It’s not your reliable Times home page with some ads, it’s your reliable Times homepage infested and overwhelmed with an advertisement. The ad not only completely dominates the above-the-fold experience (and my “fold” is generous here, 682 pixels high) but it’s moving around, people are talking (thankfully with the sound turned off) and the whole thing just overwhelms the newspaper reading experience.

Now, it’s worth noting that the New York Times is fully aware of this and provides a Minimize Ads control near the top of the page (you can actually see it in the snapshot, it’s the little gray box). It’s thoughtful of them to provide this. I’ve actually written about this “Off Switch” before. But here’s the thing: you don’t actually see that button the first time you’re greeted with that monster ad. Only if you refresh or revisit do you see it.

Anyway, the goal of this post is not to beat up on the NY Times advertising policies. The NY Times, in my opinion, is the best (if not one of the best) news destinations on the Web. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I still perceive nytimes.com as a digital representation of the paper newspaper. In the paper version, we would never see this kind of compromise for advertising on the front page. If you gray out the actual non-content on the above the fold, we’re left with this:

As you can see, a good 70% of the real estate is useless. This isn’t a newspaper anymore. It’s television. Ultimately, this is about controlling the experience. Television and radio, with it’s doling out of valued content over time, can place advertising along the experience timeline. To get to the stuff we want, we pretty much wait. Print publications are different in that I can jump to and go to anything I want. If I’m interested in the Science section, I’ll just “fast-forward” right to it. My options are far less linear and my ability to jump is unencumbered.

Content delivery and advertising on the Web is sort of it’s own animal. It borrows conventions from both TV and radio and print. I guess it feels wrong to me because, in my mind, you’re not supposed to move sections and words around on me when I’m reading. The physical placement of these information “objects” has become familiar to me. I’ve grown to know the lay of the land. When you move them around, I’m left annoyed and slightly cheated.

I can fully appreciate the Times’ motivation to sell ads. The newspapers are going through a lot of turmoil right now as they transition. My hope is that we’ll find a balance and that newspapers and magazines on the Web will hold strong on the things that compromise the reading experience and more importantly, their identity as news sources for reading news. I don’t want the NY TImes to turn into the NY Times Web Channel.

We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for "flu" is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together.

Pretty cool. Really cool actually. What Google is doing here is combining a couple of dimensions of data: where you are geographically and flu-related search queries to determine how the flu virus is spreading.

A few years ago, I talked about Google Base and what I then called the “Incidental Semantic Web.” In short, what I was talking about then is how the monitoring or mining of data artifacts out of selfish behavior can lead to some really interesting insights. That’s exactly what’s happening here.

We search for flu remedies and symptoms on Google because we’re selfishly motivated to learn more. We have no interest in contributing to some database that reports on the spread of the flu. That selfish motivation is precisely why Google can trust (relatively speaking) the data coming in. In other words, this ability to predict the spread of the flu is an incidental byproduct of millions of discrete, selfish acts.

I think this is just the beginning. Imagine synthesizing results from not only search queries, but eating habits (via “smart” refrigerators), drug interactions (RFID is making its way onto prescription bottles) and many other "sources” of data. For example, imagine finding a a far less likelihood of diabetes in cultures that eat extraordinary amounts of cauliflower.

Today, we take a guess about the correlation of different factors (Vitamin X reduces Disease Y) and kick off a study where we then decide to watch and gather data. Tomorrow, we’ll just check the data that comes out of our everyday lives.

Just ask Youtube. Youtube exploded precisely because we didn’t have to get the knife and scissors out to pry away that annoying, thick plastic casing to get at the product. Realplayer had a stubborn plastic wrapping around it. Youtube didn’t. Rewind ten years ago and stroll into Real Network’s offices and explain to them that their product was just fine but that their “packaging” would one day do them in and they would’ve laughed you out of the building. Installation downloads. Plugins. Configuration settings. It’s all a big honkin’ waste of time. The URL box killed Realplayer. Hell, even Amazon, the ultimate purveyor of actual physical stuff, is waking up to the uselessness of over-packaging in today’s world.

The un-packaging experience (or in software circles, what is commonly referred to as “download and installation”) is part of the entire experience around a piece of software. In fact, it’s a pretty important part of the relationship: it’s the introduction. The iPhone application and song acquisition experience is arguably one of the main reasons why the iPhone is so wildly popular and successful. The whole process flows beautifully. You don’t need to get the knife and scissors out.

A few weeks ago, I ran across an article or post that explained that MLB At Bat, the popular $4.99 iPhone application that gives you up-to-the-minute scores and video highlights would…*gasp*…expire. For a moment, I was offended and felt a bit duped. I paid my $4.99 and I assumed I’d purchased the damn thing. I owned it. I owned it in the traditional, free-market capitalist sense of the word. I give you $5, you give me a jar of pickles. The pickles are now mine.

