Bing 'n Wave

Mike Elgan's article on all the "attention" surrounding the demos of Microsoft Bing! and Google's Wave. There have been many articles where press/blog folks fawn over how cool they are, but I like Mike's views.

Bashing Bing, whacking Wave [Computer World]

Have you noticed that every massively popular new way to communicate in the past few years has shared the attribute of perfect linearity? First e-mail, then chat, then blogs, then Twitter -- all provided the benefit of strict, top-to-bottom, most-recent-first organization. Linearity imposes clarity on information, and puts the user's mind at ease. All attempts to "improve" these media with non-linear views have failed. People love linearity.

But this is exactly how both Microsoft and Google are trying to improve search and communication, respectively: by introducing non-linearity. In the case of Bing, Microsoft displays results in order down the middle of the page. But there are alternative results on the left as well. It's not a big deal, and Google has introduced similar non-linearity in recent years. But Google got rich and famous by providing a single search box, followed by a single ordered list of results.

(His article isn't all negative, despite the title and quotes I picked.)

So long, old friend...

We lost our dear friend, Odin, on 6 May. Odin is a Burnese Mountain Dog we "adopted" from Swissmyth (Cindy and Fred Stauch in Ann Arbor, MI).

Odin was beloved of the entire family, but the strongest bond was with my wife Theresa. Before we had the girls when I was more aggressive with my "so called career" (and had to travel or work long hours), it was Odin who was there to help the time pass and keep the lonelies at bay.

We sure do miss you buddy. You go on ahead, we'll be along shortly.