Why it’s Google that needs a Twitter too, more than twitterers need some new g-twitteroo

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So what’s the deal with this new Google buzz thing.

Google’s core premise is the googlerank, that uncanny linking metric that derives all its notions of web page authority from what other pages and links of authority link to such pages. But, these days, with 90% at best of pages and links on the world wild web being churned out by spammers and search engine scammers, google needs more sources of organic and authentic web sharing behaviour. It’s getting harder and harder to hear the signal through the noise.

By not owning a twitter, Google is missing out on having visibility or being able to track and index a huge part of modern web. That huge part is the so-called “real-time web”, formerly knows as social presence. Basically all those status updates and link sharing that twitter has become the killer app for.

Google must be craving their own twitter just to be able to see and track all the links that real actual humans are sharing with each other and what real humans are talking about and finding interesting. They need this badly for their search results and their ad targeting. And even better to have such a source whose data they don’t have to share with Microsoft.

Thats google’s eminent reason anyway. What’s the rest-of-our’s reason for using buzz over twitter or fb? Who knows yet.

Aside: perhaps first thing twitter could do to defend against buzz? Publish a twitter interface that resolves and thumbnails web links, pics and videos inline with the twitter stream. Or maybe that would be sacrilege.

Posted in Archive, twitter | 4 Comments

Forget the SuperBowl, the America’s Cup is on

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alinghi

Tonight, right now is the eve of the 33rd America’s Cup. Now two years late, this race is a culmination of 2 years of legal battles between Larry Ellison and Ernesto Bertarelli over the rules, venue, boats and every other aspect you can imagine. What it’s resulted in however is something spectacular for sailing and engineering nerds. What should have been a long contest between 20 countries match racing by elimination in 20 boats, is instead only a two boat race, 3 races only with the only rules becoming a sailing boat, 90 feet long, no limit on budget.

And what we have are two monsters BMW Oracle‘s solid wing sail trimaran, and Alighi‘s giant wave piercing catamaran. These boats were built at a cost of 500 million dollars to race for one week.

No one’s ever match raced boats this huge and fast before. These boats may go 40 knots downwind. No one knows what’s going to happen, all the ordinary match racing tactics go out the window. The boats are different enough that it could be a blow-out or a blow-up, gear failure is not unlikely.

There is no television coverage of the Americas Cup in North America, but there are plenty of places to watch the coverage online.

Throughout the week, also have an eye on the epic sailing blog Sailing Anarchy

Either way, first gun is at 10am Valencia time or 4am EST (ouch) on Monday, race two is on Wednesday, race three on Friday. We’re going to be brewing strong coffee and putting up the race on the big screen right at 4am, you know if you’re in the neighbourhood.

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Got your ticket yet for PowerPoint Karaoke? [updated]

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This Friday, my good friend Jay Goldman and I are organizing Toronto’s first PowerPoint Karaoke event. It’s going to be awesome. From the official description:

The Stage is Yours, the Slides Aren’t

PowerPoint Karaoke brings presentations from the conference room to the karaoke stage in an entertaining and competitive event. In PowerPoint Karaoke, contestants deliver PowerPoint presentations in a karaoke-styled venue. But there’s a twist: Presenters see the randomly chosen slides for the first time when they’re presenting. Presentations are on the clock and off the cuff.

PowerPoint Karaoke was invented in 2005 when a group of German artists combined Schadenfreude with Stagenfrighte to create an underground sensation that has since swept the world.

For your entertainment, 8 fearless speakers will be pitting their wits against decks of diabolically out of context slideware to tell you about important topics of our times. Presentations are 5 min each. We’ll have two heats of 4 presentations with the winners facing off for a final showdown. There may be fabulous prizes like a free beer (they’ll need it) or an ironic trophy. At least that is the plan so far.

This event is happening as culmination of the Toronto’s Participation in World Socical Media Week. We’ll also be pooling revenues from this event with the (sold out) CaseCamp Toronto this week for donation to Sick Kids Hospital (details).

After the tweets were out the bag last week, PowerPoint Karaoke is now almost sold-out as well. But I just put up another block of free tickets, well “free” with a $25 or more donation to sick kids.

LINK:Get your tickets for PowerPoint Karaoke Toronto here

UPDATE 1
PowerPoint Karaoke is SOLD OUT. And so far, you have raised $800 for the CaseCamp Sick Kids CCU Project – you guys rock!

UPDATE 2

Thanks to the awesome folks at Microsoft Office Canada ( @MSOfficeCanada on twitter) and to Crumpler.ca for donating the grand prizes for tonight’s event.

Here is the presenter lineup. Doors open at 8, presentations at 8:30pm sharp:

Heat 1	
Bretton	MacLean
Rachael	Segal
Satish	Kanwar
Alain	Lepofsky 
	
Heat 2	
Liz	Radzick
Misha 	Glouberman
JonathanLaba
Saul 	Colt

Finals:
?? vs ??
Posted in Archive, events | Tagged , , | 1 Comment