[Web] A New Way Of Thinking

It's often highlighted in popular fiction that we use a very small portion of our brains. The rest of it doesn't appear to be immediately accessibly by the conscious mind and thus we try to make do with what we get. There have been countless movies, stories and other such flights of fantasy that speculate what might happen should we gain mastery over this unused portion of the brain. They normally go down the road of superhuman intelligence, mutant powers like telekinesis or pyrokinesis or perhaps just outright insanity, as our consciousness may not be designed to fully handle all that power or something.

We now live in very technological times. Sure, it may not be the kind of world of tomorrow that shows like The Jetsons predicted, but it certainly has its similar merits and advantages. At the forefront of a lot of change is the rapid development of the internet. In the past 15 years, we've seen a dramatic change in how we utilize this complex information repository. From its early roots in text-based BBS rooms, we're now in a period when almost anything is available online.

A popular accusation that has made the rounds is that the internet is making us dumber. The fact that people feel less obligated to memorize details or learn things for themselves given the alternative of going online does seem like rather damning evidence. But maybe we're just looking at the next step in our thinking process with old eyes and with the bias of traditional processes. I really don't feel the Web is a crutch - it may very well be a major part in the next step of our evolution.

[Web] Pinoy Gay Blogs List Hypocrisy

So I was checking out my feeds on Google Reader and came across this Manila Gay Guy entry about a supposed Pinoy Gay Blogs List with the claim that this list will help "...form and encourage a gay blogging community that helps improve the positive presence of gays in the blogosphere..." When I first read about it, this seemed like a great idea. I'm all for supporting the LGBT community and I've been known to cover queer issues on this blog - to some extent the Geeky Guide is a gay blog after all.

But then I read the terms for getting on the list:

At first glance things seem innocent enough, right? It does make sense that you'd need to discuss the list to help promote it. But then the second part of item one got to me - about the need to add the list's "sponsor."

This geek wasn't born yesterday - this requirement changes the purpose of the entire list from genuinely trying to foster a community to instead just trying to increase the SEO value of MGG. With all member blogs listing MGG as part of their blogrolls, then that means more links pointing to that blog alone, thus increasing the likelihood the blog will come up high on search engine results. That just seems wrong - the list is really about being opportunistic instead of fostering a community!

Until the site changes the parameters for getting onto the list, I urge all of not you to jump the gun in terms of joining the list just yet. A Philippine gay blogging circle is a great idea, but it would truly have to benefit everyone in the same way webrings link to other members of the ring so everyone has a chance at increased readership. Instead, this method supports MGG solely and theoretically it might help some of the blogs who join the list, but only through the solitary link provided by the actual list blog itself.

Despite this warning, I'm sure people are going to join the list in droves like another internet meme. Don't say I didn't warn you.

[Web] The Prefix "Bi"

The recent announcement about ICON Magazine going bimonthly had me thinking about that word - bimonthly - and what exactly it meant. This partially stemmed from a running joke about the office in terms of our pay cycle, which is every other Friday. Some say that biweekly is the correct terms while others argue that it's semimonthly.

Being the good trooper that I am, the words of my mother echoed in my head - look it up! She'd answer this way whenever I'd ask her the meaning of any particular word, not in order to avoid answering the question but to condition me in looking for answers to my own questions as much as possible. So let's do just that.

First I tried a Google search using the keyword "define" as in [define: bimonthly] and this is what I got:

Publication issued every two months.

Which is what I thought, so end of problem, right? However, being the thorough researcher, I tried hopping over to Word Source, my favorite social dictionary, and ended up with these definitions instead:

1. occurring twice a month; "a semimonthly publication"

2. occurring every two months; "bimonthly visits"

What gives? Two definitions, both somewhat conflicting with the other? I had to try this again, this time with biweekly:

1. occurring twice a week

2. occurring every two weeks

So it turns out that the debate at the office is moot - they're both right, to some extent. Semimonthly and biweekly technically can mean the same thing! It's amazing that the English language just doesn't make sense most of the time. Good grief.

It pays to take the time to look things up, even when you think you know what you're talking about.

[Web Search] An End to 'Keywordese' ?

