Looking for an Expert on Great Firewall of China

Xmarks just got blocked and we could use high-level guidance. See https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2410 for user reports. If you have useful info, please add a comment. Thanks.

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Augmenting Google Search with SearchTabs

I'm an inveterate knowledge hound.  As much as web search has changed my life for finding information, when it comes to learning about a topic I know nothing about, Google isn't enough.  Sometimes I want a fact or an answer, and Google is terrific, but often I'm looking to become better informed generally.  Of course I go to Wikipedia whenever I can for this, but that's a beginning not an ending.  I know that terrific sites on my topic of interest exist, but how do I discover them…  That's why the Xmarks team built SearchTabs.

Suppose you are interested in learning more about health care reform.  It might be because you are student with an assignment or that you want simply to know more about what all of the shouting is really about.  The first page of Google results on "health care reform" consist entirely of news items from ABC, CNN, Fox and other media sources and two official U.S. government sites.  These links are very relevant but what's missing are links to sites with general information about the topic of health care reform.

This is where SearchTabs comes in.  SearchTabs is a lightweight Firefox add-on that augments Google search results to help you discover the best sites on any topic.

Here’s my “health care reform” search with SearchTabs installed:

Clicking on the “Health Care Reform” tab shows me the top ten sites on this topic:

Results are drawn from a distillation of a billion bookmarks saved by users of our Xmarks bookmark synchronization add-on.  We analyze many factors including how many people have bookmarked a particular site as well as what folder(s) they store them in.  Out of this we compute a rank within topic of the top sites for each of more than 175,000 
English-language topics.

You may have noticed in the first screen shot that we also analyze the ten sites on Google’s page and augment those site links with flags showing how those sites rank in their primary topic. A perfect example of this is a Google search on “Ubuntu”. Among the Google results I see this:

SearchTabs instantly helps me differentiate the Linux forums site from the similarly named Napa Valley restaurant. I get the added “signal” of understanding how these sites rank in their topic. Clicking on a flag takes me right to a tab where I can see the top ranking sites, all without leaving my search results page.

The insight we had as we were developing SearchTabs is that discovery should be thought of as an augmentation of search, not a substitute or complement.  By adding easily clickable tabs to the Google search results page, it allows the user to surface the best general sites as identified through the wisdom of crowds.

The technical team at Xmarks has done a great job of automatically identifying relevant topics from the actual search strings typed in, so users do not need to put in any extra effort to get these additional results.  To be clear, SearchTabs results come from a different corpus than Google's which makes it different than virtually every other search-related add-on out there.  We're not reprocessing Google results; we're drawing from the billion bookmarks we've analyzed.

SearchTabs is still in early beta and has some rough edges. You may see duplicate or irrelevant topics on occasion. If so, you can easily flag them and help contribute to the collective wisdom that SearchTabs is built upon.

Please check out SearchTabs and let me know what you think.

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Cosmo and Dudley at Crissy Field this morning

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Meet Dudley

Dudley is our new Doodle.  He's a rescue from Big Dog Rescue up in Sonoma who retrieved him from a shelter in Madera (Central Valley) where he would have been put down if not adopted.  He's about two years old and is a Golden Doodle.  He was picked up as a stray in very poor condition and thanks to Big Dog Rescue was treated for a variety of infirmities and has been getting healthy.  We speculate that he might have been in a family which was foreclosed out of their home and left behind.

Dudley is incredibly sweet and good-natured.  He's a real snuggler.  He's had some training and is rapidly learning the routines of our household.  Cosmo, our seven year old Labradoodle, his new big brother, is a very good teacher.  He and Cosmo have warmed up to each other and really getting along.  In fact, having Dudley around has increased Cosmo's happiness markedly.

Dudley learned his new name quickly, and has started to come when called.  He likes to swim in the Bay off Crissy Field and is a real ball hound.

We're delighted to have this new addition to our family.

     
Click here to download:
Meet_Dudley.zip (238 KB)

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At the NYT

Here I am posed next to the "Pulitzer Wall" on an upper floor of the new New York Times building.


Sent from my iPhone

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A Classy Way To Take A Tough Stance on Treating Workers Well

Reposted with permission.

