A number of lawsuits involving Google could
1) hurt the company
2) set legal standards for the rest.
Like this. Putting up thumbnails of high quality pictures on other websites is considered fair use. But, how big can the thumbnails be? According to Joi Ito’s web, Google uses 150×150, so that’s probably fair. If not, hey someone will sue them, and they’ll figure out.
Link through Words: Fair Use Thumbnails
With the sheer quantity of information available on the internet, mining it for relevance is where a lot of cool technology is being developed. Pagerank revolutionized search and made it more democratic. Searching is no longer hit or miss - today, Google can search over 8 billion web pages and return the most relevant results in less than a second.
What’s next in searching? What search engines lack is the ability to customize results depending on the user. Specific search terms return good results: (”Fourier Transform”, “Aishwarya Rai on Letterman” etc.) Vague, general searches (”Interesting science fiction “, “Funny blog”) might not return what you expect; even if they do, everyone gets the same results - your “funny blog” might suck ass to me.
Collaborative Filtering, might be the solution. The idea is simple enough - if someone else buys the same books that you do, then there is a good chance that you’ll be interested in the next book she buys. Amazon, and Netflix use it to recommend books and movies to users; it is straighforward for online merchants to do this.
But how could a search engine use Collaborative Filtering to tailor results? The easy way would be to ask users what they like, but that’s not gonna work well, is it? At Amazon, apparently, only about 1% of the items have user ranks. More subtle, implicit methods would look at the user’s browsing patterns and form “opinions” from them.
A fascinating article from the Economist Technology Quarterly. Will this be the next PageRank?
Collaborative filtering starts off by collecting data on individuals’ preferences. This can be an explicit process, by which a user ranks a book (or CD, or restaurant) on a numerical scale, typically on a scale of one to five. It can also be an implicit process–a purchase, for instance, is a clear indication that an individual is interested in the item in question. But implicit measures can also be more subtle; for instance, the amount of time spent viewing a web page, or even just the “clickstream”–the sequence of links clicked on by a person browsing on the web. These different methods can then either be aggregated into a single score, or stored separately to allow more detailed analysis. And sometimes, consumers will be asked to score the same item in different ways–for instance, what one thought of the food at a restaurant, and what one thought of the service.
Where the user of a search engine is on a solitary quest, the user of a collaborative-filtering system is part of a crowd. Search, and you search alone; ramble from one recommendation to another, and you may feel a curious kinship with the like-minded individuals whose opinions influence your own–and who are, in turn, influenced by your opinions.
Built with your security in mind, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity your business.
A spate of security flaws and updates, culminating in version 1.0.2 yesterday, call that contention in question. Microsoft would have been hauled over the coals if it had been Internet Explorer, but people are willing to cut Firefox a lot of slack, because, um.. because it is not Microsoft.
The spate of vulnerabilities and the updates bring into question the assumption by many that Firefox is more secure than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, one of the reasons many experts and analysts have given for Firefox’s rapid climb from 0 to about 6 percent of the usages hare in the United States.
Every browser will have security flaws, it is just that none of them had market shares large enough for anyone to care. Now that Firefox is growing rapidly, it’s flaws are getting visibility. To be fair to Firefox, IE has done this emergency patch thing a lot more, so Mitchell Baker could still be right:
“There is nothing that will be perfect,” said Mitchell Baker, president and chief lizard wrangler of the Mozilla Foundation, during a panel discussion at PC Forum in Scottsdale Arizona. (PC Forum is owned by CNET Networks, publisher of ZDNet UK.)
Still, Firefox, developed by the Mozilla Foundation, won’t harbour nearly as many security flaws as those that have Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and increasing popularity won’t change that, Mitchell predicted.
PS: (weasels out of controversy by stating that) I still like tabbed browsing though. And the plugins are great.
The papers are abuzz today with news of Apple following Dell and HP in backing Sony’s proposal for next generation DVDs. Called Blu-Ray, these discs can hold as much 5 - 6 times more data than the current red laser based discs, and offer better copyright protection. Everyone is speculating that this might be the last nail in the HD-DVD format that Toshiba is pushing, and Blu-ray is the clear frontrunner now in the battle of formats, so maybe this just might be where Sony ends their dismal record in winning standards. Apple is a one-product company now - a glorified manufacturer of a (really cool) music player, and it’s endorsement of the format may not mean much to Blu-Ray except for some good press.
Here’s some background on the DVD war of succession from (where else?) the Economist.
In one corner is the HD-DVD format, backed by Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo. The details are still sketchy—the specification will not be finalised until February—but HD-DVD will offer at least three times the storage capacity of DVD, while improved video-compression software will further boost capacity. The new format has the backing of the DVD Forum, which means it is the “official” successor to the DVD format. Proponents of HD-DVD claim the discs can be made cheaply using existing DVD production lines with very little modification. The first HD-DVD devices will go on sale next year.
In the other corner is Blu-ray, backed by a consortium that includes Sony, Matsushita, Hitachi and Philips. Blu-ray discs have around five times the capacity of DVDs, allowing each disc to store around two hours of high-definition video, or 13 hours of standard video. Sony has been selling Blu-ray recorders in Japan since 2003, and Matsushita and Sharp have both launched Blu-ray devices this year.
According to the article, there are four possible outcomes. A clear win for one of the standards; a compromise that causes an entirely new standard that combines elements of the competing formats, although “Nobody wants to bend, since neither side wants to give up the lucrative royalties it stands to make if its standard prevails. Instead, both sides are digging in for a long fight”; coexistence with DVD players capable of playing both formats - but this is difficult since the two formats are very different from each other; or the market not taking off at all. If I were a betting kind of person, I would bet on a Blu-Ray win.
Anyone remember how search pages used to look before Google? All of them (Altavista, MSN, Yahoo, AskJeeves) look the same now - simple and uncluttered. Guess Google made functional a cool thing. MSN.com: A letter from Bill Gates
But till Google finishes the library project, A9 will continue to be my favorite. Search Inside the Book is the best thing in search since… Google.