Just what I wanted, to see the roofs of buildings.

If any of you have tried the new Google Earth software, you know that it's pretty cool and can zoom in on specific areas in satellite photography. It's really well done and it's just another part of the puzzle that Google is added and it's free. This is what they bought when they purchased Keyhole. I think for certain kinds of people who are interested in geography, city planning or any other kind of information, then this is a good way to look at things the way the government has looked at things for many years.
The main thing that this software does is let you look at the roofs of buildings, very tiny renderings of roofs of buildings. For those of us who are interested in roofs, this is a boon for you. I can just imagine now roofing contractors trying to figure out who needs new roofs in an area and how many illegal immigrants it's going to take to finish the job. And we have Google to thank for this. In some ways I think it lessens our privacy once again and might give information to people who shouldn't have the information in the first place. But just think for a moment, if we can get this level of detail for free online, just imagine what our government and other governments can do when they photograph via satellite. I would imagine that my little pool in my backyard can be photographed from space and they can look and see how many kids are actually playing it. Although I have nothing to hide in my little pool from the government, I feel that it's a little too intrusive.

Still it is an interesting piece of software that Google has put out and it's something that you might want to try. I'm sure there are many good uses in business and personally for this and I'm going to look at this a little bit closer to see if that's the case.

Web marketing for the real world, RealWebMarketing.com

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Microsoft's Ballmer vows MSN relevancy equal to Google.

I heard that Steve Ballmer of Microsoft has been saying lately that MSN will soon have relevancy that is equal with Google. The way Google's been messing around with their algorithm lately, that may be true. When Microsoft says something like this it means they're serious about taking first place in this product category. I don't think it's so much of a question of whether they're going to be relevant as Google, but rather that they are going to be as pervasive. It's really not about the relevancy as no search engine can have identical relevancy. They all have a different flavor of algorithm, and as long as they do there will be choices for consumers on relevancy. What MSN needs to do is to continue to promote the brand MSN superior to other offerings. Of course that's going to be difficult because Google and Yahoo are probably ahead of MSN in the minds of people. How does one change mindshare? You really don't, all you can do is to be consistent with what you have, relevant and wait for the other guys to blink. MSN is in third place right now and third-place isn't the place you want to be. It can be done with money I suppose and Microsoft has a lot of money. But with the Internet the way it is these days, how people feel about a search engine is as important as the relevancy. There's a certain brand loyalty that can't be bought with dollars unless an algorithm changes so much that it destroys relevant search results. Sometimes people in the search industry wonder about Google and how they've changed their algorithm so many times. But it's their search engine and they can do whatever they want to do with it and that's the same with MSN. They can do whatever they want and no one should count out Microsoft's ability to influence the marketplace. It should be interesting to see what they put forth as more relevant in the future. The thing that will probably turn things around for Microsoft more than anything else will be when the next version of the operating system as a complete integration in search. Then most people will not feel the need to go outside of their desktop operating environment, but we'll see if Mr. Ballmer is right.

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A video channel from Google.

As this article states, Google has a video channel that they've released. I'm not sure why everybody thinks video is this important that someone would put out what is probably a subpar thing. I say thing as I don't know what else to call it. There have been a lot of videos submitted to Google that might be interesting or even educational, but there isn't much context to it. I think sometime search engines behave like a societal group vomit. The indiscriminate posting of almost anything has desensitized us and sometimes lowering the bar for what we will accept. I'm not saying that it's not a good thing to have video searchable online, quite the contrary. But I know that many things will be submitted that are just more chewing gum for the eyes. What bothers me most in the 21st century is that we become a people that aren't very analytical or discriminating in what they consume. Obviously video is one of those things that is still in its infancy but if we don't demand much, we won't get much in the future. By that I mean content, quality content.
Search engines are all about bringing more to a desktop computer without regard to what it is. I wish people were more demanding on what kind of services that they would like to see. But for right now companies like Google and Yahoo will simply put up whatever they need to put up to stay ahead of the competition. Many times it doesn't reflect goodness or a higher standard. That's always been the problem with any kind of medium that transmits information, what will it be used for. And I asked the same question that Francis Schaeffer asked, "how then should we live?" Of course he was talking about in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, how should we live? Now I know I've come a long way from talking about somebody offering video that is searchable and gone all the way to what kind of society we want to have. But I think this is symptomatic of where we are as a people right now. We seem to consume things without really knowing or examining the consequences of it.

With search engines it's all about more and now and it looks it's going to stay that way for while unfortunately. I do like other search entities like GuruNet which gives you more quality information and general searching too. At least in this situation you have a choice. Never before has so much information been available and that's a good thing, but there's no limits to what we might access except for what we personally will not tolerate. I wish the Internet had certain levels of quality, but unfortunately that's not going to happen and we need to make personal choices of what is acceptable. Google offering videos online is fine, but once again it brings up that we are a society now of regurgitating everything for everyone and now nothing is really special.

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MSN has a local search option.

Following in the footsteps of many other search engines MSN gives you an option for local search as well. I've tried it and I got to say that it's one of the best local searches I've seen. When you click on the local search tab and put in your search term, you get many results that are local to your area without having to put in your zip code. It gives you a listing of the results which in many cases is local business and then there's a map to the side which gives you the location of each one. One of the nice features about this is when you mouse over the results, you'll see the tabs on the map change in color denoting which one is which.
There's no doubt that local search is becoming a great tool for companies who want to expand their local business. Of course, it's important to get business from all over the country but many companies have certain kinds of business that is best serving local people. I think this is a lot better than some of the Yellow Pages sites that you see. Many of them aren't as sophisticated as this new MSN tool. It's an impressive thing and Microsoft continues to build up its search engine capabilities so that it can compete with the likes of Google and Yahoo. This is why you never want to count Microsoft out. They have great resources, great technology, wonderful marketing and the ability to change the marketplace to suit themselves from the operating system. It's not that Google is quaking in its boots, I don't think they are, but MSN continues to come up edging closer to the main leaders.

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Security will always be an issue...

There's probably never been a time where people are more aware of security issues than ever before. And people have a lot of reason to be concerned if they don't take good steps to secure themselves. That's why I'm concerned about search engines and how intrusive all this is become with things like desktop search and the like. There's so much of our individual information that's out there and we need to be sure that we know what the risks are. I know it's not directly related to search engines, but it's all part of a bigger picture of security that people are trying to get their arms around. Software giants like Microsoft are working hard at the security issue but at the same time provide tools that make privacy harder to come by. With all the sophistication on both sides, this issue will never go away.

I've highlighted this article that talks about security and it seems that many people think there are some hurdles to get over in the future. It's hard to separate all these different components of computing as they are so much interrelated and are becoming more so in the future.

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