I read an interesting blog post on the article "Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception" in The mouse trap blog.  In general the experiment described in the article found that "Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions".
The blog post took the article conclusions in to one direction, and I want to take it in another. From brief reading, the article made me think of a creativity and not psychosis... Illusions, imagining things, conspiracies and etc... these can all be examples of creative thinking, and high imagination. To be able to create things from nothing requires a lot of creativity. Think about it, it might be good to feel lack of control, we don't need to control everything or be afraid of loosing control. Sometimes it is good to flow to where life takes you. Next time when you are trying to think of a creative solution to something, or to discover the next big thing, think about it.
 There are a lot of people out there that don't know they can use Google to refine their searches and to apply the search box for many many more functions. (In Part 1, I'm going to list here all the functions I found that can be used in Google's search box (Feel free to add more), and in Part 2 I'll present some Gmail shortcuts).
All the functions that I'm going to present below are operated from the search box. But easily they could have been operated not by the search, but (for example) by a tool box, or a select box or in many other ways... Am I suppose to remember only my 5 favorite functions from the massive options? Wouldn't it be easier if I had an option list? I guess the simple answer is that Google expect the pro users to remember what they need to use, and they don't think these options are relevant to all. So here it is a pretty full guide, you will find a lot of useful options here. A guide to Google shortcuts (First some links to nice sources I gathered, of unique shortcuts): And some additional functions that do not exists in the above links:(some of them taken from Google web search help) Google ignores common words and characters such as where, the, how, and other digits and letters that slow down your search without improving the results. If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can make sure we pay attention to it by putting a "+" sign in front of it.
Example: peanut butter +and jelly To search for web pages that have similar content to a given site, type "related:" followed by the website address into the Google search box.
Example: related:www.cnn.com Sometimes the best way to ask a question is to get Google to ‘fill in the blank’ by adding an asterisk (*) at the part of the sentence or question that you want finished into the Google search box.
Example: Isaac Newton discovered * To see scores and schedules for sports teams type the team name or league name into the search box. This is enabled for the English Premier League, National Football League, National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball.
All sports data provided by STATS, Inc.
Example: san francisco 49ers If you’re looking for results from Google Book Search, you can enter the name of the author or book title into the search box and we’ll return any book content we have as part of your normal web results. You can click through on the record to view more detailed info about that author or title.
Example: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign (~) immediately in front of your search term.
Example: ~fast food Google’s spell checking software automatically checks whether your query uses the most common spelling of a given word. If it thinks you’re likely to generate better results with an alternative spelling, it will ask “Did you mean: (more common spelling)?”. Click the suggested spelling to launch a Google search for that term.
Example: Expolasion To find reviews and showtimes for movies playing near you, type "movies" or the name of a current film into the Google search box. If you've already saved your location on a previous search, the top search result will display showtimes for nearby theaters for the movie you've chosen.
Example: movies 94705 If you’re looking for a store, restaurant, or other local business you can search for the category of business and the location and we’ll return results right on the page, along with a map, reviews, and contact information.
Example: Italian food 02138 To see home listings in a given area type "housing", "home", or "real estate" and the name of a city or a U.S. zip code into the Google search box and hit the Enter key or click the Google Search button. Clicking the "Go" button on the results page will display details of individual homes that Google has indexed.
Example: homes Los Angeles Google ignores common words and characters such as where, the, how, and other digits and letters that slow down your search without improving the results. If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can make sure we pay attention to it by putting a "+" sign in front of it.
