Just Work Please: Mainstream Media Meets the Fail Whale
Feb 25, 2009 Read/Write Web
pimg alt=”ABCNews.jpg” src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/ABCNews.jpg” width=”150″ height=”66″ /The online world is an imperfect place. a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/gmail_give_millions_a_holiday.php”Gmail goes down/a, chunks of a href=”http://twitter.com/marshallk/status/1248273755″blog posts disappear/a, and user are a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_talk_targeted_by_phishi.php”deceived on a regular basis/a. Most of us who spend time online are aware of – and have come to expect – these foibles and hiccups. But now, throngs of mainstream media outlets are entering the fray with a bit of naivete, rushing to use online services that may not yet be ready for prime time – literally. ABC News learned their lesson the hard way during US President Obama’s address to Congress./p
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pLeading up to the speech, ABC engaged in a a href=”http://www.abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=6941694page=1″great deal of promotion/a – anchor Terry Moran referred to it several times as a “a href=”http://twitter.com/TerryMoran/status/1246293568″Twitter-anza/a” – around the fact that they would have a live Twitter stream of comments during the Obama speech. Unfortunately for them, the a href=”http://microblink.com/2009/02/24/abc-news-captures-feedback-with-live-twitter-stream/”much ballyhooed Twitter stream/a choked, got stuck, and then failed miserably in the midst of a major broadcast, forcing ABC to pull it from the site. /p
centerimg alt=”ABCObama.jpg” src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/ABCObama.jpg” width=”600″ height=”402″ //center
pNow, we know what you’re thinking. But this had nothing to do with Twitter. Rather, it had to do with an aptly named server “justworkplease.handbrewed.com.” A server that supports a service called a href=”http://www.thingfo.com/socialsite”SocialSite/a, which – in their defense – is still “in private alpha.” The service probably seemed like a good bet, given that it was also used for the a href=”http://blog.thingfo.com/2008/12/22/barack-obama-inauguration-widget/”Obama inauguration/a. But be that as it may, the service is still in strongprivate alpha/strong. It’s not the safest bet for adding a server-melting Twitter stream to your site./p
pABC News learned that lesson in a very public way./p
h2If at First You Don’t Succeed/h2
pHopefully, this event doesn’t scare ABC – or other news outlets – too far away from trying things like this again. It’s online. These things happen. /p
pOther news outlets – a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hurricane_gustav_on_the_web_reference_guide.php”like CNN/a – have learned how to incorporate Twitter into the work that they do – and they’ve had a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_security_collapses_oba.php”their own stumbles/a as well. Properties like Twitter have had their scalability issues, but they have learned how to scale for the sheer volume of users that descend upon sites during events such as these./p
pABC may have to weather a bit of snark for it, but it’s a great learning experience for them. And a testament to the sheer volume of users who share their opinions via Twitter – and the potential the service holds. /p
pHere’s hoping the next endeavor is more successful for them – and the users who expected to share their opinions with other ABC viewers./p
pema href=”http://flickr.com/photos/edubyad/3307402309/”Screenshot courtesy edubyad/a./em/p
stronga href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/just_work_please_mainstream_media_fail.php#comments-open”Discuss/a/strong
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Updated: Google Talk Worm Origin Found?
