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We’ve added a global search feature to Wists. The search will look up users, tags and individual item titles and descriptions all at once – returning the results for each, separately. – So there are no parameters and advanced search settings. Again the rule is: have the user do the least work. Because tags tend to have multiple variants with the same stem, e.g. Lifehacker, Lifehacks, Lifehacking, Wists search will return everything starting with ‘Lifehack’. However, because people have tagged things separately you can still filter by one tag in particular. I can see that perhaps using search and tags with extensions to common word stems might evolve some interesting patterns. For example, if I wanted to start a list of restaurants for my friends I coud tag as ‘restaurant_dgfriends’ and filter by that in a search for restaurant. I’ll have to think about it – but the next step…

New Features: (The overall aim is to make as much as possible one or two clicks or automatic, based upon normal interaction with the product, from building a network of friends and groups of tags, to publishing – as things like tags fill up we’ll overlay tag management on top – again hopefully making that as automated as possible.)

Noah and Evan’s Odeo launches – a turnkey service for publishing and subscribing to podcasts. I’ve had a sneak peek and it confirms two things: 1. Blogger was not a fluke success, 2. Evan only works with really good people like Noah. Odeo is a beautifully designed application.

It seems like a small thing, but day after day I can’t help thinking that there is a distinct pattern to the business model of things such as the Associated Press going more and more down the route of using open syndication rather than traditional distribution partners. Wikipedia vs. Brittanica Writer Branded Blogs vs. Media Brands Tags vs. Taxonomies Slashdot vs. Peer Review Metacritic vs. Critic What all these things do is place ordinary people or individual nuggets of information as nodes in a non-hierarchical web rather than a series of disconnected pyramid hierarchies. The way the web looks to the end user, the way it looks to publishers and the way it works in terms of money flow are starting to look the same as the underlying technology – a non hierarchical web. And the really interesting thing about webs, is that is how the real word works –…

Clearly Apple is doing much better having brought back the visionary CEO that they originally fired. And he was fired for exhibiting all the things that he is now lauded for: creating a culture based upon vision and uncompromising design. The opposite of this is what is taught at business schools – i.e. to create a culture of products based upon understanding the market, rather than vision and innovation. Apple is a great vindication of ballsyness rather than MBAness. Jobs is our generation’s Frank Lloyd Wright. That Apple is doing well is also a great vindication of everyday people over faceless corporations. When companies buy laptops they buy boring thing like Dells on the assumption that they are reliable, not Apple’s which look too flashy. What Apple owners know is that their product is plain better. So Jobs is a star and Fiorina out to pasture. Perhaps there is a…