Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Mauritius

Why I blog less now

By 8 Comments

20091104-noise

While reading Dan Cederholm’s blog, I found this small gem:

Like anyone who used to blog with frequency pre-2005, I’d like to post here more often — not just to fill up bits and bytes, but to write again. Remember when blogs were more casual and conversational? Before a post’s purpose was to grab search engine clicks or to promise “99 Answers to Your Problem That We’re Telling You You’re Having”. Yeah. I’d like to get back to that here.
Then again, history teaches us that it probably won’t happen.

Like anyone who used to blog with frequency pre-2005, I’d like to post here more often — not just to fill up bits and bytes, but to write again. Remember when blogs were more casual and conversational? Before a post’s purpose was to grab search engine clicks or to promise “99 Answers to Your Problem That We’re Telling You You’re Having”. Yeah. I’d like to get back to that here.

Then again, history teaches us that it probably won’t happen.

I guess this is why I blog less now.

Incidentally, I have been listening to a lot of Electroclash (aka Electro IV aka New wave III aka Synthpop II) during those past months. Fischerspooner is excellent. It’s healthy noise…

Google G-Mauritius Day 9 in the news

By 10 Comments

Google engineers held a two day conference on 3-4 September 2009 to give a technical overview of key Google technologies (like Google Maps and Earth, Open Social, Friend Connect, AdSense, AdWords, Analytics, the App Engine, the Web Toolkit etc.) for software development and for enhancing business processes.

During the news item, I explain how important it is for a major IT company like Google to come to Mauritius and how beneficial Google technologies can be for the local economy.

 

I am always in awe of how easy it seems for Google to create new technologies mostly out of thin air in a very short amount of time. For example, I use Gmail on a daily basis and, seriously, I don’t think that there is anything as good as it elsewhere. The beauty of Gmail is, of course, that it was created by someone out of passion during his 20% of free time that all Googlers get.

Naturally, the essential word in the above paragraph is seems. This is because nothing could be further from truth. Google succeeds in creating great products and technologies because it only recruits the best (and, ouch, I know that…) and encourage them to innovate.

During the conference, someone asked a really bizarre question: “Were we going to receive training certificates at the end?” This is bizarre for two reasons (i) the conference was not a training course and (ii) we already had received more than a mere piece of paper: the Googlers were sharing their knowledge with us! Once more, lorsque le sage montre la lune du doigt, l’imbécile regarde le doigt…

[This video is extracted from the MBC national TV news bulletin.]

Google in Mauritius: Day 2 on Twitter

By 12 Comments

20090903-gmauritiusday1

I was at the G-MauritiusDay2009 conference today and the Googlers talked about a lot of Google technologies to help people build better websites and monetise them. Here is my Twitter transcript:

(about 9 hours ago)
#googlemu Second day of the Google conference in Mauritius! Mary Himinkool, who does New Business Development, talks about Google's vision

(about 9 hours ago in reply to asheshr)
@asheshr How bizarre… They use MacBooks Pro and mentioned Linux one or twice yesterday :-)

(about 9 hours ago)
#googlemu A captivating website is (i) relevant (ii) customisable (iii) respect users (iv) engage users to participate (v) innovative

(about 9 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = Launch early and iterate = open source development model :-)

(about 9 hours ago)
#googlemu Long tail community of users…

(about 9 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to have a look at the nice things on Google Labs http://www.googlelabs.com/

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Indic Transliteration in real time http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = Share everything you can = open source development model once more :-)

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = Hire the best (most intelligent — not most vocal :-)

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = Allow people to pursue dreams. 20% of the time, Googlers do whatever they want to spend energy on.. and you get Gmail

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = ideas come from everywhere. Make people meet, talk and communicate. Let them suggest ideas.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google acquires companies to get people with new ideas.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = don't politic — use data. Only deduce something from hard facts. Get the data! Run pilot experiments!

