Boyko Family News

It’s interesting to watch the marketshare numbers for the search engine market. These numbers are released monthly by several tracking firms, and one thing is clear—in each month since Bing was introduced, its marketshare has increased. Often it is at the expense of Yahoo and/or other lesser-used search engines, however in the most recent month’s reports (as reported here), some of Bing’s gain may be at the expense of Google.

I’ve been watching Bing’s market growth since its June launch. When Bing launched, it inherited the marketshare of its predecessor, Windows Live Search, which was about 8%. Depending on which tracking firm’s numbers you look at, Bing’s marketshare is now somewhere in the neighborhood of 10.5-11%, so on average, Bing is growing at a monthly rate of roughly .4% or .5%. Now, this may not seem like much, but what if the trend continues? If Bing were gain say 6% marketshare per year, that would be 30% in 5 years. Add to this the growth that can be expected from the Yahoo deal, and it’s not unreasonable to think that Bing could have marketshare of somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% within 5 years. And if Bing has 50+%, that means that Google will be the number two search engine, rather than the #1 position that they now enjoy.

If anyone thinks that Microsoft is not in search for the long haul, or is not willing to continue to invest heavily in search for 5+ years, they are mistaken. Microsoft does look at the 5+ year timeframe, and with a business a lucrative as search-based advertising, the investment should be well-worth it.

So there you have it. My prediction that Bing will be a strong contender, and may potentially overtake Google as the #1 search engine by December 2014. Of course, Google is not going to be standing still. They will also have to innovate as a result of the threat that Bing presents. The technology will get better all around (both from Bing and from Google). Searches will be more relevant and easier to conduct. And in the end, the consumer will win.

A while back, Microsoft Research created a product called AutoCollage. It’s really quite impressive how well it works. The software (as the name plainly indicates) is used to automatically create a photo collage from a set of input photos. It began as a research project, but at some point they decided it would make sense to release it as a product. They’re onto something here. It’s the easiest to use photo collage software I’ve ever used, and the results are very good, even when run in fully-automatic mode. If you spend a couple minutes to provide a couple extra hints, the results are excellent. It’s definitely worth downloading the trial version to see what it can do.

If you use Windows Live Photo Gallery, it’s even easier to select and create collages using AutoCollage, due to the integration into WLPG. You can select you photos based on tags, or any other criteria available to you in WLPG.

Here are a couple samples of what it can do:

View Full Album

This video is making the rounds, and does an awesome job of conveying the sense of community in the Fargo-Moorhead area right now. Take a look if you haven't seen it yet. It's awe-inspiring. There are five parts so far, so check for related videos if you want to see more from the same producer.

Talking about YouTube - 2009 FARGO/MOORHEAD FLOOD
  

Here’s a timely story from the New York Times that makes my post yesterday about digital personas that much more real. A police officer chased down and arrested an ex-con on a stolen motorcycle who was allegedly carrying a loaded weapon and a bag of ammunition. During the arrest, the suspect suffered three broken ribs. The suspect accused the officer of planting the gun in order to justify the beating. When the case went to court, the defense used comments the officer had left on MySpace and Facebook to paint a picture that the officer was prone to corruption and violence (based on references to the movie Training Day, and comments he left regarding a video of an officer hitting a suspect indicating the “right” way to “tune him up”. The defendant walked.

Once again, a digital persona collides with real life (this time in a court room). Why would the officer make comments like this? I can only speculate, but one thing that happens on the internet is that feelings/thoughts that people have are more freely expressed. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this officer talks like this in real life around certain people. It wouldn’t surprise me that he is prone to more violence than is necessary. But it’s also a pretty far leap from comments on the ‘net to planting a gun, which I don’t believe this officer did.

In any case, things said through a “digital persona” may come back to bite you in real life, with real consequences. In this case, it’s possible a guilty man was acquitted.

Joe Wilcox over at Microsoft Watch recently posted a fascinating article on the topic of our digital identities and how we manage them, or rather how we might like to manage them, but are unable to do so because of the technological limitations of the services we use.

Joe’s claim is that we all have different personas, both in real life and online. In real life it is easy to choose what aspects we share based on the social context. Online it is much more difficult.

There are a couple of very interesting insights in Joe’s article. First is the need for a single digital identity. The idea has been around for a while, but no one has made it a reality, partly because of the lack of standardization, and partly because of the critical missing piece Joe mentions next: the concept of digital personas, separate from identity. Traditionally, separate personas have been maintained online through the use of different handles/nicks (identities). But with social networking services such as Facebook playing such an important role in so many people’s lives today, and with the line between real life and digital life blurring, this isn’t really practical anymore. There is a desire for a single identity. You still want to be you (identity) regardless of the social context, but you may wish to share only certain aspects of your digital life (persona) depending on the context.

Clearly we all have different personas, both in real life and online. Behavior should depend on social context. But there’s also something to be said about personas that are so far removed from each other that they conflict. We’ve all heard stories about people losing their jobs or getting disciplined in school for something they said online or for a picture they posted on Facebook or MySpace. Typically, this occurs in situations where the online persona is so at odds with the real-life persona in that particular context (e.g. work) that the conflict is irreconcilable. While Joe’s concept of digital personas might help people who fall into this category, I think it’s rather unhealthy to be in this category in the first place.

Give Joe's article a read. It’s really quite good.

I’m a big Facebook fan. Facebook is the obvious best social network for most people for a couple of reasons. First, it’s hugely popular. Chances are pretty good the people you’re interested in connecting with are already on Facebook, or will have heard of it and be willing to join. Second, it’s pretty intuitive and easy to use.

