obfuscated.org

So The ‘Hoo releases its maps beta today. It’s supposed to have better international coverage, especially for satellite images. This is handy, because my sister moved in to a new house in London yesterday, and I’d like to see it.

The address she gave me was of the form

XXX BritishSounding Road
Somecity
London YNN NAB
(UK)

With the N’s and X’s and what have you being what you’d think they are. I paste this in to Yahoo and it gives me the GFY. (Although to its credit, it converted a multi-line paste to one line, which the Goog doesn’t do.) OK, the parens around “UK” are pesky, so I got rid of those. Mildly more useful, it points to a map of England. No kidding, Yahoo.

So I go over to Goog’s maps and try — after manually flattening the address to one line, which was a real bother — the same thing. Still no dice! WTF, maps? After about five minutes of playing around, I arrive on a format that works for Google:

XXX BritishSounding Road, Cityname, UK

Google took this and said “do you really mean <exact address>?” Yahoo, unfortunately, only pointed me at the center of Cityname.

Oh well. I guess that’s why it’s a beta.

Update: Dammit, Google didn’t give the correct result. It got me to the correct street, but not the correct street address. Curse you, Magic Internet Machine, for failing me again!

1. To establish as legal tender.
2. To coin (money).
3. To convert (government debt) from securities into currency that can be used to purchase goods and services.

You — and by “you” I mean “Yahoo!” — are hereby incentivized to use this word correctly. [source]

Google beat the DOJ’s insane request for data, giving a small amount of hope that there’s still some amount of sanity in the world. Yahoo, MSN, AOL: shame on you for going belly-up on this one.

Google takes heat from privacy advocates — rightfully so, many would say — but at least they don’t roll over and hand the Fed every little piece of data it wants. Russ Beattie gets this one very, very right: this sort of data is dangerous in the hands of people who think boobs on statues are somehow bad and that religion belongs in the science classroom.

Good work, Google. You’ve certainly done more to earn my business of late than your competitors have.

Russ Beattie, one of my former cow-orkers at The ‘Hoo — although in a different location and a different business unit, so I’ve never actually met him — pointed out that Bill & co have trotted out Big.com again. I think it’s cute that somebody from The ‘Hoo would be more up on Idealab’s goings on than most folk around here seem to be. Good times.

I remember back in the day when Bill first got his hands on Big.com. I want to say that there were plans to do a deal with some consumer electronics chain and be their online presence. The joke around the office was that we would get Shaq — who had been in the office recently, and oh my is he a big man in person — to advertiser for the site, possibly selling banner ad space on his liver. Ah, dot-com. I miss you guys.

Joel on Software has some interesting things to say about setting your priorities when creating software products, the basic conflict being between doing things quickly and doing them correctly.

Listen, I know that everybody is saying that the cool thing to do these days is Ship Early and Often, but when you ship half-baked ajax calendars that don’t do much and then get Scoble to go nuts about how great they are, well, you’re going to have a lot of people like me checking it out and realizing that, for example, no thought whatsoever has gone into printing, which is fine, it’s a 1.0 release, but you know what? I’m not going to look at 30 Boxes again — I’ve spent enough time evaluating it. G’bye.

A very wise person once told me that nobody will remember how quickly you get things done. They’ll only remember how well you do them. This goes pretty contrary to the dot-com-boom/Web 2.0 thinking that “first to market wins,” or, as Joel points out, at least gets purchased:

Why so many Ajax calendars? My theory is that about a year ago, there was a lot of buzz (possibly true, possibly false) about Google shipping a calendar, and everybody thought, oh gosh, it’s gonna be really good, like Gmail, and then Yahoo! is going to be embarrassed again, and run out and buy the best Ajax calendar company they can find, just like they did with Oddpost, making those very funny kids millionaires overnight.

(It’s funny because it’s true.)

Anyway, I think Joel’s thinking here is long-run correct if what you’re trying to do is build a quality product that people enjoy using. Yes, client feedback is important. It’s absolutely essential, in fact. Just try to get feedback on something that work. If the product is bulletproof and well-thought-out, the feedback will tend towards making a good product great than towards making a crap product acceptable. You want your users to think of new features that you could implement, not bugs that you really should fix.

