People who use the Amazon.com web services routinely complain about their sluggishness. In the dedicated discussion board, after someone suggested they create an XML feed to advertise the current availability and average response time, as well as planned downtime, a developer from Amazon said they'd look into it. Better late than never, I advocated something similar for Paypal in late 2001.
Sometimes I wonder whether their web services are anything more than a cool gizmo for Amazon.com. They certainly don't give the impression they consider this a mission critical tool. Affiliates who use Amazon's web service need to cache the data and avoid live calls that might break their own site.
10/05/04 update: Rips in the Web 2.0 fabric.
11/05/04 update: Bringing Web Services to the Masses.
02/26/06 update: Trust.Salesforce.com.
09/24/07 update: this is finally something more companies are doing now, e.g. heartbeat.skype.com.
09/01/09 update: Google Apps Status.
]]>As far as we're concerned we're making sure we don't just play around too much and actually fully use a tool before considering implementing yet another one. Right now we're focused on Clicktale, mostly for its forms analytics. A bit slow but if you're into analytics, you owe it to yourself to try it.
There are other tools that we've been using for a while, and yet others that we might test later. I'm sure I'm missing many but here's a list:
Google should really open up GA in a way that lets it hosts third-party plugins. I want link popularity analysis or social media or forms conversion or split tests all in one place! Tools that compete for attention don't scale. Why isn't Google Trends integrated in Analytics? Why do we need to manage credentials and dashboards for so many apps?
The web application world, especially in the thriving marketing space, needs its Microsoft Office moment. It's the suite, stupid. But it comes with a twist: let me build up the best-of-breed online suite that I want, that I'm actually going to use, and that I can afford.
Update: GA App Gallery definitely along the lines of what I was talking about. The have WordStream, among others.
]]>Despite the buzz, I'm not really excited about Google working on a browser or IM client, though I definitely can imagine them buying Trillian and giving its Pro version for free. I guess they'll negotiate interop with AIM and they might even force the hand of Microsoft and Yahoo, which would be a Good Thing.
But looking at Google Desktop and its local web server comes a more intriguing thought. How about partnering with or acquiring a large ISP/WISP (say, Earthlink) to deliver an affordable service bundle with symmetrical bandwidth, static IPs, reliable DNS, and self-publishing with Blogger, Picasa and Hello. Let millions of personal web servers bloom and piggy back on that big wave of user-generated content.
Google would basically re-index their customers' sites (just a directory on their desktop really) on the fly, and share the results with the rest of the world (or not) based on user settings (do not confuse the wedding pictures and the honeymoon sex tape, ok). And now it makes sense to give software for free because you have other ways to bill consumers and learn about them. How's that for increasing targeted ad inventory while diversifying your revenue sources, and wiring yourself into people's life as well as within the fabric of the internet?
]]> There might also be a side business out of caching in there for Google, they already have part of the infrastructure and would only need to move to the edge. (Hmm, ok, looking at Akamai's $150M in yearly revenue, caching is not that exciting from Google's perspective at this point.) Add P2P (the Hello angle) to that to take care of content propagation so that publishing something popular is not asking for a DDOS.Anyway, imagine the landscape 5/10 years from now with ubiquitous PDA/cam/phones/whatever, lots of connectivity all around, more occasions and ways to generate content and to put it online instantly. Uploading pictures to a damn server with restricted storage just to share them with friends and family is akin to going to the telegraph office to send messages. It's just a transient state in the infrastructure that doesn't make any sense in the long run (provided we eventually get decent security on the desktop).
Google is not going to win against Microsoft or even decisively beat Yahoo by going through predictable motions. GBrowser is just a way to wave a red flag at Microsoft with "please come and squash me" written on it. I find it funny that the same people who get all wet about the GoogleOS are claiming that operating systems are a commodity and there's no money in there anymore. So why should Google do it then?
Instead, Google has to keep being disruptive and unpredictable. Microsoft never made much out of its broadband investments, Yahoo is humming a boring song with SBC, AOL TW is toast. Incidentally all seem to confuse the Internet with TV. Maybe Google could really turn the tables. It's all about empowering end users...
Right now even Altavista is better than Google at indexing media content. A first telling sign would be a Google Images that doesn't suck. We'll see (literally).
