Tag: google

Google Earth Geology Screencast

I promised to do a quick screencast showing what we demoed to one of our Geology profs for using Google Earth to help teach geology (specifically, plate tectonics). Here's a really quick runthrough, using some of the awesome Google Earth add-on layers provided by the San Diego State University College of Sciences.

I should warn, though, that since I am not a geologist (I don't even play one on TV) and since it's first thing in the morning, I do get some stuff mixed up. Just cringe, push through it, and look at the bigger picture – an interactive 3D geology simulation powered by Google Earth and freely available information.

The video is available in small H.264 format,which will work fine in iTunes and on iPods. It's also available in original large H.264 format and MPEG4.

I promised to do a quick screencast showing what we demoed to one of our Geology profs for using Google Earth to help teach geology (specifically, plate tectonics). Here's a really quick runthrough, using some of the awesome Google Earth add-on layers provided by the San Diego State University College of Sciences.

I should warn, though, that since I am not a geologist (I don't even play one on TV) and since it's first thing in the morning, I do get some stuff mixed up. Just cringe, push through it, and look at the bigger picture – an interactive 3D geology simulation powered by Google Earth and freely available information.

The video is available in small H.264 format,which will work fine in iTunes and on iPods. It's also available in original large H.264 format and MPEG4.

On Solving Spam

Spam is the scourge of the internets. It clogs Internet Tubes all over the globe, overloading the trucks that take internets around the world.

And it is directly caused by Google’s PageRank and Adsense systems. They (as well as others, but primarily Google – take a look at any spam farm, and you’ll see prominent Adsense ad blocks) created this mess by enabling individuals to cash in on hijacking innocent websites that have enabled anonymous commenting.

A spammer can sit in his basement, run some scripts to find juicy targets, send out some probes, then unleash hell in the hopes that they will improve the PageRank of their (or their client’s) websites, in an attempt to increase Adsense revenue on those sites.

So, here’s the easy solution. If a website is shown to be associated with spammish activities, the Adsense account is suspended. And their PageRank is reset to 0. Take away the financial incentive, and the rules of the came change.

It’s time for Google to step up and show some corporate responsibility. The whole rel="nofollow" solution is a non-starter, since it only works if we all agree to break the nature of the web in the first place by devaluing all links contributed to a website. It’s not worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Now, how to define “spammish activities” – and, who gets to determine if a spam producer is guilty of that? There could be juries. There could be committees. Heck, it could become a social software tagging exercise, where the intelligence of the hive is harnessed to determine if something is spam or not. spamornot.com? Have an appeals process, to prevent abuse. Have a responsible governance system to ensure effectiveness.

It seems to me that it would be in Google’s best interest to protect the value of PageRank and Adsense. By allowing spam farms to co-opt both systems, they devalue both. By ensuring spammers are removed from the system, we’re left with a more realistic representation of the online advertising ecosystem, with (hopefully) better representation of the actual contributors and participants.

But, this has to stop. Now. It’s only getting worse, and is threatening to smother any semblance of openness left on the web (1.0, 2.0 or beyond).

Spam is the scourge of the internets. It clogs Internet Tubes all over the globe, overloading the trucks that take internets around the world.

And it is directly caused by Google’s PageRank and Adsense systems. They (as well as others, but primarily Google – take a look at any spam farm, and you’ll see prominent Adsense ad blocks) created this mess by enabling individuals to cash in on hijacking innocent websites that have enabled anonymous commenting.

A spammer can sit in his basement, run some scripts to find juicy targets, send out some probes, then unleash hell in the hopes that they will improve the PageRank of their (or their client’s) websites, in an attempt to increase Adsense revenue on those sites.

So, here’s the easy solution. If a website is shown to be associated with spammish activities, the Adsense account is suspended. And their PageRank is reset to 0. Take away the financial incentive, and the rules of the came change.

It’s time for Google to step up and show some corporate responsibility. The whole rel="nofollow" solution is a non-starter, since it only works if we all agree to break the nature of the web in the first place by devaluing all links contributed to a website. It’s not worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Now, how to define “spammish activities” – and, who gets to determine if a spam producer is guilty of that? There could be juries. There could be committees. Heck, it could become a social software tagging exercise, where the intelligence of the hive is harnessed to determine if something is spam or not. spamornot.com? Have an appeals process, to prevent abuse. Have a responsible governance system to ensure effectiveness.

