Occam’s Razor

Google hits another home run with Google Analytics

At least a few of the best things in life are actually free. For web site owners like me who want useful statistics on our visitors but do not want to pay for it (in either money, time or advertising) there is a slick solution: Google Analytics.

Until Google Analytics, I had mediocre statistical solutions. I monitor my site with the free versions of SiteMeter and StatCounter. However, both services offer only limited free features. Both allow you to see detailed information on your last hundred page views only. If you want more information, you need to take out your charge card.

On the too much information side, my web server of course logs every hit for all of my sites. My web host like most provides access to free Awstats reports. It does a nice job of summarizing the data in my web logs. However, the information tends to be about a day old. Moreover, since it logs everything it provides statistics that, while valid, are not always terribly meaningful. For example, I get many hits on my RSS and Atom feed links. Most of these are just machines polling my server at periodic intervals. It does not necessarily mean that someone is actually reading my content. In addition, I am too lazy to try to figure out how to tune my Apache web server and Awstats configuration files to split my three domains into separate reports. However, the price of Awstats cannot be beat, and it does give me a picture of the total volume of traffic my site is getting.

What I really care about are those who are actively reading content. SiteMeter provided a close approximation. I could look at its statistics, add in a weighting factor for my newsfeed hits and get an overall picture. Still, without paying for it I had no way to ask questions such as, “Which entry was most popular last month?” and “What search words bring the most people to my site?”

Enter Google Analytics, Google’s free web site statistics package. Finally, I have a convenient way to dig down and see the relevant information I am looking for without having to pay for it or maintain it. I also have a way to get detailed statistics beyond the last one hundred page views. Google provides it as a free service to all but the largest web sites. It is designed to work with your Google Adwords account. However, you do not need to have a Google Adwords account to use Google Analytics.

While not a perfect package, it is slick. First, its drawbacks. It is not as easy to add the metering code to your web pages as it is with SiteMeter or StatCounter. You will need to dig through your web site’s templates and add the appropriate code in the HTML headers and ask it to validate each site. Second, by default you do not get up to the minute information. Google Analytics defaults to showing you statistics through the previous day. Current information is there but you have to change your date range. Third, it cannot track your non-browser related hits. This is good and bad because much of it you would want to ignore anyhow (search engine robots come to mine). Others, like relevant hits on your newfeeds, would be useful. Fourth, it would be nice if it had an API (application programming interface). I suspect this will come soon. With an API, Sitemeter-like features such as counters that appear on your web pages could be implemented. (Some Wordpress plug-in authors have already done some clever things.)

With these downsides though, look at what you get. First, there is no money or advertising. Second, it has a super-slick user interface built on top of Flash technology. It allows easy customization of your Google Analytics reports simply by dragging and dropping widgets. You can customize your dashboard to show your relevant statistics. You can also drill down to get relevant statistics easily, either by clicking on the link or by placing your mouse cursor over the relevant items on the graphics. Mouse-over dialog boxes tell you much relevant information without even needing to click. Move easily from one domain to another by selecting the domain from the selection list. Change the date criteria easily by opening up the date control and highlighting the dates you want.

Google Analytics provides a wealth of analytical information. Some of it, while relevant, can be hard to understand. What is a bounce rate anyhow? Convenient links provide more details. Data is organized into four major areas: visitor information, traffic content, sources and goals. The goals area is most useful if you are using their Google Adwords service. With it, you fine-tune your Google Adwords campaigns to help you bring in more traffic. This is where Google makes its money. If by offering you free analytics it can persuade you to open a Google Adwords account, or use it more frequently or effectively, it is good for their bottom line as well as yours.

I wish Google Analytics had a mode that allowed the public to see my statistics too. If it did, it would more resemble SiteMeter and StatCounter’s features. Perhaps this will come in some future version.

I have a feeling that Google Analytic’s free service is worrying SiteMeter, StatCounter and similar services. I got a recent notice from SiteMeter saying they will be rolling out an upgraded statistics package soon. With Google nipping at its heels, I would not be surprised if it offered expanded free services.