A lot of buzz is beginning to circulate about Powerset, purported to be a natural language search engine that will draw upon AI technologies to make the searches more intuitive.

I doubt this is going to be all that big, even if PARC is who's behind this particular search engine. The success of search engines like Google is not just based on the accuracy of its results but on the speed as well. having to type entire sentences in order to meet the natural language criteria will only add delays to the search process. Plus, how long will it actually take to refine the system to provide accurate results?

Powerset seems more a toy rather than a practical search engine that might challenge the big boys like Google and Yahoo. It'll probably help develop leaps and bounds for AI research since essentially they need to master how to teach language to a computer system. However everyone else will still stick to what they know.

We're already conditioned to keywords when it comes to searching online. The search engine technology behind Google has capitalized on this by creating a system that supports "keywordese" and improves accuracy as more queries are submitted. While it's not a smart search enging like Powerset wants to become, it's an effcient one that meets the current behaviors of the millions of people online right now. Sure, we could learn to use Powerset in time, but if the process becomes longer rather than shorter or if the results don't seem all that different, why will people venture off into something new?

I guess at the end of the day, we still need to wait and see how this thing will actually perform. Perhaps we're all getting our hopes up all for nothing.

Related Links:

• CNET News.com: Can Powerset knock out Google
  
• CNET News.com: Spying an intelligent search engine

[World Affairs] Subway Crash in Rome

The big news item today is all about the tragic subway accident in Rome, Italy just today. Two subway trains crashed at a Roman subway station due to causes that remain unknown at this time. One train was discharging passengers while the other came in at a "sustained speed," as one passenger described the scenario.

At this time, reports are somewhat mixed with the confirmed casualties either at 1 or 2 passengers with an injured count anywhere between 50 and to over 200 passengers. Either way, it was a tragedy.

I tried to get lucky with a Google search for [subway crashes] and ended up with this rather weird page entitled Subway and Tram crashes. Best as I can tell based on the somewhat disorganized page, the last reported subway accident was in Japan in 2001. I have to admit, you don't really hear much about subway accidents these days, which is probably a good thing.

I just hope this doesn't trigger some irrational edict to re-examine the saftey of our own light railway transport system in the Philippines. Our government has this stupidly annoying habit of identifying with international incidents like this one and attempting to forcibly relate things to the situation here at home.

[Google] SearchMash

Both the Google Operating System and Googlified blogs report that Google has launched a new search tool called SearchMash, an alternative search engine with some interesting quirks.

For the most part, it's a very simple site. What SeachMash has to offer is greater control and customization over your actual search results and not just the look and feel of the webpage you're searching with. While this may not seem like that useful a tool, it is pretty interesting given you get to play around with which results should show first, ultimately giving you to the power to drag and drop your results in rearrange them however you wish.

It also integrates the top three image results with your query right along the side and bunch of other tweaks. For the die hard geek, the site provides a whole lot of amusement. For most people, I'm not sure if they'll really appreciate what the site can be worth to them.

Frankly, I'm just wondering what this means in terms of Google's motives. Is this the beta form of a new version of Google? Perhaps it's the precursor for a new set of tools and possibilities in terms of the highly competitive web search arena?

Just wait and see for now, I guess.

[Google] Fun Finds for Everyone for Google Earth

Mike Yamamoto of CNet News.com is amazingly good at finding interesting pieces of information on the web. For this week, he's found a number of fun things for all you Google Earth users out there.

First up is The Ten Best Things You Can Do With Google Earth. This entry is particularly fun since it's structured like a sort of game you can do when you're really, really bored at home and have a broadband connection. It covers all the basics that everyone attempts like looking for your house and more unusual things like looking for the filming locations of your favorite TV shows and movies.

The other item noted this week is the Top Ten Coolest Things Seen with Google Earth, which is a really entertaining list that includes the Firefox crop circle and a couple of nude sunbathers caught with the Google tool.

The two sites put together sort of gives you a little scavenger hunt of easter eggs you might want to try finding. Who needs TV when real life can be even more entertaining, right?

