Industry News

Brad Frost’s article on the Techcrunch redesign is a great case study of a modern responsive design process. A few things stood out for me, and remain open questions that I wish I could ask Brad about.

First, there is no mention of user research. There was a kick-off meeting, with some Design Studio work, but how did they identify user needs, and why was there no user testing on their prototypes? That’s a bit perplexing.

Second, it’s really nice to see Brad take a more nuanced stance on...

Daniel Jalkut discusses the rate of software/app updates in Stagnation Or Stability?:

As an onlooker, it’s easy to associate dramatic change and motion with competence, and quiet refinement with laziness. We must draw on our own experiences attempting to build great things to appreciate how much work takes place in stillness, to have faith that even though things may appear stagnant, a benefit of frictionlessness is resulting. An app at rest may be in that long, arduous phase of becoming...

When Microsoft’s next-generation gaming console, the Xbox One, comes out on Friday, it will arrive with Bing built-in to power a range of searches from games to music to television programs — and searches you can do just by speaking to the Xbox. Today, Bing shared a preview of how this will work.

On the Bing blog, Microsoft highlighted some of the searches Bing will be able to perform, writing: When we watched Star Trek decades ago, the idea of talking to a computer seemed like pure science...

SES — formerly Search Engine Strategies — is about to undergo another name change, this time to “ClickZ Live.” The news comes from an email that Incisive Media sent to various contributors.

From the email: Tomorrow is a big day for ClickZ and its sister brands Search Engine Watch and SES, and as our valued contributors, we wanted you to hear our big news first. In a natural transition that recognizes the ever-evolving changes taking place in the digital marketing industry and the more...

We don’t know why yet, but YouTube has gone down — the home page showing only an error page saying that “a team of highly trained monkeys” is looking at the situation.

Here’s what’s being shown...

For two years running, Google’s broken major promises about search. It began doing paid inclusion in 2012, which it once called “evil.” This year, it’s experimenting with banner ads it said would never be allowed. Both represent major philosophical shifts for the company about search, but shifts it has largely avoided explaining. Does that erode user trust?

That’s the focus of my column at Marketing Land this week, Google’s Broken Promises & Who’s Running The Search Engine?

It looks at...

Some of the automated tracking tools for detecting shifts in Google's search results and thus showing evidence of a Google update went haywire on Thursday, November 14th.

Mozcast reported 102 degrees...

Rob Horning’s Google Alert for the Soul is a very dense read, but don’t let that put you off. It’s an in-depth, well-written exploration of how social media affects our sense of identity and authenticity. In particular, Rob discusses the idea of the “data self”, where our identity starts to come from the data that different social media sites collects about us:

The data self no longer seeks meaning through action; it seeks to be processed into meanings. It’s available for audit and...

Andrew Romano’s The Beatles Succeeded Through Talent, Ambition, and a Lot of Arrogance is part takedown of Malcolm Galdwell’s “10,000 hours” rule, part Beatles history:

The Beatles’ secret ingredient was arrogance.

I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. Arrogance — a kind of foolish, adolescent self-belief; an ignorant, intuitive certainty that your way is the right way — is the root of all great art. Without it, talent and timing aren’t enough. We all have a dash of it when...