The Dynamic, Spooky Truth of Google

Spotted in this month's Wired (18.05):

Found, Then Lost

In his article about Google ("Inside the Box," issue 18.03), Steven Levy used the phrase "mike siwek lawyer mi" as an example of a search that showed Google's power and effectiveness - how easy it is to find an individual lawyer in Michigan! But since the article was published and blogged about, those links crowd out Mr. Siwek, and his Web site no longer appears in Google's top search results. So very ironic.

And that me blogging about the letter discussing the blogging that changed the dynamic will also have an effect? Downright spooky.

Reminds me of that time I took over Jaguar Grooming in Cincinnati, Ohio...

Wired: Weird

I subscribe to Wired, the manic magazine full of all things web, tech, gadget, and everything else that is on the cool cutting edge. It's sometimes even referred to as elitist.

So when it was time to renew, I got an email asking me to pay online with links that sent me here:



How exactly does a magazine that lives at the ever-changing pinnacle of technology send me to a page, not on their server, that looks like a 13-year-old's phishing experiment?

Boo, Wired. We expect better.

I'll be renewing over the phone. Maybe tomorrow.

ESPN360 as a New Model?

No ESPN360 for Cincinnati

Here's the rundown: Almost every online subscription service on the internet works with one basic mechanism. If you want the extra or platinum or gold or fancypants content, you get out your credit card and pay some sort of structured fee to access that content. It works that way with streaming video, radio archives, Ancestry.com, and porn. So I hear.

Well, ESPN360 is going by a different route. They are charging the ISP to access the content. For example: I connect through Time Warner's Roadrunner internet service. If Time Warner doesn't want to pay ESPN360, I can't see that content. If they do decide to pay for it and pass the buck as a jump in my internet bill, I pay whether or not I access ESPN360. It's basically the Cable TV model.

So is this a gimmick? A fad? A threat? The end of the internet?

Let me know what you think.

(Much more at Wired Epicenter)