Google’s Data Plot Thickens with Knowledge Graph

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Google’s Data Plot Thickens with Knowledge Graph

I vividly remember a night back when I was in college. It was 3am and I was sitting at my computer, 20-page essay on Leonardo DiVinci due at 9am and pulling my hair out and yelling “Argh! Why don’t you get what I mean, Google!?”

Thankfully, those days are in the past for me…and for Google. This morning, Google announced that it will be rolling out its new Knowledge Graph interface over the next couple of days. The Knowledge Graph attempts to automatically sift through the vastness of the web the way people do.

Luckily, the countless hours we have all spent surfing around Google, getting lost, and finding ourselves have not been in vain. The Knowledge Graph technology is made possible through Google’s analysis of the trillions (yup, trillions) of searches and user behavior.

This technology will help improve your search experiences in three ways:

You can narrow your search results to single meanings of words, names, or phrases.
To your right, you’ll see an extremely user-friendly panel with summary of the most relevant content on your search topic.
You can discover new and relevant information without falling down a never-ending rabbit hole.

As Google says, “We’ve always believed that the perfect search engine should understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want.” Soon you will be able to find the answer to the next question before you even knew you wanted to ask it.

We all want faster access to data, but the connection and relevancy of it is what evolves information into knowledge. I think Google gets this. The days of asking Jeeves are over but a new era of knowledge exploration is definitely upon us. I can’t wait to give it a try.

Project Glass: See The World Like Our Robot Overlords

Google announced Project Glass this week and revealed the prototype for a new personal communication device that would encapsulate pretty much every Google program in a pair of futuristic glasses. Getting organized has never been more fashionable!

They aren’t really glasses per se, but a device worn on the head with a small screen above the right eye. The screen flashes information on cue, allowing users to set up meetings, get directions, take pictures, and video chat. It uses voice command to translate spoken commands into actions.

Google released this video to show what this product could eventually do. If it works, it could be big, really big. Pushing Google to the front of the pack in the personal communication device market. It even hints at artificial-intelligence…yes please!

Like most new technology announcements these days, it touts the ability to help users stay more connected and engaged with their world. The pictures of people wearing the prototype, however, make it look distracting…isolating, even. I guess the first cell phone user must have looked pretty weird too…

Sadly, you won’t be able to get these sweet specs at a mall kiosk anytime soon. A Google spokesperson said that it is unlikely that the glasses will be available to consumers anytime before 2013.

Free Photoshop CS6 Beta

This past Thursday, Adobe released Photoshop CS6 beta with re-engineered design tools, content-aware patching, a sleek and modern interface, and a considerable update to its speed due to the Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine which allows previously sluggish tasks (Transform, Liquify, Puppet Warp and others) to take effect in real-time.

Winston Hendrickson, VP of Products at Adobe, had this to say: “Photoshop CS6 will be a milestone release that pushes the boundaries of imaging innovation with incredible speed and performance. We couldn’t wait to share this beta of Photoshop CS6 with our customers and are looking forward to hearing from them and seeing the ways they are incorporating the beta into their daily creative workflows.”

Our Thoughts…

The reaction to another CS version usually falls on one of two extremes. Either folks are frustrated that their version, which they just dropped a few grand on, is now officially out of date, or there are those that relish diving into new features, changes, and updated interface design. We are definitely part of the latter group and we’re pumped to try out the new updates even though the past several revisions haven’t been anything to write home about. In the last couple iterations, Adobe seemed to be piling on features, MS Office style, to try and appeal to everyone and it seemed they didn’t focus on making the basics better. With this latest version it’s very clear, after a few hours with the beta, that the main goal was to do exactly that: focus on the basics and build based on how the majority of designers use the program on a daily basis.

Here at the office, we’re excited to dive in further and we’re planning on having a follow up post titled: ‘Was the Hype Right?’ (hmmm, that sounds pretty corny…working title). If you’re like us and can’t wait to try it out, Mac users can pick it up if they have a GB of RAM free and a multicore Intel processor. PC folks need at least a 2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. The Photoshop CS6 beta is available as a free download from Adobe’s website and the release version is expected to launch by the middle of 2012.

How much is your anonymity worth on the web?

Google has launched Screenwise, a 100% voluntary project that attempts to nail down internet usage statistics from normal, everyday users, rather than the ‘power-users’ that are typically monitored and seem to have the loudest voice. Google is willing to pay these regular Joes throughout the monitoring process as well, albeit via relatively meager Amazon gift cards.

What’s the catch? Well, once you opt in as a panelist, your every click around the vast interwebs will be captured by a browser extension and sent back to the Google mothership, to help them better understand how everyday folks use the web.