Feb 25, 2009 Read/Write Web
pimg alt=”googletalklogo105-2.jpg” src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/googletalklogo105-2.jpg” width=”106″ height=”58″”Hey check out this video! http://tinyurl.com/xyz,”; says an old friend by Google Talk IM. Well sure, you think, I’d love to see a video from you – it’s been a long time! Maybe you got an IM like that this afternoon, too. Maybe you got six./p
pThere’s nothing wrong with clicking on such a link, but when the site that loads as a result, Viddyho.com, asks for your Google Talk username and password in order to view the video – then you should know that trouble is afoot. Surprisingly, a whole lot of tech savvy people fell for it today. Update: The Harvard Crimson says it has unearthed the person responsible for the Viddyho worm./p
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pDaniel Carroll reported tonight a href=”http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=526749″on the Harvard Crimson newspaper’s site/a that he did a little tracing backwards, further than other reporters on the story had, and found that a San Franciscan named Hoan Ton-That appears to be responsible for the site that was harvesting the user credentials of worm victims. Ton-That’s web hosting account has been suspended, Carroll reports that he’s learned from the company. The alleged author of the worm didn’t respond to his requests for comment but has a twitter account a href=”http://twitter.com/hoan”here/a and apparently was in this author’s home town of Portland, Oregon just last week. (We were not plotting the attack together, I swear.) Ton-That’s Twitter bio reads: “Anarcho-Transexual Afro-Chicano American Feminist Studies Major” – which sounds like either an immature joke or a pretty bad ass bio to us. /p
h2The Tech Issues/h2
pWe do think there are some big issues to discuss here, too, though./p
pThe fact that many otherwise tech savvy people are falling for this trap shows that legitimate experiments in user authentication (like OpenID) still have a whole lot of explaining to do and secure APIs need more adoption. This could just as easily have been Facebook or Twitter that hijacked your Google Talk account – we give them our passwords and just trust that they won’t./p
pimg alt=”gtalkphishing.jpg” src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/gtalkphishing.jpg” width=”610″ height=”482″br /
/p
stronga href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_talk_targeted_by_phishi.php#comments-open”Discuss/a/strong
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Hitwise: Search Queries are Getting Longer
Feb 25, 2009 Read/Write Web
pspanimg alt=”hitwise_logo_nov08.png” src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/hitwise_logo_nov08.png” width=”150″ height=”40″ //spanAccording to a href=”http://hitwise.com”Hitwise/a, search queries on all the major search engines are starting to get longer and longer (a href=”http://image.exct.net/lib/fefc1774726706/d/1/SearchEngines_Jan09.pdf”PDF/a). While the average search query is still around two words long, queries that are longer than four words have become increasingly popular over the last twelve months./p
pHitwise’s latest data also confirms that Google’s market share in the search business is continuing to grow at a steady clip (9% year-over-year). Year-over-year, all of Google’s larger competitors lost ground, though at least between December and January, both Yahoo and Ask.com saw a very minor increase in their market share./p
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pimg alt=”search_engine_stats.png” src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/search_engine_stats.png” //p
h2Longer Search Queries/h2
pYear-over-year, using one and two-word search engine queries became slightly less popular, while the number of three-word queries remained flat. Instead, a growing number of users are now opting to use longer queries. Overall, longer search queries have increased ten percent over the last year./p
pThis is an interesting trend, and it could be interpreted in a variety of way. This could mean that a growing number of users is finding less value in the search results they get from relatively unspecific, short queries. It could also indicate that users are becoming more sophisticated in how they structure their queries when they are looking for very specific answers. /p
pDo you have a theory why more users are turning to longer search queries? Feel free to let us know in the comments./p
pimg alt=”search_queries_length.png” src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/search_queries_length.png” //p
stronga href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hitwise_search_queries_are_getting_longer.php#comments-open”Discuss/a/strong
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The Other Decoupling Theory
Feb 25, 2009 Read/Write Web
pimg src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/decoupling_theory_feb09a.jpg” width=”150″ height=”125″ /A lifetime ago, before the market meltdown, when it was just an ordinary recession, there was a theory that the big emerging markets (a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC”BRIC/a: Brazil, Russia, India, China) were “a href=”http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10809267″decoupled/a” from the US economy. According to this theory, when America had problems due to subprime mortgages, these countries would only be affected marginally. Well, that theory has been totally discredited. It turns out that the other web, the web of financial transactions, makes the global economy tightly coupled. But it is possible, faintly possible, that there is another form of decoupling happening between the traditional economy and the innovation economy./p
