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<b.Greener One, now in early beta, is a very interesting and timely idea. The CEO, Zoli Piroska, wants to build a “crowdsourced database of green attributes for consumer products.” The benefit for consumers is that they’ll be able to tell what the environmental impacts are of products they are considering, from TVs to laundry detergents. And that users will be the ones to build the database of attributes.

On the input side, Greener One is a structured wiki. Consumers who want to add information to the database are directed to look up certain info on products, and there’s a database of enviro contacts at major consumer companies, with a list of pre-written email templates for gathering info that’s not evident in a product’s packaging or on its Web site.

Each product gets its own green rating

Most consumers won’t enter information, of course. They’ll just consume it. What they’ll get from the service is a green rating, and data underneath it, that will tell them the comparative impact of the product they’re looking at. The database will consider the entire lifecycle of the product, from raw materials used to recyclability, and will also include include environmental issues that pop up during a product’s use (for example, outgassing due to chemicals used during manufacture). The data isn’t just about a product’s carbon footprint, as it also considers safety issues.

The system encourages users to contribute data, from which the score is calculated.

Piroska is convinced that this user-generated green database will be a game-changer in consumer behavior, especially since, as he told me, the price of an item does not correlate with its environmental impact. Expect, perhaps, in the case of Apple: The MacBook Air, he said, is one of the first laptops that doesn’t use heavy metals in its screen; and Apple as a company is “greener” than most computer manufacturers. Overall, Piroska said, the manufacturer of a product is a good indicator of greenness: In mobile phones, Nokia is generally good. Motorola is not.

Greener One isn’t going to open up its own testing lab (there are plenty already) because, “it doesn’t scale,” Piroska says. He believes a dedicated cadre of users and activists will do the heavy lifting.

Ultimately Piroska would like the Greener One rating stamped on product boxes or running alongside reviews (like those on CNET). He thinks most consumers will get exposure to the concept from such relationships, that a small number will dive into the Web site for deeper details, and that an even smaller number will contribute. Given the growing awareness of green issues and how they impact consumer safety, cost, and climate change, I would not be surprised to see this idea get some traction.

Read more here:
Greener One: A crowdsourced “green stamp”

A look at the tabbed interface that Facebook will be rolling out soon as part of its profile redesign.

(Credit: Facebook)

On Wednesday, after months of nothing but ambiguous screenshots, Facebook finally talked about its upcoming site redesign. It’ll make it easier for members to see immediate, dynamic updates from their network of friends, company representative said, and it’ll cut down on some of the profile clutter by distributing user information across a set of tabs rather than having it all on one page.

The big question: Will members like it?

“Any user interface changes, large or small, carry with them a certain risk,” developer Kyle Bragger told CNET News.com, adding that big decisions can easily create more confusion. “Audience really should always be considered when making user interface decisions.”

And considering Facebook has over 70 million members, many of whom don’t consider themselves particularly tech-savvy, a massive overhaul won’t go over smoothly with everyone.

One developer speculated that members might not like the fact that you can no longer view a Facebook profile on a single page. “(It takes away) the user’s ability to create a unique profile page that they identify with,” he said. “Even your Twitter profile seems to do a better job of representing you these days.”

Ultimately, it’s hard to tell how the general response will be, especially since no one outside the company has tested the new design yet. Major changes to Facebook have a spotty history: Facebook members freaked out about the News Feed but welcomed the ability to spice up their profiles with developer applications, and while some prominent critics lambasted the Beacon advertising program, members as a whole didn’t seem to care.

But none of those situations involved a total redesign that will put some information in different sections of the site and require clicking around in ways that it didn’t before. “Completely switching up the profiles on people will be like upgrading Windows (from XP) to Vista,” said Nick O’Neill, the blogger behind All Facebook. “I think Vista looks cool but I have no idea how to use any of the tools, (so) I stayed with XP.” The problem is that Facebook members won’t have a choice: everyone’s getting the new design, like it or not.

Then there are the thousands of developers who have created applications for Facebook’s platform and who will have a chance to test out the new design several weeks before the greater membership. Although the code for application creation isn’t changing, the way that Facebook users interact with apps certainly will: posting to feeds and “walls” is different, and some applications will have their own browser tabs whereas others will be an additional click away. Some developers have already voiced concerns that Facebook’s platform is dominated by “corporate” apps and that it’s hard for an indie creation to catch on. With applications on separate tabs, it’s inevitable that some will say this worsens the situation.

“Not all of the details have been announced for what changes need to be made. What is clear is that applications are going to need to readjust how their content is displayed.” O’Neill said. It’s true: a lot of information was left unsaid, including how it might tie into the extension of Facebook’s API into Friend Connect. He estimated that some developers likely are “going to be forced to make substantial changes to their applications.”

At the same time, some developers say they appreciate the fact that Facebook will now be able to convey more immediate information into “news feeds” that are more advanced, and are looking forward to an expanded profile environment that isn’t crammed into a single page.

“Much, much better. More dynamic. More room for breathing,” one developer told CNET News.com regarding the new design. “The older design was very constricted.”

Here is the original:
Developers, critics sound off on Facebook’s profile redesign

This post was updated at 12:30 p.m. PDT with more detailed information and quotes.

PALO ALTO, Calif.–Facebook plans to unveil a redesign of profile pages in coming weeks to help members cut down on the clutter, executives said here at a press event Wednesday.

