Yes, you heard it here first. If Internet Explorer doesn't make some serious changes in short order they'll face certain extinction to the hands of Firefox. Why you ask? Isn't it obvious?



In order to answer that question we'll need to take a little trip down internet memory lane. Our first stop is the home of Linux founder Linus Torvalds. You see, Linus had this crazy idea that he could build a better OS than what was currently available and amazingly he did. Then he opened up his source code and the open source development movement was born. Open source affords anyone anywhere the ability to contribute to a development project or to download and use an application or source code absolutely free of charge. Many a software company lost a fortune due to the open source movement and scores more individuals have benefited from it so needless to say, it's quite a controversial subject with software firms and developers alike.

Fast forward 10 or so years and you'll see several other micromovements that look and smell an awful lot like the open source development movement. The most important difference with these new movements is the fact that they aren't just for developers; they're for the average joe and the Tiny Tims of this world. What are these relatively new micromovements? Forums, Wikis and blogs.

What do Forums, Wikis and Blogs have to do with Internet Explorer becoming extinct?
Well, in order to answer that question we must look at one other area the open source development movement has involuntarily impacted, API's or application programming interfaces. They allow a developer to access data or processes they would otherwise not be able to access. APIs allow developers to grab book and author information from Amazon.com and allow developers to see what the most popular blogs are as seen by Technorati. There are dozens more cool apis and tools built around those apis but the fact of the matter is that APIs are changing the way businesses research and implement new features by allowing them to connect with their users while at the same time conducting free research & development.

That's where Firefox, Mozilla foundation's latest browser comes in. It's the IE killer! Firefox's source code is open and there is a standing invitation for anyone who's interested to write code that enhances Firefox's already robust list of features.

When a developer writes a piece of code for Firefox it's known as an extension. Currently there are 178 and the list is growing all the time. These extensions aren't just colorful skins there much more. In fact, they're the key reason Firefox is my browser home. They're saving me time and money by encapsulating functionality I could only get before from various web sites and software. Now instead of going over to the w3c to validate an html page I just right click on the page, select Web Developer then HTML Validation and I'm automatically using the w3c validator to find all the errors on a single page. Or I could just hit ctrl + shift + v and do the same thing in a single keystroke. That's possible because I downloaded the Web Developer extension from the firefox site.

Here are some other cool features I could never easily do with Internet Explorer (in its current state) or without installing 5 different toolbars filled with features I'll never use.

• Switch user agents and pretend I'm Googlebot or Yahoo's Slurp to detect cloaking.
• Easily read an rss feed.
• Pretend I'm a user in Argentina to see if Google serves up the Polar Bear Logo down there too.
• Disable the referer info when browsing.
• View all the http headers a server returned when I clicked on a link.
• View the source code for a site in a neatly formatted text editor that's color coded.
• Show all the anchors in a page.
• Show all the heading tags in a page and in the order they're rendered.
• Validate a page's css.
• View a page's style sheets.
• Disable cookies, java, images, etc... all with a single right click.
• Save specific sessions / visits on a web site.
• Delete my downloads after viewing them.

The list goes on and on but here are a few key factors that may foreshadow the defeat of IE in the browser war.

• Firefox has generated incredible brand loyalty by allowing average folks to contribute extensions to its evolution as a browser / internet application. By opening the hood and letting developers peek inside, they're making Firefox better. Not only is this making Firefox the better browser but it's also building the type of brand loyalty you can't buy. This is something Microsoft may never been able to accomplish with its current business model (not they would want to anyway).
• Mozilla extended this grass roots approach about getting users involved down to the development of the Firefox Logo. Selecting the design team of SilverOrange to create the new logo, who then recruited John Hicks of Hicks Design, was a stroke of genius. Small companies run by individuals demonstrating the less fluff more stuff attitude and less is more approach to design / layout / media. This immediately seeded Firefox into the roots of bloggers across the web.
• Mozilla is making our lives easier by allowing us to use Firefox as much more than just a web browser. It's a validator, backlink checker, web developer tool wizard and more. This saves me time and with the tight schedule I keep, that's a huge advantage over IE.
• Extensions are easily downloadable and arranged in a way that makes them easy to find. Even better still is that I can see who contributed an extension, when and what other people's rating of that extension is. Mozilla is giving credit to the little people that are making their product better and Microsoft doesn't like to touch little people, they're icky.
• Firefox is capitalizing on the API wave and user generated content (open source) wave hitting the internet today. Combine that with a strong product that will only get stronger and you have a solid case for the death of IE.
• With the creation of the SpreadFirefox website and the amount of community feedback they're getting, the brand loyalty levels are insane.

