Stefan on Google’s new calculator feature, and the (perhaps confusing) future of the “one-box” features:

“…what google is now losing (and the bane of all command line interfaces) is any kind of discoverability for all these new functions. I’ll never remember half those features, because there are few visual cues to tell me they’re there, and I can’t be arsed to remember anything. If I could remember stuff, I wouldn’t need sites like google.”

Not unusually, I’m not sure I agree with him. Google’s “one-box” features (generally) look for expressions or formats of information in your query that mean you’re trying to complete a very defined task – like an address, or a mathematical expression. They’re not trying to bind you into the syntax of a programming language or, indeed in many cases leave you with just the returned output of that features – extending (G * mass of earth) / (radius of earth^2) = 9.82085555 m / s into Search for documents containing the terms (G * mass of earth) / (radius of earth ^ 2); as featured on Google.com as an example for instance.

This is a smart (and getting smarter) conversational interface – if you know the language, the syntax of the query that will drop you right next to the answer – it fullfils it. If not, then Google will probably do it’s damnest to guess.

Not much like a unix shell.

» Whitelabel.org: Google Calculator

Tom Dolan has a had a great little idea. Turn Hansard, the daily record of proceedings of the UK’s parliament, into a network-friendly source of microcontent; or a group blog.

He starts with the germ of the idea here:

• BlatantOptimism: Tom Watson is definitely not alone
• BlatantOptimism: Hansard is a Blog – Discuss (pt2)

And then provides a mockup here.

Christina takes a look at a new Amazon innovation – a dropdown that contains your browsing history. Looks like something that might support “The Cycle” – a hypertext pattern of sense-making that Peter Merholz looked at recently.

In analysing the Amazon additions, Christina raises this:

“The question is my usual one– when a designer wildly flaunts conventions, then what? I can’t condemn it out of hand because I haven’t seen it in the usability lab. Conventions are fine, but one never knows when breaking the rules will allow one to leap past the competition. Could this be such a leap?”

I’ve been reading Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” – and thinking about the parallels between Kuhn’s exploration of the role of dogma and convention in scientific discovery; and the practice of design, especially in relation to technology and interface. Christina’s comments very much remind me of the patterns of discussion described in Kuhn’s text. More in a little while.

“…Boktai – the first ever videogame that incorporates sunlight into its gameplay. On the game cartridge is a solar sensor and when your GBA is in the sun, your vampire hunting character’s Solar Gun is charged up, giving you essential ammo.”

» Gamesradar.co.uk: Previews: Boktai

This just in this morning from the BBC News Online tech crew:

“Yesterday afternoon [we] pulled the big red lever to make the CPS start publishing RSS versions of all the NewsOnline indexes on the website.

Examples:

Front Page
http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/front_page/rss091.xml

Cambridgeshire
http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/england/cambridgeshire/rss091.xml

Arts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/entertainment/arts/rss091.xml

News 24
http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/programmes/bbc_news_24/rss091.xml

…and for all of you going away to Glastonbury next weekend, Summer Music Festivals 2003

http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/in_depth/entertainment/2003/summer_music_festivals/rss091.xml
in the UK Edition

And similarly in the World Edition,

Europe
http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/europe/rss091.xml

And Business
http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/business/rss091.xml

Etc.

The more ambitious of you out there should be able to work out the URL’s of any index you want.“

I love those guys.

Since I’ve started running iChatStatus a week ago, 3 people 4 people (Hi Euan!) so far have IM’d me in response to the “now playing in iTunes” status I’ve asked it to display. They reponses have been ones of

• identification: “Hey! I’ve got that song! / I love that! / I was just listening to that”
• mood-divining: “aaah… Queens of the Stone Age, eh? Working? / Beach Boys! Happy about something are we?”

Expression by proxy of the media I consume, ambient, trickling, clouding around me. To my friends, to my buddylist, while I’m busy doing other kinds of nothing.

Should it up-sticks with me and follow me round, this cloud? Just as iTunes never leaves me, pouring itself regularly into it’s iPod EVA suit. If I had a bluetooth cloud of ID3 tags around me would I like strangers to be able to sniff them?

What social advantage would there be to activating this SongGetty?

We often wear the t-shirts of the bands we want people to think we like while we secretly listen to deeply loved but unhip esoteria. Guilty pleasures contradicting our projected persona.

Also, I would ordinarily never play music to myself while in the physical proximity of my buddylist friends – I’d be talking with them I’d hope.

Some edge-cases and markets present themselves – long journeys in the company of friends maybe, opting to broadcast your playlists to others and seize upon coincidences as socially-acceptable interruptions of the natural (and hopefully comfortable) together-alone silences. Or the t-shirt metaphor transfigured: younger folk looking to find common ground in public settings around their media choices.

Betteridj likens it to active-badge tech/concepts pursued by the world and his wife for donkey’s years.

It’s here after a fashion in the form of iChatStatus: scriptable, personal and extensible.

—
[n.b. must finish reading Byron and Nass]

BBC News Online is going to get a new look in the next few days. Editor-in-Chief Mike Smartt makes the >ahem< smart move of explaining to the existing user-base what’s going to be happening. Maybe some more screenshots/illustrations would have been better than a portrait of Mike, but the new design is a real evolutionary continuation and shouldn’t take that much getting used to.

“Our story pages have a new look too and we’re providing more effective links to our wealth of in-depth, analysis and feature material, along with our archive of more than two million items.

The redesign and technical improvements should also mean material downloads much more quickly.

But we’ve made sure the overall character of the site has not been lost and the navigational structure so many of you tell us you value so highly remains pretty much the same.”

Congratulations to Paul Sissons, Maire Flynn, Max Gadney and the rest of the team involved.

» BBC News: “News Online to get a new look”

“Google Is Not A Search Engine. Google is an interface to the structure of the web.

» Istori/log: Google is not a search engine [via Matt Mower’s K-log]

Anil and Victor pitch overlapping Lazyweb ideas in the same week. Interest amongst colleagues might mean maybe I’ll finally get to be a Lazyweb contractor instead of client.

“The Spring Desktop is concept-centric, not file, folder, site, or brand-centric. It’s designed for the way you naturally think.”

» Spring [via interconnected]