The next big boom in the search engine industry: blog searching engines, wide and the door is open

Frederick Giasson

I wanted to write about the problems that Technorati seems to encounter these days. There it is. Via Micro Persuasion, I read this really interesting article wrote by Mr. Baker. You were questioning yourself about the current problems of the Technorati blog search engine? Read that article and you will have the answer to all your questions.

Some weeks ago, they changed all their system design. It seems that it was an in-deep re-modeling of the software and databases. The result is that they seem to have unexpected problems due to the overload of blog posts (especially after the London bomb attack).

I personally experienced many problems: slow searching, impossibility to send queries, my “links” status is not updated for my new domain name (despite the fact that I have in reality 16 links), and the indexing seem really low.

So, I am not hammering Technorati. Technorati is a really great search engine for blogs that is in the center of the blog’s trend explosion. However, they have software development and implementation problems, like many other companies. Technorati is the only service I know that give me a feed of the posts where people link-back to my domain name (the only problem is that it seems that it is not properly really working with the new system).

What is the result of this situation? There is a market waiting and no suitable blogging search engine (except Technorati that improve some problems). So the door is wide open to welcome any new search engines like Technorati. Yahoo seems to develop and test concepts and systems in that trend, and Google is probably also developing their own.

So, you are an entrepreneur? You are searching something to develop and commercialize? Then there is an idea. You think that you could not do it? Think about Google in 1998, have they succeeded? I think so.

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Web services, the future of the Internet?

Frederick Giasson

Will the Internet continue to be mainly a tool to broadcast tremendous amount of information or it will evolve as a platform where we will have access to infinity of web services?

I am starting to use web services in prevision of my India trip in 2 months. I started using a web mail application to access my POP account instead of Outlook; I started using Bloglines to retrieve my feeds instead of Omea Reader; I started to use b2Evolution to blog instead of Radio Userland.

The first reason why I started to use these web services was to access them, anywhere in the world.

However I found that I got much more advantages by using these web services instead of their standalone software counterpart considering the fact that I get rid of using 3 memory and CPU consuming applications. It is a great advantage for me considering that I work on a 2 years old laptop with just enough memory to run Windows XP. A simple lightweight application, IE, give me access to all these services. Enhance it with table browsing and you have a really good replacement for these applications.

We, Occidental people, can afford high quality and high priced computers. However, the next computer market comes from the East. Millions of people are waiting to enter into the cybernetic age. They will not enter it with 3000$ computers, but with 200$ ones. The fact is that with only one a web browser, they will have access to all available web services, like us. Will the era of standalone computer softwares, as we know it, will vanish? Probably not for specialized software, but you could bet that it will be the case for mainstream software applications.

Another thing is that countries like India seems to create computer communities and widespread computer education with cybercafés. These web services will become their “virtual desktop”. They will have the same productive power, without owning any computers, from anywhere in their countries.

Finally, is the future of Internet these web services? Personally, the more I think about it, the more I think that they are.

There is a non exhaustive list of the types of web services you can access on the Internet.

You, what type of web services are you using? Send me them and I will add them to the list.

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A question haunts me: What Internet users want?

Frederick Giasson

What Internet users expect from it? What Internet users want from it? These types of questions haunt me since some days. I am searching what Internet users really want from it.

What type of service are they using?
What type of service they would like to use? (Not currently existing)
What are the problems that they are experiencing and that could be resolved by an Internet service?
Why Internet users… use Internet and computers?

These questions could seem silly at first. However, try to answer them, ask them and check for the answers: it is not as simple as it seems.

You, how would you answer to these questions?

There are some concepts you can use to start your thinking: social software, search engines, news networks, sharing networks, community, socialization, getting things done, management, business, store, etc.

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Blog syndication format: the future are Interface Markup Languages

Frederick Giasson

What I wrote yesterday could be defined as a lost of time. It is another garage made code that try to cope with something that is not built for it.

Blogs has evolved in past years. However, feeds are stock into the past. More and more users are using these syndication technologies, and these new users ask for much. So, how could we give them much? Actually by making garage code like the one I do yesterday.

