Too many things to say. Too lazy to say them all.

The most memorable birthday of my life and no pictures, whatsoever. Imagine that…

Disturbing images and worrisome thoughts.

We know what films are releasing this weekend, but we don’t know the headlines of yesterday’s newspaper.

Hungry for news, and thirsty for information. No retention, please, we’re Indian.

Babies born. Babies dead. Babies born again.

One murder per page sells so many copies. How many murders before you can sell them all?

Everybody knows what’s wrong with the world. Nobody knows what’s wrong with everybody.

They all get their 15 minutes of fame - Standing, sitting, lying down… How far does one go?

Push it to the limit. And then pull it back just a little. Call it breathing space.

The young ones learn to fly. They fall down and die. We light candles.

Assumption. Accusation. Action. Acquittal. The new cycle of life?

Music is a recourse, not a discourse.

Roads. Rages. Road-rages.

Itching for a brawl. Macho-ism? Masochism?

Curiosity. Voyeurism. Call it what you want. What’s the difference, anyway?

Yearning for Green. Searching for Peace.

Searching for Green. Yearning for Peace.

Friends. Online. Offline. Invisible. Network. Community. Scrap. Thread. Notify. Wall.

Too many things to say. Too lazy to say them all…

Or am I?

INDIA, COME BACK!

And now, the lengthy discourse that usually follows a simple message…

As of a few hours ago, Harbhajan Singh, a.k.a. Bhajji a.k.a The Turbanator a.k.a. the Wizard Of(f) Oz a.k.a. “Symonds, go back!” was reportedly banned for a duration of three Test matches, for a racist remark dealt to Andrew Symonds.

Symonds has faced Indian ‘racism’ before. Indian fans at Vadodara and Wankhede repeatedly pestered him with monkey chants during the One-Day series in late 2007.

Cut to, circa 2008. The Sydney Cricket Ground has been a witness to some memorable moments in cricketing history. Another moment was added to the list, withe Symonds-Bhajji spat on Day 4.

Reams and reams of paper, Unimaginable tape lengths and gigabytes and terabytes of data will be spent trying to reconstruct the incident.

Not one will come close to what happened.

Simply because, the truth is a secret closely held by three people - Symonds, Bhajji and Sachin. (Yeah, he was there too, remember?) Here’s a clearer (not unbiased, mind you) account of the incident by AdelaideNow. (Do read the comments too, they make for interesting reading.) Here’s the situation as I percieve it.

Day four. India on a roll. In spite of umpiring setbacks and sloppy footwork, Sachin and Bhajji are going strong. Ponting who has never seen a Day Four happen on an India tour of Australia, suddenly finds himself in uncharted waters. (*smirk* *smirk*) And thus, the mind-games begin…

I condemn racism - unequivocally, unabashedly, unconditionally.

I also condemn sneaky manoeuvres - unequivocally, unabashedly, unconditionally.

Ponting claims, “There is absolutely no doubt this match has been played in the right spirit.” Kumble responds, “There was only one team playing in the spirit of the game, that’s all I can say.” (via The Daily Telegraph)

My heart goes out to the guy.

What kind of a person would look at Day One, look at all the Umpiring Bloopers, and say, “It’s just Cricket!” and move on?

What kind of a person would choose not to lodge a protest after all this, if only as token?

What kind of a temperament must he have to not lose cool even when a batsman stands his ground after being cleanly caught in the slips?

What does it take to not erupt when the umpire takes the opposing captain’s word and not the 3rd umpire?

A very, very large-hearted person, that’s who. No wonder he’s called Jumbo - must be his heart, three sizes bigger and all…

And the Indian Cricket Board has decided to stay and complete the Australian tour. Not for the money, I presume. There’s a lot more in endorsements. I suspect, it’s only to ‘maintain relations’ with Cricket Australia - or whatever it is they want to maintain.

What power on earth gives these pompous S.O.B.s the right to cry wolf about something they have been doing day in and day out for years and years together? Who told them that they could make their own rules and change them if someone used it against them? Who gave them the right to make rules, anyway?

Somebody tell them that the M in MCC stands for MARYLEBONE, not MELBOURNE.

Ask a psycho-analyst to profile someone with these characteristics, and the answer would, in all probability be - a mentally-retarded three year old with acute over-possessive tendencies.

Not too far from the truth, eh?

