Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

I conducted a search for Segala on Google (.com) to see if any of our competitors were squatting on the keyword (this has happened in the past). I was surprised to see that the first result had 7 links to various parts of our Web site underneath the description as per the screen shot above.

Ignore the green tick, that’s what our Firefox extension does to provide more information about the suitability of the content using Content Labels.

Do you know how/why this has happened?

I was conducting a search on an association called the BWDMA to see how it had progressed since the weird phone call I received from the guy who found it a few years ago. I say weird because I’m unable to explain it. He put himself forward as the Founder of an established and well respected independent association and asked that I change from Segala Accreditation to Segala Certification. We did, but certainly not because he asked us to.

After a little digging on my part, I found that he seemed to own lots of Web sites which all connected to each other; either by collaboration, hosting provider, technology provider or endorser. All linking back to BWDMA to say how great it was.

Anyway, one of Google’s search results led me to a site now called About us. (http://www.aboutus.org/Bwdma.com) It’s still claiming the following

The BWDMA is a “broad church”, inclusive organisation, open to all companies and individuals that have an interest in the new media sector. BWDMA is influence-driven rather than membership-driven.

The Association seeks to improve e-business standards through sharing knowledge, understanding and proliferation of best practice. To further its aims and objectives, the association actively solicits constructive relationships with industry, government, academia and other such bodies, as may have common goals or purpose.

The Association seeks to assist all industries with the adoption and application of Internet and related technologies to encourage development in the digital economy. The BWDMA endeavours to provide a gateway for businesses to purchase with confidence from reputable suppliers through the free procurement service Web Project Guide.

When you click on the ‘Go direct to the Website’ link, you’re taken to a weird looking portal where you can buy houses and find Russian brides.

When you click on the AboutUS logo to take you back to the homepage AboutUs (http://www.aboutus.org/AboutUs.org) and then select About AboutUs in the footer, you get the following

AboutUS is a wiki whose goal is to create a free and valuable Internet resource containing information both about websites and other community created topics/information. The site was pre-populated with information about many different websites and thousands of updates are now being made by people each day.

The vision of AboutUs hinges on the power of collaboration and the unique capacity of wiki technology to capture the coming together of communities.

Confused? Yeah, so was I.

So, what is BWDMA these days? Is it a Portal to help you find your next Russian bride, a Web site collecting information and displaying it in a different format, thereby adding to the noise that’s out there already, or, is it an Independent Association representing the interests of Industry? Is it trying to be all of the above?

I notice that Nomensa still talks about BWDMA on its Web site, so perhaps they can tell me more.

For a company/association who specialises in helping you to find more information about companies and associations, it doesn’t make it easy for you to find out more information about them!

Please let me know if you know what’s going on with this association.

I’ve just written a post about this on the Segala blog but thought it was relevant here because it highlights the usefulness of Twitter, even if only for fun.

We ran a competition for an iPod Touch on the Segala blog to find a new name for our Firefox extension recently. 90 comments and dozens of suggestions later, Aido and I couldn’t find one we liked. So we thought…

As a way of thanking everyone for their contribution, we decided to give away the iPod anyway. So, tonight I pasted everyone’s name into a word document and assigned a number to each one. I then asked my Twitter friends to suggest a number so I could choose the winner. I’m extremely lucky because Pat Phelan picked Mike Butcher’s number.

That’s the good news for Mike. The lucky news for me is that one of Mike’s suggestions was powdrr.com Given that Aido and I came up with POWDR, I think Mike should have won anyway.

Talk about being lucky! And I’m referring to me being lucky, not Mike. Reading back on this post, I’m wondering if we should go with powdrr instead of POWDR. Argh!

Weird huh?

One of Damien’s posts about Google’s response to the Microsoft bid for Yahoo! was the first post to grab my attention in my RSS reader this morning, as it’s a story I commented on last week.

What started as a simple post about Google’s response, turned into an epic message about how Apple, Google and Mozilla are not all good and Microsoft is not all evil. They are all pretty much after the same thing; market dominance. They just use different tactics. All of which are good and evil.