If you have been using SiteMeter and similar services, I think you owe it to yourself to add Google Analytics metering too.

December 9th, 2007 at 09:41pm Posted by Mark | Technology | no comments

The hidden power of Google Docs

The application designers at Google rarely fail to disappoint. Some of their products have failed to capture much market attention, but all of them have been interesting. If their designers are disappointed that useful applications like Froogle have not captured the public’s fancy, other ideas like Google Earth and Google Maps swept us away.

I have spent quite a bit of time lately looking at and pondering Google’s recent offerings. This weekend I belatedly signed up for a Google GMail account. I do not know why I procrastinated so long. Admittedly, it is not a perfect application. The ads served based on the content of my email still spook me a bit. I am also a bit leery leaving all my email on their servers, no matter how convenient it is to search my email using their search engine. While their privacy policy looks reassuring enough, there is no law that requires Google to keep my email messages private. Since the NSA arm-twisted telephone companies like Verizon into opening up their calling records, in spite of the illegality of doing so at the time, I have to wonder whether Big Brother is also searching my GMail.

Still, GMail is slick. Spending some time using it makes you shrug off your paranoia. In fact, once you have it, it is hard to revert. Like all Google products, GMail is hardly flashy. Google likes white backgrounds, ordinary fonts and lots of white space in its pages. However, Google is not after flashiness; it excels at usefulness. While I can bemoan their capability to search my private email messages, having it hosted inside their 3 gigabytes of free server space also means that all my mail is available wherever I can access the web. The first time GMail threaded my email I was jolted, then I wondered why email programs generally do not thread email.

GMail has many other useful features. If your cell phone is Internet capable, you can receive and reply to email on your cell phone. Its spam detection is excellent. You can segregate important emails by “starring” them. You can teach GMail to assign labels to various kinds of emails. In fact, “email” is a word that Google makes obsolete. Since all your emails are threaded, it correctly refers to your email box as a collection of “conversations”. Importing my address book, a fundamental step for being useful, was not much of a chore. I simply exported my address book from my email client into tab-delimited files, and then read them into GMail. I can use it as a vacation responder. I can POP (download) email from other accounts, or download my GMail into my email client through a secure POP connection. I can add filters to segregate common kinds of emails. Many third party applications have been written for GMail. For example, you can install a notifier program. It tells you when you have new mail by placing an icon in your system tray. However, you may not want to install the notifier. Simply leave GMail in a browser tab and the tab title will let you know if you have new email. What is the cost for all this wonderfulness? Aside from the minimal advertising, unless you want to use more than 3 gigabytes of server space, it is free.

GMail lead me to try out Google’s news feed reader called Google Reader. Previously I had been using the now antiquated Bloglines as my web-based newsreader. Google Reader is magnitudes better than Bloglines. Adding a new feed is easy, and if you are having trouble thinking of a feed to add you can select from a list of canned feeds organized by category. Your Google Reader home page consolidates a list of recent feeds for your easy viewing. As you scroll down through a feed, Google Reader assumes you have read the item. You can “star” items in the feed like you can emails. By “starring” them, they become the equivalent of temporary bookmarks. Of course, all your feeds are instantly searchable. In addition, you can choose to share with your feeds with friends. Of all the newsreaders I have used, both web based and installed, Google Reader is by far the most usable. As with GMail, if I have a browser, I have instant access to all my news feeds.

Google has many other interesting applications, many of which have yet to take off. The Google Talk application is a Johnny come lately. With AOL and Yahoo holding dominance in these markets, it is unclear how it can overtake them. (There is an open application programming interface (API) for Google Talk, which could help.) However, if you can convince your friends to use Google Talk, you have one interesting feature: the ability to transparently save and search your own chat sessions. Google’s language translation tool, built into its search engine, is eerily accurate. Google has purchased some of its competition. As you may have heard, Google now owns Blogger and YouTube. Its attempt to compete with Windows on the desktop has thus far proven futile. However, its Google Desktop Search tool allows you to search your own computer with transparent ease.

