Welcome to the 21st Century, People

There’s an inorganic rubbish collection in our area next week. There is so much I could write about this – the van-loads of ’seagulls’ pouring in from all over Auckland for some al-fresco shopping are a reality TV show just waiting to happen – but that’s a post for another day.

I walked past the rubbish pile below, as I was out walking the dogs this afternoon, and was so gutted not to have a camera with me that I jumped in the car and drove back, just to capture that beautiful scene and share it with you fine folks.

A full set of Encyclopedia Britannica, strewn out on the curb alongside a broken TV and a piss-stained mattress.

Welcome to the 21st century, people.

Getting real good at this cyber-stalking thing

Define ‘theft’

Fantastic juxtaposition of articles on the Herald website.

A couple whose bank screwed up and deposited $10m in their account are being hunted by Interpol after fleeing the country with some of the money, while NZ’s power companies face no consequences after fleecing consumers to the tune of $4.3b in just six years.

If you’re going to rob somebody in this country, make sure you wear a tie.

I ain’t drinking the Kool Aid

I don’t want to sound like a hater. I think Wolfram Alpha is a beautiful execution of a unique approach to search, and I’m glad the Mathematica folks have been able to bring it to life. Unfortunately, it is subject to two critical flaws:

1. It isn’t what people think it is; and
2. What it is really isn’t that flash

Let’s start out with the obvious. Wolfram Alpha isn’t a Google killer. It doesn’t even come close. Actually, it really doesn’t have much to do with anything Google does. Putting aside a whole lot of peripheral activities, Google is a search engine, an advertising network, and a bank. It helps people to find authoritative websites on topics they are interested in; It provides advertisers with a cost-effective means of reaching prospective customers; and It facilitates transactions between advertisers and publishers, and is effectively the Reserve Bank of the Internet. Wolfram Alpha does none of these things – it doesn’t lead you to authoritative sources of information, it assumes that role itself; It doesn’t help advertisers reach new audiences; and It sure as hell doesn’t help to monetise other properties.

The latter two alone would seemingly be enough to ensure Google’s continued dominance over newcomers, but even if that wasn’t the case – even if all Google was was a search engine – Google would win hands down. Why? Because this *smarts*, this unique approach that sets Wolfram Alpha apart from its predecessors and competitors is the answer to a question nobody asked. It is different more for the sake of being different than as a response to a real need, and it smacks of the ‘build it and they will come’ mindset that has lead to some of the Internet age’s greatest failures. Louis Border’s ‘Webvan‘ immediately springs to mind. Assuming people wanted to buy their groceries online, and assuming that a completely automated online-only supermarket was the best way to satisfy that need, Webvan was the best possible response to that opportunity. Problem was, both of those assumptions were tragically flawed and billions of investor dollars were lost. In the same way, Wolfram is assuming that all people want is a direct, concise response to a direct, concise question. Problem is, people don’t ask those kinds of questions or accept those kinds of answers.

Wolfram seems to misunderstand how and why people really use search. Sure, we search for information, but we do so in order to be able to do something with it. We search for hotels so we can find somewhere to stay, not to find out what a hotel is. And when we do want to find out what something is, context and referenced, authoritative sources are essential for validating what we are being told and furthering our understanding. The ’source information’ link accompanying Wolfram results provides a list of sites used, but with no indication of which *facts* came from which sources. Even Wikipedia - whipping boy of research purists the world over – has higher standards of transparency, which is kind of ironic when you consider that Wolfram Alpha was designed by a respected scientist.

Wolfram’s reference material is also alarmingly Americentric. For example, no New Zealand websites are referenced in response to queries about ‘New Zealand‘. I agree that there are always three sides to every story, but I’d back our own over the Library of Congress, any day.

