This is great news from Barry Schwartz this morning…Google has added several new features to the Google Maps API. Hopefully I can use the new features to speed up my USA Tennis Directory site, which uses the API extensively.
Today was the day…for 3 hours you could sneak into the MSN AdCenter program without an invitation. I put it on my schedule, and when I saw that little reminder window pop open, I headed straight for http://adcenter.msn.com. That’s when it all started…
I’ve never had a more frustrating time signing up for anything. First, I open the page up in Firefox:
MSN adCenter does not currently support the web browser you are using. Please sign in using Internet Explorer 6.
What!? Errgh…that’s frustrating. But I can’t be surprised, right? This is MS. I mean, I had to quit using the Hotmail beta for the same reasons. So I reach down and pop open IE7 beta2, surely this will work. Nope, same message. Uh…ok, how about Opera? Strike three. And now I’m out of options…IE 6 isn’t installed on my machine. I guess most people would have given up at this point, but I was persistant. I’ll go to evolt.org and download the IE6 standalone…great idea, Tyson! Guess what? Still no worky. This time I was able to see the signup form, at least some of the time. But the entire time I received intermittent flashes of a box saying “Please wait until we download the reqeusted information…” or something, making it impossible to fill out the form.
I give up! I wanted to signup and spend my money with you, Bill, but you made it impossible for me! What am I to do!!?
(I think MSFT should take some cues from WinkFlash – best ecommerce transaction I’ve ever made. 2 clicks and you’re done.)
Battelle picked up on this story today that’s just hilarious! Here’s the release from Reuters, and here’s some excerpts from this genius at MSFT:
What we’re saying is that in six months’ time we’ll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google…The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant.
So why are they bribing people to use their engine now? I wish I could link back to all the stories in 2004 and early 2005 when Microsoft was going on and on about it’s new search engines, how relevant it was and how much better it was than Google. Oh, and the huge advertising campaign that was all over TV last spring. But strangely enough, MSN was the only engine to continually decline in usage last year!
Listen, I’m all for competition and MSN becoming a legitimate search player, but you gotta stop this bloviating. Just do it, dude.
The 3 amigos appeared on the front of TIME magazine this week, you know, Page, Brin and Schmidt. Very interesting article that gives a glimpse at the serious and humurous sides of each. I like this quote from Larry:
We don’t generally talk about our strategy … because it’s strategic. I would rather have people think we’re confused than let our competitors know what we’re going to do. That’s an easy trade-off.
Maybe they are smarter than all the butterfly-kissing critics out there. I don’t think a day goes by when I don’t see another wisecracker going off about how Google is losing its focus, how they should stick to search, and how the company must be run by a bunch of imbeciles. While that may be true in time, I for one am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. They’ve created the envy of the Valley, successfully gone public and dropped some very cools apps, all without sacrificing an inch of search engine marketshare.
Schweeeeeet! More APIs are on their way!
As a mentioned last week in my post about Opera, one of the things that keeps me on Firefox is the find feature. Well, just this morning I read this from Blake Ross, co-creator of FireFox:
In Firefox, we threw out the Find mechanism applications have used for decades because, frankly, it sucked.
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
Well, the nice folks at Opera decided to treat us on their 10th birthday by offering an ad-free version of the browser for free. I must say, I’m impressed with the quality of this browser. The interface is very nice, and it has some good features not found on other browsers. This may slide in between Firefox and Maxthon for my second place browser, but here are the reasons why it won’t become my default browser:
1) The Find Bar in Firefox is my absolute favorite feature. As much as I use it, I can’t imagine going back to popup find window.
2) The Web Developer Extension in Firefox is very handy…not sure I could do without it.
3) In Firefox I can add search engines to the search toolbar, so I can have Google, Yahoo, MSN and eBay all right there. Don’t think I can do this with Opera.
4) The SEOpen extension in Firefox is a lifesaver for me 4 out of 5 days in the week.
