Here's another edition of NewPath's "cool event, awesome product, creative fundraiser" series...
Cool Event
Rahaf Farshoush launching her book "Yes We Did" on Jun 4 at 5pm at Rotman Business School.
You may have seen Rahaf talk about her involvement in Barack Obama's social media campaign. There are some interesting insights and lots to share. Social media is evolving but it is always good to see the trends on what to do and what not to do. Rahaf will be signing her book and Don Tapscott of Wikinomics fame is supposed to be there as well.
There is a video online of the whole presentation from U of Toronto - Rotman as well.
Awesome Product
The new search features in Google Search are a bit deceptive to find, but they're there and they are quite useful. I've filtered my search by chronological recency several times to find more relevant discussions and web pages that have recently been updated.
I think it is interesting that Google is continually refining the high quality search by introducing small features in a modest way to "bring people along" rather than dumping a lot of features.
For example, does Microsoft's bing.com really think that having a picture load behind the search box really change the search experience? If anything it means that the home pages takes a few extra milliseconds to load (or more depending on the device and connection). Why would they make a design decision like that? Cognitively speaking, it also takes your thought process away from the task at hand -- instead of putting together a decent search phrase you're wondering "What's that a picture of?" Google instead changes the Google logo to celebrate and underline what's happening today and cognitively it's a reinforcement of the task that I am doing today. This slight change in design makes Google win for me.
Also Google Wave launched for developers -- once I get my hands on it I will give you guys a heads up. CNET has some thoughts already.
Creative Fundraiser
Right to Play's "Nail and Sail" fundraiser on June 25 2009. Build a boat and sail it off Woodbine Beach. What could be better?
