Tim Barcz

Paying For Government Through Ad-Driven Revenue

In my post the other day about the frivolity of the web, I wrote about how there are many sites out there that seem frivolous to me.  Thinking more about the topic, most of these sites are ad-driven.  In the example I gave about the food fight application built on the FaceBook API, a FaceBook user earns "money" by answering questions posed by advertisers.

Everything these day's is ad-driven, from search engines, to social sites, even the oft rumored Google Phone.  What's stopping us from extending this model to our governmental system?  We could lower taxes and supplement with advertising dollars.

For example, when the government claims imminent domain on a piece of land in order to put a highway through they usually take enough land for the road and a little extra.  Instead I propose you take more, say 100 yards on either side of the highway.  That land, owned by the government, can then be used by advertisers to put up billboards, at a cost of course.  You could set up any number of arrangements.  You could even have a scenario where one advertisers pays a much higher rate because they don't want other advertisers.  This of all of the federal and state highways now and all of the money that would be generated by advertisers.  Most advertisers already pay to advertise on interstates.  This program would simply shift the money going to some lucky farmer who's farm got sawed in half by a road to the government instead.

Continuing down this road, social security checks could be emblazened with the logo of an advertiser.  What better way to advertise, the money you hold in your hand is telling you where to spend it!

You want governmental health care?  No problem, first you simply have to listen to a few ads and answer questions about the ads before you can see a doctor.  Customers who have insurance can opt out of the ads.  It's a win win!

If ad-driven revenues really work, as they seemingly have by surveying the Web 2.0 landscape, let's use that to solve some of our governmental problems.  You'll lower taxes making the conservatives happy.  You'll be able to offer more services, making liberals happy.

The Frivolity of the Web

Yesterday Sarah had made some cookies for our neighbors and my parents.  Before delivering to the neighbors we took an afternoon drive out to my parents to deliver to them.  While at their house, I played a YouTube clip for my dad.  While he thought the clip was moderately funny, I think he has a hard time getting it, Web 2.0 that is.  Frequently he'll ask about various sites he's heard of and what it is about them that is so attractive to people.  Additionally I'm periodically asked by family members what I do at work.  I struggle to explain my job and Geonetric's purpose in a meaningful way to a generation that didn't grow up with the internet.

As I sit and think about it, I think my dad is right sometimes when "not getting it".  I think he sees much of the internet as frivolous.  And I have to agree.  That classification isn't bad, it just is what it is.  For example, I was recently reading an article in the now defunct Business 2.0 magazine about a guy who has made millions off of the open Facebook API.  His "service" allows users to buy virtual food with money they earn through answering questions about ads.  The food purchased then can be "thrown" at another facebook member.  The popular item to throw, poop, yes poop.  How can I explain that to my father or grandfather?

That's what I like about Geonetric, we are actually doing something of value.  We have it listed on our website on our "Top 10 Reasons to Work at Geonetric":

"Reason 4: We're helping save lives!

We are connecting patients, physicians, and communities using Internet technology. We're helping an industry that has traditionally done a miserable job of using Internet technology successfully. One of our clients launched a Weblog of a morbidly obese patient undergoing bariatric surgery that helped 40 patients find this life-saving surgery. There's something very fulfilling and rewarding about doing things that help save lives!"

How do you explain the value of MySpace or YouTube to someone?  My argument isn't that these sites are bad, it's just that they seem frivolous.  Co-workers use MySpace to chat with each other when it's just as easier to pick up a phone or talk in person.  YouTube allows people to post poor quality videos of themselves typing on a keyboard.

I don't wish ill-will on them or wish they'd disappear, or think they have no place in society.  In fact I use some of these sites and carry no shame in doing so. However, it does cause me to pause and wonder what the internet/technology landscape will look like in 5, 10, 25 and 50 years from now.  Will throwing poop at each other virtually be the thing to do?  What new trends will show up?  Right now when I survey some of the very popular sites, I can't help but feel much of it is frivolous.

How to Print XPS Documents, easy as 1...1a...1aI..2...3...3a....4....5

I'm exploring the new HealthVault beta from Microsoft.  Every document on the MSDN site regarding HealthVault is downloadable as an .xps file.  In my attempt to print a document, I've read numerous blogs posts this morning about how XPS (Xml Paper Specification) is supposed to be superior to PDF but I would strongly disagree.  Here's my experience trying to simply print a .xps document (which hopefully you won't experience):

