January 15th 2007
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Internet, Life, Technology
Today I came across a search service that I’d never heard about before. Although it was pointed out to me as a way of completing my ICT task with ease, ChaCha has got my attention and has fascinated me. ChaCha gives you the option to search the web with a guide - another person who is payed to quickly assist you in your quest to find what you want. I don’t know of any other service that actually puts you in contact with another human who will help you search - and for free. There’s also the option just to search the web normally but I think in some situations, ChaCha could be an invaluable tool for some people with little time and with little patience.
About ChaCha
ChaCha was launched late last year and has grown to a company with thousands of guides. The basic principle of it is that you search for whatever and you’re connected to a guide who is experienced in searching on that particular topic. He or she provides a number of links for you which they deem most likely to be what you want. When you’ve got the information you wanted, you then have to rate the guide - either good, okay or bad. Hence why they’ll always be nice to you. This service is free.
The ChaCha Experience
I’ve been playing with ChaCha for a few hours now and I am a little impressed with the service. When I first used it I thought that it would be much easier just to search for the things myself. Although this was true in some respects, in others it wasn’t. The times when the service was most useful was when I was searching for a particular type of document or a website for a company or organisation that isn’t well known. I tried searching for the same things with Google and it took me quite a bit longer to find the same documents they had provided me. Other requests such as the website for Dell and Microsoft was a waste of time.
All the guides that I used were very friendly and actually used proper English unlike other live chat applications I’ve used (ahem Dell, Linksys). Another plus about this service is that is leaves you to do other things while the guide is fetching your results. This could be particularly useful in the workplace and I found it useful searching for sample business plans during ICT class.
Final Thoughts
As it’s a free service, it must get most, if not all, of it’s earnings from advertising displayed next to the search results. This, I would imagine, would not provide a lot of money for them so I think that there will have to be a limit to the number of guides they hire. At $5 to $10 an hour, they get payed a reasonable amount for what they do but the limiting of the number of guides leads to another problem. If ChaCha gets extremely popular then there won’t be enough guides to satisfy the number of requests; and as being a guide is supposed to be a part time appointment, the number available will be even lower. This will not please the users.
As I said earlier, ChaCha is both a normal search engine and a search engine made personal. I don’t think Google or Yahoo have anything to worry about any time soon but I do feel that ChaCha is a very useful outlet to find specialised items of interest and is a lot quicker than searching for them yourself. Try it out for yourself. You’ll obviously get a varied response because there are many guides waiting to help you but give it a go and leave a comment.
January 10th 2007
Film/TV, Internet, Technology
A couple weeks ago I was invited to take part on the ongoing beta test of The Venice Project, the new creation from the people who kindly revolutionised VoIP and brought us Skype. The Venice Project aims to do with TV what Skype did for phones; it wants to be able to provide on demand television content to who ever wants it, when they want it. The concept is simple but the hardware, software and legalities in making it a reality are far from it. I’ve been using it almost every day and I have come to the conclusion that it’s a promising piece of software that could change the face of IPTV as we know it.
Using the Software
Once you’ve downloaded and installed the software, it’s a simple matter of logging into your account - whether or not accounts will be needed when it becomes publically available remains to be verified. The user interface is very nice and does not get in the way of the video you’re watching. The current beta is definitely not a ‘proof-of-concept’ such as the early releases of Songbird were. Although it uses much of the same technology, it’s quite a smooth program to use and the user interface has been designed with simplicity in mind. The icons for the controls are easily recognisable and you pick up how to use it pretty quickly.
At the moment, there is only a Windows XP version of the software but the creators are saying that there will be versions available for Intel Macs and Linux in the future.
TVP Content
At the moment, the content available isn’t that substantial but what is available is a nice look at the potential of the concept. I was pleasantly surprised to find clips from the highly popular British motoring show Fifth Gear on there but most of the other content is American and honestly not pleasing to watch.
The quality of the video was rather surprising. It’s not quite DVD quality but it’s better than most PVRs on the market. The idea behind The Venice Project is to allow you to watch what you want and when you want it so there’s no need, or reason, to save the content locally. This idea is important because it means that content providers such as the BBC, ITV, Fox and ABC etc. don’t need to worry as much as they would. Saying that, The Venice Project is meant to deliver programmes from big content providers such as BBC and Fox because they’re high quality (both in content and in resolution) and they’re recognised names in TV and film.
