Tiger Woods, this week's Icarus, grew up with the Web.
Indeed, when he seemed to be flying most closely to the sun, Woods insisted that instead of talking to the police, he would only communicate through his own blog, TigerWoods.com.
News of his striking an iron fire hydrant and a wooden tree with his Cadillac Escalade was generated not by conventional media, but by Web media, principally led by TMZ.com.
While the more conventional media were still telling the story of how Woods' wife had supposedly saved him from a terrible fate, TMZ, RadarOnline, and others (the one conventional medium on TMZ's side was the more traditional Enquirer, but traditional media have always despised this under-rated institution) approached the matter with a cynic's eye, a skeptic's nose, and perhaps even a spy's technology.
Together, they produced many alleged lovers and tales of Tiger's conversations with close friends in which he allegedly confided that only a Kobe Special (the evocatively phrased "house on a ring") might remedy the situation.
And now that, according to numerous online sources, we have rumors of sexted photos of the inside of Tiger's trousers, I can think of nothing other than Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
(Credit:
Cliff 1066/Flickr)
Is it mere coincidence that on the day that Woods' most hallowed reputation was assaulted by rumors not only of smutty cell phone photos, but of an affair with a fascinating porn star, Google's CEO spoke to the world from on high?
In an interview with CNBC, Schmidt declared in what some might feel was his softest, most touchingly moralistic tone: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
His statement was meticulously constructed in response to a question about the trustworthiness of the world's most enveloping search engine. However, surely his answer applies to technology in general.
The problem with technology isn't so much that it immediately reveals, but that it immediately records. That is how Google makes much of its money, by recording the preferences of those who use it.
That is also how photographs, opinions, flings, even drunken nights come back to haunt those who may not wish nor deserve anyone's criticism.
In days gone by, sportspeople, movie stars, even, perish their memory, congressmen could keep their less socially acceptable behavior on the down low because proof was somewhat hard to clutch. Of course, people may have talked. But there was no physical evidence.
Now, the minute Playgirl decides that photographs of Tiger's private life and parts are genuine, all will be revealed in its less than salubrious glory. And Woods' interesting faith in the power of his blog to bring the unquestionable truth to those who admire him will seem like faintly naive bluster.
However, as we watch this whole sad, real, painful and even slightly amusing affair (or, as it seems, affairs) unfold upon our Macs, PCs and smartphones, shouldn't it make us wonder what it is to be free?
In order to live a life of freedom, shouldn't we fly in the other direction from Facebook, put some space between ourselves and MySpace, smash our cell phones and invest in landlines, let go of our laptops and most definitely never imagine that our personal blogs will persuade people that we are who we really think we are?
Shouldn't we attempt to live in a way that no one can observe and no one, especially Google, can record?
Tiger Woods might have gone the old media route--an interview with Diane Sawyer or Oprah. Even a Roger Clemens-like session on "60 Minutes." Perhaps one of those might have garnered him a little sympathy, might have earned him a few points in a game now largely driven by a 24-hour news cycle.
But Woods believed in new technology. And it is new technology that might end up doing him the most damage of all.
Rumors have begun to trickle from Googleville that the Jolly Search Giant is beginning to change its mind about those fickle fellows who espouse creativity.
You know, the sort who don't necessarily think you should research 41 different shades of blue. The sort, indeed, who sleep under their desks at ad agencies.
Which leads me to wonder whether a certain rebalancing might shortly occur in the tender relationship between the left-brainers and right-brainers of product selling.
The Web largely began as a functional experience, where everything you looked at was created by those who felt that what it does would always be a little more more important than how it looks. Partly because these people had no idea, nor did they really care, how to create something that actually looked truly inviting.
Few might agree that Google and YouTube, despite the fact that huge numbers of fingers populate them daily, are the most aesthetic of locations. Utilitarian would be the polite way of describing their sense of design.
A 10-year-old mathematician's idea of pulchritude would be a less charitable version. Somehow, every time I go to YouTube, in particular, it feels like the crummiest of Blockbusters, with DVD boxes that are fraying at the corners.
Ad agencies, very heavy on pretty and very light on engineering, at first tried to mimic print ads and billboards and squeezed them into a medium that was far more individual, far more personal than any seen before.
