All about Google

Google disk finally becomes available

2010-01-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

After a long wait, Google will finally start to deploy its online storage solution. As part of Google docs, users will have the opportunity to store documents directly in Google servers, therefore creating a new possibility for online backups.
With Google Docs, users are already able to create, share, and modify documents that are permanently store on Google servers. With this new feature, Google is improving Google Docs to add the option of permanent storage for any file.
The free version of the service will store 1GB of documents, while additional storage can be acquired through an annual fee.

Customizing colors and images on Chrome

2009-08-06T06:57:00.000-07:00

Since its launch, Google Chrome has been a full featured web browser with a very simple user interface.
What this means in practice is that you can get your job done, but you wouldn't have any of the niceties provided by Firefox, such as themes and other methods of user experience customization.
Version 3.0 of Chrome, however, is trying to change this with the addition of themes. There is even a set of themes that have been specially created for this launch (see link bellow).
As a long time user of Chrome, I think that the current default theme is just as nice (in fact, version 3.0 made some subtle improvements on it. However, it is great that we have choice, so if you are not comfortable with the default options, you can even create a new theme and make it available to everyone.

Link: https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/themes/

Using Google to let people know where you are

2009-05-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

Google has launched a few weeks ago a new service that lets people publish their current location. Known as Google latitude, the service gives information that might be useful to your friends and family.
However, even if you decide to provide location information, not every one has the software required to receive the updates. This has made some people to have some reservation about starting using Latitude.

Google is making things simple now, by displaying the information provided by the location service in other products. For example, starting now Google will be displaying location information on Google talk. This way, anyone can receive you location information with one of the Google talk clients, such as Gmail.

According to the Google Official blog:

Google Talk location status (beta) automatically updates your Google Talk or Gmail chat status message with your Latitude location. With this application enabled, all of your chat buddies can see your most recent city-level location. The Google Public Location Badge lets you publish your Latitude location on your blog or website

Google and how to scan books fast

2009-05-03T05:59:00.000-07:00

Google engineers are always looking for ways to getter and deliver information faster and more accurately. The latest example is the scanning project, that allows Google to scan physical book and add them to the Google book web site.
Google is probably the company that scans more books in the world. They have a legal agreement by which they can scan every book in some of the biggest libraries in the world. They also have a deal with publishers that will allow them very soon to sell books that are out of print.
Scanning books real fast
The latest information about the scanning project is that they are using technology to reduce the time needed to scan books. The idea even became a patent, which was granted in March of 2009.
The patent describes a technique, by which an infrared system is used before a page is scanned. The infrared light can detect how curved are the pages of a book. With this information, scanners can set up the software to correct any distortion due to the curvature of the book. It is just like using software to project a flat image out of a curved object.
With this added help, the scanners are able to process more books, since the page doesn't need to be flattened on the screen. Also, the results are more accurate, because any distortion is taken care during the scanning phase.
Making all books available
It is interesting to see how fast can Google proceed with the book scanning project. While other companies, such as Microsoft, stopped their book scanning project, Google is going even faster. Nobody out of Google knows how long will probably take until they have every book scanned, but it looks like they are getting there faster.
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Google Code adds support for Mercurial - no Git yet

2009-04-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

Google announced today that it will start supporting the distributed version system Mercurial as an alternative to svn in its code hosting website.
The company reported that they did a study on the advantages and disadvantages of both Mercurial and Git before taking a decision.
Here is a picture of the new feature, as posted on Google's blog:

Nice, but no Git Yet
Although this is an interesting step in the direction of using distributed versioning systems, it is still too little. In fact, it seems that Git has many times more users than Mercurial at this time. Developers will most probably continue pushing Google into providing Git support, as sourceforge already did recently.

Google Labs Expanded

2009-04-22T08:43:00.001-07:00

Google has a large number of employees that are always creating new technologies. While there are the already stablished services from the company, such as Gmail, search, and youtube, there is always something new and cool that Google is working on.

To give more prominence to this work, Google is doing a revamp of its Google labs. The web site existed for a long time, and it was a kind of incubator for cool projects that Google had not commited to for completely.

Total Revamp

The revamped Google Labs website is now a much larger directory of technologies that will be available from the company. Most of them are targeted a developers, and provide application programming interfaces (API) for existing services, such as Gmail and Photo search.

There are also innovations targeted at end users. For example, take the new search me
service that was released yesterday. It is now much easier to find such gems of technology, since the search and categorization functions have been greatly improved.

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Google me let people find themselves

2009-04-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

If you search you name on Google twice a day, probably you will be interested in knowing that Google has made life easier for you. A new service is being launched by Google labs, by which anyone can track information about their own name on the web.
Personal Profiles
Using the "Google me" service, one can check the results of a web search on their name. Google is also allowing that personal profiles be presented on the search results page. With this feature, you can profile information that will be displayed by each search.
The profile presented by Google me can include information about social web site memberships, such as Facebook, Orkut, and myspace.

This is one of the services that Google labs is releasing today. It certainly deserves some attention, specially if you care about results for you name on search engines.

Reference: Google Blog

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Integrating blogger and Google Analytics

2009-04-18T18:57:00.000-07:00

If you are a web site publisher, you frequently have the necessity of determining how each page is doing. This way one can try to improve the relevance of a page as well as providing additional information for readers.

If you use blogger, there are several ways of getting this information, but all of them involve using an external application. For example, the most popular alternative is to use Google Analytics, a web service provided by Google to collect information about page accesses in a simple and useful way.

Although Google Analytics is a good product, it still requires a manual process of connecting the blog to the analytics page, which involves copying and pasting a tracking code in html/javascript.

To simplify this process, Google is working on the integration of Blogger and Analytics. This means that you will be able to access directly in your blogger dashboard the information processed by analytics.

The announcement was made on the Analytics blog, and the product is in private beta. It will still take some time until the features is availabl to everyone, but it is a good sign that things will become even simpler for Blogger publishers.

Source: analytics blog

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Google MTV: youtube is planning website to provide music videos

2009-04-13T04:59:00.000-07:00

MTV was a success two decades ago with the formula of offering music videos to the masses of young listeners. Now it seems that Google wants to repeat the dose, but using the Internet, and particularly the structure of youtube to do the distribution.
According to an announcement, Google is partnering with Universal to provide music videos on a new website, vevo.com

The web site vevo.com is right now showing just a simple logo, and announcing that vevo means "1. music, 2. videos, 3. you". That is, it is using the idea of iteraction with music in the same way that youtube does for home made videos.

View PDF files on Gmail

2008-12-12T18:55:00.000-08:00

PDF files are an awkward format for distributing content on the web: PDFs are of excellent quality, and easy to read and print, but they are also considered a nuisance when you need to visualize information quickly.

Usually, to see a PDF file you need to request an application external to the web browser (a PDF reader plug in). But loading the application frequently takes much more time than loading a single web page.

PDF files also have the tendency to keep accumulating on the hard drive -- most of the time without any practical use. Thus, you end up with a lot of PDFs spread over your hard drive, and especially on the download folder.

Using the PDF Previewer in Gmail

A solution to some of the problems mentioned above has been implemented in Gmail. It is in the form of a quick previewer, that allows anyone to see the contents of a PDF file witout having to open Acrobat reader or similar programs.

If you receive an email in your Gmail account that contains a PDF attachment, you have the option to quickly preview the file. When you click view PDF, instead of loading an external application, Gmail will simply open a web page with some images displaying each of the pages of the document.

PDFs and GoogleDocs

The effect of previewing PDFs is not new if you ever used Google documents. For example, you can just as well load a PDF on Google documents and do the same manipulations.

The difference however is that, by clicking on the Gmail like, the document will be loaded into Google docs directly from Gmail.

Adding a Twitter Gadget to Gmail

2008-12-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

If you use Gmail, it is possible that you haven't notice, but Gmail supports now the addition of gadgets to its left bar. You can choose hundreds of gadgets to add, among the list maintained by Google in its iGoogle page.

From this large number of gadgets, one of special interest is the twitter gadget. If you are a twitter user, you may have the twitter web page open during the whole day. Or you may be using a separate application, such as twhirl to see your twittts.