In other news, I'm amused to see CNet slowly wake up to search engine optimization techniques that we small fish have been using for years. First they started stuffing keywords into their URLs, now they look at their referrers to welcome Google users and suggest other relevant stories besides the one displayed. Wow, leading edge!
01/19/05 update: CNet: Google wants 'dark fiber'.
02/07/05 update: Google Now a Registrar. Continuing with my theory, Google will give away free domain names as part of their Broadband offering. Much more elegant and less arcane than dynamic DNS.
05/05/05 update: Google Web Accelerator.
08/18/05 update: Free Wi-Fi? Get Ready for GoogleNet (speculation too).
09/09/05 update: Cerf's Up for Google.
11/25/05 update: Google's Shipping Container.
02/15/06 update: All Your Information Are Belong to Google.
09/24/07 update: Google plans new undersea "Unity" cable across Pacific.
01/24/08 update: Broadband Capacity Is The Alternative Minimum Tax Of The Web.
02/10/10 update: GOOG's experimental fiber network
02/17/10 update: How much should Google be subsidized?
03/17/10 update: Google’s Traffic Is Giant, Which Is Why It Should be Your ISP
03/18/10 update: Google Is Building A Private Internet That's So Much Better And Greener Than The Internet
]]>Realizing your family, yourself, and your property don't have a scratch: priceless.
My thoughts to the families of the deceased, wounded and homeless. Te quiero Chile.
]]>On the web publishing tech front, we've been working with ExpressionEngine for a bit more than a year. We like it for the most part, but still have several unresolved issues:
]]>Still, EE is way more manageable for us than our old model of using one Wordpress installation per site, thanks to EE's multi site module. I guess I wish more advanced features came right out of the box. We still have a lot of work ahead to execute all our ideas. That sort of stuff just never ends. Just like fixing and improving a house I guess! (Half horrified, half amused exclamation mark.)
]]>Nokia SIP call -> Claro 3.5G network -> internet cloud to the US -> Vonage -> more internet cloud back to Chile -> Tutopia DSL -> Cisco ATA 186 -> Philips VOIP841 wireless phone (for whom Vonage is my "landline", I also have Skype running on it).
There's probably 20,000 miles worth of roundtrip involved, with data packets going through air, copper and fiber. Try to visualize it.
]]> My wife who was upstairs picked up the phone, and my unscientific measure of the lag involved was maybe 0.5s. I admit my whole internet/VOIP setup is a bit complex: cable/dsl/3G, IP clients include laptops, a smartphone, a NAS (downloading 24/7 in the background), three VOIP providers, an Xbox360 (well it's toast right now), two internet mp3 players... But the bottom line is, it's un-freaking-believable what we can do with IP devices these days.When I was working at AT&T in 1995, the company had very visionary products, from what would become wifi, to WAN video conferencing to early tablet PCs. None of it worked too well, and the party line was that VOIP wouldn't work through IP over Ethernet: "We tried it, no can't do. Dude, you want voice/video over even just your LAN? Go ATM." Well, 14 years later, there's maybe 10 miles of ATM involved (it's used by DSL providers) but the whole thing is IP traffic.
Update: Wow, a well-written Wikipedia entry? There's hope after all.
I haven't been able to get my new 3G modem to work when plugged into my Draytek 2910G router yet, though their supposed to be compatible. Gotta get it to work as a backup in the rare case dsl and cable might be down at the same time. (Me, paranoid and obsessive compulsive? You bet.) I'd also like to get Teliax to work through my other router (Draytek 2600VG), no dice either. More nerdrage needed to get everything fully working I guess. (SIP settings and registration management on Nokia phones are a bit screwed up, so there's been some bitching involved to get where I'm at right now.)
Update: I've updated my Grand Central account to Google Voice. I can route my Google Voice to either/or Vonage and Teliax (also meaning, the devices of my choice, at my desk or on the road), get voicemail to text or recorded calls for free. Amazing.
]]>I'm planning a trip to the US in April/May (Denver and Miami) and want my phone to support me as much as possible during the trip. I usually rely on a good old piece of paper with all the necessary addresses and phone numbers and what not, but I hope it will act mostly as backup from now on.
