The Net Takeaway

Great Tools for Video Conversion · 3 days ago, Tech Personal

Was in a jam to convert some files, and pulled down these guys. Very handy. Both for Windows XP, btw; may work on Vista but I haven’t tried them yet.

SUPER © is somewhat complex, but can convert pretty much any audio and video format to any other format. And it’s Free.

Combined Community Codec Pack is a nice collection of Codecs and Filters to play almost any file in your usual players. Really helpful.

BTW, if you run something like Sherlock, you might see an error similar to “Warning: The following codecs were found broken: ff_vfw.dll”. Accd to http://www.cccp-project.net/smf/index.php?topic=2459.0, this is just an error with Sherlock, and the codec should work fine.

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Competitor's Tools, or just Tools? · 11 days ago, Analysis Marketing

I was working with a friend in Sunnyvale and we were trying to solve a problem. After the 4th spreadsheet mailed back and forth and 20 more minutes of “Ok, go to cell C137, and change that formula to, ready, =A27/$Q$5 and copy it into every 3rd column and you’ll have what I have”...

I suggested just going to Google Docs and setting up a quick shared spreadsheet.

Silence on the phone. “But.. but they are a competitor”.

“In what way? Do we sell a spreadsheet?” I wanted to hear her real concern, and this is the standard knee-jerk reaction.

“No, but this is confidential information and we can’t let it out of the enterprise. We have a policy about this, don’t we?” she returned.

“Ok. But I saw some people sending spreadsheets around via Yahoo! IM, which is inherently non-secure. People email conversion reports to client accounts hosted via Gmail; email is non-secure and Gmail is, well, Google. So, sometimes, we do let things out of the enterprise.”

I continued. “And for this sheet, you have Group A and Group B all over the place with no actual client or group names. In fact, other than the headers, this could be data from an chemistry experiment. And yes, we do have a policy, but I’m not giving the data to others or taking it home; I am using a tool hosted outside of our corpnet to process unidentified numbers.”

She jumped in: “But they can see this data! This would reveal confidential information about this advertiser spend if it ever got out, or Google could use it against us in their strategy. Or they just simply leak that we use their office suite. Imagine the press: Yahoo! uses Google to run their business.”

“Of course they can see this data if we use their system. They see millions of bytes of non-identified data per second. I don’t think they will be able to figure out what Group A really is, since I get confused and I do know… And given recent news, aren’t we testing using Google to run part of our business anyway? It’s not like we are getting rid of Excel or OpenOffice (which rocks, by the way), but for interactive spreadsheeting, they have a great solution. By the way, Yahoo! buys search ads on Google to drive traffic to our properties. And guess what: Google buys ads on Yahoo! to drive traffic to their offerings (like Gmail and Docs). So, I guess we are already using each other to run parts of our business.”

She was adamant. “No. We won’t put any of this on Google’s spreadsheets. You are insane to suggest it.”

I was a bit bleary at this point. “Ok, what if we didn’t use any column headers other than pure codes. Group A and B stay, but we change Impressions to S, Clicks to K, and CPM to Q. Its completely contextless, only you and I know what these are, and we can get this done in minutes. And think of how smart this is: They are paying programmers to improve this product so that we, their competition in search, can benefit by being more efficient. If we want to acquire or license SharePoint for Excel or EditGrid or ThinkFree or Zoho or any of the others then I’ll use them. But til then, why not leverage the efforts of our foe to conquer them? It’s like Judo!”

More silence.

“I’m emailing you the sheet again. Please let me know when you get it”. You could hear her gritted teeth.

So, we continued sending the 600k sheet back and forth, and solved the problem. We are both excel wizards, so we knew how to do all the tricks, so there were hassles, but it was comfortable. It also led to lots of copies of this sheet in my inbox and sent mail, and same for her; our mail server sent extra junk, and of course, it will all get backed up.

So, I ask you, my audience. You work at big and small companies, publicly traded and not. Think of this as a business school case study. Comment away, on the below or on anything else.

Is there a problem with using a non-secure external environment like public Google Docs for business collaboration? Was I really insane (I mean, on just this point, not fair to bring in other insane behaviors I may or may not have done.) Ignore the fact that you can buy more configurable versions, I mean just going to docs.google.com and firing it up. You get to choose who sees your sheets, but anything is hackable at the end of the day.

What about when the external environment is a direct competitor to a mainline business arm?

If its obfuscated (security through obscurity! Yeah!) enough, is there still a harm?

There is a corporate policy about information transmission (like every company has). Should it apply here? Is that a good reason not to even consider using an external tool?

Have you tried any of these collaborative spreadsheets? It completely changes how you interact with others when solving numeric issues. The efficiencies are really amazing, and they revolutionize what you use a spreadsheet for. Make dashboards for groups, plan shared travel, co-solve Sudoku, play battleship. Try one if you haven’t, links above.

