Rattleblog: Tales from the blogosphere

07-03-2008

by Damien Mulley

This month's episode of Rattleblog is all apologies, balloons and pinching.

We'd like to start Rattleblog this week with a humble apology to Yahoo. We talked up the internet giant in our last piece saying that 2008 could be the year it makes its comeback. Within days Microsoft went about trying to buy Yahoo, a saga that no doubt will go on and on and get mentioned here from time to time. And no, Rattleblog doesn't think it's far-fetched at all that Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is a fan of Rattleblog and trusts our advice. Howya Steve! Perhaps this could see us broaden our service and moonlight as matchmakers for other companies, and the Rattleblog office might decentralise to Lisdoonvarna. But for now, on with the gossip.

The GigOm blog points out that Google might have 99 balloons in your nearest summer sky as the search giant looks into the idea of using balloons as a means of distributing broadband in more remote areas. We have to wonder how Google Maps will deal with balloons in the key when the application uses digital balloons to mark areas on its online maps. A blue balloon to mark the Google red broadband balloon?

Staying with Google, Arstechnica are reporting that Google is trying to argue with the EU and anyone else that will listen that IP addresses are not personal data. This might be a tough call for them though since so many people are incriminated by IP addresses.

The power of Google really showed recently when one small feature added to Google docs effectively killed off many markets for online form services. A new option in Google's Spreadsheets now allows you to put a form on a website that will auto-fill an online spreadsheet for you, making collecting and calculating data a whole lot easier. If Google continues doing this, a whole load of companies may need to rethink their business models.

Still with Google, the internet giant learned about a greater power than itself when it announced in its results that the return from social networking sites was much less than expected. Following that, ComScore released data showing the number of Google ads being clicked on had taken a sharp downturn. This triggered a massive drop in Google's stock price as traders sold shares quickly fearing the boom days of online advertising were waning. ComScore later released a blog post explaining that it was actually good news as Google had changed how the ads were displayed so that the number of accidental clicks had almost been eliminated making each real click more valuable.

While Google recovered from this, things took an interesting turn when Facebook wooed Sheryl Sandberg to be the new Facebook COO. Sandberg was the person in charge of the most valuable area of Google -- ads. While it may not impact Google, Facebook will definitely benefit from the knowledge of someone that ran the largest ad business on the planet.

Meanwhile a hard lesson was learned by internet providers around the world when Pakistan decided to ban YouTube. Instead of just blocking access in Pakistan though, an ISP in Pakistan sent out new routing commands, which spread like a virus and shut down access to YouTube in other countries too. It's not been a good month for Google or its properties.

While YouTube mentioned in a recent interview that it'll go live streaming soon, Yahoo beat it to the punch and released its own service, a service that streamed and then stuttered, shuddered and stalled. Yahoo has a history of not realising how popular a new application will be and an hour after launch the Yahoo Live streaming service wasn't working. Maybe when Microsoft swallows it up Yahoo will have more resources?

Or maybe not, as TechCrunch reports that Microsoft is also considering branching into live streaming and rumours are it wants to buy live streaming provider UStream.

Lastly, can you patent a pinch? Apple thinks so. Engadget reports that copy and paste might finally be coming to the iPhone as Apple has filed a patent for a method of copying and pasting using a touchscreen.

Damien Mulley is an Irish blogger and works as a web consultant in Cork.