Definition
On another workload upspike over here - plenty going on with both current clients and new business. Nice. Haven't felt this positive about the market in a long time...
Building up a ton of stuff I want to write about, but not enough hours in the day at the moment.
For now, let me point you off somewhere else, to Earl Mardle's blog (link courtesy David Weinberger, via Jon Husband).
In amongst plenty of other good stuff, Earl casually tosses out what may be one of the most succinct and useful explanations of the power of Google I've encountered so far.
This is personally important to me primarily because, as the resident quasi-geek in a firm of pure-bred PR folk, I've been asked a number of times just why and how Google is as good as we all know it is. It has quickly become, of course, an absolutely indispensable tool for anyone involved in PR - or anyone involved in...um...any kind of enterprise in which information is an essential tool (which would mean pretty much anything, right?)
Earl says: "...Google understands the internet economy of links and opinions...It doesn’t matter what the content of a document is, beyond some basic keywords, Google doesn’t even read the meta tags. What it does is read its relationship with other documents on the same subject and, using the economy of the net, figure out how respected that information or informant is..."
[Yeah, "thanks for the epiphany" - I know. So maybe it's not exactly mind-blowing - but I just really liked the way he put it. There's a tight and lucid economy to Earl's writing which I'm quickly growing to love. Oft said, ne'er so well expressed, and all that.]
Google gives all of us our own prototype of the Whuffie Head Up Display lookup system Cory Doctorow describes in "Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom" (which, btw, I think I enjoyed more than any other e-book I've ever read on my trusty old Palm Vx - format & content just seemed to fit. Plus it's a bloody good read).
I imagine some purists will probably jump on me to debate the absolute accuracy of Earl's description, but it's certainly close enough and useful enough for me. He pretty much nails the singular character of the blogosphere too, in one richly evocative, crisp little phrase: "...the Blogosphere is a snake pit of densely linked opinions." Damn straight.
Back to Whuffie for a second, I've also noticed that my own personal Whuffie quotient, as measured by Google, natch, seems to have spiked of late. No idea why. Ego-surfing used to bring up hit counts in the low hundreds. For some reason, this search now turns up close to 6,000 hits. Not exactly in the Beckham celebrity league, of course - still firmly (and comfortably) on the D List - but still.
Also mightily intrigued to note the fifth hit in Google’s search results, points to here: Harvard Weblogs: Michael O'Connor Clarke
Er…hello? Did I somehow get admitted to the faculty at Harvard and no one told me? Lovely! When can I pick up my gown?
Actually, I think it’s just a quirk of the way the Radio Userland blogging system indexes email details from people who’ve left comments at the Harvard/Berkman Center Weblogs – but a nice little frisson of ‘just imagine’ all the same…
Building up a ton of stuff I want to write about, but not enough hours in the day at the moment.
For now, let me point you off somewhere else, to Earl Mardle's blog (link courtesy David Weinberger, via Jon Husband).
In amongst plenty of other good stuff, Earl casually tosses out what may be one of the most succinct and useful explanations of the power of Google I've encountered so far.
This is personally important to me primarily because, as the resident quasi-geek in a firm of pure-bred PR folk, I've been asked a number of times just why and how Google is as good as we all know it is. It has quickly become, of course, an absolutely indispensable tool for anyone involved in PR - or anyone involved in...um...any kind of enterprise in which information is an essential tool (which would mean pretty much anything, right?)
Earl says: "...Google understands the internet economy of links and opinions...It doesn’t matter what the content of a document is, beyond some basic keywords, Google doesn’t even read the meta tags. What it does is read its relationship with other documents on the same subject and, using the economy of the net, figure out how respected that information or informant is..."
[Yeah, "thanks for the epiphany" - I know. So maybe it's not exactly mind-blowing - but I just really liked the way he put it. There's a tight and lucid economy to Earl's writing which I'm quickly growing to love. Oft said, ne'er so well expressed, and all that.]
Google gives all of us our own prototype of the Whuffie Head Up Display lookup system Cory Doctorow describes in "Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom" (which, btw, I think I enjoyed more than any other e-book I've ever read on my trusty old Palm Vx - format & content just seemed to fit. Plus it's a bloody good read).
I imagine some purists will probably jump on me to debate the absolute accuracy of Earl's description, but it's certainly close enough and useful enough for me. He pretty much nails the singular character of the blogosphere too, in one richly evocative, crisp little phrase: "...the Blogosphere is a snake pit of densely linked opinions." Damn straight.
Back to Whuffie for a second, I've also noticed that my own personal Whuffie quotient, as measured by Google, natch, seems to have spiked of late. No idea why. Ego-surfing used to bring up hit counts in the low hundreds. For some reason, this search now turns up close to 6,000 hits. Not exactly in the Beckham celebrity league, of course - still firmly (and comfortably) on the D List - but still.
Also mightily intrigued to note the fifth hit in Google’s search results, points to here: Harvard Weblogs: Michael O'Connor Clarke
Er…hello? Did I somehow get admitted to the faculty at Harvard and no one told me? Lovely! When can I pick up my gown?
Actually, I think it’s just a quirk of the way the Radio Userland blogging system indexes email details from people who’ve left comments at the Harvard/Berkman Center Weblogs – but a nice little frisson of ‘just imagine’ all the same…
