When I was a teenager the coolest speakers on the planet were made by AVI Sound International in Vancouver BC and they stood out from other manufacturers because of how they used rare earth neodymium magnet structures.
Using these rare materials in speakers intended for bass was a first in the world of audio products, and AVI has helped many enthusiasts win at international competitions with their exotic products and no-compromise ideas. Even at the time the cost of using these rare minerals was really crazy, and AVI only produced limited quantities before totally stopping production.
Fast forward to 2012 and US federal authorities tasked with resource forecasts are already predicting a world-wide shortage of neodymium, and other rare minerals, that will be outpaced by our needs as early as 2015! The transition away from these magnets for things like traditional physical HDDs will help, but our needs in just the electric-vehicle industry alone is causing concerns.
Enter: Planetary Resources
It is speculation at the moment, but when you take someone with the resources and imagination of James Cameron, pick Peter Diamandis (the X Prize founder) to lead the operation, stir in some wealthy Google executives, and call it ‘Planetary Resources’ you are begging for speculation.
When Earth runs low on rare resources, the value of reaching into space for those resources starts to match up with the cost of doing so.
The trick is to find a way to mine without having it cost more than the minerals are worth.
It’s for this reason that we’re not likely to send Bruce Willis, or any humans, off to space with a pickaxe any-time soon.
The first industrial space mining is almost certainly going to be done by robotics, and guess who’s behind a new robot fighting show on TV called “Robogeddon”? Yes indeed, James Cameron is lending his experience in robotic battle cinema to the new show which will be hosted by Mark Burnett from Survivor and Shark Tank.
Is it really financially feasible to mine asteroids?
Back in 2005 Peter Diamandis did a TED video discussing how a single asteroid full of nickel-iron alloy could be worth “$20 Trillion” on the precious metals market:
(Oh Canada .. @ 8:35m)
When you look at the resources we need to continue advancing clean energy technologies like photovoltaic panels, electric motors, batteries, etc.., these items are all based on rare minerals we are rapidly running out of on this planet. By as early as 2020 we will start hitting a crisis of supply that nobody doubts will impact our current clean energy initiatives drastically.
So at this point we already know we can’t afford to not take this next step into space exploration and mining. The gains in science and development of the entire human race alone make the case for this work.
Another factor is the privatization of space exploration with NASA stepping out of the publicly funded access to space. This lack of a publicly financed effort makes room for all the private companies who now can see the value of the investment and competing for the business in this new sector.
I don’t need to tell the reader how excited and eager I am to hear the full ‘official’ announcement of Planetary Resources’ plans which should be coming as early as next week!
Speaking of Competitions..
April 15th was the final day of our Beanstalk map making contest in Minecraft.
While we were really impressed with all the effort going into the maps we know that most map makers are still trying to finish the maps they started.
At this point we have confirmation that all entries past the date of our prize change are interested in extending the competition.
To make things as fair as possible Dave has agreed that we will give out the original $50 prize to the best map we have now, and then give everyone until May 31st to finish their maps for the main prize.
This should be plenty of time to finish all those ‘runaway trains’ of details and tweaks that map makers find as they start to complete a major build. I know that on the demo map I could probably spend a week just detailing the cloud structures and leaves on the Beanstalk leading up to the giant’s castle.
Congrats to Faragilus for his floating castle and beanstalk map submission! We’ve sent out an email to confirm your win and will be shipping out your prize once we’ve confirmed your address info.
Faragilus’ map will also be featured along with the top finalists, and he is welcome to re-submit an updated map at any time if he wishes to also compete for the grand prize. Because the competition is still on-going we won’t be featuring any winning map content until the May 31st closing date.
Good luck and have a great time making your maps!
SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 1:49 pm
I swear there’s Google staffers who are so devoted to the projects they are working on that they don’t know what the rest of the company is developing.
If I was working on self driving car technology I think that the last thing I’d do is call my on-line storage solution ‘Google Drive’, but that’s exactly what they are doing and it’s coming out next week.