What is Google’s next big thing? I think it is already here. It is Google Docs and Spreadsheets, soon to be renamed Google Docs. It aims to be a web-ified version of Microsoft Office. Should Microsoft be worried? No, they should be panicked. They should be panicked not because Google Docs will likely be able to build a better word processor or spreadsheet (although that may emerge over time) but because for most of us 90% of the functionality is more than adequate and free is an excellent price. Microsoft should also be worried because these documents inherently reside inside the Google hive. Consequently, they are easily and transparently shareable. Microsoft may be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and its MSN network may be impressive, but it is a 98-pound weakling in the infrastructure hosting business. Google is the 800-pound gorilla. Moreover, Google Docs has something in common with Google Talk and, in fact, many of its applications. It has an API that can manipulate it. This means we are likely to see all sorts of small but clever applications used to serve particular vertical markets that will be at its core Google Docs documents.

Most computer users understand spreadsheets. Keeping track of tabular data (data formatted in rows and columns) is now second nature. Yet a database, even a simple one like Microsoft Access, is still relatively complex and generally too much trouble to use for the sharing data. Extensible Markup Language (XML), while certainly portable and easy to read, is still not simple to consume or process for a particular use. It depends on relatively sophisticated programs on both the sending and receiving end to make use of the data. A Google Docs spreadsheet on the other hand, needs no installation. If you can use Word or Excel, you can quickly learn to use a Google docs word processor or spreadsheet. If your use is personal, it does not cost any money. Since it is hosted in the Google infrastructure, you can easily share your Google Docs, unlike Microsoft Office documents. Generally, if you want to share these documents, you email them. And when you email them, you lose your ability to update them. This is not true when they exist inside Google.

Consequently, Google Docs is something of its own platform, but since it is an open platform anyone can write an application that works with it. You can sort of do this with Microsoft Office, but you have to write to a Microsoft API (generally Visual Basic for Applications). Google Docs is easier to interact with than XML documents (in fact, Google Docs stores its documents as XML) and can be programmatically extended using open source AJAX technology and the Google Docs API. Once this fact sinks in, Google Docs should become the de-facto means of sharing relatively simple structured data. It will create a brand new market that will make it easy to collaborate online using readily understood metaphors (spreadsheets, documents, presentations).

This is something Microsoft cannot presently do except through some of its costly and proprietary solutions. To even compete in this new market would take Microsoft many years, and would probably not succeed, given Google’s gigantic head start. It is likely that in time Google Docs (perhaps assisted by the OpenOffice suite) will crack the Microsoft Office monopoly. If you are a business, the fact that Google Docs is already hosted may very well be compelling. Why pay people to go around, install and troubleshoot Microsoft Office when they could do the same work online with just a browser? Whatever Google charges for a commercial service will likely be a small fraction of Microsoft’s costs. Moreover, you will not have to pay a help desk to support these applications.

Often it is the prosaic things endure the longest. Documents and spreadsheets are prosaic, but essential to information sharing. We were wowed a couple years back by Google Earth. I think that Google Docs, by extending the Google infrastructure to the applications level, will be seen as Google’s most significant innovation since its search engine. While it may not kill Microsoft, Microsoft may well emerge a shadow of its former self.

September 19th, 2007 at 10:28pm Posted by Mark | Technology | one comment

The Blog Returns

Google seems to have found its senses. I reappeared in its search index today around 12 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, after being ignored by Google for two months and 18 days.

I am not sure why it happened today. Perhaps it occurred because a few days back I requested a Google reinclusion. This was something I had not tried before, mainly because it was deeply buried in their web pages so I didn’t notice it.

I am skeptical that I will get the traffic I did before I was dropped, but time will tell. Anyhow, it now behooves me to be good on my word to my readers and resume blogging again.