p align=”right”emSponsor/embr /a href=’http://d1.openx.org/ck.php?n=13930amp;cb=13930′ target=’_blank’img src=’http://d1.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=11205amp;cb=13930amp;n=13930′ border=’0′ alt=” align=”right” //a/p
h2Loosely Coupled Is Better than Tightly Coupled/h2
pSoftware engineers know how nasty tightly coupled systems can be. When a bug hits a tightly coupled system, the web of interconnections (“tangle,” “spaghetti code,” “hairball” if we are being rude) creates cascading failures that lead to chaos and crashes./p
pWell, that just happened to the whole world, thanks to the web of financial transactions connecting bankers, hedge funds, and, well, just about everybody./p
pWe just saw a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory”chaos theory/a in action. The classic chaos theory analogy, illustrating the complexity of the global weather system, is that of a butterfly flapping its wings in China and creating a hurricane in Florida. In this case, a bunch of people defaulted on their mortgages in Florida and created food riots in China./p
pSo, it would be great if the global financial system was loosely coupled, if Lehman Brothers was a component neatly insulated from AIG. The government would let banks fail if they screw up, just as they let you and me fail if we screw up./p
pIt would also be great if Iceland did not have to go bankrupt because a bunch of people in America could not pay their mortgages; or that British government officials did not have to wake up in a cold sweat at 3:00 am thinking about Reyjkjavik-on-the-Thames (i.e. that the UK, as another relatively small country with an over-active banking system, could go smash)./p
pBut we are all connected. The dream of the web came true and turned into a nightmare. Yes, we love the web, but bad stuff can travel down the same wires. Not all connections are good./p
pSo let’s hope that those geeky guys, a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bernanke”Ben Bernanke/a and a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_F._Geithner”Tim Geithner/a, can do some major a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring”refactoring/a and create some clean interfaces. What do you reckon? Are they up to the job? Can those guys at Google lend a hand maybe? Some of that 20% time could come in handy here perhaps?/p
pActually, all they need to do is copy the architecture of the Internet, which was invented by DARPA all those years ago precisely to avoid a cascading failure from a Soviet nuclear attack hitting one location and thereby disabling the whole country. Despite phenomenal growth and what seems like a crazy, anarchic structure, the Internet has never seen a major systemic failure. Its problems have been temporary and isolated./p
pSimple refactoring, huh? Well, other than politics, power and money are also involved. A lot, in fact. So, it is not a simple case of refactoring, unfortunately./p
pOur best hope, then, is that there is another economy that is decoupled, one that works just fine and does not care a hoot if the General Motors, AIG, Citi behemoth all go smash. In fact, this other economy is just chomping at the bit to get its day in the sun as the behemoth crumbles./p
pI have been seeing some strange signs that this may be happening. I see these as straws in the wind. I see the straws, so the wind must be there, but I can’t see the wind. I’d be very interested in hearing from people who see similar straws. I would also love to hear from those who assume I must be smoking something and are totally certain there is no wind./p
h2September 2008: Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine/h2
pI went to the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City the week that the markets imploded and giant household-name firms evaporated in front of our eyes. These were “weird scenes inside the gold mine,” as Jim Morrison sang and a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/innovation_economy_decoupled_economy.php”as I reported at the time for ReadWriteWeb/a. The disconnect was stunning. Maybe the Web 2.0 guys just did not know what was happening and what was about to hit them, too busy singing Kumbaya and bloviating about Facebook and Twitter? Perhaps. That was at least partly true./p
pBut a few weeks later, in San Francisco for DreamForce, I saw real growth and optimism among the SaaS vendor crowd. I can usually tell when somebody is spinning the “We are fine” story as they go whistling past the graveyard. I did not get that sense. I saw companies that were growing in revenue and profits. Then I realized I was seeing the Barbarians bashing down the gates of Rome (the established enterprise vendors). Sure, it was doom and gloom in Rome, but the Barbarians were on a roll!/p
h2Message from the Singapore Shopkeepers/h2