[US Politics] Dirty Republicans

By now, you must be trapped in a location without power and access to mass media, which is someone I used to be because of the storm that hit the Philippines recently, not to have heard about the latest political scandal to hit the US Republican party. At the time of this entry, Google News has collated at least 1,533 news articles about the Foley E-mails and his subsequent resignation.

Things like this always manage to pop up as the US election season heats up on its way to its inevitable climax. It guess this is most shocking because of course the public is used to Republicans being stereotypically anti-homosexual and to have one of their own practically ousted in so public a manner is definitely a blow against the party.

Being curious myself, I tried a search for [copies of Foley emails] and ended up with these results. Can you fault me for my curiosity? I want to see exactly what all the fuss is about, haha! I managed a quick screen shot here:



The first result - http://tailrank.com/603480/Mark-Foley-s-Emails-To-Former-Teen-Intern - leads us to a Tailrank entry linking to another blog - Pushing Rope. It's one of those rabbit hole results that give you a variety of leads to the article. Tailrank had a link to a PDF file hosted on ABC News, but it was just one email. The Pushing Rope blog had manually re-typed some of the emails in question but of course there had to be more.

The second result - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/foreigndesk/detail?blogid=16&entry_id=9346 - is more promising than the first since it refers us to ABC News' The Blotter and to ABC had one of the IM conversations and links to the other emails, which I couldn't get to load at the time of this entry. The Raw Story was more brutal since they posted some of the emails directly into their article along with an image of a MySpace profile associated with the case.

I ended up stopping here - the IM conversation was enough to have even me squirming. It's both shocking and scary that a member of the US Government can get caught in this kind of a scandal, and perhaps moreso that the media has managed to get access to the emails and even the IM conversations related to this case. Talk about Big Brother,eh?

Let's see where all this leads to - we might end up with a Democrat-controlled house once the elections are over.

[Philippines] Of Typhoons and Billboards

The few times the Philippines, my country, makes it to international news headlines, it normally has to involves natural disasters or political instability. What can a guy do, right? It is a third world country after all in Southeast Asia so storms and typhoons are inevitable along with political strife, coup attempts and pocket revolutions. All that and beauty pageants to boot!

Well, Typhoon Milenyo (international name: Xangsane) has put the Philippines on the world news map, in a manner of speaking, with a reported death toll ranging from 16-28 depending on what report you end up reading. Yes, this country can't even generate a consistent death toll report. Each government department seems to have its own opinion on just how many people are dead, missing or whatever.

Most of the northern island of Luzon remains to be in darkness as a number of power lines remain down - something that makes me hope that this will urge the government to push for underground power lines in the future.



Typhoons like Milenyo always revive discussions about the nature of billboards within the metropolis. Often times they are reported as a hazard to motorists for a variety of reasons such as distracting drivers or getting blown over during typhoons. This is far from the first time this has been considered.

To be fair to the government, the MMDA has previously attempted to get these billboards removed to little avail, meeting resistance from local advertising groups and even the Supreme Court to no avail. Personally, I feel very strongly against the large hazards and hope that this recent storm and the many affected by blown-over billboards might get people to realize the risks we face with them dominating the city skyline and in turn take action.

Then again, money talks more than large scale disasters too, as loathe as we are to admit it at times, and I doubt anything significant will change in time for the next major tropical depression that is bound to hit the country.

Note: Kudos to INQ7.net for using Google as its search engine. It made writing this article a lot easier on the research side.

[The Web] The Battle of the Search Engines

This week Microsoft announced that Windows Live Search is now out of beta, which more or less means that the search engine is now truly "live" and is a more-or-less finished product. In light of a recent CNET article asking people to reconsider using Google considering the other players in the market, I thought it might be interesting to run a few tests too.

One of the biggest benefits of Google, for me, is how truly relevant the content is, especially since I am a non-US resident. Before Google, searching for content relevant to me and my country especially during my student days was significantly difficult since I had to constantly filter the results until I managed to find what I needed. Google doesn't seem to have that same difficulty and tends to surprise me with maintaining relevancy despite my using obscure local search terms. So for the purposes of this short experiment, let's try a few searches that mean something in my country but can be interpreted in many other ways as well.

