Today we’re adding a new experiment to Google Labs: Google Fast Flip, accessible at fastflip.googlelabs.com. Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers.

via Google News Blog: Read news fast with Google Fast Flip.

Design is important! As we move back to the important of design and graphic communication, I believe that publishers doing well (especially magazine publishers) in this area will benefit from visual presentations. My first question every time someone walks into my office with a new eReader, ebook, or mobile app is, “does it display graphics?”

But Fast Flip requires publishers to showcase more of their content than a simple Google News listing requires, which could allow readers to completely skip clicking through after getting the gist of the story from the first few paragraphs. On the other hand, a more attractive presentation of the story could attract more clicks than a single headline might. – cnet News

In addition to the browser version of Fast Flip, they also created a mobile version. http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/mobile

Martin Nisenholtz, the NYT‘s SVP of digital operations, cautions against reading too much into the revenue sharing—or the relationship. “There’s no grand plan here, nothing more to this other than learning,” he told paidContent. “This is not about any kind of large strategic relationship issue.” – paidcontent.org

The Fast Flip site is fastflip.googlelabs.com

Take a few flips and let us know what you think!

Search is very important.  It’s how we find answers and information everyday.

We are just getting our mind around Wolfram|Alpha a new type of search and Microsoft has announced their candidate in the search space dominated by Google.

WolframAlpha is different in that it can give us the information we seek instead of piecing it together with what we find on Google.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has unveiled Bing, the company’s revamped search engine and a key component in its online strategy.

via Microsoft unveils ‘Bing’ search engine – ZDNet.co.uk.

The current site bing.com has their Coming Soon splash page. 

According to Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk, Microsoft is calling Bing a “decision engine” rather than a search engine.

Didn’t we have big enthusiasm with Cuil (read more) recently.  I really liked the visual presentation of Cuil results and the suggestions and related keywords.  

But for some reason, it didn’t end up on a bookmark where I would conveniently use it on a regular basis.  

It’s not reasonable to me that a new search engine player enters the market and changes habbits of going to Google.  If the new search entrants want to gain presence, they should be partnering with social media sites as the exclusive search tool.  Imagine if Bing was integrated better with Twitter search than any other tool?  Or if Cuil was acquired by Facebook and bacame all Facebook users “right column” search for everything tool.

I’m sure the high level strategy teams are thinking about these things.  You wan’t to see the game get interesting? Just wait until you hear about one of the big players announce what I just proposed.