A couple of design tips to google.com

Take this search:

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=dog&aq=f&aqi=g4g-o1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=8374ee23cb92f619

1: Their URLs. Why could this not just be "google.com/dog"? Whatever the problem is I have a hard time believing it cannot and should not be solved.

2: Their text presentation is messed up. Ariel is a fine font, but the thinness of the letters and the narrow spacing makes it really difficult to scan the page.

3: I love their new sidebar, but the icons are chaotic. They should each be a single color, corresponding to the colors in Google's official icon. This would make them easily recognizable. Furthermore, the iconography is not great. When you try to deliver a service which is all about getting your users away from your website as fast as possible, then the confusion created by too similar icons, such as the "blogs" and "updates" icons in the sidebar, is very much unwanted.

4: Stop making the sidebar icons switch places, and stop hiding half of them behind a fold. Yes, they switch places in order of relevance but when the icons are not easily recognizable because of overlapping colors, suboptimal iconography and when a "random" half of them disappear on every search it just creates a mess.

5: The sidebar is great so get rid of the top bar. It wastes space, and the argument that it is there so users have something they are familiar with on every page is just a bad excuse for proper design.

Solution:

duckduckgo.com/dog

This url is perfect. If you think it is too long "dukgo.com" works as well. You can even search for "dog" by typing "duckduckgo/dog". Something that Google does not allow.

Bonus:

6: What on earth is up with that arrow pointing to the top result of every search? Does google think I am too stupid to figure out which result is the top one? What?

The iPad

... is one of the best things to happen to computing since the smartphone(iPhone) revolution. My number one complaint about it:

It does not do enough. As long as the iPad is still missing obvious features, we are not gonna see any _radical_ innovation in the tablet area from Apple. They might do something really cool when they finally implement a camera, but it is not going to be anything really surprising.

Until we have crossed the obvious, most requested features off the list, Apple is not pressured to outdo itself. Once the iPad can do everything the iPhone can, we'll start seeing innovation once more. For now we can just follow the iPhone and let it pave the way in the innovation space.

This is the only criticism I have of how Apple rolls.

One step closer

Google is opening a Web Store to collect web apps in one place:

What's the advantage of "installing" an app from Chrome Web Store?
When Google Chrome users "install" a web application from the store, a convenient shortcut is added for quickly accessing the app.

Now, this should give you a small glimpse into how Google and I see the future of the internet:

Gone are the cryptic URLS and gone is this page-by-page nonsense. Instead of writing a string of letters and numbers in a search bar and thereby navigating to a certain site, we are now presented with an online world much closer to that of our offline world. We have icons, we have shortcuts, we have depth and we have interactivity. We have spend years perfecting this offline world and now we are really beginning to perfecting the online world as well, slowly merging the interfaces.

Think of this scenario: What if, in Windows or OS X or linux, whenever you wanted to go to a folder or open a new app, you had to write the name of the folder/app and it's path in the terminal. What a waste of time, right? Well, that is where we are right now on the web. "Web pages" are not a necessity of the internet. I do not have 'pages' on my Snow Leopard OS so why would we not be able to get rid of pages on the internet as well? Why not take what we learned from the offline world and incorporate it into the online world?

What we will get in the near future is something much further away from the current "Type URL- go to site, type new URL- go to site". It is a more interactive and dynamic homepage. A mix between the current Chrome homepage, your desktop on your OS (folders etc) and a presentation of Applications. Much more intuitive, much more visual and much more relevant.

And that will just be the beginning. As Google has predicted, the browser is the new operating system.

EDIT: Need to clear up some misunderstandings. No, I am not saying that "search" or the address bar is gonna disappear. Search has not disappeared from the desktop environment and of course it will not disappear on the web. What I am saying is that the two worlds are becoming increasingly similar, and just as the average consumer does not go into terminal to navigate to a certain folder, in the same way he will not have to write and decipher the URLs of today.

The most important thought in recent tech-times

An absolute must-read. The quicker we get rid of "Files" and/or "folder hierarchy" the better.

Something that Microsoft, Google and maybe even Apple does not quite get yet.

Jakob Nielsen on the iPad

I hope Apple is listening to this.

I would very much like to see a conversation between Jobs and Nielsen, regarding the iPad.

Worn Interface

Interesting observation, poor implementation.