Example: peanut butter +and jelly To find pages that include either of two search terms, add an uppercase OR between the terms. For example, here's how to search for a vacation in either London or Paris: vacation london OR paris You can use Google to search only within one specific website by entering the search terms you're looking for, followed by the word "site" and a colon followed by the domain name. For example, here's how you'd find admission information on the Stanford University site: admission site:www.stanford.edu Feel like a number? Numrange searches for results containing numbers in a given range. Just add two numbers, separated by two periods, with no spaces, into the search box along with your search terms. You can use Numrange to set ranges for everything from dates ( Willie Mays 1950..1960) to weights ( 5000..10000 kg truck). But be sure to specify a unit of measurement or some other indicator of what the number range represents. For example, here's how you'd search for a DVD player that costs between $50 and $100: DVD player $50..$100 If you include other words in the query, Google will highlight those words within the cached document. For instance, [cache:www.google.com web] will show the cached content with the word "web" highlighted.The query [cache:] will show the version of the web page that Google has in its cache. For instance, [cache:www.google.com] will show Google's cache of the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "cache:" and the web page url. The query [link:] will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list webpages that have links pointing to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page url. The query [info:] will present some information that Google has about that web page. For instance, [info:www.google.com] will show information about the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "info:" and the web page url. If you begin a query with the [stocks:] operator, Google will treat the rest of the query terms as stock ticker symbols, and will link to a page showing stock information for those symbols. For instance, [stocks: intc yhoo] will show information about Intel and Yahoo. (Note you must type the ticker symbols, not the company name.) If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. For instance, [help site:www.google.com] will find pages about help within www.google.com. [help site:com] will find pages about help within .com urls. Note there can be no space between the "site:" and the domain. You can search a specific file type, for example: filetype:doc Allows you to search for a link or an anchor text - allinanchor:get more referrals If you start a query with [allintitle:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title. For instance, [allintitle: google search] will return only documents that have both "google" and "search" in the title. If you include [intitle:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title. For instance, [intitle:google search] will return documents that mention the word "google" in their title, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (title or no). Note there can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word. Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query: [intitle:google intitle:search] is the same as [allintitle: google search]. If you start a query with [allinurl:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the url. For instance, [allinurl: google search] will return only documents that have both "google" and "search" in the url. Note that [allinurl:] works on words, not url components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: foo/bar] will restrict the results to page with the words "foo" and "bar" in the url, but won't require that they be separated by a slash within that url, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints. If you include [inurl:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the url. For instance, [inurl:google search] will return documents that mention the word "google" in their url, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (url or no). Note there can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word. Putting "inurl:" in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting "allinurl:" at the front of your query: [inurl:google inurl:search] is the same as [allinurl: google search]. Putting "Acronym:" in front of an acronym, you will receive results with the acronym explanation. for example: Acronum:P.S If you start a query with SafeSearch: you will exclude adult oriented search results. for example: Safesearch:breast I hope I gathered most of the possibilities out there of the giant Google search engine.
Came across this very unique demo of a "Painting game" by Ian Dallas What fascinated me the most, was the fact that in this game you reveal the world by splattering paint around. You decide where to splatter paint and what parts you think are crucial to be revealed in order for you to progress in the game. It will be interesting to see if all people will splatter the same things or not, do we view the world differently? do we need the same visual "anchors" to understand the world we are in? Very creative and innovative, but regarding game play, would we be able to splatter paint for the entire game?
The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.
 Few posts ago I wrote on another Google experiment - Keyboard Shortcuts. This new experiment is a bit different.
Google accessible view, I presume, was created for disabled people who can't see well (This is why its called accessible view...). I am very glad to see that "Accessibility" is embraced for Google .  What the Accessible View gives the user, is a very simple and intuitive navigation alternative, that allows him to browse the search results. You can navigate between results by using the keywords "J", "K" (very similar to the keyboard shortcuts experiment)In addition "N", "P", & the up/down arrows (Very good improvement for the keyboard short cut experiment) allow you to do almost the same.
The added value here is that the results are highlighted. But it is not just a highlight of the results, but a sort of magnifying-glass view of the result. The magnified area floats in different layer above the actual results page. This solution is great for people who have difficulties seeing, as they can magnify the text even further by using the "=" key or the "-" key, and in addition if the user has a screen reader (commonly used by blind people) - the result that is currently highlighted, will be read to him, and only that (nothing else in the screen will be read to him, as this might distract them). Few insights:  I will not recommend using it for people who have no difficulty in reading, as the floating layer of the highlighted result, is floating above other results as well, and because you can't see the next results or the previous one, it is very hard to have good orientation when navigating between the results. - J,K,Up and Down keys have the same functionality, they allow you to navigate between the results (but not to jump to the next index page). Using "N" & "P" do the same, but also when you are standing on the last result of the page, pressing the key "N" will send you to the next index results page (and the other way around with "P"). what I find confusing is why do we need different functionality for these buttons. Either create buttons that will allow you to jump between index pages, or just use the same functionality as the "N"&"P" keys, for all buttons. This way it will have a better logic to me in terms of user experience.
