Perry

Hewitt

Tag: search

Friday 5 — 5.22.2015
1. For those of you already planning your Memorial Day driving routes, Google Maps has released useful, new features alerting users to delays and detours as you enter your destination. Beyond the time estimate, new cards provide additional context about potential delays. Related trivia: Google Maps also released the top destinations from Memorial Day 2014.
2. Google is once again showing tweets in search results, starting with mobile. Now you can search for topics and hashtags directly within Google. At the same time, Twitter is rolling out its own more robust search, with new features for logged-out users. My guess is that Twitter native search will cater more to live Twitter consumption of breaking news or events.
3. More than just music — everyone’s favorite social playlist subscription service Spotify is diversifying into podcasts and programming.
4. Today’s workforce spans multiple generations, new economy and old economy roles, and various degrees of digital capability. Here’s why the expertise gap matters, and why the first step is acknowledging the problem.
5. The MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) hype cycle peaked in 2012, but educators are still trying to crack the right formula for effective, online learning. Read this explanation of why primacy of location and cost still matters to motivate learners in a world outside the autodidacts of Silicon Valley.
Weekend fun: It’s the long weekend — why not let loose with some street dancing to beatboxers. Bad weather where you are? Then pore through these examples of faux code in TV and movies.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
May 22, 2015
Friday 5 — 4.24.2015
1. If you are responsible for a high-volume brand homepage, be sure to read this Nieman Lab take on the Atlantic re-design. I particularly like this framing from Bob Cohn: “In an age of social traffic, a homepage is less about traffic triage — directing lots of direct visitors to the content of their choice — than about presenting an image of your brand.”
2. Back when the “Mobile-friendly” text first appeared on Google search results on mobile browsers, many assumed this was a first step toward an algorithm change rewarding mobile-first design. Mobilegeddon is here without any apparent, major fallout to date, but Moz has listed some potential big losers.
3. While Facebook continues to court news publishers, this week’s algorithm changes favor content created by family and friends in the news feed. Facebook has a delicate balancing act: the need to broadcast content for publishers who drive revenue, while remaining aligned with its mission to forge and reinforce social connection.
4. Are you interested in the technical, moral, and legal issues surrounding the use of algorithms as they affect your daily life? The Berkman Center at Harvard has published a free case study [account required] for those seeking a deep dive into both practice and policy.
5. User experience has come a long way as a discipline since 1999, the first year it appeared on my business card at Harcourt, Inc. Whether you’re a manager or in an individual contributor role, here are some useful tips for how to become a UX leader.
Weekend fun: Are you a damsel in distress, an action girl, or a missing mom? Tropes are familiar conventions that a writer can rely on as present in the audience’s minds — explore their use in TV and movies through Stereotropes, an interactive experiment created by technology firm Boucoup.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
April 24, 2015
Friday 5 — 2.13.2015
1. With the rise of sideways traffic via search and social, the homepage of a news site isn’t the single navigational portal it once was. Still, it’s an important brand asset, and defines organizing principles for content. Here are 64 ways to think about a news home page.
2. Balancing being informed with staying productive isn’t easy. It requires effort to find the right smart filters, be they human or algorithmic, to be up-to-date without devoting hours each day. Here’s how one woman audited her daily media habits to improve what she reads. Spoiler alert: there may not be a lot of value in links found on Facebook.
3. Apparently millions of Facebook users have no idea they are using the internet. In developing countries, many new users are coming online solely through Facebook, which has serious implications for those trying to reach them. These studies are consistent with my wholly unscientific observations about Vietnam and Cambodia.
4. Data visualization geeks can debate the efficacy of circular timelines. I liked the distinction drawn between information visualization to amplify cognition versus data decoration and data art.
5. These days Google has a keener understanding of what you are looking for — and serves it up to you directly. Search for topics like the weather or a movie title, and Google will serve up relevant, local data above any linked results. This week Google added a compelling new category for avid symptom searchers: medical information.
Weekend fun: Here’s hoping your Valentine’s Day goes as smoothly as it did for these Tiny Hamsters. Boston will need all the romantic meals, flowers, and chocolate as it can get, as snow threatens to cover even more of our athletes.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
February 13, 2015
What Google knows to show you

Google has come a long way from the user experience of “ten blue links.” Today, Google pulls in a vast amount of the information it searches, has a keener understanding of what you are looking for — and serves it up to you directly.

