pub signage with a sense of humour.

The cyclical nature of rapid growth leading to dominance, then plateaux followed by death can be seen throughout nature and commerce. If you don’t believe me then check out this TED talk by Geoffrey West.

Applying this model to Google means that at some stage the rampaging key holders of the internet will eventually see their growth slowdown and maybe they will eventually be replaced. Writing this it even seems impossible that one day we will use an alternative service provider to find a hotel room rate, pictures of the new spielberg movie or get the low-down on the a potential employee. But as incredulous as this may sound the demise of Google could be just be around the corner.

For all of Googles altruistic investments: Google Earth, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Scholar, is it not possible that all of these services could become threatened if Google.com is not the Search engine of choice the world over. No Search, No PPC, No Revenue, No Google?

But what could ever replace this tent-pole of the web? Well, what Google does brilliantly is to give quick results in a clean interface. Allowing the user to scan the top 10 hits for ‘Qantas Air Strike’ information. Then hand control straight back to the user to decide which resuly best fits their search terms. The results returned from Google are at best awesome and at worst frustrating as hell. But yet we still refuse to look past the page 1 results, mostly because we cassume that the ‘search terms’ that we put in, must have been wrong if the result we are looking for does is not returned in the top 10 form 600 billion web pages. We just try rephrasing the search terms. Good but not a perfect solution.

Today I see Google being replaced by a better interface or interaction. Not that you could get a better visual displat of the results. But what if interaction was not visual but by using speech. Surely, if science fiction has taught us anything it is that we will need to talk to computers. See the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Knight Rider and 2001: A space odyssey. Having this relationship with the internet is surely where the magic is? When we are used to ‘asking the computer a question’ why would we want to go back to keying stuff in? And if it isn’t Google that brings us this service then Googles crown will surely be Jilted.

The future interactions with the computer won’t just about the search through. It goes deeper into functionality. ‘Show me the photos of Jack on holiday last year’, ‘What were todays headlines in the New York times’, ‘read out my unread emails’, ‘what time is my first meeting?’, ‘ Super pursuit mode please KITT’. All this drills a bit deeper into the OS rather than sitting on the internet browser which I am guessing where services like Siri come in . Totally integrated into your machine and yet can give you current web delivered content.

Despite the eye catching title, I suspect Google are a kerzillion times brighter than this article and have been working on a voice activated method of delivering content for the last 10 years. I cannot wait

I am very pleased to say that I completed the Brighton Half Marathon on February 20th in 1 hour 53 minutes! *woot*

Until the day itself I had never run the distance, and in fact the furthest I had ever run during training was 8 miles. I guess this it was this fact that made me most nervous on the big day itself. I left home in plenty of time to make it down to the start line, this move wasn’t necessarily the best idea. It meant I had far too much time hanging around at the start line, building nerves and adrenaline. I elected to stand in the ’2 hour’ enclosure and their we waited and waited finally the countdown got closer to the 9am starting gun. We looked at the clock 5, 4, 3, 2……1 then nothing. Not the ‘Chariots of Fire’ head down slo-mo start I had been expecting but perhaps a little 4 foot shuffle. Not dissimilar to the shuffle at a music festival when a band comes on. It was a full seven minutes before I crossed the start line. My plan to run listening to the entire White Album suffered a set back when I was already on track 3 ‘Glass Onion’ before my time officially started.

I had previously been advised that the temptation for every novice in their first race is to go like the clappers and overtake everyone in their path. I held back and took a gentle pace, trying to enjoy the spectacle of running through the usually overcrowded roads. It felt good to ‘take over the streets’ and reminded me of demonstrations that I had been on, albeit in the case a lycra clad self-interest health kick demonstration.

