Industry News

The Google Japan Webmaster Blog announced that they have penalized a link network there for trying to manipulate Google search results rankings...

In a journal article for Computational Culture Erica Robles-Anderson and Patrik Svensson presents a scholarly critique of PowerPoint, and it is fantastic. It’s long and in-depth and the rare academic article that is a joy to read. From the conclusion of “One Damn Slide After Another”: PowerPoint at Every Occasion for Speech:

PowerPoint is just one example of the oft-overlooked conditioning of knowledge production. The software profoundly shaped basic social expectations, technical...

Jeremy Keith writes about the onboarding process of the site The Session in his post Words of welcome. He shows a series of screen shots of simple messages that teaches users how to be good citizens on the site. Keith closes with this:

> No intricate JavaScript; no smooth animations; just some words on a screen encouraging a human connection.

Design words to live by.

I am sure you've heard the news that Google's head of search, Amit Singhal, has announced on Google+ that after 15 years he is leaving the company. He is retiring. Why...

Despite its ridiculous name I’ve become quite fond of the POSSE movement (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere). It’s pretty easy to hook up and automate, so I’ll just mention the basics (and then move on to the problem child): RSS through FeedPress (they’re awesome). FeedPress pushes each post to the site’s Twitter account. IFTTT watches the RSS feed and pushes each post to LinkedIn.

I can add more things through IFTTT, but I think that’s all I need for now. Except for...

Ben Thompson wrote a characteristically astute analysis of How Facebook Squashed Twitter. The whole essay is worth reading, but it’s this part in particular that stood out for me:

Facebook has developed its own interest graph that is far more powerful and effective and easier-to-use than Twitter’s ever was. Yes, Twitter still owns niches like NBA Twitter, and news hounds like myself (and most of you reading this article) will continue to find it essential, but for nearly everyone else...

Well, January was a super busy month probably because of the code freeze as Matt Cutts explained. We had tons of Google updates earlier this month but all were part of the core algorithm. Google told us Panda is part of the core ranking algorithm now but it doesn't change much of anything.

In An End to Parking? Clive Thompson writes about an aspect of self-driving cars that I haven’t seen before: the impact it will have on urban design. In particular, the amount of space we need for parking should change dramatically:

Robot cars could also drive much more closely to one another, packing far more vehicles onto a street. […]

What’s more, they’d never need to park. At the University of Texas-Austin, Kara Kockelman—a professor of transportation engineering—modeled...

Katie Notopoulos writes about an extremely annoying marketing trend in Guilt And Shame As A UI Design Element—opt-out messages that make you feel bad about opting out:

The worst shame offender of all, however, is quickly becoming the mailing list opt-out guilt trip. When visiting a website, a pop-up implores you to sign up for their fantastic mailing list. The only way to get rid of this list is to click on the fine print at the bottom. But too often, this doesn’t merely say “Opt out”...