I had taken care of all the things needed last night before I called it quits for the day noting as I was turning off my monitor that my FeedBurner subscription count was on the high side of 850. Granted it’s not the same kind of count one might expect from a really popular blog but it was a count I was proud of. Then this morning when I was getting settled in I noticed a letter from the Google team that the migration had been complete and gave me a list of some little things that still needed to be done. At this point I refreshed my blog page in my browser only to discover that my RSS subscriber count had changed.

I know had 257 subscribers.

WTF!

I had in one fell swoop lost over 2/3 of my subscribers – gone – poof – zip – nada – history.

Hopefully from the information in the confirmation letter from Google things will start working themselves out after the 24 hour period but to be on the safe side if you were a subscriber you may want to update your RSS feed link ( http://feedproxy.google.com/Winextra ) plus I definitely wouldn’t turn down any new subscribers.

I wonder how many more people are going to experience this as all the FeedBurner users get migrated over to Google servers. Could be some interesting times ahead for FeedBurner users.

Conversation Tags: FeedBurner, Google, RSS, subscribers

For as long as I have been blogging I have used FeedBurner to make serving up and tracking the RSS feed subscribers. While I never reached the level of subscribers to make it into the FeedBurner Advertising Network (FAN) before they got bought up by Google I was looking forward to having that option open to me. Unfortunately though Google has decided to close down FAN in favour of their own AdSense network which pays out far less than FAN did.

The question is though now that it is Google’s FeedBurner service what advantages does it bring to the table anymore for bloggers. Given that the ad revenues will be sharply reduced and the FeedBurner site metrics service is competing against Google Analytics this only leaves the subscriber counting as a unique service. As far as the site metrics from FeedBurner is concerned it is in my opinion next to useless considering that like every other metrics service for bloggers the numbers never even come close to other services.

Even the FeedBurner subscriber metrics has always been questionable with all of us using the service seeing constant fluctuations not to mention the recent gaming of those numbers by people with NetVibes accounts. While this isn’t necessarily the fault of FeedBurner it still makes one wonder when FeedBurner is looked at as a whole - what is the point of using the service anymore.

When you consider the following

• Google closes down the FeedBurner Advertising Network
• The FeedBurner site metrics don’t even come close to jiving with other services including Google’s own site metrics service
• FeedBurner subscriber counts are not consistent or can be gamed

So tell me – why are we still using this service?

Conversation Tags: Google, FeedBurner, metrics

I realize that competition can be a great thing however I wonder if in this case this everyone in the pool idea is such a good thing. First off lets take a look at the companies currently involved with cloud computing and those who have announced their intention to join the party. After a quick search this is some of the companies that I found to add to the ones I already knew of:

• Microsoft – currently active
• Google – currently active
• Amazon – currently active but directed primarily at web developers
• Dell – active
• Apple - active
• Sun – currently spinning off their utility computing operation into a separate company
• IBM – currently building out their cloud computing infrastructure
• Intel, HP and Yahoo – announced partnership to create a cloud computing test bed
• AT&T – announced the launch of their cloud computing offering called Synaptic Hosting
• Verizon – intends cloud computing offering in Q1 of 2009
• eBay – a possible move being planned

It is easy to tell from even this cursory list that this field is becoming the next Internet gold rush with everyone looking to get their slice of the proverbial pie in the sky. The problem is that all these different companies all have different ideas of how cloud computing should be implemented, how the platform should be structured and how it should be accessed. Potentially this could make the OS war that we are use to know seem like a walk in the park on a sunny afternoon.

Something that should in theory provide a level computing playing field for us the users could end up being just another minefield of protocols, access method and program interoperability – you know … those things that have been haunting our current computing life. I know I could be wrong about this worry and I hope I am – really I do – but history has shown us otherwise.

What do you think – will having all these companies (with more to come most assuredly) make the adoption of cloud computing easier or harder?

Conversation Tags: cloud computing, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Dell, Sun, IBM, Intel, HP, Yahoo, AT&T, Verizon, eBay

The Dominance

The other day I had a Discussion Point podcast where I talked about the idea of how the current operating system sectors were potentially being transplanted to this new cloud computing platform and the OS war along with them. Then today Hugh MacLeod from gapingvoid.com suggests that rather than a war per se we could end up with a single global company being the major force in the Cloud much like Microsoft on the Desktop or Google on the Web:

But nobody seems to be talking about Power Laws. Nobody’s saying that one day a single company may possibly emerge to dominate The Cloud, the way Google came to dominate Search, the way Microsoft came to dominate Software.

