I'm not necessarily looking to pile on Microsoft Bing or jump on the #bingfail bandwagon. But a lot has been written about how Bing's video searches often return full-motion porn that's not easily blocked, while its SafeSearch options are incredibly easy to turn off. Lately, I've run into a very specific issue with Bing that is both hilarious and indicative of the problem with overly broad filtering. Perhaps it's easiest to simply illustrate the problem.
Here's what happens when I conduct a Google image search for my name.
Here's what Bing returns.
As it turns out, there is an adult film star who shares the name Molly Wood. I know. Bummer for me. So, Bing has apparently decided that any image search for my name is simply too dangerous to return any results at all. And the only recourse for me to find the perfectly innocent images you see in the Google results above is to turn off the SafeSearch filter and take my chances on the porn star showing up. So, I tried that. And I am scarred for life. (Do not do this!) Apparently Bing doesn't even know I exist, but I now know a whole lot about the other Molly Wood, if you know what I'm saying.
I know this isn't a problem most of you are likely to run into, but to me, it's indicative that Bing's got some pretty big kinks to work out (so to speak), in terms of its algorithm and determining relevant results. Then again, Yahoo seems to think I'm a puppy. Maybe I just have some personal SEO issues.
UPDATE: As of today (one day after this post was published), a Bing image search on my name returns plenty of perfectly SFW images, and many of them are even of me! I am a little curious about this guy, though.
In this week's Buzz Report, I suggested (gently, of course) that the iPhone sucks on AT&T. I'm certainly not the first to suggest it: there's a pending class-action lawsuit over flaky 3G connectivity and AT&T and Apple are pointing fingers at each other over ongoing network and connection issues. Plus, every person in the background of my rant is someone who works at CNET and has had trouble with their iPhone (mostly because we don't even get service in our downtown San Francisco office).
So far, the feedback I've gotten leans heavily toward problems with iPhone/AT&T connectivity, but not everyone is having the same experience. So, here's your chance to tell us your story! What's your iPhone-on-AT&T experience like?
Let me start by saying that I agree with you on one thing: $359 is a lot of money. I just don't agree that it's too much to pay for an Amazon Kindle 2.
In the wake of the announcement of the Kindle 2, the general response is that it's nice and all, but the price is just too high. A price breakdown of the original device found that you'd need to buy about 60 books to make up the price difference (all while paying to get delivery of newspapers and periodicals you could read online for free). And analysts complain that Kindle is a niche product with a small, upwardly mobile target audience. And here's my question: what is the problem with that?
Isn't the Kindle, fundamentally, an early adopter's device? And aren't we usually pretty tolerant of that in the tech space? You all know this story. In the evolution of technology, devices start expensive, they target a niche audience that can afford the price and care passionately about the product, and then they either adopt more mainstream features or become mainstream through a combination of obvious value proposition and gradually lower prices.
Even though the Kindle is on its second iteration, it's still very much in early-adopter territory. Does anyone really expect that an e-book reader is going to take the entire world by storm and become the iPod-like gadget commodity of its day? Of course not; so why should it be priced like bread and milk?
Then there are the features. ... Read more
Forbes just put out another of those crazy lists where it proposes to identify the top Web celebrities--following a recent spate of other lists of top Tweeters and talkers and Web-famous types. And while we don't dispute the attractiveness of doing stupid lists to get people to look at your content (see: CNET Top 5), it could be said that the Web 2.0 elite is getting, well, nauseatingly self-congratulatory.
So, Tom Merritt and I decided to make our own list of influential people on the Web. These are some, but only some, of the top CNET TV fans who have, over the past few years, helped build our podcasts and videos from lonely little broadcasts to full-fledged, incredible communities--families, even. Without them, we've got nothing. Which is to say, these are most definitively the top 25 most influential people on the Web.
Yes, I am going for click bait with that title. And here's what "Sugarlumps" is all about (warning: some explicit language, but it's Flight of the Conchords, not hard-core rap). See it in HD on CNET TV proper.
I've just entered some pretty awesome company! I'm going to have a regular column on WowOWow.com, a site for Women on the Web that was founded in part by Lesley Stahl (yep, that CBS synergy paying off again), along with some other pretty big names--the regular contributors and founders are, in addition to Lesley, Peggy Noonan, Liz Smith, Joni Evans, Mary Wells, Sheila Nevins, Joan Juliet Buck, Whoopi Goldberg, Julia Reed, Joan Ganz Cooney, Judith Martin, Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, and Marlo Thomas.
I will be, not surprisingly, bringing the tech to the party. I'll have a weekly post tied to or based on the Gadget of the Week segment in that week's Buzz Report episode. The Wowowow audience is definitely less tech-savvy than the CNET audience, so look for these to be more informational or explanatory posts about the trends behind the Gadget of the Week, some buying advice about the category, or just an explanation of what in the heck a "Netbook" is, as in the first post, which went up today!
Check it out; I'm pretty excited. I'll post a link to each week's column as it goes up!
CEA i-stage: And the winner is...
And the winner is...
Although there were worthy competitors in the afternoon, the winner of the CEA i-stage event here in Las Vegas was Boxee, the "open, connected, social media center." (Though I did talk to a venture capital guy who said he was following my pick, Occipital.) I suspect that Boxee won through sheer slickness of interface, defined value proposition, and possibly presentation value. It's a good product, ...
Read the full post at CNET's CES 2009 blog.
CEA i-stage: Round one
It's lunchtime now and we've seen the first half of the i-stage presenters. It's been interesting and occasionally contentious, with a few notable standouts. First thing in the morning we saw a voice-activated remote control (Amulet) that manages Windows Media Center (cool, but with some minor hiccups that belie the difficulty of voice-recognition technology) and a portable, wireless video-camera system from Avaak that comes paired with an ...
Read the full post at CNET's CES 2009 blog.
I'm in Las Vegas right now, because tomorrow I'm hosting the i-stage event at the Consumer Electronics Association's Industry Forum event. By "hosting," I mean that I am sort of the Ryan Seacrest of the event: Kevin Kelly of Wired, Jeff Pulver, and Ryan Block are the judges. It's a pretty interesting and cool-sounding contest, actually: It deals with software, hardware, and services, and the winner gets $50,000 and a free booth at CES. And while the organizers assure me they've got a really big check for the winner, I think it might be the free publicity (and preshow publicity) at CES that's the really big draw.
The finalists haven't been much-publicized, but from what I gather, they include everything from a price-comparison engine to a glove that can control your car doors. It should be pretty cool. Kara Tsuboi is covering it for CNET TV, so look for video of the finalists late Monday or the next day. The event goes on all day, with voting in the evening, and I'll try to blog as much as I can during breaks. You can also follow me on Twitter for updates throughout the day.
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