Luke Hubbard

Over 7 million books are available for free online and on mobile devices at: http://books.google.com/

Here’s a great article by Google on book search: http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/. This article covers a high level review of book search.

Google Books has many cool features like better in text search, thumbnails, an overview page, and my favorite: an easy to use embed function. Check out the book below that I embedded into this very blog…

This post by: Luke Hubbard

Here’s a great article on CNN:

What are the most dangerous search terms on the Internet? – CNN.com.

The article sites keywords that have been targeted by hackers and malware. Some of the “riskiest terms” include:  word unscrambler, lyrics, myspace, free music downloads, phelps, game cheats, printable fill-in puzzles, free ringtones and solitaire.

Today, I read a great article on the advantages of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing:  Google VS Bing User Centric Eye Tracking Study.

The main advantage that Bing has over Google is its 3 column format. Because the first column on the left contains useful information, users tend to notice the sister column on the right, the ads. Here’s the eye tracking study image, which shows Bing on the left and Google on the right…
 

Specifically, notice the right side of both images. Bing (left) had more users reading the ads than Google (right).

All in all, I think eye tracking studies have limited purpose. Yes, they show the movement of the eyes, but they fail to take into account what the user is actually thinking. For instance, even if users always notice Bing ads, it doesn’t mean that those users will find them helpful. In fact, users may only be noticing the ads because Bing is new and they are trying to figure it all out. If Bing fails to provide a solid user experience and quality search results, then it will not gain any traction against the other search engines.

Microsoft is spending considerable advertising dollars on promoting Bing.com, and they hope it will be a Google killer. Unfortunately, I just don’t see it happening as the search engine doesn’t seem to have any huge advantage over Google or Yahoo. Also, I don’t see any better results than what MSN or Live.com provided.

So far, I see no improvement in Microsoft’s search algorithm. If I want to find information, and find it fast, I will continue to use Google and Yahoo.

Wow, just when you thought there wasn’t anything else unbelievable for Google to create, they release Google Wave!

Google Wave is a new tool for “communication and collaboration on the web,” which utilizes cloud computing. Wave is open protocol, meaning that developers can mold it to fit their own concepts. Here’s the official video from Google:

Lars and Jens Rasmussen of Google, the developers of Google Maps, were the ones to develop Wave. They aimed at creating email for the first time, like it was invented now rather than years ago.

With this in mind, Google Wave addresses needs of the common day user such as the ability to type and read conversations real time. This is different from instant message because in Google Wave, you can see your friend actually typing each character without having to hit an enter button. These conversations are called “waves.” Also, more than two users can enter into the conversation.

The features are endless such as the ability to drag and drop pictures into the threads, and to play back the conversations in the order they were created. You’ll have to check out the video to get the full understanding of who all this works… they do a good job of showing examples of each feature.

One really cool aspect of wave is its attempt to fuse together user generated content with a new form of email, which is delivery tool. Because Waves can be public, conversations could act as RSS feeds, newsletters, Wikis, or even blogs.

Wave is a web based application just like Gmail, and in fact, it looks very similar to the Gmail interface we’re all used to seeing.

Google Wave Interface

Most importantly, Wave is open protocol, which means Google is looking for outside developers to enhance the product. I’m very interested to see what the future holds for Wave and if developers will collaborate to build a product that replaces email, wikis, blogs, rss, and social networks.