How blackout day missed the boat

Raise your hand if you use Wikipedia on a daily basis. Okay, now raise your hand if you know what Boing Boing is. If your hand is not up, chances are you unaware that some web sites have chosen to blackout their content today in a protest to the internet censorship bills SOPA and PIPA.

The idea behind the protest is to give people a taste of what the internet would be like if these bills were to pass.

The protest probably is effective if you use these sites on a regular basis. However, Wikipedia and Boing Boing are far from the most popular sites on the internet. Arguably the most popular and useful site on the internet -- Google -- a staunch opponent of the legislation, could only muster this lame protest:

Oh the horror! What happened to the logo? Oh wait, the search bar still works...

At least Google tried. My Twitter and Facebook pages work fine. Nowhere on either page can you find any mention of the protest or of the twin harbingers of the internet apocalypse (that is, if you don't count the tweets and updates from actual members).

Can you imagine how effective the protest would have been if these companies had taken more action?

What if gmail made you wait five minutes to login? What if Twitter and Facebook randomly blacked out tweets and status updates? People would probably amass on the steps of congress and firebomb the place.

Instead I have to wait an extra day to look up the career of Roy Orbison. That's really going to set me back.

Self-propelled cars for safety and efficiency

In this thought-provoking essay Sebastian Thrun makes a strong case for the use of self-propelled vehicles. Three things struck me about this piece. The first is that the technology and engineering behind the work he is discussing comes from Google and not any of the big three car companies (okay, so perhaps this shouldn't be that surprising). The second thing I found interesting is that not only do these self-propelled cars exist but they also have been tested on almost 200,000 miles of public highways and have done so 100% safely. Finally, texting in a vehicle is legal in Nevada -- as long as that vehicle is a self-driving autonomous vehicle.

Facebook is the top search term of 2011 (sort of)

Mashable reports that "Facebook" was the top search term of 2011. They must really have a lot of "mindshare," right? Well, sort of. This study really shows what kind of people use Google (primarily) to get to their favorite website, and not necessarily that they are looking for other information about that site. Other top searches this year included "facebook login" and "www.facebook.com".

Facebook has 800 million registered users, this is a year when practically anyone with a computer and an internet connection has an account. Many of those users know very little about bookmarking, or the advanced capabilities of most web browsers. We've all seen a relative trying to "surf the web". They pull up Internet Explorer and go to Google (or maybe google is their homepage) and type the full address of the site they want, then click the first result that appears. That's not exactly any indication that the user is any more invested in that site or that brand. And, while I'm a big fan of shortcuts and timesavers to reduce repetitive tasks like entering the same search term every time I use my computer, but that might not really be a priority for many users.

This kind of report is more of a reflection on the users of search engines and how people are using technology, not what they searched for. The study by Hitwise is pretty comprehensive, and defines the majority of top searches as "navigational search," which seems to hit on what Mashable's article misses.  Its also unfortunate that the study didn't include mobile searches, which is rapidly growing and becoming the primary means of search and experiencing online content.