The shopping world is run with faceted taxonomies. You know, the standard drill of choosing narrower and narrower categories, and then adding filters on things such as price, manufacturers and features. All of this navigation is powered and made possible through highly structured data with explicit relationships stored in a database or equivalent.

The data is structured, with hard links and concepts, that are also inflexible. If I want to create new attributes to filter by I have to modify the database, create new entries and establish the relationships. In reality what ends up happening is that taxonomy designers spend a lot of time at the beginning of development figuring out what is the best Hierarchical structure because they know it won’t get changed a lot in the future.

Now, what if you could accomplish the same drill-down and filtering use cases without storing hard database relationships?

It turns out that you can. With a BUT.

Main point: Text indexing is a superset of structured taxonomies.

Let me say that again…

TEXT INDEXING IS A SUPERSET OF STRUCTURED TAXONOMIES

Remember that a service like Google indexes everything. You can search every page against any character sequence. Well, if you place your taxonomy information on the page in a text format then it gets indexed just like everything else.

Taxonomy information.. indexed? Isn’t that the same as hard database relationships? EXACTLY! Without the database! Or rather, Google’s index IS the database.

Here’s the huge boost from this: If the search index is an isomorphism of your explicit taxonomy, then it’s also an isomorphism of unknown taxonomies that you haven’t even thought of.

As long as you put as much information as possible on the page then Google will index it, and voila every kind of taxonomy you can think of is created and buried inside the search index. What this means is that you can go back and create taxonomies without any loss of information!

In the structured approach if I wanted to be able to filter on HDTVs that have a 120Hz mode, I have to create a new facet called “Refresh Rate” and then go back and add the 120Hz attribute to all those televisions that apply.

In the unstructured approach I just write down in the text somewhere that the television supports 120Hz, alongside the contrast ratio, and all the other specifications that may or may not be important. Now, I can just search for those features and I’ll have the filter applied automatically. Beautiful!

Now for the problems.

A raw text search of “120Hz” doesn’t differentiate between Does have 120Hz, and doesn’t have 120Hz. Also there’s no way to apply your own sorting, and GOOG doesn’t handle ranges well. And this is why there is untapped potential. Google just announced that they’re creating an supplemental index for Custom Search, so why not add some extra extensions?

As the webmaster of ProductWiki I know the structure of the page better than a bot ever will. If I can provide search hints to say “THIS PART OF THE PAGE IS MORE IMPORTANT” that would be nice.

Also, these search companies need to handle date, and numeric ranges a lot better. I should be able to do $1000..$2000 and it’ll return me everything that has $1103.23 to $1,500. Same with dates, let me put in a variety of formats (isn’t even that important) and the parser understands what to look for.

Now I can do this kind of expansion of terms myself, but damnit this is their core competency.

In conclusion: I finally realize the power of unstructured search. It really does become the Database of Everything and that’s really friggin cool. Now with that power comes great responsibility, so search companies let’s step things up a notch and get some more advanced query handling happening.

I’ve come up with a model that movies studios, consumers, and technology providers can live together in harmony.

Each party is responsible for their core competency, you don’t have inefficient redundancies, profit will increase, and consumers won’t be screwed.

Let’s examine what each party offers.

Movie studios - they are the content producers and IP holders.

Content Delivery - iTunes, Xbox Live Marketplace, Blu-Ray discs, DVD discs, Amazon Unbox, etc… all of these are just delivery mechanisms to get the content from the studios to where you can consume it.

Playback device  - Xbox,  Computer, Set top box, AppleTV, etc

The problem with the traditional model is that everything is bundled into one service. Xbox Live Marketplace and iTunes are perfect examples of this. When you rent/purchase media from these services you have to buy the IP rights from them, you have to use their delivery mechanism, and you have to use their playback device.

My proposed model decouples everything.

