Alfa Jango Blog Engineering, Software, and Entrepreneurship

Google Instant Search is here, and over the last couple days there has been much hurrah about the sites that Google now loads directly into the results as you type, even after you’ve only typed in a single letter. Fast Company and Mashable have written about it. And before them, the Huffington Post wrote about it. And eight months before that, this little blog wrote about it. (By the way, the Huffington Post was nice enough to link back to us, so hats off to them!)

If you’re interested, check out Google One-letter Suggestions, where we analyzed the first 10 results for each letter (unlike these other publications who only look at the first result) and found some interesting trends back in December.

You see, these instant suggestions have been around for the better part of the year, before Google introduced Instant Search. Instead of loading the pages instantly as you typed though, it merely suggested search terms as you typed. In a way, Instant Search is actually the second step in a gradual release. The first step (the search term suggestions) meant you didn’t have to finish typing your search query, and the second step takes it just one step further, eliminating the need to hit ‘Enter’.

But what I really want to bring up is something I can’t believe none of the other major publications picked up on. This is the thing that I found the most interesting out of the entire analysis. If you type the letter “w” into Google, one of your top ten search suggestions is Facebook! Facebook? Yes, apparently enough people type “www.facebook.com” into Google that Facebook is a top-ten result for the letter “w”.

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We really hope this is some sort of sick joke on Mini’s part. In fact, we half-expect it is. But I would like to take this opportunity to discuss an important part of developing useful applications: Don’t waste time and resources developing something for which you have not yet solicited feedback. The trade-offs between openly sharing, and being “stealthy” can be quite one-sided. But first…

Background: Mini’s Mission Control

Typically, I am very pro-Mini. They are amazingly fun to drive and to auto-cross, and I came very close to owning one in the recent past. However, their latest feature, available on the limited Mini 50 Camden Edition, has everyone scratching their heads.

The best way I can describe Mission Control is that it’s what your car would sound like if it were a spaceship, and it had a crew of 3 people in addition to you, the pilot. It is 10% useful information read aloud to you (current fuel level, adverse weather warnings, etc) and 90% inane dialog between those 3 other crew members. And by 3 other crew members, I mean that the car talks to itself in different voices while you listen. In that respect, perhaps it’s more akin to what your car would sound like if it had multiple-personality disorder, and you were stuck in the middle.

But enough description, check out the video Oh, and this “feature” costs $5000.

Be sure to check out AutoBlog’s reaction as well

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I recently stumbled upon an article called, “If You’re Nervous About Quitting Your Boring Job, Don’t Do It”

As you can tell by the title of my post, I disagree. Let’s put aside the fact that I would not come to the conclusion that Lisa (the case study for the above post) should not have quit her job based purely on the fact that she failed the first time out. That’s completely normal, and I’d be excited to see what Lisa learned and how she applies it to her next endeavor. No, even more than that, I disagree with sentiment of the post.

Who knows what the future will bring, but I think I fall into the category of people “who have built up rare and highly desirable skills” and have accomplished a lot since I left my full-time engineering job to pursue my entrepreneurial passions.

My point here isn’t to brag, but simply to say that when I decided to pursue my passion and the desireable lifestyle of entrepreneurship, quitting my full-time job was one of the most nerve-racking and toughest decisions I’ve ever made, full of doubt and second-guessing. If you are having doubts or second thoughts about quitting your job, then congratulations, you are a pragmatic, rational, sane human-being.

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