The Googlies thought ad agencies somewhat risible relics of a disappearing world--like a bunch of Don Johnsons trying to deal with the brainy world of CSI.
Yet while the Web is still very functional, it is also the place where we increasingly live far too much of our lives. We watch TV on the Web. We read papers on the Web. We find lovers on the Web. And we continue to tell them how much we love them on the Web.
I know that some people feel that the pages of, for example, Yahoo Sports and the Huffington Post have been occasionally enhanced by wallpaper ads that add energy to the home pages without taking away from the content.
So advertising, done right, surely has a chance to make Web pages more attractive, more involving, and more inspiring.
There was a time in the U.K., for example, when the TV ads were actually more interesting than much of the programing. It is possible. It does happen. Brazil is another country where advertising can be far more involving far than the latest soap opera.
As Google decides that display advertising is where the new money will inevitably be, ad agencies might just think about creating work that makes Google's pages a little more inviting, a little more, dare one say it, exciting.
How strange it might be, in some optimistic future, if advertising created by outsiders actually helped Google with its business as well as advertisers with theirs.
The advent of Bing has shown that just a little aesthetic sense might, in fact, help to attract real people out there, those scouring the Web for anything that might brighten their day.
Just imagine if Google's and YouTube's pages were adorned with ads that offered wit, charm, and design sense as opposed to little blue words offering last minute vacations or little yellow words promising erectile function.
Might that be good for business? Might it even encourage YouTube, in particular, into a redesign?
Gordon Bell may well be a slightly peculiar man.
On the other hand, he may simply be the world's first e-philanthropist.
Bell, a researcher at Microsoft, has decided that it is, indeed, in the interests of science for him to commit every single nano-second of his brain's functions to a digital resting place, so that those in future times might see just what human life was like in our woeful, wobbling era.
According to CNN, Bell is just a little enthusiastic about this project. (Click here for a Q & A with Bell from February conducted by ZD Net U.K.)
He wafts around the world carrying more recording equipment than, well, CNN. He tapes conversations, trips, bills, medical records, and, for all I know, visits to the washroom to groom his nasal hair.
It's a lovely place. But would you want every second of your life there to be recorded?
(Credit: CC Robert Scoble/Flickr)He has even tried out a Microsoft invention called a SenseCam, which attempts to monitor and record as much of your life as is digitally possible in the form of images.
I know many of you will be wondering just how large the Kilimanjaro of information might be. Well, Bell seems to estimate it at some 350GB.
But it's another of his estimates which makes my body feel reluctant to welcome my breakfast. You see, Bell believes that by 2020 the whole of our lives will be online and searchable.
I find myself wondering just what kind of lives some of these big boffins have led. Isn't the real joy of life the mysteries rather than the facts?
Can anything truly replace the serendipity of love, the insanity of coincidence, the maniacal lunacy of the surprise, and the relief at finally forgetting some of the idiotic things we have done in our lives?
There is a woman namedJill Price, who suffers from hyperthymestic syndrome, the ability to remember absolutely everything about her life. It does not seem to make her unusually happy. How do I know? Well, she told ABC News: "It makes me crazy."
If everything is there for us to merely click and search, isn't that the moment when we cease to be human beings and become, well, Ray Kurzweil?
Perhaps you, too, might feel just a twinge of ironic joy at Bell's reply to one searchingly innocent question posed to him by CNN: "Are you on Facebook and Twitter?"
Bell replied: "Yeah, I'm on Facebook and Twitter and occasionally I will tweet something. Somehow my problem is that I don't think I have anything interesting to tweet about."
And yet we are supposed to trawl through 350 Gigabytes of mostly uninteresting life? Oh, its enough to make you want to sip pinot noir with your cornflakes.
Microsoft has responded swiftly to suggestions that its Bing search engine seems to throw up ads alongside the keyword "pornography".
In a post Thursday, I outlined some of the suspicions that surrounded the appearance of ads for Bing next to searches for fleshy entertainment.
A Microsoft representative declared in an e-mail: "Microsoft has not purchased the keyword 'pornography,' and this term has never been in our AdWords account."
This will serve as a considerable relief to many upstanding citizens.
The company representative continued: "It is our policy on the Bing marketing team that we do not have any adult content as part of any of our keyword buys or other marketing campaigns."
However, Microsoft has vivid views about how this alleged relationship between "binging" and films featuring somewhat less talented actors naked might have come about.