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = creativity loves restraints — put clear boundaries

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Focus on Users and usage and money will follow. Don't focus on the money. Start with satisfying user needs.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Don't kill projects — morph them. Simplify. Combine. E.g. Google Talk + Gmail = Gmail chat…

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Talked about Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu THE FUTURE = LIVING IN THE CLOUD. I'm convinced. And I hope you're too!

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Advances: Better search, better visualisation, etc.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu A great wind is blowing and that gives you either imagination or a headache. I'm lucky that I'm being inspired by Mary :-)

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy told us to blog about how awesome the keynote by Mary was. So I feel compelled to say that Mary's keynote was very nice.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu 15 minutes of break before a Google Analytics session. See you later.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy starts on Adsense and Adwords.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu 74,200,000,000 Google searches in June 2008. Bloody hell :-)

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Evolution of search: lycos, askjeeves, yahoo, excite, web crawler. Brings a lot of past memory.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy mentions Mozilla Aurora, 3D search, http://www.adaptivepath.com/aurora/

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Search is successful because of its speed (and also its relevance.)

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy didn't mention it but Google search runs on a cluster of 500,000 Linux computers.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google continually changes its algo. 10-20% of the web is new each time Google starts using a new algo.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu By the way (and this will appeal to functional programming fans like me), Google uses MapReduce http://bit.ly/2ErR0O

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy explaining the Ad Auction mechanism. See http://bit.ly/VUAVo

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Ad position determined by quality score (click-through-rate, keyword, ad text, landing page quality.) So ad text also has a role!

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Ad position also depends on how much the advertiser wants to pay (CPC). Ad rank = quality score * max CPC.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Payment = Ad rank / competitor quality score + $0.01. Actual CPC <= Max CPC.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Revise your Quality Score and your Max CPC a least once per month

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Account -> Campaign -> Ad group. Chose relevant keywords and ad text.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy mentions the AdWords Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu The Keyword Tool is really excellent. I am happy to have been introduced to it!

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy explains exact match, phrase match, broad match, negative match. See http://bit.ly/ecb3S

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy says that people spend less time watching TV, listening radio and reading. Instead they do those things online.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Marketers are moving online as things can be measured. Everything is based on clicks.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Return on investment calculation becomes trivial.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu New platforms: mobile. iPhone users search 50x more than other mobile phone users. Mobile ad market: around $4B estimated.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy mentions the Nokia N900 http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/ which is the future of phones ahem computers, maybe.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu The guy next to me is fast asleep. He shouldn't have come…

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy says that the most important parameter in AdWords is the budget per day. Starts at $1 per day which means Rs 1000 per month

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu The destination URL for an advert should be as specific as possible.

(about 7 hours ago in reply to yashvin)
@yashvin I hope that guy didn't come yesterday :-)

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy is a fetishist: he is using the domain lickmyear.org as an example domain :-)

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Adwords finished. All and good. Now let's move to AdSense.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Explains about ad units, etc.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Revenue from AdSense depends of course on the traffic.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy finished doing his presentation on AdWords (great) and AdSense (so so…) Julian will talk of Analytics next.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian starts on Google Analytics. Know your users. Decide from data! That's the new mantra :-)

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Analytics = what's happening | Website Optimizer = change your website

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian Harris explains how analytics is highly customisable: profiles, geofiltering, custom reporting, visitor demographics, API

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Having referrals is a great way to increase traffic. https://www.noulakaz.net/ gets 55% of its traffic from referrals.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian explains the difference between hits and page views. A single page might request hundreds of server hits.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian speaks on Analytics URL builder http://bit.ly/foZtS

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu For those who don't know: Chewy is @LordofGoats and Julian is @julianharris What about the other Googlers?

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Hell! I've mistakenly typed @ instead of # again. I am getting too old for this :-)

(about 7 hours ago in reply to who0)
@who0 De rien :-)

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Think in terms of user goals! Know your users. Why are they coming on my website?

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Potential goals: e-commerce, lead generation, brand and/or product awareness, member acquisition, etc.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Analytics can track goals (multiple pages e.g. an e-commerce sale process.)