I think Team India should walk out of the remaining Test matches. Turning the other cheek and all that is fine - we did it after Day One and the saga of bad umpiring decisions. But when that too, is done, it’s time to follow Munnabhai’s example. We will stand by you whatever happens after that.

Why this sudden patriotic fire, you ask?

Well, we the people of India, were shown a dream on the 24th September, 2007 at Johannesburg. Silly, gullible, idiots that we were, we believed it then.

And, we believe it now…

COME BACK, INDIA!!

To preserve your sanity, I recommend you read none of these posts. If you do want to go to the depths of stark raving madness, click on the link or continue…

—–

What then, does happen to the passengers on the train?

Well, complying with the fundamental principles of Quantum Mechanics, the passengers may or may not switch trains while these ghost trains pass through each other .

(I believe another pint ot two of the golden brew might help at this point.)

Depending on whether the passengers do switch trains, (or refuse to do so) the collapsing of the universes may or maynot happen.

Notice the plural usage of the term ‘universe.’ I chose the plural since we have already established that the universes we are talking about are decidedly individual, It’s the thing in vogue, don’t you know?

So, as we were saying this collapsing of universes depends on whether you decide to switch trains ( No, not you r daily eight fifteens and nine-twenties. I mean, the ghost trains we are talking about!) Of course, if you try the switching-trains act with your daily eight-fifteen and nine-twenties, you’ll only end up being a candidate for the padded cell or a specimen for the students of medicine, one way or the other…

Yes, I do tend to confuse my parentheses…

Assuming for the moment that you do switch trains, your world order in existence (until then) changes (None of the sky-turning-green or grass-turning-blue business, remember?)

This change in the world order is not noticeable. In fact it is as furtive as a cat-burglar hopping over an open window sill trying to do his job. And that is precisely what it does - its job. The job under scrutiny being nothing else but coming into existence. It is a definite pity that this coming into existence business is not heralded as, I believe, it should rightly be!

A change in the world order signifies a change in the event segue, which is, as we know, unheralded, yet taken as a completely natural course of action.

We often tend to mistake such event segues as providence or Acts of God, while the truth is that we ourselves have induced it. Not that we know we have.

Take for example, a simple case.

Remember the time when you chose a particular piece of apparel over the other? The very act of choice was enough to send the universe collapsing without giving it enough time to pack its bags and beat it. And with equal intensisty, fervor and haste was ushered, a new universe, a new world order to make suitable amends.

The point of the entire thing is that your choice of apparel either caused someone to turn a wrinkly nose up in distaste or an equally (if not more) wrinkly eyebrow up in praise. Either ways there was something wrinkly going up.

Notice that, irrespective of the nature of choice, a new world order is bound to emerge.

And when a new world order does emerge, the first thing it does is obliterate any vestiges of the existence of the previous one. No point in clashing two titans where only one can exist. better clear out the playing fields, what?

Do this uniquely existing NWO tries to bandy its existence about the place, as successfully as a string quartet playing the harmonica and as is wont, fails miserably.

The cause for failure must not be attached to experience, or rather the absence of it. For, experience caunts naught in trhe business it is supposed to perform. On the contrary, the cause for failure is the inevitable truth that NWOs have an exceedingly short life - well, shorter than most, actually.

At this point, may I suggest another pint or two?

What with NWOs clashing with each other and attempting to remain unique with their exitences what happens to the trains?

Now, don’t tell me you have forgotten about the trians already?

Tut, tut! To simplify things, I shall now attempt to bring the two examples and analogies together and combine them as one, so as to render understanding this concept, astoundingly easy!!

Listen closely, the tracks that I spoke about, while discussing the trains (the ghost trains to be more specific) are merely instances of different world orders.

The trains are, well, event segues that keep changing these tracks and keep running into each other without crashing. The passengers in trains are people - us, you, me and the rest of the world (although, why anybody would ride ghost trains is beyond me…)

Aha, I hear you say! How can two people, with two obviously unique and distinct lives, ride the same train? Isn’t thee a flaw, a fallacy in this argument? Doesn’t it indicate a chink in the armor of your reasoning?

To that, my answer would be a ruddy “NO!!”

It doesn’t. Hear me out. It’s quite simple, actually.

Remember that the trains are merely event segues. And an event is nothing but a blot, a point on the four-dimensional landscape. To refresh your memory and your Advanced Physics 101, the four dimensional landscape is made of three dimensions of space and one of time.

(Though, why anyone would add the two together is a little weird.

