just another blog pressed for words

Google Labs has a pretty solid history of putting out one amazing innovation after another (like Sets, Trends, and News Timeline, just to name a few). Latest that I’ve been messing around with is Fast Flip, which basically brings the experience of browsing headlines at a newsstand to your online news experience.

Such a simple idea, and a brilliant one. The functionality is pretty flawless in my experience so far. Don’t think this will end up replacing Google Reader just yet (at least not for me), but I have to say it’s a far more enjoyable and richer experience. Also like that it changes and adapts the stories you see based on those you click on in order to give you the most relevant experience.

The mobile experience may be even better, which is not something you get to say often.

Perfect way to get a feel for what’s going on from multiple sources while walking to the train in the morning for example (though the drivers who honk at me as I absent mindedly walk into the road while reading clearly feel otherwise).

Google Labs never ceases to impress. And I’m always even more interested to see what they do next. Their philosophy of embracing life in beta is something I wish more companies saw the value in.

Just getting started on lazyfeed, and have to say I’m really into it so far. Like Google Reader in realtime, but even more simple. Rather than having to go blog by blog, site by site subscribing to various feeds, all lazyfeed asks you to do is type in some key words (some of mine so far are ‘iPhone’, ‘mobileweb’, ‘userexperience’) and it then scrapes the web and pulls in articles, blog posts, and a host of other content that relate to your key word. Just save that stream, and then it automatically starts updating your stuff in realtime.

Easily lets you connect back to your various existing identities (twitter, facebook, flickr) and pulls in your tagged items from there too (though I see they left out google reader- maybe they weren’t allowed to include that functionality? Wouldn’t mind a Posterous addition either, but too early to start complaining, it did just launch after all). And, you can pretty easily share stuff from lazyfeed back out to your other nets.

Always finding myself these days looking for ever simpler aggregation tools to manage the overload of info that my Reader currently is, and have to say this may be one of the best I’ve used in a while. Can see getting a lot of use out of this one. And given that it’s pretty solid right from the start aside from a few minor complaints, will be very curious to see how it evolves and improves over time as they start to get more and more feedback from people.

(found via @mashable)

Whether you’re an operational executive, or a creative director, one of your goals is to push out forward-thinking, innovative work. But is process the antithesis of creativity? Is discipline a dirty word? Not at all.

For a while, Google as been synonymous with innovation. The company famously lets its engineers spend one day a week on projects that aren’t part of their jobs. Those “wasted” work days that so many execs would squawk at brought us GMail, Google Trends, and now Google Squared.

But Google has recently taken a further step towards fostering innovation, by establishing some basic managerial processes to ensure employee’s creativity finds its way to high-level management. After all, more than 95 percent of Google’s revenues trace back to Web-based search advertising. It’s been great at launching services like GMail, but Google has yet to have the company really rally behind these services as legitimate products (GMail is still in beta).

The Harvard Biz Review writes:

Google is creating “innovation reviews” where department heads share promising ideas with Google’s top leadership, helping executives focus attention and resources on promising ideas early. As CEO Eric Schmidt said, “We were concerned that some of the biggest ideas were getting squashed.”

It doesn’t seem like Google is walking away from its ideals. Rather, it’s trying to couple its world-class approach to the “front end” of the innovation process with the world-class discipline exhibited by companies like Procter & Gamble. It might yet struggle to bring these two approaches together. But success could allow the company to create an innovation capability that actually lives up to the hype.

The take-away here is that processes which push innovation from the bottom up are good. Remember that saying: “sh*t flows downstream?” All companies need help defying gravity.