The Paris Hilton Search Paradox

Everyone who ever had a professional encounter with search engines is familiar with the Paris Hilton Search Engine Paradox.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, in short - think about what happens if you decide to go to Paris, you want to stay at the Paris Hilton, and decide to look it up on Google to find good deals or whatever. You immediately become a victim of the paradox because if you run "the paris hilton" in Google, most of the results you'll get will be for Miss Paris Hilton.
The Paris Hilton search engine paradox refers to the problem search engine programmers have when they need to figure out what the person was really looking for when a search phrase is very ambiguous. The case of Paris Hilton is particularly problematic, since Paris Hilton is really a sibling of the Hilton family, owners the hotel chain. Hence, even the search phrase "Paris Hilton Hotel" may still mean that someone is interested in the lady and not the city (since she is the inheritor of the hotel chain). It would be extremely difficult, probably impossible, to figure out what a person meant without knowing a bit more about the person, the context, or something else. It would, however, not be very morale to provide search results based on profiling the person (it's a 14 year old male - must be interested in the Paris, the girl, because they cannot afford the hotel and because of other reasons I can't write here ;) ).

Aaaaaanyways, I got carried away with this post - what I really wanted to share with you is this Saturday Night Live sketch my brother sent me, which noticeably took this paradox to different place: Enjoy.

Do you know Andy Hey ?

I just wanted to ask you - since there are people talking to me three times a week about signing this dude, Andy Hey. This guy must be mighty popular if everyone wants to sign him, but I couldn't really figure out who he is.

So, if anyone out there knows who Andy Hey is, please send me his contact details. I know of a number of people who want me to sign him.



P.S. If a tree falls in the forest, and all people who can hear it fall signed an NDA, did it make a noise?


Knock it off with your NDAs, will ya? You're making me publish really stupid blog posts.

Web development companies. Sheesh!!

Have you ever had this? Did you ever feel like you were alone in the world, you and your so-called "high" standards? Have you ever had a contractor deliver some seriously suboptimal deliverables? (let me see those hands...) Have you ever had an argument with your contractor, where he just couldn't see what was so embarrassing in what they did, and you thought you were going out of your freakin' mind?

I was recently involved in a project that required building a branding website. We hired Israel's top leading company in Drupal to do the development (no names mentioned), despite the relatively high price-tag, because we wanted the best, and we didn't have any room for mistakes, and had a short deadline, yada yada yada.

We set the timeline. Everyone was happy. We were looking over the developer shoulders constantly, and we saw they were not working fast enough to reach the milestones. We started whipping them, and in parallel started dropping features from the deadline, so we can make it there on time. We finally made the deadline (WE ALWAYS DO! It's a principal to work by) with less than half of the applicative content we had planned for, but with sort-of enough content.

All this we've seen before, and I refuse to get excited about it anymore. It's a general form of practice with web companies in Israel. Sometimes in the states too. You promise one thing, and deliver something else. You promise top quality product, on time. You end up delivering low quality on time, or top quality two months late, or low quality not on time. We've actually gone to the point where if you received one of the two - either quality or timely deliverable - you are a happy camper.

But the thing that drove me mad is the fact that the web company felt it was adequate to release the site with things like the above image (and this is merely an example. There was plenty more). To me this just reads "unprofessional" all over the canvas. Meeting the deadline with everything that was agreed upon is one thing. But releasing something to a production system that embarrasses your customer in front of their customers is a whole different ball-game.

Think about it - the whole idea of the website is creating new contact. You spend money on online advertising, leading your new potential customers through funnels, and when they finally push the button you wanted them to push most, splaaaaaaaat.

I sent the above image to the web company so that they know what my problem is.
Needless to say they had no idea why I am so upset. The feedback text is there, ain't it...

Farewall RAZR...

About three years ago I bought me a top of the line, bleeding edge mobile phone - the Motorola RAZR V3.
About three weeks ago I bought me a top of the line, bleeding edge iPhone 3G.
It is amazing to see the distance that the mobile phone industry traveled in three years, courtesy of Apple. However, this is a subject for another post.

This post is dedicated to saying goodbye to my V3.

I've been a big Motorola phone fan since I was the proud owner of Motorola Timeport.

But RAZR V3 blew me away. At the time it was one mean piece of equipment - the first one to carry a USB plug for both charging and syncing, and a great step in the non-proprietary direction in that. The same charger is used to charge my phone and my bluetooth earpiece, and my MP3 player. I can charge my phone from my Laptop. Oh, wow.

And there is one thing that I have to tribute to the UI folks in Motorola. It seems like all they do all day is sit and count how many clicks it would take to get a trivial task done. If it's more than 3, it's back to the sketch-board.
I recently had a setback of 3 days where my iPhone stopped working (upgraded to 3.0, long story...). I went back to my ancient V3, and I have to tell you - I was actually having fun.
Suddenly an operation that would take 10 clicks on the iPhone, and would actually make me think about it while I was doing it, was being done by my fingers automatically in 2 clicks. Something as easy as pulling out my recent calls is done in one click. Dial to one of my contacts? 3 clicks.
Now, granted, that the iPhone, the most amazing piece of common computing equipment ever to be invented by man, carries "a bit" more features than my V3. Still, being the commandline geek that I am, I want to be able to do common tasks in one or maximum two clicks.
Am I not going to be able to do that in the modern world of mobile phones being cool-small-computers?
Time will tell.
Meantime, I just wanted to thank my V3 for a wonderful 3-4 years. I'm going to miss you like you miss an old dog that passed away.

I have a new iPhone puppy ;)

GPS Excitement

Cool.... A bike ride...