Resuming blogging this week will be challenging because life finds me in Boulder, Colorado. I am at my brother’s fiancée’s house. I will be in the Denver area all week to participate in some training. I will likely see plenty of Denver this year. I should be back at least three more times before July. But hopefully my evenings this week will leave me reasonably free and I will have time to do some serious blogging again.

My thanks to all who left comments telling me how much they appreciated my blog. I will try to live up to your high opinions of me.

January 21st, 2007 at 06:24pm Posted by Mark | Life 2007 | 6 comments

The blog goes dormant

I wanted to have a blog that meant something to me, and that provided some unique thoughts and perspective to the world. Until early November 2006, my modest goals seemed to be within reach. It was about that time that Google unceremoniously pulled my blog from its search index. More than two months later, I am still stuck in the Internet’s version of Siberia, with no way to change my situation. My SiteMeter page views, which reliably were between 150 and 200 page views per day before last November, dribbled to as little as 14 yesterday. A simple query on Google’s search index on “Occam’s Razor” returns nothing related to my site. In fact, if you try this query you will see that its search index contains not a single reference to this blog.

There almost seems to be a cascading effect. I remain in other search indexes like Yahoo and MSN, but because I am not in Google’s it seems like with every passing day that I rank lower and lower in their search indexes too. This translates into fewer and fewer hits.

So I am at a loss. I can continue to write blog entries for my own amusement and for a handful of family or friends that visit this place regularly. Or I can decide that blogging when my content cannot be found amounts to a waste of my time, and I should be doing other things instead.

I choose the latter. I will continue to do what I can to influence Google to index this site again, although I have followed their guidance to the tee. Creating and managing a quality blog is hard work. I have worked very hard to provide a quality blog for more than four years. Nevertheless, creating and updating a blog that hardly anyone can find is a waste of my time. Life is too short for my time to be squandered on a futile endeavor.

Unlike President Bush, who thinks that more of the same failed strategy in Iraq will work wonders, I am under no illusions. I may post the occasional entry here from time to time. Moreover, I do hope to be back in force once I am listed in the Google search index again. Until that happens, this blog goes dormant. I will use my time more productively: to read, research, indulge my other hobbies, play the good father and husband, and maybe actually smell a rose or two. However, I will be back once I am indexed by Google again.

Please do not throw away your bookmarks to my blog. I hope this is just a sabbatical and not the end. If you enjoy a good discussion, consider becoming a member of my forum, The Potomac Tavern, where you will always find me having conversations with my friends. Enjoy my archives because I believe I have left a lot of thoughtful and rich content. My Best of Occam’s Razor category is especially worth your time. In addition, feel free to leave comments (which I will approve) or send me email. You can also call Google to complain.

Let me extend my thanks and appreciation to all who have spent and enjoyed your time here. Thank you for all those who have posted comments. Whether this blog comes back to life though is no longer in my hands, but in Google’s.

January 14th, 2007 at 09:42am Posted by Mark | Life 2007 | 6 comments

Coaxing Google

As I am discovering, trying to get Google to place your web site back in its index is like trying to get your way with City Hall. Good luck. Once I had a web presence with Google. Now it no longer is aware even of this site. Since November 3rd, my site has disappeared from Google. Try it. Nothing comes up for this site, not a single link. Even my Google cache has disappeared.

Perhaps that is not entirely true. Apparently, its image index is managed separately. I still get occasionally referrals from Google for images placed here. However, as best I can tell, this is the extent to which Google acknowledges that my site is alive.

If I were a major presence on the web like, say msnbc.com, Google would take my call. Alas, I am nobody. I am just some guy with a blog. My blog may inhabit some very dark corner of the Internet, but it is my corner, representing a huge investment of my time and energy for nearly four years. Over the years, traffic to my site has been modest, but each year it has grown steadily. Much of its growth, I will confess, came from Google referrals. Since I have been unlisted, instead of being a very dark corner of the Internet, I am now in a dungeon. MSN and Yahoo stop by regularly and offer their sympathies, but both are search engine wannabees. Google sets the platinum standard. If Google gets around to reindexing this site, they will do so in their own sweet time, thank you very much. Like McDonalds, they serve billions. Moreover, like McDonalds, if you want a hamburger your way, well, be prepared to wait a while.