First, let's meet our contestants:

1. Google - the current reigning champ with majority market share in the search market
   
2. Yahoo! - a crowd favorite because of its customized content and extra bells and whistles
   
3. Windows Live Search - a newer player in the field from the guys at Microsoft
   
4. Ask.com - the site that used to be known as Ask Jeeves, now a more streamlined search engine known for pretty comprehensive results

Round 1 - Acronyms

On a whim, I thought it might be interesting to see what some local acronyms might result in. I started with [MMDA], a local government agency that manages most of the traffic control in our capital city along with other city beautification projects.

Google brought me the official MMDA website at the top of their results on the first try while Yahoo! only had it as one of the top five results and Live Search didn't even have it on the first page. I was surprised that Ask.com also had the official website at the top of their list. Not bad.

Next up is [PUP], a local university. Google managed to get it right the first time once again by locating the webpage of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines right off the bat. Yahoo! and Ask found the page within its first five results although got a little lost in articles about dogs. Windows Live didn't find it just yet. I can't blame them, they're new at this yet.

Looks like Google has 2 points, Ask has 1 and both Yahoo! and Live Search are at 0 in terms of accuracy although Yahoo! is still pretty close, for the most part.

Round 2 - Names

Continuing the game, I decided to be just plain silly and attempt searching for local personalities with as little information as possible. I started this round with just the search keyword [Piolo], in reference to the local actor Piolo Pascual.

Surprisingly, all four engines got this pretty spot on, leading me to links specifically about the Filipino actor may they be Wikipedia articles or independent fansites. I guess his name is more specific than I thought it would be. Points for everyone!

To continue the annoying thread, I next tried to search for [Jolina], since Jolina Magdangal annoys me beyond belief. This time around, no one got it right on the first try leading me to furniture stores and Tex Mex places. I looked at the next highet results and Google had a link to her official GMA profile, where this is the station that is currently supporting her for now. Everyone else caught up by the third search result, leading us to a variety of fansites for the supposed pop icon.

Everyone has 1 point for this round. I was weighing assigning partial points for the second search term but then that might skew things.

Round 3 - Local Institutions

This round might be similar to the first one, but it's worth a shot. I now wanted to see if they'd lead me to the website of certain local groups or businesses based on my search terms.

I started with something safe and popular - [Ayala] and all search engines except Yahoo! brought me to a relevant page. Google and Live Search brought me to the company's corporate page while Ask brought me to their malls' webpage. Yahoo! goofed since they brought me to a Wikipedia article about some Argentinian soccer player.

The next test was for a more generic name so I opted to add a little to the search by looking for [Sy family]. Points for everyone for bringing us to a Time Magazine article about them and other major asian families except for Live Search which led us to German family or other.

This round has Google and Ask with 2 points, and Live and Yahoo! with 1 point each.

The Verdict:

I know this is not very comprehensive, but I think it's a fair show of where the search engines stand given some samples of more localized content searches. This was just something I wanted to try off the top of my head and should we ever want to revisit this concept in the future, I'm more than open to suggestions on how this experiment should go.

Let's look at the final scores:

1. Google - 5 points
2. Ask.com - 4 points
3. Yahoo! - 2 points
4. Windows Live Search - 2 points

And the winner is Google, with Ask.com coming in a close second. Yahoo! still performed decently although the engine was constantly asking for addtional search terms to narrow the search down. Live Search is clearly showing it's raw nature at this point and the engine definitely needs more time before it starts filtering the results better.

This just goes to support my initial statement about how Google is great for non-US residents looking for relevant data. Even with minimal search terms, it still brought me pretty close to localized content most relevant to my queries even while general. Yahoo! is trying to keep up but relies on localized search terms like philippines for it to identify the need to look for local content. My kudos to Ask.com - they've come a long way from the old Jeeves days when they were only good for looking for academic resources, really. It's fair to say that it's not too bad to use Ask, although I wish they had more supporting services like Google and Yahoo! do today. Perhaps they will in time, eh?

In the future we can try other contests to compare image search results or something of that nature, who knows? I'm pretty sure this is far from over.

What do you think?

[The Web] Technical Support

In line with recent frustrations with my company's IT Department, I thought it might be interesting to try a few related searches in the area to see what comes up on Google.

