Google is producing astonishing stuff at an even more astonishing rate

Last week I wrote about the underexploited development resource which every manufacturer has in the form of its customers. Many development projects which might have been a success never actually become real products because of flawed research or simply bad management calls. However, another approach is to just throw everything out there, not worry about failures, and see what sticks. It's expensive, but will uncover the unexpected gems.
This seems to be whats going on at Google, which is producing astonishing stuff at an even more astonishing rate. I've looked at some of its recent ideas and thought "that's clever, but perhaps not for me", but others have been jaw-droppingly useful as far as I'm concerned. The point is, the company is giving them all a go in the real world.
Take the GMail email service, for example. It brings together the best bits of different approaches to email, adds search and storage facilities never offered before, and has instantly become indispensable to the way I work. Google Desktop Search is another free application which I've quickly become dependent on; in fact, I can't imagine now not having results from my own hard drive integrated into standard Google search results pages.
Google Maps is a really nice implementation of online street mapping on its own, but combined with the Google database it's a really powerful and useful tool ("show me a map of pneumatics distributors in Bedford" - instant results). But it's Google Earth which has really blown me away. Some people might look at it and say "great technology, but how useful is it?" I'd suggest it's exactly the sort of application which the public will find unthought-of uses for. You have to see it for yourselves, but the ability to fly around the entire planet, photographically, instantly, is just the coolest thing you'll see on your PC screen this year. Or probably any other year, to be honest. And the more I think about it, the more I can think of engineering and scientific applications for it too.
Gmail
Google Desktop Search
Google Maps UK
Google Earth

There seems to be increasing academic interest in the process of collective invention

There seems to be increasing academic interest in the process of collective invention, a concept which has been largely facilitated by the communications revolution of the past ten years. Traditionally, technological change has been considered to be the preserve of individual inventors, whether they're true individuals or single corporations.
Now, however, consumers are increasingly developing their own products, adapting commercially-available technology for their real needs rather than accepting the designer's stated purpose. The entire patent system, which has supposedly driven innovation for so long, depends on the inventor saying what the design is for. But mountain biking, kitesurfing and text messaging are all examples of users creating their own products or applications.
This isn't new: just Google "the case of the Cornish Pumping Engine" to see what I mean. But it's certainly a renewed spirit, and something which manufacturers are failing to exploit. Consumers don't particularly want to develop their own products - it's just necessary in a world where the success of a company is often measured in how well it controls its market.
How many of your suppliers even run online forums where you can give feedback or make suggestions? Outside the software sector, I suspect almost none. If you can't get the product you want, it's easy to turn to an alternative supplier who might have gone down that path, but it'd have been better to have pointed your existing supplier in that direction some time before. Far too many manufacturers say they "listen to the market" and are "customer driven" when they're nothing of the sort. They just mean that before committing to production, they ask customers for a reaction to their latest design. Big deal. Why not allow R+D to interact with the customers from the start?

No prizes for guessing the star of the Paris Air Show this week

No prizes for guessing the star of the Paris Air Show this week. According to a BBC report, even onlookers at Boeing's chalets on the side of the runway were awestruck at the giant Airbus A380. Whilst its economics are questionable, its wow-factor most certainly is not. Watch the display flight at the BBC website (link top right).
Despite its focus on longer range, mid-size aircraft, Boeing is hedging its bets and has announced a new version of the 747, so it's not giving up that sector. At the same time, the order book for the new 787 looks healthy, and the rival from Airbus, the A350, is lagging behind, despite some impressive orders this week. I just hope the inevitable foot being placed in the door by the legal community, as ever, doesn't delay any of these aircraft. I want to see them for myself.

The Channel Tunnel Rail Link: is engineering newsworthy at last?

I was so pleased to see a decent article in the mainstream press recently about the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, that astonishing project going on in London at the moment. I was even more pleased to see another ...and another. The cover story on the Sunday Times colour supplement. A whole special issue of The Guardian's G2. Where will it end? Is engineering newsworthy at last?
I'm assuming the project has got itself a PR operation going. Good for them. This is a feat of engineering which is breathtaking in its scope, and everyone should know about it. Read the two paragraphs below from the Sunday Times piece. Get this story into schools now!

"[technical director] Mike Glover started out as an actuary, then decided 'something was missing in my life'. At such moments most people become religious, read self-help books or try to contact dead relatives, but Glover did a degree in engineering, since when he has 'never had a boring day'. "It's not just design, it's a venture, it's soup to nuts... I find that hard to get across to people."
It is a repeated refrain - engineering is a great, wonderful heroic activity and everyone should do it. I understand their feelings. These days, architects steal the glory and engineers are seen as the poor grunts in bad suits and hard hats. Barlow, Telford and Brunel are big names from another age; modern engineers are nobodies.
"We need," muses Isabel Coman, a 31-year-old senior engineer at St Pancras, "a television series like ER about engineers. Everyone is so proud of this. It will be here in 100 years' time."
Read the full article

Everyone wins if manufacturers structure their websites in a sensible way which users would want

I spent yesterday at a conference which was discussing how to get more traffic to websites through the search engines, but for me it was as much with a web user's hat on as a website operator's. The good news is that to defeat the increasing number of websites out there full of machine- generated rubbish, which I'm sure we've all seen (and quickly left), the main search engines are concentrating on identifying the characteristics of websites which are designed for real people to use.
So in answer to the question from website owners "how do I get my site to appeal to the search engines?", the universal answer now seems to be "design and write it for your users". Sounds straightforward, but when you look at the contrived structure and mangled language of many websites over the years, you'll know they were designed more with an eye to what the writer thought the search engines wanted.
What does this mean for us as people who use the web to source suppliers or get support information (which is just about everyone now)? Long term, nothing but good news. The message to manufacturers is that everyone wins if they structure their websites in a sensible way which users would want; if they get rid of the "roadblocks" like introductory movies; and (most of all) if they put more and more content on their sites. The manufacturers who will win the online information war are those who put on display everything they have to offer, in as much detail as they can. And that includes articles, case studies, hints and tips ...everything that as customers, we might find interesting. It's also a great chance for smaller, more go-ahead manufacturers to score over the corporate giants with "not the way we do things here" attitudes or tortuous approval processes where too many people are allowed to say no.