So Google launched Google Health today, and basically it's about drugs, lots and lots of drugs. Google is after the 20 billion dollar drug industry's advertisement money. Basically Google wants to know what ailments you have or might think you have, and then wants to sell ad companies ad space to target you. Just like good old television you let Google tell you about problems like Restless leg syndrome, the cure for which causes gambling problems and sexual urges.

Remember facebook's beacon? You thought it was gone, but it's back and this time it's got a new name. It's called Google Friend Connect. Not only does it allow Google to keep an eye on the users, but Google also keeps the content that they contribute, as well as the user base.

This is basically Google's version of the beacon put out by facebook a while ago. It collects which sites you visit, keeps track of your friends, and what you do while you're on that site and it provides that information to Google so that they can advertise better -- just like facebook wanted to do. In return for you providing Google with this service, Google will let friends visiting your site talk with each other or comment on your site. If there was an outcry about the beacon, there should be a similar one for this product. The only difference being that they're not announcing this information to your friends -- yet (remember the news reader?)! In order to drive any traffic to your site, they have to announce the information to your friends at which point this product is just like the beacon.

Also as for the value, I can't see how this adds value to your site, as the users who are already going to visit your site can talk about it with each other. I don't see how new users are going to come to your site because of this product. Perhaps I don't understand the product well enough yet, but it doesn't seem like its adding all that much value to any given site than comments already provide -- and you control your comments and can export them anywhere. With this product it's 100% lockin, you can't do anything with the content that your users contributed to the site. It seems like a bad idea for pretty much everyone as far as I can see.

If you don't have comments on your site, may I suggest getting an Open Source CMS or a blogging tool instead. Much more value, much more control, and no privacy concerns.

As shameless plug, I am writing an Open Source social network called Social OS (Open Source). It's not ready yet, but be on the lookout for it at etopian.com. Social OS takes the majority of concerns with today's social networks and addresses them in a nice open source package built on top of a leading content management system.

I have been thinking recently about banks and currency. It's a fact that American currency and that of the majority of the world is fiat currency, it's currency that is completely based on the promise of the government. The government is free to do with it as it wishes and to inflate the currency, debase it, and so on. The user of the currency has no control over it. Further, governments allegedly use their gold reserves to further manipulate and solidly backed currency to maintain the value of their fiat currency.

This document is currently being worked on and is very much incomplete. Please contact me if you're interested in contributing to it.

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Okay, here's yet another idea. There is no way that Ask, Microsoft, or Yahoo can beat Google together. But what if they teamed up?

I have always been curious about Google and what its applications are based on. It turns out it's Java, Python, C++, and SWIG. SWIG is used to tie Python and C++ code together. Here's an entire transcript from PyCon 2005 that details what exactly Google does with its software.

TITLE OF PAPER: Python at Google
URL OF PRESENTATION: --not available--
PRESENTED BY: Greg Stein
REPRESENTING: Google

CONFERENCE: PyCon 2005
DATE: March 25, 2005
LOCATION: Marvin Theater
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I was browsing YouTube and I noticed that one of the candidates, Al-Noor, is using Google ads and I thought that probably makes history as the first time a candidate used an online ad-platform in Calgary. I personally don't support or know Al-Noor but his platform seems more direct than Daves. I also like the fact that he posted a contract as a part of his platform. Now only if we could somehow make these damn things binding we would be in business. Election Results are here

It seems that someone got the idea from scalpers that it's a good idea to try to scalp ad-words. Buy up all the popular ad-words then resell them at an inflated cost; or that's my read on what this guy is doing. Yes Game Theory says it works, so do the sweaty, shady guys hanging outside concerts -- it's no big discovery.

the physics arXiv blog » Blog Archive » Game theory and the future of Adwords