Google’s organization of the world’s data, called ‘The Knowledge Graph,’ affects about 25% of all search queries. Google serves more and more rich data to minimize the need for users to click a second time. Search for the term “weather” or the title of a movie, and Google will serve up relevant, local data above any linked results.

When I recently searched for the correct spelling of the name of a director at Harvard, Google surprised me with a Wikipedia entry above a link to the site.

What does this mean for web content publishers?

This scraping and delivery of content is convenient for users eager to save a click. It also has practical ramifications for the originating content publishers. Today, a search engine optimization (SEO) must go far beyond meta tags and content keywords. Publishers need to closely watch and respond to web traffic analytics (for example, understanding dark social and developing a robust Wikipedia strategy) as well as technical features offered by search engines (for example, rich snippets and structured data).

February 9, 2015
Friday 5 — 1.23.2015
1. There’s a reassuring familiarity to Google search. Launched in 1999, Google today accounts for two-thirds of all searches in the U.S. But behind the scenes, the search product is constantly evolving, determined to stay dominant in an era tilting rapidly toward mobile and social.
2. Physical proximity meets content sharing with viral app Plague. You create a content card, and people close to you become infected with your idea — to the tune of 150K in the two months since the app launched.
3. Wonder how mere mortals manage to scale their web presence for extraordinary traffic events? Paul Ford recounts how Paper braced itself for traffic with its internet-breaking Kardashian issue.
4. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of myriad internet-enabled devices must be in want of a way to manage relentless information flow. Here’s one useful productivity tip: Don’t read anything now.
5. NiemanLab interviewed the the team that runs the New York Times’ Twitter accounts, and gleaned some thoughtful insights into what worked and what didn’t.
Weekend fun: Already tired of #Ballghazi chatter? Deflated or elated for the Superbowl next weekend, we can all agree on the integrity of the Puppy Bowl lineup.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
January 23, 2015
Friday 5 — 11.21.2014
1. Google is now clearly identifying mobile-friendly sites in its search results. While Google’s search algorithm remains a well-kept secret, it’s not a stretch to infer that sites that perform well on mobile will index better for its search.
2. Wasting time on Facebook at work is a popular pastime, even if you have to access it stealthily on your smartphone. Quartz reports on a new project called Facebook at Work. This would put Facebook head-to-head with LinkedIn for professional networking, and gain a foothold in the coveted productivity and collaboration space.
3. Planning and delivering effective client presentations isn’t as easy as it looks. Watch out for these 13 ways designers can screw them up.
4. Early Twitter adopters beware: now you can search every tweet ever sent. The demise of many popular link shorteners means you may not, however, be able to follow all those links.
5. Although Wikipedia remains the 6th largest site on the internet, a daunting bureaucratic culture around the rules make it a black box for prospective contributors. Communications professionals are particularly flummoxed on what’s fair game and what’s not — this free ebook aims to change all that.
Weekend fun: A book on computer engineer Barbie, who used her subpar coding skills to make cute puppies, was not Mattel’s finest hour. However, the responses brought out the best of the internet.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
November 21, 2014
Friday 5 — 10.31.2014
1. Benedict Evans demonstrates how mobile is eating the world. It’s worth reading for the astonishing growth metrics, like 80% of all adults in the world owning smartphones by 2020. One larger point is that tech is rapidly moving beyond the tech sector to transform all industries. And for now, that starts mobile first.
2. Product managers are critical in the software industry — and this discipline is spreading as every company develops a software capability. We need more ways to educate people into becoming product managers, as well as to provide ongoing professional development opportunities.
3. Reddit added a crowdfunding capability to allow community members to raise money and support causes they care about. Already an early adopter of cryptocurrencies, Redddit is expanding the suite of services that keep community members happy and engaged on the site.
4. Google now surfaces a sitelinks search box to branded search results — a box that allows you to search a website directly from the Google results page. Here’s how you can disable it.
5. MOOC 1.0 has emerged from its first hype cycle a little worse for wear. How can we ensure that next generation MOOCs will deliver effective and compelling online learning? Here’s a great roundup of lessons to be learned from other online experiences from commerce to social networking.
