Steve Bryant

This isn’t a joke: When I hit up Google Video a few moments ago (11pm ET), I noticed on the front page that the site was recommending two Matt Cutts videos and Saddam Hussein’s execution. WTF? That selection strikes me as incredibly odd and inappropriate. I’m not sure what algo is responsible, but Hussein’s execution […]

The great blog Data Mining points me to Cognos, which has an enterprise search product (taking advantage of Google OneBox) that spits out graphs of data points over time. I would love a function like this on regular Google search. It would be a very useful alternative to the ordered lists of appropriate pages, a […]

Microsoft has a problem with branding. While the brands Microsoft, Windows and Vista connotate desktop software and a successful operating system, its latest brand, Windows Live, is a confusing non-entity. “Microsoft’s Live branding has been tremendously confusing and has hurt the company, and it is very likely contributing to the situation they are in right […]

Google today announced a new version of its enterprise search, Google Mini, with updates to secure search, site search and Google OneBox for enterprise. The new Google Mini starts at $1,995 and integrates with Google Analytics. More details in the press release and at mini.google.com. As Steve Rubel noted recently, Google also added a feature […]

You’d think with all the Nigerian 419 scams being publicized lately that people would stop falling prey to money-laundering schemes from African countries. But no. Agents from United States ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), the largest branch of the Department of Homeland Security, recently executed a search warrant against Yahoo by which it obtained all […]

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley — that’s the one who doesn’t look like a resident of Trollzopolis — said this weekend at the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos that YouTube “is going to move in [the] direction” of rewarding users for their creativity. In the announcement, which was posted to YouTube (natch, below), Hurley says […]

Much ado about maps this weekend: Another thread on Slashdot discusses how some potentially sensitive areas, like this nuclear facility in Boston, are blurred out on Google Maps. The concern over Google censorship comes after the Telegraph reported earlier this month that terrorists had been using Google Earth to plan their attacks. But commenters point […]

Upon learning that satellites would be flying overhead to capture images used in Google Maps, a couple living in Sydney, Australia, decided to spam the photos with a huge piece of “art”: “We had some very intense days of planning before finally deciding that Michael and Jodie would fly down from Brisbane to meet Mike […]

Google has made several small algorithm changes that may minimize the impact of user campaigns to make a specific site rank well for a meaningless or biased query. According to Google’s Matt Cutts, writing in Google’s Webmaster Central blog: “People have asked about how we feel about Googlebombs, and we have talked about them in […]

Here’s something that’s not new, but that is slightly disturbing: QuickBooks 2007 offers users the option to allow Google to index their QuickBooks information in order to automatically generate suggested AdWords for the user’s business. The indexing option apparently scans the QuickBook user’s inventory in order to suggest the best terms for advertising. While I’ve […]