Industry News

Don’t want your content to be included in many of Google’s vertical search services, such as Google Shopping or Google+ Local? Google’s got a new tool for that, a result of its agreement earlier this year with the US Federal Trade Commission over anti-trust charges.

Announced on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, the new tool is located within Google Webmaster Central and allows publishers to keep their content out of: Google Shopping Google+ Local Google Flights Google Hotels Google...

Jared Spool looks at different redesign strategies in Extraordinarily Radical Redesign Strategies. Whenever time and budget allow it, I believe the “realign” strategy — what Jared calls “The Glacial-Speed Approach” — works best. This strategy relies on continuous, incremental change to reach your site goals:

The beauty of making small changes means that you never have high risk. A menu item here, a new form field there. Slowly the interface morphs, and if you make a mistake, well, you...

In March 2011, two years ago, Google introduced a blocked sites feature that allows searchers to block unwanted sites via Google's search interface. In December 2012, the feature stopped working and today, Google posts a message that blocked sites is discontinued...

Jason Kottke once said that The Onion is often the most emotionally honest media source we have, and that was proven once again with David Ferguson’s recent article there called Find The Thing You’re Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life:

Because when you get right down to it, everyone has dreams, and you deserve the chance—hell, you owe it to yourself—to pursue those dreams when you only have enough energy to change out of your work clothes...

Frank Chimero talks about the misuse of the word “timeless” as it relates to design in Let’s talk about timeless design. Here’s one of his complaints:

Why is timeless design always the goal? What’s wrong with making something look like it was made when it was made? Why do designers all of a sudden want to exist outside of time, like Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap? [...]

Other people: can you help me understand what is happening in this world of ours? I want to know what technology...

I recently wrote about the value of exposing kids to technology, so I really enjoyed reading Hanna Rosin’s The touch-screen generation:

To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter or teach her to speak Chinese, or alternatively that it will rust her neural circuitry—the device has been out for only three years, not much more than the time it takes some academics to find funding and gather research subjects. So what’s a parent to...

The commercial in the middle of an episode of “Worst Cooks In America” this weekend caught me off-guard. Was that an ad for the Google Search App? It sure was, and the restart of Google’s campaign to push its cross-platform search tool.

It was the first time I spotted this particular campaign on TV, though Google tells me they’ve been running since the fall. That’s true, but those seemed to have stopped soon after the New Year, and now the campaign has begun again, it looks like.

Of...

I haven’t seen this before, It would appear that Google have started replacing some organic positions with Results for similar searches : https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=how+to+ask+a+guy+for+his+jacket Dave Google changes – Results...

I know there are more important things in the world to get annoyed with, but I completely agree with Matthew J.X. Malady’s rant about email signoffs:

After 10 or 15 more “Regards” of varying magnitudes, I could take no more. I finally realized the ridiculousness of spending even one second thinking about the totally unnecessary words that we tack on to the end of emails. And I came to the following conclusion: It’s time to eliminate email signoffs completely. Henceforth, I do not...