Update: I've set up Teliax and made a couple test calls, seems pretty good so far. Vonage has seemed on the brink of extinction since pretty much they got started and Skype has never worked quite as well for me (some calls are great, some are crappy, it's always been more uneven in my experience). Plus, Vonage's soft phone is not cheap and I'm not sure there's even one for smartphones. More options means more resilience means less headaches and downtime.
Also: E71 tricks.
Update about push email: Seven sends SMS to the UK in a kind of sneaky way behind your back, and it doesn't work seamlessly with Devicescape Easy Wifi (at least for me). Not sure it's going to be my long term solution, especially given it won't work with messages stored on external memory. I tried Emoze but it doesn't seem to manage folders, at least not the free product. Next: Profimail.
]]>Nokia is aware of the problem but doesn't even have a deadline to fix it. I thought they finally meant to be a competitive player in the US but it seems I was wrong. Also, apparently Nokia is too poor to py for decent upgrade servers.
Looks like Palm is back in the game so if Nokia doesn't get their act together I'll be on the market again soon for an unlocked phone that can work worldwide and is actually properly supported by its vendor.
02/15/09 update: proceeded with the finally available update. Going through applications to see things are working fine, Gmail settings didn't make it even after backup/restore (since the E71 doesn't save user settings through firmware updates - yeah it's stupid at that price range).
]]>Someone knows what they're doing in this Google department. If they manage to stay aligned with Salesforce.com, the Google Apps/Force.com combo could really threaten Microsoft and Oracle a few years from now.
Google Apps + App Engine + Gears + Chrome + Native Client + network investments, they're not toying around. There's a deliberate web application strategy at work here with more chances to succeed than Netscape ever had in the 90's. This is a much, much better direction for Google than weak wiki-based offerings or pondering whether to buy Digg.com. I'm starting to be excited again by a refocused Google that seems to gain from the pressure brought by the recession. It helps that Yahoo and Microsoft have been more inept at search marketing than I thought was possible, but Google is starting to show fresh vision and good execution outside of Adwords.
]]>At Watershed we have our own mini health portal with tabs for our internal and external apps. Most of our vendors now at least have some sort of blog keeping track of scheduled downtime and unforeseen issues. We're lobbying those who still don't so they get on board. And this is part of my default checklist each time I'm considering potential online software vendors.
Off-topic notice to the non-existent readers mourning the long-gone days when I used to blog more often. You can get more frequent Olivier fixes on Twitter. One liners work well for me as I rarely find the time to research and write longer blog posts anymore. Speaking of micro-blogging, we're also satisfied Yammer users, which is really filling a gap for distributed teams.
]]>Now, look at their snapshot archive. It's a calendar-based interface (no doubt inspired by Windows Restore) that lets you roll back to older versions of your online database. This is, again, a level of control that most web app vendors don't even think of, let alone execute properly. Go go DabbleDB, you stand above the crowd!
]]>So right now I'm trying to figure out what's available in the US, and let me tell you, Sprint, T-Online, Verizon and Sprint are competing to win the Most Useless Website award. So I'm begging you, dear reader, to email me with info on how to get 3/3.5G access in the US (most importantly, New England) without a damn yearly contract (ideally, without any sort of contract at all, as sometimes I just spend three days in, say, New York and don't go back to the US for six months so even a month-to-month PAYG contract is overkill).
Any help appreciated (email, twitter or IM, comments here are broken). Progress, if any, in my quest, will be updated here.
Update: bitching on my blog unlocked the right google query which led me to this, which looks like a winner. Update: or not as it looks like a loophole, but hey AT&T don't bother even listing PAYG data plans in your GoPhone pages, right? Medianet Unlimited is "unlimited" only if you use a phone without a full-fledged keyboard. Jokers/crooks. But then you have iPhone 3G users doing it. Seems worth a try buying one of the $10 GoPhone.
Update about the E71, it works in Europe and the US because it's quad band GSM, but 3G is an either/or proposition:
- Europe: E71-1 RM-346 = GSM 850/900/1800/1900; WCDMA 900/2100 HSDPA
- US: E71-2 RM-357 = GSM 850/900/1800/1900; WCDMA 850/1900 HSDPA
Well at least Chile is running HSDPA 1900 too, and I don't go back to Europe much these days. Can't have it all I guess, but what a headache.
]]>