Gmail now supports twitter using the twitter Gadget. You just need to add the gadget link to the list of gadgets in Google labs, and it will be installed. Now it will be easier than ever to keep in contact with you twitter friends through Gmail.

Link: GO2WEB20 Blog: How to Add Gadgets to your Gmail Account

Parking your domain at Google

2008-12-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

Domain parking is a business with a long history in the web. Basically, if you have a domain name without any content, you can use it to make a few bucks using domain parking services.

The basic idea behind domain parking is that, depending on the domain name you have, many users will access the domain from time to time. For example, a domain such as pizza.com will generate visits even if it had no content. People just type a name like this in the browser window and it will eventually arrive at their web site.

Domain owner can profit from this by adding links that users will eventually click, generating advertisement revenue.

Until now, Google had a domain parking service that was restricted to domains with large number of visitors. Imagine if Microsoft.com goes out of business: they could just park the domain at Google and share the ad revenue.

Now, Google is allowing this to all domain owners. It may become a great business for people that buy domain names, since they need no content. Just the name will be enough to generate some money.

The bad news, however, is that you can certainly expect a large number of new domain to be created just for this purpose. Which will make even harder to find useful things, unless you use Google... well, may that is what they really want, after all.

Link: Inside AdSense: Extending AdSense for domains to all publishers

Gmail adds TODO lists to its interface

2008-12-09T06:43:00.000-08:00

Using Gmail as a personal organizer is something that many users do. It has so many nice features, such as storing email as conversations, that are helpful in keeping users organized.

Something that was missing, however, is the abilitity to add lists of tasks. To do lists are a very useful feature in any organizer. Some people have even tried to replicate this in Gmail by sending email to themselves.

It turns out that now Gmail has its own to-do list. It is activated using the Google labs feature, where you can select it as an option. A link to the task list will appear bellow the contacts link. Just click it, and you will see a window similar to the Google Talk window.

You can read more about this new feature on the Gmail blog: Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Tasks

Devices for Developers - Android

2008-12-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

Android is the software platform used by the Google phone (commercially released as the G1). Android is open source software, and it allows anyone to created software that can run in the Google smart phone.

Until now, however, developers had to leave in the same market where the Google phone was sold in order to have one. Moreover, the phone sold commercially is locked with features required by carriers.

Google is now allowing developers to have their own unlocked Google phone, which can be used to create software more easily than what as permitted by the commercial version.

This development phone also provides access to developers living in countries without commercial carriers for the Google phone.

For more information on this program, check the recent post at Devices for Developers - Android

Official Google Blog: Google Friend Connect: now available

2008-12-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

After a few months in a closed beta, Google launches a new service targeted at webmasters that want to profit on the wave of social services.

With Google friend connect, you can also create a web site that has features similar to Facebook or Orkut. The objective is to let users join your website with the same login used in other networks. Then, they will be able to connect with friends as usual.

I think it is a smart service, which can improve many web sites. You should take a look at the original posting at the Official Google Blog (Google Friend Connect now available).

Gmail gets colors

2008-11-19T18:23:00.001-08:00

Gmail users have lots of cool features to spend their time on, but the colors of the main interface have been left unchanged for a long time. Since Gmail was launched, there was not big effort to make the UI colors look different.

This changed now with a new featured integrated into the web application: Gmail themes. With themes, you can choose from several colorful screen to be used with Gmail. Changing the theme is as easy as clicking on a button in the settings window.

Speeding up your searches

2007-12-08T12:52:00.001-08:00

If you are like me, a good part of your online time is spend searching information on Google. In the majority of the cases, I am doing something that requires additional information, or looking for a website that can solve my problem.

Clearly Google saves me a lot of time, but it would also interesting to minimize the time necessary for my own Google searches. Here are some tips I think that minimize your search time. They have been very helpful in improving my search experience.

Search for specific terms: most people spend a lot of time in the web because they search for terms that are too general. For example, if you are looking for music players for mp3 and you start searching just for mp3, most of your searches will be about general mp3 musics. If you really want to find pages faster, you need to be more specific with your terms.
Use the cached pages: Google offers the great ability of looking the cache of a web page returned by the search. This have some advantages: first, you get faster to the result you are looking for. It is usually much faster to access Google pages than to access another web page in the web. So, using this idea you will cut your waiting time. Second, the cached page has you search terms highlighted. This means that you can very easily find the results on the page, instead of looking for them with the search feature of your browser.
Read carefully the descriptions returned in the search result page: most people are so anxious to find a result that they click on the first page returned by Google. Although this works frequently, it can also be a time waste in many cases. It is better to consider each page, and find the ones that most closely relate to what you are searching for.

I think that searching content is similar to any other activity: the more you do it, the better you get at finding what you want. Using some of these tips I was able to reduce my search time and therefore have been able to spend more time doing what I like.

Google Android: a platform for new mobile applications

2007-12-05T18:44:00.000-08:00

If you think about existing application for mobile devices, and how they are different in look and feel, you will soon discover that this is an area which is far from a standardized. Each cell phone or PDA in the market is using a different, and many times incompatible, operating system and applications.

Although this could be good for manufactures in some sense (for example, by locking applications to a specific platform), it is bad for users that have to adjust to different applications when changing devices. Doing such a change is not nearly as easy as withPCs, where you can always use the same operating system (windows or linux) in any computer.

To change this trend, Google introduced the android platform for mobile computing. Their goal is to allow the creation of applications that will run unchanged on any participating device. In order to do this, Google has made available a complete software solution, which includes a Linux-based kernel, libraries, and graphical utilities.

If you have interest in mobile applications, you should certainly consider android. It is a clean platform, and given the power of Google, it will probably be available in many devices in the near future.

See the Space with Google Earth

2007-08-22T17:45:00.001-07:00

Google earth has brought new ways to view the planet: for the first time, it made it very easy to visit any location in the planet from our desktop. Now, Google is trying to do the same for the sky. The new version of Google earth will have the capability to show the space, in addition the traditional satellite views of the Earth.

A new module of Google Earth allows users to switch from Earth view to Sky view. This allows anyone to explore the sky using some of the well known tools in Google earth. For example, one can take a close up of specific regions of the sky. Constellations can be presented in a way that is easy to identify.

It is difficult to say that the sky view will be so important as the technology for geographical information. However, this new feature may be very interesting for educational purposes, so it will be of great interests in schools. And, of course, the amateur and even professional astronomers will be delighted.

Google Finance Tools

2007-08-11T09:34:00.001-07:00

If you are interested in finance and investment, Google finance has a super web site that can be used to get all information you need about financial investments, especially stocks.

The web site, finance.google.com, has a search interface similar to the well known Google search. With the search box you can find any stock that is currently traded in the US.

One advantage of the search feature in Google finance is that it has autocompletion. For example, suppose you want to find the price of Apple stock, but doesn't remember the symbol (also known as ticker). A simple way of solving this is typing the name of the company (Apple), and Google finance will automatically fill in the ticker.

Google finance also has lots of information about stocks: a summary of the activity of the company, the latest results for the previous quarters, blog discussions, and much more.

The main reason I like to use Google finance is the smart charts: using AJAX, you can visualize prices for any time period. This makes it easy to analyze the past valuation of a company and use this information in your research of stocks.

Using the Google currency converter

2007-06-26T20:41:00.001-07:00

If you have to convert monetary values frequently or just occasionally, you may have found that it is always a pain to find the exact quantity in a foreign currency. Although there are a number of web pages that provide this type of conversion, you always have to remember where it is located, and then enter the value as required.
Google tries to help in this kind of situation by providing an automatic currency converter, embedded in its search engine.

Functionality

The way the Google currency converter works is very simple. You can enter your values directly in the search box: it can be in the main Google page, the search bar in your web browser, or in a search box in a third-party web site. Google will process your request and return a currency value.

Syntax

You need, however, to put your search in a special format, so that Google can recognize that you want to make a currency conversion. The syntax of the search is as follows: the name and quantity of the original currency, followed by the name of the target currency.
To make this easier to grasp, look at the following example:
5 USD to Canadian dollar
Here we give the quantity and original currency, and follow it by the name of a foreign currency.
Other examples can give a better idea of how this works (these are examples taken directly from the Google help page)
3.5 USD in GBP
currency of Brazil in Malaysian money
5 British pounds in South Korean money
2.2 USD per gallon in INR per litre

Problems

The currency converter of Google does a great job, but it also has some limitations. One problem that I noticed is that sometimes it is hard to get the syntax that can be properly understood by Google. For example, the following
5 canadian dollar in USD
is not understood. You have to spend sometime trying until you get the right
5 CAD in USD.
Given these limitations, however, learning to use the Google currency converter is probably the easiest way to convert currencies, and you should give it a try.

