Googlefasting: Day 7

Continued from Day 1, Day 1.5, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6…

• Looked for an old OPML Autodiscovery document, knowing that I had clicked on the URL for it when I was still in Seattle. Couldn't find anything, anywhere. Really wanted to use Google again. Basically, this comes on the heels of Dave's announcement this morning about OPML 2.0 (which Gada.be and… another thing we're working on… fully intends on supporting).
• Interviewed Matt Cutts from Google. Either someone slipped him a Mickey or he's always *THAT* happy. Thanks to Google for letting him speak with us this afternoon; their PR team isn't as speed bump'ish as they could be. This time with Matt, of course, does not count against my Googlefast. I did not search Google at any point during our conversation.
• Realized Lent started today. Guess I should smear a big black G on my forehead now? Or should the G be blue? My fast ends in another self-imposed week. Although, the rules are subject to change at any time. Someone actually suggested that I lay off of search engines altogether – but that idea is just insane. Living without Google has been difficult enough.
• Sat down to interview Chris from Feedster. Still wondering when we can get access to their API for Gada.be (or, at worst, their plain ol' RSS feed). They went from indexing 5 million to 25 million feeds in a single year, according to him. On a related note, I can't wait to see what Scott Johnson has been up to (and Rafer is still WINKing along).
• Came up with a killer idea for the ultimate Firefox Search plugin – if you know anybody who could help me craft it quickly.
• Talked with the Mobile guy (Andy Yang) from Ask. I guess he came to Gnomedex last year, but didn't introduce himself to me. Ack! Man, no matter who you are or how busy I look – I would really appreciate it if you introduced yourself to me if I don't know who you are. Truly, I'm approachable. Anyway, I think the Mobile Search space is highly under-represented in these events; must find interesting Seattle mobile search companies with which to network.
• Understand that these two weeks will pass like a fart on the radar. A year from now, someone who's much more important than me will do the same thing – and everybody will then start asking the same damn questions (and coming to the same damn conclusions) that I have this week.
• Search needs to become more pervasive and less invasive. Those who “get” RSS and OPML understand the problem at hand. Intellext has a pretty interesting product that deserves attention (although they really need to work on a tweener version for folks who don't have $200 to spend on a single software license). Why shouldn't Web search work more like Intellext? As a funny aside, Yahoo! suggested I try “intellext client call blog time” when I searched for Intellext – a link that lead me no near pointless results.
• Russ's recent rant makes me wonder what he was saying about search before Google? Was he claiming (or would he claim) that the game was already over before it had truly begun? “FireFox – why? Isn't that just the same ol' Mozilla client?” Not all businesses make money from day, or year, one. Most small businesses fail within the first five years, as a matter of fact – that's their benchmark. Why should we hold “wacky” Internet ideas to any less of a standard? People can do anything online. In related news, I'm the #3 “chest” on Ask. I tried a subsequent search on Ask, and was fronted with: “We are currently experiencing an unusually large amount of Web searches. Please try your search again.”
• Went looking on Yahoo! for info on the Samsung A-920 – but couldn't find anything relevant in the regular ol' Web results. Looked to flip to the Blogs tab, and… couldn't find an easy way to do it. Interestingly enough, I found a Technorati tag with a single post from Vinny Carpenter. I was just invited into the same program, FWIW. Jeff's in on the unadvertisment, too – as is Mr. Rubelicious. More in this Sprint thing later.
• Thinking about compiling all these random thoughts into a larger article for my next CPU Magazine assignment.
• Posted on the future of search a few minutes ago.

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