- Too many buttons that act the same, well I realize its an experiment, but why can't you decide?
Keep them coming Google, you're doing good to the user experience and accessibility.
In the last few months I witness an impressive advancement in the auto-complete function of browsers, web sites and application. So I decided to summarize the evolution of it, in terms of User Experience. In the beginning there was (and still) Internet explorer
In Internet explorer 7, the auto-complete only complete if the browsing history string starts with the exact string the user wrote. for example, if you write the string "A", only web sites that start with "A" will appear.
And Google said, let there be Google Suggest
 Google suggest, is literally suggesting the users search terms according to the the strings the users entered into the search box. and in the same principal of the Internet explorer, it mostly suggest the matches from the beginning of the search terms.
There is only one small user experience problem as I see it, sometimes the string I enter will be more relevant in the middle of the sentence, but due to the fact that Google has so many suggestion to give that match the beginning of the phrase, you almost never see suggestion that include your string in the middle of the suggested search term. (I had to write "hesaurus" to receive the suggestion that doesn't start with "H" and got "Thesaurus"...). I wonder if the Google algorithm take it into consideration.
And Mozilla saw the light, and created FireFox 3
The big improvement in FF, is that the auto complete searches the string you enter in the address box, not just in the beginning of the phrase but in the middle of it and/or in the site description, all according to how relevant it is according to the user browsing history.
Today a short and easy domain name is not something so common, and many domains today are created from half words or a couple of words, and this is not so easy remember. The FF auto complete was a huge improvement in terms of user experience, as users no longer need to be so accurate, and remember exactly the domain name, they only needed to remember part of it or how it is described.
And Google said, let there be Google Chrome
In Google Chrome the address box and the search box are combined to one. If the phrase you enter exists in your browsing history it will suggest a web site, if it doesn't it will suggest that you will search for this phrase.
So simple and so smart, why hassle the user to click between two boxes that are so relevant to each other, when he can do it in one.
And when something makes your life so much easier, people find out many ways use it.
Good friends of mine, created the startup Predictad, They give advertisers a new place to advertise in - in the suggest box. The ads that appear. are relevant to the user search phrase. This gives the publishers and the advertisers a new way to earn money or exposure.
I wrote this post because I saw today a nice post in the weblog of 37signals - Signal vs. Noise, a nice enhancement Highrise made to their auto complete tool.
Something in particular caught my eye, Their auto complete tool, also know how to complete strings that not exactly match (For example if the user wrote "danrimon" (my name), the auto complete will also know to search for "dan rimon"). This is pretty cool, although exists in other places, including Google Chrome, but for some reason I only noticed it when i saw Highrise video.
This made me think, What's next?
The purpose of the auto complete is to help users, then why not take it to the next level:
- One obvious improvement - correct spelling mistakes.
- The other thing is more interesting in user experience terms, and this is Auto-Complete with filtering. what do I mean? If I want to search the word "Water" for example, I can write instead "trewa" (Why is that?), because this string includes all the letters of the word "water", but mixed. What the auto complete algorithm should do in my mind is suggest all the strings that include these latter in the relevant possible combination (and filter the words that do not include these letters or part of them). This simple change will solve a lot of most common mistakes we do when we write in the Internet. mix the letters because we write to fast and do not pay attention very closely.
If you have any more interesting auto complete tools or just more insights - feel free to share.
As a cognitive psychologist I found this video very funny and interesting. Dan Dennett, a philosopher and a cognitive scientist, puts our Mind & Conscious on the spot light, and by experimenting with some clever "mind tricks", he shows us that what we see, is just what our mind wants to see. Some questions arise from the lecture: - Does the mind have a will of its own?
- Why do we see things in a certain way and not the other?