Google cooperates with Apple on more than the iPhone

2007-06-20T06:57:00.001-07:00

Apple and Google plan to collaborate even more - that is the message from Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, to the crowed that came to preview some of the Google's innovations during a French event.
According to Google's CEO, the cooperation just started with the integration of Youtube into Apple's products, such as AppleTV and the iPhone. Scchmidt, who was demoing a very exclusive Apple iPhone, told the crowd that other collaborations where on the way, and that the Google-Apple combination would deliver notable technologies in the near future.
It will be very interesting to watch what these collaborative features would be. In fact, joining the network power of Google with the hardware and software excellence of Apple would result in pretty impressive products. Let us hope that this collaboration really works in the long run and that users can benefit from it.

Google: future growth is in business customers

2007-06-20T06:31:00.001-07:00

During the first ten years of Google, huge growth has been reported by the company based on its large base of satisfied customers. During this time, Google transformed itself from a simple web search engine into one of the most valuable web properties of all time.
These days where the end user is the target, however, might be ending. The growth levels experimented by the company in their first years seem to be unsustainable for the long run, and Google has to find some way to get the engine working. Their future as a company depends on the ability of the management in creating new business opportunities that make them even stronger.
One important step in this change is the new discuss of the CEO, Eric Schmidt. In an interview, the CEO explain that the future expansion of Google will depend fundamentally on "providing applications and other services to business customers".
This may be a gold opportunity for Google, but it all depends on how it is implemented. If this is done at the expense of end users (as has been the case of Microsoft), then the loyal customer base may just think that they are not so "cool" anymore.

Yahoo tries to get back on track with new CEO

2007-06-19T12:27:00.001-07:00

Will it work?

It has been talked in the media that when a founder comes back to help a company, it usually change things around. Remember what happened with Apple for example? There is, however, a big difference between the innovative style of Steve Jobs and the style of the Yahoo founder. For once, he was never responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company. Moreover, Yahoo is not a startup anymore.

Even more than Google, it has a big-corporation culture that requires people with strong knowledge of administrative techniques, beyond technical knowledge. For example, it is difficult to think that the Google founders could go so far without the expert help of Eric Schmidt.

So, while it is exciting for Yahoo people that Jerry is back, it is hard to see if the change will really be the beginning of a real improvement in the situation of Yahoo.

What are the consequences to Google?

If it was in another situation, maybe this event should have some repercussion on Google. After all, Yahoo is the main competitor in several areas, including search, and it is never wise to dismiss new information about your competitors. However, Google has such a large share of the search market that it is difficult to see they being threatened by Yahoo any time soon. When and if this happens, then it will probably time for Google to be more careful with the steps adopted by this new CEO.

Searching for Images

2007-06-19T09:24:00.001-07:00

One of the main advantages of the web is the amount of free information that is available. However, information itself is not that important if you don't have a good way to sort into what is valuable and what is what is trivial.

If you are looking for images, don't forget to use Google images as a resource to navigate all this information.

Here are some tips to help you find the images you want faster
Use common words that represent the object/image that you are looking for. It might be easier to find images of generic objects than of very particular ones.
Try to add keywords that can clarify the meaning of the images you are trying to find. For example, when looking for caterpilar (equipment) instead of searching for cat or caterpilar you can add the keyword equipment.

Solar powered cars and Google - what is the matter?

2007-06-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

Google recently set up a foundation dedicated to the main company "unwritten" goal: doing good. The foundation has been funded to provide help in several areas, including energy conservation.

Google is announcing that they will fund a new project to develop solar powered cars. This is exciting, and if succesful, it can improve the image of the company as one that is interested in helping the environment. This is also good for the company, since its image has been shown as not very positive in the last popular pools...

Google Makes Art Available Online

2007-04-03T18:54:00.000-07:00

Google has always been about technology and great ideas. The company loves to create artistic logos, videos, and other media that can show their creativity.

Now, the company has made available much of this material for download on mobile phones. If you want, you can just navigate to Google's mobile web site and use some of their nice logos, and other product-related art in your cell phone.

I think it is a nice touch that can humanize a little bit the image of Google. Moreover, it is cheap promotion for them: there are lots of Google fans that will carry the images of Google in their cell phones, and will not mind doing free promotion for them.

If you are interested, just log in to Google's mobile web site and download some "commercial" art.

Link

Google helps to combat spam

2007-03-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

Spam is the big problem everyone has when dealing with email. It is so easy to send email to other people that spammers have used the opportunity to send unintended messages to everyone in the planet. It is known that around 80% of the emails in the world are just spam.

Google is fighting hard aggains spammers. Its flagship email service, Gmail, has been effective in maintaining inboxes clean from spam.

Google has a software package, Googlepack, which can help your computer run much better, despite of the widespread viruses and malicious emails. You should download Googlepack today.

Google is also collaborating with legislators. According to the Google blog, spammers that use the system to improve stock prices will be hurted. Stocks with such problems can be take of the market. It is only a beginning, but it is a good initiative from the market and institutions that should not tolerate spam anymore.

It is good to see that Google is doing its part. Users should also do its part and report spam frequently. This is the best way to keep our inboxes clean.

Webmasters As Information Providers

2007-02-26T19:27:00.000-08:00

Finding information about web sites is an important part of the equation, but Google webmaster tools also give the chance for site owners to provide information about their sites. Nobody knows better then site owners about the content of their web pages, and using this information can help Google to classify pages with even better accuracy.

Google services for webmasters has features that allows web masters to provide this kind of information. One of the things that a site owner can do to improve the coverage by Google is to create a site map. A site map is a file that describes the contents of the web site: the number of pages, where they are, and what is their content. The site map is an important tool, because it improves the accuracy with which the Google crawler can navigate the web site.

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The normal way web crawlers work is by exploration: they start in a visible web page, most frequently the default of page of a web site. Then, they will collect the links pointing to other pages in the web site, until they hopefully have a list of all pages in the web site. While this process works well most of the time, it is not optimal.

First of all, it wastes time and bandwidth of the web site in which the process is done. Second, there is always the possibility the some web page is not visible from the home page. This means that some web pages in a site can never be known by the search engine, unless there is a link from an external page pointing to that location.

A site map can avoid this situation by providing the full list of web pages in the web site. To create a site map in Google webmaster tools, you just need to click on the “sitemaps” tab. From there, a “load sitemap” button is available, which will ask for the location of the sitemap file.

Physically, the site map is just an XML file with entries that correspond to the required information, such as page name and location. Several tools are available for automatic creation of site maps. For example, if you use WordPress blogs, there is a free plug in (called “Google Sitemaps”) that can be used to read all entries in the site and create a site map. In fact, the software will even automatically upload the site map to Google.

Google Webmaster Tools

2007-02-25T08:35:00.000-08:00

Google has always been about organizing information for web users, and webmaster are just another group of people that needs more information. Since webmaster generate most of the information that is indexed by Google, it is more than natural that a certain level of collaboration should exist between Google and these producers of digital content.

In the past, webmaster have been looked at by searching companies with a little suspicion. It is not a secret that the biggest goal of any webmaster is to be spot in the number one for some of the search keywords that is targeted by their pages. Also, many webmasters have used less than scrupulous tactics to improve their ranking in the web search listings. Doing things such as creating additional meta tags, and massaging the html content to improve the visibility for web bots is frequently done.

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For these reasons, web search engines have tried to keep some safe distance from web masters, mainly to avoid that personal preferences affect the quality of the results. Although Google has the protection of its results as a clear priority, it also needs all the help they can find in order to provide the best results. Webmasters can be a useful source of information about the content of web pages, if they are used correctly.

In the past, since webmasters had no say on the workings of web search engines, they could only use indirect methods to provide information, such as using meta tags, html titles, etc. Google is trying to engage webmasters more directly, extracting directly from them information that can be useful to understand the content of pages.