The contextual deficiency of Wolfram results reminds me of John Steinbeck’s meditation on the problems of measuring a fish:

The Mexican sierra has 17 plus 15 plus 9 spines in the dorsal fin. These can easily be counted. But if the sierra strikes hard on the line so that our hands are burned, if the fish sounds and nearly escapes and finally comes in over the rail, his colors pulsing and his tail beating the air, a whole new relational externality has come into being – an entity which is more than the sum of the fish plus the fisherman. The only way to count the spines of the sierra unaffected by this second relational reality is to sit in a laboratory, open an evil-smelling jar, remove a stiff colorless fish from the formalin solution, count the spines, and write the truth. . . . There you have recorded a reality which cannot be assailed – probably the least important reality concerning either the fish or yourself.

It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.

- Steinbeck, John. 1941. The Log from the Sea of Cortez

So Wolfram Alpha isn’t what people think it is. It isn’t a Google killer. It isn’t a better search engine than Google, Yahoo, MSN or even Wikipedia. It isn’t really a search engine at all.

It is also pretty uninspiring. A lot of attention has been directed towards how *different* it is, and much has been made of the various witty responses returned by some search phrases. Sure it’s different, and its novelty value is enough to ensure we’ll all check it out at least once. But is different better? Is different enough to change our habits? Is different enough to make us persevere with a lesser solution that offers to human understanding what KFC offers to human nutrition?

It can’t be. It shouldn’t be. And it won’t be. Expectations are too high and substance is too low. Wolfram Alpha will never make it as an alternative or successor to traditional search. At best, it will become a new feature or algorithmic enhancement to Yahoo, Google or Microsoft.

But maybe that was the plan all along.

Flying Pig 2.0 crashes, burns – no survivors

Bwahahahahahaha!

We all saw it coming, but frankly I’m amazed it took so long.

The news media have been circulating the usual clichés from insiders citing external factors such as ‘the current retail environment’. Bullshit. The fact of the matter is, Ferrit never had a viable business model and seemed hell-bent on throwing money at a problem that could only be solved with smarts and balls.

A wee word of advice to any cash-heavy corporates looking to speculate on the next Interweb bubble: if you don’t believe in your product, neither will anyone else.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

I totally LOVE The Onion

Google – great food, lousy coffee

A mate of mine who works as an aircraft engineer at Auckland airport tells me there was a privately-owned 767-200 parked there recently, by all accounts owned by Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin.

A lot of people – especially in the country that practically invented tall poppy syndrome – would heap scorn on such extravagance, arguing that they could save the planet (yeah right!) and countless starving children by flying coach and giving the savings to charity. Me, I think that without such impressive displays of what can be achieved through hard work and natural ability (ingenio et labore!), your average drone would be even more useless than they are now. Yet another reason why I can’t stand lefties – to really excell people need incentives beyond forced or fake altruism. If you don’t like Sergei and Larry living the way they do, build a better search engine and reinvent the advertising industry. I’m sure you’ll find it harder to decry such opulence when it’s your own.

Anyhoo, I like Google and find many of their products to be indespensible, personally and professionally. I even took a couple of days out of the office last month to get certified as a Google Advertising Professional. I enjoyed the training, aced the exam, and even went so far as to drink the instructors under the table at the drinkies that followed (education is, after all, a lifelong commitment). As I nursed my aching head the following morning I could quite honestly tell you that Google is a company that does nothing by halves.

And then today I get this tacky piece of crap in the mail…

Yup, that’s class. One hundred percent. Think I’ll hang it in the den, next to my Master’s degree.

One thing I learned during my near-decade in the hospitality industry is the importance of coffee. It’s the last thing your guests are served before they leave your establishment, so it’d better be good if you want them to return. Trust me on this – great coffee after a lousy meal can win back a disappointed customer, and the opposite is also true.

Rather than reminding me of what I achieved and the great experience I had with the trainers, this tacky piece of home-made laminated crap just makes me cringe. Am I being melodramatic? Possibly. Am I overreacting? I think not, and here’s why.

I was personally invited to attend the Google training. I received personal emails from our account manager confirming my place and reminding me of dates and locations. I was greeted and called on by name during the training, and entertained afterward as though by friends. My experience with Google was very much a personal, enjoyable one – hardly what you would expect from one of the world’s largest tech companies. And then they remind me that I’m just a number, one of countless thousands they engage with on a similar level every single day.

