Would you Bing that?
Earlier this week Microsoft Canada invited myself and a few other locals out to take a look at Bing. Here’s what you should know about Bing.
Bing is Microsoft’s new search engine. Bing is a re-brand of Microsoft’s old “live” search engine. The one no one ever really used. Bing is effectively front-end revamp, re-brand and relaunch of Microsoft search.
Another thing to know. Bing in Canada isn’t the same thing as Bing in the US. The US one has a lot more “stuff” to it. You may or may not actually like the cleaner Canadian version. Click to make these pictures bigger:
Bing USA vs. Bing Canada
I’ve been trying out for a several days. The best you can say for it is that it’s okay. It’s a fine search engine. This may not sound like high praise, but a) it’s far better than you can say for the last few search engines who’ve tried to take on the GOOG b) coming from microsoft, who are only finally starting to rediscover the internet in recent years.
And Microsoft really is trying to take on the google, or so they say. Actually how they say it is that users are unsatisfied with “search” and that they use the back button too much and that “search” takes them too long to find a perfect pair of shoes for example. But they say they are not trying to take on Google per say. As though taking of “search” is somehow a different than taking on the company that has 97% market share of search.
How do you get better than Google? Well this is tough, google being, let’s be honest, much of the time, almost brilliantly indistinguishable from magic. Then there is Google Inc.’s habit of generally simply awesome web applications all over the internet and then giving them to us users for free. Don’t you feel kinda bad not using google for search?
To do better, Bing’s strategy is mostly about trying to aggregate a lot of corner cases. Bing’s search results provides categories that are context sensitive to what you are searching for. Search for “Toronto” and you’ll get a lot of results categorized by city-ish and touristy-ish related subjects, search for “Australian Cattle Dog” and you’ll get dog pictures and categories like adoption and pets and rescues. Not bad.
Is Bing a serviceable replacement for googling? I would dare say that most of the time it is. Is there any reason you should switch? Well let’s not get crazy. Bing is by no means clearly better than google, it may be fine, but it’s not clearly ten times better. Ten times better is probably what it would take for most consumers to consciously and confidently make that decision.
And that’s what’s really so funny about Bing being better than google, is how much Bing looks like google. Though it’s front page is rather distinctive, Bing’s results, how to put this politely, “leverage a lot of familiar affordances” from google:
I Can’t Believe it’s not Google!
You know I bet if bet if you shipped a lot of OEM computers that just happened to have Bing set as the default search engine, that it might take a lot of ordinary users a while before they even noticed that they weren’t on google…
LINK: Bing
UPDATE/PROTIP: the image searching on Bing is actually pretty awesome. They give you a nice side bar frame to browse across images on multiple sites, much less back-buttony than google. Example. Click on a picture in these results to see what I mean.
Will QR Codes Save the National Post?
If you are a reader of Canada’s (other) national newspaper the National Post, you may have noticed that they are trying out something neat with 2D barcodes a.k.a QR Codes. They don’t quite look like normal QR codes but this is incidental. The idea is that the codes are a printed link between the ink-on-flattened-wood-pulp edition and the online properties of the Post. Put differently, it’s one adventurous way for a dead-tree media company to play spin the bottle with the cyber age.
You need a mobile phone, a smart phone, basically an iphone or a recent model blackberry, and special application to make it useful. If useful it is. I would really like to see this experiment be successful. However, a brief informal facebook poll of friends (and I have a lot of pretty nerdy friends) failed to reveal anyone who had actually tried the feature. Similarly Michele and I learned first hand how hard it is make a QR code campaign work when we tried it first hand with an (mostly failed) impromptu QR-code social experiment at SXSW09.
Unlike Japan, North Americans just don’t seem to be ready for optical codes yet. Our phones don’t have built in readers. You have to manually download an app first which takes several minutes and some technical savvy. The iPhone has a terrible camera for reading them. And unless you provide a lot of context around the code and where it points to, people are suspicious of it being spammy.
Nonetheless, you gotta give the Post points for effort and experimentation.
It’s a damn tough time to be in media. Online is killing not just reader attention spans but also advertiser spend. The barbarians are at the gate for traditional media empires. Like a declining Rome hot linking to the visigoths, newspapers find themselves in a weird position, trying to promote print and online channels for news.
But here, wait for it, is the Post real real secret plan of genius. These codes are really for advertisers. If (big if) the Post can get a significant installbase of users, using a NationalPost mobile app, AND a proprietary QR code reader, then they have a killer product to sell to the print advertisers. Suddenly print ads become actionable, print advertisers can get real-time conversion, real time metrics on the performance of their ads. And the post has killer app the globe and the Star don’t. The codes would continue to be used for both editorial as well as ad features so, in theory, there is always someting in it for the consumer too to install the app.