For old-school nerds, this might seem boring. GMailFS came out years ago an it allowed GMail users to add a ‘GMail’ drive as a file system in your PC. Anything you drag over to the GMail drive would be uploaded to your GMail account as hidden email messages with attachments. Browsing the GMail drive on any internet connected PC would show you all your files and you could copy/delete/upload from any location. It was actually pretty handy.
Sadly GMail’s technical staff saw the potential nightmare that would arise if something changed with these ‘special hidden messages’ and quickly moved to block the GMailFS tool from working before it became too popular.
Everyone using GMailFS knew it was a hack, against the EULA for GMail, and so the move to block it wasn’t a big stink, more of a ‘bummer’ moment like when they realize they forgot to increase the price of your favourite soda in the school’s vending machine and then fix it.
Also, while Gmail offers almost 8GB of storage, using it for files could cause mail interruptions if you were to max it out trying to copy some files between machines. Plus all your mail eats up your storage, and in my case, that means only 3486MB of storage not 5GB.
While prices aren’t available, we know all Google storage limits are expandable for paid accounts. It would only make sense, given the processing needs of email, that Google Drive will allow you to add more space to your drive for less money than you’d pay for the same storage in GMail.
Speculation is that Google Drive will have desktop integration on Windows, Android, and Mac meaning it should be as easy to use as a USB drive yet you only need to pack around your username and password.
Other operating systems will obviously have web access to the drive, that’s a “no brainer“, so even obscure versions of Linux and potentially even appliances like WebTVs will have limited access to your shared files.
Why not sign up a few friends using a DropBox referral ID and get 15GB of free space? Well if you want to use your friend’s info like that, you either hate your friends or they are really understanding. Plus DropBox doesn’t have the best track record of privacy and security; in fact it seems like the hackers lay off DropBox just long enough for it to become a ripe target and then they hack it again.
Even without the historical issues surrounding the competition, this is going to be just like G+ vs. Facebook, Skype vs. Google Voice:
- If you use GMail you already trust Google with your most private assets, using them for files is no extra risk.
- Google is a hardware and software solutions provider. Anything they deliver will be more advanced than the competition.
- Google has a much larger exposure base than the competition yet a much better track record on security and data integrity.
Personally, to me this is a no-brainer, and the only questions I have are how awesome the integration will be with other services?
- If I upload a music folder with a playlist so I can put my music onto my car-pc, can I open the playlist and stream my tunes from Google Music on my work PC?
- If someone emails me a file and I wanted to share it with my co-workers, will GMail let me save the file to a shared folder in Google Drive?
- If I put a huge RAW image from my DSLR camera on my Google Drive, can I open it in Picasa and share a thumbnail on G+ without making 5 copies of the same picture?
- If something crazy happens while I’m in a Google self-driving car, can I save the last 5 minutes of exterior video to my Google Drive and then later share the pertinent time-segment of that clip on YouTube without having to upload/download?
SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 12:13 pm
The FCC has proposed a $25,000 fine against Google on the grounds that the global search giant "deliberately impeded" their 2010 investigation into the collection of private user data through available unsecured Wi-Fi networks during its Street View mapping and did so for several months. Google stated that the data collection in question that occurred was "inadvertent" and that it had stopped the practice immediately once it had discovered that it was happening.
The FCC proposed the fine late Friday on the cusp of the deadline for taking action on the infamous "Wi-Spy" case. Google will still have an opportunity to appeal the fine before the decision becomes final. The government agency did not actually fine Google for violating the FCC’s electronic eavesdropping law in this case, stating that there simply is no precedent for applying the law to unsecured Wi-Fi networks. The FCC went on to say that Google was reluctant to cooperate in the investigation which is the reason for the fine.
A Google spokesperson said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal that, "We worked in good faith to answer the FCC’s question’s throughout the inquiry, and we are pleased that they have concluded that we complied with the law." A Google engineer that helped to develop the Street View technology code chose to invoke Fifth Amendment rights in order to avoid self-incrimination and refused to provide a testimony in the investigation.