And if you can picture a 4-d landscape, you may quit reading at this point, find yourself a nice shawl, a comfortable rocking chair and do what you bally well do the best. Nod off to sleep, that is. Sweet dreams.)

To the rest of you who have not yet nodded off to sleep, let us board our ghost trains yet again.

Since events are merely a blot on the 4-d landscape, and we humans are the same, it is a simple deduction. You know the methods, dear reader. Apply them.

If you came up with an equation that resembled something of the sort:

We, humans = Events on the 4-d landscape

Well, you have earned your Advanced Physics degree and are on your way to winning the Nobel prize for physics. People have been given the prize for far fewer letters in their equations, the notable one being the much bandied about:

E = mc2

But, I digress.

Although you may have earned your Advanced Physics degree, it does not help to rest on your laurels. Personally, it is a little difficult to imagine why one would rest on laurels, what with laurels being placed (traditionally) on the top of the head as a kind of substitute for crowns, thus rendering the actual resting-on-laurels part a tiresome and extremelyexercising feat to be achieved only by those possessing a lithe body and a burning desire to rest on their laurels.

Coming back to the equation, now that we have figured out that we humans are a blot on the landscape - of time and space - and events too occupy the smae position as we do, it follows that… well, whatever follows, follows.

So sitting in this train - which is analogous to an event segue - running on tracks that are nothing but individual NWOs, we the passengers happen to share the same event and hence it so happens that we end up co passengers on the same train!!!

Elementary, my dear reader!

What is actually a cause for wonder - and concern, as well - is the ease with which we manage to switch these trains. The closeste metaphor that strikes the brain is - weaseling out of a situation. Unfair as it may sound, you, my discerning reader will appreciate the justness of the same!

But what actually had my goose cooked for a while, was the fact that to switch these proverbial, exemplary (is that the right word?) trains, and not suffer any damamge, we too must be made of the same constituents that these trains are made up of!

Ergo, we must be ghosts, too!

But, we quite evidently are not, which means one is not equal to one, and all is not well with the world!!

And that is where reason steps in like a white knight in shining armor and calmly bonks the dragon of confusion on the head and returns the damsel in distress to her ivory tower and -

[CENSORED for indecency]

Erm, I mean to say that the ghost train story, complete with the tracks and passenger constituents was merely an analogy, a metaphor for larger things and should not be mixed.

Gee, these things should come with warning labels attached! “Not to be confused with real life.” “May cause unexpected results.” Many a time, these things have caused me an insufferable headache, especially when consumed in large quantities. The best remedy (or so I have found) is to bottle them and keep them bottle - till eternity.

Trust me, it helps. Really.

What with this talk of bottles and headaches and such, I have this sudden urge to partake a pint or two of the golden brew. Care to join me?

Aah, off to secure that Advanced Physics degree of yours, I see! Well, ’twas nice talking to you!

Cheerie-O!

But I guess it fits the current storyline much more. So, here goes…

—–

Everytime the universe collapses, there is a high chance that you, my dear reader, are the principal cause.

Before you get your knickers into a twist, allow me to offer an explanation.

The collapsing of the universe happens too frequently, too often for anyone to notice. And it usually does that without the slightest preliminary notice that we all think it should serve.

Obviously, not everybody (or should i say everything?) follows the man-made precept of following rules laid down by other men.

Which in itself would be a great contradiction, because we can’t set rules for something (or someone) that set the rules for us in the first place.

Aah, I see that I am beginning to ramble. So I will very prudently get back to the thing I was attempting to explain.

The collapsing of the Universe has nothing to do with bits and pieces of everything flying hither-thither, like an explosion on some war-fields. It is much like the collapsing of a wave function, which - if you have your quantum mechanics right - happens whenever you try and detect the ruddy ol’ thing!

The collapsing of universes merely represents the shifting of probabilities that happen with every moment of decision hat comes your way. What shirt to wear, what trousers to match, what color of socks to choose, to the amount of aggression required to carry it off. Each of these decisions cause your individual universe to collapse and merge with subsequent universes, much like a segue into a song playing on the radio.

I have a distinct feeling that you may have heard all of this before. And it is a feeling i strongly despise. What with the internet and the wealth of information lying thereabouts, it would be a wonder if hadn’t stumbled across this sometime or the other.

