One would think that Microsoft's $240 million investment in Facebook -- at a valuation at a ridiculous $15 billion -- would give them some fringe benefits. You know, like maybe a preferential app placement, integration of MS Live Search or MSN Messenger, or at least some stickers.
Or... not. As shown ...
On Friday of last week, I went to order a water cooler for our office.
Being a technophile, I tried to do it online first, via Poland Spring. After filling the cart, I go to check out. Delivery information? No problem. Billing information? Uh oh.
Wikia's billing ...
What kind of person buys this t-shirt? I mean, other than the graduate him or herself?
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's an inspiring story, and makes for great television or what have you.
Estimated # of sales: 2.
Disclaimers: The opinions herein are not necessarily that of my employer. In fact, I'd not bet on it. Oh, and nothing on this blog should be construed to be considered legal advice.
All text on this page copyright 2008 by Dan Lewis, except for excerpts and comments, which are copyright someone else. All items copyright Dan Lewis are available per below:
“The Internet, legally, is uncharted waters, but it’s not impossible to navigate. By analogy, almost all websites can be treated like billboards.”
That’s a quote from an old notepad I found recently. It’s not verbatim, but close enough And it’s about nine years old.
In 1995, I entered college. The Web was, relatively speaking, new. The first [...]
Here’s the update from the last week (or so) of Search Team goodness:
Toolbar
* Wikia Evolution, the search toolbar launched. Download it at http://re.search.wikia.com/toolbar/download.html
* Want to tinker with the code? Grab it via the SVN at http://svn.swlabs.org/re.search/cool/toolbar/ - there’s no documentation yet, but we’re working on it. The test .xpi (evolution.test.xpi) can be unzipped as per [...]
James Grimmelmann is an adjuct professor of law at New York Law School here in Manhattan. His recent paper, “The Google Dilemma” (available via SSRN) tells five stories about the power Google currently wields, and why Google — or whomever “controls” search — needs to wield that power with great responsibility.
The paper is a quick [...]
Our announcement about our new Wikia Evolution toolbar definitely made the rounds. Here are some of the blog posts about it — feel free to use the toolbar to add these posts right to the Wikia Search index :)
You can download the toolbar here.
AltSearchEngines — Introducing Wikia Evolution / Firefox Toolbar
CenterNetworks — Wikia Search Launches [...]
One of our core values at Wikia Search is Community. We want everyone to be able to participate in the Wikia Search project. That’s why we are proud to introduce Wikia Evolution, our new Firefox toolbar. You can download it here, or via Mozilla’s Firefox Add-On Library.
The mission of Wikia Evolution: To empower users to [...]
From day one of the Wikia Search project, the Wikia Search community collectively brainstormed the core principles of the project and, indeed, that search currently lacks and needs. One of them — transparency — is needed now more than ever.
Last week, Google released it’s new content endeavor, Knol — a platform by which anyone can [...]
Last Friday, Google announced that, according to them, the web has one trillion unique URLs. But Google’s index, quoth their blog, is not that big:
We don’t index every one of those trillion pages — many of them are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content similar to the calendar example that isn’t very [...]
Here’s what the search team did last week:
Nutch:
* Finish FieldIndexer
* Finished BasicFields
* Working on AnchorFields
These are all part of the new Indexer that will allow fine grained control of fields that go into our index. The FieldIndexer is the actual indexer itself that replaces the current Nutch indexer. The BasicFields replaces the current [...]
Grub, the open source web crawler, is a key part of Wikia Search and an community-benefiting web search experience in general.
My larger vision is pretty simple. I want Grub to be a decent and open snapshot of the web that is kept fresh, and then stored/shared in ways useful to the whole community — to [...]
What: Creative Commons Salon NYC
Where:The Open Planning Project, 349 W. 12th Street, New York City
When: TONIGHT! 7pm to 10pm
Who: Us! We’re presenting on Wikia Search And the Livable Streets Network and comedian Max Silvestri.
What else: Free beer!
RSVP? Via Facebook