An example of this trend is the Google services for webmasters. In this page, webmasters can get a lot of information about how Google view their pages. For example, they can view who links to their web sites, what is their average page rank, and how many times the Google crawler has searched for links in their pages.

Find who links to your page

2007-02-05T21:03:00.000-08:00

Google delievered today good news for webmasters who want to have improved coverage from Google search: a new tool has been created to determine what web sites link directly to your web pages.

In the past, if you wanted to know who linked to your site, the best approach available was running a "link:" type of search in Google. This returned some links, but not all.

The new service created by Google will allow each webmaster to know exactly who is linking. It is an effective method to know what has been your impact in the Web, and will certainly help in optimizing web sites.

Link

Google adds Australia to Google maps

2007-02-05T20:53:00.000-08:00

With a group of Googlers living in Australia, it would be long for these new to be true: Google is now adding Australian maps to Google maps. Another corner of the world is integrated into the already large database of Google maps.

Now, you can also find local pizza places, restaurants, music stores, and even Zoos in Australia! Good news for our Aussie friends, as well as for tourists visiting this nice area of the Southern hemisphere.

Link

Using Google APIs to improve accessibility

2007-02-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

Google offers a great range of applications, including search, email, talk, among others. These services, however, are not always targeted at disabled users, specially when they are first introduced.

Thus, it is important to have mechanisms to add functionality to Google products from the point of view of accessibility. This is exactly what the Google API tries to provide: an unified mans for developers to provide extra functionality based on the Google services.

In this entry of the Google blog, the in-house specialist on accessibility discusses how mash-ups can be used to provided the necessary functionality for inpaired users. It is interesting to see how the existing technology can be used in such creative ways.

Link

2007-02-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome!

This is a user-maintained web site (that is, no affiliation with Google), with the objective of providing usage information and discussing news about Google products.

Are you constantly running Google searches? Do you use Gmail for all your email needs? Is Googlepack the first software you install when you get a new computer? Do you use Google Desktop daily to find your files? Do you use Froogle to compare prices when you shop on the Web? If you answered yes to many of the questions above, then this site is for you!

Browse the information in this site, give your suggestions, ask questions. Let us know what you think of Google products (both the good and bad).

Blogger: another way to contact your friends

2007-01-30T05:40:00.000-08:00

The social website of Google, Orkut, is not as popular as facebook, but it has its nice tricks. The latest of them is the possibility of sending SMS messages directly to your friends in Orkut. This way, you can send messages to your community of friends even if you are out of the computer. You can also receive new messages anywhere, any time of the day or night.

Interestingly, as Orkut main's audience is in Brazil, insted of the US, the new service will be available with a brazillian mobile operator. It seems to be one of the first examples of an american web site that releases a service to a foreign country before even it is available in the US. Given, however, that around 70% of Orkut members are from Brazil, it is not difficult to understand why.

Visit Orkut and check this new feature: it will help you to keep even more connected.

Comparing business with Google

2007-01-30T05:33:00.000-08:00

When Google launched its "Google Local" web page, it was the simplest way to find businesses in your local neighborhood. Just type your addess in Google maps, and click on local search to find whatever type of business you need. Classical example: find pizza!

However, Google is trying to make the process even more straightfoward. The objective is to make it easier to access this information from the main search engine. Now, if you type "pizza" followed by your address, you will get a listing of all pizza places close to the address you typed. It is a way of save time, since you don't need to run two searches (one for the address, and another for the business). And it also helps Google to sell advertisement for local businesses, as it couldn't be different...

Viewing the sunrise with Google Earth and Discovery

2007-01-29T16:00:00.000-08:00

Google earth has steadly added features to its base application during the last months. The lates addition to this dynamic software application is the ability to watch the sun rising on different parts of the planet.

The images are provided by Discory, with footage from several places on earth. It is possible to see the sun rising at almost any time of the day, by following the path of the sun around the planet.

It is interesting as the technology is truly helping everyone to become more acquaited with our planet. What in the past was huge and isolated now can be explored with a few simple clicks of the mouse.

With Google Earth, Google is revolutionizing the access to geographical data in the same way that it revolutionized access to the web. And, since it is all for free, I can only say thanks.

Link

New Visual

2007-01-28T18:26:00.000-08:00

Well, the new year came, an new features in Google blogger have been implemented. I decided that was time to give them a chance, and therefore I will use a new template from now on. This template is simple, but looks good. Moreover, it makes it much easier to change the blog using the new visual tools of blogger. Let me know what you think.

Visualizing the world through books with Google

2007-01-28T16:26:00.000-08:00

Finding books on the Internet has become easier thanks to Google book search. This search service gives lots of information about new and old books. You can find free books that are out of print, but there is also a lot of data about new books that you can buy online or in your local bookstore.

Now, Google is even integrating their maps technology into Google book search. If you search a book that mention several different places, you will see a world map, and resulting listing what places in the world the book is referencing.

This doesn't seem very useful for most books, but certainly there are some books where it will be interesting to see where the action occurs. In the Google book search blog you will see a better example, involving different foods over the world:

As of yesterday, this sort of information became a lot easier to find as well as visualize: there's now a Book Search feature on the "About this book" page which shows readers the places mentioned in a particular book and pinpoints them on a map. Clicking around on the map for Extreme Cuisine, I quickly found out that dogs are on the menu in Seoul, Roman emperors enjoyed dormice, Melbourne residents serve up emu and crocodile, and Mopani worms are available in Johannesburg!

Link

Better Indexing of web sites with Google

2007-01-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

Organic traffic, that is, traffic that is generated by people that are searching for your content, is the holy grail of Web advertisement. In order to receive this traffic, web masters have devised even more ingenuous ways of listing their web sites on the top of the listing on Google.

The best way of doing this, however, is helping the web search servers to do their job. Google is trying to make this easier by improving their support of the robots.txt. This is a well known file that determines how the web site is going to submit information to the web search engine.

According to their web site:

The key is a simple file called robots.txt that has been an industry standard for many years. It lets a site owner control how search engines access their web site. With robots.txt you can control access at multiple levels -- the entire site, through individual directories, pages of a specific type, down to individual pages. Effective use of robots.txt gives you a lot of control over how your site is searched, but its not always obvious how to achieve exactly what you want. This is the first of a series of posts on how to use robots.txt to control access to your content.

What does robots.txt do?
The web is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you might think it's a lot of work maintaining your website, but that's just peanuts to the whole web. (with profound apologies to Douglas Adams)
Search engines like Google read through all this information and create an index of it. The index allows a search engine to take a query from users and show all the pages on the web that match it.

In order to do this Google has a set of computers that continually crawl the web. They have a list of all the websites that Google knows about and read all the pages on each of those sites. Together these machines are known as the Googlebot. In general you want Googlebot to access your site so your web pages can be found by people searching on Google.

Link

Google helps Lego tournment

2007-01-26T20:54:00.000-08:00

Googlers are not only well paid (according to the media), they also word on several interesting projects of their own, or in community.

An initiative that has been supported by Google is the Lego competition. This is something done for the secondary school students, where they can create robots using Lego pieces.

We believe that getting kids interested in science, computers, and technology early on is very important, so we were honored last weekend to receive the "FIRST LEGO^® League Outreach" award at the Northern California FLL championship tournament. FFL is a program encouraging fourth- to eighth-grade kids to study science and technology. Each fall, student teams (who compete at the local, national and international level) build autonomous LEGO^® robots to tackle a set of challenge missions -- and finish as many as they can in 2-½ minutes! This year's challenge: called Nano Quest.

Link

Show your university on Google Earth

2007-01-25T18:03:00.000-08:00

Google has announced a new competition for college students for building the best 3D representation of their universities on Google Earth. This is an interesting competition for college students, because it provides a venue for them to show their technical and artistic skills. Therefore, heterogeneous teams are expected to be working on this, involving people in computer science, design, and architecture, for example.

The prize will be a travel to the Google campus (and most probably a job offer). I look forward to seeing the results of this competition.

Zeitgeist: Google reveals the spirit of the time

2006-12-29T14:14:00.000-08:00

One more year is ending... Time for new year's resolutions, exchange of gifts, and ... Google Zeitgeist. The annual reviews of the most searched terms in Google is coming again, showing the keywords and phrases that have been searched more frequently in Google search.