In terms of interacting with clients and ending up with a product that everybody (myself included) is happy with, I’ve always had better luck spending more time on things — up front time writing quality tests and putting research time in to tools as well as just being more thoughtful when actually writing the damn thing — than I have getting things out the door ASAP. Long run, I’m betting that the companies that follow this line of thinking will be the successful ones.

Ever have one of those days when there’s a ton of traffic coming in to work and you start to get angry about it, but then you relize what likely caused the traffic and you feel a bit guilty about being angry? Yeah. Ug. Traffic isn’t as bad as getting hit by a train.

AP Wire | 01/06/2006 | Driver dies when commuter train slams into car in Burbank

A brief memo to any coffee house still playing the “Garden State” soundtrack on loop: Quit it. Please. You and your kind have been playing that album for over a year now. Yes, Yahoo/Burbank coffee house, I’m talking to you.

Thing is, it isn’t a bad album. I own a copy of it, and I enjoy listening to it from time to time, but whenever I hear it in a coffee house it makes me want to break people’s arms.

So get some new music. How about The Stones? Everybody likes The Stones. Play some Joan Baez if you want to stink of coffee house. I don’t really care, just so long as you give Garden State a rest. (And don’t you dare put Bob Marley’s “Legend” on, because I know that’s what you’re thinking….)

Mark Cuban suggests in Time to allow hard drives pre loaded with Music….and change Harry Fox - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com that a push delivery system for electronic content (music is discussed specifically in this article) be developed. The basic idea is that your service provider throw down some number of tracks on to your player every day or week or whatever, and you’re charged for them if and only if you listen to and keep them.

At first, I didn’t like this idea. It seems like it’s not a lot more than a vehicle for the labels to push the artists that they want to promote on to me. That wouldn’t be cool at all.

What I wonder now, though, is if this service had a really killer recommender system, could it not be very cool? If I got a big bunch of tracks every now and again that genuinely appealed to me, that’d be the greatest thing. I’m always grateful to find new music that I like; having somebody else do it for me would be super.

Contrasted with the current pull systems — subscription services like Yahoo Music Unlimited or Napster. Sure, you can find and listen to all different sorts of new music, but you really have to go out and find it yourself. Even if they had a great recommendation system, there would still be the activation energy required to seek it out. When I was using Yahoo Music, I always just fired up KRS1 or Miles or Dylan and called it a day. It was easier, and the results were more than good enough. If I woke up in the morning with a big pile of songs that I was very likely to enjoy on my player, though, I’d definitely listen to them.

Building such a recommendation system would be tough. You’d have to be Yahoo or similar to have enough data to make a stab at it. Still, if you could pull it off, I think I’d sign up.

For a big chunk of my Pasadena career, I’ve worked in R&D organizations. First in Idealab’s short-lived research group, then in Overture Research which became Yahoo Research Labs and then Yahoo Research. It’s my job to think of new and exciting things — to innovate. I take this particular charge very seriously, and I think I’ve had great success over the years. I played a part in an innovation that I am very proud of, and I would like to share it with you.

This innovation is the fine and noble sport known as Pasadena-Rules Foosball. While its roots lie in traditional foosball, it has been forged for years by the fires of rigorous study, peer review, carefully crafted experimentation and beer. Pasadena-Rules is the most advanced form of foosball known to man. This is the game that we will all play in the future when we’re wearing silver jumpsuits.

The original game of foosball is a relatively simplistic game with a small set of easy to understand yet limiting rules. It seeks to emulate football (known in the states as “soccer” and not to be confused with American “football”) with little plastic men attached to metal rods. The rules, in short, are as follows:

• Score one point each time you legally get the ball in your opponent’s goal.
• First side to ten points wins.
• No spinning.