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Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and Virtual PC · 14 days ago, Tech

Update
Accd to comment below (Thanks, Jerry!), in comments on site Arcane Code

Hi! I was getting the same error message trying both booting into live environment and install mode. Adding boot parameters noapic nolapic and vga=791 solved the problem for me.

I’ll try that next but wanted to put it here in case you guys have time to try it before I do.

Original Post: ================

I’ve written before about my fun with Virtual PC and Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 7.10 and No Mouse on Virtual PC
Ubuntu 7.04 and No Mouse on Virtual PC
All Nettakeaway articles with Ubuntu

Now, with the latest release of 8.04 Hardy Heron ISO, I can’t even get the LiveCD to boot. I get to the Select language screen, I select English, then to the “Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer”. It loads Kernel quickly, then I get “An unrecoverable processor error has been encountered. The virtual machine will reset now.”

There’s probably some parameter here or there that I need to set, but yet again, the most popular Linux config out there somehow failed to test on the free virtual environment owned by the largest software company in the world. I know Linux guys’ disdain for MS, but come on.

So, I’m sure I can install it to a drive and all will work. But right now, I’ve got nothing to say about it, and that’s not good.

I will say that Innotek’s VirtualBox, now part of Sun, loaded the LiveCD flawlessly with really great performance. An amazing open source product, I highly recommend it. Download it here.

BTW, I have no idea if the mouse will work or not… but I would check those links above and be prepared.

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But its good for you... · 16 days ago, Personal Trivial

Europa Cafe, 1412 Broadway, NYC.

Small Salad plastic bowl, no toppings = $3.25
Ingredients (tuna fish, sundried tomatoes, chickpeas) = $4.50

Tax to total = $8.40

I guess that’s priceless.

But really feels more like a total ripoff.

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IndexTools migrating towards Free... · 24 days ago, Tech

Dennis Mortensen, head of IndexTools, puts it a bit differently than I do… IndexTools (Yahoo!) Web Analytics goes FREE!

I would caveat this by pointing out that its not totally open to the world yet.

Further to this, it should be noted that Yahoo! (I should probably teach myself to say – we – at some point) does not intend to add any new partnerships or direct clients in the short to midterm, while we prepare for the next rollout wave.

So, current customers can stop paying, current agencies can stop charging for use (if they wish to pass through the cost savings), and we start the journey towards totally free. But if aren’t currently a user, you have to wait just a bit longer. Or cozy up to some of the great reseller/partner agencies, perhaps starting here.

But it’ll be worth the wait. Because the price is not the value of this offering: free is just the candy coating on top. Don’t judge it by free, judge it by what it can can do for you. Soon, you’ll wonder why you ever used anything else.

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Can't Join Google App Engine · 28 days ago, Tech

I mean, yes, you or I will be able to join it in the future, but for the moment, I don’t know what I would do there. If you haven’t heard, look at Google App Engine. You see, even if you join, you can’t join from a database sense.

That is, it’s an impressive offering with all sorts of cool stuff, akin to Amazon’s services, and has glowing reviews (like this one from Niall Kennedy) but it’s missing one basic thing.

It has no relational database. That’s right, no joining of tables. Welcome back to the glory days of hand merging text files.

Yes, it does have a query language called GQL and there is a full API explained in the Datastore API section, but as they clearly say on the GQL reference page, “A GQL query cannot perform a SQL-like “join” query.”.

At the end of the day, they have chosen to use the classic Google datastore model that works for many… but that I still have trouble with.

Look, Map-Reduce is a classic approach (correct, Google did not invent it, but they sure made an amazingly powerful implementation of it) and there are a lot of things one can do with it. But I am not a good enough Object-oriented programmer to use flat datastores. I like relational databases. I guess I am an becoming an oldie.

It’s just disappointing. All sorts of things will port right over there (Python, Django) but to then have to work around this annoying deficiency seems like a complete missed opportunity. Imagine the boost Google could have given to, say, PostgreSQL, the last remaining fully independent open source database with a sizable user base. (BTW, if you like MySQL, you’ll LOVE Postgres).

It is just a beta/developer release. Perhaps they will roll out this stuff in the future; we’ll have to wait and see.

Or, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. Maybe it’s just time to learn hard-core objects, where the app describes relationships between entities and middleware manages the join process “behind the scenes” so to speak.

Either way, it’s still a nice offering. So, Amazon, Google… next would have to be MS, Adobe (Flash hosting, watch and see), and maybe even another large internet player?

PS: Lots and lots of articles on this, but the quickest example on how to work around this was Google App Engine: One-to-many JOIN.