This year, Google revealed a little about how they come up with this list. According to them, they are not looking for the most searched terms of the year, but the ones that moved to the forefront during 2006.

This was the year of social and video websites, such as bebo, youtube, and related services. You can see the complete list in Google Zeitgeist.

Link

Google Desktop is available in more languages

2006-12-20T20:22:00.000-08:00

Google Desktop has also been recently updated. The new version (4.5) is available for download in several languages.

According to the Google blog:

we've been working to make it widely available outside of the English-speaking world. We're finally done, and now you can get it in any of 28 languages. And just in time for the holidays, we've added several holiday themed gadgets.

Link

Blogger new features

2006-12-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Blogger is finally out of a long beta. Google is announcing today that the new version is now official.

Despite that, the system is still not available for old blogs. If you have a blog like this one, you have to keep using the previous version of blogger, unless you want to go through the trouble to convert all your blogs. This is unfortunate. I hope this solve this sometime in the future.

Link

Google in Japan

2006-12-17T08:39:00.000-08:00

Google announced this week that they are officially opening their office in Japan. As in other places, they have a good group with hackers willing to find new technologies for the search giant.

According to their site:

Recently we relocated to Japan to take on the challenge of extending Google's global engineering organization by opening a new R&D center in Shibuya, Tokyo (co-located with the existing sales office). We've both been at Google for many years and hope to use our experience to transfer our culture and technical knowledge to a new place with a new group of engineers. It will be an exciting adventure. Just as no two snowflakes are exactly alike, over the years, we expect the Tokyo office will develop its own variation of Google's engineering culture.

Link

Using Google Search More Effectively

2006-12-17T08:22:00.000-08:00

Google is the king of the web search sites out there. It is also used by millions of people to find what they need on the Internet. However, despite its wide use, Google is still not used to its full potential by most people. Many use it only to do basic search, while Google is capable of much more.

Search Operators

The main feature of Google is standard search: you type the term you are interested in, click the search button, and Google returns the search results that best match your query. This is the way that millions of people perform search on this web site.

However, few people know that Google can return you much more information. You just need to ask for it. An to ask for more information with Google, you can use search operators, which will make your life much easier.

Examples of Search Operators

There are several search operators that you can use with Google. The one that I find to be most useful is the "site:" operator. You can use the keyword "site:", followed by the name of a web domain, to find information contained specifically in that web site.

Suppose for example that you want to find a list of jobs available at Google. You can do that easily by using the term your are searching (jobs), together with the "site:" keyword, and the domain google.com. Your query will then look something like this:

jobs site:google.com

You can use the same strategy in any web sites. For example, if you want to see how many times I mentioned for example "googlepack" in this website, you can look for

googlepack site:all-about-google.blogspot.com

Which will return several pages.

List of operators

This is an incomplete list of operators, with the ones that I find most useful

allintitle: this operator allows one to find the web sites with the words you are looking for in the title. It helps to focus you search even more, since these are supposed to be specialized websites.

link: this operator, when followed by a web site address, will return all the pages that link to that site. It is good if you are trying to find who links to your page, for example.

allinurl: this is similar to allintitle, but it will find the pages where the keyword you are looking for appears in the URL, that is, the complete address of the site you are looking for.

define: this one can be used to find specifically a definition for the keyword you want to search. This will usually return information from dictionaries, and other reference material available on the web.

Google Picasa has new options for the Xmas

2006-12-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

Google Picasa is the product that allows users to organize photos according to several criteria. A new version of Picasa - web albums - is available today. With this version you will be able to order prints of your pictures directly from Picasa. This will make it much easier to enjoy your pictures with your family.

From the Google blog:

Other new features include video upload for easy sharing (it’s just like with photos—select them in Picasa and click the “Web Album” button) and searching tools. Now you can search over your own captions, album titles, and album descriptions, and you can even search for photos in your friends’ public albums. Digging up that picture of me trying to figure out which end of the holiday turkey is "up" should be easier than ever.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google programmers have nothing else to do

2006-12-13T15:38:00.000-08:00

In general, Google as a company does pretty interesting products. However, I came to recognize today that from time to time they do things that range from strange to stupid.

It seems that they gave as a task for some of their programmers to create a silly game using Google Earth. The great objective of the game is to follow a set of clues, with the help of which people are supposed to find the destination of Santa Claus.

Is that a good use of time?

I truly believe that Google can do much better things to improve its image. Why not, for example, solving some of the problems in the Blogger system? Last time I saw they needed a lot of help with the transition to the new interface.

I hope at least that some people have fun with this silly game. I also hope they get back to work after it is done.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Earth, Web 2.0

Google Improves Firefox Toolbar

2006-12-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

The Google toolbar provides very handy options for web users, and is nowadays almost a required piece of software for PC users (if you don't have it, I recommend the download of the GooglePack, which includes the Google toolbar among other things).

The Google toolbar exists or IE and for Firefox, but the Firefox version has long been behind the IE version. Google is now using the oportunity not only to improve the Firefox version of the toolbar, but also to provide more options, which will be welcome by users.
One of the innovative functions of the toolbar is to open MS Office files directly on Google Docs & Spreadsheets. In the past, you had to first to copy files to the desktop and then import those files on the Google Docs web site. This is not necessary anymore, as the toolbar will handle this automatically.

This is the most interesting download of the day: go ahead and get the new Google toolbar for Firefox.

Link

Related links:
GooglePack is available
Google Bar is updated

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google tries to attract engineers with options program

2006-12-12T18:41:00.000-08:00

It looks like Google is trying to lure more people to work for them. The last ideas have been recently presented on their blog. I am not a specialist in finance, but this looks like just a new way of attracting more people to work for them. And although they pay well, relative to other companies in Silicon Valley, this program seems to be a means of improve their attractiveness to potential employees.

It is important for Google to keep their programers. Many of the good ones are lured by the promise of great increases in the price of their stock options. However, as the company matures, this growth may not be sufficient to keep employees from moving to new companies. In fact, this is the fate of most technology companies in the Valley. Example of this happening can be see in other Internet powerhouses, such as eBay and Yahoo.

From their blog:

We work hard to attract and retain the world's best talent in a number of ways, and a part of that is offering competitive compensation packages. We offer standard things such as competitive salary, cash incentives, restricted stock units and stock options. But we also aim to be innovative. So today we're announcing a new compensation program called Transferable Stock Options (TSOs).

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google Finance gets a facelift

2006-12-12T08:58:00.000-08:00

Of the recent products launched by Google, Google Finance is one that has received the hardest critics. Despite some of its innovative features, mostly due to the nice web programming work done by the their programmers, people have received Google Finance mostly with lack of interest, and even dissatisfaction. It is not as information-packed as its rival yahoo search, and the features it has now are not complete.

Lack of Interest

Probably because of this lack of interest, Google is pushing a facelift on the web site. First, they are getting rid of the old initial web page, where you could see mostly irrelevant information from blogs and user groups. Now, the home page shows data about the major indices, and the most traded stocks. It also shows the main financial news, updated automatically, as it is the case with Google News.

According to the entry on the Google blog,

here's what's new:

* A new homepage design which lets you see currency information, sector performance for the U.S. market, and a listing of top market movers along with the relevant and important news of the day.

* A Top Movers section highlighting most active companies by price, market cap, volume, and popularity as determined by our own Google Trends.

* More comprehensive charts, which now display up to 40 years of data for U.S. stocks.

* Richer portfolio capabilities that let you import other online portfolios to Google Finance, use different views and add transactions to make it easier to track your investments.

* A quick and easy way to add and view your Google Finance portfolios on the Google Personalized Homepage.

Evaluation

Despite being a step ahead, Google Finance is still not on pair with Yahoo Finance. Google may say that it is a complementary web site, but even then it doesn't attract the same level of interest. I hope, however, that they continue pushing the envelope, and probably after a few iterations we might have a really interesting financial web site from Google. This time, I think they still didn't get it.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Finance, Web 2.0

Google Earth and Geographic Information

2006-12-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

Google Earth is a truly wonderful program. It give us features that one decade ago were considered to be science fiction. Now, everyone can search the globe and view pictures of the most fascinating places with a mouse click.

