I’m loving Web His­tory but I think there are a cou­ple more things I still want to see from it: 

• A side­bar for­mat­ted his­tory page simi­lar to Firefox’s exis­ting his­tory but with all the smart fea­tu­res of Google’s Web History 
• A bookmarklet/button to Pause and Un-Pause the Web His­tory with ease
• Web­site thumb­nails: I often for­get the name of a site but can spot it from a thumbnail
• Total num­ber of visits to a par­ti­cu­lar domain/page, trends for these domains/pages. 
• Key­words I have used to reach a domain previously.

In a nice little park in Bath Spa.

Back in Decem­ber 2006 I sent in a reply to Google’s “Big Idea Cha­llenge”;

Goo­gle res­pon­ded with a phone call asking for details and they said they’d send me some infor­ma­tion via email, I never heard from them again. With Google’s latest spate of recom­men­da­tion gad­gets and their latest pro­duct change, “web his­tory” (something I have been wai­ting for for a while because I was fed up of never being able to search my his­tory — an offline ver­sion would be nice and more secure), it seems rele­vant to post what I submitted. 

I called it Goo­gle Chan­nels, for lack of bet­ter words and to embrace Google’s bri­lliant naming tra­di­tion (see: Froogle’s death, one of my favou­rite play on words). This was my pitch:

PDF Sum­mary & Advert for Pro­duct

PDF Goo­gle Pro­po­sal

Goo­gle Chan­nels
A free, auto­ma­ted, user spe­ci­fic and edi­ta­ble chan­nel to faci­li­tate the dis­co­very of enter­tain­ment on the internet.

The Pro­blem

Fin­ding enter­tain­ment is very much a dif­fe­rent pro­cess to an infor­ma­tion search. For infor­ma­tion, a user, for the most part, knows what he or she is loo­king for and crea­tes an appro­priate search query to find what they need. For current enter­tain­ment search pro­ces­ses, a user must know what they want to read, watch or lis­ten to before begin­ning their search. This, in many res­pects, is con­trary to the act of dis­co­ve­ring fresh enter­tain­ment. In mature mediums there exist two paths — one for the acqui­re­ment of media and a second for its dis­co­very. Inter­net search acts pre­do­mi­nantly as the for­mer simi­lar to a cinema which shows a film you chose spe­ci­fi­cally to watch. Exam­ples of the lat­ter are tele­vi­sion, radio and libra­ries; each pro­vi­des a selec­tion of enter­tain­ment ser­vi­ces for the dis­co­very of new qua­lity con­tent.

The inter­net today offers a uni­que world­wide medium for text, video and audio; it has quickly become the ulti­mate enter­tain­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and infor­ma­tion hub. Goo­gle, with aims to orga­nise the world’s infor­ma­tion, has made great stri­des in pro­vi­ding tools for fin­ding infor­ma­tion fast, and via Gmail and Goo­gle Talk (amongst others) online com­mu­ni­ca­tion is being made easier. With the emer­gence of flash strea­ming and legal movie and music down­loads it is now the enter­tain­ment aspects of the inter­net that must be addres­sed by Goo­gle. The first steps have already been taken with Goo­gle Video and You­Tube. I believe Google’s next big inno­va­tion should be to improve the acces­si­bi­lity and dis­co­very pro­ces­ses for the wealth of qua­lity con­tent avai­la­ble on the inter­net, to match the second ele­ment of Google’s aim: to make con­tent uni­ver­sally accessible.

The clo­sest the inter­net currently has to an enter­tain­ment dis­co­very ser­vice is “Stum­bleU­pon” a site that allows users to recom­mend web pages so that rea­ders may stum­ble through the inter­net fin­ding its hid­den sweet spots. Other under­ta­kings inc­lude; The “Venice Pro­ject”, from Niklas Zenns­trom and Janus Friis, crea­tors of Skype, which sees their focu­sed efforts in crea­ting a recom­men­da­tion dri­ven Broad­band TV ser­vice for qua­lity video con­tent deli­very and dis­co­very. Last​.fm, a Bri­tish based com­pany, colla­tes music lis­te­ned to and gene­ra­tes free cus­to­mi­sed radio sta­tions for dis­co­very of new music. I believe now is the time for Goo­gle to begin deve­lo­ping a ser­vice in this field, as inter­net con­tent begins to escape the con­fi­nes of the PC box. Last​.fm’s gro­wing popu­la­rity and suc­cess is proof that there is a demand.

