Friday, February 18, 2005

Today's Morning Coffee Notes was recorded in the pre-dawn hours in Atlanta. Lots of stuff about Google and Smart Tags. 

Tod Maffin explains the first podcast network which launched on the 14th. 

I spoke with Marissa Mayer from Google today, briefly. We'll talk again next week, giving me a chance to become familiar with the toolbar, and they're going to study the issues raised by Microsoft's Smart Tags. My goal is to come up with the line discussed earlier, not sure if they agree. 

eWeek: Google's Tool Bar Links Stir Debate. 

4:30PM: Arrived safely in Waycross, GA. 

The Media Drop reports that the Business Wire now supports RSS. 

Jeremy Bowers on Message Integrity. 

I stopped at a random truck stop on I-75 south of Atlanta and it has better wifi than the last few hotels I was at, and it's free, and I get free refills for my unsweet ice tea. Life is good! 

I'm talking with Google PR people later today. To summarize what I said in the podcast, the question is where is the line, what's permissible content modification and what's not? Certainly there is a line, right? We don't mind them changing the font or size of our text, or even converting it to voice to make it accessible to deaf people. Then, the question of trust comes up. When Google bought Blogger, they stated clearly that they would not do anything to tilt the table in favor of Blogger, but shortly after, within weeks, they broke that promise, ironically, using the Google Toolbar. Even worse, they would not engage in dialog. Those were very difficult times, and the people who were responsible may not even be at Google now. Who knows. But the fact is, you can't go by corporate promises in areas like this, and even if you could, their promises are not binding on other companies. It all may sound theoretic, but I've been around this block many times over many years. You have to have a sense where the line is, and not budge one inch. As I said in the podcast, we'll likely have some powerful allies on this one, it's content vs technology, the First Amendment and commerce, free speech and money (lots of it). 

Technorati is organizing a "Web Spam Squashing Summit" to, according to Jeremy Zawodny, "get the tool makers in a room together to talk about web spam, share info, and brainstorm." It's on February 24, in (I guess) Santa Clara, CA. I hope they invited someone from UserLand, because I use their tools. Also would be great to see Feedster and PubSub participating, so we know it's really open. What about Google? Don't they have something to contribute? The list of "key industry players" seems a bit short. Maybe this is something users could help with? Just an idea. 

Susan Mernit wonders about the NY Times acquisition of About.com.