If you’re not a conspiracy theorist, or worried about being a part of a broad cross-section (and you’re at least 13 years old), you could have signed up to be a panelist through the Screenwise website. However, at the time of writing, there has been an overwhelming interest for this program and Google is urging those interested to “please come back later for more details”. If you got in early or the program opens back up, Google plans to reward panelists with a $5 Amazon gift card for the first month of tracking and another $5 gift card for every three months thereafter.

To take it a step further, of the folks that have already signed up, a handful have been approached to install a small black box to their home modem called a Screenwise Data Collector (SDC). Having an SDC box in your home will track your entire home network usage, no matter the time of day, chosen browser, or device you surf on. While more intrusive, the SDC program does award participants $20 for every month they participate and an initial $100 for starting the program.

So how do you feel about every keystroke, click, hover, or late-night Amazon impulse being tracked and recorded to provide the common user a better experience on the internet?

Flexible Phone From the Future

We’re suckers for the newest ‘hotness’ or what could be the next big thing, so when we stumbled on Nokia’s newest R&D project we were fascinated.

The HumanForm is a bizarre, tear-dropped shaped, future phone concept that mixes the implausible with very real nanotechnology developments that Nokia has dropped over $4 billion on in the past year. As successor to the Morph, the HumanForm idea moves in the direction of a pipe-dream with just a hint of reality. Flexible, transparent displays are still exciting, but the hodgepodge of features in the HumanForm makes it hard for us to take seriously as a futuristic evolution of the smartphone.

Really, all this does is make us frik’n giddy for the next announcement and start craving Marty’s self-drying jacket next.

Video Killed the Merchandise Stand

Instead of wasting time on YouTube watching a video of a chimp riding a Segway, you can now use it to do something important…like buy a Maroon 5 water bottle!

YouTube announced that it will soon launch The Merch Store, a coalition of eCommerce veterans that will give musicians the ability to sell digital downloads, merchandise, and even concert tickets directly from their YouTube channel.

Details are still rather fuzzy on the split of the sales. YouTube has assured artists that they will make the same amount whether they go through The Merch Store or the affiliate alone.

With 3 billion (with a b) videos watched every day; it’s an obvious path for the Google-owned company to follow. I’m optimistic that The Merch Store has the potential to transform the way musicians use YouTube. We’ll see if users are as quick to give up their credit card numbers as they are their coffee breaks.

Sony (and Gravitate) goes responsive

With the countless devices that can now get online, web designers have no choice but to create multiple versions to accommodate the various screen sizes accessing their sites. Enter responsive web design, a practice in which a site responds to the users screen size and serves up appropriately-sized and -positioned content on the fly, eliminating the need to develop separate versions.

Responsive web design is making headlines and becoming more and more prevalent as large sites like Sony.com is just one of many corporate sites that is making it easier for people on mobile devices to experience their site. In Gravitate’s recent site launch, we took advantage of this new practice to give users a totally flexible interface.

The e-Cookbook: Is it Ready Yet?

As the Holidays draw near, so does a new season of cookbooks. Julia Child’s 50-year-old classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking debuted as an e-book last month. With the print version measuring at 750+ pages, a digital copy would satisfy any cook’s appetite for ease of use and portability, right?

Well, we’re not quite there yet. Reviews of most e-cookbooks currently on market all seem to say the same thing: it feels like a squished PDF. Plus, I don’t know anybody who would agree that splattering marinara sauce on their iPhone is a good way to begin a dinner party.

The e-cookbook age will likely gain popularity soon. Celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver and Mario Batali have recently introduced apps (applications that is, not bruscetta) and many publishers have started releasing digital versions of new cookbooks simultaneously with print.

Still, I don’t see print cookbooks leaving the table anytime soon. They will likely become more traditional and less functional pieces of home décor in coming years. Like the trophies of a well-used kitchen.

Building better forms

One of the most dreaded parts of the online experience is the web form. Not only does it represent work, it also raises the concern that your information will be sent to spam lists all over the globe. Establishing trust on your site goes a long way to convincing users to share their personal information. But there are other things you can consider when creating your form that make it far more likely to convert users:

1) Keep it short. Ask youself whether you truly need to collect a particular piece of information. Gender? Title? Studies show that with each additional field, your likelihood of having someone complete your form goes down significantly.
2) Keep your labels short and intuitive. For that matter, make your fields only as long as they need to be. Anything that reduces visual clutter while still being easy to understand is key.
3) Make your validation smart. If your form won’t submit and it’s not clear to the the user why because of poorly marked validation, users will get frustrated and just bail.
4) Consider using mad-libs style labelling. Conversion studies are showing that this fill-in-the-blanks approach to collecting information is seeing positive results.
5) Make it worth people’s while. People don’t want to fork over their info without getting something in return. Enticing them with a freebie or giveaway in order to create a quid pro quo.

Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category