pStraws in the wind matter, because the hard data, those official GDP and employment numbers, are out of date by the time we hear them. Using them to run your business is like driving with only a rear-view mirror: dangerous!/p
pI learned this when my wife and I moved to Singapore in 1994. As we arrived, the newspapers were reporting strong GDP growth. When we saw rather empty shops and asked shopkeepers, “How’s business,” we heard in response, “It’s bad”. Guess which information source proved more accurate?/p
pThe same is true at the other end of a cycle, when all the official news is negative. If you wait till it turns positive, you’ll have missed your opportunity./p
h2Straws in the Wind Today/h2
pJoel on Software asks, “a href=”http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/02/11.html”Is the tech recession over,/a” based on strong sales in his own business. The comments are well worth reading./p
pAt ReadWriteWeb, we like sounding the contrarian trumpet, a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/storms_in_the_web_20_petri_dish.php”sending warnings/a when it all looks great and reporting some good news when everybody is gloomy. Recently, we have been reporting on a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_20_gritty_entrepreneur.php”gritty entrepreneurs/a who are doing well, a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/jobwire/2009/02/whos-hiring-in-tech-2009-numbe.php”new jobs being created/a, and a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/a_team_update_a_series_funding.php”growth in Series A financing/a. We even reported — shock, horror — on a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blurb_vc_backed_startup_is_profitable.php”profitable VC-backed ventures/a./p
pFred Wilson relates a a href=”http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/11/a-growth-story.html”growth story/a at some of Union Square Ventures’ portfolio companies. There is a FriendFeed a href=”http://friendfeed.com/rooms/good-news-community”Good News Community/a. The a href=”http://www.employmentcrossing.com/lcpressrelease.php?id=230123″EmploymentCrossing/a site tracks daily and weekly job creation. On the day I looked:/p
ulliNew jobs this week: 212,755/li
liJobs added today: 6,943/li/ul
h2The Bits of Destruction Theory/h2
pFred Wilson describes eloquently why we might be seeing this decoupling. He calls it “a href=”http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/12/bits-of-destruc.html”bits of destruction/a.” His conclusion is worth printing and pinning on your wall:/p
blockquotep”This downturn will be marked in history as the time where many of the business models built in the industrial era finally collapsed as a result of being undermined by the information age. It’s creative destruction at work. It’s painful and many jobs will be lost permanently. But let’s also remember that its inevitable and we can’t fight it. Technology and information forces are unstoppable and they will reshape the world as we know it regardless of whether or not we want them to.”/p/blockquote
h2Coase’s Theorem/h2
pThe original decoupling story came with a theory. The theory was that the growth in BRIC economies was strong, and that a slowdown in exports created by a recession in the West would shave off a GDP point or two for a few quarters, and that would be it. That would have been true if the financial system had been built on a loosely coupled architecture similar to the Internet’s./p
pWhat theory could explain a lot of tiny little start-ups being in good shape, while big companies in all markets and all countries are struggling?/p
pThis fundamental secular shift in power from large business to small business can be explained by a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem”Coase’s Theorem/a (which won its author the Nobel prize in Economics in 1991). Here is the key bit:/p
blockquotep”The theorem states that when trade in an externality is possible and there are no transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property rights.”/p/blockquote
pYes, the Internet reduces thosestrong transaction costs/strong. So, you don’t need to be big to compete. You don’t need vertical integration. This dramatically changes the a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/enterprise_20_nature_of_the_firm.php”Nature of the Firm/a./p
h2Barbarian or Roman, Your Choice/h2
pIf this all sounds like optimism run rampant, like rose-colored spectacles worn by entrepreneurs who have to be positive just to get out of bed, ask yourself which of these you would prefer to be running now:/p
ulliGM/Ford/Chrysler or a tiny all-electric startup like a href=”http://www.zenncars.com/”ZennCars/a?/li
liCiti/BankAm/Wells Fargo or a startup like a href=”http://www.virginmoneyus.com/”Virgin Money/a, which is doing an end run around the whole banking system?/li
liOracle/SAP or 37 Signals, Zoho, Relenta? (Yes, this is a very short list of my current favorite SaaS providers; the full list is a stronglot/strong longer)./li/ul
pOne can make a similar case in virtually every market. In short, it is a better time to be a Barbarian than a Roman, better to be attacking than defending./p
pThis is strongnot/strong the normal story in a downturn, when start-ups go smash and Big Co entrenches its position. Something seems to be fundamentally different this time./p
h2Nah, Just Stock up on Canned Food and Guns?/h2