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu For lead generation, goal tracking can be used, for example, to check whether a visitor is filling in a form after his visit.

(about 7 hours ago in reply to AdamWoozeer)
@AdamWoozeer True. True.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Analytics allow you to "pinpoint where you lose visitors" and "duplicate successful paths" I really need to have a look at goals

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Up to now, I have used Analytics as a good-looking webalizer. I need to change my stance.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Funnel reporting looks really nice graphically.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Don't don't don't tell me that googlestore is powered by ASP!?!?!?

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Goals and Funnels explained at http://bit.ly/GKWmX I have to spend some time with those for my http://www.knowledge7.com/ website

(about 6 hours ago in reply to misrael)
@misrael You win this time :-) #googlemu

(about 6 hours ago)
@misrael There is something fishy. If you go on the website e.g. http://bit.ly/cmYx5 you'll see that it is using PHP… #googlemu

 

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu So, on the Analytics webpage, we see .asp pages whereas when we visit the site, we can see .php. Who can explain? Using both?

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian now starts talking of Google Site Optimizer which is what you should do after doing analytics.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Netcraft confirms that googlestore.com works on IIS 6.0 http://bit.ly/rSrRJ Must be a side project, n'est ce pas @misrael? :-)

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Site Optimizer https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/ allow people to improve conversion rate.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Site optimizer allows people to do A/B testing (compare two versions of the same page) and multivariate experiment (compare >2)

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Read http://bit.ly/2VQhFd for more information on Google Site Optimizer

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu What? Test what combination of site content drives most conversions. Why? Help marketers convert visitors into customers.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Visitors take 8 seconds to decide whether they will leave or stay! So cut down on the crap graphics :-)

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian is talking about multivariate analysis. In other words, GSO can compare the conversion rates of, say, 3 versions of a page.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu GWO allows different designs to cohabit. Nothing to do with trying out a design for, say, a week. That's neat.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Maybe Julian is getting into too much depth, isn't he? A lot of people in the audience are somewhat dizzy :-)

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian was a user experience consultant in his pre-Google life. By the way, you should really really read http://bit.ly/VMhYK

(about 6 hours ago in reply to __Sun__)
@__Sun__ Why don't you come? I don't think they'll notice there is an "outsider" :-) #googlemu

(about 6 hours ago)
@misrael timbuktubikes runs on PHP :-) I'm vindicated! #googlemu

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of conversions and conversion rate. See http://bit.ly/W82Hp Basically, has the visitor done THE action you wanted.

(about 6 hours ago in reply to LordofGoats)
@LordofGoats Finding nice sounding domains has really become tough lately because of those people buying domains in bulk. #googlemu

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian has just finished demoing a Website Optimizer experiment. Now he is showing us a case study of Picassa.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian said something very important: "A funnel can be only one page!" That's excellent.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Hypothesis #1: It is always better to describe user benefits than product features

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Site optimizer showed that the hypothesis was false. I would have never guessed…

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian showing us a "enhanced" design which cut the sales by half. He also said that the homepage is a political battleground :-)

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian is summarising now. He has called Julien Faliu how he optimizes his own website. See http://www.expat-blog.com/

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu sed 's/u h/u to show h/g' please

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Expat-Blog has a lot of traffic. More than 290,000 visits per month. Julien must be a rich guy :-)

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Julien is getting more than 6000 new customers per month on Expat-Blog now :-)

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Julien Faliu is saying that Analytics & AdSense are great tools to monetise a website. I guess we're all convinced now :-)

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu 66% of people coming on Expat-Blog register. That's excellent!!!

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Consultants can use Google products for free and bill customers for their service. Phew :-) [As if we didn't know already.]

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Someone asked a good question on the real influence of SEO experts on ranking. They didn't answer. Seems to work though.

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of the potential of using Google Earth for the tourist industry..

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy showing us a layer in Google Earth from fboweb.com where one can see all airplanes flying in the US airspace! That's neat!

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu See http://flightwise.com/ for more info.