SEO news blog post by Kyle Krenbrink @ 11:18 am
Much like keyword rankings on Google, it’s not a matter if things will update, it’s more a matter of when, how much, and if it’s going to make your life better.
Sounds relatively subjective? Well that’s because while the folks at Google are definitely trying to make a ‘please everyone’ interface for all products, and Google Plus is the latest to get some love, nobody is perfect and everyone is different.
The following video is a bit heavy on the ‘promotion’ and a tad light on the ‘features’ so if you are details oriented you can skip it:
Obvious Changes:
Better use of wide screen format:
- The left side bar has been iconized with short text labels below the icons.
- Not only are the icons very easy to see, but they are very easy to arrange/remove.
- Full drag and drop support for icons makes touch operations much easier.
ie: You can finger drag someone to a circle without needing a right-click.
- Having your chat contacts on the right makes good use of wider screens.
- Larger photo thumbnails are a nice improvement and more modern.
Sharing option is very obvious now:
- The improved share input area is really easy to understand.
- Minimalists can still use the old pop-out Share menu linked to your profile image.
Focus on Chat
- Because your contacts are visible on the left chat is icon-less
- Removing the icon has removed the useless indent in the chat window:
- If you liked staring at your profile image you can always switch back to GMail and chat there.
On the BAD side of things:
I was shocked at what you can’t drag to the side bar. If I want to play a single game, I’d rather have it than the ‘Games’ link?
Lonely neck-beards all over Reddit have been mocking the extra space on their wide screens with 16:9 ratios.
Thing is that the chat windows fill that space if you have 2 or more people you chat with constantly, and most people do. Sadly the meme is so popular that #usesforwhitespace is actually a trending topic and leaves me doing my best impression of Jean Luc.
Does this do anything for the folks who see G+ as the arch-nemesis of FB? Heck no!
In fact there’s a fresh batch of very pointless debates raging about how ‘G+ is unwilling to post user statistics because it’s an embarrassment.‘ which is another face-palm because they publish that info all the time (currently @ 170 million active Google+ accounts, 90 million accounts were created in the last 2 months alone) but unlike FB it’s not a bragging point since Google is clearly not interested in user counts.
If Google+ cared about user statistics they wouldn’t care if the accounts were active or not when publishing their stats, and they wouldn’t have worked so hard to allow people to use the system without making accounts (unlike Facebook/Twitter).
To quote John Lydgate:
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.
The whole self mockery reminds me of this awkward/embarrassing clip demonstrating the temple of promotion that is ‘Hawaii Five-O’ attempting to establish a new ‘slang phrase’for Microsoft while showing off a Windows 7 phone :
SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:57 am
“Arrrgh! Shiver me timbers! Mizen the topsail! Be that land I see through my metal eye?!”
Okay so Google’s new Augmented Reality Glasses aren’t just for one-eyed pirates, heck even a two eyed pirate can find a use for these ‘La Forge’ inspired techno goggles.
Yesterday Google was showing off a working prototype of their Augmented Reality Glasses which have been a two year labour of love running under the code name: ‘Project Glass‘.
Until yesterday we had little info on this Google[x] project, and there was speculation that the end project might come out as a digital contact lens instead of the pair of black and white frames we are seeing demonstrated this week.
At the moment however even the frames are in the ‘styling’ phase of prototyping, looking a bit like a slice of an iPhone, with a very tiny camera hole, hooked up to a thumbnail sized display.
We also know that they have touch controls on the top of the glasses, one of which is for capturing an image of whatever is in-front of you. My guess is that the first ‘mod’ for these will be a flip down shield that ‘alarmists’ can use to guarantee nobody is spying on them.
As if pictures weren’t enough to get our hands reaching for our wallets, there was also a ‘concept’ video demonstrating the Android based UI that the glasses will use to interact with the user.
After watching the video I have to wonder how they would display something in the middle of your visual perspective using a tiny little screen?
This resulted in me spending about 35 seconds bending a paper clip into the rough shape of the screen. I plopped this mock-up onto my glasses and took a look at what area the ‘display’ would have.