It seems to me that it would be in Google’s best interest to protect the value of PageRank and Adsense. By allowing spam farms to co-opt both systems, they devalue both. By ensuring spammers are removed from the system, we’re left with a more realistic representation of the online advertising ecosystem, with (hopefully) better representation of the actual contributors and participants.

But, this has to stop. Now. It’s only getting worse, and is threatening to smother any semblance of openness left on the web (1.0, 2.0 or beyond).

Google Rank and Spam Attacks

This blog has been under a pretty heavy sustained spam attack for the last couple of days. In the last 12 hours, over 500 attempts got past Bad Behavior (gods know how many were blocked in that period by BB) – but not a single one got past Akismet, which handles anything that isn't obvious spam. I was trying to figure out why the sudden attack, and then it struck me – the Google Pagerank of the site must have changed, making it a juicier target.

For some reason, the Google Pagerank is now up to 7. For a mundane, narcissistic, banal collection of stuff.

Google Pagerank for D'Arcy Norman dot net

Google Pagerank for D'Arcy Norman dot net

For perspective, I checked what the PR of the City of Calgary website is. 6. Weighted higher than a website for an entire city of a million people. Granted, the city website sucks twelve ways from sunday, but still…

The University of Calgary? 8. This blog is weighted almost as highly as an entire research university's website. w. t. f. ?

That's just bizarre. Hopefully just a glitch in the PR algorithm. But it does explain the sudden surge in spam attacks. They must be using Google's own APIs to determine juicy targets to hit. Nice. Thanks for that.

Another factor that might make this blog a juicy target for spammers is that I don't use the rel="nofollow" attribute on comment links. If a comment isn't spam, it deserves to be counted as a link. That's what the internet is based on, not discounting an entire set of links just because they may or may not be spam – especially when the comments have already been marked as non-spam. Spam comments don't get posted (or if they do, they don't live long) here.

This blog has been under a pretty heavy sustained spam attack for the last couple of days. In the last 12 hours, over 500 attempts got past Bad Behavior (gods know how many were blocked in that period by BB) – but not a single one got past Akismet, which handles anything that isn't obvious spam. I was trying to figure out why the sudden attack, and then it struck me – the Google Pagerank of the site must have changed, making it a juicier target.

For some reason, the Google Pagerank is now up to 7. For a mundane, narcissistic, banal collection of stuff.

Google Pagerank for D'Arcy Norman dot net

Google Pagerank for D'Arcy Norman dot net

For perspective, I checked what the PR of the City of Calgary website is. 6. Weighted higher than a website for an entire city of a million people. Granted, the city website sucks twelve ways from sunday, but still…

The University of Calgary? 8. This blog is weighted almost as highly as an entire research university's website. w. t. f. ?

That's just bizarre. Hopefully just a glitch in the PR algorithm. But it does explain the sudden surge in spam attacks. They must be using Google's own APIs to determine juicy targets to hit. Nice. Thanks for that.

Another factor that might make this blog a juicy target for spammers is that I don't use the rel="nofollow" attribute on comment links. If a comment isn't spam, it deserves to be counted as a link. That's what the internet is based on, not discounting an entire set of links just because they may or may not be spam – especially when the comments have already been marked as non-spam. Spam comments don't get posted (or if they do, they don't live long) here.

Google Calendar is almost Newton Calendar

I played with the new Google Calendar yesterday (great timing – we had just finished a meeting at the TLC where we were throwing ideas around to improve our timesheet and project tracking systems, and a calendar UI was high on the list).

At first, I thought it was just a web based iCal knockoff. But, I just played a bit more, and now I realize it’s a web based Newton Calendar knockoff. That’s meant as a very high compliment. Maybe, 10 years later, we’re ready to get back into data soups and intelligent assistants…

Try this. Log into Google Calendar, and hit the “Quick Add” link. A text box pops up. Enter “lunch with elvis tomorrow at noon for 2 hours at the bellagio in las vegas”

What you get is a calendar event created, at 12:00pm, blocking the calendar for 2 hours, with location “the bellagio in Las Vegas” (including a link to a Google Map showing where the Bellagio is). I’m assuming if Elvis was in my Google Contact List, he’d be automatically added and invited to the event.

The UI is also by far the best calendar UI I’ve seen on the web. It feels completely like a desktop application. Want to create an event from 1pm-2pm? Just drag a selection on the calendar, and it creates an event – then prompts you for details. Just like a good desktop calendar should. But it’s a web app.

