The River

My husband and I are doing a lot of traveling these days, what with the bi-coastal relationship and all. So it’s a great opportunity for me to check out some of the emerging travel search players like Yahoo’s Farechase (IE only), Kayak.com and SideStep (toolbar download necessary).

So, given the above caveats (“IE only” and “toolbar download necessary”) I am probably searching with Kayak a bit more often than with the others. Booked my first flight via Kayak today and enjoyed the user experience. I love that it “remembers” my previous searches, so I can just modify slightly, if necessary — change the dates, for example. This time, to book the cheapest most convenient flight (on Delta), I had the choice of going to Orbitz or to Delta.com. Tried going direct first, and couldn’t find that fare anywhere on Delta’s site. Then, Orbitz.com had it immediately. I don’t even pretend to understand how the airlines do their distribution and pricing. I just want the best fare. Kayak’s Flash interface, which I was using, seems to be a bit of a memory hog. But since that Google Desktop Search app is STILL indexing my hard drive (I’m going on 6 days now, Fred.), things could be slowing down due to that. (Or countless other things!)

What’s fantastic from Kayak’s point of view is that it gets to be solely a search company (and a media company) and can leave things like actually booking the flight, or dealing with CRM things like flight notifications, to others. What a relief, I’d think, not to require a call center to deal with people wanting to change their flights.

Note: I wrote about Kayak on ClickZ News a little while back.

So, yesterday on ClickZ News, I wrote a piece on the launch of a new wireless ad network. Then today, I get a newsletter (archived copy here), sections of which look awfully familiar. Hmmm….

As if the famous heart attack anecdote isn’t enough, Google is once again saving lives. From the BBC comes a story of how an Australian hostage in Iraq was freed because a Google search convinced his captors he didn’t work for the CIA or a U.S. contractor.

From the story:

[John Martinkus’] executive producer at Australia’s SBS network, Mike Carey, said Google probably saved freelance journalist Martinkus.

“They Googled him and then went onto a web site – either his own or his book publisher’s web site, I don’t know which one – and saw that he was who he was, and that was instrumental in letting him go, I think, or swinging their decision,” he told AP news agency.

My former journalism professor, Sree Sreenivasan, takes it as yet another sign that journalists need their own Web sites. Point taken, Sree.

There’s been a lot of blog linking the past couple of days to a Baylor College of Medicine study on how “cultural messages” (i.e. advertising, marketing, branding) affect the brain.

The sixty-seven people tested showed no preference for either Coke or Pepsi when they didn’t know which drink was which. When told what they were drinking, roughly three-fourths preferred Coke. All 67 also submitted to brain scans, and researchers said they could tell — even before people took a drink — which brand they preferred, because of the MRI.

“There?s a huge effect of the Coke label on brain activity related to the control of actions, the drudging up of memories, and things that involve self-image,” said Dr. Read Montague, director of the Brown Human Neuroimaging Lab, in the press release.

Really fascinating stuff.

More from Montague in the press release:

“We live in a sea of cultural messages. Everybody has heard of Coke and Pepsi, they have messages, and, in the case of Coke, those messages have insinuated themselves in our nervous systems. There is a response in the brain which leads to a behavioral effect ?- in this case, personal preference -? regarding these beverages.”

The study appeared in the Oct. 14 issue of the journal Neuron.

Kudos to my homies in Houston at Baylor College of Medicine.

Looks like Puffin is finally making its debut. Danny reports that Google has debuted what it’s calling Google Desktop.

The program isn’t compatible with my system here at the office, for some reason. The installer says it conflicts with various programs on my system — most of which I don’t even recognize. Anyway, can’t really comment on it until I’ve had a chance to check it out.

UPDATE: Ok, so turns out the Desktop Search is incompatible with PortMagic, which is something that comes bundled with AOL 9.0 Optimized. I was able to uninstall it, but if Google is going for a mass (AOL-using) audience, this could become a problem .

My first reactions:

The user interface is a little… strange. Sure, Google wants it to be easy and familiar, but it’s weird to search your hard drive via a browser, and I would expect the mass audience to be a bit confused. If things (like my personal files) show up in a Web browser, it would be natural to assume it’s on the Web. Yes, I know it’s not, I’m just talking about perception.

Same goes for the Desktop search results showing up when you search Google Web.

What’s with not being able to search e-mail unless Outlook is open? One of the biggest promises of desktop search, at least where I’m concerned, is the ability to search archived e-mail files. I’ve got tons of e-mails archived that I’d love to get access to, but Outlook balks when trying to load gigabytes of old e-mail.

Kudos for functions to search IM and cached HTML files. But it strikes me as sort of weird to do the Web history this way. Aren’t temporary Internet files deleted occasionally, or shouldn’t they be? (Non-techie talking here.)

Why no ads? Too sensitive? I’d imagine they’ll be coming in not too long.

I’m with Calacanis in thinking it doesn’t do as much for me — yet — as X1, which I’ve been using for a while. X1 is a bit of a memory hog, but it also allows you to search and sort by a lot of different variables — from address, subject line, etc.

UPDATE2: My buddy Tom has thoughts and links to others with thoughts.

Hearty congratulations are in order for my colleague Zach and his wife, Jean, who just added two tiny new members to their family. Hooray for the twins, and mom and dad, too!