Adwidgets

I’ve thought this idea was interesting for some time now – ads merging with widgets.

Online ads are getting smarter and more interactive. In other words, you can do more with an ad than just click on  it and go to another web page. It’s not that difficult to build more interactivity into the ad itself.

So, if a user is somewhat interested, they can learn more about the product or so some limited searching and interacting – without leaving the web page they are visiting. 

I wonder if these ads will be more successful, more annoying, or some mix of both.

Google is working on these smarter ads to be part of their burgeoning advertising empire.

Google Gadget Ads, which are being tested by a small, select group of Google AdWords advertisers, are being expanded to include more advertisers, according to Google. The company is hoping the new service will lead to people viewing more ads online. Google said Gadget Ads will allow advertisers to interact with users in new ways and hold users’ attention for longer time periods than regular ads. Advertisers will also be able to see how many users interact with the ads, as well as how they interacted with the ads, Google said.

Gadget Ads are small software applications, or widgets, that combine real-time data feeds, images and video with traditional advertising content, according to the statement. They can be developed using Flash, HTML or both, Google said. The ads look like small Web pages within a Web page, and users can also embed them into their blogs or iGoogle home pages. Gadget ads are built on an open system, so anyone can set up and run ads on the Google content network, Google said.

Google tries out interactive ad format.

 

Interesting Links

• Advertising Lab: future of advertising and advertising technology: TI Shows Cell Phone Projector
• FOXNews.com – Tech Experts: ‘Widgets’ Are Huge Security Risk
• Recruiters’ New Secret Weapon: Psych Tests that Predict Job Performance on BNET
• Google tries out interactive ad format
• Google Cashing in on Widget Craze
• Email: Yahoo Mail Innovates, Gmail Stagnates – Lifehacker
• ‘An innovation calendar is a must for every company’ – Daily News & Analysis
• 7 Stupid Thinking Errors You Probably Make – lifehack.org
• CIOs Seen as Obstacle to Innovation
• Google Official Leading Health Projects Resigns – WSJ.com
• Vitamin D increases life expectancy, study finds

The Woz

The Woz spoke here at Idea Festival last night. Also known as Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple computer, inventor, entrepreneur, and just all around top-tier intellect.

Louisville loved Woz. We all enjoyed the energetic speech.

The story of Steve Wozniak is a story of innovation and entrepreneurism. Some key things I took away:

• Follow your passions
• Take ‚Äúno‚Äù for an answer  ‚Äì if big companies refuse your ideas, that is – (then just do them yourself)
• Team up with other forward-facing people (there is really only a very small percentage of real innovative entrepreneurs, when you find them, keep in touch, team up)
• Be curious
• Don‚Äôt give up
• Have fun: Woz is the type of guy that is always having fun and laughing. This is your life- have fun and laugh as you pursue your passions.

Robot Swarms

Yesterday James McLurkin, the MIT based leader in the field of distributed robotics, spoke here at Idea Festival.

Distributed robotics is where you take separate robots, program each with simple rules, and attempt to use this method to achieve complex results. It is a little like nature. A single bee is not that smart, but the ability of the hive to act and adapt is phenomenal. We are always trying to imitate  the wonders of nature with technology. Nature obtains optimal results with simple rules.

He considers “swarms” to be the future of robotics.

What’s the point? Why have a swarm of robots instead of one big robot? One reason is the a swarm can do things that single robots cannot. For example, a massive search operation in a collapsed building is perfect for a swarm of small robots to team up and search. This is teamwork – for robots.

These distributed robotics experts like James are inspired by behaviors of bees, ants and termites.

5 Things & the Future of Search

Craig Neville-Manning (Chief Engineer, Google NY office) spoke yesterday here at Idea Festival. He outlined 5 core things he wanted us to know:

1. Think broadly
"Computer science is not just about computers."

Computer science is about building things that change the world. It is about research. And, it is about people.

2. Enable others
Google Maps is an example. Technology’s value can be increased by allowing others to build upon what you have. They will build things you may not even have predicted. Google maps has been used to map businesses or crime locations, by being mixed with other data.

3. Use deep technology
Contextual spell-check is an example he gave. Google is able to use their vast data about spellings and all the wrong ways people spell things – to help users predict the right way to spell something.

4. Build for scale
"Dumb, unreliable, massively parallel, on lots of data."
Google does not try to make computers perfect. The most cost effective path for large computing situations is to use low-cost imperfect hardware, and make up for it with massive redundancy, running massively parallel.

5. Detect trends
Google Trends and Zeitgeist are examples. Trends can be detected using massive amounts of user data.

The Future

When asked about the future, he felt that today’s search technology will look primitive in 5 to 10 years. Verbal communications will continue to progress, where one day searching the Internet may just become talking to the Internet.

