I may not be the best Googler out there who can think of keywords to search for something at the spur of the moment (impromptu or impulsively – I give up on my first few tries). And seriously, I don’t know if I should classify myself as impatient, lazy or intolerant. Let’s just say I’m being a little ignorant on this here.
Just before starting work at 1:11am, I thought of a song I heard on radio today. I remembered the lyrics’ chorus to that song, just not the title, so I decided to Google it. Just because I wanted an immediate answer, my impulsive human behavior drove me to click not on the first link that appeared, but the second one instead. Why?
I don’t think the word ‘YouTube’ made me click on the first link. My brain tends to ignore anything that does not catch my eye. And believe me, my brain is ninja-ly trained as a huge, huge spam buster. Anything that goes spammy gets out of my way in less than a look. Spam has a bleak future in me. (And I’m making a point to those out there that descriptions and title tags are more important for end-users vs. robots.)
One of the reasons why I clicked on YouTube is because I wanted to listen to that song immediately to identify if the song is what I wanted. And I know YouTube gives me that medium over the other results out there that would probably just give me lyrics. But that’s only one of the things we’re talking about here. (I’m hinting at the media guys.. 😛 )
Other days when I need to take a breather, Twitter isn’t very comforting. Since my Twitter list is full of people talking only to themselves, I’ll end up going out for a drink with my colleagues or try to get something out of nothing, like Google ‘Watch the Simpsons Online’.
UNFORTUNATELY, in my case, which is in hand with SBS’s food videos (Australian News Center) and “Watch Prison Break Online,” I’m not ABLE to watch MANY of those because I’m geographically located in MALAYSIA. And these sites, to save bandwidth (it’s never enough), will geographically block me from viewing these videos.
Sigh. I’m never going to be able to entertain myself other than checking XKCD or watching YouTubers making a fool out of themselves and others. I wish someone knew how frustrating this can be. Like I said, I’m no impulsive-spur-of-the-moment-freakazoid, so I panic into boredom.
“What’s wrong with Google?” I mutter. “It’s showing me results that I can’t view, results that they may (or may not know) that I can watch. Since it’s geographically blocked, how is it not smart enough to know it’s GEOGRAPHICALLY blocked, I can’t view this, warn me about this, provide me alternatives, give me a solution, show me some good quality content I can view, just to satisfy my ONE search string?” (At last I found that I can watch streaming videos from China’s mainstream servers – they’re much faster since they’re closer to me, but it’s totally unreliable in terms of bugging the crap out of my eyes and computer. Also, I found a program where I can stream videos from a program called PPstream.)
There are not many mainstream media options in Malaysia that I can rely on. Since it’s a maturing, semi-virgin market, I wouldn’t blame them (or anyone at all, for that matter).
Since Google talks so much about Google Search Quality and rant all day about the millions of questions they get, and finish their days with coffee and XXX filters/busters, pedophiles catching, PageRank and ranking systems, what about the ‘end-user experience’ (Paragraph 8, line 2) they’re speaking of? Is this problem being looked upon or is it not discovered?
Ok, seriously, I may be a complete ‘idiota’ – I rant too much. But the whole concept of my rant here is that whatever system you have in place in your company, SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) and workflow in your everyday lives, always remember that there are always two things:
- Corporate Governance
- Human Governance
A system may be impeccable to a certain extent; however, it takes exemplary human governance to overcome most possibilities that occur within the corporate governance, which in turn affects rising of possible issues within a particular product or system when either one is left negligent.
Instead of looking into rectifying problems and solving issues or equations, look into balancing development, rectification, possible opportunities, distribution of services within a mainframe, potential exploitation of marketplace, inherited value vs production value and, most importantly, processes within processes.
And at the end of Udi Manber’s blogpost, he nailed it (last paragraph, first sentence). Dang! That post was dated 20/5/2008.
