaves and would much rather pick up some of my older bands, early 90s stuff, late 80s stuff – the hard to find gems that you used to get in the back of the Book Centre or downstairs in Sherwoods or your other now non-existant music store.

    So wasn’t I pleased to read this morning that Universal are digitising their back catalog of out of print albums, many of which had only been available on vinyl or just out of print for years. For the next 3 years or so, Universal are going to start reissuing around 10,000 out of print albums and they”ll likely partner with iTunes and the rest of the online music stores for distribution.

    Why? Because you don’t need shelves to stack CDs on the Internet! Bring it on….

  • Google On The Radio?

    Flick on 2FM and you’ll hear a bunch of Google adword adverts. Actually, you won’t. But I could be telling you that in a few months time, given Googles hugh presence in Dublin. CNET reports that Google have just purchased a radio advertising company and are looking to integrate the technology which helps “sell, schedule, deliver and report radio ads” with their existing AdWords service for advertisers.

    I’ve already seen evidence of Google filling newspaper slots with AdWords snippets (Chicago-Sun Times was one such paper, bless them for their American sports coverage, even with Chicago out of the playoffs). I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this would start Google FM or something along those lines as well. They may as well since they’re doing everything anyway!

  • New blog of interest

    Speaking from a designer’s point of view, its nice to hear people’s thoughts on a product from the other side of the fence, the side that matters most to be honest. What I’m talking about is usability, and Keith Bohanna has just set up a new blog focussing on matters of usability or “what makes the internet easy or difficult to use for end users of all levels”, all the while concentrating on Irish websites.

    Looking forward to some new and interesting posts on the matter.

  • Ranking Google

    Been looking into a lot of the workings of Google and their advertising wing this morning, so I thought sharing some of that information might be useful…

    The software behind Google’s search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. Google uses PageRankâ„¢ to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. It then conducts hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, Google is able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.

    PageRank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page’s importance by the number of votes it receives.

    PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google’s technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.

    Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google’s search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google’s technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyses the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query.

    Fun reading, eh?

  • DeviantART Mobile

    I’m a subscriber to DeviantART and this year will mark my second year (in April) as a subscribed member. Us subscribers are allowed into the ‘beta’ program, which allows us beta test a load of new features in DA and one of those is Deviant Mobile. At least to an extent. When uploading new photos and ‘deviations’ we can choose whether or not to allow our works appear on the mobile edition of DA, which has gone live according to Mobile Crunch.

    Users, mainly in the US, can then log on to Deviant Mobile, scan through thousands of submissions, pick up new works for your phone, leave comments and all the rest. Of course, if you have a have decent phone or PDA you could browse DA regularly as well. Mobile Crunch warns users about data charges, and I’ve got to second that. The size of deviations on DA from people not used to publishing images to the web can be ridiculous, expect downloads of up to 1mb in size and beyond for full view.

    That and the fact that your own work is available on mobile medium leads to doubts I have about the distribution of works of art via mobile, especially since I recently had one of my own photos ripped off on DA. No doubt there will be tons of feedback on this over the coming weeks but can’t say that I have use for the service.