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Yahoo! Acquires Indextools · 30 days ago, Tech

(Note: I work at Yahoo!, and I’m jazzed about this acquisition. I am speaking here as a guy who loves web analytics, not as an official Y! spokesperson or anything. So, my opinion here may or may not be shared by folks at Y! and should not be taken as official company stance, policy or anything at all official, actually).

Lot’s of folks don’t know that Yahoo! has some of the premier web analytic talent in the world working here. From founders of companies like Accrue and Keylime through to folks working on analyzing usage data across the largest site in Internet history, we’ve focused on trying to turn data into insights, into something useful about people and their preferences and expectations, into knowledge.

But you can’t always do everything yourself. And sometimes, you come across some more people who “just get it”. So, today, I’m pleased to help announce that Yahoo! has acquired IndexTools. Please see Yahoo! Announces Agreement to Acquire IndexTools’ Analytics Business for the official announcement.

I first encountered these guys a few years ago when working with Tesco’s email at e-Dialog. Tesco, the largest retailer in England and one of the tops in the world, doesn’t trust their data to just anybody (trust me, it really took some time to get that data just for their email!). Even back then, IndexTools had some clever ideas around segmentation and report customization, but they hadn’t made as much penetration to the states. Nevertheless, they had set their sights on the “Omniture” market, and were growing quickly.

Now, they’ve expanded their client base around the world, along with agency reseller partners who use their tool as their primary analytic dashboard for their clients. The tool continues to be a very impressive mix: It has a strong segmentation component, including the ability to mix passed-in variables with web behaviors. It has easy drag and drop report customization, like an Excel Pivot Table online. It features well laid out reports and a pretty good sense of giving reports which are pretty helpful out of the box.

The obvious question you are going to ask: Does this compete with Google Analytics? Well, does BMW compete with Ford? Yes, they both sell cars, but they are attacking different markets with different approaches. There are some wonderful features in Google Analytics, and I use it here on this blog. There are things that Google Analytics does that Indextools does not, and vice versa.

But we came at this from a different direction. You see, Yahoo has a variety of ways to interact with partners and users: you can be a development partner building something around Maps or our other APIs, you can be an advertiser running rich media or search ads or microsites, you can be a small business running your store on Yahoo Shopping (and, yes, you can be a user using RSS or mail or other services: think about what analysis could do for them? Hmmm…) and across all this, we realized that we needed a capability which could analyze usage data across a variety of these modalities and help people working with our functionality to get optimal use out of it.

As part of being a partner, you have to give people ways to understand how their efforts with you are working. So, yeah, from a marketing analysis POV for advertisers with us (we do consider them partners), this tool makes sense; it delivers the power of Omniture for a fraction of the price. It links your marketing to behaviors on your site, with segmentation and other analytics approaches at your fingertips.

But it also will lend itself to the variety of other ways partners work with us: imagine giving that “maps functionality” developer an understanding of how their tool is being used. Imagine helping people using any of the APIs we offer understand how to optimize their site, drive traffic, and get better usage.

Google Analytics is a basic tool, and it delivers some pretty basic site analytics (though I like the testing component, it’s pretty advanced for a basic tool). It’s not aimed at the guys who really want to understand their data, nor is it aimed at the variety of ways people can work with Google (it ignores all that API stuff, for example). We see Indextools as the foundational start to understanding not just marketing and its impact on site behavior, but how to understand your online site usage to achieve your goals, be they commerce, fame, or just a mention on Techcrunch. Not many companies have the capability to deliver on that story.

In fact, we looked at most of the tools on the market today: all the majors, and many startups. Few had the combination of capabilities to deliver on this approach: strong event-driven data capability with an attractive reporting front end, and a back end which is flexible in its approach to meeting the analytic need of a very different web from the one Omniture, Webtrends, etc. started out measuring. Not to say that those tools suck (because they don’t, not completely), but that we were looking for a unique mix, and Indextools had it.

Go click around their site: IndexTools.com. Look at the functionality. Like I said, it’s certainly not Google Analytics; its more powerful and yes, a bit more complex on the interface (at this point). It probably won’t be free to everyone initially. In fact, it may never go free and unfettered; you may have to partner with Yahoo! to get access to this functionality (which might simply mean advertise with a search ad, but you get the idea). You’ll hear more about how things will fall out in the near future (BTW, the world changes on a daily basis, so keep watching the news (cough, hostile takeover attempt, cough)).

If you just want to get page counts, there are lots of free offerings, and Google Analytics is great at this. But if you want to see what it’s like to have access to Omniture-like capability without having to pay Omniture, you want to see how a data-driven approach to the world looks, if you want to see how analytics can improve every aspect of interaction on the web, then keep your eyes on what we’re doing with IndexTools.

