Unlikely Words » google

Facebook is Google

aaron cohen — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 15:04:47 +0000

In an article about Google's recent surprise company-wide raise and bonus this about Facebook's staff.

Of the more than 1,900 Facebook employees with resumes on LinkedIn, 300 -- around 15% of Facebook's staff -- list Google as a past employer.

Is that a lot? Because it sounds like a lot to me. Also, the person that leaked the raise/bonus info to Business Insider got fired. They presumably will not be receiving a raise or a bonus. Unless they go work for Facebook.

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Google and Twitter Idea

aaron cohen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:23:28 +0000

Michael Wolff has a Future of the Internet piece that's infinitely better than Newsweek's 1995 article about the internet not having a future.

One question I had is, in the article, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter says Twitter would generate "a billion search queries a day in the coming yeah." So how much do you think Google would pay for a little button next to every Tweet that says, "Google This". And you could highlight the terms you want to search on Google.

Wolff also talked about Barry Diller's new media company model which could have brands owning entire shows instead of buying 30 second ads. I've been waiting for that forever. Of course, I think it will only work for a year or so, while the brand can get press for the new type of advertising, but it's worth a shot.

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YouTube Adds Captions For All Videos

aaron cohen — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:25:50 +0000

I couldn't tell from this article about YouTube adding captions to all videos whether you will be able to get a transcript of the video or just see captions while the video is playing. If you can get a transcript, did YouTube/Google just release a free audio transcription service? I can see uploading interviews to YouTube and then cleaning up the voice recognition mistakes. It would sure beat typing out an entire interview.

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Quick Thoughts on Google Buzz

aaron cohen — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:13:12 +0000

As of this writing, I still don't have Google Buzz on my computer - these thoughts were gleaned from find it enabled on my iPhone. First reaction: Holy crap, I love it.

This app wouldn't have worked 3 years ago, but Facebook and Twitter have been doing heavy lifting, training "Social Media Experts" and technophobes alike how to (over)share. Broadly generalizing here, but a lot of people probably find their Facebook accounts bloated with too many people they don't care enough about. By limiting Google Buzz to the users you communicate most with, Google has made the hard cuts for you.

I wonder if people will share differently than they do on FB or Twitter. What do you think?

Microsoft probably invested millions of dollars and several months to come up with a word they could turn into a verb like 'To Google', but Buzz feels natural right off the bat. For what it's worth, I like 'to Buzz' infinitely more than I like 'to Tweet'.

Since I only saw it on my iPhone, this may change, but it's potential as a mobile app is amazing.

Privacy issues aside, the Buzz Map and the "Nearby" feature of the mobile app are incredibly voyeuristic and addictive. With links to a users Google Profile, it also makes the web a lot more local and personal.

What will Facebook's undoubtedly ham-handed response be? Another move that outrages privacy experts, looks bad, and is hard to use?

When Google exposes my data, somehow I expect it, maybe I'm an apologist. When Facebook does it, people get MAD MAD MAD.

I think Twitter remains relatively useful, but this hurts Facebook a lot.

Also, whither Foursquare?

What do you think?

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How Much is a Tweet Worth?

aaron cohen — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:14:03 +0000

The article's not online anymore, but Fimoculous captured the quotation that Google and Microsoft are paying a $0.03 CPM for Tweets. That's more than I would have paid... ###Possibly related posts:A Month’s Worth of Links About Newspapers Is It Worth Your Time? Google Reader, Like, Follow, Share ### Possibly related posts:

25 Media Maxims from Ken Auletta

aaron cohen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:02:53 +0000

Ken Auletta from the New Yorker wrote a book about Google, “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It” and before he published it, he cut the last chapter of 25 media maxims. Click the link above to read the chapter, or see below to see them in cribbed form. You might recognize the first maxim from Steve Jobs' Stanford graduation address (video below via AllThingsD)

1. “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
2. Passion Wins
3. Focus is Required
4. Vision is Required
5. A Team Culture is Vital
6. Treat Engineers as Kings
7. Treat Customers Like a King
8. Brand Often Means Trust
9. Every Company is a Frenemy
10. The Speed Of Change Accelerates
11. Adapt or Die
12. “Life is long but time is short.”
13. A “Free” Web Is Not Always Free
14. Digital is Different
15. Don’t Think of The Web as Another Distribution Platform
16. Technology Provides Potent New Targeting Tools
17. The Web Forges Communities, and Threatens Privacy
18. Beware The Government Bear
19. Paradox:The Web Forges Both Niche and Large Communities
20. More Media Concentration, Yet More Choice
21. Luck Matters
22. No More Old Media Magic
23. No More New Media Magic, Either
24. Don’t Ignore the Human Factor
25. There are no Certitudes

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Google Reader, Like, Follow, Share

aaron cohen — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:54:19 +0000

4 different people mentioned to me today that I ended up in their Google Reader at some point and they wanted to know why. I had noticed that certain articles I was scanning were "liked" by people I didn't know, which I thought was weird. Obviously, Google made a change. To me it looks like a strike against both Facebook AND Twitter. Not only are you able to connect with and read the articles shared by people you do know (Facebook), but you'll be able to do the same with people you don't know, as well (Twitter). Seems like a good idea to me.