Despite this, Google Earth is always improving the next feature added is integration with geographic databases. For example, one now can get information from Wikipedia when visiting a place, just by clicking an associated icon. Not only wikipedia, but other communities such as Panoramio, and the Google Earth Community are represented in this new feature.

According to the Google Earth Team:

To experience this for yourself, all you need to do is start Google Earth and explore the world. As of today you will see new icons -— the Wikipedia globe, the Panoramio star, or the information “i” of the Google Earth Community —- so just click on any of them to explore information about a place. You can also easily turn it off in the Layers panel on the lower left.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, software, Web 2.0

New Features on Google Spreadsheets

2006-11-29T08:18:00.000-08:00

The good and old spreadsheet software, it seems, has its own ways to keep reviving itself. Starting its life as a killer application for micro-computers, spreadsheets have incorporated many new and useful features. You can see that modern spreadsheet software is used not only for number crunching. From Visicalc to Excel, this is an area of software development that has improved, although keeping many of its original roots.

Google spreadsheets is a new step in this evolution. With Google spreadsheets, one can create a completely automated calculation sheet that can be used by multiple people, anywhere in the world. But today's spreadsheets are not used just to calculate: they can be used to visualize data, organize lists, and improve collaboration.

Google has announced today some new features that will make the usage of Google spreadsheets even better. One of the features is revisions: you can see exactly what modifications where made to a spreadsheet, and who did it. Another interesting addition is a web publishing feature. With that, one can post a link to the spreadsheet that can be accessed in read only mode.

Google is working hard to bring spreadsheet software to the new world of the web 2.0. I believe they are doing a good job, and the future for Google spreadsheets looks bright. Take a look, and see if you agree.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google Fights Global warming

2006-11-27T19:47:00.000-08:00

Global warming is a problem of everyone, which is each day claiming more victms. As the "company that is not evil", Google decided to make good, and help fighting the global problem.

In collaboration with several school, Google paid for a whole page ad in the USA today to present ideas to control global warming. The ideas were created by children using Google software, including Google docs and Google spreadsheet.

According to them:

Hundreds of students from more than 20 countries recently brainstormed ideas on combating climate change -- and they did it online using Google Docs & Spreadsheets. The kids had a blast coming up with solutions to address climate change, and we had a blast reading through their ideas and selecting the top 50 to feature on the Google Educators site.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google

Adsense: finding the better paying keywords

2006-11-25T10:16:00.000-08:00

One of the things you need to do to get good results as an adsense advertiser is to know you public. Knowning you public, in the adsense lingo, is similar to knowing the words that must be targeted by your web page.

Out of the thousands of words in the adwords program, what are the ones that you should target? Of course, this decision depends on what you like, what you known, and what the web searchers want to find.

For example, it doesn't help if you like needles, but there is nobody interested in this topic. On the other hand there are topics that interest everybody, like cars, home, insurance, for example.

If you want to find the top words more researched in the web portals, there is some help available. One example is the site 7Search.com. They provide a list of top paying 100 keywords, that can be very helpful if you want to create your pages for the adsense program. Bellow I give just the first part of the list, with the word and it maximum bid (that is, the maximum you can be paid for that word):

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Technorati tags: Adwords, search

Adsense Ad Positioning

2006-11-23T13:45:00.000-08:00

One of the secrets of Adsense profitability, is knowing how to position the ads in the best possible way. The position where ads are added can be the difference between a successful website and one that doesn't perform well.

The easiest way to position Adsense ads is to put them along the top, bottom, and sides of the page. This is also the most natural option suggested by the format of Adsense ads.

Although simple to work with, this positioning may not be the most effective for your web site. For pages where you have to concentrate on the content, is much better to locate ads inside the text, instead of put them in the borders.

The main goal of doing this is allowing users to have a chance of actually seeing the Ads. If you put the Adsense blocks closer to where the text is located, your click though rate may increase as a result.

Another common trick is to locate the Adsense code at locations such as the beginning of the article, and at its end. This is another way of helping users to actually see what is in the Adsense unit.

The reality is that each page has a different dynamics. This asks for different approaches in ad location. By experimenting with different positions, you will be able to get the best results of you Adsense pages.

Technorati Tags:
Google, Adsense, tips

GooglePack - content and usage

2006-11-22T17:28:00.000-08:00

From all posts I wrote about Google, the most accessed is the one about the Googlepack. If you don't remember, the Googlepack is the set of applications that Google provides for Windows users, as a way of providing a "patch" for the normally broken Windows installation.

So, what is the Googlepack composed of? There are several utilities, among them an antivirus, web browser, adware removal, a Google toolbar, and other organizers. Here is a list of the ones that I think are the most important software in the Googlepack:

Firefox: the king of the alternative browsers is the best way to view web content. It is recommended by Google and it is part of the package.
Google Earth: how never got impressed in seeing their own house on Google Earth? This is a breath taking application, where you can see the whole world, your own city, or a place that you are going to visit next week. I think is one of the best applications around, and it is nice that you can have access to it in the Googlepack.
Picasa: this is the main picture organizer provided by Google. It has a lot of nice features, that make it possible to give some order to the thousands of pictures we have in our computers. It performs the same function on Windows that the iPhoto does so well in the Mac. Given this "whole" in the Windows offer, nothing better than having something free to fill the gap.
Google desktop: this is a piece of software that is aimed directly at a weakness of Windows. It gives users the change to search files in their desktops with the same easy with which they can find files in the Internet with Google.
Googlepack screen saver: see the nice pictures that we took on the desktop, using several effects. It is not essential, but is nice to have.
Adware SE Personal: gives you a way of protecting your computer against the nasty adware that you find in may pages nowadays.
Norton Antivirus: the Googlepack even comes with its own antivirus, a free version of Norton. It will not last forever (only one year), but it can go a long way into protecting your computer.

The best thing about the Googlepack, however, is that it automatically installs and updates all these applications. You don't have to worry about getting the latest versions, the Googlepack will do this for you. Although it is possible to get all these programs for free, it is hard to keep track of the updates -- the Googlepack allows you to forget about this, and have your software updated automatically.

Technorati Tags: Google, security, software

Google transit in LA

2006-11-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

If you, like me, enjoys leaving your car in the garage and taking public transportation, and if you live LA, you can now have a handy help from Google to plan your trips.

Google transit allows users to take the shortest path to their destinations using bus, trains, or subways. It is not available in every major city however. Previously, it was available in Portland, and now it is also available in LA.

Given the low key status of public transportation in the US, it is always nice to have some help in finding our way.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Reading books online on Google

2006-11-21T21:58:00.000-08:00

The Google book project, which aims at making all books available online is going on at full speed. The latest development has been in creating a better interface for reading books.

If you think that reading a whole book in the computer screen is difficult, you are absolutely right. That is why Google is making a greater effort to make the task a little more enjoyable. The new interface has new features such as full screen, which means that users are able to locate information faster.

The interface also gives more details about the book you want to see, such as sample pages and a list of main keywords for the book content. The controls for page advancing have been improved tool. Finally, you can scroll all over a book, and view pages in a two side format.

Reading books in Google books is really becoming more enjoyable with the addition of these features. Although I doubt that people will be reading many more books on the computer screen, you should check the new developments and see if you like them.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google breaks the $500 mark - so what?...

2006-11-21T20:53:00.000-08:00

Google broke today the $500 mark for the stock. It seems that nothing can stop Google into conquering all information in the world... At least for now.

What makes Google special is that they aim high! And they make people believe that they can really do that. There is no reason why other companies cannot enter the same area that Google is aiming. They just need the proper mindset to enter the fight. The Google thing of Google is that they are not Microsoft -- there is no monopoly on the Internet.

So, yes, they can aim at dominate the whole information of the world, but it doesn't mean that other companies cannot do a similar job.... Let see if they really can.

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google News improves its interface to publishers

2006-11-21T10:59:00.000-08:00

If you are a content owner and would like to have your articles included in Google news, here is a good news for you: the interface to Google news content generation has been improved.

Google is doing this as a continuation of their effort to revamp the site feeds option. Web masters will have less trouble to keep their content updated. This will certainly improve the quality of the results generated by Google news. It seems like a win-win situation.