That being said, it's also important to note that Firefox is a voluntary download. Meaning, I have to want it in order to get it on my machine. Internet Explorer ships out standard with the Windows operating system and that may very well be enough to foil the death of IE. However, good things have a way of coming to the forefront of society and my money's on Firefox. I don't believe Microsoft can mount a campaign strong enough to deny Firefox its place on our systems but I could be wrong. If you think about it though, that's MSFT's business model.

"Find the best and brightest and if you can't buy or hire them then we build a better mousetrap and use our existing infrastructure to bombard the marketplace with it. Sure we'll take a pr beating for it but that's what we hired Scoble for."

All kidding aside, its going to be an interesting 2005 on the Firefox vs. IE front. I'm not the only one talking about it either. Even BoingBoing is commenting on it. Here are some stats on the emergence of Firefox as the IE killer.

I was talking to Alorie Gilbert from CNet yesterday about the relationship between bloggers and journalists.

I told Alorie that all this hubub about journalists being displaced by bloggers is overrated and unnecessary. I went on to say that I really like the way our blogger / journalist relationship is progressing. I'm never going to, nor want to be, a full time writer or journalist and I know she has no ambitions of being a tech entrepreneur. I hate spell checking and rereading stuff I post to make sure it's gramatically correct... boring!

Plus, when I have some juicy information regarding the Enterprise Applications vertical that needs confirmation and in-depth investigating then I'll send her the tip. That allows me to get a "real professional" follow up on the details of a rumor and get to the truth of the story. It also allows me to know a reputable person is going to bring stuff to light that I may not be comfortable disclosing.

Alorie told me that she loves bloggers but she's having a really hard time finding any bloggers for the enterprise applications sector she usually writes about. I want to help her out and prove that there has to be one good enterprise software blogger out there that hasn't been spoken for yet.

That being said, consider this Alorie's want ad.

Wanted: One blogger covering the world of enterprise software and fortune 500 technology firm news and current events. Must be honest, have solid industry contacts and be willing to give up a bit of fame for the greater good of the enterprise technology public.

I can attest to Alorie's ability to cover a story with great detail and her reputation precedes her. Plus, she's not willing to put up a story just because it would generate traffic. Her credibility is her biggest asset and she's not willing to tarnish that for fame.

Want to be put in contact w/Alorie? Drop an email to marketingshift [@] gmail[.]com and I'll screen you. Consider me Alories blogger big brother.

For those of you that know me, you know my brother Jonah is in Iraq with his Marine Recon battallion. We've been praying for him every day and today my mom sent me a link to a picture of Jonah that appeared on Yahoo via Reuters.

For those of you that don't know Jonah, he's an amazing individual. Following the completion of his 12 week Recon training he was awarded the Man of Honor medal for having the highest overall score of the 60+ men he trained with. He's an overachiever that looks you straight in the eyes when he's talking to you and expects the same in return. He loves to fish and surf but right now he's loving serving his country and we're all grateful.

Thanks Jonah, I miss you very much, Piper and I pray for you every night. Come home soon! Actually, Shannon prays for you as well as her parents and our entire church. I know you're in good hands but everyone still misses you a lot. Do what you have to do and we'll see you soon.