But there is one major problem with Facebook: it’s a closed environment. Facebook does provide Facebook Connect, but this just doesn’t go far enough. I want to see true interoperability between my social network and the other applications and web sites/services I use. I want a unified personal status, whether I set it on Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, or Twitter. I want the option for unified contacts and calendars, with open APIs that will allow any authenticated application to participate in synchronization of this data. Bits and pieces of this are beginning to emerge, but we’re not there yet. What’s required is an open, documented, social networking platform.

I think Microsoft’s Windows Live services are our best bet for getting there. Microsoft (which is the company I happen to work for) is playing catch up when it comes to social networking and web applications in general. Large strides have been made with the most recent Windows Live release, but clearly much more needs to be done. When it comes to providing platforms, Microsoft has a pretty successful history. The only other companies (in my mind) with the capability to provide a unified platform such as what I’m envisioning are Google, and possibly Facebook.

The next five years are going to be very interesting….

I’ve been running the Windows 7 beta for about a week now. I’m very impressed.

It feels snappy. Probably partly because I did a clean install, but partly because it feels like Seven has had performance tuning since Vista.

The UI is very clean. The biggest visible change is the new task bar:

I wasn’t sure I’d like it, and I’m still getting used to it, but I think I’m going to like it a lot. The innovation over Vista is that the task bar intermingles running programs with shortcuts to start the programs. The beauty of this approach is that there is no ambiguity about how to find your most commonly-used applications. Once an application is pinned to the task bar, you always go to that pinned icon to access that program, regardless of whether the application is running or not. And for anyone that misses the window names, they can still optionally be shown.

I’m also fond of the new Libraries functionality, which provides consolidated views for certain folders (Pictures, Documents, Videos, and Music by default). It’s nice to have this view without caring where on your drive or on your network the actual files are stored.

Stability has been good so far. No OS crashes at all. I’ve had a couple of application crashes, and am more inclined to blame the apps than to blame Seven.

Obviously this is still a beta, and on one of the machines I’m using, I notice some fairly regular issues with the mouse cursor not painting quite right. I had trouble installing the driver for one of my ethernet adapters as well. This was the only device Seven didn’t get right on the initial install (and I’m not sure why, either, since the driver actually shipped with Seven).

But overall, I expect this to be a very good release.

Last Sabbath our family sang a short song for our church Christmas program. Here’s the video. Good job, kids!

Lately I’ve been using Facebook more and more to keep in touch with people I know. One problem with Facebook is that uploading and managing photos in Facebook is harder than it should be.

On my own PC, I use the excellent (and getting better all the time) Windows Live Photo Gallery to manage photos. This software is currently in beta, but I don’t have any qualms about recommending it as a primary photo management tool. One cool feature of this software is that it provides a Publish menu, under which you will find options for publishing the photos on your PC to online photo services. Out of the box, it supports only Microsoft’s online photo service and Flickr, but it also provides a plugin model that allows developers to create plugins to publish to other online services. I found one (called LiveUpload to Facebook) for publishing to Facebook, and it worked well the first time I tried it.

For anyone that uses Facebook, and uploads photos to Facebook, give it a try. Even if you’re not currently using Windows Live Photo Gallery, it’s worth your time to download it and play around with it to see if you like it.

This week we finally got around to laying the brick patio we've been planning for a while. It's been a long, hard--and at times, frustrating--process, but it's coming along nicely. It's not quite finished yet--and even after we're done, we still have a huge pile of dirt to deal with--but we're getting close. The digging and leveling was the worst. Laying the brick actually isn't too bad.

Here are a few photos:

   
Windows Live Spaces

Just wanted to point out a great online RSS reader service. http://www.bloglines.com/. It's not new or anything. I've been using it for almost 2 years, and the service has been around for at least a couple more. But for anyone who isn't aware of it's existence, check it out.

What is Bloglines? It's an online RSS feed aggregator. I never used to be much of a believer in online services like this, particularly because the user experience of web-based applications has always been sub-standard when compared to a rich Windows-based application. But web applications are getting much better (the newer beta version of Bloglines is pretty good), and the benefits of a cloud-based service like Bloglines are hard to deny, since your personal news feeds will be available to you from any internet-connected device with a web browser.

Cloud-based services like Bloglines (and a whole slew of other services some of which already exist and some of which are yet to be developed) will clearly play a major role in how people interact with their computers in the next decade.

The Mesh and all it represents is quite possibly the most significant development in the computing industry since the creation of the Internet. It starts with Live Mesh, but the ultimate vision is so much more. It will be years before the full potential is realized, but the Mesh will fundamentally change how we interact with software and how software is written in the coming decade.

Today, at age 5 1/2, josh lost his first tooth. It was the lower left incisor. It first appeared just a little over 4 years ago, when he was about 1 1/2. Now, 4 years later, the tooth is gone, and the permanent tooth is poking through. :)

Josh is very excited and is quite proud. Yet another milestone in the life of a child.

    
Full-Resolution Album Link

Tonight was an historic occasion. For the very first time in their young lives, Joshua and Alyssa went to the movies! As a reward for Joshua working through handwriting worksheets for all 26 letters in the alphabet, we went to see Horton Hears a Who. We went all out--popcorn, candy, soda--and we all had a good time. Even Alyssa sat quietly and paid attention.

It's been a while since I've been to the theater, and we've never had the whole family out. Wow has it become expensive! I think it was probably about $40 for our family of four (and two of the tickets were discounted kids tickets). Next time we go, I'm sure we'll try for a Sunday matinee. At least we have some nice scrapbook material with the move ticket stubs. :)