I think you’ll start to see Yahoo! as more than a media company. You’ll start to see what we can do with data and technology (both invented here, acquired, and partners), things we’ve used in-house but are now starting to share with the world. You’ll see Yahoo! as a technology company. As an analytics company. And you’ll think about analytics in a new way because of what we’re doing.

Congratulations to Indextools!

PS: For some additional perspective, check out Eric Peterson’s post.

Bob Page (mentioned above) also posted about the acquisition.

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The Ring · 32 days ago, Personal

I had a nice Saturday night. I got a skybox seat at Madison Square Garden to a sold out show. Food and drinks in the rafters, looking down through the hanging LED screens as strains of an instrumental version of Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up rose throughout the arena.

The circus sure has changed.

Yes, I was at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus. Note that, officially, it is not a Circus, it is “a wacky and whimsical circus spectacular”. Anyway, we had the opportunity to join some friends in their box at MSG to see the show. You go in through a side entrance, up to a 3rd floor restaurant and bar, then a second elevator takes you to the 10th floor to go to the box.

The boxes are all about the size of an average NYC Hotel room. Each has a bathroom, 2 rows of seats (7 or so per row) with ledges for food/drinks, and a standing area. Ice, fridges, freezers, and a sink along one wall, a table for food on the other. The view is literally from the roof; you look straight out to the retired number hangers. There is glass in front of you, but it’s only half height, which scared us when Sam started running up and down stairs and jumping onto seats. Unlike other box seats I’ve seen in other arenas, there were only a few, somewhat small, TVs, most of which looked pretty beaten up.

There is also a menu of food offerings. If you thought NYC was expensive before, you’ve seen nothing like this: $40 for a tray of chicken nuggets and pigs-in-a-blanket, enough to serve 4 or so kids. This goes up to $99 for a tray of pasta. 6 packs of beer were $30 for Bud Lite. It was staggering. Oh, and they confiscate any food/drink you bring in, including water (we were searched at the gate).

Hey, the circus souvenirs aren’t any better: from $15 for a “program” booklet to $25 for a flashing light spinner, its easy to see where the profit comes from in the circus game… well, from this stuff and the expensive tickets. But enough carping about cash.

Anyway, its clear that Ringling has had to face the world of Cirque du Soleil who changed the circus into “performance art”, the world of animal cruelty charges at every turn (they were protesting outside of the Garden, pushing brochures into kids faces), video games, fragmented media, and the general early tweening of youth.

How did they do? Not bad. Other than that mistake of using Prodigy tunes to soundtrack an act (with no words, thankfully, and no one I was with recognized the tune), they had a very clean Broadway style of songs and “parades”. Act 1 had lots of Cirque style acrobatics, very little trapeze. A very impressive 7 motorcycles in a cage was really cool… but the younger kids didn’t care much about.

The 2nd act had the animals: no lions, no Gunther Gebel-Williams who died in 2001, but an OK tiger act and a very nice elephants act. The kids were pretty rapt for the elephants, but even I was bored with the tigers.

Kids of Sam’s age, 3-4, don’t yet see the danger in some of the feats, so the trapeze and some of the other high-flier acts didn’t hold their interests.

The clowns also didn’t have as much physical comedy as I recall. There was the standard recurring joke of the ringmaster’s hat, which is ok, but I remember seeing clowns with big shoes, all climbing out of 1 small car, and lots of broad physical comedy. There was some cutesy, but the opening act was a dog run with frisbee catching. Come on, this is NYC; I can see that on Sunday afternoons in the park. Give me some clowning!

Also, the circus benefits from being down closer to the surface. Lots of comedy was missed because the clowns scatter and play to their section. From up top, you can see all of it, but miss all the details. Also, the trapeze act was obscured by the LED light show screens, so we only saw spinning feet and hands, never the whole person. But it was a pretty comfortable way to watch the show, esp. with a bathroom right there.

So, the box was fun, but we worry: this was Sam’s first time ever in a stadium. I sure hope he doesn’t think every visit to a show will be like this! The other problem, of course, is that he wants to see elephants every day now. Thank goodness for Flickr.

So, go see the circus. Like everything else, it’s not like you remember it, and don’t expect the kids to love it all… but they parts they like, they will remember forever.

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Right Mouse Click on a Mac · 32 days ago, Tech

Saw this on a mailing list, and decided to save it. Not saying I’m going to get a Mac, but we’ll see…

How to “right-mouse click” on a Mac? There are a few ways:

You can plug a two (or more) button mouse in
You can hold down the Ctrl key and click for the context click
You can tap two spread fingers on the pad for the context click
You can drag two spread fingers for 2-dimensional scrolling

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Super Pii Pii Brothers · 38 days ago, Trivial

Finally, the perfect use for a Wii on this first day in April.

Super Pii Pii Brothers at ThinkGeek

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