The current display would actually have quite a bit of space to display info, but there’s no way I can ‘see’ that it would be able to display something in the middle of your view?
Virtual retinal displays, even the most advanced laser based units, still haven’t found their way into ‘production’, even within military channels like DARPA where such a technology should be very tempting to adopt.
So for now I’m in the camp of nay-sayers who feel that the tech needs a bit more work before it can deliver what’s in the promotional video, and even then there’s certainly some kinks to work out of the system for obvious safety reasons.
Pity though, some of the style pics look so cool..
SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:42 am
It seems that Google is trying to breathe life into its failing Google+ social network with a new patent on its System and Method for Generating a Ghost Profile for a Social Network.
Considering the waning popularity of Google latest social platform, it seems that they are desperate to get anyone they can use it. Google+ hopes that by non-users being able to create an unsearchable ghost profile they can get &non-believers" (yikes! their words not mine) to participate in social networking without providing any end-user information.
The abstract for the patent reads:
The ghost profile allows a user to use certain features in a social network without converting to a social network profile. Specifically, the ghost profiles are unsearchable and comments that originate from a ghost profile user are displayed as partial names.
The ghost profile is generated when a member of the social network invites a user to join. In one example, the member is automatically added as a friend to the user’s ghost profile.
The premise is that some people are opposed to using social networking. When a user of a social network has a friend that is not on the network, or is opposed to or otherwise has no interest in social networking, the second group misses out on an important social component. If the friend on the network site wants to share some photos with this person, the other is forced to either join the network to view them or simply miss out on being able to view them.
SEO news blog post by Kyle Krenbrink @ 12:14 pm
As an SEO who loves 12 volt tech, cars, and robotics, I tend to focus on these updates from Google’s self driving car project. This morning I came across a video showing off the first official self driving car ‘user’ Steve Mahan, who is legally (95%) blind.
My only disappointment with the video was that Steve’s user # at the end of the video:
“#0,000,000,001″
..would only indicate ‘billions’ and not a ‘googol’ of users like :
“#00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001″
See how witty that would have been?
Okay I also wasn’t impressed with the parking, just getting the car into the slot like that reminds me of driving past the local bingo hall. Where’s the pride in parking accurately?
After seeing this sort of result from Google’s innovations it’s really sad to hear rumour that Google is pushing to trim the fat and look at reducing all the innovations it’s known for. Considering the volume of ‘Google is evil‘ and ‘Google just wants to steal our info‘ rumours that keep going around, hopefully the users can see that actions are more honest than words?
A Minecraft Demo Video?!
Yes indeed! I managed to find no solutions to the darkness issue, so I took a video of something that looks great when it’s dark: Lightning!
In fact one of the fellows who’s helped with the detailing stole our thunder over on Reddit’s r/minecraft, but we’re cool with it. Would have been nice if he’d link over to the contest page, but we understand. *sob*
The video, even as dark as it is, does give a sneak peek of the Beanstalk we’ve been building on the demo server. Hopefully we’re providing inspiration vs. stealing all the good ideas.
Speaking of ideas, we are still fishing for some good ways to detail the Goose nest and how to make ‘leafs’ that look thin on the Beanstalk. Serious brownie points are available for anyone who shares a way to get around those hurdles so we can focus on other parts of the maps.
SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 10:39 am
I know we’ve been anti-Google the last few weeks, but Google’s upcoming IO conference really did sell-out, in 20 mins no less!
With only 5,500 seats the 20 minute sell-out wasn’t too shocking, but the $2,000 EBay auction for a Google IO ticket took me by surprise. I tried to go find it for a confirmation picture but it was already nuked. Even at the full price of $900 a pop, the scalping price was over double! Heck educational admission ticket prices are only $300 each!?
If you’re wondering ‘what the heck is Google IO?’ that could be our fault, because our post about it last year, Ooh Shiny! ChromeOS & ChromeBook, was totally about the new ChromeBook and not the conference.. Oh man!