The lecture doesn't fully answer all of that, but it gives you a lot to think when you observe the world, and all the information out there that our mind "decide to see" and more interesting what it ignores. My 2 cents: The world we see out there, is the world "we" decided we want to see, but we decide to see only part of it, not for no reason. The world is too complex for our brain to understand, too much information to process at once, this is why our mind filter things and interfere with the way we "see". I guess that in time, we will be able to process more and more information, to really experience the world and its wonders. But for now, lets just keep an open mind.
Saw today the Amazon Window Shop, looks cool, and more importantly simple to use. The browsing can be done in 2 modes: Zoom-in view (at the moment the default mode): 
Regular view: 
You can navigate by using the arrows - and zoom in and out by using the "spacebar" and the "enter" (they don't mention it for some reason). you can also navigate by using the mouse, using a dragging method (They also don't mention it, is it too obvious?). Some anecdotes: - The top navigation bar that allows you to navigation left to right between different content and dates is yet to be perfect
- Different content is presented in a different color - this is a good cognitive indication, my only concern is that there just too many colors to grasp the difference or even notice it (for example between movies and TV shows).
- There is lack of consistency - some categories are monthly and some weekly. This situation create a bit of confusing, as the order of categories is not consistent, and a bit confusing.
- I would add some sort of borders between update dates, for example an intuitive way to understand that now i switched between October updates to August updates and so on... this will ad another level of structure.
- This experience of easy browsing without using the mouse is good, but there is one little annoying bug here... if you give me the chance not to use the mouse why do you make me press on the "I" (help) icon to read the help? pressing the letter "I" should do the trick.
- The default way of navigation (zoomed in) in my mind is not the right way, because for someone who didn't see the feature before, found it difficult to get a good orientation, and it might create a negative first impression for the users.
- I think another level of information is missing - short reviews, rating or a reference to information on the site. In my mind i see an option to flip the item picture to see its back side, and in it will appear some additional information on the item.
I find the window shop pretty good compared to many semi-virtual environments I saw in the past. But keep in mind, this can not replace the rest of the shop/site (in this case amazon shop). It is not for no reason that the feature name is "Window shop", as this can be used effectively almost only to present new items in a sort of a "show case".
I just watched interview with Yossi Vardi on Web2Expo in Europe. Interesting and funny as usual. Yossi Vardi has a long success investments record that made a lot of entrepreneurs request his business and finance assistance. He is an angel, that as far as i know, as of today he mainly invest small amounts of money in early stage Israeli startups. I heard his investments criterion "Mantra" a couple of times before, and I'm always happy to hear it again. He always says that he invest in the people and not the product, feeling that if the investment will not succeed at least he gave a "scholarship" to yet another entrepreneur. This sounds too naive and imaginary to be true, but I have seen it happen. If Vardi thinks the people in front of him are "good" people he will invest in them. So I just want to say to Yossi, I'm glad that there are still people out there that are not so cold and calculated, and that good people deserve the chance to follow out their dreams, but what does it say about me if you didn't want to invest in me... :) Keep it up, you give hope to many young dreamers. Yossi Vardi on Business Week, and in TC50
Most of the day I sketch and design the future web sites of my company and sketch the improvements of the current ones. An important aspect of my work is to plan the correct flow of things. This is why Product Planner caught my eye. The company describe this product - "Product Planner was born out of the need to help people understand and create user flows for their web products. The idea is that by looking at examples of other successful web products, you can get a better idea of how to create your own". 
The site is in its early stage and doesn't really have yet enough examples, but I really love their vision, and I can see how much it can do to the User Experience of web sites who will follow it. In general Product Planner is a simple tool to create and share flows, but the great thing about it is that the flows are not created just from headlines but they are created from functional designs screens or from the actual site screen shots. The full detailed design in the flow makes all the difference in understanding and building good user experience. For example - an "Invitation to Twitter" flow: 
Each box in the flow represent and actual page as a part of the flow, and by pressing on a box you can see it magnified: 
Few pointers: - Not enough flexibility in flow types - It decreases the chance that experts will use this tool BUT this limitation can also do good, by keeping the small and generic flows, the site becomes more useful, and it is better than having very long unique flows that won't serve many.
