

Radical constraints can lead to breakthroughs in simplicity and entirely new things - daviday
http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=348963&story_id=10328123

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immad
Evan gave a talk on this at Le Web 3.0. It was short and sweet. I liked it, it
makes the point well. Found the video online:
<http://light.vpod.tv/?s=0.0.392057>

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zoltz
I agree that this is the potentially "hottest" statement from the story. Yet
only two examples are given: Google and Twitter. Taking away the clutter
around the search box was a good idea, but wasn't Google's real innovation
something like counting links to pages to judge their significance? The
Twitter example is better, but one example is not enough to make the case. Are
there others?

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bayareaguy
It's a little more complex than counting links.

Before Google, most search engines only examined the keywords on a given page
to determine relevence.

Google improved on this by ranking results according to the "PageRank", which
is a probability distribution that represents the likelihood that a person
randomly clicking on links will arrive at any particular page.

With few exceptions, PageRank doesn't really capture any semantics associated
with the links.

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cdr
The idea that constraints are a key to creativity is hardly new, but it is
valid.

"... breakthroughs in simplicity and entirely new things", though? A tad
inane.

