Simplicity Rules

Jeremy Zawodny has a very frank assessment of how Yahoo! Finance lost out to the newly-released Google Finance. The saddest part is how Yahoo! could have easily made the same innovations.

Virtually all of the new/innovative/cool features in Google Finance are things we talked about YEARS ago. Many of them I’d lobbied for repeatedly. Some were even prototyped.

Who’s gonna get “credit” for all that now?

The first thing on the list of innovations is a pretty obvious one: a ticker search that doesn’t suck. That’s probably my biggest beef with Y! Finance and it’s such an obvious addition. So, why didn’t it happen?

Well, we all have these things. It may be an idea for a whole product or a feature. Ideas are just about worthless. Sometimes I’ve tried to wait for a project to be perfect. When I realized I was going down that road with onBLOCK, that’s when I knew it was time to release.

Of course, there is a downside to releasing before you’re ready. Google has seen it happen with several of their products and the first day is tainted with instability. But if what you’ve got is good–and you’re willing to listen to what people say–it will make it past any negative first impression.

This weekend, for the first time since Netscape 2, I bothered to change the background color in my Web browser. I wanted to see how a transparent image looked without a white background. Perhaps out of ancient habit, I picked the grey that used to don blank windows of first generation web browsers.

As I’ve been browsing from site to site, I’ve noticed quite a few that don’t override the browser’s default background color. Yahoo! is the only site of the big three search engines (Google and MSN being the other two) that doesn’t explicitly switch to white. Take that as you will.

Embarrassingly, I even found a few of my sites that I meant to have white backgrounds, but hadn’t actually set them. Since few people change their default background, I probably don’t have much reason to be embarrassed, but it’s amazing how we assume that what we see is what everyone sees. (There’s a lesson outside of Web design in there, if you look for it).

So, it’s worth checking out. Maybe you could choose a better color than grey. How about pink?

There were a couple big conferences recently. Rather than go myself, I read notes of people who did attend. One of the gems is this how-to on keeping your inbox empty. I have been following the advice for a week and it’s worked well.

I have always had the desire to keep my inbox clean, but haven’t had a system. In the past, it’s been pretty brute force. While it has felt nice to be done, I never enjoyed the task. Also, I found myself feeling guilty for replying to friends and family when there were emails that were “more important.” So, I like that this system encourages me to take the time to respond to those first. It makes sense that if I am to keep relationships going via email that I not consider it a burden.

And the best part is that this system isn’t life-altering. It’s a simple (perhaps obvious to some) way of breaking down your inbox.

If you give it a shot, let me know how it works for you.

Recently a friend wanted to show me a neat video he had seen. The problem was he couldn’t find it again. Searching for turntable intersection, he couldn’t find it amongst thousands of results on Google and Yahoo!.

Before giving up, we tried the same search on del.icio.us. One result. The right one.

I’ve never really believed in the utopia of the one result search query before. I’m still not sure if I do, but this certainly impressed me. How long until Yahoo! (who bought del.icio.us in December) incorporates del.icio.us into their search algorithm?