1. Let me buy the IP rights to watch the media in any way that I choose.

2. Let me use any delivery provider I want.

3. Let me consume the content on any device I want.

There’s already a lot of literature on points 2-3, so I’m going to focus on point 1-2. If I’ve already bought a DVD, I’ve paid for the IP rights to that movie, so why should I pay for those exact same IP rights when I buy a movie from iTunes? Make buying the IP rights a one-time deal. Let me take those rights with me to different providers. If I own a view-license then let me download the movie on Live Marketplace for my 360, let me download it on iTunes for my computer, and I’ll pay for the delivery SERVICE, but I won’t pay for the rights multiple times.

Have content producers compete on the CONTENT.

Have delivery services compete on the SERVICE and not the content.

Have playback devices compete on the PLAYBACK and not the service.

If we focus the competition then the space will innovate at a rapid pace. If we don’t price gouge the consumer they’ll be willing to pay for the content in a lot of different ways that is convenient for them.

We’re already seeing some movement in this decoupling.

There has already been some decoupling in the delivery mechanism and playback space. Amazon Unbox is playable on TiVO devices, Xbox 360/PS3 will play downloaded content (usually pirated).

Some new DVDs contain an iTunes digital file unlock code so you get the iTunes movie along with the DVD.

This is the way of the future.

Implementation

In this digital world, implementation is actually quite easy from a technical perspective. Follow the credit card model. Use a centralized licensing database. Give me some security credentials that are tied to an account that stores and tracks which licenses I have access to.

I can purchase these licenses directly from the movie studios, from the delivery providers, from resellers, whoever. Then I use those credentials with a delivery service who checks the database to verify I have the rights before sending me the content.

Criticisms

1. Too complicated - for the average person giving them direct access to these concepts would prove too much I agree. But let’s give people some credit. I’m confident that an abstraction layer on the interface could hide the underlying mechanisms so everything works seemlessly. This would be difficult, but would definitely be worth it. A model like this lives or dies on ease of use for the consumer. Though the decreased costs should give some leway of not being perfect.

2. Using a centralized mechanism - in general yes these are usually best to be avoided. But come on, centralized databases aren’t inherently evil in themselves, and are sometimes the preferred design approach. Having a 3rd party handle the licenses lets it be regulated, reduces the red tape that everybody has to go through, and should be a non-profit industry entity like exist with web standards. The benefit is that movie studios only deal with one entity, and content deliverers only deal with one entity. And make it an international body to make things REALLY easy.

3. It won’t happen - if this model results in more money for everyone, then it will. It will take a major force to create though. A company with vision, and the resources to make a big bet. Apple is too much in bed with the media. It’s too innovative for Microsoft, and the natural trust issues. Media companies won’t have the long-term vision. The best bet is on Google, since they’re all about platforms now.

Well, the bomb has dropped. The 3rd biggest player in the online world is looking to buy out the biggest player in the online world. Details of the deal can be found in a million places (here’s one).

 My prognosis: Google wins.

In the key areas of competitions - search, advertising, local/maps, e-mail, IM, other services - all three companies have competitive offerings. Each company has its own strengths and weaknesses in each area. Now maybe the idea behind Microsoft is that the combined company will merge the strengths and drown out the weaknesses. Fine, maybe that’s true, but that takes time. And in the world of technology time is your greatest enemy.

Even Yahoo itself couldn’t figure out how to stick to ONE offering per sector and had internal competition with itself. Now you’re going to have competition between the two internal teams with different cultures, etc. What is going to happen? Let’s say in an ideal world that everybody gets along, the teams merge, and the best and brightest from each sector remain. In an ideal world that’ll take about a year.

This means that development on these core projects will essentially stall while the heads-up get their heads-out and manage the transition. Now through all that time Google with its cohesive teams will just keep on innovating and moving forward. All of a sudden Mi-yahoo-crosoft teams start pumping out work again and BAM they’re a year behind the curve with almost no chance of catching up.