~jason

The Macromedia Blackstone project is currently in beta testing. For those of you that don't know, Blackstone is the latest version of ColdFusion MX. I'm on the Blackstone beta test team but I haven't gotten to do much testing due to work demands. However, one of the hardest parts about doing beta testing is getting a server up and running so you can try out all the new features. Well, that's not a problem any longer.

CFDynamics is currently offering free Blackstone hosting to anyone interested. That's right, you get to try out Macromedia's latest version of ColdFusion and it doesn't cost you a dime. I thought that was pretty cool so I figured I'd let all you geeks know about it.

Some of the new features in Blackstone include.

• Rich Forms: Tag based generation of Flash forms & XForms.
• Printing: Print individual pages or entire documents w/perfect formatting.
• Reporting: Business reporting capabilities that reduce the need for 3rd party reporting tools.
• Graphing: Increased capabilities for charting & graphing business intelligence.

SysAdmins will enjoy

• Multi-Instance Management: Providing application partitioning and isolation.
• Sourceless Deployment: No more giving your CF Source code away.
• Java App Deployment: Deploy CF as a Java EAR or WAR file.

Can't wait any longer? Here's the signup form.

In the beginning of this post I said "Beta is the new Black" and I meant it. Everyone is releasing products in Beta for their core audience to test and provide feedback. This didn't use to be the case with new product releases but in this ever-changing internet landscape it's becoming the norm. Google made it acceptible and now many others are following suit, even Microsoft.

Ever dream about building a cluster of 5 mini-itx computers to run the world's smallest search engine? Well I have. But then Mac launches the Mac Mini. I realize I won't have to build a mini-itx from scratch (yessss!!!!) or order a bunch of wizbang parts that don't make any sense to me. Additionally, I know this Mac Mini looks schweet and will probably be the perfect object to convert me from Windoze to Mac. Additionally, the Mini Mac comes with a warranty, what more could I want? Well, I want to build a cluster of them and power the worlds smallest (physically) production model search engine. I stole the phrase "production model" from the automotive industry cause it's the only phrase that aptly describes the thought. [That thought being an out of the box, unmodified computer].

Now I just have to find a place to host this bad boy.

But wait, what do I see,
a Mini Mac colo facility staring back at me.

It's too good to be true,
How can that be? $29 for 100% uptime availability!

I'm floored, I'm delighted, I'm living a dream,
Now I'll make that mac mini search engine,

The one of my dreams!

~poem by a Geek

~Hat Tip Pete - Another Geek

I don't drink Coors beer but this image looks so appealing to me right now. Yes, it's still early in the morning but it's been one of those weeks. I wish I hadn't read that MediaPost email about some ads Coors Light ran during the regular season NFL games and postseason games.

"Coors Light ran ads during the NFL playoffs highlighting the "Cold Hard Facts" about the Super Bowl and showed fans gearing up for the game with their Coors Light. The company ran ads in heavy rotation throughout the playoffs but is not running ads during the actual Super Bowl. Yet they are the official sponsors of the big game. Will Anheuser-Busch take advantage of this? They should. The ads show visuals of the Rocky Mountains and a football stadium, with an announcer explaining that as the Super Bowl approaches, millions of bottles of Coors Light will be tackled, fans will get in touch with their inner linebacker, grown men will dance, games will be won, voices will be lost, and hot dogs will be washed down with Coors Light. The ads were created by Foote Cone & Belding Chicago."

From Technology Review magazine comes a post about how Yahoo has the biggest head start in the local search field as well as the best brand loyalty when compared to Google and MSN.

"Yahoo is poised to capitalize on the mobile search capabilities, though for now, the search wars are all about the desktop.

In the competitive field of search services, Yahoo is gaining ground on its top competitors, according to a survey by Market Researcher Keynote. While Google, Yahoo and MSN were the top choices of the 2,000 consumers surveyed, Yahoo maintained the highest user loyalty, primarily because of its localized search.

All three companies are targeting local search moving into the future, but Google and Microsoft haven't yet found their groove.

