I don’t know about the rest of you out there in cyberspace, but I, for one, have come to the conclusion that Google’s search results are nowhere near as useful as they used to be. My perspective is very straight forward when it comes to the “quality” of search… Do I find what I’m looking for in the top 5 results on the first try of a search. I’m not a search expert. I don’t know, nor do I have any interest in really “knowing” if Google’s search results are really slipping. What I do know is that for me, it feels like search has become noticably less relevant/useful over the course of the last 18 months.

Today Google released what they call the “Personal Blocklist” as a Chorme Extension (download it from here). This tool allows individuals to block specific sites from showing up in Google search results. It’s unfortunate that Google did not provide a way to input a list of sites to be blocked in bulk, but I’m sure someone will augment the Extension in short order.

In the meantime, here is a handy list of sites that I will be search for and blocking ASAP.

• ehow.com
• experts-exchange.com
• naymz.com
• activehotels.com
• robtex.com
• encyclopedia.com
• fixya.com
• chacha.com
• 123people.com
• download3k.com
• petitionspot.com
• thefreedictionary.com
• networkedblogs.com
• buzzillions.com
• shopwiki.com
• wowxos.com
• answerbag.com
• allexperts.com
• freewebs.com
• copygator.com

Let me know if you find this list useful, and please help me add to the list.

Thanks.

I have been working on a new project I call Electronic Timelines. The ET project is a set of data capture tools designed to structure information streams from news, blogs, and social networks and to correlate/compare them with other less obvious data points. I have been working on the underpinnings of this concept for a while and am finally beginning to see my hypothesis proven correct.

In the process of this work I have become interested in the “discoverability” of data that currently lives within ones social stream/graph. For the sake of this conversation let’s accept the following definition of “discovery”…

Part of the pre-trial litigation process during which each party requests relevant information and documents from the other side in an attempt to “discover” pertinent facts. Generally discovery devices include depositions, interogatories, requests for admissions, document production requests and requests for inspection.

The formal procedures used by parties to a lawsuit to obtain information before a trial is called discovery. Discovery helps a party find out the other side’s version of the facts, what witnesses know, and other evidence. Rules dictating the allowable methods of discovery have been set up by Congress (for federal courts) and by state legislatures (for state courts).

All the conversation around privacy, particularly with respect to Facebook, tends to focus on non-descript fears, a.k.a. FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). However, as I have begun to investigate this matter more deeply, I have concluded the number one reason NOT to allow your social stream/graph to be publicly accessible comes when we consider what happens if you are every involved in a legal matter where a “discovery” demand is placed on you.

Apparently, on 26 May 2010, the US District Court (see See Crispin v. Christian Audigier Inc.) ruled that some content hosted on social networking sites will be precluded from discovery only to the extent that those communications were not available to the general public (see http://goo.gl/ykazG). This is huge news and should be taken VERY SERIOUSLY by anyone that uses Facebook or any other social networking site. This is particulary important now that Facebook is all about your location, etc.

Let me pose the following as an example…

You allow Facebook, Foursquare, Google Latitude, etc. to track your every move because you like letting all of your friends know where to find you. (I would encourage you to reconsider this personal policy, but that is not the point of this posting.) If you do not setup your privacy settings correctly, all of this location information would be “discoverable” in a court of law. I don’t know about you, but this fact alone should make everyone strongly reconsider just what they really want shared publicly.

I am very interested to hear what other people think of the “privacy question” from this perspective.

Chris Dixon, founder of Hunch, just wrote the following on his blog. It hit so close to home I felt like I should repost it here. If anyone reads this and knows Chris, please let him know how much I appreciated his words. I feel like a disciple of this philosophy as I’m struggling with this very issue as we speak.

My most useful career experience was about eight years ago when I was trying to break into the world of VC-backed startups. I applied to hundreds of jobs:  low-level VC roles, startups jobs, even to big tech companies.  I got rejected from every single one.  Big companies rejected me outright or gave me a courtesy interview before rejecting me. VCs told me they wanted someone with VC experience.  Startups at the time were laying people off.  The economy was bad (particularly where I was looking – consumer internet) and I had a strange resume (computer programmer, small bootstrapped startups, undergrad and masters studying Philosophy/mathematical logic).

The reason this period was so useful was that it helped me develop a really thick skin.  I came to realize that employers weren’t really rejecting me as a person or on my potential – they were rejecting a resume.  As it became depersonalized, I became bolder in my tactics. I eventually landed a job at Bessemer (thanks to their willingness to take chances and look beyond resumes), which led to getting my first VC-backed startup funded, and things got better from there.

One of the great things about looking for a job is that your “payoff” is almost always a max function (the best of all attempts), not an average. This is also generally true for raising VC financing, doing bizdev partnerships, hiring programmers, finding good advisors/mentors, even blogging and marketing.  I probably got rejected by someone once a day last week alone. In one case a friend who tried to help called me to console me. He seemed surprised when I told him: “no worries – this is a daily occurrence – we’ll just keep trying.”  If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals aren’t ambitious enough.