Still, given my ability as an (unaccomplished) raconteur, I’ll just egg on, regardless. Back to collapsing universes then…

At each point the universe twists and shifts and moves in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform. Each decision, each choice, each of your moves gives the universe a new path, thus causing the old ones to collapse and re-form (pun, unintended) its ways to the new.

While all this twsting and shifting and moving in mysterious ways to reform is happening, where, I hear you cry, are we??

Well, the answer to that would be a vague-is sort of “Here, we are!”

I know, I know, that is the vaguest vague-ish sort of an answer you could ever expect, but it’ll probably help you a notch, if I added the words, “Here, being a euphemism for the present…” Is euphemism the word I am looking for?

So with all those questions and vague-ish sort of answers out of the way, we return to attack the matter at hand - the matter under scrutiny being the collapsing of universes and the cuases and effects, thereof.

The universe has this ruddy tendency to collpase at the drop of a hat. Not that many hats are being dropped these days. Come to think of it, who wears a hat these days? I am pretty sure that the trademark hat wearers - the cowboys - too desist from wearing hats for pretty much the same reason; that it stereotypes them too much!

But I digress. Where was I?

Aah yes, universes collapsing at the drop of a hat, yes!

So these universes, which have a striking affinity for dropping hats, tend to collapse and there you are!

Where, do I hear you ask, are we?

Tut, tut, I have already answered that question a few paragraphs back, so it would kindly help if you sort of got yourself into an iterative loop and paid more attention to what I was saying…

And if you do manage to extricate yourself out of the aforementioned iterative loop with a break statement or a switch case (which I safely assume you have done, since you have reached this point) I may as well go on with the proceedings, so to say.

So on with the proceedings, as you say, most of which seem to involve (or not involve, depending on which point of view you prefer) dropping hats and similar other things…

[Author's Question: Why do the stupid things have to drop anyway??]

A collapsing universe signifies a break from the current chain of events to a new twist in th tale, a new development hitherto unseen, a different outcome of a possibility (which as we happen to know, exists in galore.

Thus when a universe collapses, the world order changes.

No, no, the sky does not go from blue to green, nor does the grass seem to effect a similar chromal exchange. What do you think it is, a ruddy cartoon?

It simply means, dear reader, that a new sequence of events is estanblished. And it might please you (or surprise you) to know that this sequence exists only unitl the time of the next universe collapse. Which, as we happen to know happens too soon for the time scale experienced by us humans.

With all these ruddy collapses happening all around us, where do I hear you ask, are we?

Tut, tut. I do think a pint or two, of the golden brew might help you restore our jangled nerves at this point.

Having already answered that question before, I will not attempt to delve into it again, since there are other, more important, questions that, I feel, require more of this delving into business…

The establishment of a new sequemce of events is not too difficult to comprehend.

In fact, it is quite simple.

Picture a series of railway tracks.

Where?

Well, picture them in ruddy ol’ Timbuktu for all that I care! Just picture them!!

All good? With me so far?

Okay, now picture them crossing each other many times over.

Not too difficult, eh?

Well, now try picturing them with trains running on them.

Aah, I seem to have had you there! You might be wondering why these trains do not crash into each other, it the tracks do not cross over many times over.

Well (and a pretty good “Well!!” I might add) the thing is, the trains do crash into each other, but they do not blow into smithereens.

They simply pass through each other as if they were ghost trains.

To be continued…

Read it here: The Bond Walks Again.

But I am surprised, of the 45 comments (at the last count…) and through the entire post, there is not one true Bond fan.
Everyone keeps commenting on how Daniel Craig is un-suave and un-stylish, or at the very least less worthy than Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery (Ye Gods!). I thought movies were meant for watching and *listening* as well.

For those who haven’t gotten the drift yet, check this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming#James_Bond_books

And a complete Ian Fleming Bibliography can be found here:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/series/james-bond/

A ‘Casino’ Quickie
Casino Royale is Ian Fleming’s FIRST Bond book. The book is about a spy who has been recently promoted to a double agent status and given the license to kill. In casino royale, James Bond is a brash, short-tempered, somewhat uncouth (if I may say so) young man who believes in here and now. More often than not, he lets his heart rule over his head.

Casino Royale is not about the shaken-not-stirred martini Bond we know. Rather, it is about the man who became James Bond 007. It is about the process of finding and losing love that eventually hardens him into the ‘Bond, James Bond’ as we know today. Ever wonder why Craig never says the trademark Bond line (”The name’s Bond, James Bond”) except at the end? Now you know…

Everything about Daniel Craig in the movie, from his clothing to his Body language is raw, and exudes a different charm. The Bond babes are there and yet, not quite there, if you get my drift

But this post is not intended to be a review of the movie. It is meant to quash some of the misgivings about the ‘Bond series’.