I tried the generic search query [technical support] just to see what I'd get, and the results were actually pretty interesting. Here are the sites I received in response to my search in the order they appeared at the time of this article:

1. Microsoft Technical Support (http://support.microsoft.com/)
   
2. Technical Support & Documentation - Cisco Systems (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/support/index.html)
   
3. Home Page >> Netscape.com (http://www.netscape.com/FAQ/)
   
4. Apple - Support (http://www.apple.com/support/)
   
5. Dell Support (http://support.dell.com/)
   
6. QUALCOMM's Eudora Technical Support (http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/)
   
7. Support - Semantic Corp. (http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/)
   
8. Adobe - Support (http://www.adobe.com/support/)
   
9. HelpOnThe.Net: Tech Support Guy (http://www.techguy.org/)
   
10. BNA TEchnical Support (http://www.bna.com/contact/techsupport.htm)

Now given that Google's results are based around the PageRank system, which determines the relvance of a search result based on the number of links to that page by other pages of equally high link ranking, this makes the search results the most relevant based on what people are linking to.

Given my search, this can lead you to interpret the results in several ways. Since most people are linking to the Microsoft Technical Support page, it means that Microsoft Products are the most linked to because (1) they have the most number of users, (2) they have the most issues or (3) most support sites refer you back to them in order to resolve your problems. I'll not pass judgement over the results just yet - but it does make you think, right? It certainly amuses me, hahaha!

What is also interesting is the other products on the list. Given these same possible explanations for why they appear so highly in the search results, it makes you consider just how many people are utilizing products from these developers like Cisco and Netscape.

Netscape surprised me a lot since they don't have majority market share in the browser market, and yet they're highly ranked. A lower market share would eliminate explanation #1, so that leads me to think they have a lot of issues? If it's a question of users, why doesn't Mozilla Firefox come up this high on the search results list rather than Netscape? The amusement continues...

Having Apple and Dell on the list makes sense from a user support perspective because of the loyal following for Mac products and of course the iPod line. Dell is number one PC manufacturer in the US so naturally they'd trigger a lot of support links as well. The same logic follows for Eudora as an alternative email client to MS Outlook, Symantic because of their anti-virus software (Norton) and Adobe because of their large product suite.

The point of this article - a short lesson on what your search results might actually mean. While we normally see search engines as a means to an end, just something we pass through before we get to the real information that we want, looking at Google search results can also reveal a lot about our behavior in this technically-driven world. Our search results reflect what we're linking to, hence what we're reading and what we tend to look for. It might be because of sheer number of users or in this case, the sheer number of potential problems.

Think about it.

[The Web] The Marks of 9/11

September 11, 2001 was one of the most shocking and memorable days in modern human history. This was the day that terrorism truly became a household world and everyone changed the way they thought about it. No longer was terrorism the thing of far off play soldiers calling for their respective causes - it was no longer something remote and distant from anyone. Terrorism became so real in the time after 9/11 that everybody was changed somehow.

I remember seeing the first scattered reports of the attacks on the World Trade Center 5 years ago. It was Monday night here in the Philippines and I was stunned at what I was seeing. No one was sure what had happened at first but when it was confirmed that a plane had indeeed hit the building, then I knew that things would never be the same. I think of a lot of people sharing the screen with me felt similarly.

To mark the anniversary of that tragic day, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the world remembers September 11. Let's take a look, shall we?

I'm starting with two basic Google web searches first - [September 11] and [9/11] to see what comes up for both. Surprisingly, one website stands out as the top search result for for both parameters: a site called September 11 News.com (http://www.september11news.com/)

The site is pretty much all abou the event from a news reporting perspective as it tries to collate every piece of information publicly reported about the terrorist attacks on the day ranging from web archives of the news from that day all the way to claims of images of faces in the smoke. I can see now why this site became the top site over the years for 9/11 information.

Of course, for both results the official Wikipedia article on the attacks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_attacks) is not too far behind given the relative popularity of the social encyclopedia service. It also provides anyone with a pretty comprehensive reporting on what happened on that day along with everything afterwards like the plans for the memorial for the victims along with the new World Trade Center.

