Looking For Local Search

via Techdirt:Looking For Local Search

A new study has found that when people are searching online for a place to buy something, approximately one out of every four is looking for a local retailer they can go to buy the product, rather than just looking for an online retailer. With that high a percentage, you can understand why the search companies are all starting to invest in local search offerings. What will be interesting is how this percentage changes over time. Will people become more internet focused (location doesn't matter) or will they continue to search out local stores (which may depend on the strength of local search options)?

Far be it for me to stand against the tide of the death of distance...

of course, if you can figure out an internet users location, there may be a business in providing local merchants.

Slice and Dice in Antarctica, Tim Bray gets a nod.

Tim Bray and his firm Antarctica get's a nod in The Globe and Mail: Visual software helps dissect data

Sharing information in the Magic Kingdom

2 pieces on the use of new IT technology at Disney, based on a presention at ETech, focus on project communication:

Just don't call them weblogs and Disney Enterprise Weblogs and Wikis

key points : use the same interface they were used to dealing with, focus on blogging for project communication, call them something they know, Leverage people's existing habits.

Locate me physically based on my IP address

In the process of downloading the alpha release of MySQL Administrator (which looks quite solid and useful) I noticed on the download page (for Win binaries) a reference to MaxMind GeoIP.

MaxMind offers a product to Obtain the Country, Region, City, Latitude, and Longitude of any IP address., the GeoIP City Edition claims to drill down to World Region Code, City Name, Postal Code, Latitude nad Longitude, DMA Code (Designated Market Area, US only), and Area Code.


It might be worth a look. The only other alternates I'm aware of are CountryHawk and GeoBytes.

MaMind also provides some standard list such as :
ISO 3166 Country Codes,
Region Codes: For US/Canada, ISO-3166-2 code for the state/province name. Outside of the US and Canada, FIPS 10-4 codes.
Designated Market Area (DMA) codes (US only) contains metro regions in the US based on TV demographics. Designated Market Area (DMA) is a Nielsen Media Research term better defined here.

More RSS Newsreaders for Notes and Domino

Via vowe dot net : Collaborative RSS Newsreader for Notes and Domino comes news of Madicon RSS reader, a R6 product, not freeware, (it starts at 25 Euro per user) but you get a fully functional free trial for 30 days. Looks very slick passed on the OSX screen shot Vowe posted.

Also looks like another RSS/Blog reader, Studio Blog Reade, is due out next Monday, with lots of functionality (after having dealt with LotusXSL.jar and XML4J.jar files problems.

AskTog: Top 10 Reasons to Not Shop On Line

Via Tomalak's Realm comes AskTog: Top 10 Reasons to Not Shop On Line a dave letterman top ten list with a (horror) story for each one.

Here's my interpretation :

• Waiting for the pages to load: Don't assume they have a high speed connection; Never use a graphic for text; Every graphic must add real value (to the customer not the VP).


• Stupid promotional efforts make the company appear dim witted: Don't deceive or lie (ever or even a little) in order to bring customers to your site/company.


• Insufficient, unintelligible, or just plain wrong information for making a buying decision.


• Search can't find: be forgiving for Misspellings; "OR" searches instead of "AND" by default.


• Do you what my money: Sites that don't work on my browser/OS; Click the button to buy , only to be directed to call instead.


• Temporary shopping carts: sites that forget want I asked for or timeout because "I'm" to slow to respond / make up my mind / confirm with my friend.


• Sites that can't ship in-stock items in a timely fashion.


• One size fits none; entering credit card numbers and dates in in-fexible manners. Badly designed defaults.


• After the sale service: confirmation emails that no one has ever printed out.


• Buyer Protection guarantees that don't.

Travel to 17th century Holland this weekend, Girl with a Pearl Earring

We saw Girl with a Pearl Earring this weekend. The acting, setting and clothing were wonderful. It felt like a glimpse of 17th century Holland. It show how much times have changed and how much they haven't. More information about the painting is here. (the time line of Vermeer's life is fascinating)Looks like I shall have to read the book now, which apparently provides more back story and such. A wonderful and lush movie. Go see it. Now...

VC Finance, or testing the water

Via Scott Loftesness: a personal weblog: Model Venture Financing Documents

These templates are a sample set legal documents (put together by a group of leading venture capital attorneys) consisting of:

Term Sheet, Stock Purchase Agreement, Certificate of Incorporation, Investor Rights Agreement, Voting Agreement, Right of First Refusal and Co-Sale Agreement, Management Rights Letter, Model Opinion Letter, Model Indemnification Agreement

The model documents aim to:

* reflect industry norms
* be fair, biased toward neither the VC nor the entrepreneur, consistent with industry norms
* present a range of “typically seen” options (again, consistent with industry norms)
* include explanatory commentary where necessary or helpful

Also Tim Bray discussesss Bouncing Termsheets, an introduction to the VC Process and terminology.

Two valuable resources in understanding what the norm is and when to walk away. 'Cause when you are very thirsty any liquid can look tempting, even the toxic ones!

Corel sells XmetaL to Blast Radius

The Globe and Mail: "Corel sells XmetaL to Blast Radius"

Feb. 6 2004 - Blast Radius and Corel have signed an agreement whereby Blast Radius will acquire all assets of Corel's XMetaL division. The deal is expected to close within the next several days. XMetaL is an XML authoring product that Blast Radius says will complement its existing content collaboration product offerings, also based on XML standards.

XMetaL simplifies the creation of valid XML content, and streamlines the process of distributing information to the Web, print and other media. XMetaL customers include Nike Timing, CIBC World Markets, KBC Bank and Insurance, Texas Instruments, ICP Europe Publishing, Mercury Marine, and Continental Airlines.

The XMetaL 4 Platform is Composed of Four Components:

XMetaL Author, a customizable XML editing environment; XMetaL for ActiveX, an editing interface; XMetaL Developer, a centralized development environment for creating XMetaL customizations and applications and XMetaL Central, a server-based XML environment management tool.

Hopefully they know what to do with it. Corel bought Softquad severall years ago (2000 or 2001?), and likely paid top dollar (in other words too much). I would expect it will help Blast Radius sell more services into current Xmetal customers. But what else can they do with it, even as hot as all things xml are? Any comments VM...

Keeping sane in an insane world >Running a business on OS X and Linux

Via something on infoworld comes : Nicest of the Damned: Running a business on OS X and Linux.

A well written piece form a past and current CTO. Interesting points on building technology paltforms and the real microsoft tax. And I love the Blog name. Yet another entry on my Tech Blog watch list. (Now, can we get "our" C level people on OSX)