Simplicity is the key to all successful search engines. Yahoo and its competitors know getting users information fast and easily is the key to success with consumers who are not computer savvy about search."

Interesting points about local search and how Yahoo's leading the way.

A few days ago I told you about the new Become shopping search engine and gave you a glimpse at what you can expect from it. Michael wanted me to clarify one point from that post. I said that there is a way to guarantee your site is crawled by the Become crawler/spider. But it needs a bit of clarification.

Currently, Become has no plans to offer a 'submit your site here' form and the only way to guarantee your site is listed in the Become index is to be linked to from another site the BecomeBot has already crawled. Since they'll be launching the engine with approximately 2.5 billion pages in their index, that should make it pretty easy to ensure your site is crawled by the BecomeBot. It's also important to note that the mere fact the BecomeBot has spidered your site doesn't mean you'll be listed in their index. Once their crawler fetches your site the indexer determines whether or not your site is shopping related, if it's not then it will not make it into the search results. More information can be found at their webmasters page.

I hope that clarifies things a bit. Let me know if and of you have any questions.

Greg's blogging about some interesting local search news coming out of the Fast conference in Puerto Rico. Here's a good bit of info on Amazon's A9 local search press release.

"A9.com, the search subsidiary of e-commerce giant Amazon, has launched a Yellow Pages/local search directory that features millions of photo images of businesses and buildings in major U.S. cities, including New York, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles, among others. (France's Pages Jaunes did something similar, though not as elaborate, a couple of years ago).

Search results will appear in A9.com. Clicking on results lands the users on a co-branded A9-Amazon page. A novel feature, “find it on the block,� allows users to scroll and take a virtual, visual tour of adjacent and nearby businesses, stores and so on. (This is not unlike IPIX virtual real estate tours.)

Amazon claims to have 20 million images of local businesses and it is inviting businesses to add or upload their own images for free. The photos were collected by driving the city blocks equipped with digital cameras, GPS technology and other hardware and software. A9/Amazon captured the images and matched them in context to create a visual representation of the street.

Amazon is also offering local businesses the ability to upload Yellow Pages content (e.g., hours, credit cards accepted, links to Web site, and so on, for free). This appears to be a serious effort to construct a competitive consumer directory, with the visual information leading the way as the differentiator from existing Internet Yellow Pages offerings.

Other features include:

• Click-to-Call: reportedly provided by eStara


• Customer reviews/ratings


• Personalized recommendations (this probably relies on Amazon’s recommendations/collaborative filtering technology)

This is a very provocative and interesting angle on Internet Yellow Pages. However, A9, which has some unique features among search engines, has had very little traction with consumers, in part because Amazon has largely not promoted it. This is A9’s central challenge—creating awareness among consumers in an already fragmented interactive local marketplace.

But there's a paradox here. Amazon has a much bigger brand and traffic than A9. Yet the search engine is the “front door� to this new directory. One way to see this is as a bid for traffic to A9, with images/photos as the differentiator. But there's surely an advertiser play, which hasn't yet been announced (or perhaps fully thought through)."

Link via Greg.

I saw an AdSense listing on my blog the other day about a company called Nooked. At first glance they appear to do the exact same thing as SimpleFeed. Since SimpleFeed doesn't have any known competitors I decided to ask Mark if he knew of this new company and if they are an actual competitor to his product. Here's the skinny.

Nooked
doesn't user unique subscriber urls
so their reporting can only be as good as
FeedBurner
.

Here is a Nooked feed URL
http://www.nooked.com/news/feed/nooked

Here are sample content URLs (everyone uses unique content URLs)
http://www.nooked.com/news/link/nooked/20050117/
ff80808101725ce1010183f988d72092#RSS_consumption
http://www.nooked.com/news/link/nooked/20050117/
ff80808101725ce1010183f15b7e2078#CNN_get_RSS
http://www.nooked.com/news/link/nooked/20050117/
ff80808101725ce1010183ef2f902071#RSS_Case_Study_blog
http://www.nooked.com/news/link/nooked/20050117/
ff80808101725ce1010183e0f5572052#RSS_to_the_rescue

Essentially this link says 'link to article owned by publisher 'nooked' published on /17/05 in the database record 'xxxxxxxx'. Pretty standard redirect clickthrough counter.

