Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• The real reason for Google's free 411 service

  Tim O'Reilly speculated why Google is really doing a free 411 service . In short, I'm speculating that the 1-800-GOOG-411 service is designed to harvest voice data to build Google's own speech database, rather than licensing from Nuance or another player. Charlie confirmed this at the recent Google Developer Day. Dr. Norvig said that the primary motivation behind Goog-411 is to provide something useful to Google's users, but the voice data the service collects will certainly help the company improve its voice recognition capabilities. This isn't surprising - Google has a proven track record of providing useful, free software that is ultimately a vehicle to feed the AdSense cash cow. Perhaps the more interesting question is how Google will put this speech database to work in the future. Such a database would be incredibly useful to deliver contextual AdSense for audio products. Of course, the injection process is a bit more complicated (and less dynamic) in a podcast as opposed to a web... Posted Jun 04 2007, 12:32 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Web 2.0, Google, Advertising

• Another ironic Mac commercial

  We already know some of the ads in the Get-A-Mac campaign don't exactly make sense . The latest, "Counselor", seems particularly ironic to me. In the ad, the Mac says that the PC "is a wizard with numbers and dresses like a gentleman". The PC is able to say that the Mac is "better with creative stuff", but quickly qualifies such behavior as "completely juvenile and a waste of time". Wait... I thought Apple was the one running the slander campaign? Speaking of which, Apple and Microsoft really do need some counseling. Some of the 5.5G iPods were released with a virus , which Apple blamed on Microsoft because of its insecure OS. Microsoft, of course, said it was simply Apple's lackluster quality control . Let me just come out and say it - Apple wouldn't stoop to releasing a device that intentionally included a Windows-only security exploit to "prove a point", would they? I mean, sure, they'll have some lawsuits, but pretty effective marketing move... Posted Oct 19 2006, 02:33 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Rants, Security, Gadgets, Web 2.0, Marketing, YouTube, Apple, Advertising

• Advertising in RSS

  Mike Gunderloy (Larkware News) points to an ad brokerage for RSS feeds . Interesting idea. How effective it is depends. I still think that, especially when it comes to personal weblogs, a personal endorsement is going to be infinitely more effective than a canned ad. I think the only way this is going to be effective is to have ads that are carefully selected based on the content of your weblog. Even if automated, the ads need to be something that, if given the choice, you might actually endorse. Actually, what would be ideal would be avoiding any automatic ad injection and instead buying placement. This, of course, requires more effort on the part of the author - but it helps the author's opinion come through a bit better, and still generates the same or better buzz for the product. After all, I subscribed to the feed to read the author's opinion, not a canned advertisement. I want the ad to reflect that. Of course, there should be some disclosure and the ad should be clearly marked as... Posted Jan 26 2004, 07:49 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Web 2.0, Business, Blogging, Advertising