Industry News

I’ve been writing recently about a patent from Google on Direct Answers, and how Google might take those from authoritative sources, using an intent template process (“what are the symptoms for [measles, flu, athlete’s foot,ebola]”) to include many...

I am on the first week of my move from Northern Virginia to Carlsbad California, and I got to witness a historical local event last night. A sign was installed along a highway that goes along the Pacific Coast and through towns as it winds through...

Oh man, Some 2015 Predictions on The Awl is so good. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but if I have to:

No human, for the entirety of 2015, will be convinced of anything but his own rightness by any “explainer” site. They will become extremely popular, fully stocked with “Perfect Response” and “Reasons Why” posts that are first and foremost affirming to the reader, and secondarily intended to demonstrate the rightness and virtue of the sharer. One high-growth post-type in 2015: “You’re...

If you visit Google France at google.fr or Google News France at news.google.fr you will be shown a memorial that has the words "Je suis Charlie...

I’m not a big fan of these types of articles, but I did like Mark Kawano’s point about what makes Apple a successful design organization in 4 Myths About Apple Design, From An Ex-Apple Designer:

It’s actually the engineering culture, and the way the organization is structured to appreciate and support design. Everybody there is thinking about UX and design, not just the designers. And that’s what makes everything about the product so much better … much more than any individual designer...

As is often the case with these things, I just noticed two articles that make very similar points about the quantified self movement. In Quantify Thyself LM Sacasas makes the point that we don’t know what we don’t measure:

Not only do we tend to pay more attention to what we can measure, we begin to care more about what can measure. Perhaps that is because measurement affords us a degree of ostensible control over whatever it is that we are able to measure. It makes self-improvement...

Last year I accidentally became an expert on interviewing. I didn’t want to, but hey, we do what we need to do. I just published some things I learned in the process on A List Apart, in an article called How to Interview. Here’s one piece of advice on how to get companies to email you back…

Send separate, personal emails to each of the likely hiring managers you found. Make it really, really short. Don’t go on about how awesome you are—you’ll get a chance to do that later. Tell them you...

I just finished Clive Thompson’s Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better and really enjoyed it. So much of what we read about technology these days is doom and gloom that I wanted to spend time on something a little more positive. And turns out, there’s much to be positive about.

There are many stand-out moments in the book. One is the exploration of ambient awareness — how social media often makes our in-person connections stronger because we know so...

During the busiest holiday shopping season, Google was making ongoing updates to the Penguin algorithm. There is no disputing that, Google confirmed it.

But since the second week of December...