Each year Google hosts it’s Input/Output conference to not only share a vision of what’s ahead for Google, but also to get some feedback from the developers and users that work with Google’s solutions.
As is the case each year the team of nerds over at Google have put together a ‘chrome experiment‘ for anyone with a Google account.
The splash page for the Google IO event experiment teases us with the following:
“Brush up on your geometry, dust off your protractor, and architect a machine only you could have dreamt of. Join developers tackling our latest Chrome Experiment for a chance to have your machine featured at Google I/O.”
… yet the site seems a wee bit too popular at the moment, refusing to proceed into the actual site no matter how many times your click it. I’ll have to keep trying but right now it looks like I’ll have to come back and update after lunch.
If you REALLY wanted to click something to fiddle with in your browser, and it has to work right this second, well try Browser Quest from Mozilla Labs! While the game is currently still up and running I expect it will completely flat-line as it reaches peak popularity. I am running around as DobbieBobkins if you get in.
Browser Quest is an HTML5 site, with everything using the latest web-tech available. Don’t let those 8-bit graphics fool you, this is a modern technical demonstration. I’ve seen the game work with the latest versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera, just fine, though Opera was loading like dirt because of some broken plugins.
Speaking of coming back to things. I keep saying that we will have more on the Beanstalk Minecraft map contest, including some videos to inspire folks with ideas.. Sadly I am SO out of date with video capture that it boggles the mind.
Apparently my problem with recording is missing codecs, so I installed the FFdshow package which supposedly contains the right codecs to maintain the correct color space and gamma values in my source videos. If that sounded like Spanish, in a nutshell I’m fixing some dark video issues. 
Here’s my last upload fresh off the preview screen, and it’s STILL TOO DARK?
So, for now, today’s post is more of a bookmark, with some Google IO teasing, to be visited again after lunch when things are less popular.
UPDATE: Okay I got into the Google IO on my lunch and did a Bean experiment:
SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 1:38 pm
Finding a balance between quality content and optimization has always been a challenge to those in the SEO industry. Most of us at some point have been guilty of over-optimizing sites; either due to lack of knowledge of best practices, or as a deliberate rank sculpting technique. As a follow-up to my post on Monday regarding upcoming penalties from Google for sites that are "overly-optimized" (Newest Panda Attacks Onsite Optimization), I came across this post on SEO by the Sea in which Bill Slawski goes into more detail regarding the anticipated rollout of the Google algorithm. I have posted a portion of his post here for your convenience.
Regarding Matt Cutts statement that Google may come up with an "over-optimization" penalty in the future to help sites that aren’t showing up as highly in search results because of other sites that might have excessive links pointed to them or contain specific keywords more often, you can get the sense that this is something Google has been aiming at for years by looking at many of the patent filings and whitepapers from the company.
An aim of good SEO is to improve the quality, relevance, and usability of pages for visitors, so that the objectives of the owners of those pages are furthered, and people actually looking for what is offered on those pages are more likely to find those pages. Optimization, as a term, means to make something the best that you can, and in SEO usually aims at making a page the best that one can in terms of satisfying people using a query term that the page is about, to meet their informational or situational or transactional needs.
Some people promoting web pages attempt to use tactics like over stuffing a page with a particular keyword or pointing as many links to it as possible that use that keyword in anchor text, without necessarily attempting to make that particular page one that will satisfy visitor’s needs.
So a penalty like this might do things like ignore the value of anchor text in blog comments or forum signatures pointing to pages, lessen the value of links between sites that are related in some manner, lessen the value of keywords or related terms that appear on the same page at a very high rate, or apply some other similar approaches.
That doesn’t mean that the value of thoughtfully created, high quality pages, following best SEO practices will be harmed. The goals of that type of SEO align with the goals of search engines in helping people find pages that help meet their needs.
I anticipate a lot of upcoming discussion on this algorithm change if/when it is implemented. In much the same way that the original Panda received a lot of cooler talk, this latest rollout is going to cause many waves in many pools.
SEO news blog post by Kyle Krenbrink @ 11:08 am
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