Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO

I’ve written about my Omron pedometer once before, but I wanted to mention it again because I like it so much. Recent research suggests that using a pedometer can lead to more walking and better health.

I’ve been carrying a pedometer for a little over a year now, and I’ve done almost four million steps since starting to use it:

Just recently I finished a month where I did 10,000 steps or more every day. Once you start a streak of over 10K steps/day, it’s addictive to stay on the streak. In my opinion, a good pedometer is a secret weapon to get into better shape.

The only thing that would make this Omron pedometer perfect is if Omron would open or document their protocol so that Mac and Linux users could write their own pedometer software. At one point I started trying to reverse engineer the USB protocol myself using a program called SnoopyPro:

But really, who has the time to sit down and reverse engineer a whole USB device from scratch these days? It would be better if Omron would just document their protocol so other people could write a Linux/Mac driver.

Hey folks, I wanted to let you know that new toolbar PageRank values should become visible over the next few days. I’m expecting that also in the next few days that we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites.

I was going to wait until part 2 was posted, but I’ll point people to part 1 now. The video from the SMX Advanced keynote is now live, so you can watch the first 25 minutes of questions and answers. Read the intro here, or just watch the video:

And Juliane Stiller from Google’s German Webmaster blog stopped by the Googleplex for a more fun interview. Read the intro in English or German or just watch the video below:

Thanks for setting this up, Juliane! Note to self: wear a different shirt for my next SEO video interview. I happened to wear the same polo shirt for both interviews.

I still like my last start-up idea about converting MP3 music collections to be legal and cleaning up mangled/ugly filenames. As Amazon and others start to sell MP3s, a startup could easily offer some interesting services. For example, I just saw that a new product called TuneUp will clean up your filenames, metadata, and cover art. That’s cool stuff that fixes a real problem a lot of people have.

Ready for another idea? This one is simple. Make an Android or iPhone app for people who need a taxi. Imagine: you’re in another city, and you just learned that from your hotel to dinner is not walkable. You’re standing on a street corner. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO!?

Answer: you fire up “Call me a Cab” on your app-enabled phone. Your phone automatically senses your location and (anywhere in the world) gives you 3-4 suggestions for local cab companies, with phone numbers. That’s the base functionality, but that’s still a huge step forward. When you’re standing on a street corner you don’t often have a page like this in front of you:

Now how would you make the app even better? In some places (like, say, these cities) the app would show you where the closest cab is, call it, and get an “estimated time of arrival” as you watch the cab get closer on a map. Something like this page, but on your phone:

How would you make money? Maybe you sell a premium version of the app that does more (more features, or checks for buses or other public transit nearby). Or maybe taxi/cab companies would be willing to advertise in the app just like they advertise in the yellow pages. Maybe you’re a taxi company and you offer this app for free to make your cabs more efficient or to build a brand (most people think of taxis as a commodity right now). And it doesn’t always have to be about the money, you know. Maybe you do it to build awareness about your software startup and unlock future opportunities down the line.

Once you get GPS + cool sensors + the ability to run an application on a phone, there’s a ton of exciting apps you could write. Sure you could find nearby friends, but why not write a GPS-enabled celebrity spotter? Or an “Am I Speeding Right Now?” app that you can use in your car.

If you need other good ideas, I recommend reading through Paul Graham’s list of suggested start-up ideas. I’m a big fan of #3 (finding “New News”), #13 (online learning), and #28 (fixing email overload). Or for that matter, just think about things around your house or business that are messy or annoying and solve that problem.

Here are some of the applications that I’m trying out right now:

What applications do you like on the iPhone 3G?