Deval Patrick Committee
Dear Friends:
Earlier today, the Governor sent Hyatt president Mark Hoplamazian a letter warning that he will direct all state employees to stop doing official business with Hyatt unless the company rehires the housekeeping staff it fired from Boston-area hotels on August 31.
The letter follows below.
Please 
forward to your friends and family.
Sincerely,
Charlotte Golar Richie
Executive Director
Deval Patrick Committee
Mark Hoplamazian
President and CEO 
Hyatt Hotels Corporation
71 South Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60606
Dear Mr. Hoplamazian:
Thank you for speaking with me again yesterday and for your letter of yesterday afternoon. I appreciate the thoughtful tone of both, and your efforts to extend further benefits to the displaced workers.
However, as I said when we spoke, I am disappointed by your company's unwillingness to reconsider the decision to replace the housekeeping staff with an “outsourced” firm, and give the jobs back to the people who were displaced. You tell me that there are sound financial reasons for the company's decision, and I accept that. But the manner in which these workers were discharged is so inconsistent with both the expressed values of the Hyatt organization and basic fairness, that I do not believe any other remedy than full reinstatement is adequate.
You indicated that some of the facts reported on the methods and circumstances of the discharge were not correct. Because I appreciate that there are two sides to every story, I have spoken to a couple of affected workers personally, and will meet with a group of them later this week to take my own measure of their stories. So far, I am no less troubled than I was upon reading early media accounts.
We want to work with you. We value the presence of Hyatt in Boston and the Commonwealth, and will work with you to smoothly transition these workers, if there is no other choice. But you must understand that what has been imposed on these workers -- most of whom have worked hard, played by the rules, and invested their time and energy in your company's success -- is both upsetting in its own right, and also the worst nightmare of every worker in today's weak economy.
I understand first hand how difficult it is to manage through the current economic challenges without compounding the disruptions the times have caused. In this economy, no business (or government, for that matter) is immune from these kinds of choices. But surely there is some way to retain the jobs for your housekeeping staff, as other hotels in the area have done, and to work with them to help the company meet its current challenges, rather than tossing them out unceremoniously to fend for themselves while the people they trained take their jobs at barely livable wages.
Again, I ask Hyatt to reconsider the decision to replace these workers. Barring that, I will direct all state employees not to use Hyatt when traveling or for other purposes for the foreseeable future. This is not how I like to operate. But the treatment of these workers appears to be so substandard that it leaves me no choice.
Sincerely,
Deval Patrick

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The Future of Venture Capital

A writer for a finance publication just asked me for comment on the future of venture capital. He cited some negative trends: the poor performance of endowments that put money into VC funds, the freeze-up of the IPO market as an exit strategy, and a slowdown in innovation. Here's a slightly edited version of what I wrote back. This may all be familiar to entrepreneurs ad investors, but I feel like sharing my perspective broadly.

I think venture capital is presently in some difficulty, but for a different set of reasons.

1. I see shrinkage of endowments as a positive. VC funds had too much money to invest well, and that was causing problems. Now supply and demand are better balanced. Firms with long-term track records are not having trouble raising new funds.

2. Exit mechanisms will recover as the economy recovers, which it is doing. This is a temporary problem.

3. I don't think innovation in the Information Technology space is in a holding pattern at all. Major new platforms like the iPhone and Android are just getting started. Tablet computing is going to be a revolution in many fields, including education. The continued operation of Moore's law means adding wi-fi to devices is basically free which will bring us a step closer to ubiquitous computing. In Act II of virtual worlds like Second Life (I am an investor), the chasm will be crossed and enterprise will adopt in droves for collaboration.

What I do see is that many of the best new startups, including ones with world-shaking ambitions, don't need venture capital to get started. Seed rounds of $500-750K, funded by angel investors and small, specialized funds (which are basically grown-up angels) are getting first choice of the best entrepreneurs in consumer Internet opportunities.

Startups have gotten cheaper, require fewer people and less time to market because today's platforms offer so much more of an advanced starting point. Entrepreneurs can get access both to capital and expertise from angels and seed funders. There is a whole generation of successful entrepreneurs with capital who from the core investors in this new band.

Many of these companies (and this is the sector I am investing in, having done 10 deals this year) go on to raise Series A rounds from institutional VC firms, but some do not. They become self-funding or are acquired. Of the ones who do raise a Series A, there may be less upside compared with having gotten in at the beginning.

On the other hand, Enterprise IT startups and networking/communications which have longer ramps and higher capital requirements are still good candidates for partnering with institutional venture capital.

So all in all I think that the opportunity set is shifting and perhaps shrinking a little in IT for VC's.

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We Are All Studious In My Family

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Crazy Like a Fox

I review "Crazy Like a Fox: One Principal's Triumph in the Inner City" in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

"Under his leadership as a charismatic and unconventional principal, Ben Chavis turned a failing charter school in Oakland into one of the top performers in the state…"

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Stepping into the World of Health Care IT

Over the past six months I've stepped into the world of health care information technology.

I am passionate about the need to improve health care for everyone in the U.S., but dubious about the prospects of achieving that important goal without fundamental restructuring of the health care system that seems unlikely to emerge in the current political climate.  

It is a moral scandal how poorly the U.S. does in health care compared with every other developed nation in the world.  However, without a plan to tame the cost spiral (among other things), our health care system will continue to evolve in a fashion which is both dysfunctional and unsustainable.  I've written about this in the Huffington Post

The only hope of controlling health care costs involves the adoption of the right kind of IT.  Information Technology is hardly a panacea, but it is one of the crucial components needed for change, and it can also be a driver of change, alongside a restructuring of payment systems to create   economic incentives for health improvement.

Yet health care IT has dramatically under-performed its potential and, in fact,  is a prisoner of the current counter-productive system of economic incentives for providers which rewards volume of treatment, not improved outcomes.  Current electronic medical records, by and large, are really no more than billing documentation modules.

Despite these many barriers, I believe it is possible to make a positive difference.

I've just taken on a role as Senior Advisor on Health Information Technology at the Center for American Progress.  This is a part-time role in which I will have the chance to try to connect the world I come from, which is familiar with the ways in which disruptive technology can creation new platforms for innovation, and the world of health care policy.

I'll be giving the opening keynote at an invitational meeting of Health Information Technology Platforms at Harvard University on September 29-30.

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