Monopoly issues aside, could you imagine such a company? We wouldn’t be talking about a multi-billion dollar business like today’s Microsoft or Google. We’re talking about something that could feasibly dwarf them. We’re potentially talking about a multi-trillion dollar company. Possibly the largest company to have ever existed.

I imagine my friends who work for the aforementioned companies know all this, and know how VAST the stakes are.

Windows vs Apple? Who cares? Kid’s stuff. There’s a much bigger game going on… And for some reason, its utter enormity seems to be a very well-kept secret.

While Hugh might be considering it a secret for now one has to wonder if indeed one company could end up being the major force – and which company; if it even currently exist, will it be. If computing history is any guideline to go by chances are Hugh could be right. Now whether that will be a good thing or not still remains to be seen.

The Cost

The main component of all cloud computing offering regardless of the company making them is massive data centers all around the world. companies like Google and Microsoft are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year and there is no sign of them slowing down – if anything they will be increasing their spending. However there is another cost beyond the investments being made by the companies involved – one that could have far reaching effects in our changing world.

There is one common element that all data centers need that has nothing at all to do with storing data and that is the electrical power required to run these massive server farms. The folks over at Pingdom did some number crunching and the one usage example they gave and based on stats for 2005 the amount of power used by all US data centers at that time was enough to power five million houses. this figure doesn’t take into account either the other equipment involved – like the routers and such.

Since 2005; which really was only the early years of data centers being built on any huge scale, there has been an explosion of data center projects. It is this insatiable need for electricity that has Microsoft and Google building their data centers in remote areas that are close to current hydro electric installation and looking to even building their own. While this need for power not just to run the actual data centers but also to cool them has prompted these major player to also heavily invest in research about cooling these data monstrosities.

One has to wonder though with this increase desire to move us all to the cloud what is going to be the cost to our environment and is it worth the cost. Will this increasing push potentially endanger our power supply because of our dependency on computer? Have we really looked at the possible repercussions to our society if we hinge our future growth on clouds being propped up by a single source that could be vulnerable in so many different ways?

Conclusion

It is inevitable that cloud computing will become a primary platform in our computing world the questions that remain are who is going to control it and will our society be willing to pay for the possible ecological effects of our dependencies.

What do you think?

Conversation Tags: cloud computing, Microsoft, Google

Back in December of last year when Google announced the whole Knol idea I wrote a post titled “Knol - a potential fertile ground for smart spammers and marketers?” that like the headline said suggested that this new endeavor from Google would end up be nothing more than a repository of spam links. In the post I said in no uncertain terms

Space changing maybe but I know one thing for sure. Knol; or whatever they end up calling it, will become the fertile ground for the best of the best smart spammers and marketers.

This of course was opposite of what the more popular bloggers were saying at the time that this would be a serious game changer. M.G. Siegler from his ParisLemon blog suggested that this would be because of money

Google obviously is not stupid. They saw all the traffic going to Wikipedia from their searches and likely thought: “why don’t we make our own”? The question would be why, when Wikipedia is already so firmly established? Well because if you read closely, authors will have the option to put Google Ads on the pages. Cha-ching.

Duncan Riley who was still at TechCrunch at the time said it would be a game changer:

this month its a new project called “Knol” (which apparently stands for a unit of knowledge), a user generated knowledge project that combines parts of Wikipedia and Squidoo (and to a lesser extent Mahalo) into what could easily turn out to game changer in this space.

Well the other day Knol finally went public and since that point we have been reading all kinds of posts about how spammy the service was. Duncan who is now the driving force behind The Inquisitr appears to have changed his mind on this game changing idea with his post on July 28 where he suggests Knol now equals spam

Then there are those targeting content in high paying keywords, for example adding Knol entries on terms such as Insurance, their goal being not to provide the best knowledge on the service, but to get high paying clicks via the ads Google show on each page. There’s even a blog dedicated to doing just that.

Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins over at Mashable has been watching Knol as it has moved forward and he as well believes; regardless of what some of the commenters on his posts say, that Knol is indeed becoming a new home for splogs using an email conversation as proof

This morning I received the URGENT ALERT that a mere three days after the launch of Google’s Knol, he’s already created an automated Knol article generator.