Not so. Major League Baseball is going to require everyone to buy At Bat every year. It turns out I didn’t own a damn thing. In fact, I leased it…or subscribed to it. After getting over my initial grievance about the whole thing, I realized a few things. First, $4.99 a year is not even worth debating for an application of this quality. $4.99 gets you a large coffee at Starbucks. Second, all software is headed in this direction. It’s going the way of cable television or cell phones. We’re going to pay to use, not to own.

Today, the burden on software publishers is to sell you software that you will then own. A few years will go by and you’re asked again to “upgrade.” You can choose not to and just keep using whatever you’ve got. The burden is on software publishers to pile on features and updates compelling enough to make us want to pay the upgrade cost. If our copies of Photoshop CS3 stopped working tomorrow because it had “expired” you’d witness some sort of revolt of graphic designers, but that’s exactly where we’re headed.

This shift will bring a renewed emphasis on the software experience itself. The marketing of software; the barrier-to-entry to use; the virtual out-of-the-box experience along with the actual use of the product is all blending together into one continuous interaction. As we ready our idea management product, Kindling for general release, we’re realizing that the entire thing: from marketing pages, to the sign-up process to the actual application itself is really one cohesive experience.

So take heed product managers and designers, the shrink-wrapped box is gone. The barriers are gone. Hell, the actual shelf space is gone. Marketing is no longer over there and your product is over here. It’s all one big ball of experience. Make it as simple and memorable as you possibly can.

• Google Moderator: Take Q&A to a whole new level -- manage feedback from the smallest video conference to the largest all-hands company meeting.  Learn more
• Google Code Reviews: Collaborate with others to catch bugs in software changes before you check them in. Learn more
• Google Short Links: Create easy-to-remember links for both your internal and external web pages Learn more

Hey, free stuff is always good. You need a Google Apps account to play with these.

Guess what kids: Windows 7 is just Vista…with some more stuff. It’ll feel faster and more responsive in some key areas because the Vista team will have finally gotten the opportunity to do the various pieces right. In fact, Microsoft has already drastically improved Vista. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now and the various upgrades (Search 4.0, the Service Pack) have improved things dramatically. The operating system runs very nicely for me.

But all these patches and repairs aren’t going to repair one key bug: the stigma and negative sentiment around Windows Vista. You can’t combat that negativity with a laundry list of patches and updates.

So what do you do if you’re Microsoft? Purge the Vista name and move on. The number “7” just sounds more efficient and streamlined. Yeh, there are a handful of “features” that look more like new mini-apps than a true overhaul. And of course, you’ve got the benefit of a tweaking and cleaning up Vista. Personally, I think Vista has matured into a capable, reliable operating system. But alas, fixing software is one thing, fixing perception is a whole other thing.

I’ve reviewed the changes in 7 and honestly, it looks really promising. The mindset seems to be all about streamlining and improving the user experience. I’m all for it. But don’t be fooled. This is Microsoft rebooting the Windows brand.

“Can I help you with something?”

We roll our eyes (mentally at least).

“No thanks. I’m good. Just looking around.”

Shopping is recreational for many. It’s less about walking into Best Buy with printouts of exact model numbers targeting something specific and more about just killing some time rummaging through stuff. We may buy something, but there’s a good chance we won’t.

The online shopping experience is far different. Many of us do surf around and stroll through the virtual aisles, but it’s a very different hunt-and-peck sort of experience. The key difference with the online “no-thanks-I’m-just-looking” experience is that it transcends physical space or location. In a click, we can hop thousands of geographic miles. One minute we’re checking out a New York City boutique, the next we’re on the fringes of bizarre Japanese merchandising. It’s a manic, unpredictable experience.

The question for online retailers obviously leads to: “How do I keep that potential customer inside my ‘store’?” It’s a tough thing, and nobody’s really been able to nail it. Amazon has done an amazing job of building community and personalization around the shopping experience and it’s paid off so far. Now, they’re trying to bring the fiddling-around-the-shop experience to the Web with the Amazon Window Shop.  Here’s a snapshot of it:

It’s a fun, virtual reality-style experience. They’ve kept it to music, games, books and movies/DVD’s (which makes sense). You don’t search for anything. You simply flip through the latest products. It’s a nice experience (for an even more impressive 3D-ish browsing experience, check out Cooliris) but I’m not sure this is going to connect for people for one key reason: there’s no search.

This may well be a first iteration and search may be upcoming, but the online shopping experience is all about search. As we rip through site after site we search…constantly. It’s become the way we pivot from place to place, honing in on what we’re after (or what we think we’re after). If we go astray, we reset our bearings by…searching yet again. In the world of online retail, perusal equals search. It’s how we stroll around. The problem with an experience like Window Shop is that it recreates the limitations around the physical world; a limitation that we were glad to obliterate and transcend on the Web. The visual experience is great, but it can’t be confined. It needs to go everywhere to be compelling.

As the economy turns for the worse, I think people are going to be doing a lot more perusing and a lot less buying. Experiences like Window Shop have a compelling halo effect for Amazon even if it doesn’t directly lead to purchases. Let’s face it. Amazon, at the very least, wants you at the mall. Even if you’re only gonna hang out at the food court.