These are the rules played by most of the world, and that’s a shame because they quickly become unsatisfying. Foosball provides a marvelous arena for innovation, and over the years we’ve explored every corner of it. At Idealab in late 2000 we discovered the master key to all foosball innovation.

• Spinning is legal.

Because it allows for the ball to easily leave the table, this rule opens up the game to more exciting variation than you could possibly imagine. The first and most popular at idealab added the following rules:

• If the ball leaves the table and strikes your opponent, you score one point.
• If the ball leaves the table and your opponent catches it, they score one point.

More subtle variations on this theme include scoring two points if you hit your opponent in the head or after the ball bounces off the wall, etc. We played with these rules for years. They dominated the Pasadena-Rules foosball scene until a crack team of foosball researchers at Yahoo Research Labs (formerly Overture Research) took to the study of foosball.

Our first change involved dead ball situations (the ball can not be reached by any man or leaves the table). These rules are:

• In a dead ball situation, the ball is served again by the team that did not serve last.
• If there are three consecutive dead-ball situations without a score, the next score is worth two points.

Two additional multi-point opportunities were also developed.

• If the ball passes over the goalie’s bar directly before it goes in the goal, double points are scored.
• If the ball leaves the table, bounces off the wall and returns to the table, double points are scored. This modifier is only good until the next goal or dead-ball.

So if you have three dead ball situations, hit the ball off the wall and then score over the goalie bar, you can get eight points in one goal. To date this has not been accomplished.

Not satisfied with a game that emulated only one sport, we added a new scoring system called “baseball.” The concept is rather simple: Each team has a set of bases which may be populated by runners. Bases can be earned by hitting the ball off the wall. For each wall the ball hits, you get a runner to advance one base. Runners already on base must be forced to the next base by new runners. For each runner to cross home plate, you score one point.

If the ball is hit off the table and caught by the other team, they score an out on your team. If three outs are scored your bases are cleared.

If you hit the ball in to some sort of container — a trash can or a bowl of candy or similar — you earn a ground-rule double for your team. If the container is “way over there” — a subject term — a basket is scored rather than a ground-rule double and you score two points rather than bases.

If there are non-players in the room, you may declare a certain base value for hitting them. If they catch the ball, the other team earns those bases.

Several multi-purpose rules that we developed:

• If you hit something made of glass, you score one base.
• If you break something made of glass, you score one point.
• If you draw blood from you opponent, you score one point.
• If your opponent is forced to go to the emergency room, you win the game.
• If you knock the phone off the hook with the ball, you score one point.
• If you activate speed-dial with the ball and call the boss, you win the game.

We have found these rules to be vastly superior to the rules of classic foosball and are confidant that they will be adopted for tournament play in the near future. You should give them a try the next time you enjoy a fine game of foosball.

Today is the first day of my last week working in Pasadena. Starting next Monday my group will be housed in Yahoo’s Burbank facility.

I’ve never worked in any other town. Since my sophomore year in college, from JPL to First Quadrant, The Idza to Visualize and finally Overture Research/Yahoo Research Labs/Yahoo Research (I’m sure the name will change again after our next reorg) I’ve worked in the home of the Rose Bowl, the Doo-Dah Parade, Caltech and that little old lady.

A lot has happened while I’ve been working in Pasadena. The Lakers won the NBA championship three times. The internet bubble came and went. (I hear it’s back again.) The president was impeached, but it all worked out in the end. O.J. was found not-guilty, and a big pack of crazies crashed airplanes in to a couple of buildings. I spent that day in one of Pasadena’s fine bars.

I had a child, got married and divorced, and owned three cars. More friends than I can count got married, and a whole mess of them either have children or are about to. I’ve met some of the best people I ever will. All while working in Pasadena.

Needless to say, I have mixed feelings about leaving. On one hand, it’s an adventure. I’ll get to show up somewhere new every day. I’ll drive on new and exciting streets and eat in new and exciting restaurants. On the other hand, Pasadena is my work home. It’s comfortable, friendly and has been exceedingly kind to me.

So here’s to this one last week. I hope I can be as good to Pasadena over the next five days as it’s been to me over the last ten years.