Google Archive

Aardvark founders Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz have just announced that the Aardvark service will be closing as of the end of this month. Apparently the shutdown is part of the larger Google Labs shutdown that was announced earlier this summer. Aardvark was acquired by Google in early 2010 for $50 million.

Max and Damon note, “We’ve been excited to share these lessons within Google over the past year, especially as part of the effort behind Google+.  It has been gratifying to see how well this project is doing — even in these early stages, Google+ has already become a great place to share knowledge online, eclipsing the original vark.com! — and there is much more to come very soon.  In this and other projects at Google, the Aardvark team remains committed to developing powerful tools for connecting people and improving access to information.”

Since I don’t use Gmail or Gtalk regularly, I don’t see many Aardvark requests. Although every once in a while, I get a popup from Aardvark inside of Google+ asking me if I want to answer a question.

You have until September 30th to copy your data or ask Aardvark for an export. After this data the data will be deleted forever.

Google has just started informing developers who use Google App Engine that the service will be leaving preview mode in late September. I’ve included parts of the email received by developer Darren Stuart below. From viewing the new pricing link, it appears that the cloud services offered by Google will now be known as, “Google Cloud Services”.

The biggest change comes to the pricing model in which Google notes, “…this includes lowering the free quotas for all Apps. Almost all applications will be billed more under the new pricing. Once App Engine leaves preview this pricing will immediately go into effect..” Pricing will fall into three tiers: free, paid and premium. The paid plan will be $9/app and the premium plan will be $500/account. It is important that if you use Google Cloud Services/App Engine that you review the pricing because Google notes that the pricing will go into effect immediately once the preview mode is turned off in September.

Some important bits from the email:

• “In May at Google I/O we announced that Google App Engine would be leaving Preview status later this year. As part of Google’s long-term commitment to App Engine, we are also updating our policies, pricing and support model to reflect its status as a fully supported Google product. We plan to roll this out in the second half of September but we wanted to let you know what this will mean for you and your App Engine applications.”
• “App Engine has a 3 year deprecation policy. This policy applies to the entire App Engine platform with the exception of “trusted tester” and “experimental” APIs.”
• “We are introducing new Premier Accounts that will have access to Operational Support, invoice-based billing, and allow companies to create as many applications as they need for $500 per account per month (plus usage fees).”

Google has created an optimization faq to help you streamline your apps to keep the costs down. There is also a billing faq to help understand the new pricing model. Google is also offering a $50 credit if you modify your budget or setup billing on your Google Cloud Services/App Engine account.

A couple of days ago, I created a fun, fake joke post about how you could attend my seminar on how to become a Google+ expert. Most thought it was real (no idea why) and some were very upset and/or angry that I would offer a course for a social network that has been live for less than a month, has already been notified changes are coming and is only used by social media experts to talk about social media experts and Google+. Of course once they realized that it was a  joke, everyone had a good laugh.

But apparently one person saw a gold rush and decided to actually offer a one-hour course so soon post launch — that person? Chris Brogan. Before I continue, let me say that while I have never met Chris, he does come across as genuine. I’d place him second in terms of being able to round up the sheeps – and unlike the person I’d put first, Chris appears to have built his following organically which is awesome. He’s also been one of the few people to be able to post paid affiliate links into his streams without huge backlash. My issue isn’t that he is offering this course, but rather that he should have waited at least six months for the network to balance itself.

Chris is offering a one-hour session for $50 on, “How To Learn Google+ for Business and Networking”. He plans to teach attendees the following:

• Profile tips and tricks.
• Organizing people in circles.
• Finding the good stuff.
• How to post engaging material.
• Keeping up with comments.
• Making the most of your time.

Funny enough some of his agenda items match mine – and the others on his list are very general. He is also going to offer a Q&A session for an hour after the learning takes place.

Continue reading “Srsly? My Google+ Seminar Was a Joke, Apparently This One’s For Reals” »

Two years ago I created a history of online experts – everything from the early “html experts” to the more modern “social media experts” and everything in between. Sadly I’ve been up way late at night recently and have seen television infomercials that can help you become an eBay expert, Facebook expert and even how to make buckets of cash pushing products on Twitter.

Since the launch of the new Google+ social network and subsequent explosion in users (apparently the count is going up faster than the U.S. debt), I realized that it would make sense for someone like myself to offer a Google+ Expert Course. You see I was one of the earliest users, I have an avatar and I understand the difference between share, like, vote +1 and comment.