So here I wait. It is nine days since my web site mysteriously disappeared from their search index. My site traffic has dropped to one quarter of its previous traffic. Because I am not indexed in Google, my advertising revenue with Google Adsense is virtually nonexistent too.

I have tried using their Webmaster tools. It listed seventeen bad links on my pages and nine pages that were unavailable. I corrected all my bad links, which were carryovers from a time when my MovableType blog software created entry names that were numbers. Maybe it was these seventeen errors put me over a threshold and caused my blog to become unlisted. However, with nearly 600 entries long at this point, it is a bit time consuming to fix every bad link on my site. Still, to please the Google gods, I took the time to correct all of them.

I am left to wonder if a bunch of right wing Christian homophobes secretly run Google. All I know is that it was about the same time I published this entry on the Rev. Ted Haggard, defrocked minister and hypocrite that my blog unceremoniously disappeared from their index. Maybe I used the word “homosexuality” once too often and thereby crossed over some sort of threshold that placed my site in their bit bucket.

While no one cares but me, I find the whole situation very irritating. Google has become the indispensable tool for the Internet. It is so powerful I am starting to think that maybe it requires some regulation. Somehow, I doubt regulation would improve their product. Google should at least staff a public Google Help Desk where site owners can find out why their site does not appear in the index. If my site were banned, then I should at least have some explanation for why it is banned. Nevertheless, like Windows, the details of its inner workings are impenetrable.

Nonetheless, I am tempted to get even. While I am sure my tiny corner of the internet is too small for them to bother with, there are alternatives. While I cannot coax others to use Yahoo or MSN for their search engines, I can decide to feature Yahoo Publisher instead of Google Search and Adsense on my site.

Meanwhile, I will keep blogging, hoping that my diminished audience is only a temporary condition. Google is the 800-pound gorilla of the search business. Whether deliberately or inadvertently, it has squashed my humble little web site.

November 12th, 2006 at 03:41pm Posted by Mark | Technology | no comments

Help! Google abandoned my blog!

Google giveth and Google taketh. For reasons that were probably not deliberate, this site dropped out of the Google search index since about 10 PM on Friday. Whereas normally I get 150-200 page views a day (according to SiteMeter) yesterday I got about 50. So far today I am up to 21 page views. These numbers of course do not count the many other hits from other search engines, feed readers and the like.

I had not really quantified before what a huge factor Google is in driving eyes to this website. Without Google, I am reduced to hoping minor search engines like Yahoo! and MSN to send traffic here instead. It is fair to say though that traffic referred here through Google accounts for two thirds to three quarters of all the page views read with a browser.

Perhaps this is just as well. I resubmitted my site to the Google search engine, but it could take weeks for it to fully index my site again. With preelection jitters and a sad anniversary to commemorate this week (it will be one year since my mother’s death this Friday) perhaps I do not need too many other distractions anyhow. Maybe the Internet is telling me to take a blogging breather.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying a quiet day home alone. My wife and daughter are in Pennsylvania for the day. I am spending my day catering to our cat Arthur who wants to go in and out of our screened in deck every few minutes. It will suffice for my exercise today.

Take pity on a poor hardworking blogger with nearly four years of quality content, and refer a friend to this blog today!

November 5th, 2006 at 05:14pm Posted by Mark | Technology | one comment

Google Adsense Integration

After pondering this recent Washington Post article, I am going to try a little experiment in capitalism on my blog. Google Adsense is a way for web sites to earn some money just for being there. In most cases, it is not a whole lot of money. In general, using Adsense, the more page views a site gets, the more revenue can potentially be generated for the site.

While I am not trying to get rich off of Occam’s Razor, at a minimum it would be nice if my content could pay for my hosting costs. It would be even better if I could earn some small change for the time I invest in creating content for this site. As you may remember, a typical entry is an investment of several hours of my spare time. It would be even better if this site could earn enough money so I could afford dedicated hosting. Because I use shared hosting, occasionally site access is a bit sluggish.