Google’s response

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft — despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses — to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet?

We believe that the interests of Internet users come first — and should come first — as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.

I’m playing devil’s advocate here and certain to attract a retort from standards enthusiasts. If you’re one of them, please take a look at the contribution Segala (and I) make to open standards.

In my opinion, Google’s response has been childish to say the least. In fact, I’d like to call bullshit, which is a little stronger than Dennis Howlett’s ‘Pot, kettle, black’ post.

The truth about Google

I’ve had enough of Google’s so-called ‘no evil’ policy. Google may have started off with a best endeavours approach to add value to the Web, but it now seeks to increase its revenue share at the expense of relevant and trustworthy search results.

Did it ever start out to do no evil? A little company called Overture invented a means for combining search and advertising, with auction-based keyword targeted text ads. Yahoo bought Overture, then proceeded to sue Google, whice made sense: Google had completely ripped off Overture’s concept, and was liable for every dollar it earned using that form of advertising.

Rather than aggressively fight the small search company, which was clearly infringing on Yahoo-owned patents with every dollar it earned, Yahoo settled, agreeing to take 2.7 million shares of Google, just over 1% of the company (at the time). Yahoo sold those shares as soon as Google went public, for $82.62 a share, or $223 million. Thanks to InsideMicrosoft for the stats and Steve Clayton for pointing me to them via Twitter.

How can Google say it ‘does no evil’ when it filters search on behalf of an oppressive Chinese Government? (Ok, I’ve now given reason for the Chinese Government to ban this blog, like it did with the Segala blog when I posted about a Chinese blogger who was killed by government officials.) If it had people’s best interests at heart it wouldn’t place advertising above freedom of speech.

How can Google say that it is a company with the Internet’s interests at heart? If it did, it wouldn’t make the highest bidders more prominent in search results. Instead, it would present to users, the most relevant and trustworthy Web sites. Paid search is not obvious to the vast majority of end users.

While I’m at it…

The Yahoo! takeover would enable Microsoft to compete with Google’s monopolistic search engine. Google has approximately 80% of the global search market and doesn’t permit anyone to see what’s inside the box. Why? Well, because it gives them a competitive advantage, which it’s entitled to. It only provides open access to APIs because it benefits them in the long run. They even provide products for free to help compete directly with Microsoft. I don’t believe Google want to move to the desktop. I believe they just want to hurt Microsoft.

Android is another example. It’ll be fantastic for the Mobile Industry but, the open source framework comes with Google applications preinstall. That’s no different to Windows coming with Real Player embedded.

So what do I mean by monopolistic? Well, take a look at Mozilla Firefox (a non-profit do-gooder). Firefox is Microsoft’s main competitor in the browser market. Google and Firefox couldn’t be snuggled up any closer in bed with Firefox acting as Google’s hot water bottle. I say this because Firefox has approximately 12% of the global market and its default search engine in the toolbar is Google, from whom it generates the majority of its revenue. Mozilla is now a $300m business.

Search engines such as Excite (my all time favourite) Altavista and Lycos all provided honest search results. That is, prominence was given to the Web sites which provided the most relevant content to search terms. Ok, so they had flaws, but at least they didn’t sell out to the highest bidders like Google. Google in my opinion, hasn’t added any value whatsoever to search. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

What I’d like to see happen

1. I’d like to see Yahoo! owned del.icio.us (what a dumb ass domain) given a face lift so it’s easier for the longtail of users to adopt, thereby encouraging scale. Give users the option to integrate browser based bookmarks with del.icio.us bookmarks so we end up with a more extensive database of relevant search results.
2. Keep the Yahoo! brand but turn it into a search engine. Use the bookmarks as described above, as an engine to help provide more meaningful search results.
3. Use Yahoo! as the default search engine for Internet Explorer
4. Improve IE8 so it’s more standards compliant, without introducing yet another tag to make the assertion about compliance
5. Embed all the cool Yahoo! stuff such as Flickr into IE
6. Employ or appoint better products people to take over Yahoo! properties
7. Adopt Content Labels in IE to enable more trust on the Web
8. There’s plenty more to talk about regarding their email and IM properties, but I’ll leave the commentating about those to others. Feel free to leave your opinion.