Executives also said they’ll introduce a beta version this week that will allow developers to test the new pages before it rolls them out to members in June.

The redesign, a preview of which was released Tuesday night, slots member information under five new tabs: personal news feeds; profile information; photos; applications; and a customizable page. The news feeds will take the place of the members’ home page and are meant to make it easier for people to see dynamically changing information from friends.

“We see this big trend,” said Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook’s vice president of product marketing. “People are publishing feeds all the time, and the point is people are increasingly telling a narrative and we want to make that easier for our users to do. And we want people to consume that narrative more easily.”

The company will unveil design changes at the risk of angering application developers that rely on Facebook for distribution and member usage. For example, applications will have their own tab under the new profile design and that could marginalize some less exciting widgets. But company executives said the design overhaul will ultimately give developers more reason to engage with members. “We think there’s more opportunity for distribution, but for more meaningful application,” said Facebook product manager Mark Slee.

Palihapitiya added that some developers could suffer in the more dynamic environment of news feeds on member home pages. “Applications that are much more static in nature will not be as successful as they used be.”

Here is an overview of the changes:

The news feed will take the role of the member home page, with one stream of information that people can reformat into three different sizes. From the main page, people can also update information on new Facebook applications, post a wall message, or upload photos from one point next to the news feed. The reason for that change, Palihapitiya said, was because the company wanted to make the home page cleaner and simpler, and allow people to see dynamically changing information first. Developers can also get front page play through the news feeds. “Developers can integrate into the feed through the publisher box, so I could draw some graffiti or send a ’superpoke,’” said Facebook product manager Ruchi Sanghvi.

Facebook moves the static information on members to its second tab, or the information tab. That page will contain detailed data about the person’s address, personal history, and preferences. Executives said developers can get creative with new applications that help members tell a story about who they are.

Next is a tab for photos, which are commanding a lot of attention from Facebook users, according to Palihapitiya. So far, he said, members have uploaded 6 billion photos to the site, or 14 million on a daily basis. “Photos are just one example of an application that could blow up for us,” Palihapitiya said.

The profile box tab, or where applications will reside, lets people see a record of the widget they downloaded.

The last tab gives people a choice to customize a page, much like a new feature on the iPhone. People can “add a new tab to highlight an application like Scrabulous that they play often.” Executives said that this is “a huge new opportunity for developers” and could increase advertising revenue.

That said, developers will need to try it out of themselves: “We are going to give developers a beta period in which they will be able to step into the sandbox and tweak their application so that they’re ready for when this thing gets rolled out in coming weeks,” said Slee.

Credit:
Facebook execs explain profile redesign

Google has concluded it’s been a little too secretive about the inner workings of its search engine.

The company has deliberately stayed mum about the algorithm that decides what to put at the top of the search results list, in part because the company doesn’t want competitors copying it and in part because it doesn’t want Web sites gaming the system, said Udi Manber, the vice president of engineering in charge of search quality, in a blog post Wednesday. Now, though, it plans to share a little more.

“Being completely secretive isn’t ideal, and this blog post is part of a renewed effort to open up a bit more than we have in the past,” Manber said. “We will try to periodically tell you about new things, explain old things, give advice, spread news, and engage in conversations.”

The blog post mostly just outlines the search quality effort, but we’ll have to wait for future blog posts for the real dirt. But Manber gives a glimpse of some of the factors–internally called inputs–that Google weighs.

“The most famous part of our ranking algorithm is PageRank, an algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded Google. PageRank is still in use today, but it is now a part of a much larger system. Other parts include language models (the ability to handle phrases, synonyms, diacritics, spelling mistakes, and so on), query models (it’s not just the language, it’s how people use it today), time models (some queries are best answered with a 30-minutes old page, and some are better answered with a page that stood the test of time), and personalized models (not all people want the same thing).

In 2006, Google hired Manber from Amazon.com, where he led the company’s A9 search engine work. Before that he worked at Yahoo.

Manber also said humans and automated tools constantly evaluate how well Google is doing, and it constantly rolls changes into the search algorithm–Google made 450 changes to its algorithm in 2007, he said. Some were minor, he said, such as correctly understanding acronyms in Hebrew, and some were major, such as a big change to PageRank in January, he said.

The company also has begun opening up a bit to the press. It shed some light on search challenges during its Google Factory Tour event Monday, and I plan to publish a Q&A with Manber shortly.

See the original post:
Google sheds light, dimly, on search quality

Looks like offering old episodes of Star Trek and MacGyver proved successful: CBS Interactive announced this week that it has added a selection of new “classic TV” content to its CBS Audience Network of online video partners.

Full episodes and clips of select seasons from Twin Peaks, Beverly Hills: 90210, The Love Boat, Family Ties, and Perry Mason are now available on CBS’ 300-plus partner sites, which include downloadable video service Joost, AOL and its newly acquired social network Bebo, video-sharing site Veoh, and a few hardware partners like Slingbox. CBS has also added more seasons of MacGyver, The Twilight Zone, and Hawaii Five-O to complement what it first started offering in February.

CBS has not signed on to Hulu, the joint online-video venture currently run by NBC Universal and News Corp., but CBS Interactive President Quincy Smith has said that it’s still a possibility.

Disclosure: News.com is published by CNET Networks, which is a current CBS Audience Network partner and is expected to become a part of CBS in an acquisition set to close in the third quarter.

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CBS Audience Network adds more retro programming