Therefore, I have disabled my site search and enabled Google Adsense for Search. It will replace the site’s search engine. This has the benefit of offering better search capabilities than is possible with the MovableType software I am running, so it should add value for web surfers. Google Adsense for Search will also serve what it believes will be relevant targeted advertising. If you click on some of these targeted ads, the site may earn a few cents. If they add up, they may pay for my hosting costs.

Google also has an Adsense for Content service, which displays relevant ads on web pages based on the page’s content. Again, if you click on some of these ads, I may receive a few cents. I will not put these ads on my main index but only on the individual entry or archives pages. This way those of you who regularly read from the Main Index will not see advertising.

About 80% of my page requests are a result of search engines queries that take the user to a specific archive or entry. The vast majority of these visitors arrive here from a Google search. Consequently, it seems appropriate to me to see if some revenue can be generated from these pages. Heck, my entry Sharon Mitchell: Porn Saint alone tends to average about ten requests per day. I imagine any “Sharon Mitchell Porn” links generated by Google Adsense could alone pay for my hosting costs. I will find out.

I hope these changes do not seem too commercial or obtrusive. If you are less likely to return here because of this ad policy, please leave me a comment. If push came to shove, I would rather serve ad-free content than push readers away.

July 29th, 2006 at 09:41am Posted by Mark | Life 2006 | no comments

The Two Sides of Google

Google is one of these amazing companies that demonstrates how uninspiring and mediocre most businesses in the Information Technology (IT) field actually are. Unlike Microsoft, which claims to be innovative but largely is not, Google can truly claim the mantle. Google is a company with the power to inspire awe. Its search engine continues to be the cream of the crop. Yahoo and MSN will keep trying to best Google, but they will likely continue to play follow the leader. Yahoo Maps, for example, just recently released its Beta mapping application, which roughly compares with Google Maps. Google Maps, of course, has been using the magic of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) for over a year to take map usability to a completely new level.

For software engineers like me, the speed with which Google churns out amazing new technologies takes my breath away. Its billions of dollars in ready capital certainly explains part of its success. With its passion for excellence and fearlessness taking big chances, Google simply soars high above the rest of the IT crowd. Mostly it hits the bullseye. Google Earth is just the most recent example of a technology that blew my socks off. It is a killer application, as every bit as revolutionary as the first web browser. We were still being wowed with Google Maps ease of use when Google threw us the Google Earth bombshell.

One of the more recent services introduced by Google is Google Video. It provides a new way to find and share video files. Google acts as the Internet’s ubiquitous high speed and fault tolerant video server. Given its enormous infrastructure, hosting and serving these large bandwidth intensive videos must not be much of a problem. The service even lets you know its most popular videos. Yet this is just one of a number of flashy services that Google provides, most at no cost. Let Google host your blog on Blogger. Centralize your email on the network with GMail. Find the lowest price online with Froogle. Search your computer as you would the Internet with Google Desktop Search. (It just happens to be a feature of the Google Desktop, a clever new application, which looks like a first attempt to break up Microsoft’s desktop monopoly.) Google even has pretensions in the Instant Messaging arena with its Talk client. Clearly, their ambition knows few bounds. While it occasionally bites off more than it is ready to chew (GMail being an obvious example) Google’s numbers of home runs outside the ballpark would make even Babe Ruth jealous.

Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems was I believe the first to promote the idea in the 1990s that “the network is the computer”. While he was ridiculed at the time, Google has shown us that the network can be the computer. With an infrastructure like Google’s, what seemed impossible can unexpectedly become reality. While Microsoft spins its wheels trying to make its Windows product ever niftier, Google shows us that it is what you can do with a computer that makes it meaningful. Indeed, Google makes a compelling case that its services and infrastructure is the ubiquitous application layer of the future, if not the here and now. I am creating this entry using Microsoft Word, but I have already checked a half dozen facts online using Google’s search engine. I can use any word processor to create this entry. I cannot go just anywhere online to find out the information I need this rapidly. Google demonstrates it is not how pretty your screwdriver is that matters, but how well it helps you turn the screw. Therefore, we get its low-tech web pages, always with the pure white background, the simple text and its generous use of white space. It appears low tech but it is simple enough for a student in grade school to use effectively.