Peeking under Google's Hood

I am here having a great time at Idea Festival in Louisville, KY.

Yesterday Craig Neville-Manning (Chief Engineer, NY office) spoke on Google’s technology and architecture.

This is really the architecture of the future in my opinion. I have written previous posts on the topic.

Low cost computer parts put together for distributed processing and storage. Failure of individual parts is expected and planned for. Everything is redundant so that no individual part’s failure impacts the whole.

The technology feels very organic and “natural”. It will be interesting to see the progression of these types of server farms that Google is creating.

For more Information Internet News had in interesting article on the topic a while back.

Future Focus

Companies whose chief executives talk about the future innovate more than those that don’t.

Companies whose chief executives speak about future events and external activities innovate more than those whose chiefs don’t, a U.S. university study says.

“By simply counting the number of future-oriented sentences in annual reports we can predict future innovation by the firm,” said marketing Professor Rajesh Chandy of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

CEOs who focus their attention on future events and external activities lead their firms to early adoption and invention of new technologies and greater and faster development of innovations, said Chandy, whose study appears in the next issue of the Journal of Marketing.

United Press International – NewsTrack – Business – Future-focused CEOs bring innovation.

Now, I don’t think that this is a case where just speaking words make you more innovative. I think that the analysis of the words indicate that some people are just simply more future-focused and innovation focused than others. The words are indicating how they already think and act.

Also, employees are impacted by what their employers value. If the bosses are taking about the future and innovation more, then employees get the idea that innovation is important to the company and respond accordingly. On the other hand, if the bosses are always short sided and value short term thinking, then the employees will respond to that, also.

So, the best business leaders will concentrate on innovation and then, naturally, talk about it.

Changes

New software writes its own code

Charles Simonyi is creating software that writes software…

Business 2.0 writes:

Simonyi’s five-year-old startup, Intentional Software, is making software so smart that you can simply tell it what you want to do. Lay down a few basic parameters, and it will write its own code. No programming skills are necessary.

"Experts [in other fields] can be much more innovative and responsive to their business, and see the resulting software immediately," says Simonyi, speaking from the deck of his yacht, one of the world’s largest.

Humans, arguably, have done a pretty lousy job of writing code. Derailed software projects have shamed plenty of large companies. (See "When Bugs Attack," right.) The National Institute of Standards and Technology says such bugs cost the U.S. economy nearly $60 billion each year.

"The nature of programming is that you make mistakes," says Jonathan Edwards, a research fellow at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. "No one ever gets it right, and people have concluded this is as good as it’s going to get."

What’s Next: Simonyi’s new software writes its own code – Aug. 28, 2007.

Simonyi is not just some hack coming out of nowhere with big claims. He has a hefty resume at Xerox PARC and Microsoft.

 

Google's "Secret" Weapons

In a decade Google will not be known just for it’s Web search capabilities, primarily. Think about Microsoft. Do you say, yeah, Microsoft, that company who makes MS-DOS? No, that is old, they do a lot of things now. Kind of like what Google will be doing in a decade.

I think that most people think of Google as a search company, and that’s ok. That is correct right now. That is what they earn most of their money right now.

Most don’t realize that the exciting part about Google is what’s under the hood. Google is building massive storage and processing capabilities. They are building server facilities with massive capabilities all over the world. Data factories to support the company’s future capabilities.

The factories of the future – data factories. The nature of the software game is changing – from off the shelf software – to online hosted apps.

They are making sure that they are not just a search engine in the future. They are making sure that they will have the capability to be the host of choice with whatever apps they choose. And, they are not just stacking up computers, they are taking commoditized computer parts and with their own custom-made software – are building a reliable and redundant storage and processing capability that is very cost effective.

I just saw an ad for Google hosted apps. It said “build your business, not your backed”. Google corporate email hosting, not including all their other apps, seems like a great deal for businesses.

There is a theory that IT is becoming more and more of a commodity. In some areas, I really think that this is true. Will “build your business, not your back-end” become the mind-set for the future of IT?  IT could become mostly hosted out to 3^rd party developers and 3^rd party hosts? Also, when we all have fast, ubiquitous, wireless access to the Internet, will we want all our data and processing to be on our local PC? Maybe not. If the World becomes more and more hosted, where will Google be? Probably in good shape.

In the mean time, you can expect more applications to be hosted and large amounts of storage space offered to back up all your data. Also, with all those economies of scale and inexpensive space, Google may become the host of choice for many existing businesses – both for email and web-site hosting. In the long term, much of your business and personal apps and data (both devices and home computers) will hosted in a large server farm. And, Google may be making the right moves to be the premier host for the World’s data in addition to their capabilities of organizing and searching.