The Bond Series

1. The Bond series is not a ‘Series’.
   Or rather, it is not in a chronological order. Check out Fleming’s bibliography and you’ll realize what I am talking about.
2. Daniel Craig looks gay/wussy/________ (Your adjective here)
   He’s meant to look raw. It’s his first ‘assignment’. Or sort of. He’s supposed to behave like an air-head. A promotion often does that to you.
3. Daniel Craig is not as stylish as ________ (Your choice of Bond here)
   See point 2.
4. Casino Royale is not as stylish/gadgety/______ (Your adjective here) as _______ (Insert name of a Bond movie)
   See point 2.

Oh by the way, did you know Casino Royale was written in 1953? You didn’t, did you? I figured…

Trivia:
In one of the scenes during the Poker tournament, Bond orders the bartender to make a drink for him. He proceeds to narrates the recipe from memory for about twenty seconds and ends with, …”shaken, not stirred.”

Yep, that is the famous ’shaken-not-stirred’ Bond martini. The more observant of you may even have noted down the recipe during the movie.

Pass it on, if you did.

There’s nothing to tell. No direct or proximate cause. You just wake up one day and you aren’t a part of your life. You know this. Your life doesn’t belong to you. Your body is not, I don’t know how to make you feel the force of this, yours. There’s just life, living itself. You don’t have it. You don’t have anything to do with it. That’s all. It doesn’t sound like much, but believe me. It’s like when you hypnotize someone and persuade them there’s a big pile of mattresses outside their window. They no longer see a reason not to jump.

– Quoted by Kryzstof “Dubdub” Waterford-Wajda in “Fury“, by Salman Rushdie.

I no longer see a reason not to jump. And I haven’t even been hypnotized yet. No, not even self-hypnosis. What’s more, I even know for a fact that there are NO matressess outside my window. Yet, I no longer see a reason not to jump.

I read -no, make that devour- books or listen to music to pass my time. I drink insane amounts of coffee, and spend crazy money clogging up my system with carcinogenic substances.

I have a great job and a fantastic boss, and extremely supportive co-workers. I have great friends who are pursuing knowledgeable pursuits.

I talk to people who know what they are doing, who are masters in what they do. I learn from them, more than I ever learnt at the University, more than I could ever expect to learn. Heck, pretty soon I am gonna even become one of those people.

Yet, I feel incomplete, somehow.

There’s nothing to tell. No direct or proximate cause. I just woke up to-day and I ain’t a part of my life. I know this. My life does not belong to me. My body is not -I don’t know how to make you feel the force of this- mine. There’s just life, living itself. I don’t have it. I don’t have anything to do with it. That’s all. It doesn’t sound like much, but believe me. It’s like you hypnotized me and persuaded me there’s a big pile of mattresses outside my window. I no longer see a reason not to jump.

Should I jump?

Enter del.icio.us, one of the first social applications.

All of a sudden, you could bookmark pages you liked AND store them too! Searching for that page on Shark bites you saw two months ago simply transformed into searching through your list of bookmarks. Your bookmarks could now travel with you wherever you went!! The sharing feature meant that now your friend could easily send you that link to the direct downloads, bypassing all the popups and ads along the way.

The process of consuming information now became three-tiered: Search, Store and Retrieve.

Somewhere between then and now, we instinctively developed a habit of consuming content, gaining knowledge, and stashing it away for further usage. A lot of Web purists call this approach as the River of News approach.

Drink hard, drink deep…

We live in a dynamic world that survives on a River of News.

The River of News concept, as described by Dave Winer, goes something like this:

Instead of having to hunt for new stories by clicking on the titles of feeds, you just view the page of new stuff and scroll through it. It’s like sitting on the bank of a river, watching the boats go by. If you miss one, no big deal.

… which is exactly how we parse our daily newspapers for news! If a story is interesting enough, it will be back again the next day. If it ain’t, down it goes…

The River of News concept assumes a relaxed outlook towards the consumption of content by any user. It relies on the fact that if an older item is to be revived, then it will be revived, no matter how or why*.

