Wolfram|Alpha Needs an Open Source Version

I’ve used Wolfram|Alpha for some in the past, but when it comes to actual, useful information, I can’t get it to give me much. It’s not hard to see why there aren’t results for every potential query: most people have strange interests and the few people behind the scenes at Wolfram|Alpha probably aren’t as weird as the rest of us. As clever as their software might be, it’s not going to anticipate people with strange hobbies. What does one do in that case? read more

Interface Design

I stumbled across a website on interface design this evening. It has some good points that deserve to be implemented more often than they have been so far.

I’m especially a fan of implementing Fitts’s law, though I haven’t thought about it quite the same way it’s presented here.

Final Thoughts on Google

The firestorm around Google seems to be dying down quite a bit. Here’s an article written a couple weeks ago during the frenzy about Google and their big ideas. The author has some interesting points about what constitutes a big idea and what does not. Whether or not Google will continue to succeed is an open question, but suffice it to say, the ‘me-too’ style of business growth is usually not overwhelmingly successful.

The Future of Google

For those of you who want to argue that Google is doing just fine (ahem), I refer you to some new articles on the subject. Google may not be in the trouble I originally blogged about, but this article generalizes the difficulties it faces in terms of past internet giants like AOL, and this article reiterates the Twitter Threat discussed in the first article. As I recall, somebody and somebody else have been writing Ubiquity scripts to let them search specific sites from any webpage. Dare I say it, but I think people are finding alternatives to searching with the Old Ways.

Tom’s remarks about One Login to Rule Them All, however, is still valid. I won’t take that away from him.