Personalization: Continued

Bruce Clay Blog has a great blog about a personalization search tool called Collarity. The blog does a good job describing the pros and cons of regular "personalized search" while detailing what Collarity is about.

If you're all for unintrusive personalized search, this may be worth the time.

This video is great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
I'm an anthropology fan, so it's even better that it was created by a professor of anthro.

Personalization with Meaning

Currently I'm involved in this new social/video networking site. It just launched its BETA version with many impressive changes to come.

Why another social/video site? This ones different. It's focus is, well, it actually has a focus for one. Preserving, archiving, and sharing digitally converted 8mm original videos.

You know those old boxes full of film in the closet, attic, or garage? Ever wonder what's on them? I have. I've come on board with this site because of it's cultural (I'm an anthropologist at heart), historical, and personal value.

I never thought much about that film beyond "I wish I could watch that/I wonder what's on it" and "Where would I find the equipment?" or "How has the film held up against time, dust, and storage?" Now I know more about it and I'm hoping those who have already converted and those who have considered converting the film will join in this community.

The community is called XPEERi Retro Video. Pronounced X-peer-ee. Like experience. Members log in, create accounts, upload video and can provide information, descriptions and story lines to their home videos.

Imagine being able to upload and share the video your dad shot of you and your sisters running through sprinklers when you were 8. Or what about your parent's wedding day? A family vacation which imprinted fond memories or a party you love to reminesce about could be shared with peers, children and grandchildren.

The site holds significance because it is focused and will work toward being an archive universities, researchers and community groups can utilize for educational, historical and entertainment. With permission from the video owner of course.

Check it out. It's still in BETA but it's coming along nicely.

www.xpeeriretro.com

Tell me what you think about the site, the concept and the videos.

You can even leave messages on videos and there will be a forum soon!

Personalization in Social Netowrking: The Latest Hot Topic

Buzz on the web suggests the latest in social networking and search will revolve around personalization. Personalized searches now are nothing to gawk at, the technology is still in its infancy. Sure, you can personalize your myspace and face book pages, but that's not quite what thebuzz is about.

Changing HTML code may be fin for some, but it's hardly the rage it once was.

I'm interested to see how much personal information we're willing to give sites like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN in the future. Sure, we balk about security and privacy. But come on folks, what you really want is easy access without the fuss and muss. Why do you think many of us use those "form fillers"? So we don't have to fill out form after form of the same information.

Google's gotten a lot of flack about giving up personal info. The government seems to overstep its grey boundaries at times (controversial, I know). Many are still weary about providing credit card, social security and certain passwords online. Who's capturing it? Who's behind the forms and files?

Really what we want is something easy that we don't have to think about. Why go step-by-step in a multi process form when you're computer can pre-fill the pages for you after you've done it once?

What if your search query could "instinctively" know what you're seeking and return only the necessary results? What if irrelevant ads wouldn't be served up along side your query results?

How amazing. It's coming.

What do you think about personalization and security?

Personalization, in Your SERPS?

Can't take credit for finding this one, but through Matt Cutts blog (put it in your RSS feed, favorites, whatever you like and read it regularly) I read this blog. It's about the Evolution of a Search Engine and discusses the, yup, ever changing search engines. Well, Google primarily as it is a blog on Google Blogoscoped.

P. Lenssen predicts some future evolutions of Google and search engines in general. Moving toward personalization. With technology that works.

A few key points:

~Technology will get better at returning results.
~Users will grant Google lots of access to personal information for better results.
~Ads will always appear, though may be more targeted and less intrusive.
~Rocky 7 sucks.

I suggest reading the blog in toto for his predictions, which seems reasonable. Matt Cutts seems to think it'll happen along those predictions, especially since Google announced later that same day that it would return personalized results for signed in users.