[..]

As you can tell, the purpose of this software isn’t to create valuable “Knol units” or to spread the altruistic dream of free knowledge for all, but to create Knols with the purpose to squat on as much namespace as possible while attempting to reap the rewards of high value links from the Google domain these articles will sit on.

As he points out in his demonstration of the automation software, the articles don’t need to be particularly informative or even original, so long as they are long, plentiful, and moderately relevant to the keyword.

This use of Knol to grab keywords has been noticed by others as well. As Aaron Wall from SEO Book wrote on July 28th as well

From the above data (and the aggressive promotion of YouTube content after the roll out of universal search) it is fair to state that house content is favored by the Google algorithm.

For me though had to be Doc Searls’ post today where he comes right out and says that Knol is becoming a den of spam

A knol, Knol says, is a “unit of knowledge”. I don’t think so. But I do think Knol is already becoming a den of spam.

My cursory research, at that link, suggests that the answer is yes. “Anemia“? No results. “Hair“? 12, including several (supposedly) by the top guy at the Beauty Network. “Cancer“? 38, so far, inncluding three in the first page of results for the biggest spam giveaway, Mesothelioma. Search for anything. Watch the results.

See … I told you so

Conversation Tags: Google, Knol, splogs, spam

It turns out that Judge didn’t go for Google’s safe harbor argument and has ordered Google to turn all user records over to Viacom. The funny part about this is that the judge also used Google’s own argument – that IP addresses of computers aren’t personally revealing in and of themselves – against the company. Needless to say the Electronic Frontier Foundation has reacted [nw] calling the judge’s order a violation of the Video Privacy Act.

But here’s the answer to the quiz question – it will take four terabyte hard drives to hold all of the user records for YouTube.

Conversation Tags: Google, Viacom, user records

Today Dare Obasanjo has a post where he points to a year old post by Bill Slawski on Search Engine Land. In the post Bill; talking about a 2007 study, shows that the majority of search isn’t related to buying stuff

Their research uncovered the following numbers: “80% of Web queries are informational in nature, with about 10% each being navigational and transactional.” The research points to the vast majority of searches being conducted for information gathering purposes. One of the indications of “information” queries that they looked for were searches which include terms such as: “ways to,” “how to,” “what is.”

So one has to wonder just how much of this idea that everyone is using search because they want to buy something is purely a marketing campaign. A campaign being directed in a large part by Google in order to convince advertisers that they can’t survive in an online world without Google and their search results.

I know myself I have never used any search engine in order to find something I wanted to purchase. The other thing that a study like this shows is that CPM ad models are flawed and why ads like Google AdSense only benefit Google and a very small percentage of the high traffic sites.

Conversation Tags: search, Google, AdSense, advertising

Yes folks Google had everyone on the edge of their seats waiting breathlessly for the anticipated pimping of their Gmail Labs. Finally the curtain was going to be raised on the place where their developers can show off their 20% time projects for Gmail. Speculation had been fermenting since Google first announced that there was even going to be such a thing as the Lab. Now we were going to finally see all the cool stuff that would be taking our Gmail to the next level.

The curtain drops.

Gmail Labs is displayed to the world.

Uhm……

This is it?

Wow …

Are you sure you aren’t hiding anything?

So let me get this straight. This is what you are offering up for serious consideration as improvements to our email experience?

* Quick Links – and this has what to do with email?

* Superstars – marginally useful I guess

* Pictures in Chat – hmm had that with Gtalk already

* Fixed width font – huh? why?

* Custom keyboard shortcuts – again a marginally useful option I guess but what this to do with email?

* Mouse gestures – once more what does this have to do with email?

* Signature Tweaks – this is something that should have been a default option just as it is with any email client.

* Random signature – what’s next a random tagline option?

* Custom date formats – why?

* Muzzle - <scratching head>

* Old Snakey – great another way to avoid dealing with email

* Email addict – gee would just closing the Gmail window work just as well?

* Hide Unread Counts – why?

One would have hoped that all that 20% time being used up would have resulted in something more useful that most of what is in that list. I realize that Gmail is the snitz in the tech crowd but really all this hoopla over a bunch of basically useless code hacks is amazing. At least I’m not alone in wondering what all the noise was about.

Next time Google decides to try for some press I hope it is over something that is actually useful.

Conversation Tags: Google, Gmail, hype