Cory Watilo

Google has been known to continually improve upon the look and feel of their search site, but I just came across some changes that are a bit more substantial than a traditional Google refresh or improvement. This "redesign" includes a blue search button, eliminating the Google Search and I'm Feeling Lucky buttons and more changes on the results page.

The homepage now includes a voice search feature that will automatically use a built-in microphone or one attached to a webcam (thanks to HTML5).

They also seem to be trying a completely new color scheme in the left rail of the search results page, as well as a gray bar across the top.

Another example of a results page with different types of content.

And the line height on some pages just looks plain silly.

There's a good chance many of these changes will never go live. A couple years ago, Facebook redesigned and tested their signup process but it didn't last long.

Netvibes is my favorite news reader and I've used it for years. It's the best way I've found so far to digest news delivered by RSS feeds on the desktop. But when Netvibes released their premium service last year, I was pretty disappointed to see what it offered:

• Support response within 24 hours
• Beta access and a VIP profile badge

And for this, they want $39 a year. I'm sorry, but I'm just not a fan of prioritizing support for paid users when it's basically your only benefit of upgrading. And it's certainly not a convincing enough reason to shell out $39.

Here's where I disagree with the Netvibes philosophy: Support is not a feature. Keeping users happy is a core part of running an internet business and should be top priority. I shouldn't have to pay to get help if I run into a problem that I shouldn't have in the first place.

What's worse is that I've noticed a significantly longer support response time since they released their premium service (average response time used to be 1-2 days; lately it's been 4 days).

And the fact that Netvibes wants to charge for access to beta tests is downright boneheaded. Usually beta tests are given away for free since it's prone to more bugs and can be less stable than a final product.

I should point out that I am more than willing to give $39 to Netvibes for some advanced features I could use. Heck, I'd give them $100 a year. But not for something that should be a "customer right". I would happily pay for an advanced featureset (known as the freemium model, where a subset of users pay for features that not everyone wants or needs). Ya know, like embeddable widgets of news stories I'm reading - like a feed, advanced formatting of feeds, heck, maybe even iPad support (although this was rumored to be coming a year ago). But I would more than likely do it just to support a service I've used for free for many years.

I hope Netvibes continues to innovate and create a better news-reading experience online, rather than relying on users to pay for support to supplement their revenue from enterprise accounts. As good as their experience is at presenting the news, there's still plenty of room for improvement. Netvibes: if you need some ideas, see Flipboard for iPad.

Netvibes needs to continue evolving their product to stay on top. And maybe come up with some features that users will pay for, rather than charging for something that should be free.

People. Your spelling is atrocious. And it's getting worse every day.

Far too many people confuse the difference between your/you're, their/they're, to/too, and its/it's - or even worse, they don't even realize there is a difference. There are even plenty of Facebook groups dedicated into setting people straight. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem they've worked yet. And what's even more depressing is that most 2nd graders understand the right usage.

So in an effort to do my part in making the world a better place, I'm providing a little guide of what words to use and when.

Your/You're
You're is a contraction of "you are". If you can't interchange "you are" and "you're" in a sentence, you're using the wrong one.

Their/They're/There
Same as above. "They're" is a contraction of "they are". If you can't interchange "they are" and "they're" in a sentence, you're using the wrong one. "Their" is possessive, when referring to an object of someone (like their car). If it's neither of those, use there (generally speaking). And if you want to use all three in a sentence, it'd look something like this: "They're putting their things over there."

To/Too
Only use "too" in these cases: when it can be replaced by "also", like "I want some ice cream, too." or when it means "in excess" like "Your iPod is playing too loudly." An easy way to remember this is the extra "o" is only used when you're adding more on to something.

Its/It's
It's is a contraction of "it is". If you can't interchange "it is" and it's, then you're doing it wrong.

Fortunately I'm not alone in this pet peeve. This little bit below is taken from postings found across the web:

Let's review:

"Your" signifies ownership or relation, which refers to something owned by someone, a title or friend/relation. Examples:

"Your car is cool."
"Your status is lame."
"Your shirt is ugly."

"You're" is an abbreviation of "you are", which is what you'd say when speaking to someone about who or what they are, be it insult, praise, fact or random statement. Examples:

"You're a moron."
"You're fantastic!"
"You're ugly."