"The keyword that seems to be triggering these results is 'free videos,'" the Microsoft representative explained. "We are following up with Google to understand why this ad is showing up in these types of queries."
That should be a very interesting conversation. One looks forward to reading a transcript.
I tend to believe that life's pleasures should be experienced with real human beings, relatively sober, and free of excessive chemical content.
However, I understand there are those who make use of search engines to fuel their various needs, including those of pornographic succour.
Which brings me to Bing.
There seems to be some agreement among the cognoscenti that Microsoft's fine search engine offers optimal results for those who are seeking the filmic freshness of the flesh. Blocking such freshness can also be a difficult maneuver.
You see, Bing has excellent video search properties. And you might be astonished to hear that one of the major types of video for which humanity's needy search is video of a pornographic bent.
However, TechCrunch claims to have encountered evidence that Bing has entered an entirely new realm of raunch.
An enterprising TechCrunch employee decided to google the term "pornography" and was perhaps simultaneously astonished and elated to discover a sponsored link from Bing.
No, there is no suggestion that Bing is the better search engine for drug paraphernalia.
(Credit: CC James Wheare/Flickr)The artful ad was headlined "Free Video." It then extolled Bing's remarkable access to "thousands of videos."
Somehow, I feel there may be more than thousands.
I know those of a technical leaning might suggest that sometimes when you do quite a few searches in succession the ads don't seem to keep up, so the ads that you see for your second search might have been generated by your first search.
I was still dissatisfied. I could not understand why anyone would search "pornography" when the very simple "porn" would have clearly sufficed. Is the suggestion that only those of a elevated snootiness, those who refer to pornography by its full name, get the Bing ad?
Then I stumbled into a blog post by Aaron Goldman, who seems to be quite au fait with the digital marketing world.
Goldman claims that he googled "Google porn searches" and immediately encountered an ad for Bing. Now the minds of those of a suspicious disposition must truly be wandering and wondering.
I would never be the one to suggest that Microsoft deliberately seeks out porn business.
However, business is, indeed, business. So one wonders just how much awareness there is among bingers of this alleged arousing serendipity?
A little while ago, I was working with a client who wanted to change his very large company's brand name.
His greatest concern was that the new name should make for a simple URL.
I wondered whether it wasn't more important that the brand name should be memorable. Isn't that where it all starts? And ends?
I was reminded of this conversation Tuesday when I arrived in Austin, Texas. By chance and a glass of viognier, I encountered a photographer who wanted her work to enjoy a wider audience. She gave me her card, headlined by her URL: CourtneyChavanell.com. Which, given that Courtney Chavanell was her name, appeared to be appropriate.
(Credit:
CC ChrisDlugosz/Flickr)
However, I secretly wanted to tell her to change her name like actors do- because Chavanell is tough to remember. She said the key to her work was optimism, so I wanted to suggest that she change her professional name to Courtney Optimist. Everyone would remember that, URL or not.
There was a time when people thought URLs were the key to getting hordes to throng your site. Make it short, have one of the most important keywords--sex, free, go, eat, my, and porn being examples--and your fortune was made.
People still try to trade the most simple URLs for hopeful hundreds of thousands. They will still line up in the hope of getting a vanity URL from Facebook.
But don't most people simply go to the little search box, type in the name of what they're looking for, and search?
If it's something they want to go back to, they'll bookmark it. But they won't remember what the URL is. For the simple reason that they don't need to. The Bingoogle fraternity does it for them.
Indeed, in Japan, a country so often so clever about these things, the trend in advertising is not for companies to slap their URLs three feet high in the bottom right of the ad--it's to have search boxes with suggested search terms.
Every time I see a URL in an ad that tell you to go to COMPANY NAME/special offer or some such, I wonder if there's anyone who would ever do such a thing.
Perhaps there are those generic words that people absent-mindedly type, perhaps just out of boredom. I don't know, URLs like kitchen.com. Or music.com. But could this still be a significant number?
How many people really do bother to type URLs these days?
Just wondering.
So the Googlies are, allegedly, gnashing and wailing.
Their ears, their nostrils, even their fully formed eyebrows are twitching beyond all human control.
Though I am not one of those who necessarily subscribes to the idea that Googlies ever have extreme emotions, the rumor is that they are in a fizzy tizzy. Because of Bing, the new search fragrance from Microsoft.