Genius eh? If you’ll go out there and use it< .
Photo: poignantly capturing a clash of young and old, of mobiles, mores and business/teenage models. FYI: To their credit, the Post did not provide any links to “additional online content” related to teenage sexting. Keep it classy Posties.
Presentation: Design for an Augment Reality world
For posterity here is the slideshare version of my Augmented Reality talk, which I presented for the first time at Refresh Events in Toronto. As a first cut, this presentation represented more of a shotgun scattershot rather than a linearly coherent narrative of the various thoughts on this topic currently spinning in my head my these days.
For background this was the talk proposal. I think I got to most of this stuff.
How “Augmented Reality” and the mobile web changes everything
Mobile broadband access and ever-smarter phones are shaking the internet out its lofty cloud and bringing the web into the real world. As a result, the old “real world”, and many old ideas and many old business models will be running out of places to hide from the pervasive influence of the net.
Meanwhile, each of our smart phones are in many ways even better than the old clunky tools we used to use to surf the net. Our mobile devices are not only connected but, also bristling with sensors like radios, cameras, microphones, GPS etc. that can directly perceive and interact with the world around you. We’re reaching a point where it’s theoretically possible to point that device at almost anything: a landmark, a product on a store shelf, your friends or a crowd of people; and draw from the cloud and your social graph as much, or perhaps more, relevant information than you ever wanted to know. Oh, and the cloud will be watching you and whatever’s around you as well.
In the new augmented reality, the web surfs you.
The goal of this talk will be to provide you with a fast paced overview of what this new “augmented” reality will mean for how we socialize, for how we sell and market physical products, for architecture, for media and entertainment, for public policy, crime, privacy and, as well, few early signals for what might be the new killer apps.
If all that is not interesting enough, I will also bring free beer.
How did it go? I think it went well! thanks for all the wonderful twitter feedback. 100+ tweets and counting =)
wrongbutton @tpurves fantastic presentation! very thought-provoking. especially enjoyed social AR consideration and the notion of layering data sets
BrianSe7en @tpurves great job on the AR deck! somebody who “gets it”.. yeah!
danielpatricio @tpurves Great job on the presentation, it really inspired me and got me thinking. there is a lot of potential in our future
randymatheson @tpurves - inspiring presentation on Augmented Reality tonight at #refreshevents , a balanced look at what is coming in the next few years
sebchorney @tpurves Great job. Real value for me was the “example->implication” flow, and high-level summations/analyses/insights in your tables.
D_Hock Great #RefreshEvents tonight - seeing the crowd engaged by @tpurves‘ talk was truly fascinating.
malcolmbastien @tpurves Awesome talk. It’s clear you know your stuff and have done some deep thinking of its broad impacts.
nitchblog Amazing debate to end the night. Great discussions that brought us around the world and back! Thanks to @jkozuch + @tpurves #refreshevents
davefleet @tpurves is wielding a NFC phone. Love the potential with that technology #refreshevents
pinkbrickroad @tpurves so interesting/funny. Future is crazy. #refreshevents
josephdee @tpurves presentation has been kick-ass so far. Peeks into the future of mobile experience, which is making me grin : ) #refreshevents
AdamSchwabe I love hearing @tpurves talk tech. So intelligent and focused. Fast, well-read. #RefreshEvents
I look forward to presenting again the next revision. Contact or DM me if you’d like me to lead/present this discussion at a future event. Meanwhile enjoy:
Link: Audio track of my presentation (video coming they say)
Reboot11 is on the way. Theme is Action.
Love the theme of Reboot number, and according to Thomas the last, reboot conference. The theme is Action. The last 10 reboots have been about insights, this one is about action. June 25-26 in copenhagen, denmark.
The official announcement from Thomas Madsen-Mygdal:
this is a once in our lifetime opportunity, and so it could be the single most important reboot ever - because this year we’re not in a world that thinks the status quo is working - it’s not only the freaks at reboot that feel the need to reboot things. we’re in times of change and systemic failure unlike anything we’ll probably experience again in our lifetime. we’ve had visionary insights and reflections the last couple of years at reboot (renaissance, human and free - great journeys into the deep insights). now it’s time to act on the insights.
it’s up to us edgelings and participatory folks to take charge and begin building a better future - insight comes with responsibility.
we’re not afraid. we know that we need to reinvent and reboot everything on new scales based on trust, networks and participation.we are at the cusp of a new approach to sharing, consuming, banking, insurance, journalism, democracy - well almost everything - all the core infrastructure we’ve build our societal systems on. how do we move forward?
