The Taste Blog

Journalism is a business – that is how it is going to sustain itself; that is a key precept of the New Business Models for News Project. But is it still an industry dominated by companies and…

UC Berkeley Professor Marti Hearst has a great new book out, “Search User Interfaces”.

The book is a survey of recent work in search, but with an unusual focus on the importance of interface…

Few of you should care but for those who do, here’s a chronicle of my experience in robotic surgery for prostate cancer. I post it here mainly for the ongoing Google value to those who follow me…

Michael Stonebraker is predicting that the dominance of the generic relational database is coming to an end. Having recently founded several database companies, he has a vested interested in…

You must do many silly things to get a large research grant:

• You must know precisely what you will do for the next five years. Yet, in my experience, good researchers only have a vague idea of…

My prostate surgery went fine. I’ve been tweeting it. Will blog more when I get a full keyboard at home, later today, I hope.

Despite frequently appearing together at conferences, it is fairly rare to see public debate on technology and technique between people from Google and Microsoft. A recent talk on A/B testing at …

If you seek approval above all else, you are unlikely to innovate outside the rigid bounds of the current system:

• You do not convince existing journals to give more respect to this new field you…

The latest edition of the Guardian MediaTalkUSA podcast, which I present, features the work of CUNY’s New Business Models for News Project and discussion with two folks who know hyperlocal: Deb…

In addition to the podcast (below), the New Business Models for News Project is the subject of my column in the Guardian’s media section. Here’s the full text:

There is a future for news – a…

Zephyr Teachout has a good column in tomorrow’s Washington Post predicting the disaggregated university. It’s very much in harmony with what I wrote in What Would Google Do? – that complete…

Americans think that the best scientists come from their best universities. To learn more, consider where the influential mathematicians actually come from:

It has been a long time coming, but Google finally started personalizing their AdWords search advertising to the past behavior of searchers:

When determining which ads to show on a Google search…

Yesterday I tweeted about Google’s offer to bring its checkout to enable micropayments for newspapers: “A cynical act, I’d say: a tool no one uses used to coopt foes on a useless quest.” In…