So in addition to not having personalization, they do not use unique subscriber URLs, and their reporting will be very approximate. Note this post from
Feedburner
."

Thanks for the info Mark!

Their sites are back online so everyone can rest easy and enjoy your day online.

This is a public service announcement to all readers / users of WebProNews and all other iEntry web sites. They're currently undergoing server maintenance and should be back online shortly.

I told you people were going to start spamming it. We'll see if CNet's new trackback policy is worth the IT headaches it's going to cause. I seriously doubt it.

Here's someone's post on the trackback page for the announcement, the irony kills me. I wonder how much traffic he's getting from that post :) His link is the 7th from the top.

"If you have been looking for valueble inbound link to your blog, you should check out CNET News.com. They now support TrackBack and Pingback. So if you find any interesting story from their site and linking back to them and sends the proper notification to them, you will get a link back in return from CNET News.com.
This will be an easy way to get a quality inbound link.

ToonChooi"

The irony gets even better cause this guy is a spammer and doesn't even realize he's a spammer. That rocks!

CNet announced that it's providing TrackBack support for all of it's news stories now. However, they didn't say anything about linking to relevant sites from within their stories. So they want to get the glory and allow folks to see who's linking to their stories [like bloggers do] but they don't want to show their guts and link to the people and subjects found in their stories. Just another way blogs are being wrecked by mass media. I wish the media outlets would just stick to what they do well [reporting & writing] and let bloggers do what they do well [opinions & commentary].

The only thing this will accomplish is identifying CNet as a site that's worth spamming. They're not even using the nofollow attribute in the links they post on the trackback url. I predict it will take about 5 days before every story on CNet has trackbacks to sites with unrelated content. It's gonna backfire, mark my words.

I'm giving CNET a "nofollow" link for that garbage. Cyberjournalist will get some PageRank though :)
via cyberjournalist

The Kelsey Group has brought to light some interesting implications regarding recent advancements in the video search world and I think they need to be read. Also, the Kelsey Group blog is fairly new [not even 1 month old] but I highly recommend anyone needing to stay on top of the local marketing world add them to their feed aggregator.

Online Video Search: Web-TV Convergence?

"Now that Google has formally joined AOL, Yahoo!, Blinxx and others in offering TV/video search, the time has come to speculate more seriously about Web-TV convergence. As more and more video content (and related rich media advertising) goes online, will search engines and the Internet itself be an infinite fountain of TV and movies on demand? Indeed, the Web will likely become a viable alternative to TV with an infinitely greater array of programming choices. The Internet is already cannibalizing TV viewing among young people in the U.S. Alternatively, cable providers are now seeking and will continue to seek consumer adoption of high-speed Internet access over TV monitors. (In a related vein, computer hardware makers are manufacturing TVs.)

Compared to some of the other providers of video search, the initial Google effort is relatively modest it now consists of searching the text of television programs and offering still images related to those shows. It also involves partnerships with PBS, Fox, C-SPAN and ABC among others. Programs will be available the same day as their broadcast. However, ultimately, Google will offer full-length video. What that means is that Google will become much more literally like TV and like a broadcast advertising medium. However, the combination of search and rich media/video offers intriguing possibilities and directional wrinkles for advertisers."

I'd love to get some feedback from Jeremy Allaire on this. He's in the thick of this movement at the moment and could provide some unique insight. Especially because when Allaire was acquired by Macromedia RIA's [rich internet applications] were just sprouting legs and Jeremy was the CTO of Macromedia during that time. His insight into the power and capabilities of rich media are bar none.

Pew / Internet released a report January 23rd about internet search engine users. The title of the report is Internet Searchers Are Confident, satisfied and trusting - but they are also unaware and naive.