“ACTION”, THE CHALLENGE
———————–
so the action challenge is:- what are the great acts, the proven ideas, patterns, solutions, etc. you can implement in your local community, country, peer group, etc. the most important simple ideas we can act on to make a difference
- how can we all learn the skills of action, how to communicate, how to prototype, how to design, how to create, how to manage, how to create movements, how to start an open source project, how to fund projects and companies.
- what to act on first (obviously whatever you’re passionate about, but perhaps there’s lessons of what can make the greatest difference)
- who are the great actionists who can inspire us, and what can we learn from history?
If you haven’t been, this may be your last chance to catch Reboot. It’s a long ways away for most of us Canadians, though I was able to make it in 2009 thanks to some serendipitous business travel at the time. Maybe the travel gods will smile on me again?
In any case, you don’t have to go to be inspired by this theme. Last action heroes, now is your time.
Like the great fire of london, the current globe spanning economic collapse brings hardships to many. The econclipse is ripping like brushfire through the deadwood of dated business, governance and distribution models. For the visionary and actionaries, this is just a window of discontinuous transition, an opportunity for the new architects the digital Christopher Wrens if you will, to build this century’s new edifices and institutions.
Take action.
LINK: register for Reboot 11
In reality, SXSW Interactive 2009 was a long drunken wake for the death of print
[Last of my notes from SXSW, these on the recurring theme of death of many media, but one we may particularly miss, the death of books and long form fiction]
The econoclipse has totally hastened the demise by digital soil erosion of the already shaky foundations of almost every old-media business model. And what’s crazy is how much the geeks lament this **even as they
are the very ones killing them*. It’s like OH WOE to old media STAB STAB STAB why are you dying? STAB STAB I’m so angry with you STAB STAB STAB for not having more foresight, and for selfishly dying and stuff.
|
“It seems a shame,” the Walrus said, |
Bruce Sterling’s keynote was an absolutely spot-on Irish wake for books and fiction, complete with drinking and chips on stage.
“Look,” said Sterling, pulling out a stack of copies of his most recent novel, The Caryatids, and placing it on the lectern. “These are what we used to call books. I know that you’re sort of unused to seeing them. Let me explain to you how these devices work because I’m not sure a Web 2.0 crowd follows the structure anymore.
If there is a ray of light, the answer became more clear as to what publishers, and authors have to do to thrive. According to Bruce, and echoed by Chris Anderson and Guy Kawasaki’s conversation, it’s about being (to borrow from Hugh) a personal micro-brand not about being someone tied to just one medium “the book”.
This is generally a lot easier for authors than for publishers to get their head around. Though authors could benefit from the tools and representation to help them do that. Of course this model also works better for non-fiction, or authors who are talented at speaking or at blogging or consulting or punditry, or at being charismatic enough or having enough of a following to be paid to show up anywhere like at events, or to lend their recognition/respect/authorial-aura to other projects like Margaret Atwood might in Canada etc.
But the rub, how do you align the interests of the publisher with all of these other ways that the author will actually use to feed themselves?
It’s also clear this whole transition won’t work well for a lot of writers. “Writing+charisma” is a whole other bag of tricks than just being a “writer”. In the worst case, this would be like the transition from silent film to talkies. Talkies wiped out all but a handful of the previous stars. Movie stars still existed (if fact more of them) but for the most part they were stars at a different bag of tricks.
There’s another problem, how micro can your brand be to make a living. The very literary writers who may create works only loved or admired by much smaller peer group, or those writers who are good/great but only so long as you don’t let them be seen out of the house.
Of course we as a society could just fund some of these dead media directly. Thank goodness for charity and government grants (and the CBC).
We do it already, in all sectors of society. If there’s no easy way to charge people for incremental usage of some “public good” like streetlights or paved sidewalks but everyone somewhat agrees that it would nonetheless be nice to have these things in society, then you fund it with tax dollars.
The implication here, for literature, maybe for journalism, is that it we rethink it as “high art” as in those forms of media that no one actually expects to be an economical sort of industry or otherwise supported by the market. like ballet. Maybe we are in this world already?
What does that make General Motors then? are we now considering the making of GM cars a nationally protected art form?
link: Future May Be Brighter, but It’s Apocalypse Now
link: Bruce Sterling’s SXSW keynote partial transcript (It seems, sadly, there is no audio version or full transcript on any of the internet)
Thomas Purves
is an Entrepreneur and futurist for hire, lives in the great city of Toronto.