Regarding Bing: Microsoft should invent a new category

Ever since the Bing favicon leaked, people have been wondering what Bing is, even though we don't have much to go on besides a name and a favicon. Though details are still sketchy, based on what I've heard, Bing is not bringing anything new to the table. Rumor has it that Bing's basic "innovation" is a search results page showing several different types of search results (images, links, news stories, etc). That kind of thing has been around for a long time and none has really succeeded in one-upping the power of typing in something and getting what you want in the top 3 results 9 times out of 10, which is what Google gives me. Even if Microsoft can 100% replicate that, they are not going to compete with the fact that Search=Google in almost everyone's mind.

Instead of trying to compete in Search, Microsoft should create a new category that it can own. It doesn't matter if in fact this new category is 90% the same thing as Search is currently. What matters is that they should open a window of time where, if people think "I want to Search" they will go to Google, but if people think "I want to ____", they will go to Microsoft. And eventually, that ____ can supersede "Search" as the way to get around on the Internet.

So the question is, what is ____?

There are a few possibilities. First in my mind would be "Explore". Microsoft already "owns" this word. "To Explore" is similar to "To Search", but whereas when you search you are looking for something in particular, when you Explore you are simply looking around in a particular area to learn things. Often when I go to Google I am intending to Explore, in which case I really don't want the results ordered quite so perfectly-- I'd like to stumble onto something I wouldn't otherwise notice. Social news engines like Digg bring some of this to the table, but it is harder to do just "look around" the Internet about a particular topic that is not news based without getting locked into a very well trodden path (Wikipedia, etc.). Microsoft "Web Explore" could be a technology that helps me discover the undiscovered gems on the WWW. If they could work out a very simple web UI (which seems to be a challenge for Microsoft these days) that helps me do this, I may at least bookmark that page in my PC browser.

Another possibility would be "Find". Apple kind of owns this concept via OS X's "Finder". But I don't think they've quite dominated the word like Google has "Search". "To Find" is also similar to "To Search", but implies that you'd actually find the thing you are looking for instead of just searching for it. I am not sure "Find" is quite differentiated enough from "Search" that people wouldn't instantly call foul and ignore this altogether. But it would be worth considering.

One more possibility would be "Locate". A bit less vernacular than "Find" but otherwise a similar concept. This could be leveraged heavily in Mobile and Local Search, a category that is just beginning to really blossom. I imagine location based and more generally context based searching would be key.

Speaking of context, some other concepts that Microsoft could bring to the table that Google would be at least a step behind on would be using knowledge of what the user is currently doing on their PC to drive search results (queue anti-trust concerns). It could notice that when I have Word and Visio open the search results I tend to select are related to academic topics, whereas when I have Eclipse, Sql Studio and Outlook open I am more likely to select Java, CSS, Javascript, and SQL related results. Since my major is Computer related, it wouldn't be that big of a difference for me, but I can imagine it would be fairly different for others.

Anyway, if Microsoft's "Bing" tries to attack Google head on via trying to take over "Search", they will lose. But there is absolutely no reason they cannot get everyone to move from "Search" to an entirely new category.

(Yes, I know this is all based on assumption combined with tell-me-something-I-don't-know, but still I hope an interesting set of ideas)

jFunk prototype

I had a little bit of time recently to create a prototype for jFunk, which I have hosted now on google code projects: http://code.google.com/p/jfunk/. jFunk will be a jQuery-like Javascript utility for searching JSON/Javascript objects.

jFunk will allow you to retrieve (and soon, manipulate) objects within complex JSON or Javascript objects. The design of the jFunk API will closely parallel the jQuery API, replicating it exactly except where the differences between DOM and Javascript make replication nonsensical.

The current script is in an extremely rudimentary, throwaway prototype form, provided simply for exploratory purposes.

• I would not recommend trying jFunk unless you are familiar with jQuery, otherwise this will not make much sense
  
• This will only be appropriate with deep, complex Javascript/JSON structures
  
• It has no expectation of good performance
  
• The code is not "designed" currently, simply cowboy coded until it did some useful proof of concept things. So its ugly, and probably buggy!
  
• It does not avoid looping structures, if a parent contains a child which contains a reference to it's parent, a loop will occur and lock your browser!
  

However, depending on level of interest and available time, a properly architected version will be written.

So far, only these selectors are supported:

    *
    name[atr]
    name[atr=val]
    name:first
    name:last
    #id
    .class
    parent > child

I recommend that you always use > between known parents and their direct children, to avoid unnecessary deep searching.

Some examples of use:

var Food={
    fruits: [
        { name: "Banana", color: "Yellow" },
        { name: "Apple", color: "Red" },
        { name: "Grapefruit", color: "Orange" },
        { name: "Kiwi", color: "Green" }
        ],
    vegetables: [
        { name: "Carrot", color: "Orange" },
        { name: "Turnip", color: "Purple" },
        { name: "Rutabaga", color: "Yellow" },
        { name: "Sweet Potato", color: "Orange" }
        ]
    };

var orangeStuff=jF("*[color=Orange]",Food).get();
var orangeVeg  =Jf("> vegetables > *[color=Orange]",Food).get();

//orange stuff is now [{name:"Grapefruit",color:"Orange"},{name:"Carrot",color:"Orange"},{name:"Sweet Potato",color:"Orange"}]
//orange veg is now [{name:"Carrot",color:"Orange"},{name:"Sweet Potato",color:"Orange"}]

Stackoverflow - Please add message envelope to your Flair, and make the URL for Flair based on user name

I wanted to create a iGoogle gadget to display my current stackoverflow stats so that I wouldn't keep obsessively checking the main page (I am really just now getting into SO). So I create this stackoverflow status gadget:

And posted it to stackoverflow. All this does is embed an iframe to stackoverflow.com and scroll it so that the status block is available.

Anyway, then someone pointed me to the user flair, which I didn't know about. I should probably change my gadget to use user flair instead, which will be a much lighter load in SO.  BUT...

I really want to see my message envelop status, that is my biggest point.  And flair doesn't show this.

It would also be nice if the flair URL be something that can be constructed using the user's SO user name instead of the user id.

Anyway, since there is no-where on the flair page to add a comment, this is my attempt at communicating this request to Stackoverflow.

Stack Overflow Dev Days - Seattle, Oct 21

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/05/12.html

jump on it!

Stupeflix - Video from anything, so awesome

http://www.stupeflix.com/wikivideos/stupeflix/

This app lets you ingest content from elsewhere and create awesome videos automatically.  Or, you can get really down and dirty editing an XML file to configure transitions, order, etc.  Just take a look...  All I can say is "wow".

Don't be afraid to say "I don't know"

This past week in Computer Forensics in the Law we were covering the rules for expert witnesses.  One of the rules when on the witness stand, and several variations thereafter, was "If you don't know the answer, say so."  This is good advice in many other areas of life, no place else more than in the computing industry.  Our industry changes so fast, there is no way anyone should posture expertise in any but a few areas.

I am reminded of this when I read of Jeff Atwood (coding horror, stack overflow) getting his password found by someone else.  I love that Jeff came out and just said "check this out, I screwed up, don't make the samePublish Post mistake".

Citations

I have found a good resource for producing proper MLA citations: the MLA Citation Generator.  Just select the type of citation, fill out the relavent fields, and you are done.  One caveat is that you must format the date strings properly yourself (e.g. 3 "Mar 2009").

As an aside, why don't books include the MLA and other relavent citation formats in the front of the book?  I hate having to find the publisher, city and date, it is sometimes buried amongst other things.  Maybe I'm just lazy but this seems like an easy thing for them to do.