Calendars can also be shared, either publically or with a defined set of individuals – for free, without having to pony up for a .Mac account. And you can subscribe to standard calendars published in the iCal format. I subscribed to the Calgary Flames schedule right away 🙂

This is pretty cool stuff. It’s going to be tough reverting back to Oracle Corporate Time™ for use on campus. Now I have to put in for a schwanky graphics tablet so Google Calendar can have handwriting recognition like my old MessagePad did…

I played with the new Google Calendar yesterday (great timing – we had just finished a meeting at the TLC where we were throwing ideas around to improve our timesheet and project tracking systems, and a calendar UI was high on the list).

At first, I thought it was just a web based iCal knockoff. But, I just played a bit more, and now I realize it’s a web based Newton Calendar knockoff. That’s meant as a very high compliment. Maybe, 10 years later, we’re ready to get back into data soups and intelligent assistants…

Try this. Log into Google Calendar, and hit the “Quick Add” link. A text box pops up. Enter “lunch with elvis tomorrow at noon for 2 hours at the bellagio in las vegas”

What you get is a calendar event created, at 12:00pm, blocking the calendar for 2 hours, with location “the bellagio in Las Vegas” (including a link to a Google Map showing where the Bellagio is). I’m assuming if Elvis was in my Google Contact List, he’d be automatically added and invited to the event.

The UI is also by far the best calendar UI I’ve seen on the web. It feels completely like a desktop application. Want to create an event from 1pm-2pm? Just drag a selection on the calendar, and it creates an event – then prompts you for details. Just like a good desktop calendar should. But it’s a web app.

Calendars can also be shared, either publically or with a defined set of individuals – for free, without having to pony up for a .Mac account. And you can subscribe to standard calendars published in the iCal format. I subscribed to the Calgary Flames schedule right away 🙂

This is pretty cool stuff. It’s going to be tough reverting back to Oracle Corporate Time™ for use on campus. Now I have to put in for a schwanky graphics tablet so Google Calendar can have handwriting recognition like my old MessagePad did…

Google Analytics – nice, but delayed

Product Image: Google Analytics
Google Analytics
My rating: 3 out of 5

I’ve been playing with Google Analytics since I saw Tim Bray mention it last week. It looks like Google bought the Urchin webserver stats cruncher, rolled into their Adsense service, and are offering it for free. Although it seems rather tilted towards optimizing Adsense revenue, it’s also quite useful for non-Adsense usage.

I’ve been letting it chew for a week to see what kind of data it came up with, and am really impressed with the reports it provides. My only real beefs are that the data is delayed (-1/2 star) – by sometimes a day or more – and that it borks in Safari (-1/2 star). And, the interface seems really complicated (-1 star) – I keep forgetting where the various reports live. Are they visible under “Executive” mode? “Webmaster”? “Marketer”? And, some of the terminology used to describe the reports is a bit non-intuitive. Maybe not if you’re an Adsense geek, but for a regular web-head, I keep thinking “uh, what does this report tell me – they do provide nice paragraphs under each report to give the gist of it, though.

The report delay is really noticeable because I’m also using Sitemeter, which provides up-to-the-second reporting. That’s how I saw the traffic spike sent from TUAW this morning. I would have completely missed that (until it was over) if I was relying on the Analytics reports.

The reports are displayed in dynamic form – either “ajax” (blech) or Flash, depending on the report, making drilling down into the data a bit less unpleasant. I personally love the “Map Overlay” view, showing where the last 50/100/500 viewers were from. I wish there was a way to teleport to the other end of a network connection. There are several blog readers in locations I’d love to visit 🙂

Google Analytics: Map Overlay

The other really cool report matches entry pages with exit pages, so you can see sort of a flow through the data on the blog. Very cool, seeing how people are taking advantage of the alternative navigation links (related entries, calendars, tabs, searches).

It doesn’t have a way to track RSS traffic. If it did, I’d gleefully bump the review up to 5 stars, and ignore the no-Safari display. I can live with a few hours of delay on the reports, too.

Product Image: Google Analytics
Google Analytics
My rating: 3 out of 5

I’ve been playing with Google Analytics since I saw Tim Bray mention it last week. It looks like Google bought the Urchin webserver stats cruncher, rolled into their Adsense service, and are offering it for free. Although it seems rather tilted towards optimizing Adsense revenue, it’s also quite useful for non-Adsense usage.

I’ve been letting it chew for a week to see what kind of data it came up with, and am really impressed with the reports it provides. My only real beefs are that the data is delayed (-1/2 star) – by sometimes a day or more – and that it borks in Safari (-1/2 star). And, the interface seems really complicated (-1 star) – I keep forgetting where the various reports live. Are they visible under “Executive” mode? “Webmaster”? “Marketer”? And, some of the terminology used to describe the reports is a bit non-intuitive. Maybe not if you’re an Adsense geek, but for a regular web-head, I keep thinking “uh, what does this report tell me – they do provide nice paragraphs under each report to give the gist of it, though.