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to have some *real* food now :-)

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy showing us Google Squared http://www.google.com/squared

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Lunchtime!!!

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy explains Google Search (1) crawling (2) page ranking http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html and (3) indexing

(about 4 hours ago in reply to kiagiri)
@kiagiri Should be on http://flightwise.com/ somewhere… Sorry I don't remember the exact name.

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu For fun, search for "search engine" on Google and be surprised :-)

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu 25% of queries have not been seen in 3 months. 10-25% of the web is new each time Google crawls it.

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu Basic guidelines. Make your website (1) discoverable (2) indexable (3) nice content and structure (4) get a lot of incoming links

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu About (4), do it correctly: by becoming authoritative in some adequate forums and having, say, your URL in your signature.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Make your URLs nice and clean. Have a lot of normal internal text links so that the GoogleBot can visit all pages…

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Reduce the number of redirects to a minimum. Think about what users will type as keywords. Use good titles, headings and keywords.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy mentioned Linux again. And Mary somewhat described the open source development model in the morning. I'm happy :-)

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Check your website using Lynx :-) GoogleBot cannot (yet) understand images…

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Use Flash and Javascript sparingly. Measure everything. Run Analytics. Look at referring sites. etc.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Flash recommendations: use HTML for navigation, use meta tags, use text tracks, create an HTML version of your site…

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Personally I dream of a world with no flash but a lot of HTML5. See http://www.youtube.com/html5 I tried with Safari and it works

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy is explaining the syntax of robots.txt which a lot of people don't know about. I don't use robots.txt personally.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Dealing with duplicate content. Read about rel="canonical" at http://bit.ly/I9KXQ

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Google does not like paid links or anything fishy at all!

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Showing us Google Webmasters Central http://www.google.com/webmasters/

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu … which allows people to use the Google Webmaster Tools.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu "Top search queries" only appear here, in the Google Webmaster Tools. It's worth its weight in gold :-)

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Exploring GWT. Crawl stats. Pages crawled per day. Time spent downloading a page. PageRank of pages. Page with highest PageRank.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu About SEO: you need to understand what the SEO people are doing. Avoid black hat http://bit.ly/dREBl

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Mary starts presenting some innovative applications using Google technology. First…

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu http://www.meetup.com/ Do something • Learn something Share something • Change something

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meetup.com

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Showing us http://animoto.com/ Turn your photos & videos into pure amazing videos. Free, fast and shockingly easy :-)

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu You can add music. Either your own or one of the Creative Commons music available there.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Now she's showing us http://www.zappos.com/map/ which is something girls will love ;-)

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Now we're seeing http://obamavisits-ghana.appspot.com/ which is the Obama visits Ghana website. App Engine, YouTube, Maps, etc.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu By the way, something nice just happened. Flash crashed within Chrome and everything still works :-) This is great.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Don't forget about the Google App Gallery http://appgallery.appspot.com/ I really need to get into that.

(about 2 hours ago in reply to LordofGoats)
@LordofGoats HTML5 has the potential to displace Flash from the heart of a lot of *real* web developers :-) #googlemu

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Asvin Balloo has just showed us his own application http://twitree.com/ and it was great :-)

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Now having a look at http://www.kotzot.com/ and it looks like a portal for Mauritians. Dilraj is demoing it ;-)

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu I think it's time now to go home. Seems that there is not much to see.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu I liked: App Engine, Friend Connect, Mary's keynote, Adwords, Adsense, Analytics and some of the websites shown by Mary.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu I was somewhat less enthusiastic about: the Google Web Toolkit but, maybe, I didn't manage to understand everything.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy is showing us Google Audio Indexing http://labs.google.com/gaudi You can search for words in a video!!!

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Mary mentions Google Channels. I need to think about using one for @KnowledgeSeven

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu I need to ask one question about Android…

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy said that Android has just started and everything now will depend on the user community developing applications.

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Finished with a great group photo. Bye bye everyone. It was great being part of this event and twittering for 2 days was cool too