The only hitch to this concept is the duration of focus in an avergae human. Somehow, the concept of a limited attention span has seeped on to the Web. Conversations (a.k.a posts, articles, etc.) have a specific life span depending upon a variety of factors, ranging from authority to popularity. The previous post touched upon four of these factors that I personally belive to be important.

As the river of news concept washes the Webosphere, the content generated by users (erm, I mean, the knowledge shared by the netizens) becomes outdated as soon as the attention-span of the article ends. For some posts, the span is as short as 30 seconds, for others it might last for weeks.** The keep-alive time of the post is enriched by a variety of parameters, with the element of chance also playing a significant role, sometimes.

The Bottom-line: Find, not search

Traditional Search Engines search for content based upon classifications of keywords and various natively built algorithms. Earlier, when the internet was an array of ‘webmaster-maintained’ static displays, search engines had to be relevant. In the days to come, I foresee the River of News flooding the Blogosphere: Freshness of results will definitely be paramount, then.

The trade-off between freshness and relevancy is one of the factors that will see a good sound debate in the days to come. This, unless the Blogging trend tapers off suddenly instead of continuing to rise.***

One question I have purposefully (and successfully) avoided so far is this: Will we be able to match people to keywords?

A search engine will match content to your keywords. But there are three Shrikant Joshis and many Shrikants and many more Joshis who are regular bloggers. How do you differentiate them? Again, what happens when you are looking for a solution to a problem? Would search engines in the (near?) future also throw up results like:

“5 user(s) can solve your problem! Do you want to hire them?”

More importantly, if they did, would you believe them?

Footnotes:

*One of my reasons for posting this post so late (inspite of my previous assurances) was to check if there was any interest I could generate, and how it varied with time. However, I miscalculated one of the most important aspects. Subscriptions. Since I never had any audience to begin with, there was no way I could anticipate anything. That’s called counting your results before you have keywords.

** Wondering what category my posts fall into? Well, somewhere close to the 30 second limit.

***For more details read David Sifry of Technorati

Technorati Tags: Search Engines, Tags, River of News, Future

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What does making sense out of data mean?

In Search Engine terms, it would refer to contextualizing the huge chunk of uncontextual data that is the World Wide Web into information and eventually knowledge. To me, as a human, it simply means tagging certain keywords to any given chunk of data (e.g. a lecture, a passage, a book, a chapter, a conversation) in order to be able to recall it at any time - especially, when one of these keywords is mentioned.

For instance, the conversation in the previous post was about a traveller, (an out-of-towner) looking for directions to a tobbacconist. As I keep reminding myself, Web 2.0 is not a product, it is a process. The process has a lot of conversational threads that keep getting picked and dropped as newer and more interesting threads or new participants appear in their place.

So what would a contemporary Search engine have to consider in Web 2.0?

‘Weight’ing for Information.

From being a static display of items-for-sale behind elegant window panes, the Internet slowly transformed into a bazaar of sorts, with hawkers all around the place plying their wares. The markets grew to accomodate the new and the old. With the advent of Web 2.0, contextualization of information became the norm and not an option.

It all began with a nifty bookmarking site called del.icio.us that allowed you to access your favorite sites across the web. Technorati extended the concept to Blogs and induced bloggers to ‘tag’ their posts with their choice of keywords/tags.

With the Web evolving like a democracy, the obvious question of authority in the Web-democracy arose. Which voice among the loud babble was to be trusted? As the web evolved, so did the concept of it’s franchise. Only, in this virtual reality, links were deemed votes and tags were your campaign ads. Let’s take a quick look at the foru weights that influence your vote.

1. Tags - Powerful Keywords

Each tag is a keyword that associates a particular context, a topic, with a given chunk of data.

2. Time - The ‘other’ Long Tail

All topics & data have a peak presence time. The freshness of a particular keyword is of prime importance in its influence.
Consider this simple example: When Iraq was attacked, almost all of the Search Engines across the world were buzzing with Search queries consisting of corresponding keywords, viz., “Iraq” “attack”. The “hotness” of the Search cooled down as the days progressed, as the world got other topics to discuss about.

3. Trust & Authority

Even in flat hierarchies like the Internet there are obvious postitions of Trust and Authority. People who blog well, and blog often gain a large following, and effectively, the crucial element of Trust.

4. Authenticity

A news on a Microsoft blog would obviously be rated higher in all terms than a news quoting a “trusted Source at Microsoft”. The only exceptions to this rule are:

• The news is a really good bit of juicy gossip - like a rant or a ‘leaked’ secret
• The blogger has high levels of Trust & Authority

There’s a common thread that binds all of these.. Do you see it yet?