The miles ticked away and it was entertaining to see a few runners dressed-up in the fancy dress. Pingu and Mr Incredible to name but two. In all honesty I have previously been sceptical of people that feel the need to scream ‘look at me’ and perhaps even worse ‘look at me, I am doing this for charity’ and then another level ‘look at me, aren’t I wacky, and I am doing this for charity, crazy eh?’. But as I was making my way round the course it was a welcome distraction from the internal thoughts of, how far is left to go? am I going to make it? when is the next mile marker? am I going to be last? should I have done more training? am I running to fast? am I running to slow? where the hell is the next lucozade, I am parched? So good on ‘em I say.

The White Album unsurprisingly came and went, but I had forgotten the next album I had selected for the playlist. As I was rounding the Hove Lagoon Bon Jovi kicked in and gave a huge burst of energy geeing me up and whisking me back down the seafront to the finish line. Let it Rock indeed.

Well that concludes my resolution for 2011. I cannot say I am desparate to get out there and run another half marathon. Although I could be persuaded to enter the full marathon maybe 2012?

Last week I was lucky enough to attend a Digital Surrey event in Farnham.  Ade Oshineye talked about ‘What happens after social networking?’. The talk explored areas that I believe most of us have already been aware of albeit not specifically identified and labelled. However, Ade’s opening question of the presentation ‘What is Social Networking’ really intrigued me and one I have thought about quite a bit since.

I have not reached any specific conclusions but it has made me widen my previous definition of the phrase. My vague answer to the question was loosely based on the term being a band to wrap tidily around the usage of Social Network sites and applications. Defining what makes a site or application part of the ‘Social Network’  is a lot of harder, the key characteristics would be ‘membership’, ‘contribution’ and ultimately the linking up with other ‘members’ to make a ‘Network’. Each individuals contribution leads to a shared experience. I was not entirely happy with that definition and preferred one of the audiences definition of ‘What is Social Networking?’ being ‘Knackering’ as much more accurate.

Having mulled, cogitated, ummed and erred the reason why I wasn’t happy with any previous definition is that there is no way that I think Social Networking should be restricted to be a wholly online experience. I was standing in a room before the talk enjoying a glass of wine talking to a few colleagues and clients, which I now consider to be both social and networking. Why is the buzzword surrounding a breed of technology tools specific to the web given such a generic term. ‘Email’ was a great term and works well, everyone knew that it was strongly related to what we were already doing with ‘mail’ but with the electronic bit stuck on the front and then shortened to ‘e’ for that user friendly touch, nice. ‘Texting’, works perfectly too. No room for confusion as the verb to ‘text’ was descriptive and did not leave any room for confusion.

Surely social networking is nothing more than what we and the rest of the animal kingdom have been doing since the beginning of time. Hanging out, chatting, learning stuff, sharing stuff, bitching about stuff, flirting and generally interacting.

No matter how many times I have thought up brilliant new years resolutions it is quite often the case that they are discarded and forgotten before the year is out. It would also be great if I had an ongoing ‘check-off’ list to get any idea of progress and likelihood of completion. However, I am now getting the sense that in order to achieve this I need to bring in a few of my day job skills. To take a web project managers approach to accomplishing the resolutions would be to of course define the requirements of each resolution, establish the criteria for completion and put a time estimate and a budget against each one. I think I am missing work too much after a week off. I am going to try and define each of the my resolutions below and see if I can keep track of their progress and see how much has changed by the end of the year.

Run a half marathon.

This was already in the pipe-line at the end of last year when I got bullied, cajoled and enlisted by my so-called friends who are experienced runners with a sado-masochistic streak. I am entered to run the Brighton half marathon on Feb 22nd. I started to run in the evenings after work in October last year and after a couple of weeks of wheezing around the back streets I felt fitter and started to run further and further. Then the snow, ice and -8 C temperatures hit Surrey and I hung up my Nike Air’s for the rest of the year. I hope it will not take too longer to burn off the Christmas excesses and get back to speed.

Success – can be clearly defined as completing the 13 mile course on the 22nd Feb, ideally in a respectable 3 hour time. But completion even on hands and knees will be acceptable.

Time Frame – the deadline 22nd Feb is not movable

Budget – Apart from the £25 entry fee and a bottle of power-ade I am good to go.