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Building a Better Search Engine?
Once upon a time, if you needed information your primary sources would have been books (for established, well
understood subjects) and periodicals (for current events and emerging concepts). People have always been good sources too, but they generally weren't as accessible in the old days as they are now.
The Web has eliminated a lot of that paper. But as the number of Web pages increases, it also gets harder to find useful, relevant content. For substantive background information, you need to wade
through pages and pages of results that have been aggregated automatically, rather than reviewed by people. And as good as the ranking algorithms are, lots of people still like to see the opinions of
actual human beings in the mix. (If you're a StumbleUpon user, you're used to seeing the little "S" tag in your search results, showing content that's been recommended by the StumbleUpon community.)
There's a relatively new search tool called Mahalo which includes some interesting cross-searching capabilities, which lets you compare results from the leading engines. More important, though, is that it has human editors involved in evaluating and categorizing. Some subjects have "feature" pages, and on the page for Coffee Cake, you'll find categorized results for Recipes, Blogs & Forums, History & Trivia, On-Line Merchandise, Related Searches and
User Links, as well as a Discussion Forum. It's a bit like what happens in Wikipedia, although there's more structural consistency.
Interesting, and worth a book mark.
Deep or Wide
We've recently started reading Garr Reynolds’ blog on presentation design, and recommend it as a source of good ideas and interesting insights. The blog itself is called Presentation Zen.
In February, Reynolds wrote about the issue of depth and breadth in the design of a business presentation. A lot of presenters have a lot to say (or at least think they do) and try to squeeze too much information into a given time slot. This leads to two problems.
The first is a general erosion of information quality, since audiences are forced into overload-compensation mode. They're getting more information than they need, and perhaps more than they can
understand. The second is that the presenter will tend to accelerate as his or her time runs out, skimming the material and losing the opportunity to reinforce the message or answer questions. Citing
Michael Alley's The Craft of Scientific Presentations, Reynolds suggests that presenters decide up
front whether they need to go deep or wide, and recognize that they probably can't do both.
If you need to put across a deep understanding of the subject matter, you need to put serious limits on
the scope. If you want a big-picture understanding, keep everything at a high level, and don't drill down too far.
The Good Night Lamp
In the January issue of Directions we included a piece on "ambient information," referring to a strategy which moves information out of traditional communication channels and into something that plays a background role in the environment. As an example, we mentioned the wireless Ambient Orb (from Ambient Devices) -- it's an IP-aware gadget that changes color based on variations in designated external events. The settings are controlled through the vendor's website, so the Orb can be set to keep tabs on stock prices, weather conditions, traffic flows and the like.
This month, we came across a gizmo called the Good Night Lamp. It's another ambient device, in which one table-sized lamp, with an
energy-saving bulb, is able to communicate with a number of small "child" lamps that are lit by LEDs. As long as the lamps are within range of a wireless Internet connection, the parent lamp
can communicate with the child lamps anywhere in the world. When the parent is turned on, the children glow red. When it's turned off, the child lamps go out.
The Good Night Lamp is more of a
design concept than a product, with the goal of helping people connect with their loved ones through "sensitive, invisible and intelligent technology." The idea might strike you as cool, or as
strangely creepifying, but it's an interesting example of how the infrastructure of the Web supports new ways of keeping in touch.
Twitter in the Enterprise
It's time to follow up on an earlier Directions article about the application known as Twitter. If you missed that piece, and aren't familiar with it, Twitter is a "micro-blogging" service that lets users send short posts to a Web site, where they're
displayed on a user's profile page and shared with whomever might be interested. The posts are called "tweets," and if you become a "follower" of a Twitter user, you can have their
tweets sent to your RSS reader or cell phone. It seems like a pretty strange idea, to be honest, since tweets are often things like "having meat loaf for dinner." However, some companies are
accepting Twitter as a business tool, with applications in marketing, promotions, operations and general communications.
One blogger has suggested a number of valid uses for an academic environment, which include things like building a sense of community in the classroom, providing
instant feedback for teachers and even improving grammar. Another writer mentions a company that's using Twitter to keep track of field service techs. Instead of calling in with status updates, they send a tweet. That notifies the service manager as well as the other techs, so resources can be scheduled efficiently. Tweets have the immediacy of Instant Messaging, with the added value of group distributions.
One testimonial at the Twitter site describes it as "the telegraph of Web 2.0." It's not for everyone, but you may see a use for it in your portfolio. It can broadcast to many users, on
a subscription basis, in real time. Plus, it's free!
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