Now OBVIOUSLY the business geniuses (and that is sincere) at Microsoft have thought about these things. So one has to imagine that there is a grand scheme behind all of this. Or maybe it really is a lesser of two evils, and the transition will happen slowly. Yahoo will continue to exist as a separate entity while Microsoft starts sending more and more of their execs over to “handle” things slowly transforming the culture. That’s how I would do it anyway.

Man… who knows what’ll happen. I wonder if Microsoft will buy Sony next.

TechCrunch takes a look at MSN’s new video site, and their new policy on showing advertisements. For fear of being cliche, video on the web is still an infant frontier and monetizing the hundreds of millions of eyeballs is the 64 billion dollar question.There are many options available, each one with their own advantages and disadvantages. Pre-rolls, post-rolls, overlays, banners, etc.

It bothers me that overlays are starting to get attention because I absolutely HATE them. I hate anything that obstructs my view of the action that’s happening on screen. Personally, even though they get a lot of flack, I think pre-rolls have the best potential. Why? Because they’re inline with my experience. Look to my previous write-up about PPP and things being out or in context of the experience. The reason why pre-rolls ads have gotten such a hard time is because they’ve been executed upon so poorly. If I’m just watching a 30 second clip it doesn’t make sense to show me a 30 second commercial in front.

Instead commercials should be short, very short, engaging, and tailored to what I’m interested in. 5-10 second ads are bearable. Heck, just use the time before a video loads to display an ad, instead of waiting for the damn ad to show up in the first place! Don’t show me some animated circle, show me a deal on some new 360 games, or news about a new service launching.

 From my own personal experience I know that videos are incredibly popular and can spread very quickly. So even if people can’t monetize well right now everybody’s going to be trying their hardest to figure it out. In the meantime I’m going to enjoy this Golden-Age of minimal advertising on sites like Stage6 before someone DOES figure it out, and we’re stuck with ads, just like AdSense did to the text web.

TechCrunch has another post about PPP and its evils. I don’t want to talk about this specific incident since it’s pretty silly all around, but like Arrington says, PPP always brings up discussion and this is a good time to share my thoughts on it. While some people disagree with PPP’s methods, there IS something to be said about rethinking the way that bloggers make money. Look at the current situation… you have:

1. Bloggers who write and want to make money

2. Companies that want to get their products and services known

It’s only natural that these two forces come together. Bloggers want to make a living. Companies want to promote. Nothing groundbreaking here. Traditionally the way these two entities have come together is in the form of advertising. On the web this includes AdSense, or other ad networks, or using banner ads through an ad agency like b5Media or Federated Media.

However, those kinds of advertising schemes are pretty broken. When you have technology such as AdBlocker existing, it shows that advertisements annoy a contingent of readers enough to take action, and maybe annoys more than that but are too lazy to do anything about it, or they bite the bullet and deal with the ads because they know the blogger has to eat.

But why does it have to be that way? It obviously doesn’t. For every blog out there, there is a corresponding business model that is a better fit than just throwing up some banner ads. Ads are very EASY to do, just go with an existed system, or even sell the ads yourself, it’s all very straight forward. But most of the time they’re not the BEST thing to do.

Look at ProductWiki, or any Price Comparison service. These are great business models because the money making is built directly into the service. People don’t consider the “ads” as being an out-of-context message, but an integrated part of the experience.  By using a model that is harmonious with your users expectations you end up making more money, and getting a better experience.

PayPerPost is another kind of way for bloggers to make money. The idea isn’t that bad in theory, it’s the execution that leaves you wanting. Personally, I looked at PPP to see if it’d make sense to have some bloggers write about the site and check it out. Looking at the blogs they recommended, most of them were crap. Garbage. Useless.

And it makes sense! A lot of bloggers that work with PPP make some decent money with it, so they use the service: a lot. The end result though is that most of these blogs have horrible quality where it’s just one payed post after another. That doesn’t benefit anyone, unless you’re just interested in straight link development. But if you were, you could get much better return on your investment through other means.

