Prize Pony Open!

A long side project has finally seen the light of day - the Prize Pony store is open and churning orders (hopefully at some point :)) at www.prizepony.com. The long story of how things happened is on the Prize Pony blog.

Any and all feedback massively appreciated!



 

Google's regression toward mediocrity

I have found that the user experience with Google has deteriorated over the past two years. In the past couple of months, it has worsened considerably.

First, Google started introducing more and more aggressive spell-checking and correction in the queries. Often, especially with obscure languages like Finnish, Google decides to correct the query, even if the correct spelling would yield numerous results. I remember either Brin or Page (or maybe it was Marissa?) saying that the ideal use case of Google would be that it only returned one result - the one that answers the user's query exactly. What happened to that notion? The "Did you mean"-function has been very useful and moreso with the advent of two panes of results, one for corrected spellings and one for sic - as it was spelled. Forcing repeated corrections, especially when it broadens the results set, can lead to regression towards the mean. With search results, can lead to mediocrity.

The more worrying new feature has in fact lead to a completely new use behaviour on Google. In the past, one could be fairly confident that the best possible results served to meet the query would be the top results, and rarely had to scroll to the bottom of the page. The new feature of omitting words from the query leads to the user having to scroll to the bottom of the page to make sure no words have been omitted. If there have been, they will discover a line of text: "Tip: These results do not include the word..." There the user is offered a link which leads to the query the user originally wanted to make. Here is an example, where the word "among" has been omitted by Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=aggression+among+diabetics (odd example, but relevant to research I was conducting recently).

This is incredibly contrived behaviour and arrogate development from Google. I completely understand that the feature has been extensively tested and proven to improve various problematic use cases, but it has also lead to an unforeseen difficulty in using Google. The strength of the search engine that I remember got me using it, was that it included all the typed words in the query, without having to resort to operators like '+' to force a word to appear. In fact, Google even told you that the '+' operator was unnecessary, since all the words were included by default.

There is very little difference in terms of actual experienced quality between the results of major search engines. Studies are divided as to whether there is perceived difference in quality (i.e. where the user knows the results have been generated by Yahoo! or Google), (Bailey, Thomas 2008).

I think Google has more to lose, and while it will be marginal, there are early abandoners as well as early adopters, and the margins will go first. Sheryl Sandberg had us read the Tipping Point as the first Google Book Club (yeah, we had one) book, and the simplistic learnings from there would be good to bear in mind when considering the importance of marginal users' marginal search results.

EDIT: just got a really good example where Google corrects my query making it useless:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=atlas.ti+variable+playback+speed&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

EU elections in Finland to hit an all time low?

While we in Finland managed to motivate ourselves to break the 40% mark in the EU elections of 2004 (41.1%), we are seeing possibly the worst, most uninspiring and obscure candidate line-up in the history of the elections. The best-known candidate even says he'll only stay in Strassbourg for a maximum of two years (Soini's blog in bad Finnish). The major parties have had trouble filling the candidate lists by the deadlines, and the layman will just have to wonder why should he be interested in the election if even the candidates are reluctant.

In 1999, we dipped almost to 30% (or 31.4% to be exact), but I wouldn't be surprised if the general voting percentage figure started with the number two in 2009. It may in fact be Soini's massive prospective protest vote that will push the voter activity in Finland over the watermark.

Here's the historical tables in Finnish.

EDIT: Jyrki Katainen of Kokoomus forecasts 50% activity, and the general buzz over the election has increased during the last two weeks before the election. Maybe we won't fare badly. Maybe the odd lists have in fact challenged people to find a candidate they could endorse. Let's wait til Sunday.

Kitewing on Lake Saimaa

The kitewing is probably the most fun toy I've had in a long time. I got a Rage 55 - wingspan 5,5 meters - earlier this year and have had a few good runs both on the Espoo/Helsinki coast and Lake Saimaa in Lappeenranta at my dad's house. The below video from my second time out on ice doesn't feature any big jumps or other antics (as the wind had already dissipated in the afternoon by the time I got the videographer up from bed), but it goes to show how it's just a matter of picking the wing up up and riding it (well, it took a sec to get started again...). While it isn't quite as versatile and is more dependent on a steady wind than a kite, it's a breeze to put together and to disassemble. You'll be out on the ice (or sand) long before the kite-fellows have untangled and powered up their fliers. You can get one from the UK here of in Finland here (note again, the pound's cheap, even if you're not in the UK...).

Cityvice.tv and Kauko Röyhkä

Teppo, a friend of mine, has gotten a creative and exciting venture nicely started. Called Cityvice.tv, the site will offer high-quality video content for syndication partners based on various custom channels. I love video so I wanted to help out, and this far I've done a few interviews you can see below. More to come, I hope!

Meeting Kauko Röyhkä for the interview last Thursday (posting this late, courtesy of Blogger sucking again), below, was quite exciting, and the gig with Röyhkä ja Rättö ja Lehtisalo an amazing smuggle-load of kraut-chaos and primordial noise. Yes yes. Still reverberating...!





 

Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo interview at Nosturi

Despite being high on painkillers and muscle relaxants, I went to Nosturi to do a quick interview with Jussi Lehtisalo from Circle. I would've gone even if my legs were cut off. The interview was done for my friend Teppo's CityVice.tv, which seems to be picking up nicely. I think he liked my style, so I'll be doing more of these - once I get better and have the time for reporting like this.

Check out the Circle-video at CityVice.tv, should be one of the top results (no embedding support yet, I think they're in beta :)).


 

From a hospital bed

I'm on some pretty groovy painkillers right now and this comes from
the tender care of Maria Hospital in Helsinki. Having come back from
skiing, I went to the gym even though my back wasn't cooperating and
got totalled in the early sets of my squat (only 80 kg on the bar, the
day's heaviest was to be 115 kg). I have a pretty solid technique and
in the past the deep squats I do have actually alliviated my chronic
back pains. But this was acute. I can't walk quite yet, so they've
doubled the dosage here. Talk about treating the symptom. But I'm
grateful. If this is what my taxes get me, I love paying my taxes.

I was planning to start blogging actively about weightlifting. Now, I
may need to change the sport.

Cheers,
Mikko
(Sent from my iPhone)