The Solu­tion

For Goo­gle Chan­nels to solve these enter­tain­ment search issues it needs to offer two things; first it must deli­ver inte­res­ting con­tent and secondly this must suit the user’s tas­tes. Goo­gle already has a head-start with regards to con­tent deli­very; its exten­sive crawl index, video and book libra­ries pre­sent the essence of a solu­tion (though to my know­ledge no Goo­gle owned music or audio data­base currently exists). To show con­tent that is rele­vant, know­ledge of the users’ tas­tes must be known and items must be grou­ped by simi­la­rity. Goo­gle Sets is already the foun­da­tion of these grou­ping func­tions — searching for tele­vi­sion shows like “Family Guy” and “The Simp­sons” yields “South Park” as a top sug­ges­tion. Know­ledge of the user can be obtai­ned through exis­ting data or by user input.

Crea­ting the Chan­nel

Google’s per­so­na­li­zed search data can give an accu­rate por­tra­yal of a user’s tas­tes (e.g. top search terms), as does their rating trends, labe­lling actions and Goo­gle Talk’s music trends. Colla­ting this data with simi­lar neigh­bours and data from Goo­gle Sets, a selec­tion of mate­rials matching the user’s tas­tes is pro­du­ced without nee­ding search. Hence a user-specific recom­men­da­tions chan­nel is gene­ra­ted, crea­ting the basics for a dis­co­very dri­ven inter­net ser­vice (an exten­sion of the pre-existing per­so­nal home­page gad­get “Inte­res­ting things for you”). With refi­ne­ments through cate­go­ri­sa­tion this chan­nel can be split into genre spe­ci­fic bands.

The alter­na­tive approach is to ask the user for a few things they already enjoy — favou­rite music artists, web­si­tes, tele­vi­sion shows and books may be key poin­ters. Using a grou­ping struc­ture a list of recom­men­da­tions can be gene­ra­ted, allo­wing rele­vant con­tent from inde­xes (Books, Goo­gle Video, RSS feeds, etc) or esta­blished chan­nels to be com­bi­ned into a per­so­na­li­zed chan­nel. As Goo­gle Chan­nels evol­ves the accu­racy of recom­men­da­tions will improve.

Chan­nel Imple­men­ta­tion

Imple­men­ta­tion beco­mes the next ques­tion; chan­nels may be video, audio or writ­ten, or an amal­ga­ma­tion. Video chan­nels may be a gene­ra­ted stream of video not unlike tele­vi­sion chan­nels, with one recom­men­ded video con­ti­nuing directly on from the pre­vious — this stream may play live to mul­ti­ple par­ties, play from a cho­sen point (e.g. select first video from a list), be skip­ped through or down­loa­ded. Music chan­nels may act like those on Last​.fm, pla­ying music simi­lar to artists the user already knows, they could also be gea­red towards pod­cast dis­co­very or online radio which may then be pla­yed in-browser. Rea­ding lists would act much like exis­ting feed aggre­ga­tion ser­vi­ces, howe­ver could con­tain a degree of use­ful auto­ma­tion and Goo­gle Book recom­men­da­tions to inform users of lite­ra­ture, sites and news that inte­rests them yet lies outside of their con­fi­ned inter­net corner.

User Con­trol

User edi­ting adds sig­ni­fi­cant benefits:

·        Remove sub­jects that are uninteresting.