Other Features
Although not fully functional there are additional features in the software that have real promise to make the TV watching experience more interactive and more integrated into our daily lives. Because it’s based on the same technology as Songbird and Firefox, there is the future possibility of extensions such as news tickers which could allow extra connectivity and a world of new options.
Current features in the program include channel chat, clocks and although it currently doesn’t function, The Venice Project also appears to want to integrate instant messaging via the Jabber system. That means that you can chat to your friends or complete strangers while watching TV. The extensibility of the software is promising.
Final Thoughts
The Venice Project is both an exciting idea and even more exciting to actually use. It’s got a lot of features to brag about and the software engineers and all the team behind it certainly have something to be proud of. It will certainly make an impact on the way on-demand content is watched on the computer but the mystery is how it will impact; especially with the imminent release of Apple TV.
Certainly here in the UK, I can say that the concept is something I welcome dearly. The closest things we have to a product like this is Sky+ or Freeview coupled with a DVR. The problem is neither of those are free. I’d love to see The Venice Project take off but the problem herein lies with the content providers. Recently, Channel 4 launched an on-demand service for the computer where you rent shows to watch. ITV have their own on-demand service and I was told today that the BBC are going to launch their own service in the very near future. I can only say that what differs TVP from other on-demand services is the fact it’s on your PC, it’s peer-to-peer technology and its free. The fact that it’s free for consumers would most likely put off content providers from showing anything.
Another worry is that people who have caps on their download and/or upload bandwidth will face problems. According to the site “In one hour of viewing, approximately 320Mb data will be downloaded and 105Mb uploaded, which means that it will exhaust a 1Gb cap in 10 hours.” I don’t have caps so it wouldn’t worry me but even people who don’t are subject to ‘fair use policies’ which mean that excessive viewing through the software will most likely make your ISP a little unhappy.
So, is The Venice Project going to be plain sailing or is it going to get lost? We’ll have to wait and see…
January 9th 2007
Internet, Life, Technology
When I was given my first computer in the Christmas of 1999 the last thing that came to my mind was connecting to the internet. Back then I was more interested in just having access to a word processor for school homework and a place to play my games on. My computer then was a bulky Packard Bell with a 60MHz Pentium processor, 72MB of RAM, a slow 4x CD-ROM drive, a slow and noisy 2GB Western Digital hard drive, integrated graphics with 1MB of memory and one USB 1.1 port - I had to uninstall one game to install another so I had no intention of connecting to the internet. That is until just before I started secondary school in 2001.
It was then, in 2000, that I was introduced to the wonderful world of dial-up internet by a friend. Her dad hooked me up with a lovely and loud 56k modem and helped my parents sign me up to NTL’s offer of free 56k internet access (the one that eventually led to their bankruptcy). When I first heard that sound of the modem dialling up I was so excited. Obviously, I could only access it during certain times of the day because it used the main phone line which the telephone also required. I was happy anyway - I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t connected earlier!
In 2004, my parents gave me the opportunity to purchase a new computer to help me with my continuing studies and also because I wanted to take advantage of the broadband revolution but my Packard Bell PC did not have enough juice for NTL’s liking. Back then I wasn’t tech-savvy enough to know that Dell do suck but I was knowledgeable enough to realise that internet connectivity was going to play a major role in my purchase. The broadband revolution changed the way I looked for a computer.
Yin and Yang
The internet and the world wide web play an enormous part in our lives today whether it’s at home, at work or at school. Work and school tasks would be a lot harder to complete if we didn’t have internet access. Computers and internet access now go together hand in hand - one without the other 
wouldn’t mean anything. There are more internet service providers than you can shake a stick at and some are now taking advantage of the complimentary nature of the computer and the service they offer: internet access. ISPs such as RedTen Internet are now enticing customers with the offer of a free computer with their broadband packages. Now the offer looks genuine but the catch is you have to stay with them for a few years before you can keep the computer.
This move, and I think many more ISPs will also offer this incentive in the near future, shows us just how interconnected a computer and the internet now is. Ten years ago there was very little you could do if you were connected to the internet unless you were part of specific social circles. Now, as Bill Gates puts it, we’re moving more into the digital decade and we’re ever increasingly reliant on internet access to give us our information, to connect and interact with our friends and colleagues and to provide content for other users. Without access to the internet our computers would only be as half as useful. Although we can still edit graphics, edit video, listen to music or even play games, when used correctly the internet and the world wide web can provide some invaluable resources which could not be crammed onto our current home computer hard drives.
