A few weeks ago, my fiancé and I decided to move the date of our wedding up from April 2010 to September 2009. I have absolutely no idea how to put a wedding together, so I’ve obviously turned to my dear old friend the Internet to find some answers… quickly.

I find myself searching for lists of this and that on a daily basis. Take for instance my bridal quest for the perfect flowers – I’d like to find a list of flower types with a photo and some additional information. Enter Google Squared!

Google Squared is a product that allows users to research information quickly and efficiently by offering a neatly packaged online spreadsheet that pulls information from multiple webpages in response to search queries. So, when I search “flowers,” I receive a comprehensive list of just about every blossom on Earth, which also includes an image, description, genus, order and kingdom. I don’t need the last three tidbits of information, but I do want to know the seasonality of the flowers as it will help me to stay within my wedding budget to use Fall flowers. So, I simply type “season” in the add columns field and can get rid of the unnecessary columns if I choose.

Continue reading »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Over the past couple weeks there has been a bit of excitement around the new iPhone and the resurgence of Palm with the release of the Palm Pre.

The Palm Pre is being looked at by some as Palm’s savior as it’s their first device equipped to compete with the heavyweights of today since the days of the Treo 600 & 700 models.  The Pre boasts a full HTML browser, email access, GPS, WIFI access, music, video and a host of other features on Palm’s new Linux derived operating system.  Analysts are forecasting about 100,000 units were sold in the first weekend of its launch.

The new iPhone 3GS is a an expansion of the previous model (iPhone 3G) with some new features such as video recording/editing, voice control, larger storage, and an upgrade to the processor making it two times faster than the previous model.  Apple has reported a million plus sales of the new phone since its launch this past weekend.  The new 3GS is available for $199 and the 3G model is now being offered for $99.

Continue reading »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This post was written by Chris Copeland and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider, Friday, June 5, 2009

In my last column, I proclaimed search to be going out of business. So what comes next? The answer lies in the question “why?”

Traditional advertising has been in the business of addressing what we know about people and their tendencies. We act based on models of what people do and what that likely means about them in mass. We buy TV to target women in specific demographics with the help of research (focus groups, panels, surveys, and gut instinct) to encourage them to try a specific shampoo that will not only clean their hair, but also create near-orgasmic reactions. Because who doesn’t want a hair care product that will satisfy all needs?

With search marketing, we started to see a shift in advertising that has been well-documented. The days of being tied to push marketing based on what people watched and what those people liked were over. We had a data vault like never before; and inside the vault is the consumer’s expression of intent.

Continue reading »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Digital technology of today is adding new meaning to Moore’s Law. While we can expect technology to get smarter, faster, and smaller just about every 18 months, never did I think that would mean giving a machine human-like quality.

Now, when most of you first read the title of this post, I’m sure one of two things came to mind. If you’re a movie fan ‘The Sixth Sense’ film may have been a first thought. If you’re a Techie, then the wearable gestural interface created by Pranav Mistry and his friends over at the MIT labs, may have been top of mind. Either way, the concepts and ideas drawn from these two very different media formats are similar to the logic behind Wolfram Alpha. The idea of having the ability to formulate, process, and obtain information that is beyond the normal human allowance, a sixth sense, is the premise for both the movie and the science lab experiment, and now it has moved into the world of Search.

The Wolfram Alpha web resource has been created, neither to replace or compete with Google nor to become the next new BETA engine to flop. This new search property was conceived to help expand the scientific and computational capabilities of people. Wolfram Alpha is best suited for a user wanting to know how to compute the circumference of a circle or understand quantum physics, not for someone looking for the best deal on red shoes.

Continue reading »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Once upon a time a company called America Online (AOL) provided their customers with access to the internet, email, desktop wallpapers and some of the first social tools (chat rooms) through a simple portal.  Their web pricing model was “by the minute” and later became unlimited web plans.  AOLs’ most prized feature to users was easy access to the internet.  Users were presented with interesting sites to visit, their email was all in one place, and they could chat with friends on IM or in chat rooms.  In comparison to today it took longer to find what was desired on the web due to slow dial up speeds and pc equipment, lack of tools to find information, products and etc.  AOL was able to build a successful business around helping non text savvy people discover new content on the web, providing an internet starter kit, so to speak.  Later down the road the technology advanced, web content rapidly increased, users became more aware of the web’s potential, and pricing to access the web became more competitive.  These evolutions created the necessity for web browsers which allow users to move easily about the web and discover new areas on their own terms. Thus, the launch of Netscape and Internet Explorer in the mid 1990s made this concept of browsing the web a reality.   At this point user behavior started to evolve into what we see now, search engine navigation.  Starting from the mid to late 90s Yahoo and Google stepped in to assist users in finding the information they were accustomed to finding in libraries, newspapers, magazines, and etc at their beck and call (search query).

Continue reading »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!