December 2011 Archives

After a leaked Windows Phone roadmap, there are a few blogs speculating about what a Windows "Superphone" means and whether or not it's necessary.

Here's my take. I think Microsoft wants to unify their operating systems.

Windows Phone was the first "Metro" experience, but it runs on an old CE kernel and the stack above that is Silverlight (and XNA). Metro is huge. It's the first really new user interface Microsoft's shipped since Windows 95. Metro makes classic Windows and even iPhone and Android feel ancient -- the same old square icons on a desktop we've all been using for the last several decades.

Windows 8 brings Metro to the desktop, laptop, and tablet world. This world, though, is built on the NT kernel, with the WinRT API above that. Sure, you can build Silverlight-like apps in Windows 8 Metro, it might even be trivial to port your WP app to Windows 8 Metro, but you can't easily go the other way.

So, what can Microsoft do about this? Well, it's easy, move Windows Phone onto the NT kernel, and carry over the bulk of the WinRT API. This would make developing your Windows app for any form factor, from desktops to phones, a very easy task. Throw in some nice Visual Studio and Blend templates for re-shaping your app to fit the various form factors, and you've got something really compelling.

The problem with that? Well, today's Windows Phone hardware probably isn't sufficient to drive an NT+WinRT OS. Enter "Superphones."

Superphones, I'm guessing, are the first generation of Windows Phone that run on the NT kernel and support the WinRT (or at least enough of it for most apps.) Note the Apollo release timing is not far from the expected Windows 8 release. Put that together with the recent news that the Windows Phone chief was put in charge of a "a new role working for me on a time-critical opportunity focused on driving maximum impact in 2012 with Windows Phone and Windows 8", and there might be something to this.

So, what do you all think. Am I crazy? Would "same API" across all devices be a worthy Microsoft goal? An achievable one? And what about X-box? Could Microsoft pull off the hat-trick, and unify all of their major platforms under a Metro front end? No doubt that's a tall order, and there are three CPU architectures to deal with. But Microsoft is a big and wealthy company.

I keep an eye on Google News results for "firefox". Today I noticed that the URL for that search was crazy long.

https://www.google.com/search?&hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&btnmeta_news_search=1&q=firefox#q=firefox&hl=en&safe=off&gl=us&tbas=0&tbm=nws&source=lnt&tbs=sbd:1&sa=X&ei=fwP6TprKDcariALLtpiTDQ&ved=0CCAQpwUoAQ&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=2758f09f54f048c8&biw=1366&bih=664

After a couple of seconds of playing around with it, I determined that the actually useful to me bits made a much smaller string.

https://www.google.com/search?q=firefox&tbm=nws&tbs=sbd:1

That is, trimming the URL down to the shorter string returned the same search results as the longer string. So, there are only tree pieces of information, three parameters required to get me the results I'm after. There's the search term, that it's a news search, and the sort order. The language and geography and safe browsing setting are obvious (though they don't impact the results, so why carry them,) but what are the rest of these parameters?

btnmeta_news_search=1
tbas=0
source=lnt
sa=X
ei=fwP6TprKDcariALLtpiTDQ
ved=0CCAQpwUoAQ
bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb
fp=2758f09f54f048c8
biw=1366
bih=664

If you're a Google News developer and you've got a minute, maybe you can satisfy my curiosity.

It's 2011 and the Web is a really powerful platform. JS/HTML/CSS menus are all across the Web. Why is it that we still have such basic usability failings from some of the biggest players in the business. Is it really that hard to recognize that your menu is going to be cut off and flip it the other direction like any other sane app in the world?

Here's a Facebook menu just dumbly cropped by the edge of the Window.

And here's a Twitter menu demonstrating the same idiocy.

Now, here's Google getting it right.

Because the menu would have been clipped by the edge of the window, Google flipped it up the other direction. They're actually even better than that, though. They first try to shift it up a bit to get it onscreen. If that doesn't work, they flip the direction.