(To be concluded)

Note:
I profusely apologise for disappearing from the Blogging scene, all of a sudden. I was forced into a short hiatus by unforeseen circumstances. We updated our website platform to a new version, recently. although the beta is pretty stable, we are still working on a better UI. As a result, I had to spend some sleepless nights and a few Blog-less weeks.

Once again, my sincere apologies for the same…

Technorati Tags: search, search-engine, tags, web2.0

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Those of you who reached here through Google, Yahoo or MSN are probably laughing as you read this. But do go on, there’s more.

(Un)common Recurring Searches

Often our searches are simple keywords crafted with central themes in mind:

• A name (e.g. Shrikant Joshi or Performancing)
• A topic (e.g. Corporate Communications)
• A context (e.g. “Spanish Omelette” +recipe)

Some of us might even burden the spartan box (or in the old days, the Butler) with an entire question. The faithful zombie then crawls its way through the innards of the webs, looking for that occasional diamond stashed away in the back alleys. Usually, in the common cases such as the ones defined above, results are returned in the correct context of our request. Often, the SERPs also throw results that are related yet not within context.

Robert Scoble’s post on Optimization had this line that caught my attention:

It all starts with the blog. Now, why can’t I put my blog on the map? When you go to Live.com and search on “Scoble” why can’t I customize my results there with more information for you?

Well, I don’t agree wholly.

Search for my name on Google. There are at least three different people called Shrikant Joshi who turn up in the top 3. We keep exchanging the first three ranks. And all of us are pretty active bloggers it would seem. The see-sawing of rankings in the Organic Search results is not a matter of concern for me. Nor do I want to customise these search results so that I would get more result-space.

I am not a key-word

What are search engines? Simply speaking, search engines are content-aggregators assigned the additional job of classification. As humans we need to have everything classified into a taxonomy so as to facilitate recollection. Our knowledge depends upon storage which in turn depends upon collection and classification of data. Classification helps recollection and hence improves perceptive retention of knowledge.

Or, in simple words:

The more you know, the wiser you are. Hence, classify and remember.

Similar to how we retain knowledge, Search Engines classify the data they crawl according to keywords. A huge index is built up and referenced and cross-referenced until all the possible avenues of keywords linking to pages and vice-versa are covered. But you probably know all that and more already.

Keywords, mmmm… Aah!

The next step would be making sense out of the data, which eventually leads to contextualization. Don’t get it? Well, simply put:

“A search engine’s job is to make sense out of all that data.”

Let’s take a simple case. Someone in your town happens to own a convenience store named Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Let us imagine that an outsider in your city is searching for it. Here’s how the conversation would go:

Outsider: “Where can I find a convenience store?”
You: “That would have to be Uncle Tom’s cabin. Go straight down for about two blocks and then take a left. It’s right across the street.”
Outsider: “Would I be likely to get some cigarettes there?”
You: “Oh! If you simply wants cigarettes, there a tobacconist just round the corner!”

A normal conversation, eh? Well, let’s take a look at it again. Only this time, we’ll look at it the way a search engine would. Let’s insert some key words into it for understanding the flow of the conversation:

1. “Where can I find a convenience store?”
[New Search Query, keyword: "convenience store"]
2. “That would have to be Uncle Tom’s cabin. Go straight down for about two blocks and then take a left. It’s right across the street.”
[Response keywords:"Uncle Tom's cabin", "directions"]
3. “Would I be likely to get some cigarettes there?”
[Refine Search Query, keyword: "cigarettes"]
4. “Oh! If you simply wants cigarettes, there a tobacconist just round the corner!”
[Response keywords: "Tobacconist","Round the corner"]

With me so far? Here’s the stumper:

If each of these sentences corresponded to an entire blog-post in the Blogosphere, how would you track this conversation? How would you rank each post with respect to the keywords. Would those keywords be enough to cover all aspects of the conversation? Would you call those keywords as appropriate descriptors of the conversation? Where would these posts appear in SERPs for the combined keywords {”Your Name” +directions}

To be continued…

Disclaimer:
I am no Search Engine Expert. These opinions are simply my $0.02 worth. Or may be less.

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So is it really true, then? Is Google silently creating a presence in all possible verticals? How long will it be before they integrate all things under one roof?

I am still wondering…

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