Read a story today about how SEO Has Killed The My Internet in Search Engine Land – it was quite good… can almost hear music going in the background…ha..

” …. Everywhere I look, I see bad websites. I see hideous design, poorly designed technology, flash implementations that render websites invisible, information architectures based on a company’s organizational chart, copy that looks like it was written by my six year old, cluttered layout, garbled code, ugly interfaces, and worst of all, sites that forgot they were there to serve a purpose.”

“… SEO has left me in such as state that I can no longer look at a website like a normal person. I see flaws in websites everywhere I look. Here’s just a taste of what my warped little mind sees as I browse the web.”

Reminds me that when someone takes up a discipline they tend to see the world in terms of it – can probably think of all kinds of examples.  Could be too much SEO works poisons the ability to just enjoy a typical dysfunctional website.

Mark Cuban is in the news again- TechCrunch covers Mark’s earlier post on The End of Location Based Applications ?

… I just invested in a company that takes video of an area and can tell you exactly how many people are in the capture area at any given time.  It’s great for traffic patterns, security, and much more.  We are posting cameras in certain environments where anonymity is required, and we don’t and won’t capture faces or anything that could identify an individual.  We will simply provide incredibly accurate traffic information and patterns. A great application with great opportunity.

The next extension is to install it in places where we can add facial recognition software. So rather than someone checking in to a specific application, we would already know you are there.”

I’m pretty sure I know of the company (or at least, a company that does the same thing) as I viewed their applications in Lower Manhattan  last year.  No big deal, it’s not the hardware – but more software drivers – most of the hardware is relatively low tech – a cheap video camera is all that is need for input – it’s the software that interprets faces, sex and age – and can both tie into Social Networks such as Facebook – but I also suggested feeding the data into Google Analytics – which I was told is quite doable.   Trying to remember the name of the company but for the life of me, I can’t.

Meanwhile got involved and commented in a post titled -  Mark Cuban Dreams Of Minority Report. So Do I. But We’re Not There Yet

by telling us 2011 isn’t going to be the year we don’t have to check in – more like 2037 – ha! – here’s a scene from Minority Report that paints what it would most likely be like to live in such a world – where the ads are talking to you as walk by them.

But .. then again, you don’t need to wait to 2037 according to Gizmodo – as Google is already playing with your brain and likely to do a lot more of that in the future – read this post on Google May Soon Start Telling You When To Go Shopping, And What To Buy:

Speaking about one possible future of Google integration, company fellow Amit Singhal outlined a frankly terrifying vision—where Google scans our to-do lists, automatically searches for outstanding tasks and tells us when and how to complete them…

…. “So my calendar knows when I have free time, my [GPS-enabled] phone knows where I am, my to do list has a list of things I need to accomplish and time is expensive … On top of that Google local knows the map of this place and it knows where all the sports shops are – so why can’t this thing tell me ‘you have 45 minutes free in your agenda, there’s a sports shop 300 metres away go and buy a cricket bat”

Funny, but doesn’t this sound just like Seth Godin’s description of the 4G Web from a few years back?

…. Google watches what I search. It watches what other people like me search. Every day, it shows me things I ought to be searching for that I’m not. And it introduces me to people who are searching for what I’m searching for.

As a project manager, my computer knows my flow chart and dependencies for what we’re working on. And so does the computer of every person on the project, inside my team and out. As soon as something goes wrong (or right) the entire chart updates.

I’m late for a dinner. My GPS phone knows this (because it has my calendar, my location, and the traffic status). So, it tells me, and then it alerts the people who are waiting for me.

I visit a blog for the first time. My browser knows what sort of stories I am interested in and shows me highlights of the new blog based on that history.

When thinking of the above – be careful what you ask for – you might get it but it might not be what you really thought it would be once you get it – that’s happened to me a number of times.

As far as analytics software – there is a new contender from SaaS -  Personyze, but you can check their website at perosnyze.com and see that this is probably a brand new real-time web analytics.  I took a quick look and it looks promising – but I haven’t actually worked with it yet.

That reminds me – read an interesting post by Greg Moore on Actionable Insights. Do They Really Exist? Sounds like he doesn’t think they do exist because all ideas of an improvement are based on a hunch or guess – he’s probably right..

… If a search phrase has a bounce rate of 85%, you can guess why that might be, and you can guess what you might do on a page to make things better, but really you have no data to support your claim that things will get better if only the company makes the change you – the web analyst – are advocating.

Most marketing campaigns are guesses.  And so are most suggestions from web analysts.

Like me, he suggests playing with your analytics platform to look for insights – let them jump out at your and then just test, test, test.

And … to close this post out – here’s a picture of me with a baby bird on my finger – there’s a story behind that – a bright future where opportunity is like the young bird.

I had been at a bizzy.com launch the night before, btw.