One more feature from Google. Specialized music search.
Say you enter “The Beatles” in the searchbox. This is more or less what you will get:
Notice the first result, it’s not a typical one. Click on it and you will get a detaild list of all Beatles records, links to reviews for each one of them, the artist’s blog (if ther is one), etc.
You may find more at Official Google Blog: Searching for music.
I like it!
I feel that during the last couple of months the Web is changing fast. It looks like users, developers and enterpreneurs are much more mature on what the Web means and what it is good for.
First, we tried to move all our off-line habits, business and applications to the new, exciting on-line world of the Internet. We gave our shops, our directories, our magazines, our banks a new “web-based” front end. All these services and activities could very well exist off-line and, well, they did.
But now, we are moving on. We create services and business around things that could not even exist without the Web.
We have folksonomies and it’s not a geeky thing anymore (Yahoo! investment in Flickr and del.icio.us is a good proof of this [1])
Google maps are not just on-line maps, we stick our photos, our blogs, our ads on them, and create new and exciting applications like Frappr.
Our RSS/ATOM feeds transfer audio and video (ex. podcasts) and not just the “latest headlines” -they are getting “smarter” too (see Feedburner’s Feedflare [2] and Feed for Thought).
Our blogs are becoming more than just an electronic equivelent of a diary or newspaper, they are an electronic camvas that displays information from our del.icio.us bookmarks, pingbacks and trackbaks, and they interact with the rest of the Web, creating their own “Cosmos”.
Web APIs used to be an experimental feature to “have the developers on our
side”. Not any more. We are using them to build new business models (see Alexa Web Search).
We are also getting away from the PC client. I’m not referring to the usual “mobile phone as a web client”. iPods are connected to the internet nowdays -what’s an iPod without a fast internet connection to download music or audio/video podcasts? TiVo is turning into a web-connected device. And Cisco’s aquisition of KiSS Technologies through Linksys is a good promise we should be expecting more on internet based/enhanced home entertainment…
Oh, I’m so excited!
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[1] One step closer to sexyness 
[2] What I called content enrichment a year ago…
Great news! Yahoo! is doing some really good moves lately and is moving fast to Web 2.0. (del.icio.us and Flickr, wow, the posibilities are endless!)
According to this InfoWorld article,
But they [Google] don’t share these advertising revenues with the end users who help them get the revenue, Gates said. “Google keeps all of the money with itself,” he added.
[...]
In its bid to share revenues with users, Microsoft may give free software or even cash to users, said Gates, who did not discuss further details.
Wow! While Google is trying to cut Microsoft’s main revenue stream (which in turn funds or could fund MSN) by pushing open source software like firefox, it looks like Microsoft may try to cut Google’s revenue stream wich is coming from on-line ads.
Do not take Bill Gates’ words for granted. Paying back search engine users is something that may never happen. If they were to do something like this they would have to rely on some kind of strong authentication scheme -or start a fight against all kind of bots and scripts that will generate fake search queries and clicks. To me, Gates’ words look more like a threat against Google -stay away from our business and we’ll keep out of yours.
But, in any case, you can see that this is war! Which side are you in?
I was listening to Kjell Nordstrom (author of Karaoke Capitalism: Managing for Mankind 
- the fittest, the one that does what is supposed to do in the most efficient and cost-effective way. He named Ryanair as a good example.
- the sexiest, the one that people just love because of its appeal. It may be more expensive or not as efficient as competitors (like a BMW or a Gucci or even an iPod) but consumers are in love with the product -they just have to have it.
So… When it comes to search engines, I have the feeling that they all try to be the fittest. Most users agree that Google is ahead of all others in this field. Google search does one job and does it extremely well -no whistles and bells. But it’s not sexy. (Some may say that it used to be, when their approach was so different from the others and they were surrounded by this “underground-ish” hype. But they are as mainstream as it gets now).
Here is an example of what I mean. Take Yahoo. They have this Yahoo! 360 thing. They try to sell it as the Web2.0 killer app. Users do not care about Web 1,2 or 3. But they would probably love to see search results mashed up with celebrities’ bookmarks (Madonna’s, or Steven Jobs’ or Linus Torvalds’s). This would be a sexy feature!
The Tango Desktop Project exists to create a consistent user experience for free and Open Source software with graphical user interfaces.
I have been using linux as my main desktop for 6 or 7 years now and I tell you that GNOME and KDE functionality are at least as good as (in my oppinion better than) MS Windows. Having a consistent visual interface could add this extra touch that makes OSS Desktops appealing to more people.
Visit the Tango Desktop Project to learn more.