Conclusion
This whole post has most likely just been a long winded way to tell you how I think our computer purchases have been influenced by the internet, and access to it. When I bought my first computer seven or eight years ago, I had to intention of connecting to the net but now, when we buy a computer our first thoughts will contain a plan to get internet access.
Sorry it was so long winded (I forgot the direction of the post half way through).
December 12th 2006
Blogging, Internet, Programming, Technology
I’ve was invited to join the closed beta of the Israeli start up ClickTale. The service allows you to see a snapshot of what your visitors do and it records their mouse movements, actions and text input in real time. I was sceptical at first but although the beta service isn’t quite what they advertise on their main site, it has got most of the features and sure is something unique - and something I think could be very useful. I’m going to cover what features ClickTale provides, their uses and also the privacy issue that ClickTale brings to the table.
Mice Behaviour
There is a lot of statistic services out there that track your visitors, where they come from, where they enter from and how long they stay on your site - some even go as far as to provide a heat map of ‘hot spots’ on your site that are clicked more. But what ClickTale does is unique in that it tracks the mouse movements of the visitor around your site, whether they right or left click and also what text they enter into fields such as searches. It records these movements and allows you to see what the visitor is checking out when and where - where do they go as soon as the page loads?
This is useful to site owners because in order to optimise your site or service you first need to understand the habits of your users. ClickTale bridges the 
gap between eye tracking and statistics for websites. I’ve found that when I’m browsing a website, especially a text heavy site, I follow my mouse with my eyes as a reading aid. Watching how a user navigates around the site, how a user responds to links or images can be vital information for any site owner not only in designing the user interface but other style decisions.
Data Analysis
Having all the data being made into the movies of the users’ movements and actions is very nice but what ClickTale also does is provide a statistical analysis of the data it collects. Much like Google Analytics (although at time of writing much less advanced) it provides data grouped by country, language, browser, operating system, screen sizes and window sizes. Although the statistical analysis is not as comprehensive as Google Analytics or say AWStats, I think that the main feature of seeing what your visitors do could potentially be more useful and important. At the moment the analysis is limited to what I’ve mentioned above but I feel that a lot more could be done with the data.
The data could be transformed into a ‘heat map’ of mouse movement and actions - which parts of the page does the mouse move over most, which links are most clicked and which parts of the page are seen the most. Services such as Crazy Egg already offer a service that creates ‘heat maps’ based on where users are clicking. This is useful as it shows which links are used the most but tracking mouse movement could potentially be more useful. Mouse movement usually signals interest on the visitor’s side. In my own experience, if I’m weary of a link I hover over it first and see what it points to. If I’m not, I go straight to it. The behaviour of the user’s cursor can say a lot about how visitors perceive your site and provide suggestions on how you can make the user feel safer browsing your site.
Privacy Issues
Obviously, with the fact that visitors’ mouse movements, text input and mouse actions are all recorded, the issue of privacy arises. ClickTale battles 
some of the arguments about privacy by not recording password inputs, not recording any activity outside the web page, not tracking visitors between websites, not tracking any personal files, internet history or interacting with any local files or software. Also, only authorised people (people with the username and password) can actually view the recorded data.
Although the creators have good intentions for their product, it could be used in the wrong manner. Passwords could be captured via a normal text field, some crafty JavaScript and ClickTale. If the users are properly screened though, this could be avoided.
Final Thoughts
I love the idea of ClickTale and since trying it out on my own blog, it’s been interesting to watch the visitors’ movements, where they click, and how much of my posts they really do read! Although it’s been in closed development and testing since the early part of this year, it seems the wait will be worth it. In my case as a small blog owner, it has been interesting to see how the users interact with my bookmarks, seeing whether or not that use the lower part of the sidebar and also seeing whether or not they find searching intuitive.
Also, the fact that adding the service to your site is done by just two pieces of JavaScript means that site operators will find it incredibly easy to use. Once the user interface has been polished, I think that it would be a vital service for any serious website owner.
Oh, and a special thanks to Arik for giving me permission to write this review and including shots of the current user interface.
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