This is basic stuff, people. It's clearly possible and Google gets it mostly right to prove that. Why are you still falling down on these kinds of basics?

The TV looks pretty small. It's the fire place that's large -- about 8 feet wide.

I guess we need a bigger TV :-)

On another note, "It's a Wonderful Life" was not a success in it day and didn't become a Christmas classic until its copyright expired and television stations could play it for free. Yeah, sometimes the value of art isn't recognized because of copyright. Sometimes, a public good isn't valued until it's shared.

Another fire place shot.

There are a number of articles around the web this week making all kinds of guesses and predictions about the Google and Firefox search relationship. I realize that this is mostly inside baseball, but I'd expect those covering this as "news" to be a little more familiar with how this stuff all works. Apparently they don't so here's a quick tutorial on "the economics of the Web".

The economic model that's driven the Web for most of its existence is advertising. Back in the day it was banners and pop-ups. Today it's AdWords and AdSense.

The model works a lot like the previous era of television or newspapers. Advertisers pay content providers to include ads alongside their content. Content providers make most of their money from advertisers. Users get a "free" service.

Google is one of the most successful companies on the Web because they were the first to figure out and sell highly effective ads on the Web. Their innovation was highly context sensitive ads that are more likely to get clicks than the previous generation of ads. When you search for something, Google knows precisely what it is you're after and they can serve ads to you based on your search input (and anything else they know about you from your other Google interactions.)

Google started out as a search company. But that's not what they are today. Google's primary business is advertising. From their SEC filing on the nature of their operations, "We generate revenue primarily by delivering relevant, cost-effective online advertising."

Google brought in $9.7B in revenues in Q3'11. 96% of that revenue was from ad sales. They bundle those ads with some great "free" products like Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, etc. so I'm not complaining here. It's a good deal for lots of users. I use some of Google's services and I visit lots of sites that depend on AdSense to pay the bills and keep publishing great content and providing valuable services.

Not all traffic to Google ads is "organic" though. To help drive ad sales, Google pays for traffic to their ads. They paid out $2.21 billion, or 24% of their ad revenues in "Traffic Acquisition Costs". That money goes to revenue shares with their AdSense partners and to "distribution partners" -- presumably browser makers, PC OEMs, and mobile OEMs and operators.

This is Google's business. They sell ads alongside "free" content, and they buy additional traffic to make those ads more valuable.

For years, many in the tech press have presumed that Google is "donating" money to Mozilla. They're not. They're no more donating to Mozilla than they are to Opera or Apple, both of which derive significant revenue by sending search traffic to Google. For Opera, that appears to be about $50M in the last 12 months. (Apple doesn't disclose the details of their arrangements with Google.) They're no more donating to Mozilla than they are to the handset makers and carriers they pay to distribute Android. It's a simple business deal. They sell ads and they do what they can to put eyes in front of those ads.

Now, and again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It's a fine model and it's the model that most of the Web depends on today. Take it away and we would certainly have fewer of the great things we all love about the Web and we'd be paying subscriptions for what remained. But Google is not a philanthropist "donating" money to Mozilla or any other "traffic acquisition" partner.

I know some of you all have been reading crazy press articles about how Google's going to quit paying Mozilla for Firefox search traffic and I understand that's been unsettling to folks.

This is just a quick note to say that you don't need to worry. Google loves Firefox search traffic and Mozilla gets a really solid revenue stream from that. Because it's such a good relationship for both parties, Mozilla and Google have come together for a great new 3+ year agreement that keeps Google as the Firefox desktop default search service in most geographies and ensures that Mozilla's going to have the income to make even stronger investments in the Open Web going forward.

You can read the official Mozilla Blog post here: Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement for Default Search in Firefox

Anyone know if this is possible with ordered lists? If so, can you share the HTML here?

A. First item
   1. sub-item
   2. sub-item
B. Second item
   3. sub item
   4. sub item
C. Third item
   5. sub item
   6. sub item

I realize that it's not the most logical thing in the world, but I'd like to be able to do it. Any help appreciated.