The report delay is really noticeable because I’m also using Sitemeter, which provides up-to-the-second reporting. That’s how I saw the traffic spike sent from TUAW this morning. I would have completely missed that (until it was over) if I was relying on the Analytics reports.

The reports are displayed in dynamic form – either “ajax” (blech) or Flash, depending on the report, making drilling down into the data a bit less unpleasant. I personally love the “Map Overlay” view, showing where the last 50/100/500 viewers were from. I wish there was a way to teleport to the other end of a network connection. There are several blog readers in locations I’d love to visit 🙂

Google Analytics: Map Overlay

The other really cool report matches entry pages with exit pages, so you can see sort of a flow through the data on the blog. Very cool, seeing how people are taking advantage of the alternative navigation links (related entries, calendars, tabs, searches).

It doesn’t have a way to track RSS traffic. If it did, I’d gleefully bump the review up to 5 stars, and ignore the no-Safari display. I can live with a few hours of delay on the reports, too.

Shaking the Google Addiction

I’ve been such a total Google junkie since it kicked all of the search engine’s collective asses. Nothing else has come close, so I haven’t even bothered looking anywhere else for perhaps a couple of years now. It just hit me that I’m a little uncomfortable with that total reliance on one source (and their algorithms) for my searching.

So, following Mark Evans’ lead, I’m going to try going a week without Google. I’m not approaching this from a “Google is EVIL” angle – I think they’re the exact opposite – they’ve had opportunity to be evil, and have shown that they want to make the effort to be Good. I just need to take a look around to see what else is coming along…

First, I’m going to try Ice Rocket – kinda Google-like, but it’s been doing some cool stuff with RSS and blogs long before The Goog rolled that stuff out.

I think I should poke around and see if the Meta Search Aggregators are progressing. Remember Dog Pile? They were teh cool before Google ruled us all. (heh – just checked and it’s still running! I’ll have to check it out…)

Update: Woah. Just did a quick (Dogpile) search for “metasearch”, and came up with a bunch of candidates:

I haven’t done any research into legitimacy of any of these tools yet, and haven’t tried them out (except for Dog Pile), but there’s the (short, incomplete) list.

Update: Just did a search for “Calgary” on each of these metasearchers, and only 2 engines returned stuff that wasn’t mostly ads, or just piping in Google’s results. Dog Pile and Search AllInOne – of the two, Dog Pile was more useful.

I’ve been such a total Google junkie since it kicked all of the search engine’s collective asses. Nothing else has come close, so I haven’t even bothered looking anywhere else for perhaps a couple of years now. It just hit me that I’m a little uncomfortable with that total reliance on one source (and their algorithms) for my searching.

So, following Mark Evans’ lead, I’m going to try going a week without Google. I’m not approaching this from a “Google is EVIL” angle – I think they’re the exact opposite – they’ve had opportunity to be evil, and have shown that they want to make the effort to be Good. I just need to take a look around to see what else is coming along…

First, I’m going to try Ice Rocket – kinda Google-like, but it’s been doing some cool stuff with RSS and blogs long before The Goog rolled that stuff out.

I think I should poke around and see if the Meta Search Aggregators are progressing. Remember Dog Pile? They were teh cool before Google ruled us all. (heh – just checked and it’s still running! I’ll have to check it out…)

Update: Woah. Just did a quick (Dogpile) search for “metasearch”, and came up with a bunch of candidates:

I haven’t done any research into legitimacy of any of these tools yet, and haven’t tried them out (except for Dog Pile), but there’s the (short, incomplete) list.

Update: Just did a search for “Calgary” on each of these metasearchers, and only 2 engines returned stuff that wasn’t mostly ads, or just piping in Google’s results. Dog Pile and Search AllInOne – of the two, Dog Pile was more useful.

Global Map of Edubloggers’ Community

Josie Fraser is at it again, this time with a cool project to map the location of edubloggers around the world.

Map of edubloggers

Right now, it looks rather UK-centric, but once more people add themselves to the list it might be a useful resource to describe the global community of edubloggers. Would that be a part of a global community of practice?