This is just another demonstration of the specifications problem. Things move slowly. The only way that things move faster is that someone with influence gets the bull by the horns and does it.

By example, personally I would like to have a “comment” tag where to put the comments of my readers.



However, will I call every feed reader companies to tell them to take these new tags into account, and to display them properly in their application? I do not think so.

RSS 2.0 support XML namespaces. However, who cares? I mean, feed readers will have access to the structured information; however, they will not display it if they do not care about.

It is why technologies such as XForms are interesting. What is an XForm? It is an XML based form. The purpose is to give me the power to build my custom forms with a simple XML script. Then with an XForm, I can create my custom web form that will send me the retrieved information in an xml format I previously specified. Plus, I am sure that the form will be displayed by the presentation software (a browser or anything else) the way I want it to be presented.

Now what I want is something that does the same thing as XForm but more presentation oriented. The W3C answered the needs with the XFDL specification. Then, as a blogger, if I want that my posts and comments be seen in a traditional Usenet readers interface, the only thing I need to do is to add a “simple” snippet of script into my blog’s feed. Then I will be sure that all my readers, platform and software independent, will see the information I broadcast as I want them to see it.

I think that this is one of the only way to see the future. The feed readers will only have to replace their “Web Browser Layer” by a “XFDL (or any other interface markup languages) Layer”. Then everybody will be able to do exactly what they want, without caring about the compatibility with all the softwares on the market.

Right now, such modules are only available as plug-ins for current web-browsers. Sometime they work, other time they do not. When the guys in the IE or Firefox teams will integrate it and make it available to other developers through some API, the whole landscape of web feeds publishing certainly will change.

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New applications of the Secure Web Feed Protocol – In Gmail and RSS Calendar

Frederick Giasson

Five days ago I proposed my article: Secure Web Feed Protocol, to the PST05 conference. Two days after I came around 15 things you can do with RSS. Two of these applications got my attention:

  1. Collect your email from all your email accounts in your RSS reader
    Stay updated on someone’s schedule
  2. I thought: these ideas are wonderful! What about the security of these services? Could they use SWFP? There is what I found.

1. Google is supposed to have tested a RSS feed service for Gmail in their GoogleLabs in 2004. I can not confirm if the service is always available because I do not have any Gmail accounts and I can not sing-in for one. This service put new incoming messages of a Gmail account into a RSS feed. Then if you subscribe to that feed you will see your new Gmail messages directly into your web feed reader. What an excellent idea! However, I was surprised to found that they used SSL to create a secure channel between the feed and the feed reader.

In the section 5 of the SWFP article I explained why I think that using SSL to secure a web feed is not the good strategy to adopt. It is for this reason that I was surprised to discover that they tried to use SSL to secure the inbox web feeds. JC suspected that they did not create it for this purpose but for another application called Google Notifier. I think he is right.

I do not know what was the real purpose of this test but the result is the same: the idea of using RSS feeds to check your mail is interesting. However, using SSL does not seem to be the good strategy to adopt. Not all stand alone feed readers support SSL. If you do not wish to enter the login and password of the private feed each time you want to check for new messages, you will need to do something like that:

https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom

This solution is even worse than not encrypting the web feed at all. With this string an intruder could sing-in into your account then check, delete or send messages with your Gmail account. It is far worse than only having access to the unencrypted inbox content.

This is a beautiful idea that could be handled by the Secure Web Feed Protocol. Now check out the second application of RSS feed that could use SWFP.

2. This time we are sharing our calendar with our friends and family using a service called RSS Calendar. When you add something to it all your friends and family will have access to your calendar’s changes. Is that not beautiful? Yeah it is. What about the security of this other service?

You could wish that the planet know that you are going to Mont Washington the 20 Mai 2005. But what if you only wish that your friends and family know it? There is no privacy feature in the service for the moment.

I think that the implementation of the Secure Web Feed Protocol could be really interesting in this case too. Only the people you choose would be able to read your calendar. I like the idea.

You are now thinking: how could the implementation of SWFP could be done in such services? The only thing that will change with what I discussed in the article is the way you will distribute the asymmetric keys

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