Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Progress is uneven: digital video mess and Google search

Eight years after my last effort to digitize our home analog video, I discover digital home video is still a mess. I also learn that Final Cut Pro X has a lot in common with Aperture 2 -- it's not ready for production and it's not a robust upgrade path from Apple's consumer products (iMovie HD, iMovie 11).

On the other hand, when I operate my 15 yo SONY camcorder I feel like I'm working on a 1910 automobile. Massive physical controls that require actual muscle input, an array of puzzling buttons ... I'm used to my iPhone.

Radical progress in some areas, but small progress or even regressions in others.

Similarly, vast torrents of social media, yet I have to discover FCPX sucks the old fashioned way - by personally using the free trial version.


More interestingly, I again find that advertising-funded search isn't working. I fear we're experiencing a negative feedback loop. That is, Google's search quality has been slowly deteriorating as Google's services increasingly align with Google's advertising driven business model (ex: if Google downrated pages with advertising quality would improve). Ordinarily that would promote alternatives, but Google is so dominant that it instead discourages the production of quality content... which makes search less useful ...

Update: I revised the last paragraph a half-hour after posting as I began to think through what's happening.

1 comment:

  1. I recently changed my default search to DuckDuckGo...

    Occasionally, I don't find a satisfactory result, and have to go to Google, but probably not much more often than I'd have to do a second try on Google.

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