Microposting(s) for October 27th through October 31st

These my micropostings and bookmarks – October 27th through October 31st:

• Google. OCR. Images. Text. Searchable. Wow. [“Official Google Blog: A picture of a thousand words?”] – As a fan of the notion of OCR since, oh, the late 90s (when it was an exercise in belief in technology over experience) I’ve been wanting OCR to become mainstream, free, fast and reliable. Enter Google, having sprinkled some magic over its archive. Impressive.
• Example of predictive search with thumbnails at BabyAge.com – Leaving aside this site’s Longest Ever Page Title, they’ve quite a nice incremental development on predictive search.

  In similar vein to Google Finance’s and Plone’s attempts to complete your search string as you type it, showing a dynamic drop down box with an ever-refining list of matches, so too does BabyAge – but with the addition of thumbnails.

  On the homepage just type something into the Search box (eg “Britax”) and you’ll see a refined product list complete with product thumbnail.

  Now, call me ungrateful, but why not add in a price, the option to filter by ‘in-stock-ness’ or to overlay flashes (eg new in, exclusive, on sale, last few). Indeed, why not allow the ‘slide of a mouse’ to pop up an overlay with a mini-product page? Why not an ‘add to basket’ or ‘buy now’ button?

  So – not an evil or inept addition, but rather a “so what” step that leaves me wanting more.

  How about “ShoppingDrill” as a new drill-down-and-shop-from-the-searchbar approach?

• Google Analytics Plugins, Hacks and Tips Collection | FutureNow’s GrokDotCom / Marketing Optimization Blog – V useful – found in @offmessage’s delicious feed 😉