So I have plenty of cheers for Google today. I am especially glad it gave the U.S. Justice Department a Bronx cheer when the department recently requested a week’s worth of its web searches. The Justice Department wants the information to discover how the web is being used by pedophiles and those interested in child pornography. Unlike Yahoo and MSN, Google wisely said no. It valued the trust it has earned with its customers too much to let the Justice Department mine its information. Let us hope it continues to do so. Apparently, Google records the Internet Protocol (IP) address of every search query. Let us hope that if push comes to shove Google simply stops recording the IP addresses of all our search queries. For an administration already deeply in Big Brother land with its warrantless electronic eavesdropping, this is simply an opening salvo by the government to get its hands on our private business. If Yahoo and MSN care that little about my privacy, I will not be giving them my business.

In making a stand in America though, Google apparently is quite willing to compromise its principles to win business overseas. For also in the news this week were stories that Google will allow the Chinese government to censor its search engine content. Maybe I was naïve, but I really thought Google got it. However, apparently they will compromise their principles if it improves their shareholders’ bottom line. Perhaps as a result, Google shares went up 3.4 percent with the announcement.

Google must not understand its own unique power at this point in history. Many of us talk about the importance of human freedom, but few are in a position to do much to expand it. Google can. It is the 900-pound gorilla in the information search business. Rather than kowtow to China’s paranoid rulers it should have said no thanks. Yes, perhaps that might have kept Google out of the important Chinese market. Yet a powerful and uncensored internet search engine is a great beacon for those who believe in the power of ideas. The Google business plan surely was premised on its importance. Google is a trusted broker for finding uncensored information. It expands personal freedom and spreads enlightenment. Its reputation is at stake. Which is why Google should rethink doing business with China. Right now, its search engine is the largest force for the liberation of the human mind in the 21st century. Google can be both profitable and spread human enlightenment at the same time. It should tell China it does not need its business unless it guarantees that its citizens have the unfettered access to its search engine.

January 29th, 2006 at 08:47pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006, Technology | no comments

Discovering the Living Earth with Google Earth

I am rarely amazed. But Google Earth is truly amazing. It astounds me.

Google Earth is a program that you install on your PC. It gives you an incredibly easy way to zoom in on any part of the planet. It is amazing how quickly and easily you can go from outer space to zooming in on someone’s backyard. It is incredible how quickly you can focus on an address of interest. It is simplicity in itself to zoom out or pull back (use that middle mouse roller). Once you have marked a spot on the earth, it is transparently easy to find it again; particularly when it shows up as a focus spot on the globe if it fits on the map.

Perhaps the product is named wrong. It should be called Google Magellan. Ferdinand de Magellan was the captain of the first ship to sail around the world. That was an amazing act. Now you too can sail around the world in a virtual airplane or spacecraft and never leave your chair. You can zip from point A to point B with incredible ease. Moreover, as you do so you see the earth move around you in three dimensions. It is the first product that truly lets you appreciate the breadth and scope of our planet.

Of course, we have seen satellite and aerial photos on the web before. Google Map satellite photos are pretty darn easy to use: just drag in the direction you want, and zoom in on whatever is in the center of the map. Microsoft Terraserver has amazing detail for much of the United States. However, Google Earth goes way beyond even the recently introduced Google Satellite Maps. It seamlessly makes finding any defined point on the globe almost effortless. In addition, it provides convenient layers that show road names, local terrain, lodging, dining, buildings (in three dimensions in many cities) and borders.