Weekend fun: Dancing with drones? Someone’s gotta do it, I guess.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
October 31, 2014
Friday 5 — 10.10.2014
1. Google has enhanced its search results with an “In the News” box. These results include blogs and other content sites that are not traditionally indexed as news. This would explain the travesty above, where a Chelsea blog is listed related to a search for Arsenal F.C.
2. Here’s a thoughtful recap and lessons learned from the NYTNow and soon-to-be-shuttered NYT Opinion apps. Being smart about mobile can draw in new and younger audiences, but it’s still a challenge to figure out what users will pay for, and to avoid cannibalizing existing channels with lower priced offerings.
3. Did you ever wonder what the advertisers know about you based on your web habits? Data researcher Jer Thorp paid 10 users $5 each to profile him based on the ads he’d been shown, and shares the results. If you are curious about the data online advertisers are gathering about you, download this Chrome extension, Floodwatch.
4. Creative types proficient in Photoshop or InDesign can make anything look good. For the rest of us looking for ways to improve our graphics, here are 23 useful tools to create images for social media.
5. Diehard location check-in fans may like the new Swarm widget for iOS 8, which lets users check in with a single tap. Foursquare is taking another run at serendipitous in-person socializing with a “nearby friends” feature.
Weekend fun: Jimmy Fallon runs down the pros and cons of Ello, the new ad-free social network.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
October 10, 2014
Friday 5 — 9.26.2014
1. Even with the meteoric rise of social media, search remains a significant driver of traffic for most sites. Google released a helpful, scrolling infographic reviewing the basics of how search works.
2. Visual social network Pinterest is a treasure trove for publishers. Not only a resource for trendspotting, Pinterest can in some cases drive more referral traffic to publishers than Facebook or Twitter.
3. Social media anxiety most often takes the form of FOMO (fear of missing out) — that feeling you get when you realize all your friends are on a fabulous ski weekend while you’re home in your pajamas binge watching True Detective. A new site aims to ease the pain of a different form of social media anxiety — when you fret over your unliked Instagram photos.
4. Are messaging apps taking over your mobile device? Here’s a breakdown of the trends that are sticking (e.g., disappearing messages, ambient messaging) and leading to the app proliferation.
5. If you work in marketing or publishing, chances are you spend some of your time sourcing digital design. 8 tricks to selecting a design partner underscores the value of a designer who understands business goals, and who will stand up to you and your bad ideas.
Weekend fun: The time-honored geek ritual of unboxing a new tech product is re-imagined in Blue Man Group’s video of the iPhone 6. But once unboxed, will it bend? Here’s a roundup of internet reactions to #bendgate.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up to get a weekly email.
September 26, 2014
Next gen mobile: your app data finds you

The news industry is still struggling with the shift to digital, as the leaked New York Times innovation report underscores. Apart from new required competencies like video, data visualization, and analytics that digital transformation demands, there is a similar tectonic shift in reader (user) expectation. News has gone from being a canonical resource that people are expected to consult to a digital, just-in-time service delivered to people wherever they are. It’s now been six years since we first heard, if news is important, it will find me, and news outlets are still striving to realize that vision.

The current expectation that important news will find the user is highly relevant to mobile. Chances are, your handheld device knows everything about you: the location of your favorite restaurant, your movie preferences, and even your fitness habits. And yet in many cases we are still using our phones the way we read print newspapers — consulting them when we need information, and optimizing our home screen (front page). But as people spend more of their mobile time interacting with apps, there is an ever greater opportunity for those apps to take advantage of the data via the software and the hardware to deliver what users want when they are likely to need it.

Yahoo is moving toward contextual search, which would enable them, if granted API access, to provide far more relevant search results informed by apps. And the idea of invisible apps running in the background and serving up information and services on the fly is taking hold. Just as the news industry is responding to the shift in user expectation that the important news must find us, next-generation mobile will require that context-aware, timely information gathered via software and hardware finds us, too.

May 19, 2014