·        Actions when vie­wing chan­nels may include: 

·        “add simi­lar items to my chan­nel”*,

·        “add this item to my channel”, 

·        “add items in this label to my channel”,

·        “create new chan­nel based on”, 

·        “label item/channel”,

·        “ban items in this category”, 

·        “ban this item”, 

·        “blog this item/channel”, 

·        “share this item/channel”, 

·        “com­bine channels”,

·        “recom­mend item/channel”

·        “invite user to chat”

·        “rate this item/channel”

·        Recom­men­da­tions can evolve using rating sys­tems that pro­mote good con­tent and ban bad content. 

·       Com­plete con­trol of chan­nel could bring true “inter­net TV” to life.

* e.g. “add sites simi­lar to Slash​dot​.org”, let­ting users find domains that match their nor­mal rea­ding mate­rials without the trou­ble of buil­ding a spe­ci­fic search query to find them.

Once chan­nels are crea­ted the next logi­cal steps are sha­ring of chan­nels, chan­nel labels, recom­men­ded chan­nels, RSS chan­nel feeds, top chan­nels lists, searcha­ble chan­nels data­base, public and pri­vate chan­nels, embed­da­ble chan­nels, spon­so­red chan­nels, chan­nel colla­bo­ra­tion, Goo­gle Talk inte­gra­tion for chat whilst vie­wing, con­tent data­ba­ses allo­wing crea­tors to add their work directly to chan­nels (much like the exis­ting You­Tube chan­nels sys­tem), exc­lu­sive con­tent or subsc­rip­tion channels. 

Tar­ge­ted Advertising

Reve­nue streams for Goo­gle and con­tent crea­tors are also ins­tantly appa­rent. Goo­gle would know the full spe­ci­fics of the ‘now pla­ying’ con­tent. Hence incor­po­ra­tion of Goo­gle Ads is only a stone’s throw away. Video chan­nel fea­tu­res can be inter­lin­ked by rele­vant video ads, and simi­larly for audio. For incen­ti­ves to create chan­nels owners may receive pay­ments from a pay per click or impres­sion ini­tia­tive. The cost of dis­pla­ying ads on a chan­nel may also be pro­por­tio­nal to the num­ber of regu­lar vie­wers or rea­ders a chan­nel has.

Crea­tors of con­tent (e.g. a tele­vi­sion net­work) may wish to receive more return and have grea­ter con­trol of pro­cee­dings; a cor­po­rate con­trol panel may be an option. Simi­larly an adver­ti­sing con­trol panel may be help­ful to large adver­ti­sing cor­po­ra­tions that want to spe­ci­fi­cally con­trol when and where their ads are shown.

Bene­fits Elsewhere

Other bene­fits to Goo­gle are the natu­ral cate­go­ri­sa­tion and sor­ting made by users of chan­nel con­tent, which will not only improve recom­men­da­tion qua­lity but also add to the use­ful­ness of Goo­gle search results; for ins­tance a fuzzy search that returns results matching the users search aims but not neces­sa­rily matching their query; par­ti­cu­larly help­ful for those having trou­ble refi­ning search terms. 

Wow, this Numero Group keeps get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter. I truly recom­mend their collec­tions. This is a track from disc 12 in their reper­toire NUM012, the album is called “What a Beau­ti­ful Place” and was ori­gi­nally relea­sed in 1971 but fell into obs­cu­rity until now.

Title: 13. In The Hot Sum­mer

Artist: Cathe­rine Howe

Album: What A Beau­ti­ful Place

“The first ever com­pact disc issue of Cathe­rine Howe’s bri­lliant debut album. Pro­du­ced by legen­dary jazz pia­nist Bobby Scott, the album is a pas­to­ral blend of English country­side folk and Lon­don orches­tral pop, not unlike Bry­ter Lay­ter or North Star Grass­man And The Ravens. Ori­gi­nally relea­sed on Reflec­tion Records in 1971, the much sought after album disap­pea­red before ever hit­ting the racks. Boo­klet inc­lu­des half a dozen unpu­blished pho­tos and an ano­ta­ted his­tory of the album’s brief exis­tence. The fully remas­te­red album inc­lu­des an unearthed bonus track ori­gi­nally inten­ded to be inc­lu­ded on the album.”