The River

The Yahoo! Search Blog features a post by research director Bernard Mangold introducing Yahoo! Mindset. It’s a really interesting little project aimed at helping the company sort search results by commercial or informational content, depending on the user’s intent (or Mindset). This sort of gets to the whole issue of being able to target ads depending on where people are in the buying cycle — research mode or impulse buying mode. I need to check it out more, but it’s good to know this kind of experimentation is going on.

It’s really getting on my nerves that, since I switched back to Google AdSense, every ad seems to be targeted on the word “blog.” Sure, I mention blogging — and this is a blog, after all — but goodness knows I write about other things, too. Get it together, Google, and crawl these pages, please.

My colleagues over at JupiterResearch are podcasting. And as this initial effort is about blogs and brands, I thought I’d pass the info along.

The official announcement is here.

also: Gartenberg, pointing to Seattle PI, notes how difficult the production of a podcast is.

I’m participating in the beta test of Google AdSense for Feeds — enabled by Feedburner — so you’ll soon begin seeing an ad every few entries. Looking forward to seeing how contextually relevant these ads actually turn out to be. Your feedback (to theriver*at*mcnigel.com or in the comments) is welcome!

We’ve decided to podcast the birth of our child.

Just kidding

Malcolm Gladwell writes in the New Yorker about media literacy and sophistication, and their effect on IQ. It’s a review of the new book, “Everything Bad is Good for You” by Stephen Johnson.

I think my New Yorker subscription has lapsed but I’ve been too busy to even follow up on it lately. Anyway, here’s a little from the fascinating Gladwell review:

As Johnson points out, television is very different now from what it was thirty years ago. It’s harder. A typical episode of “Starsky and Hutch,” in the nineteen-seventies, followed an essentially linear path: two characters, engaged in a single story line, moving toward a decisive conclusion. To watch an episode of “Dallas” today is to be stunned by its glacial pace—by the arduous attempts to establish social relationships, by the excruciating simplicity of the plotline, by how obvious it was. A single episode of “The Sopranos,” by contrast, might follow five narrative threads, involving a dozen characters who weave in and out of the plot. Modern television also requires the viewer to do a lot of what Johnson calls “filling in,” as in a “Seinfeld” episode that subtly parodies the Kennedy assassination conspiracists, or a typical “Simpsons” episode, which may contain numerous allusions to politics or cinema or pop culture.

UPDATE: Rushkoff on Johnson

Fantastic post from Seth Godin about the essential nature of marketing. While I don’t believe the placebo effect can make up for terrible products/services/ideas, I do believe that fundamentally sound things can go much further if they have a compelling story to tell.

Since I was at the Googleplex yesterday, it’d be an omission not to at least mention Google’s new personalized home page test. It’s interesting in terms of what it says about Google’s strategy, but it’s so far behind what Yahoo! has been doing for years. Anyway, I’m going to be musing on subjects like these in next week’s ClickZ Experts column, so I’ll save it for then.

UPDATE: Jeremy Zawodny posts on the subject.

It’s true. The lunch food here at Google was amazing. Baby green salad, maple glazed salmon, and delectable mixed vegetables. There were other options (portobello wellington, steak), but those were my selections. I could really eat my vegetables every day if they tasted like these.

Separately, Seth Godin blogs about the famous former Grateful Dead chef.

About the “show.” So far it’s pretty rudimentary but there are interesting tidbits here and there. Will either be writing about it for ClickZ or might post later here if it doesn’t gel into something that’s right for that audience.

Some are watching it on the Web, others will be at the Googleplex. Me, I’ll be among the latter. I’m trekking down to Mountain View in a few minutes.

Even though famed chef Charlie Ayers is leaving, I’m looking forward to eats on Google (hey, I’m nearly 8 months pregnant, give me a break), and, of course, I’m looking forward to hearing what execs have to say. Should be an interesting scene. Wonder if the new global communications head, Dan Senor, will be in attendance.