Why do people continue to take a shot at Microsoft when companies such as Apple, Google and Mozilla are out for themselves just like anyone else? Microsoft has, and continues to be in trouble regarding their market dominance, but none of it is based on their new products. It’s old news so move on.

I’ve heard along the grapevine that a small company called Segala, an expert in content classification and standards compliance certification, is giving away an iPod Touch.

I hear the competition is just as easy as those silly questions you see on daytime TV too.

Why not take a trip to the Segala blog and enter the competition now. I know the guy who found Segala, so buy me a few beers and I’ll help fix it so you win

Enter the competition now.

Mozilla has released its 2006 audited financials and that little Google search box in the top right of Firefox is the gift that keeps giving.

Mozilla’s revenue, which includes Mozilla’s foundation and corporation, came in at $66.8 million in 2006. That’s up from $52.9 million in 2005. Sounds like Google vs Microsoft, not Internet Explorer vs Firefox. I’ve also noted that Mozilla has withdrawn cash and invested it elsewhere.

Larry Dignan on ZDNet has the full detail.

I’ve written many blog posts and articles for magazines about the mobile Web. It’s a subject that I’m quite passionate about and one that Segala invests heavily in by helping to create W3C standards. We’re also investing heavily in testing and certification products for mobile Web standards compliance, which help our partners to deliver services in this area.

This post has two messages.

1. Why I think the Web is likely to become more readily available with the launch of Apple’s iPhone as it acts as a new benchmark for the industry.
2. Why I’ve now got second thoughts about buying an iPhone.

End users now realising the difference between WAP (premium content created specifically for mobile phones) and the open Web is the main reason I think the iPhone will act as a new benchmark for the industry.

Take a look at the comments on an older post if you want to read what some very qualified people think. Be warned, the comments alone total more than 17,000 words, but as I said, they’re very qualified sources and people I respect from companies such as Microsoft, Google, .mobi, MobileAware and Opera.

Until now, I’ve been hearing the same argument against small screens, standard-less browsers, speeds and price points, as I did during my AOL days in the mid 90’s. People need to look forward. The growth rate of Mobile technology improvements in particular, is far greater than any other major landscape change in IT.

I also had a run in with the CTO of Mozilla (owner of Firefox) on the BIMA blog that I edit, but I was proved right when Mozilla canned it’s mobile browser just weeks after my post. Interestingly, I used the iPhone back then to demonstrate how the Web will appear on phones.

I also believe the iPhone will help the Web become more accessible to people in developing countries. I’m not saying people in India will now access the Web through an iPhone. What I am saying is that mobile vendors will now need to wake up and start designing phones are are more supportive of Web browsing and are extremely easy to use. Mobile networks are cheaper than fixed line networks, so users are more likely to use a mobile than a PC. As Bill Gates once said (either that or I had a dream and came up with a great quote):

If I had a choice, I’d put a mobile phone in the hands of every customer, not a PC.

BANGALORE, India (AFP) - Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf has predicted that mobile phones, not personal computers, will fuel growth of the worldwide web as countries like India snap up millions of handsets monthly.

From 50 million in 1997, the number of people who have logged onto the Internet has exploded to nearly 1.1 billion, Cerf, who is considered one of the founding fathers of the Internet, said Tuesday.

Yet, the Internet only reaches a sixth of the world’s population, Cerf told reporters during a visit to this southern city, known as India’s Silicon Valley, where Google has a research and development facility.

You will get those other 5.5 billion people only when affordability increases and the cost of communication goes down,” said Cerf, 63, who joined Google in 2005. “The mobile phone has become an important factor in the Internet revolution.

I can’t help but feel that Operators will soon be forced into providing lower data tariffs when customers demand and consume more data through surfing the Web also. The iPhone demonstrates that it is feasible to browse the Web from a small screen. It’s not just about the weather and train timetables as I’ve previously stated when debating with my colleagues in the W3C Mobile Web Initiative (where I’m a member of the Steering Council and Segala is a founding sponsor and co-editor of the conformance document).