Update: The global domination by the North American Edubloggers Guild has begun! 12 hours after posting the first image, the Risk gameboard has changed markedly:

Edubloggers update

Update: a few hours, and the global domination of the EduBloggers’ Guild continues…

update 2

Josie Fraser is at it again, this time with a cool project to map the location of edubloggers around the world.

Map of edubloggers

Right now, it looks rather UK-centric, but once more people add themselves to the list it might be a useful resource to describe the global community of edubloggers. Would that be a part of a global community of practice?

Update: The global domination by the North American Edubloggers Guild has begun! 12 hours after posting the first image, the Risk gameboard has changed markedly:

Edubloggers update

Update: a few hours, and the global domination of the EduBloggers’ Guild continues…

update 2

Adsense Removed (again)

For the last couple of days, I was experimenting with running Google Adsense on my blog. I’d tried it before – mostly to see how well it matched ads to content – and removed it then, too. I put it on, calling it my “iPod fund” – but felt kind of dirty. I didn’t like the feeling, but justified it in my head – figuring it wasn’t hurting anyone, and just might buy me a toy or two…

Tonight, I was talking with Janice about it, and she commented that I’d sold out. She was completely right (of course. she’s always right and she calls it like she sees it without holding any punches – one of the reasons I love her so much). I’ve removed the ads from the blog, and if I try to sneak them back in I hope someone will smack me upside the head.

The ads weren’t bringing in heaps of cash – enough to buy a couple of iPods per year if today’s rate held up – but it’s just not worth it. This blog is my outboard brain, and my handing over any portion of it to attempt to “monetize” it is just plain wrong. I’m going to go wash the stink of advertising off now… G’night.

For the last couple of days, I was experimenting with running Google Adsense on my blog. I’d tried it before – mostly to see how well it matched ads to content – and removed it then, too. I put it on, calling it my “iPod fund” – but felt kind of dirty. I didn’t like the feeling, but justified it in my head – figuring it wasn’t hurting anyone, and just might buy me a toy or two…

Tonight, I was talking with Janice about it, and she commented that I’d sold out. She was completely right (of course. she’s always right and she calls it like she sees it without holding any punches – one of the reasons I love her so much). I’ve removed the ads from the blog, and if I try to sneak them back in I hope someone will smack me upside the head.

The ads weren’t bringing in heaps of cash – enough to buy a couple of iPods per year if today’s rate held up – but it’s just not worth it. This blog is my outboard brain, and my handing over any portion of it to attempt to “monetize” it is just plain wrong. I’m going to go wash the stink of advertising off now… G’night.

Google Maps ROCK!

I just printed off a set of maps from maps.google.com to help navigate while driving from SFO to Sonoma State University (via downtown San Francisco to pick up Tim at SFMOMA). Incredibly detailed and easy to read maps, with great easy-to-follow descriptions.

I ended up printing off about 6 different maps, for different portions of the trip (zoomed appropriately). Much better than having to lug around a big “Bay Area Streetmap” atlas.

For example – this view of the 101/280 interchanges south of downtown, with the offramp that will get us to SFMOMA (or this cool alternate view using satellite imagery to help get landmarks straight).

I just printed off a set of maps from maps.google.com to help navigate while driving from SFO to Sonoma State University (via downtown San Francisco to pick up Tim at SFMOMA). Incredibly detailed and easy to read maps, with great easy-to-follow descriptions.

I ended up printing off about 6 different maps, for different portions of the trip (zoomed appropriately). Much better than having to lug around a big “Bay Area Streetmap” atlas.

For example – this view of the 101/280 interchanges south of downtown, with the offramp that will get us to SFMOMA (or this cool alternate view using satellite imagery to help get landmarks straight).

Google can see my house!

When I first started playing with maps.google.com, I thought it was freaking amazing. Then, I wondered out loud if the Keyhole team was talking to the Maps team.

Apparently, the answer was “yah huh!”

OK. Let’s see if this still works. Google, if you’re listening, you should drive a big ol’ Brinks truck full-o-cash into my garage. You already know where it is…

UPDATE: this is just a blog post. if you want to see your house, go to Google Maps, or Bing Maps, or any of a bunch of other places. This site can’t show you your house. Stop putting your home addresses into the search field on my blog in the hopes of seeing a satellite photo of your house. Seriously. People. Stop.

When I first started playing with maps.google.com, I thought it was freaking amazing. Then, I wondered out loud if the Keyhole team was talking to the Maps team.

Apparently, the answer was “yah huh!”

OK. Let’s see if this still works. Google, if you’re listening, you should drive a big ol’ Brinks truck full-o-cash into my garage. You already know where it is…