Cool Stuff

Via Kim Kraus’ increasingly unhealthy obsession with MS Dewey. (really Kim, I am starting to become concerned) Kim blogged yesterday about Microsoft’s new search engine MsDewey. My first thought was “interesting.” Ask finally dropped the butler, Jeeves, in order to change their image, and Microsoft has unveiled a sort of Jeeves 2.0. I will say that I found it to be patently irritating. Sure, Ms Dewey is attractive and gets your attention right away. Of course, I don’t go to search engines to be entertained. I go to find stuff called “information.” So, anything that gets in the way of that process irritates me. It’s obvious that this was…

This week, Coca Cola is “formally embracing” the online video phenomenon of the exploding geyser created from mixing Mentos with Diet Coke. This statement is from the same company whose formal position a few months ago was: “We would hope people want to drink [Diet Coke] more than try experiments with it,” says Coke spokeswoman Susan McDermott. She adds that the “craziness with Mentos … doesn’t fit with the brand personality” of Diet Coke.” From the Wall Street Journal June 12, 2006. Well, now we have an official acceptance from Coke that people will now be publicly embraced for dropping Mentos into their product, rather than being shunned by the corporate giant for…

Last week I had the privilege of attending a seminar given by Edward Tufte. Tufte is recognized as an authority on Data Visualization and he offers extensive examples of incredible diagrams that engage the reader by communicating extensive amounts of information through diagrams or the written word. This was one of the most interesting seminars I’ve ever attended, and I strongly suggest this seminar to anyone that has to communicate data. Either as a salesperson, a public speaker or simply to internal technical groups, the information in this seminar will help you to become a better presenter of information. Tufte uses many historical examples of visualizing data. Starting from…

QuickBooks 2007 will incorporate four Google applications, AdWords, Maps, Google Base, and Google Desktop. The interface will allow QuickBooks users to interface to paid keyword campaigns and Google Maps business listings. The Google Base interface will allow merchants to upload their product inventories into Google Base. Intuit has an estimated 3.7 million small and medium-sized businesses. This is an amazing joint venture between two market leaders. Google CEO Eric Schmidt quoted the ‘Long Tail’ as the reasoning behind extending this service through QuickBooks. The essential principles of the cause of the long tail are: 1, more powerful tools; and 2, distribution of those tools to the population. By allowing Google to interface with QuickBooks,…

Usability Guru, Jacob Neilson weighs into the Long Tail discussion with some incredible data from the log files of UseIt. Amazingly, it shows that the Ziph distribution (former name of The Long Tail) looks to be a constant on the Internet. Regardless of the name, the phenomenon is that the total amount of pages, referrals, terms, etc. after the top 10 will far exceed the numbers of the top 10 itself. Using data from 10 years ago, Nielson charts the referrers, pages view and search engine queries comparing the data from 1996 to 2006. He shows an amazing statistic that the shows is that the tail is indeed longer than the head when it comes…

Usability Guru, Jacob Neilson weighs into the Long Tail discussion with some incredible data from the log files of UseIt. Amazingly, it shows that the Ziph distribution (former name of The Long Tail) looks to be a constant on the Internet. Regardless of the name, the phenomenon is that the total amount of pages, referrals, terms, etc. after the top 10 will far exceed the numbers of the top 10 itself. Using data from 10 years ago, Nielson charts the referrers, pages view and search engine queries comparing the data from 1996 to 2006. He shows an amazing statistic that the shows is that the tail is indeed longer than the head when it comes…

With great anticipation, I pre-ordered Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail two months ago. I received it last week and have read it through fairly quickly. I enjoyed the book as it was much more of a social commentary than a business manual. I like this approach, as the long tail is not a “how-to”, but a “because why”. The difference is vast between those, as it is the difference between the understanding the market forces or being subject to them. In the opening chapters of the book I had many shared experiences, growing up in the 80’s and being a fan of the British New Wave and Punk music…

I recently found that one of my favorite web sites, woot.com has expanded into wine. For those of you that may not be familiar with Woot.com, the premise is surprisingly simply – “One day, one product.” It’s like Christmas every morning to see the product for the day. It is usually an electronic type of product, though the range can be from vacuum cleaners to wireless G routers (I got one!).

And now, Woot has expanded into wine. For afficianados, this will be an amazing alternative that destroys the typical wine-of-the-month club drama. The tagline is now “One week, one wine.” Woot features different cellars and wine choices…

The past few weeks have been a blur – at least my kids still remember me. It started by going to Toronto to speak at the Search Engine Strategies conference. I decided to attend a few of the sessions that I had missed at the prior conference and hopefully pick up a few new ideas. Fortunately, I attended Gord Hotchkiss’ session where he shared further results of his eye tracking study on search results. Last year, Gord shared the first part of the study which focused on Google and how users viewed and chose results. There was some great information, such as the “F” pattern and the semantic map (love that…

Courtesy of Rand over at SEOMoz, Google looks to have a search refining query for recipes. This immediately caught my attention, as I always seem to be searching for a recipe for the evening meal.

I love cooking and it is one of those activities that just seem to calm me after a long day. Amazingly, I found a very nice Middle-Eastern recipe for lamb right out of the initial search. A great tool for cooks and those who love food!