David Beach's Blog

Google Global Navigation... Genius!

OMG! Google's done it again! Global navigation! I can't believe it! I can now get to my gmail from the homepage? Freakin' awesome! And then from Gmail, I can get to some other place?? Holy smokes. Those guys are some kind of super freaky genius people. And then photos in search results?? And video? I have chills. "Universal" Search!!! Is there another word that describes this better than that? How about Jumbo-colossal-awesome-super-duper Search!!!! Yay!

Actually in all seriousness. The time line search in experimental is very sweet. But I'm surprised about one thing... Since Udi is there, why aren't they going to an all side by side column result?

Oh wait.. "we are not making any announcments at this time."

*Snark Off

Search Jackassery

I wrote this whole thing about this and this. But I decided to bite my tongue and let Jeremy, Qi and Eckart, and Caterina do my talking for me. This is good too.

I only have this to say. All I know is what I'm being asked to do every single day... bust my ass to build the best search experience ever. I also know that neither Google nor Yahoo! have come close. I've said this before and of course it's true, what's been created and developed so far is nothing compared to what will be. I can only speak from my perspective, but I know for a fact that Yahoo! understands this and is completely dedicated to the vision of providing the absolute best search experience. But we're going to do it on our terms, not Google's or anyones. To think otherwise is a joke. And those that jerked their knees have greatly miscalculated us... or really have way too much time on their hands.

 

Yub Nub

I think I might have my new home page. YubNub. At the very least, it should be at the top of my favorites, My Web, or top of mind when online. Yubnub.org is a command line  web app that allows users to use the command line to do a variety of tasks (such as search). It's also open so others can submit their own command functions.  It's been around for awhile, but I decided to write about it because I found myself using it more and more. It's a matter of convenience. Mike Holzer turned me on to it before I went to India, and I haven't stopped since.

It was created by Jon Aquino from Victoria, British Columbia. What is it with these British Colombian's? They have nothing better to do than create killer apps?

Check it out if you haven't. I think you might enjoy. The command for Yahoo! is "y"

Yahoo! Shopping is "yshop"

Plus I think "Yub Nub" is what those freakin' Ewoks sang during that last scene of Return of the Jedi... Don't know if there is a connection, but either way that's pretty damn geeky.

Initial Thoughts on My Web 2.0

I'm sitting in the Bangalore office playing with My Web 2.0. This has been kept under wraps up until now, even to other Search Y! employees. So this is my first time looking at it and playing with it.

I think I'm going to have to let it grow in order to comment on its usefulness. Because the power of this depends on a large social network and user base.  I'll also have to weed myself past Ken Norton's Blog links...  Just kidding Ken, I must have happened to sign in as you were using it.

The tool is nice, but I really see the benefit being outside of the My Web interface. Where this shines is within Yahoo! Search results. Seeing matching saved results from my social network has tremendous value. As long as the results are as relevant or more relevant than the regular results. But that might be tricky.

Here's an example: I searched for "How to buy a digital camera" the my web results looked something like this:

My Web: 7 Results for how to buy a digital camera

• - Blogs Will Change Your Business - Saved by don l  - Details
• - The top tech news and technology headlines from Yahoo! Ne... - Saved by Zhichen Xu  - Details
• - The Internet Stock Blog: Yahoo to acquire Six Apart? - Saved by don l  - Details
• - See all 7 results . . .

Not so helpful yet. And I don't even know who these people are. So it appears to be true that the results are only as good as your social network.

Like I said... I think I'm going to have to wait and see.

The funny thing is, I can see how this could get competitive. I mean between people in your social network. Who links to the coolest sites? Who has the most links? Who tags the best? Why am I not in this persons contact list? Heh.

A couple of more comments before I head to a meeting... I wish the functionality of adding a saved site was in-line... it takes too long for the pop up to load... editing and tagging should be in-line as well... I don't like having to place a comma between tags... what the hell are tags anyway?... the majority of yahoo users will have no clue... does this have mass appeal?... i want to see my own saved stuff in my community view, this is the same problem 360 has with it's main page, you can't see your own additions... there's more... but again, let's let it grow. I know Yahoo! is not done with this.

-beach

All Your Search are Belong to Us

Yahoo! Research released a quick and dirty answer to Become.com a few days ago. Yahoo! Mindset is a search engine that combines research with shopping results and allows the user to control the view or define their intent by use of a slider. Less research and more shopping... or the other way around. The results regenerate on the fly. This is very reminiscent of a product I manage called SmartSort. All good. Immediately, mindset improves upon what Become and other shopping engines have been working on. It allows the user to control the experience and to better understand what are shopping results and what are research results (and what are in between). That's a good thing. Power to the people.

Okay gotta run.
-beach

Google Has Jumped the Shark

Nice little article from the Guardian in the UK about how Yahoo! is winning in their eyes. Also the Search Engine Watch awards were "handed" out today. Seems to be some momentum here. Next year Y! Shopping search will move from second to first. Stone cold lock.

By the way, when was the "tipping point" for the term "jump the shark?"

-beach

Off and Running: New A9 Functionality

Good day for a first official post... Jeff B. and A9 announced today at Etech new functionality that allows users to add their own "columns" of search-able content to their result view. They want to open up their experience by allowing any content creator with search functionality the ability to syndicate their search through A9's system. They already offer dozens of choices including, flickr, New York Times, Wikipedia, "Top Blogs", furl, Google sponsored links and some small e-commerce providers... You can see this developing into a My Yahoo! for search.

I really like their button interface. It's very clean and I feel comfortable using it. But I  see it becoming information overload pretty quickly. One set of results is difficult enough to sort through and I don't see them solving that problem yet. They still offer the typical display of google SR. It gets even more difficult when you add more columns. The results squish together and become almost unreadable.

Question of the moment... why can't you search through Amazon's entire catalog of products with A9?

-beach