- A sidebar formatted history page similar to Firefox's existing history but with all the smart features of Google's Web History
- A bookmarklet/button to Pause and Un-Pause the Web History with ease
- Website thumbnails: I often forget the name of a site but can spot it from a thumbnail
- Total number of visits to a particular domain/page, trends for these domains/pages.
- Keywords I have used to reach a domain previously.
Google responded with a phone call asking for details and they said they'd send me some information via email, I never heard from them again. With Google's latest spate of recommendation gadgets and their latest product change, "web history" (something I have been waiting for for a while because I was fed up of never being able to search my history - an offline version would be nice and more secure), it seems relevant to post what I submitted.
I called it Google Channels, for lack of better words and to embrace Google's brilliant naming tradition (see: Froogle's death, one of my favourite play on words). This was my pitch:
PDF Summary & Advert for Product
PDF Google Proposal
Google Channels
A free, automated, user specific and editable channel to facilitate the discovery of entertainment on the internet.
The Problem
Finding entertainment is very much a different process to an information search. For information, a user, for the most part, knows what he or she is looking for and creates an appropriate search query to find what they need. For current entertainment search processes, a user must know what they want to read, watch or listen to before beginning their search. This, in many respects, is contrary to the act of discovering fresh entertainment. In mature mediums there exist two paths - one for the acquirement of media and a second for its discovery. Internet search acts predominantly as the former similar to a cinema which shows a film you chose specifically to watch. Examples of the latter are television, radio and libraries; each provides a selection of entertainment services for the discovery of new quality content.
The internet today offers a unique worldwide medium for text, video and audio; it has quickly become the ultimate entertainment, communication and information hub. Google, with aims to organise the world's information, has made great strides in providing tools for finding information fast, and via Gmail and Google Talk (amongst others) online communication is being made easier. With the emergence of flash streaming and legal movie and music downloads it is now the entertainment aspects of the internet that must be addressed by Google. The first steps have already been taken with Google Video and YouTube. I believe Google's next big innovation should be to improve the accessibility and discovery processes for the wealth of quality content available on the internet, to match the second element of Google's aim: to make content universally accessible.
The closest the internet currently has to an entertainment discovery service is "StumbleUpon" a site that allows users to recommend web pages so that readers may stumble through the internet finding its hidden sweet spots. Other undertakings include; The "Venice Project", from Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, creators of Skype, which sees their focused efforts in creating a recommendation driven Broadband TV service for quality video content delivery and discovery. Last.fm, a British based company, collates music listened to and generates free customised radio stations for discovery of new music. I believe now is the time for Google to begin developing a service in this field, as internet content begins to escape the confines of the PC box. Last.fm's growing popularity and success is proof that there is a demand.
The Solution
For Google Channels to solve these entertainment search issues it needs to offer two things; first it must deliver interesting content and secondly this must suit the user's tastes. Google already has a head-start with regards to content delivery; its extensive crawl index, video and book libraries present the essence of a solution (though to my knowledge no Google owned music or audio database currently exists). To show content that is relevant, knowledge of the users' tastes must be known and items must be grouped by similarity. Google Sets is already the foundation of these grouping functions - searching for television shows like "Family Guy" and "The Simpsons" yields "South Park" as a top suggestion. Knowledge of the user can be obtained through existing data or by user input.
Creating the Channel
Google's personalized search data can give an accurate portrayal of a user's tastes (e.g. top search terms), as does their rating trends, labelling actions and Google Talk's music trends. Collating this data with similar neighbours and data from Google Sets, a selection of materials matching the user's tastes is produced without needing search. Hence a user-specific recommendations channel is generated, creating the basics for a discovery driven internet service (an extension of the pre-existing personal homepage gadget "Interesting things for you"). With refinements through categorisation this channel can be split into genre specific bands.
