Google - Google Beta-testing Desktop Search. ... Google Acquires Keyhole, including a little known program called "EarthViewer". We suspect what's already a stunning integration of Earth's satellite photo-mapping is about to get a whole LOT better. Google lowered the annual subscription to just $29.95 effective immediately!
Google launched Google Print in beta in October, adding to their already massive index the ability to search for content within printed books.
Overture - Click Fraud Update – As the pay-per-click advertising segment of online marketing matures, it's becoming increasingly important that your company's online advertising systems mature in lock-step. Click Fraud Article ... "subscriber" ... "fortune"
Ask Jeeves / Teoma - No recent changes at Ask Jeeves
MSN - MSN Releases Tech Preview #2 of their New Engine Here. Larger Index, Clustering, Caching ... So far MSN is showing us features and usability the other engines have been majoring in for years.
ODP / DMOZ - No changes to report for the past 30 days at ODP.
Yahoo - Yahoo links up with Adobe for Search – Last month Yahoo announced plans to work with Adobe on integrating Yahoo Search into the Adobe Toolbar on their .pdf document viewer.
Yahoo Releases Personal Search Beta – On October 5th Yahoo released their Personal Web Search Beta which allows users to organize their search information, block individual search results, and save search results with notes.
Yahoo recently announced a deal to buy Stata Labs, a company which offers an email search program called Bloomba.
George A. Miller penned a research paper in 1956, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information." It was groundbreaking in its time. In it, Miller hypothesized the human working memory can hold up to seven bits of information, plus or minus two, at once. Often referred to as "Miller's Magic 7," that theory is the basis of many Web page design decisions. Below, some modern day extrapolations and design conclusions rooted in Miller's research:
Give users only seven links (choices) in the active window.
Give users only seven items on the menu bar.
Give users only seven tabs at the top of a Web site page.
Give users only seven items in a pull-down menu.
Give users only seven items on a bulleted list.
Many advances have been made in understanding human memory since 1956. Why does Miller's Magic 7 survive in light of current science? We can't concede that maximizing this informational processing "capacity" is necessary on a Web site.
I want to offer a more current and commonsensical approach to these design element "conclusions." No designer should be bound by a meaningless number rooted in dusty science.
The Boring Giants, Miller's Laws' Biggest Offenders - While studying the 16 top-selling Web sites recently, we wondered, "What do these sites all have in common?"
Our first response was, "They're boring." We also noticed something else.
With a few exceptions, each site had an extraordinary amount of hyperlinks on its home page....
Read the entire article here.