Regarding The Search Experience

• 
  84% of internet users have used search engines. On any given day, 56% of those online use search engines.
• 
  92% of those who use search engines say they are confident about their searching abilities, with over half of them, 52%, saying they're 'very confident'.
• 
  87% of searchers say they have successful search experiences most of the time, including some 17% of users who say they always find the information for which they are looking.
• 
  68% of users say that search engines are a fair and unbiased source of information; 19% say they don't place that trust in search engines.

The numbers that stick out to me are the 17% that say they ALWAYS find what they're looking for and the 19% that don't place trust in the engines. The 17% that say they always find what they're looking for is too high, honestly, I'm not sure I've ever found exactly what I was looking for much less always found it. The 19% that don't trust the engines is also important because trust is the biggest factor in online browsing and purchasing. This points to the paid vs organic listings and the confusion there in.

More stats from the Pew report about search engine users naive -ness

• 
  38% of searchers are aware of a distinction between paid and unpaid results; 62% are not.
• 
  18% of searchers overall (47% of searchers who are aware of the distinction) say they can always tell which results are paid or sponsored and which are not.
• 
  70% of searchers are okay with the concept of paid or sponsored results.
• 
  45% of searchers would stop using search engines if they thought the engines weren't being clear about offering some results for pay.

I guess the 62% that aren't aware of the difference between organic results and paid results need to voice their opinions to the major engines.

A broader user base and increased web content have altered the landscape of what we search for.
This is one reason I'm all about search engines based on vertical markets and why tailoring an algorithm to a particular vertical market is going to yield much more relevant results than using a shotgun approach to searching and indexing the web. I think Michael's onto something with his new engine.

From the Pew Report...

"One category of particular interest is commerce. There is no exact way to measure the number of commercial searches, but at least one statistic gives us an idea of the scope of commercial searching: comScore Networks reports that 40% - 45% of search queries now include sponsored results.10 While it may not be the case that all these search queries were launched with commerce in mind, the search terms used were close enough to warrant a commercial opportunity in the returns."

The report surveyed 2,200 adults, 18 & older and was written up by Deborah Fallows. Thanks to Greg for the tip.

You've seen me post previously about Michael Yang and his new shopping search engine Become. When I talked about Michael's new search engine I didn't give much detail as to what it would do, how it was put together, what made it unique and so forth. Well here's a sneak peek under the hood brought to you exclusively by Marketing Shift.

Here's a question and answer session between me and Michael about Become.

1. What is the scope of the Become crawler? Is it limited to retail web sites, wholesalers, CNet, eBay, etc...?

Michael: Our crawler crawls the entire web but only indexes sites and pages that our intelligent crawler deem shopping related. We have proprietary technologies built in to recognize whether a page is a merchant order page, review page, manufacturers, forums, etc.

2. What is the foundation of your ranking algorithm? Google has PageRank and it's based heavily on backlinks but it's been faulted for the shortcomings of such an algo. Is there a secret sauce for Become's algo?

Michael: Yes, we have a new ranking agorithm with proprietary technologies that we believe is the next generation. We overcome many of the short comings of pagerank algorithm.

3. How many unique pages will be included in Become's index when it goes live?

Michael: 2.2 billion pages.

4. Is there any way to guarantee Become crawls a particular web site?

Michael: Yes. [more information on getting included in Become's search results to follow in a later Q & A session with Michael.]

5. I assume there will be a ppc element to the site since you mentioned that when we first spoke in March at SES. Is this the case and if so, where can site owners, marketing firms, ad agencies, etc... go to get more information on that or to set up an account? Is therea way to set up a ppc account prior to the go live date?

Michael: We are partnering with Google Adsense for our PPC program. [More information regarding the partnership with Google to follow in a later Q & A session with Michael.]

It will be interesting to see how things go with Become as it nears launch. There is an invite-only prelaunch party scheduled for February 10th in Palo Alto. I'll be blogging the event and the days leading up to it as well so stay tuned.