Author Archive

ACM Conference on Web Search & Data Mining

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

This week I’m attending the first ACM conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM 2008). It’s amazing to note that this is the first such conference of its kind. I’m also astounded at the turnout: circa 250 attendees, including some of the most influential figures in Web search going back to the beginning of […]

Anatomy of a Fuzzy Space

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

Ian White of Urban Mapping today announced that portions of his fantastic data set are open to developers for free. In the local field, Ian is a great thinker when it comes to the intersection of hard data and human perception, and his company has focused on trying to define fuzzy boundaries for perceived local […]

Kelsey ILM Coverage: The Cambrian Age of Search

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

Today finds me in Los Angeles, at Kelsey’s ILM’07 event, listening to a session titled “Convergence of Local Media and Directories”. The convergence, it turns out, is all about how consumers search for local services. The panel’s doing a great job hashing through what it might mean to have effective local search, and there’s disagreement […]

Rest in Peace, Judy’s Book

Wednesday, October 24th, 2007

Today finds me well-nigh depressed, as I late last night learned of the demise of Judy’s Book. I’ve always been empathetic to their original mission, and thought I could see big trouble when they recently shifted their business model. According to Andy, who has written eloquently and openly about the ups and downs of the […]

Thoughts from SMX

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

Am just back from SMX Local & Mobile in Denver. Chris Sherman and Greg Sterling put together a pretty fantastic show, with content that balanced high-level industry insight with discussion of pretty detailed tactical issues, as well.
The day 1 keynote was by Michael Jones, CTO for Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local Search. It […]

Local Search: Think Data Mining

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Local Search isn’t about search.
Bear with me….Four years ago, anyone wanting to strike out in the world of vertical search (think local, shopping, people search, etc.) really had two problems to solve: first, how to aggregate content only applicable to their intended domain, and second, how to make that content searchable. The first of these […]

Local Connections and Garden Doors

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

Since moving to the Seattle neighborhood of Queen Anne last year, my wife and I have been ardent subscribers to the “Queen Anne Moms” mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QueenAnneMoms/). It’s a fantastic miscellany of questions and perspectives on everything local–including but not exclusive of parenting issues–everything from when to discontinue the binky, to which contractors do great […]

Hot off the Press - Our Inside Take on Local

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

To help kick off the dialogue with a bang, today we released an industry report we call “Unlocking the Potential of the Local Internet”. In it we wanted to shelve the rhetoric and hyperbole and be thoughtful about both the real opportunities and the tough challenges of tapping the local market, from both sides of […]