From the Google blog:

Now, English-language publishers who are currently included in Google News will be able to use their existing feeds -- or define a more advanced Sitemap of their current news articles -- to tell us exactly which articles they'd like us to crawl. While they've always been able to use technical solutions such as robots.txt to govern which portions of their sites Google crawls and indexes, this will give publishers more granular tools to tell our crawlers exactly what should be included.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Using Google to hear the web

2006-11-20T14:05:00.000-08:00

The web 2.0, with graphics, video, and dynamic applications is a great advance in terms of web usability. But, when it comes to accessibility, all these features may cause more harm than good. This is the case, for example, of users that cannot see.

One way of alleviating this problem, which has been provided by Google, is a by product of their technology for access from mobile phones. The Google transcoder is able to translate flashy web pages into their (near) equivalent text-based versions.

Using this software, it has become much easier for vision-impaired user to hear the content of web pages. It is definitely another great service that Google is providing for free for everyone. As stated by T.V. Raman in the Google blog:

It turns out that much of the visual complexity that creates stumbling blocks for mobile users also become show-stoppers when it comes to listening to a web page using screen-readers. So the transcoder has become a useful part of my web access arsenal. You can reach it at google.com/m. From there, search for your favorite site. Think of it as the equivalent of your browser's address bar. Once you access a website through the this interface, any links you follow from that page will be automatically transcoded.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Gmail little know tips from Google

2006-11-20T08:39:00.000-08:00

Gmail is a well known web 2.0 application that can handle all types of email needs. I personally use Gmail to read and write email daily, and I am very satisfied with is user experience. However, like all web 2.0 services, Gmail is not static. It is evolving nicely, and almost every month there are a few new features that are worth of notice.

Google has recently stressed some of these nice features that are almost forgot, but that can improve the user experience to whole new levels. Among them are:

Dynamic update of messages: when a new message in your current thread is received, Gmail now presents a little information, which allows you to reload the list of messages in your conversation.
Replying by chat: this gives everyone the opportunity to interact in real-time. If you want to talk to your buddies, instead of just leaving a cold email message, you have many more opportunities with this feature.
Attachment handling: The is one of the most interesting features of gmail for me. Whenever I see a MS word or pdf attachment, I don't need to download them and call my local viewer. Gmail can show a web-based version of those files, so I can quickly decide if they are interesting or not. No virus, not additional time spent.

And, of course, the storage space is still always increasing...

What do you think is the most interesting feature of Gmail?

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Finding good source code with Google code search

2006-11-20T07:47:00.000-08:00

Programming is a fun task, but is not without its number of problems. Among them, the most difficult issue is finding appropriate information. If you are lucky enough, you can find documentation on the Internet for all the APIs you want to use. However, reading API documentation is like trying to feel the taste of a dish by just reading the recipe. To have a real idea of how to use a programming APIs there is nothing like seeing the real thing, that is, the source code.

That is when things get difficult. It is really hard to come up with good examples of API usage without going to low level details of an application. This is most of the time a frustrating experience for programmers just starting on a specific platform.

Things can different, however, in an Internet-enabled world. With so much free and high quality open source code available in the Internet, it must be possible to find an example of usage for almost any major programming technology. You just need to search it. There is when Google provides the key. The Google code search allows one to find all source code by keyword, programming language, and license type, among other major categories.
Using Google code search has made my programming life much better during the last few months. In the past, if I wanted to find an example of usage for some programming functionality, I had to look at company web sites, forums, and other special web sites that provided this kind of information. With Google code search, I can just forget about this and run a search for the specific function or class that I want to use over all free software code out there.

In fact, Google code search is not restricted only to open source. It will catch all source code that is hiding on the net, as long as it can classify it as a programming language file, be it C++, Java, Perl, or any other language. Critics think that this is also a dangerous feature, since you can find code that you are not allowed to use. And by using indiscriminate copy-and-paste, you can turn you own application into illegal code, so take care.

In my own experience, Google code search is a revolution in the way of finding programming examples, and therefore improving my coding abilities. Have you readers used this tool before? What do you think of it?

Technorati Tags: Google, Programming, Web 2.0

Google Base is One Year Old

2006-11-16T21:13:00.000-08:00

Google base is becoming one year old. In the fast paced world of Google, one year is an important milestone. Starting as a free repository of miscellaneous data, Google base has been used by Google as a testbed for new ideas on search.

After one year of innovation, Google is remembering the main facts of the short life of this web site:

It's been one year since we launched Google Base, and the team would like to take the opportunity to thank all our users for all of the hundreds of millions of items that have been submitted, and all the valuable feedback on how to improve this service.

Link via Google Blog

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

The Top 10 Universities according to Google

2006-10-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

Universities are very competitive places, they like to be seen as good compared to others. Given the amount of money that anyone has to put into education, it is not a surprise that each university want to look better in the national rankings.

Google gives us a simple way to determine some of the best universities. You can simply use the search engine, and find what university has been more referenced in the web. If you type "university" in the Google search window, this is the ranking that will show up as a result:

Harvard
Yale
Stanford
Cornell
Georgetown
University of Delaware
Princeton
University of Florida
University of Michigan
Syracuse

If you take into consideration that this was not the intended use of the Google search system, we get a somewhat consistent result. Harvard is consistently ranked as the top university. Most of the others are well recognized Ivy league schools.

Maybe next time you consider a university you should look at what Google has to say about it.

Technorati Tags: Google, Web

Google Groups: updated and better

2006-10-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

Google groups is the service that allows the creation of email groups. It has been up for a few years now, and supports a lot of activities such as reading, posting, and creating your own group.

Google groups is now with an improved interface. The company decided to add a nice look and few, that is more similar to the yahoo approach than the traditional "text only" method used by Google. The information now seems to be easier to find, definitively.

Another important change is the addition of features only found in Gmail, such as the threads of messages listed as foldable items. This improves significantly the process of reading and answering messages.

It seems to be a very good improvement over the older interface. If Google continues to provide such face lifts for their other services, it will certainly help improve their visibility on a larger user base.

Link

Google adds user gadgets to personalized webpage

2006-10-03T18:38:00.000-07:00

Google recently asked users to write gadgets using its API, mainly to include in the Google desktop application. The competition resulted in several new great looking gadgets that range from games to little applications.

Google is now releasing those gadgets for use also in the Google personalized web page. If you have a personalized web page you can quickly add the gadgets the most interest you.

From the Google blog:

Today we're opening up our gadget inventory for your viewing and cloning pleasure. In other words, now you can copy and paste some simple HTML to add the Google Gadgets you like to your own webpage. Check out our directory of Google Gadgets for your webpage to see all the options. And as always, if you can't find one like the one you had in mind, you can always write a gadget yourself.

Link

Finding your way with Google transit

2006-09-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

Google has been revolutionizing the way we find information for a few years now. Fist with web pages, then with images and maps, they are ready to take the game to the next level.

The latest improvement is the Google Transit service. With Google transit, you can quickly find your way with some major cities. New cities have been added to the support list of google transit:

Eugene, Oregon
Honolulu, Hawaii
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Seattle, Washington
Tampa, Florida

On these cities and others, you can just type a starting and a final destination, and Google will suggest the best way of reaching your destiny using public transportation. Take a look at this new and exciting service.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

How to create a Google video bar

2006-09-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

Video content access has been exploding during the last months due to the increased amount of bandwidth on the average households. This explains why so many sites such as Google video, and youtube have become successful.

You can also enter this new web trend by installing a Google video bar in your blog or web page. Although you will certainly need some programming expertise, everything is clearly explained in the Google ajax API blog.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Internet, Web 2.0

Google adds tabs to the personalized web page

2006-09-15T06:46:00.000-07:00

The personalized web page of Google is a nice way of keeping the information you need. I use it mainly to add news about the topics of my interest. But sometimes, you are limiting yourself because you don't want to made the page a complete mess, with hundreds of links.

Now, Google introduces a new feature to the personalized web page that allows tabs to be created. Now, you can add as many gadgets as you want to the personalized web page, and they will be organized by tabs. I think this is definitely a win for Google, and I will be using this a lot during the next few days.

Technorati Tags: Google, Internet, web 2.0

Google will start offering book downloads

2006-08-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

Update: Google has confirmed this information today in its blog.