Another popular result for both keyword phrases is The September 11 Digital Archive (http://www.911digitalarchive.org/), which is similar in tone to September 11 News.com but perhaps cleaner-looking, in my opinion, and better organized. Rather than subdividing things on the front page, it keeps your options in genral terms on the lefthand sidebar so you know exactly where to find everything. What I also liked about it is the detailed Guide to Websites, which walks you through other pages of interest. It definitely has the feel of a more sponsored and organized initiative although it will take me a fair amount of time to verify which of the two have better information for the reader, should I ever decide to take time to do just that.

A nice item on the list is CNN's September 11 Memorial page (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/), which is a comprehensive list of everyone who either died or went missing on that day. You can go through the memorial in a variety of ways such as by name, employment or where they were on 9/11, which is very useful for anyone wanting to see how their loved ones have been honored.

Now between the two searches, you'll notice one of the major differences is that the [9/11] results also include a lot of links to more controversial conspiracy theory sites like 9-11 Research (http://911research.wtc7.net/), which claims to document an independent investigation into the events of 9/11 in order to reveal the "truth" about the attacks being a hoax. While I don't think all of the attacks were faked per se, if I may make any stand on this particular interpretation of the events on that day, although I do think there are certain things that are unusual that require further scrutiny. Along with this site are two others of similar tones, namely 911Truth.org (http://www.911truth.org/) and Reopen 9/11 (http://www.reopen911.org/), which also contribute their opinions on the issue and how the US Government should be held accountable for the nearly 3,000 people who died on that day.

Another member of the top ten results is Loose Change 2nd Edition (http://www.loosechange911.com/), a site for a particularly striking independent film that also documents the various conspiracy theories and why they feel the attacks were organized by the government. If you run a search for [loose change], you'll see that the people behind this website have also uploaded their entire documentary to Google Video in case you want to see. The film does raise some interesting questions although I'm not too confident in terms of every single piece of evidence.

To balance things out, you'll also find a link to the Screw Loose Change blog (http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/) that seeks to challenge the conspiracy theorists. Given the search results thus far, it does appear that the conspiracy theorists have somewhat greater internet presence given their pages come up higher than those who seek to oppose them. This does not make their research all the more credible, let me remind you. All it means is that we're searching and linking to these pages more, perhaps because controversy is always interesting, wouldn't you agree?

It's a bit weird, I suppose. While on TV right now they're showing various documentaries along with news coverage of the various memorial services, on the web this is what's waiting for you, a mix of the serious and the unusual. I guess that just goes to show how free and dynamic the internet can be. Everyone's opinion can be represented and all it takes is a striking enough idea, even such as those of the conspiracy theorists, to gain some level of popularity. Google tends to just reflect those popularity waves and trends based on what becomes the most relevant result on their pages.

[Alpha] Geek Searching

While the concern about the scoring methodology remains on the table, I thought I'd take some time out to document the geekier side of the reviews to be posted here. With luck, I won't scare people off with what I'm considering.

Since the Geeky Guide will be partly devoted to helping less technical users make full use of the internet, I've spent a fair amount of time considering how to differentiate this portion of the entries. Rather than be really wordy in explaining the how-to portion.

Here's my idea:

For all searches, I'll specify what to type in the search box using brackets like this - [keyword] so all readers can clearly identify what they need to do on their end. By default, all searches will be done through Google, since it is the most effective search engine, in my opinion, and also we'll be able to take advantage of the special search commands also built-in to Google like define and what is. It'll take people some time to get used to reading the entries in this manner, but I'm sure it'll be what will truly define the site and make it unique compared to others.

I'm excited about getting some beta review entries up to see what feedback I'll generate for those sorts of reviews. I don't think I'll be able to create the rating gear/sprocket image in time for the first beta release reviews (unless people out there decide to help me *hints hard*)

A lot of the information in the Alpha posts are going to become the basis for the site's FAQ section. I'm still weighing if I should create the FAQs just as an entry in the site or as a distinct page using Google Page Creator. I can ensure that it links back to the Geeky Guide, but I also risk people moving on to other pages from there.

Hmmm...