Month: January 2006

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Google Talk links to other Jabber servers

Om Malik notes that Google Talkabout, the official Google Talk developer’s blog, Gary Burd released news that Google has finally opened up their Google Talk servers for federation with other Jabber servers.

What does this mean to the Google Talk user? Google Talk users can now chat with users on other XMPP services and vice versa. If you are running a Jabber server, you can set it up to communicate with the Google Talk servers and allow your users to communicate with Google Talk users. This is a huge step forward for instant messaging interoperability. Yes, it’s all using the standard XMPP protocol, but it begins to make the notion of a proprietary IM client seem archaic.

This announcement comes on the heals of sneak peeks at upcoming Google Talk functionality that previewed at CES earlier this month. With the announced interoperability with AIM, Google has covered the low end of the IM spectrum. With Jabber federation, they’ve covered the high end.

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Google Reaches for the Radio

Google announced the interesting acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting, a small, privately held company that has developed an automated advertising platform for radio advertising. Sounds a bit like what Google Adwords did for web advertising, doesn’t it? The deal is for $102 million in cash, with additional cash payments up to $1.14 billion over three years based on performance targets. Not too shabby.

This is an interesting development for Google, marking yet another foray into traditional media. Will Google revolutionize advertising in other media in the same way they’ve done for the web?

I worked with the crew at dMarc for 2-1/2 years when we were launching Winfire. Chad Steelberg, his brother Ryan, Greg Meinke, Mike Russo and others — all a great bunch of guys driven to excel. Good luck with your new employer!

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Yahoo! Announces Acquisition

Greg Yardley scooped everyone on this one.

Yahoo! Announces Acquisition of Company Before Its Foundation

SUNNYVALE, CA, Jan 11, 2006 (YARDLEYPRESS) — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YAHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced the acquisition of an unnamed Web 2.0 company three days before it was to be founded. “Yahoo! is committed to generating mass quantities of free public relations by acquiring more pre-revenue, pre-business plan companies than any other global Internet company,” said Chris P. Bacon, Director of Hype Production.

“We’ve been acquiring companies earlier and earlier – before VC funding, before revenue, and in some cases before the completion of their products,” explained Hugh Jorgan, newly-appointed Vice President of Pre-Business Development. “By buying companies before they’re founded, we move directly to the natural conclusion of the trend.”

Read the complete story. It wouldn’t be funny if it weren’t so close to reality.

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Trend Report on 7 Deadly Sins

According to Wikipedia, the seven deadly sins were introduced by St. Gregory the Great. He ranked them from least serious to most: lust, gluttony, sadness (later replaced by sloth), avarice (greed), anger, envy and pride.

If we assume the blogosphere to be a microcosm of the world at large (which we can’t really, since it reflects those geeky and vain enough to bother creating a blog in the first place)… but IF we assume so, could we use the blogoshpere as a prediction market for the seven deadly sins? What sins or hot (or not)?

Fortunately, Intelliseek’s BlogPulse tools reveal the answer. As you can see from the report, pride and anger compete for the top spot, with lust surprisingly a distant third. Presumably, bloggers as a whole are an angry, proud lot with an occasional lusty desire.

Sloth and gluttony fall at the bottom of the heap. Maybe bloggers by the very fact that they bother to blog at all are less inclined toward sloth. I suspect gluttony would be ranked much higher if the keyword and it’s variants were replaced with more commonly used synonyms.

Check out more amusing trends at BlogPulse.

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The Hesternal Post

Mike Oswalt saw hesternal over on A.Word.A.Day and naturally was compelled to forward to me. You might presume that it means something like “…of or relating to a Hester” but you would, of course, be incorrect. What does hesternal mean?

hesternal (he-STER-nuhl) adjective

Of yesterday.

[From Latin hesternus (of yesterday).]

Wikipedia adds a bit more context:

Hesternal tense is a group of grammatical tenses that are defined relative to the previous day. Pre-hesternal past tense refers to events happening previous to yesterday, whereas hesternal past tense refers to events happening yesterday.

I never really cared much for grammer. I love language, reading and writing. I’m just not enamored by the mechanics. Disecting the structure of a sentence is akin to performing a post-portem on a dead poet’s blood, sweat and tears.

In spite of that, I’m putting one grammatical term to good use, and posting this yesterday instead of hodiernal.

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Living Well Is The Best Revenge

“Living well is the best revenge.” George Herbert, the early 17th-century metaphysical poet and clergyman, owns the distinction of coining this uplifting aphorism, a man of probity who has given us a way out of our present spiritual and economic dilemma. He makes sure we understand that we cannot get up by going down. We must live well. By and large, the only way for us to compete in the world as it is now is for us to drench our products and service with quality and qualities that discerning people care about. As it happens, that is probably also the only way healthy people can live their lives, because it carries with it the idea of “a job well done.” The goal is quality of life, not a life of crumbs and crumbles.

From the always interesting Letters from the Global Province.