The alternative approach is to ask the user for a few things they already enjoy - favourite music artists, websites, television shows and books may be key pointers. Using a grouping structure a list of recommendations can be generated, allowing relevant content from indexes (Books, Google Video, RSS feeds, etc) or established channels to be combined into a personalized channel. As Google Channels evolves the accuracy of recommendations will improve.
Channel Implementation
Implementation becomes the next question; channels may be video, audio or written, or an amalgamation. Video channels may be a generated stream of video not unlike television channels, with one recommended video continuing directly on from the previous - this stream may play live to multiple parties, play from a chosen point (e.g. select first video from a list), be skipped through or downloaded. Music channels may act like those on Last.fm, playing music similar to artists the user already knows, they could also be geared towards podcast discovery or online radio which may then be played in-browser. Reading lists would act much like existing feed aggregation services, however could contain a degree of useful automation and Google Book recommendations to inform users of literature, sites and news that interests them yet lies outside of their confined internet corner.
User Control
User editing adds significant benefits:
· Remove subjects that are uninteresting.
· Actions when viewing channels may include:
· "add similar items to my channel"*,
· "add this item to my channel",
· "add items in this label to my channel",
· "create new channel based on",
· "label item/channel",
· "ban items in this category",
· "ban this item",
· "blog this item/channel",
· "share this item/channel",
· "combine channels",
· "recommend item/channel"
· "invite user to chat"
· "rate this item/channel"
· Recommendations can evolve using rating systems that promote good content and ban bad content.
· Complete control of channel could bring true "internet TV" to life.
* e.g. "add sites similar to Slashdot.org", letting users find domains that match their normal reading materials without the trouble of building a specific search query to find them.
Once channels are created the next logical steps are sharing of channels, channel labels, recommended channels, RSS channel feeds, top channels lists, searchable channels database, public and private channels, embeddable channels, sponsored channels, channel collaboration, Google Talk integration for chat whilst viewing, content databases allowing creators to add their work directly to channels (much like the existing YouTube channels system), exclusive content or subscription channels.
Targeted Advertising
Revenue streams for Google and content creators are also instantly apparent. Google would know the full specifics of the 'now playing' content. Hence incorporation of Google Ads is only a stone's throw away. Video channel features can be interlinked by relevant video ads, and similarly for audio. For incentives to create channels owners may receive payments from a pay per click or impression initiative. The cost of displaying ads on a channel may also be proportional to the number of regular viewers or readers a channel has.
Creators of content (e.g. a television network) may wish to receive more return and have greater control of proceedings; a corporate control panel may be an option. Similarly an advertising control panel may be helpful to large advertising corporations that want to specifically control when and where their ads are shown.
Benefits Elsewhere
Other benefits to Google are the natural categorisation and sorting made by users of channel content, which will not only improve recommendation quality but also add to the usefulness of Google search results; for instance a fuzzy search that returns results matching the users search aims but not necessarily matching their query; particularly helpful for those having trouble refining search terms.
Alas, I am back from my Easter break, university's final exams beckon me whilst Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet spur me on. My 12,000 word directed reading assignment is almost past me, after submitting it I plan to put it up here and pass it around the net a bit. I have spent too much time on it to have only two parties read it. In fact I'll probably put up PDFs of all my uni work once I am done here. It seems a waste to have many hours of work read and marked by only one person.
Anyway, two Saturdays ago I left in the evening by car from this here Redfern accommodation; leaving my neighbourly rabbits, robins and squirrels for town and terraces. It was the weekend before Easter and I was to watch my local team, Bristol Rovers FC, perform in their first cup final for a long time (the Johnstons Paint trophy) at Cardiff's millennium stadium – the last cup final to be played there. We were against Doncaster; our support turned out 40,000 strong and this was the scene:
After watching the under-teams play their big games and a team warm-up and pyrotechnics display the game started. After 5 minutes we were 2-0 down and out. It stayed that way until half time; with a penalty and fine shot we took it to 2-2 extra time. Sadly our league 2 stamina lead to a mishap and we ended up losing 3-2. Yet it was a most enjoyable day out and the fivelive consensus agreed that Rovers had performed well – the fans were happy. A three hour traffic jam on the way back was however not so fun.