I don’t want to appear ungrateful. The training cost me nothing and was very rewarding. I still have the utmost respect for Google, and admire the Googlers I’ve had dealings with. I just couldn’t let this slide. If anyone from Google reads this, I’d like to suggest you either get the certificates done properly or do away with them altogether. This half-assed stuff really is beneath you. To everyone else, let this be a reminder…

No matter what industry you’re working in, never underestimate the importance of serving great coffee

John Mayer is a douchebag

But the eulogy he wrote for Paul Newman was pretty cool. Re-posted below, without the author’s permission. Because, after all, he is a douchebag.

I’m not sure when or where it started, but I used to play this game with my friends where we’d try and figure out who the “heaviest” legend was in terms of having the clout to bump another superstar from a reservation at a packed restaurant on a Saturday night. It starts to get fun when you work your way up to bickering about whether Robert De Niro bumps Bob Dylan, or Springsteen bumps Bono, but the game quickly runs out of steam when you realize that nobody can top Paul Newman. You can sort of picture Bill Clinton standing at the front of Nobu waiting for a table to pay their check, smiling and whispering “Paul NEWMAN is here!”

Nobody will ever be that cool again.

How to waste money in online advertising

Pour money into establishing a pretty cool campaign (buy beer and get cheap flights to Oz), using digital and media agencies who are too stupid to insert the destination URL into the banner, and too lazy to test in the live environment (click the banner to see what I mean).

FAIL!

I told you so

As someone who has submitted and reviewed CV’s on several occasions over the years, one of the major challenges I’ve encountered is in differentiating the great ones (including mine) from the not so great. Buried in any pile of resumés there is always to be found a few rock stars, many Joe Averages, and a depressing number of muppets. It’s normally pretty easy to filter out the muppets, but it’s often hard to discern the rock stars from the Joe Averages – they tend to have the same or similar academic backgrounds and experience, helped in no small part by the fact that Joe Average tends to do a very convincing job of blagging his accomplishments, while rock stars often (foolishly) rely on the facts speaking for themselves.

Some people try and use design to stand out, but sadly that just makes it look like they’re trying too hard. I mean, sure – you don’t want so hand in a CV written in crayon on toilet paper, but once you get past neat and professional it gets a little embarrassing. If you must send in a hard-copy, use only white, A4 paper with a single staple in the top left-hand corner. Do NOT use binders or plastic folders – if your CV is so long that it needs binding, you’re showing your prospective employer that you can’t hold down a job and/or don’t understand brevity. Either way, they won’t want to know about you.

So how do you make sure you stand out?

One trick that’s worked for me is to include a set of professional insights – half a dozen thoughts about the industry you work in, and what you think the next year or so has in store. You don’t have to make out like you’re some kind of oracle, and it really doesn’t matter if your predictions are a little off. Provided you don’t say anything too stupid, it always makes for good conversation in the interview, which you must have if you’re to have any shot at all of being hired. It also shows the employer that you’re not just some clock-punching automaton making a career out of getting by – show ‘em you really get what you do, and the job is yours for the asking.

Anyhoo, while doing some reading yesterday I was reminded of one of the predictions in my current CV, and – sadly for millions of people – it looks like I was bang on the money.

A substantial ‘adjustment’ will take place in tech stocks this year. That’s right people – we’re headed for another crash. Google will take a big hit, down to $400 US or below.

Exhibit A: Call it a ‘global financial crisis’ if you like, but a crash is still a crash

Exhibit B: Google shares are currently trading at $334, down from a 52-week high of $747.24 and $649.25 at the start of the year (when I made the prediction).

I wish I’d managed to predict myself into a new 911, but it’s been a pretty good year for me so I can’t complain. That said, (obligatory dig at the dyke) there are some rough times ahead and we need a firm hand on the tiller. Party vote NATIONAL on 8 November please!