Oh, and you're damn right I'm gonna "share" this, Captain Obvious, you better "like" it.

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Google Voice Transcripts

matt — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:24:37 +0000

I have Google Voice, because I signed up for Grand Central ages ago, and I decided to finally start using my Google Voice number for "professional" purposes. Right now I just have my Google Voice number forward to my cell phone. The trade-off, of course, is that I'd have to trade the totally awesome iPhone visual voicemail for Google's speech-to-text voicemail. I asked Rachel to call me to test it out, with the following results:

hey john it's me i'm downstairs printed diapers and the dryer hope doing internally if you're having a nice time upstairs playing the leapfrog musical what's it i'm realizing that i forgot to put the papers that you had in the living room from yesterday i forgot to put them in with this paperwork but i will put them in tomorrow morning's okay i will be back upstairs and i'm looking forward to getting the babies some possible fred soft switch they should be genetically program full of hey alright bye

So clearly that works perfectly.

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Share RSS Feeds on Google Reader?

aaron cohen — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:44:57 +0000

In the last year, I've convinced 5 or 6 people to start using RSS in general and Google Reader specifically. Without a doubt, one of the first questions they ask after understanding the technology is, "OK, what feeds should I read now." I think what happens is people recognize what they'll be able to do with RSS (follow their favorite websites) and they want to do more of it.

Google makes it easy to share specific items from your feeds with your friends, going so far as to give you a personalized page with your shared items on it (careful, you might just start a blog by accident). However, there's currently no way to share which feeds you're subscribed to making it hard to truly evangelize this product. Get on that Google.

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Google to Buy The New York Times?

aaron cohen — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:34:38 +0000

From this Mark Bowden article about Arthur Sulzberger Jr this quotation:

Among the other prospective buyers whose names have surfaced in the press are Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York; Google; and even, perish the thought, the press baron Rupert Murdoch, whose Wall Street Journal has emerged as journalistic competition for the Times in a way it never was before.

I keep harping on this, but I really don't see how newspaper's survive without coming up with a new model. One such model could be finding a corporate patron, like, uh... Google.tra

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Locksmiths in New York

aaron cohen — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:09:57 +0000

Bruce Schneier has a write up about lock smiths in New York spamming Google Maps with multiple fake business addresses. The result is a single locksmith showing up in every neighborhood in the city regardless of the location of their actual office.

I remember this happening in Somerville when we moved in a couple years ago, so I don't think this is isolated to New York City. What other businesses would find this practice useful? Taxis, courier service... There's got to be others.

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Is Google Voice for Me?

aaron cohen — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:44:58 +0000

I don't get enough phone calls to need Google Voice, not that I don't want it, and Pogue makes me think I could get rid of my text messaging plan and text with impunity?

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Syncing Google Calendar with iCal

matt — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:04:14 +0000

Have a Google Calendar and want to sync it with iCal? Check this out (via KFM).

Only works with Leopard (not a big deal) and will only sync calendars you own. The latter is a dealbreaker for me (Rachel and I share our Google Calendars, and I need to see both in iCal and on my iPhone) so I'm sticking with Spanning Sync for now. If you only have a single calendar, though, this looks pretty sweet.

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Does Anyone Speak Portuguese?

aaron cohen — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:12:07 +0000

Here's a link to a Brazilian blog that posted a link to download the last album of the band that I was tour manager for. Go check it out, it's a good album. Anyway, if you speak Portuguese, I'd love to know what this says. For what it's worth, the link was happened upon by my friend organically. That is totally found without Google, which I thought was a funny coincidence.

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Text Messaging Added to GChat – Could Be Better!

aaron cohen — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:21:01 +0000

Answering all my prayers (well, the ones about adding text messages to Gmail), Google has added text messaging capability. It's only in chat mode for now, but can straight texting from Gmail be far behind? Thinking this is probably for Android, but who knows. I was hoping that a response from the phone to the text would automagically save the person's cell phone email address in your phone, but alas. Google is too tricky for that.

Text Messaging in Chat
Send SMS text messages right from Gmail. You chat from your comfy computer and reach your friends on the go; they get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards.

To get it to work, go to the Lab tab in the Settings menu and enable this feature.

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