The latest from TechCrunch
- AJAX Search: Is Google Sweating Bing Or Just Feeling The Need For Speed?
- WITN?: Exit ignorance, pursued by a bear. The truth behind Obama's plan to take over the Internet
- Vidly: Twitvid.io Changes Names, Direction, And Gets Funding
| AJAX Search: Is Google Sweating Bing Or Just Feeling The Need For Speed? | Top |
| Since February, Google has been quietly testing a new type of search functionality: AJAX search. Basically, Google uses more advanced JavaScript to make search result pages load even faster by only loading new information as needed on new queries. And while it doesn’t appear to be rolling out on a large scale yet, more users are starting to notice it. One such user is Mike Stoppelman, a software engineer at Yelp. But Stoppelman’s take on it is interesting, and worth noting because before he worked at Yelp, he was an engineer at Google for four years. As Stoppelman sees it, Google is bringing out AJAX Search to combat Microsoft’s Bing search product, which has garnered quite a bit of attention since its launch a few months ago. Some claim that Bing is faster than Google, but an AJAX Google would undoubtedly be faster than Bing. Of course, as I mentioned, Google has been testing this since well before Bing was born, but the timing of a wider roll-out could well be a result of Bing. Google has denied making changes as a result of competitors in the past, most recently for its new “Caffeine” test , but at some point they have to concede that they do watch what rivals are doing and change plans accordingly — it would be foolish not to. It’s worth noting that Caffeine appears to use AJAX search results as well. There’s also the issue of whether or not this speed increase really matters all that much? After all, both Google and Bing are now serving up results in fractions of a second, and any increase probably isn’t going to be perceived in a meaningful way by end users. But remember, this is Google. A move to shave off fractions of a second definitely seems like something they would focus on, knowing that those fractions add up. Shave enough fractions of a second off of everyone’s searches and you’ll be supplying people with more time to do more searches — which of course means more ads served, and most importantly, more money. So how will you know if you’re getting the AJAX results? Look at the URL. A normal Google Search has something like the following at its end: /search?q=QUERY An AJAX search result replaces that with something that looks like: /#q=QUERY As I mentioned, if you don’t see the AJAX results in your regular Google results, you can see it on the Caffeine test page here . [photo: Paramount Pictures] Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
| WITN?: Exit ignorance, pursued by a bear. The truth behind Obama's plan to take over the Internet | Top |
| Feeling a bit under the weather yesterday - presumably my body’s reaction to the fact that San Francisco has suddenly become sunny - I decided to take a jaunt around the Internet for column ideas. My deadline was a whole 24 hours away, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, right? My first find was this story about a bear who had got trapped in a Colorado skate park, presumably after breaking in to practice his Ollies, or whatever it is bears do on skateboards. The bear was finally rescued when townsfolk dropped a ladder into the park, allowing him to climb to freedom. To any normal person, a bear trapped in a skate park would be little more than a heartwarming newsbite; a quirky story to distract from another week of war and terrorism and kidnapped children living in back yards in Antioch. But not for the lazy tech columnist looking for inspiration. For the lazy tech columnist looking for inspiration, a bear trapped in a skate park easily becomes a metaphor for the attitudes of certain Silicon Valley types who are trapped in their little Northern California bubble and don’t realise - or care - that there’s a world outside. And the ladder, I suppose, represents the columnist whose job it is to provide escape from the ignorance. Perfect. Another Saturday box ticked. Move on, nothing to see here. But just as I was about to shut down Firefox and start scribbling skateboard jokes in my special columnist’s notepad, another headline caught my eye, this time from CNET. It read: ‘ Bill would give president emergency control of Internet ‘. Wow, I thought, this Bill guy sounds like a dick. But no, as it turned out, the Bill in question is the Rockefeller-Snowe bill (S.773), notable both for being the first piece of US legislation to be named after a Fatboy Slim track and for the fact that it gives the President the power to shut down the Internet whenever he feels like it. Unsurprisingly, the 1000+ comments on the article are somewhat hostile, helped by a link from Matt Drudge who thoughtfully added his own scare quotes around the word ‘emergency’. ‘This has nothing to do with “prorecting” [sic] the internet,’ wrote one commenter, ‘and everything to do with the power drunk, dicatorial [sic] Obama engaging in an unprecedendted [sic], unconstitutional power grab, orchestrated by his psychotic lunatic fringe “czars”.’ A bold statement, from that rare person who can spell ‘psychotic’ and ‘czars’ only to stumble over ‘protecting’. ‘Can you say, “Caesar Chavez?”‘, asked another, presumably rhetorically - while a third managed to wrangle two talking points into one meaningless one with: ‘Of course this goes along with the Obamacare nonsense that the government will have direct access to your bank accounts if this Obamacare BS becomes law. Hitler all over again’. Well said, Sir. It’s a scandal that Adolf Hitler’s cybersecurity bill and healthcare proposals don’t get the criticism they deserve. But behind the megaditto rhetoric, some of the commenters do actually have a point. Unlike the previous administration’s PATRIOT act, which promoted freedom of information by wiretapping every man, woman and child in America, the Democrats’ Rockefeller-Snowe bill does sound pretty creepy and invasive. All the President needs to do is declare a state of emergency and he’ll have the right to disconnect US citizens from the web, access their computers and even hack into the servers of private companies. That’s a horrendous power-grab