UPDATE: The first city has sold out – we filled up the 50,000 seat arena in just two days. Stay tuned for the second city launch or join the waitlist (there’s a $100 waitlist fee)

The Google+ Expert Course will be offered in 4 cities in 2011 – the city list will be announced shortly as I want to make sure we secure a space that can hold at least 50,000-100,000 in each city. The course will also be offered as a “hangout” on Google+ for the 10 people who can get in before space fills up.

Continue reading “Launching The Google+ Expert Training Course! Limited Availability – Register Today!” »

Well the holidays came early this year for early adopters with the clinical field test trial of Google+ (or is it Google Plus?). I like to think of myself as an early adopter who acts like a normal and frankly so far Google+ seems a lot like Friendfeed.

There is a video feature which will be a huge hit in the adult sector once/if G+ makes it past the e-adopter set. Last night I watched Robert Scoble eat some fried chicken while he and 10 others talked about some technology – I can certainly see why this is the future now.

In all seriousness, I find the interface a bit confusing in terms of where to find updates and if they auto-refresh in real-time but I am sure I will get it at some point. The nice thing I hear about Google+ is that there is no much richness in terms of all the apps and friends and stuff that you may never want to leave!

Of course next week Facebook is apparently launching some video tool so look forward to posts that explain why G+ is dead.

Continue reading “Comprehensive List of Dead Companies/Technologies Due to Google+” »

During my corporate days, my team attended several leadership workshops led by John Maxwell.  Over the next few years I realized that John became my favorite leadership/motivational speaker. His ability to draw in an audience and keep a story moving is great- since I left corporate America, I miss his workshops.

Early on in one of his workshops, he explained something that had everyone from my team looking at each other wondering if we should stick around because clearly this guy was off his rocker. He said that everyone does something 80% well – whatever that thing is. Yet in life we try to work on the other 20% – why? For those of you who have worked in a corporate environment, you know what this means. Your yearly progress reports always want you to work on the areas that your boss thinks you need to improve on. But Maxwell said this really makes no sense – what would happen if you focused on the 80% and made that part absolutely amazing? If we work on the 20% we aren’t good at, the best we can do is probably a passing grade, but if we focus on the things we do really well, we would own those areas. Take a minute and think about that concept…

I sit at my desk and day after day I read another blog post or journalist explaining that Google either needs to get into social to compete with Facebook or they are doing a crappy job with the efforts they have put forth to-date. Today Google soft-launched Google+ which Danny Sullivan calls a Facebook competitor.  So here’s what I propose…

GOOGLE…FU** SOCIAL.

I am dead serious – stop trying to fix the 20% that you aren’t good at and focus on the 80% that made Google the powerhouse company that it is. I get that Facebook is the sexy social marketing superstar right now and you are a boring utility company and want to feel sexy – forget it – it’s your 20% and it’s a short-term play anyway. And guess what – the utilities stick around for a long time.

Continue reading “Hey Google…F*** Social.” »

I’ve been to hundreds of conferences over the past few years and I am always interested in watching how the check-in process is handled at each conference. It always seems like the check-in process at the SXSW interactive festival is the worst in terms of time and length of line. SXSW has moved the check-in location a couple of times over the past five years to allow for more volunteer positions, but the check-in process is still a pain in the butt and frankly a waste of valuable networking time.

Most recently, I suggested that SXSW setup stations along the hallway where 50+ laptops would be setup to allow for individuals to check-in to the conference. You would enter your registration ID, confirm your name and company and submit. Since SXSW has so many different types of badges, you would then have a printer location displayed on the screen and when you get to that printer, the SXSW volunteer would hand you your badge. This would nearly completely eliminate the lines and the time involved waiting on the check-in line.

Well it seems Google was reading and listening because the Google IO check-in process was the smoothest I’ve seen in a long time. When I entered the Moscone West conference center, Google had 3 check-in pods. Each one had about 15 computers (apparently they were the CR-48 netbooks), a Google employee and a badge printer. You could scan the barcode from your printed receipt, enter the code manually, or scan the barcode image directly from your smartphone. After I picked up my attendee badge (I was attending as a CloudContacts employee no press pass for CN), I stood nearby and watched how long the process took for others who wanted to check-in. The process was less than a minute for almost of the test subjects with many completing the process in about 30 seconds.

Continue reading “Google Shows SXSW How The Conference Check-In Process Should Work” »