Yearly Archives: 2005

Internet, the Enigma

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For some people, the Internet is an enigma. An enigma is something puzzling. Perhaps if more people knew more about the Internet, they too would find it to be an enigma.

The Internet Is Not A Telephone Line

Some may assume the Internet works like a telephone line. Dial up a contact. The other party comes on the line. Immediately you have direct communication. What is said at one end of the line is heard at the other end.

The Internet is not at all like that. A web page at its origin is very different from the forms it takes as it moves through the network that brings it to the viewer of the web page. Packets of information travel through a complex traffic balancing system. The process by which a web page is chopped up into packages, moves through the network and is reassembled at the other end is almost miraculous. .. or perhaps even enigmatic.

The Enigma Machine

This enigmatic web page transmission process has some similarities with a process used during the Second World War to transmit secret information over vast distances. This process was based on the Enigma Machine. The Enigma Machine was used to encrypt military information in such a form that it could be transmitted without the possibility that an unintended party could waylay the information and learn the secrets. When the intended recipient received the garbled information, another enigma machine was used to reverse the encryption process and make the contents intelligible once more. Only an enigma machine set up to match the transmitting enigma machine could correctly decrypt the contents.

The Transmission of Web Pages

The transmission of web pages across the Internet has more similarities with the encryption/decryption process of the Enigma Machine than might be realised. A website owner viewing a web page on his or her own computer might assume that every recipient would see it exactly the same. However the process of preparing it for transmission works just like the enigma machine. If the receiving station does not have a compatible ‘enigma machine’, then a distorted impression may be received.

In the case of the Internet, if the transmitting and receiving stations are not too dissimilar, then the content should be recognizable. However exactly the same viewing experience will only be seen if both stations have exactly the same:

  • Hardware
  • Operating System
  • Internet Browser, and
  • Monitor type and screen resolution.

If the web site designer has done the web page development with skill and competence then most receivers should receive a reasonably satisfactory viewing experience. However most web pages will look ‘broken’ to at least 10% of their viewers and this percentage of dissatisfied viewers can very easily exceed 50% in the worst cases.

To avoid this enigmatic behaviour, a knowledgeable website owner will employ a web designer who understands viewer technology options, web standards and cross-browser compatibility.

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Wikipedia plans site shake-up

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That’s the title of a Financial Times article this week. Wikipedia, the online user-written encyclopaedia, has seen steady growth in its users, despite people such as Daniel Brandt criticizing Wikipedia’s veracity. Now apparently Wikipedia is to introduce a more traditional fixed version of its contents in an effort to increase its reliability.

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, said a new “stable” version of the reference would be added to the site and audited to ensure its accuracy.

The current, changing version of the encyclopaedia – which will remain available to users – is reliant on its outside readers to catch inaccuracies and correct them.

“What we are doing in the long run is pursuing a model of having stable versions and live versions,” Mr Wales said in an interview with the Financial Times.

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So who's the loser – Microsoft, Google or AOL?

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There’s been a major battle going on over the past weeks, that might have gone either way. Microsoft and AOL or Google and AOL?

Inside Microsoft seemed to feel it was all over on December 6 in a piece entitled MSN Wins AOL?

MarketWatch says they’ve heard that Microsoft is now closing a deal with AOL, although not to buy the division from Time Warner.

Time Warner Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are close to a deal to form an online-ad service rival to Google Inc., people familiar with the negotiations told The Wall Street Journal. Under the proposal, AOL would drop Google as its primary provider of Internet-search services and adopt Microsoft’s MSN service, the paper reported.

Might be a good time to sell Google stock. Google won’t be killed by the loss of AOL’s revenues, but the stock will take a short-term hit.
Roll forward two weeks and it’s Google and AOL who are inking a deal. Bits From Bill on December 17 comments on the deal .

The battle was on for the hearts and mind of AOL and its 20 million members.

The winner was Google although they’re not the only ones who will benefit if this deal succeeds. In return for a billion dollars Google gets a 5% share in AOL. Google will also continue to be the search engine of choice for AOL

The real winner will be AOL. A billion in cash is great Christmas bonus and it couldn’t come at a better time for budgets at AOL. AOL has been struggling with how to roll out content to the non-AOL internet. The exposure by Google will make it possible for AOL to make this transition. In return, Google will benefit from the rich content which includes a huge video library ripe for indexing.

Motives are always tough to discern in such a battle, particularly if two suitors are both hotly pursuing a fair maiden’s hand. I fear that Microsoft put AOL into the driving seat. So AOL could hold out for a great deal of icing on the cake Google was offering it. I doubt what Google wins from the association with AOL will outweight the costs of accepting a semi-portal approach involving an AOL presence. However the stock market doesn’t seem to agree and the Google share price is hitting new peaks as this is written.

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High Performance Blogging

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Blogging is a powerful way of getting Internet visibility and there is an important website that’s recently come on line that I find particularly valuable. One of the founders is Nick Wilson, who was the driving force behind Threadwatch, a community website focused on Internet marketing and related technologies. He has sold his interest in that and is now involved in Performancing. Its tagline says it all, Helping Bloggers Succeed. If you’re intent on having success, I would recommend adding their RSS newsfeed to your blogroll.

One recent post I found useful was entitled Google Teaches Bloggers How To Rank. In this Nick Wilson interviewed Matt Cutts, a ‘senior Google engineer and webmaster relations chappy’. There were some really interesting topics covered in the interview. However possibly the most valuable insight was Cutts’s advice to go read the Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. As usual, it’s always best to get advice directly from the horse’s mouth.

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Wikipedia and Daniel Brandt

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Very many people now turn to Wikipedia on the Web as a source of knowledge on almost anything. It’s now said to be the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world. It receives 2.5 billion page views a month. The number of articles is close to 2 million and is growing by seven percent per month. Anyone with an Internet connection can help to share their knowledge about a subject and build this collective brain.

There’s an interesting newspaper account today of the efforts of Daniel Brandt, of San Antonio, to help an individual whose Wikipedia entry was defamatory. It turned out that the entry had been created by someone as a prank. However it took some clever detective work to track down the miscreant.

If that name, Daniel Brandt, rings a bell he was the founder of Public Information Research in 2002, which runs the Google Watch website. Brandt states that the website’s goals are to report on conflicts of interest in Google’s corporate structure, the dependency of the public on it for information, invasion of privacy issues, and its increasing commercial links with private interests.

The interesting footnote to this story is that Daniel Brandt wants his Wikipedia entry removed. As of today, it includes the following:

Brandt in October 2005 launched a new website, Wikipedia Watch, with criticism of Wikipedia, as a direct response to his inability to delete the article that was made about himself, which he stated was an invasion of privacy, and the inability of Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales to respond to his facsimile requesting for this article to be deleted. As a direct result of the creation of Wikipedia Watch, Brandt was banned indefinitely from Wikipedia. Brandt argues that Wikipedia’s openness raises the risk that articles may be manipulated by anyone without being accountable for it.

You can find what Daniel Brandt thinks about Wikipedia at Wikipedia Watch.

It just shows how elusive the truth can be.

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