According to a report, Google's Sergey Brin has ordered some of his finest brains to take Bing apart as if it were a secretly smuggled advance exemplar of the Palm Pre.
He wants to know how it thinks. He wants to know who its friends are. He wants its very innards examined for performance-enhancing algorithms.
I would very much like to believe this story. Mainly because I want the word "Bing" to become part of the language, but also because Bing seems like a rather fine product.
However, a small part of me, somewhere between my spleen and my liver, is sending a warning signal. You see, last Christmas I read the highly amusing Michael Wolff biography of Rupert Murdoch.
In it, Wolff describes how Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, encouraged him to hang with a younger crowd. You know, some of the folks that might just decimate the newspaper industry as we know it. Folks such as Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
So perhaps that place between my spleen and liver has been aroused by the fact that the newspaper that broke the "Google is blinging scared" story was Murdoch's own, and very much beloved, New York Post.
Of course it's possible that someone at Google was trembling so much that he spilled his tale of fear to a friend at the New York Post.
However, when you're perceived as being a little bit of a, well, monopoly, isn't it nice to occasionally bathe in the idea that there is a serious threat to your throne and your, um, pension? Might you just be tempted to find a nicely engineered way of slipping that story out there just to improve the way you are regarded?
It's a little like movies of the last 15 years or so in which the male protagonist has to show his vulnerable side to get the girl.
Because he sheds a tear or two and visits a psychologist to talk about his mama, we end up thinking his belching, slobbering, swilling, snorting, slightly uncouth persona was all actually rather charming.
He does get the girl, though. And that, for him, is really all that matters.
I want to Bing. I want to be Binged.
I want to hear the Binging bells from a million laptops ringing the news that there might be an alternative to Google's dominant bong.
So I was only too delighted to hear that two TV ads have already emerged to do the Binging ringing.
The first so-called anthem spot (ad agencies love to tell clients they need an anthem spot, in the same way that England really, really needs "God Save the Queen"), disappeared almost before it appeared.
The ad seemed, to my timid heart and mind, to be telling viewers that if only they hadn't had their noses stuck in Google searches for most of the day, we might not have needed a financial bailout.
If only you all weren't "lost in the links," you might have prevented your house from being foreclosed and your investment broker from stealing all that money you were hiding from your ex-spouse during the divorce proceedings.
This seems a little harsh on the Googlies. They may not exude enough warmth to heat the outhouse, but to link their links to Bernie Madoff seems a little like blaming Alex Rodriguez for global warming. ("Well, if only you weren't all glued to your TVs watching him hit, you might have been able to sit in the dark and save energy").
I suspect the anthem ad didn't stay on too long, because it feels more complicated than the relationships in "John and Kate Plus 8." In the enthusiasm to make you believe you really are sunk in Searchville, the Bingers felt they had to create a sense of chaos, one that perhaps real people don't feel at all.
Now there's a second TV spot, in which, during various conversations, one party is triggered by the other party's use of a word to give useless search results for that word (watch the video and you'll see what I mean).
This could be funny. This should be funny. But again, the attempt to evoke frenzied overload leaves viewers with a feeling of, no, really, frenzied overload.
It's one thing to dramatize the negative. But it's peculiar to make it seem like it's chaos out there.
Especially as it isn't chaos out there. It certainly doesn't feel like that to people who google as they used to hoover. It feels just faintly annoying sometimes. There's a little too much dust and it's still quite hard to get it under the sofa.
So why don't the creators of the ads mine this annoying feeling to charm their way into people's consciousness?
I'm also left a little perplexed at the idea of Bing being described as a decision engine. I should only use Bing when I want to decide something? Such as whether to go to a Zac Efron movie or stay home and attempt to eat my eyebrows? Again, it's a complex thought that feels neither understandable nor terribly believable.
Some of the performances in this second spot, though, are superb. So I wish I could have just witnessed the whole of the breakfast scene played out in one well-scripted 30-second film. The two actresses would have delivered a funny and winning performance, one that would have made the spot clear, memorable, and loaded just right.
In the attempt to make Google seem like the old, nasty, hairy-nostriled IBM to Bing's cute little Granny Smith, the Bingers mislaid the one thing that made Apple's communication so powerful: the simplicity.