That being said, I’m not against having companies pay bloggers for their attention to review and examine their products and services. Bloggers don’t have infinite time to review everything. Looking at the web industry, you have your A-list, B-list and so on. These are busy guys that don’t have time to write about the 10 new startups that launch every single freaking day. What does that mean for the startups? You gotta pay to get noticed.

It’s already happening even if it isn’t explicit! Startups get funded, they hire PR firms, marketing agencies. They hold parties. They attend conferences. They spend A LOT of money to get themselves noticed by the people that matter. They spend A LOT of money in the hopes that they will be written about, and refered to by the people that matter.

You could say that bloggers just write about things they think are WORTH writing about. Well obviously. However, there’s a lot that they’re NOT writing about that is WORTH writing about but they don’t have TIME to. That’s where the paid model comes in. Let’s take out the middle-man. Using this medium why go the “old media” route of the payola to get bloggers to write about us. Just pay them directly. But you’re not paying for their writing. You’re paying for their attention so that they MAY write about you.

Naturally this creates a supply (blogger attention) and a demand (companies) and the result should and will be a bidding system to see which companies get covered first.

Let me take the side of a blogger for a second. I’m a busy person. I’m doing a lot of things with the site, I’m enjoying life outside of the Internet (try to), doesn’t leave much time to blog. However, if somebody comes to me and says “Yo, here’s $XXX so you can take time out of your busy schedule to check us out” I’d be down with that. And if I’m really busy they’d be like “Yo, we know you’re REALLY busy, so we’ll give you $XXX*2 for your time!” I’d be down with that too.

If these companies approaching me have a strong overlap with my audience, then it makes sense for EVERYONE.

Since it makes so much sense, then why are we left with such crappy options such as ineffective advertising or garbage PayPerPost? There’s a big opportunity here for someone to make a lot of money. But it’s definitely a balancing act because you can very quickly get into PPP territory of crappiness.

First post! The great thing about being the writer on the blog is that you’re always FIRST.

In light of the first post on this blog… I present: FIRST

Electronic Arts, are you finally starting to shape up? Was it an internal motivation that is causing you to raise your standards? Or is it an increasingly intelligent gaming population that got burned one too many times? To be honest, I don’t really care about the answer, as long as you’re fighting against the slide into mediocrity with standout titles like skate.

This game ROCKS.

Pure and Simple. I don’t know how else to put it.

I could talk about the satisfying nature of the revolutionary Flick-It controls. I could talk about the open ended world that is a pleasure to explore. I could talk about the awesome skate.reel feature for sharing videos. I could talk about the realistic sound effects that gives everything OOMPH. I could talk about the advanced physics based animation system.

Instead I’ll just share this one story.

I was just riding around the city practicing moves, grinds and looking for cool places to do tricks when I discovered this little area tucked away behind a store. It was simple enough: a ramp leading up to a garbage bin nestled directly against the wall. For the next 30 minutes I poured over the same area until I got the perfect line that I wanted. Yes it took me a little while. And I loved every minute of it.

You see, in my younger years I actually took up skateboarding for a while. My friends and I would skate on the street, or go to local places and generally try to land a kickflip, or two on a good day. The meticulous practice and reward for skill necessary in real skateboarding is captured perfectly in skate. That’s not to say it’s a difficult game. You can go quite far by just doing any old random move.

But if you want to get that perfect line. That line that lets you express yourself.That takes time and skill, and it’s worth it.

There are very few games that let you repeat the same task multiple times without throwing the controller out the window. The ones that do are something special. Something classic.

Thanks EA. I didn’t think I’d be saying that unless it was for a paycheck.

Now don’t mess it all up and release semi-annual installments with minor improvements! Let this one sit, simmer and gestate. Do a bi-annual release and make them substantial.