pIn late 1999, I was doing some heavy-duty gardening, pulling up some roots, digging away energetically. A neighbor asked me what I was doing. I said, “Planting potatoes. Have you not heard? Y2K is coming, and there will be no food in the shops?” I was new in the area, so she did not know I was kidding. “OMG,” she said, “You are in the computer business, so you really know this is true, right?”. I cooled her down. It was ridiculous then, and it’s ridiculous now. Rome survived; there were just different people in charge, and those Barbarians eventually became civilized and boring. This is strongjust/strong a transfer of wealth and power./p
h2Report the Straws You Are Seeing/h2
pTake a break from the gloomy headlines and tell us what is happening in your market. Are you seeing any growth?/p
pemPhoto by a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/julio-claudians/2172143501/”Joe Geranio/a./em/p
stronga href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_other_decoupling_theory.php#comments-open”Discuss/a/strong
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Google Announces Pricing for App Engine: Allows Developers to Scale Beyond Free Quotas
Feb 25, 2009 Read/Write Web
pimg alt=”app_engine_logo_feb09.png” src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/app_engine_logo_feb09.png” /Google today finally a href=”http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-grow-your-app-beyond-free-quotas.html”announced /aits pricing plans for its App Engine service. Google’s App Engine allows developers to run their web applications on Google’s infrastructure and, until today, was only available in a free, but restricted, version. The free version currently gives developers up to 500MB of persistent storage and CPU power and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month. Starting today, however, developers will also be able to purchase additional resources, which will enable them to scale their apps beyond these free quotas./p
p align=”right”emSponsor/embr /a href=’http://d1.openx.org/ck.php?n=13979amp;cb=13979′ target=’_blank’img src=’http://d1.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=11205amp;cb=13979amp;n=13979′ border=’0′ alt=” align=”right” //a/p
pFor the next 90 days, the free allotment will remain unchanged, but after that, Google will a href=”http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/quotas.html#Free_Changes”reduce the free quota resources/a. At the same time, however, it will also double the free storage quota to 1GB. Google argues that the other changes won’t impact the large majority of “well written” apps running on the service right now./p
pAccording to Google, App Engine billing was one of the most requested features from App Engine developers. Thanks to this new pricing scheme, developers can now use App Engine to deploy larger and more popular applications on the service without hitting the ceiling of Google’s free quotas. Developers will be able to set daily budgets for their apps and allocate this budget across CPU, bandwidth, storage, and email. /p
pSome of the most popular apps that are currently using Google’s App Engine are a href=”http://www.buddypoke.com/”BuddyPoke/a, a href=”http://www.lingospot.com/”Lingospot/a, Best Buy’s a href=”http://www.giftag.com/”Giftag.com/a, and a href=”http://www.mentalfloss.com/”Mental Floss/a./p
h2Pricing/h2
pHere is the new pricing scheme according to Google’s blog post:/p
ul
li$0.10 per CPU core hour. This covers the actual CPU time an application uses to process a given request, as well as that for any Datastore usage./li
li$0.10 per GB bandwidth incoming, $0.12 per GB bandwidth outgoing.#160; This covers traffic directly to/from users, traffic between the app and any external servers accessed using the URLFetch API, and data sent via the Email API./li
li$0.15 per GB of data stored by the application per month./li
li$0.0001 per email recipient for emails sent by the application /li
/ul
pGoogle first announced that it was a href=”http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2008/05/announcing-open-signups-expected.html”planning/a to offer these pay-as-you-go resources to developers last May, and today’s prices are at the lower end of the ranges that Google announced back then./p
pIn general, Google’s prices seem to be slightly cheaper and less complicated than a href=”http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing”Amazon’s pricing schemes/a for using its EC2 and S3 service. It should be noted, however, that Amazon offers a far larger feature set than App Engine. App Engine only supports the Python programming language, while EC2 gives you access to a complete, remotely hosted, on-demand operating system./p
h2Coming Soon: XMPP, Scheduled Task, Mail/h2
pEarlier this month, Google also a href=”http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2009/02/roadmap-update.html”announced/a a number of new features that will appear in App Engine in the next six month, including the ability to receive and process mail, support for running scheduled tasks, and support for sending and receiving XMPP messages./p
stronga href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/app_engine_pricing_announcement.php#comments-open”Discuss/a/strong
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