Oh, come on, you didn't know that Bing is trying to be the Apple of search? No one told you? It's there in the ads. You just have to search a little.
Do you speak Wolfie?
I know that many fine, inquiring minds have attempted to delve deep into the mental well that is computational knowledge engine, Wolfram Alpha.
Well, I've had a tough day and I wanted to get to know Wolfie, man to machine. So I asked questions, I cross-examined, I stared, as did George Bush with Vladimir Putin, into Wolfie's very soul.
Here is what I found.
My first question was a simple one: What's it all about? Wolfie churned it over in his mind. His answer? Some very interesting information about the Albanian lek. Yes, the currency of Albania is not doing so well. However, it will clearly be the answer to the world's search for meaning very shortly.
I thought that perhaps I'd unnerved Wolfie. He's probably quite tired with all the publicity. So I tried: "Do you like your job?" To which I received a very polite: "I like to compute."
Ah, now we were communicating.
So my next input was: "Is the earth dying?" I just wondered, you know. Well, Wolfie swiftly informed me that the only data he had on the subject is that 107.6 people die every minute. Which works out at 4.714 million people a month.
Now I was told that when asked "Do you speak Thai?" that Wolfie replies, for now, he only speaks English. However when I asked "Do you speak Polish?", Wolfie had no idea what I was talking about.
A little perturbed, I asked "Are you friendly?" and Wolfie stared at me for a few moments before informing me about the fine city of Friendly, Maryland, population 10,938.
I wasn't about to back off. My next question was: "Are you a virgin?" Wolfie didn't need to think about this. He replied: "VIRGIN!" I was delighted that he believed in abstinence, until I discovered that he was referring to a magazine in France with a circulation of 150,000.
I felt we were meandering somewhat. So I thought I'd toss him a softball.
I asked: "What is the population of Wales?" Don't ask me why. I have a friend there. It seemed like an easy question. However, Wolfie answered: 5956. He also claimed this was a 2004 estimate.
Um, what? Yes, I was clear to input the British Wales, as opposed from the one in Wisconsin. Or the other one in New York. The British Wales has several million people. Has Wolfie hit the booze?
I thought I'd check, so I threw him: "Is Google crap?" He immediately cheered up and gave me a comparison between Google's share price and that of something called CRCAM Alpes Provence.
It was clear Wolfram Alpha and I needed to work on our relationship. Either that, or we will soon be in couples therapy. So I asked him the big one: "Are you an Alpha Male?"
Wolfie didn't even hesitate. He immediately gave me details of what seemed to be his exercise regime, which includes running at a speed of 400 meters per minute at an elevation of two degrees with a maximum heart rate of 192.5 beats per minute. Well, that's what it seemed to be.
Yes, couples therapy might be a very good idea.
Eu. It's the sound you make when someone forces their fist into your imperfectly-conditioned gut. It's the sound that some might describe as a large, dissatisfied grunt.
Which is what its mayor seems to be emitting every time she looks at Google search results for her beloved French town.
When you google 'Eu', you get plenty of results for that bastion of energy, the European Union. You get some that refer to the past participle of the French verb 'to have.' But you have to work very, very hard to find reference to this lovely market town in Normandy.
How lovely is Eu? Well, it has somehow eluded every vacation itinerary I have ever enjoyed. But Britain's cheery Queen Victoria visited it twice. That was in the days before the Web.
Eu is twinned with two other fine French towns. Ay and Is. Truly. The former is in Champagne, the latter in Burgundy. And Eu is also the place where William the Bastard married the heart-melting Matilda in 1050.
The mayor, Marie-Françoise Gaouyer, believes that Eu has lost a third of its tourists because of its low Google search status. Her belief is that instead of spending money to improve that status- as many on these pages know, making oneself superior to the European Union is not easy- she believes the town must change its name. (Oddly, this has not been the strategy pursued by the Mayor of Intercourse, Pennsylvania)
Ville d'Eu (Eu Town) appears to be her favorite. But others include Eu-en-Normandie and Eu-Le-Chateau. (Yes, there's a wonderful chateau there)
However, the legal and political process involved in a name change will take five years. And think of all the marketing money they will have to spend to launch the new Eu.
Perhaps they might consider changing their name to Google. That would surely make Eu famous overnight.