It is an incredibly synergy of form, function and information. It is tethered to the whole massive Google infrastructure. To make it work you need high speed Internet. You also need a newer version of Microsoft Windows (Mac version under development) and a supported 3D graphics card. Still many of us have this already so there is nothing to buy. You also have to download and install the Google Earth program. Today this may be impossible. Even with its massive bandwidth and infrastructure, Google is having trouble keeping up with the demand. So as of today, you cannot download it. I got lucky. After reading an article about it in Sunday’s Washington Post, I downloaded it. Since then it has become almost an addiction.

How do I love Google Earth? I love the drag and drop interface. Once I have found my addresses of interest, I just drag them into the My Places area of the interface and they are remembered forever (including the height, perspective and layers I used when I last visited). I love the tilt feature. It gives me a forced perspective I never had before. For example, I live a few miles from Washington Dulles International Airport. Now I can soar above it and traverse the runways just like an airplane captain. It gives you detail you cannot get from Flight Simulator. Yes, I am very much like a bird in flight when I navigate with Google Earth. Unlike a bird, I do not have any altitude limitations. I can travel hundreds of miles a second. In addition, I love clicking on the roads layer and seeing the road names pop into place. I like the way the road names shrink or expand to fit the available space, or transparently go away if the type size would overwhelm or underwhelm the road. I like being able to rotate perspective on a dime. I like knowing precisely the latitude, longitude and height above the ground I am at during any given moment. I love the way when I go from point A to point B that it pulls back perspective and zooms me effortlessly and smoothly across the landscape, then zooms in to your new address. This is not just cool. This is not just way cool. This is ultra cool.

Google is partnered with Keyhole, which provides a lot of the digital imagery magic. Unfortunately, you cannot necessarily zoom into your backyard. The highly detailed imagery is not (yet) available for the whole country. But if you live in or around a major metropolitan area then the chances are that you will see your house, your driveway, your cars in the driveway, your trees, your bushes, even your fences. You can get a clue as to how detailed the imagery is in a particular area from the density of the grid. If it is more gray than green, for example, it is probably contains highly dense imagery. Certain states like Indiana and Massachusetts seem to have complete high-density images of their states.

If you wonder where the imagery comes from, it will tell you the source of the information near the bottom of every image. I was looking at Saigon last night and was a bit surprised to find that the imagery was provided courtesy of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, an agency of our Department of Defense. I used to work there in the quaint days when it was called the Defense Mapping Agency. My newest employer, the U.S. Geological Survey provides a lot of the coarser imagery through its Landsat and EROS satellite images. If I have some impatience with the program, it is that I want high imagery photos for the entire planet. But it’s not there. Rest assured that if Google can get them then they will make them available.

Of course the first thing I did was examine from the air all those places where I used to live. But I’ve also had lots of other fun. I’ve looked at airports I’ve flown in and out of. It’s fun to locate them myself by zooming in on a city the navigating to it with my eye. I’ve found things with my eye that I did not think I could find. I found the hotel where I was at in both Montreal and Denver. I found a shortcut that gets me around traffic coming home from work.

While an excellent tool, it is not always perfect. It misplaced one of my residences by about a block. It put a gas station I frequent half a mile up the road. But at least 95% of the time it locates addresses or places correctly. Considering the volume of them out there that is very impressive.

When I was a youth and imagining the future, I figured that we’d have colonies on Mars by 2005. I could only dimly imagine personal computers, cell phones or even the Internet. But none of these things were as far out as Google Earth. I never expected a tool like this in my lifetime. This is Star Trek stuff. That it is available here and now and for free just blows my 48 year old mind.

If you are geography nut as I am then you will find that Google Earth is an addicting tool. Even if you are not you may find that with the easy use of Google Earth you will turn into one too. Moreover, perhaps like me you will get an appreciation for the breadth and depth of our planet. Yes, it is finite, but it fits together in both micro and macro like trillions of tiny puzzle pieces. With Google Earth, you may feel the earth come alive as a living entity for the first time. And for me that’s why it is truly amazing.

July 6th, 2005 at 09:50pm Posted by Mark | Technology | no comments