for use in an unspecified emergency. Or at least it would be. If that’s what the bill actually proposed. In fact, in its current form, the worst the bill does is to clarify the President’s existing power to take limited control of communications networks in the case of national emergency or war. Like President Bush was able to order all planes to be grounded on September 11th, the bill would allow President Obama to ground parts of the Internet in similar circumstances. But at this stage even those powers aren’t set in stone - the bill is still in draft form, having already been redrafted after early objections that the wording was too vague. And it’s still too vague, to the point where Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, says : “we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.” Indeed. What we really have here is a classic situation of an ambiguously-drafted bill, not even close to passing but which has the capacity to generate some pretty scary headlines. Last week it was death panels, this week it’s Obama stealing our Internets. Like a bear trapped in a skate park, critics - mainly of the President rather than the bill - are running round and round, without any kind of information ladder to help them out of their pit of paranoia. And so, as ever, it falls to me to provide that missing ladder. Don’t ask me how ( *cough* French hacker *cough* ), but I’ve managed to get hold of a copy of a secret memo sent to Senators Rockefeller and Snowe by the Whitehouse, outlining exactly what powers Obama wants over the Internet, and why. I think you’ll agree, it makes pretty interesting reading… Hey Senators, Please find below President Obama’s wishlist for taking control of the Internet. As promised, these powers will only be used in the event of a national ‘emergency’ ;-)…. 1) In the event of an ‘emergency’ drop in poll numbers, the President needs to ensure that copies of Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity’ and Rush Limbaugh’s ‘The Way Things Ought To Be’ are automatically deleted from the nation’s Kindles and replaced with ‘The Audacity of Hope’. (Note: contrary to previous draft, there is now no need to extend this to Ann Coulter’s ‘Treason’ as it is already basically unreadable) 2) Should the US deficit pass 20 trillion, the President will need to take over private email servers to send an ‘emergency’ 419 scam message to every American citizen. In these emails, the President will invite Americans to send him their bank account information, so that he might use it to process the fortune of his late uncle. Obviously, he will request their confidential co-operation in this matter, in exchange for a share of the proceeds. 3) Following the recent successful trial in France, the President requires the ability to turn the iPhones of any of America’s enemies into improvised exploding devices. Or ‘Freedom Phones’. 4) Should US unemployment levels continue to rise, the President needs the ability to order the shut down of World of Warcraft, forcing millions of Americans to go out and get fucking jobs. 5) In case of ‘emergency’ bad press over a badly-drafted cybersecurity bill, the President will require unfettered access to Drudge Report servers to delete all ’scare quotes’. This would prevent Drudge from using the headline ‘Bill would give president “emergency” control of Internet’ to suggest that Obama might just decide to nuke the entire web because he’s having a bad day. 6) If the bad press ‘emergency’ continues, Obama will need to shore up support by ordering that the hashtag ‘#Ilovethepresident’ be appended to all tweets. In response to specific threats, he may also request that trending topics be replaced with a new, approved list including: #everythingisfine, #nothingtoseehere, #lookoverthere, #areyoukiddingme and #theotherguywasfarworse Ok, that’s all for now! Let’s pass this thing, comrades! Liebe Grüße, Caesar Chavez Policy Director, The White House So there you have it. The bear of ignorance, rescued by the ladder of facts. My work here is done: let the mature, informed debate begin. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
| Vidly: Twitvid.io Changes Names, Direction, And Gets Funding | Top |
| When Twitvid.io launched back in May, it was amid a mad rush of startups trying to become the “TwitPic of Video” for Twitter. This included another startup, Twitvid.com , which caused a lot of confusion among users. It also apparently brought out the cease and desist orders from Leo Laporte , who has the rights to the TWiT (This Week in Tech) name. Needless to say, the timing was right for a name change for Twitvid.io, and so they’ve done that. They’re now Vidly . But the change is about more than just removing user confusion and clearing up legal issues, it also represents a shift away from a sole focus on Twitter. Vidly’s new goal is to be the most convient way for people to share video on the web, no matter what service they use. And they’re going to start that by launching an iPhone app that will allow users to easily upload videos they take to a range of services including yes, Twitter and Facebook. And Vidly (which can also be spelled Vid.ly, as they own that domain as well as the dot com) already has a big time supporter: California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, when he’s not busy doing Q&A sessions at Twitter HQ , the Governator is using Vidly to spread his agenda. Here’s Schwarzenegger’s page on the site. While the first step is an iPhone app (alongside the website), Vidly co-founder Chrys Bader also says that BlackBerry and Android products are in the pipeline. “ Basically, we want to be anywhere where there is a video audience. And not necessarily just in the U.S. either, ” Bader tells us. Along those lines, the company has taken a $500,000 angel round of funding from the likes of Ron Conway and other individual investors. The money is being used to staff up, since the company currently only has 2 employees. Before Vidly was Twitvid.io, it was known as Fliggo , a Y Combinator startup. As Vidly, the startup still faces plenty of competition, though many are solely focused on Twitter video sharing right now. CrunchBase Information Vidly Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
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