- As a site builder how will I know which flow to use, which is the better? I can see which ones are the favorite ones, but which ones are truly good for my goals? As a User Experience expert, when I plan a flow I have in my mind the objective of the flow. For example if I want to create a signup flow - the objective of it can be:
- Joining as fast as possible (Low barrier of registration)
- Gaining as much information as possible (When I want to profile my users before they get access)
- Complex registration (High barrier registration - when I don't want each users to become a member of my site without some sort of a commitment by him
- Users can add comments to a flow, but it won't do the trick, maybe add the option to tag a flow by a set of characteristics: "for professional users", "for novice users", and etc...
- What I miss the most if to be able to explain the interaction between each segments of the flow, and to be able to add to the flow exceptional cases - for example error message in case the user does something wrong in the flow (Enter the wrong password, Email already exists).
To conclude: I hope this site will fulfill its vision and be a tool for product managers, usability experts, developers and etc... and make our web a friendlier place. I'm sure I'll be happy if people will share with me interesting flows from the site.
Occasionally I'm practicing being my very own StumbleUpon engine, when i start typing weird site names and hope for smooth landing.  Today i did just that thing and i was redirected to Johnny Walker site. Personally I'm a White Russian fan (and thanks to The Dude and the Cohen Brothers for making me a little more cooler, at least in my mind), but I can handle a few drops of good whisky.
Landing on that site triggered this blog post, as I once again wondered if covering our ass is better than doing the right thing, in terms of marketing of course. When I landed on the home page of the site, I got a "Warning page" asking me two questions "where do you live" and "when were you born", the purpose of these questions are to verify that I'm in legal age to drink, according to my country minimum drinking age law. and yes it actually works, for "Israel" i said i was 19 and it was ok, and for the US the same age did not let me go through to the main site.  Anyway...  This "Warning page" exists also in other similar companies, such as Absolut Vodka. Yes the regulations require you the warn your visitors before you let them enter a site that will encourage them to drink alcohol, but is the super smart mechanism of age verification will actually stop a minor from entering the site? and what is the purpose of the law?
I understood the purpose of the law when I took my magnifying glass and examined the "warning page" more closely... to give the "Drinkers" important information before to consume alcohol and to prevent minors from doing so. The Absolut Vodka version (left) and the Johnny Walker version (right): 
In a very small font size...: - Here is what Absolut say: "ABSOLUT endorses responsible and moderate drinking. For this reason, we would like to recommend the following reading: Century Council, Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), and The European Forum for Responsible Drinking (EFRD)"
- Here is what Johnny Walker say (you need to click on the link to see the explanation page): "As we support responsible drinking, we need to ask you these questions to ensure that you're over the legal purchase age and that you're legally allowed to view this site in your country of access. We also need to be aware if anyone else using this computer could be under the legal purchase age. Rest assured that none of the information you provide here will be used to contact you in any way."
Both examples show us that these regulations gave the users the "opportunity" to gain information about alcohol consumption... Once you finish getting educated by the companies and crack the age verification mechanism, you get to enter the site, But unfortunately you see no mention what so ever on the important alcohol education... Johnny Walker HP: 
Absolut HP: 
Nice design, but where did company responsibility toward alcohol drinking went? What is my point? - Do you really think that by using such a warning page you prevent minors from entering the site? No!
- Do you really think you got to the attention of anyone, some knowledge about alcohol hazards? No!
- Minors can still access the site, and they nobody will ever see (except me) the alcohol public information.
So what good is this regulation for? Well i have a suggestion, change the current regulation - Instead of that stupid age verification that also contains important information in a font size of 8 (or lower)... Request the companies to dedicate a part of the home page for alcohol education, and loose that "warning page". By doing so you will improve the user MX (Marketing Experience(c)) of the actual customers (users who are of legal age), and you will also gain the attention of users to information regarding alcohol drinking - information that is important at all ages. A win win situation. On a personal note - a marketing experience expert - a user experience expertise in marketing why didn't i think about it before, Its a cool title to use.
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