So, will you buy an iPhone? Steve Clayton says he’s not interested. After reading his post, I was reminded of how much I really hated the LG Chocolate device, which also has a touch screen. In fact, his opinion persuaded me to rethink my position on the iPhone. The LG was so annoying that I still have marks on the wall where it received a well deserved bashing every other week. The trouble is, it took a while before I grew to hate it. I wonder if the same will be said for the iPhone.

Carly Taylor from mobile operator Three made a similar statement to Steve regarding the slow response of text messaging. In an email to the Mobile Monday list, Carl wrote

One point that takes away some of the shine for the cool types who will buy it for its looks:

• My experience was that the touch UI is poor for texting.
• No feel, and fingernails get in the way (bad for most women).
• For volume text addicts this will turn them off quickly.

This has also got me thinking, as it’s something that would bug the hell out of me. In fact, I think this issue alone would turn me off the iPhone.

So, my verdict is to wait for feedback from people who have used it as their daily lifestyle device for a few months. I’d like to hear what users think about the slow texting and annoying touch screen quirks when the novelty has worn off.

Are you going to buy one?

Glaxstar is a company run by a very good friend of mine, Ian Hayward. These guys have built what I believe to be the only 100% full proof way of protecting minors from inappropriate content on the Web. Their newly released product is called Glubble. I’ve known about this for a very long time but have been unable to blog about it.

These are the same guys behind Mozzilla’s bluechip extensions for companies such as Google, Yahoo! PayPal and more recently, eBay.

They’re also responsible for building Segala’s (Semantic) Firefox extension to enable more trust on the Web by reading Content Labels. Ian has asked me enough times for a roadmap of functionality changes so I better get on with it!

Actually, come to think of it, Glaxstar’s Firefox extension built to our requirements to read Content Labels is equally compelling as it adds more trust on the Web based on standards and codes of conduct.

You can read TechCrunch’s review here.

Check it out, it’s fantastic!!! http://glubble.com

I had breakfast the other day with Steve Clayton in Home House (very posh private members club), ‘geek in disguise’ by day and CTO, Microsoft UK Partner Group by night. Or is it the other way around?! Very cool guy who gets the power of networking and connecting Microsoft partners (and others) for mutual benefit.

Steve and I met for a friendly chit chat about potential collaboration on numerous fronts. I can only mention one at present though. I showed him our Firefox extension that alters Google search results, enabling trust on the Web that’s truly scalable. That is, unlike VeriSign’s identity solution to combat phishing, McAfee SiteAdviser, Netscape and of course, GeoTrust’s equally non-scalable attempt with Trustwatch.

I don’t mind taking a pop at those companies because they’re pretty big and have been hogging the cake for too long. It’s now time to share. I was going to take the opportunity to expand on what Content Labels are but it ended up too long and way off topic, so I’ll post another note about labels shortly and try to use a different approach with my explanation and use cases.

I had every intention of heading home following my stint at Home House, but when I received Mike Butcher’s twitter (feel free to follow my twitter) regarding Internet People I decided to head over for a short while. I’m delighted I did as I ended up bumping into Jemima Kiss from the Guardian and Jeanette Moskovits, Co-founder and CEO of Autoquake. It’s funny to think that I had to travel to Le Web 3.0 in Paris last year and have dinner with Marc Canter (thanks to Tom Raftery) in order to meet Jeannette for the first time, especially given that she’s based in London! It’s a small world.

It was also good (as usual) to bump into Paul Birch, Cominded Founder, Bebo Co-founder and Justin Champney, Head of Brand Innovation EMEA, McCann Worldwide. Justin has agreed to be a guest writer on my BIMA blog, which has yet to get off the ground properly. Must attend to this! Justin, get your ass in gear

I did meet a new face, Prashant Agarwal from Refresh Mobile and who’s helping Heather Harde, TechCrunch CEO, to find someone to re-launch TechCrunch UK. So, I wonder when that’ll go ahead…

Thanks to Butcher, the rumor had it that I was going to run TechCrunch UK. A day after he blogged it as a joke, ironically word spread and lead to at least 6 people asking me if it were true at a mashup event the following night, including 2 VCs.

