Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality. The Future Of Television And The Digital Living Room.
Evolution. Requiem for Detroit. Tech. Musique. How Google Got Its New Look. Every day 268Â million people use Google (GOOG) to search for something. The query goes in, the company's software delivers back the most relevant links. The interaction is so simple—and the hidden calculation behind the results so complex—that it's no wonder people tend not to notice much about the process. Who bothers to ask the ingredients of a magic formula? For all of its experiments with maps, books, e-mail, and social networking, Google is still an empire built on search. Since Google's 1998 debut, the search results page—where a home page query is returned with 10 suggested links on the left and multiple advertiser links on the right—has been through seven subtle redesigns.
Google has long had advanced search capabilities, but they were difficult to find. Given that the shift of a few pixels can affect Google's profits, why would the company ever mess with the most successful product in the history of the Internet? It's not just the look that's been updated. 7 must-reads for entrepreneurs. (Editor’s note: Javier Rojas is a managing director leading U.S. investment activities for Kennet Partners. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.) If you’re an entrepreneur, odds are you’re insanely busy. You may welcome constructive suggestions to improve your business, but don’t really have time to hunt for answers.
The good news is there are plenty of great books on the market that can help make a difference. No time to read? I love reading: the value you get from an insightful book amazes me. That said, it can be a challenge deciding what to read and how to apply it. But no source applies judgment and makes recommendations specifically for entrepreneur readers like myself (and, presumably, you) – readers who change technology, science and learning.
The other issue is figuring out how to apply what you read. We’ll kick off the reviews tomorrow. Are you making or losing money with marketing automation? Hiring a Programmer for Your Startup. Any hiring decisions you make at the early stages of a business are important, but finding the right people with the right technical skills is particularly crucial. To that end, serial entrepreneur and CD Baby founder Derek Sivers recently wrote a guide - "How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen" - on his blog. Sivers's post is a step-by-step guide to advertising and hiring, but it also serves as a good model for planning ideas and tackling achievable project milestones. Version 1.0 The most important point, perhaps: make sure to crystallize your idea, then simplify it down to a succinct assignment that a programmer can undertake.
Sivers urges you to "Dream the big dream of everything your site/service/company might be some day, and write it all down. Hire for Milestone 1 of Version 1.0 "Write down every thing you know this Version 1.0 needs to do. Next Steps for Hiring a Programmer 1. How I Graduated from Harvard, Turned Down Google, Got a Job On T. How To Use Photos To Sell More Online - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement As a photographer and UX designer, I pay particular attention to the effectiveness of photography when I’m testing with users. Regardless of the context, users rarely fail to comment on or be influenced by photography when shopping online.
This article pulls together principles from psychology, marketing, UX design and photographic theory. It provides a set of principles to follow when commissioning and editing photography and when planning and designing profitable e-commerce user experiences. Show Off Product Benefits The best way to sell products is to let them sell themselves. Consider the Gorilla Pod shown below. Don’t Give Reasons Not to Buy One client sold flowers online, and many customers were buying flowers for hospitalized relatives. Create an Immersive Experience Photographs have the potential to elicit an emotional response. Make ‘em Laugh Photos have the capacity to entertain as much as to inform. Educate and Inform Tell a Story Highlight Innovation Don’t Mislead Users. 10 Tips for Designing HTML Emails. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, HTML emails are a wildly popular marketing tool and you will almost definitely come across clients that want you to build them. If you don’t know anything about HTML emails, they’re annoying to develop and break all the rules you’ve ever learned as a web designer, but being able to code them is a valuable skill to possess.
Today we’ll look at ten quick and easy tips to get beginners started on the road to creating beautiful and functional emails. #1 Use Tables Wait what? Didn’t we abandon non-semantic table-based designs ages ago? Yep, and now you get to experience the joy all over again. Unfortunately, most email clients don’t support a plain old CSS layout like you’re used to. If you’re unfamiliar with table-based layouts, here’s a simple example. Table Tools If you want an easy way to build the basic structure of an HTML table, check out the free generators below. #2 Use Inline CSS HTML emails do support limited CSS, but you can’t use an external style sheet.
Apple Nation. Guardian Viral Video Chart: World Cup 2010 meets Lord of the Rin. Nike's big-budget World Cup 2010 video will long rank among the best in commercial video virals, but there's an independently-produced World Cup-themed video that's touching 2m views. This week's top viral offering comes in the guise of Lord of the Rings (always a winner).
"You have my sword," "You have my bow," "And my axe," "...and my vuvu-". You'll just have to watch it. Also, who knew Europop was more annoying than vuvuzelas? In other loosely lager-related news, Carlsberg had better watch their commercial fiefdom because Heineken have pulled together a couple of chucklers. Elsewhere, we have the latest (real, we think) iteration of those desktop dancing babies. Guardian Viral Video Chart. 1 Gandalf goes to the World CupUnlike the Nike offering, you don't have to like football – or Lord of the Rings, for that matter – to appreciate this vuvuzela-laced treat. 2 Reporter window break fail"All it takes is a matter of seconds" ... to see watch this video and see where it's heading. Global Trade And 'Twilight' - Forbes.com. Smarter Than You Think - Computers Make Strides in Recognizing S.
The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet | Magazine. Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting. Chris Anderson explains how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of capitalism. And Michael Wolff explains why the new breed of media titan is forsaking the Web for more promising (and profitable) pastures. Who’s to Blame: Us As much as we love the open, unfettered Web, we’re abandoning it for simpler, sleeker services that just work. by Chris Anderson You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. This is not a trivial distinction. A decade ago, the ascent of the Web browser as the center of the computing world appeared inevitable. But there has always been an alternative path, one that saw the Web as a worthy tool but not the whole toolkit.
“Sure, we’ll always have Web pages. Who’s to Blame: Them Chaos isn’t a business model. 10 Inspiring TED Talks for Startups. The mission of TED (Technology Education Design) is to promote "ideas worth spreading. " And as such, there is plenty of material that entrepreneurs - folks definitely interested in spreading their ideas - can find inspiring in the recordings available on TED's website. We've gone through the archives and hand-picked some of our favorite TED talks for startups.
Granted, it's hard to select just ten to feature here out of the 700-some-odd videos available. So if your favorite isn't listed, be sure to leave us a comment. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.