• Click on download link (using Firefox), I'm then asked if I'd like to open the .xps document with "XPS Viewer" to which I say yes, only to find that another tab is opened in FireFox asking me the question again.  Another affirmative answer opens another blank tab asking the question again, you can see where this is going.
• I'm smart, so I'll save the .xps document to my desktop and open in IE.  Sure enough, the file opens and I can read it fine.  I go to print however and I only have 3 printers to choose from, none of which are my actual printers (you know the things that spit out paper and have cryptic messages like "PC Load Letter" .  Normally I have nine printers, but now I have three, so I start seeing what I can do with these:
  • Microsoft Office Document Image Writer - This "printer" is there but selecting it disables the print button.
  • Microsoft XPS Document Writer - This "printer" asks me where I want to save my file...as another .xps document.
  • PrimoPDF - When choosing to "print" to a pdf file I encounter an error.
• Now I'm at the point where I'm googling for a solution.  I can't find squat, maybe this problem is limited to me.  I do find a pack to download the viewer on Microsoft's site, so I try to download a viewer, hoping that the problems I have may be fixed in a new version.  The installation comes in the .NET 3.0 redistributable, and low and behold it fails to install, saying I already have the .NET 3.0 redist.
• So I find another option on the Microsoft XPS page for the "Microsoft XPS Essentials Pack".  Mind you there's a nice note telling me the option explored in the previous step is "recommended for your system configuration."  I download and install the "Essentials" pack with no problems.
• Now I open the .xps file in the standalone xps viewer and am please to see that when I go to print that all of my printers are there.  So I attempt to print to the default printer and everything seemingly works...until I see that only 11 pages print of the 58 pages.  I print to a different printer, this time 19 pages.  Better...but still wildly deficient.  Next I try printing to pdf, I open the PDF and all 58 pages are there.  I print from my PDF reader and all 58 pages come out of the printer.

That's it...simple.  What I don't get is why people are so afraid to embrace new technology?

So to summarize, here is how to print a .xps file:

1. Download the "Microsoft XPS Essentials Pack".
1. Make sure you have the .net 3.0 redistributable.
1. You first need the .net 2.0 and .net 1.1 before you can install the 3.0
2. Change the default program to handle .xps documents.
3. Print your file, selecting the "PrimoPDF" printer.
   1. Install PrimoPDF if not installed.
4. Now open the result PDF in your reader of choice.
5. Print your file, selecting the hardware printer of your chioce.

There it is, easy as 1...1a...1aI..2...3...3a....4....5

Enjoying Puzzles

A few weeks ago I was over at my bosses house for a charity euchre night.  While waiting for play to start, I spent some time with his daughter observing her complete a puzzle.  In the puzzle she had to draw a line connecting dots, where each dot was associated with a letter from the alphabet.  I've also recently watched my niece with puzzle book at her house where she has to fill in the missing number in a sequence.

At some age puzzles seems to take a backseat to other things and dissapear entirely in the worst case.

This past Sunday while at Target, I found myself in the toy department searching for a Rubik's cube.  It might have been to test myself or simply to recapture my youth.  I remember playing and solving one as a child at my grandparents.  My method to solving it was much like yours most likely, move the stickers.  (It's not cheating, it's thinking outside the box.)

After taking it out the package and spending some time with it, I've solved it a few times now through completely legal methods.  Even after solving it, it intrigues me.  I find myself thinking about the position of square and what the outcome of moves would be on the cube.

While it's still just a game, and may not have the same immediate benefits of learning letters and numbers like the aformentioned toddlers, I'm hoping that by thinking accutely my brain is just slightly sharper.  Even if the benefit is temporal, I am enjoying the puzzle.

When It Comes to Search You (Don't) Have Options

I've recently finished reading Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think which was highly recommended by both Jeff Atwood and David Sturtz, Geonetric's information architect.  One of the points the book makes is that the users of your website nowadays have been so conditioned by Google that they expect to see a search box. My contention is that adding "search" to your website is no trivial matter.

There seem to be few categories your site can fall into, here are three that I'm familiar with:

Scenario 1:

My father has a website, with a number of pages of static content.  The pages are .aspx pages only to utilize features of .NET like MasterPages and/or themes.  The content is static.  To implement a search I need to somehow index the content, which should be easy, in theory since the content is static.

Scenario 2:

I've built a small CMS system for myself, to manage pages and content.  The pages are dynamic in that when you request a page, no page exists on disk and is loaded from a database.

Scenario 3:

A large CMS with multiple different "objects".  You may at various points want to search for specific "objects" or search across all "objects".  I'm thinking back to my last job where we had a large site to manage baseball tournaments.  There were three primary "objects", players, teams, tournaments.  There was a general search that had to search everything and individual searches for each object that would only return those objects.  In other words the site wide search for "Blue Devils" would return both the "Cleveland Blue Devils" team as well as the "Duke Blue Devils Classic" tournament.  The same search in the team and tournament section would only return the team and the tournament, respectively.

Options:

• I could use Google to search my site.  You've seen the "search this site" boxes on websites.
  • Pros
    • Google indexes well
    • Easy?
  • Cons
    • lose the "look" of your site since you're using google for the search results page.
    • Can't index "objects".  Google can index only public facing web pages/documents.  Therefore (using Scenario 3) a tournament could only be found if the name appear prominently somewhere where Google will find it.  In other words you're relying on Google, a lot.
    • Cannot limit Google to certain "objects".  I can't say, "search only pages that are about Teams", where I could do that quite easily implementing my own search
• Implement my own search
  • Pro
    • The algorithm is my own and I can change it if I'd like.
    • Keep "look" of site by never leaving site.
  • Cons
    • Much more work.  Writing my own SQL to search and aggregate the results.  Do I full-text index on tables?  Do I use a third party solution?

It's a very tricky proposition.  Krug says that users will look for a search box, so that means you should put one there right?  If you put a search box on your site that doesn't produce reasonably good results then the user will lose faith in your website and may leave.  If you don't provide a way to search your pages/data, of which there may be quite a bit, then the user may struggle to find what they're looking for and leave.  The only option you seemingly have is too implement search and implement it well.