So, may I start the rumor now and suggest that Mike Butcher is going to re-launch TechCrunch UK and is in fact, having an affair with Mike Arrington, who he’s had his eye on since Sam Sethi dumped him for a younger model.

I’m probably going to pay a price for this banter, aren’t I Mike (Butcher)? Ah well, at least I got a giggle out of writing this on what would have otherwise been a very boring train journey into London.

OR

I was astonished to read (on Dan’s blog) that Mozilla doesn’t think users want to access the Web on mobile devices. Hence my picture above of what Mozilla must have in mind when it comes to the Web on the move, anytime, anywhere.

Dan was commentating on the Browser Panel at SXSW which was run by Arun from AOL (a colleague of mine from the W3C MWI). My buddy Charles from Opera took part too.

Brendan Eich, CTO of Mozilla is the reason for this post though. According to Dan, Brendan said

I don’t believe people are going to browse the Web on their phone. I don’t believe people want to use Wikipedia from their phone.

I’m absolutely amazed by Brendan’s view and I sincerely hope it’s his personal view and not Mozilla’s. Otherwise this $300m business faces the prospect of ending up in the bin alongside it’s parent, Netscape. For a guy who’s incredibly smart working for an organisation that has gained a market share of 10% to 12% of desktop browsers within 2 years, his comments are a little surprising to say the least. Brendan’s comments in my opinion, lack vision. Hell, they lack logic.

I couldn’t disagree more with Brendan. There are more people in the world who don’t have access to the Web than there are people who do. Of those people, most of them are in developing countries. The vast majority of them are extremely likely to use a mobile devices as their primary access point to the Web as it’s more difficult and more expensive to roll out fix lined networks than it is mobile.

Google announced some statistics recently that back up my view. BANGALORE, India (AFP) - Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf has predicted that mobile phones, not personal computers, will fuel growth of the worldwide web as countries like India snap up millions of handsets monthly.

From 50 million in 1997, the number of people who have logged onto the Internet has exploded to nearly 1.1 billion, Cerf, who is considered one of the founding fathers of the Internet, said Tuesday.

Yet, the Internet only reaches a sixth of the world’s population, Cerf told reporters during a visit to this southern city, known as India’s Silicon Valley, where Google has a research and development facility.

Worldwide there are 2.5 billion mobile-phone users, whose numbers are growing rapidly in developing countries led by China and India, the world’s most populous countries, Cerf said in his presentation.

India, a country of 1.1 billion people, alone is adding seven million mobile-phone users a month, a powerful enough lure for British telecom giant Vodafone to pay 11.1 billion dollars for a controlling stake in local mobile firm Hutch-Essar this month. Read the original new article.

I feel so strongly about helping to bring the Web to more people, I decided to become a founding sponsor of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). One of the goals of the MWI is to create best practice guidelines to help developers build Web sites that will work on desktop computers, but importantly, work better on mobile devices too.

Other founding sponsors include Vodafone Group, Nokia, HP, Opera, MobileAware, ftgroup and Volantis. Other active participants within the initiative include companies such as AOL, .mobi, Google and Telefonica.

One of my recent posts amassed a staggering word count that exceeded 17,000, with comments from Google, .mobi, Opera, WURFL and more. I had to splinter the conversation into a different post which is still ongoing and awaiting a response from me.

The mobile web is a hot topic and there’s always room for disagreement. However, I’m still amazed to hear the fastest growing desktop browser say that it doesn’t think people will want to use a mobile to browse the Web. Perhaps they should have a chat with Apple.

Mozilla, I love what you’re doing. Hell, we’ve got a cool Firefox extension ourselves. However, please pull your head out of the sand if you really believe mobile is only for calling your granny.

Thanks to Keith Waters (France Telecom) for the picture above.