When asked on Monday what we should do I promptly replied, "Absolutely nothing". And that's what I enjoyed doing – I caught the most atrocious 80s super-hero movie on Sky Movies – "Howard the Duck" with Marty's mother from Back to the Future. We played multi-player super monkey ball on the Wii and lay about in the sun reading our novels – I'm still making my way though Kerouac's "On the road". In the evening we turned geeks and played 4 player Lord of the Rings RISK – the incomplete mordor-less version. I take great pride in winning, given my terrible starting position.
On Tuesday we went to Bath for the day, it just so happened that the sunshine went away for a day, much to our disgust. Though walking about the lovely sandstone spa was interesting – if any of you readers should come across the fudge-packer in the fudge shop, please berate him for taunting me with chocolate goodies whilst I was still under the self-inflicted restraints of lent. That night we declared a RISK rematch wherein I came first or second, depending on which rules we used. On this night Liverpool also beat PSV away from home 3-0 – a fine showing.
Sam left for Surrey, and later Kent, on Wednesday morning without her coat. Left with family, cats, book and Wii I made myself at home, spending a couple of hours on some website code and a couple here and there on coursework assignments. The footie that night was not so great; both United and Chelsea had poor champions league showings. Thursday through week was much of the same, sun tanning, book reading, film watching, work writing, cat petting. I cut grass in gardens front and back and watched others plant peas and spray fences with protective brown sludge.
Thursday brought about the Masters Golf tournament at Augusta – what a tough year that proved to be. Not a single player made a 4-day par over the x amount of holes. As I have already said, I was supporting Justin Rose, right up until hole 17 on Sunday – what an unlucky break that was – it's a shame but in the end I was quite happy for Zach Johnson to take away the prize, his second to last shot on the 18th was a beauty. This spur in golf interest led to a number of Wii golf rounds on Wii sports – I made a personal best of 7 under par playing with my Johnny Depp Mii and making a few very nice eagles. I got taught a couple of nice new tricks too, such as using an iron out of the bunker and driver when faced with trees.
Thursday evening also took me for a meal at Chiquito's to celebrate my sister's 20th. Those lazy boy rib quesadillas are truly scrumptious. As was the New York baked cheesecake.
On Easter Sunday I welcomed back the taste of chocolate with Thornton's, KitKat and Cadbury's Crème eggs. Now my teeth are rotten. I'm also eating croissants again much to my delight. After a lovely beef roast cooked by my sister I spent the day with my grandparents, watching England lose to Australia in the cricket, studying Chinese and eating delicious home made trifle.
Monday and Tuesday it was back to the garden for more fun filled outside laptop based essay writing. Tuesday evening was graced by Manchester United's 7-1 stomping of Roma, truly an incredible performance. It's hard enough to put seven past a lower league team let alone coming from behind against second-place Serie A Roma that were unbeaten in their previous 20 matches and had conceded only 5 goals in the champions' league tournament. Just wow. Now 3 teams out of 4 left in the competition are English, the top three sides in the Premiership no doubt. There could be a messy Chelsea-United showdown come May – fighting for the league title, playing each other in the FA cup and Champion's League finals.
I don't know if there's much else to talk about – I spent the afternoon with my Grampy on Wednesday talking of the future and the past et al and I came back to Warwick yesterday via the M5 and Tesco. Now I am back home with this as my view:
Making posts with images is now much easier after I created my sweet little small and thumbnail generation script.
Anyway - back to the case in point; the generated images have three modes: a) Show the details for a given IMDB number b) Show details for the top item in a keyword search c) Show my most recently rated film. Upon generation these files get cached, the cache updates once a week for film details and one a day for the rated film. So, here are some fun fun dynamic images:
http://movies.trivialbeing.org/my/rated/rated.png
http://movies.trivialbeing.org/pic/lost in translation.png
