No need to search, they know what you want

It was a short week for some, but there was no shortage of intriguing news and opinions to sort through. We’ve rounded up a handful of items to share with you on this Friday, including one of many takes on Target’s “maternal instincts,” websites that don’t need searching and a forthcoming offering from Google that will really be in your face.

The New York Times piece on Target’s extreme targeted marketing via data analytics caught fire and was everywhere this week. Here’s one of the more thoughtful among the many takes on what it all means. It’s a two-part piece; you can click to see the second part at the end of the entry.

And in the further adventures of somewhat scary and scarily innovative data analytics: a company that aims to cut down all that laborious search time and just tell you what you want.

We don’t like the suggestion that CIOs are anything but this — however, Forbes contributer Perry Rotella offers up a trio of succinct steppingstones CIOs should consider in order to be recognized as “first-class executive leaders.”

Here’s something you really don’t want your business to get stuck with. Aside from its vast time-sucking capabilities, there’s another downside to the very hot Pinterest website — potential lawsuits, naturally.

Not to be confused with image recognition app Google Goggles, comes more speculation that Google will release reality-augmenting glasses by year’s end. Is this going to be one of those things we’ll question the point of, then find it becomes ingrained in our lives (hello, Facebook in 2007)? Maybe that eyePhone episode of “Futurama” is eerily prescient.