Free music and video downloads have been common place in the Internet for a few years now. Google has been able to get into some of this action with the Google video web site, and related efforts. Now, they also want to provide downloads for free books, of which they have a lot, from the millions of scans stored on Google book search.

Basically, the idea is to provide access to the books free of copyright, but letting users to download the content in some format similar to pdf. The books will be readable and printable in the local computer.

According to CIO.com,

The books available for download will only be those that are in the public domain and thus not protected by copyright, Smith said. Until now, people have been able to read these public-domain books on the Google Book Search website, but not download and print them, he said. ... Google will not allow downloading of copyrighted books, not even those for which it has obtained permission from the copyright holders to display their full text, Smith said.

However, it doesn't take much imagination to see how they can partner with publisher worldwide and provide legitimate downloads of new books, using their Google checkout payment system. This may look like good news for readers who will have better access to books. Let us see if this initiative really works in practice.

Link via CIO.com

Google and eBay: cooperation with Skype

2006-08-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

The internet telephony market is maturing every day, and new players as well as old ones are using the opportunity to cement their strategies. The latest example is the cooperation agreement between Google and eBay concerning the well known Internet telephony company Skype.

During the next months, Google announced to be using Skype's technology to provide communication services for their customers. One example of such use is to have direct links in a web page that use skype to call a customer.

It is also very possible that Google will find some way to interoperate with Skype using Gtalk, its in-house instant message service.

It looks that this agreement will go a long way into making internet telephony, instant messages, and related software even more important in the day-to-day life of companies and individual customers.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Internet, Skype

Google add applications for your domain

2006-08-28T16:23:00.000-07:00

What happens when Google decides to package some of its services to businesses? The media starts to talk loud about how Google is trying to steal the market of Microsoft. It might very well be this, but by now it seems that they are just trying to position themselves as a good alternative for Internet access.

Today, Google announced that some of their most famous applications (Gmail, Gtalk, and Google calendar) will be available in a package that can be used by corporations as if it was part of its intranet. The web apps can be customized using the corporate logo, and the url of the company.

It looks like an exciting opportunity to Google, but also for other companies that are trying to maintain their web services. With help of Google, it seems that this will become increasingly easier.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Internet, Microsoft

Google new office in Atlanta

2006-08-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

Google is each day growing as an organization. The number of offices is also increasing. This week, a new office was opened in Atlanta.

Despite the need for more space, the opening of these labs show the priority that Google gives to recruiting the best people. They now have offices in the major areas with concentration of high tech workers. This trend also follows the location of major universities: Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Pittsburgh (Carnegie Mellow, and now Atlanta (Georgia Tech).

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Internet, Jobs

Google help at your finger tips

2006-07-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

These days, Google offers so many web services that it becomes harder and harder to know what is what and get help on the problems you might help.

If this looks a lot like confusion, it is being improved now. The Google team decided to create a single web page where all help information could be gathered.

Visit the Google help center and try to find the information you need.

Link

Technorati Tags: Computers, Google, Web 2.0

Google: Search company data with a cell phone

2006-07-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

Google is providing more and more ways to search your information. The news today is that you can have access to corporate search using your cell phone.

In this way, Google is extending the reach of its corporate search into the mobile arena. More info can be found on the enterprise products page.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Internet

Google interested in test automation

2006-07-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

From Google Web log:

Earlier we announced a first-time conference on test automation, something of interest to an admittedly select group. Just a reminder to those of you who work in this area that our deadline for requesting a spot at the London meeting this fall is coming up at the end of the week. Here's more information if you'd like to sign up.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Internet

Google explain its position about click fraud

2006-07-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

Click fraud is well known to be one of the few weaknesses of the Adwords systems. Since the Adwords system is payed by the number of clicks, click fraud happens simply when somebody decides to click ads without the clear intention of seen the information, but only waste the advertiser's money. And it is not so easy (despite the effort made by Google and many others) to detect when this happens in 100% of the cases.

Because of this, Google is always careful when talking about the possibility and the effects of click fraud. This time, somebody misquoted the Google's CEO Eric Schmidt as saying that they could just let click fraud happen, and economic forces alone would make it disappear.

It turns out that this is not what he meant, and is not the policy of Google. The company clearly wants to make everyone sure that click fraud does not happen with them, and that they are fighting against this practice.

In this entry of the Google blog, the Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety of Google (and from the title you see how important click fraud is for the company) reassures advertisers and the public in general that the company is not "letting it happen", but instead fighting the issue of click fraud with all the technological tools they have at their disposal.

Link

Technorati Tags: Advertisement, Google, Internet, Web 2.0

Connecting to Adwords with Java

2006-07-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Adwords is not only a great advertisement system, but it also lets users to play with it in several ways. The interactivity of the whole Adwords in something remarkable, and has truly revolutionized the world of advertisement. Advertisers have now the possibility of targeting users in a ways that was never possible before, and at the same time having a large number of tools to automate the results.

The latest help from Google in supporting advertiser requirements comes in the form of an API to the Java programming language. Use this new API, Java programmers can hook into the Adwords system and extract information about their user accounts, as well as changing parameters in each campaign.

The Java API for Adwords is very well thought and gives real control to third party programmers. It will certainly allow the appearance of a new generation of tools to support advertisers, which is certainly of high importance in an industry that is growing so fast as online advertisement.

Technorati Tags: Advertisement, Adwords, Google, Programming, Web 2.0

Google changes in AdWords algorithm: who benefits?

2006-07-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

Google announced in the last week that the Adwords algorithms would be changed to improve its relevancy to users and advertisers. What this seems to mean is that the landing pages of ads will be scrutinized by Google algorithms, to improve the fit between what is being advertised and what the users is really looking for.

This seems all good to users and to honest advertisers. On the other hand, one disadvantage has being noted by some bidders: the price of some words have gone up very quickly, as reported by some people.

In the rush to adapt to the new rules, it seems that advertisers are bidding higher for the same words. Adword bid inflation has been noted to vary from 400% to 2000%. This, however, appears to be the fate for advertisers that don't provide good "return for click" for end users. What may at the end be good for the public in general.

Link, via Adwords blog

Technorati Tags: Advertisement, Google, Adwords, Web 2.0

Europeans show their skills to Google

2006-07-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

Google has been the supporter of several coding competitions in the past. In this year, for example, they held such competitions in India and China. Now, the Europeans are getting their chance of showing their skill to Google.

According to the Google blog:

After nearly 10,000 registrants and three intense online rounds, the top 50 finalists persevered and flew to Dublin for the final challenge. ACM members also joined the coding community fun, traveling from countries as far afield as Kazakhstan, Russia, Sweden, Egypt, Spain, France, Poland and Bulgaria to celebrate the success of the finalists. Several of the ACMers had qualified for the Code Jam Finals in their own right, and having them in Dublin added a real buzz to the proceedings.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Programming

Google Video goes international

2006-07-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

After the initial inception of Google video in the US, the online store has been celebrated by some and detracted by others. Using the familiar interface created by Google to its leading search engine, Google video delivery movies and short videos to a large audience in the world.

Now, they are taking a new step by introducing Google video to other markets. It has been recently reported the introduction of Google video to UK, France, Canada, Germany, Poland, and a few other countries.

It clearly shows that the translation group at Google is working full speed in several products. We hope Google video will do very well in these new markets.

Link via Pocket-lint

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google adds new features to Google maps

2006-07-11T19:55:00.000-07:00

Google maps is probably one of the most successful web sites created by Google in the last few years. As recently noted, few features other than the search engine itself are a killing for Google, but Google maps has done pretty well to keep the high moral for the guys at Google.

The new features released recently involve mostly tweaks in the user interface, with little changes that will make the user experience even better.

The most perceptible change in the web site is the addition of new underline tabs. They are labeled "search the map", "find businesses", and "get directions", and represent the three main uses of Google maps (also known as Google local). It is interesting to notice that this is a new element of the user interface that may well migrate into other Google web sites -- maybe in the future the Google engine will have its own tabs for different features.

The next improvement is the zooming options. Now, you can speed up the zooming process by double clicking. A double click means "increase zoom". A double click + control button means "reduce zoom" or "zoom out".

With these two features, Google shows that it is constantly working to improve the user experience in its web sites. We hope that such user-focused approach will continue for a long time.

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

eBay fighting Google checkout

2006-07-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

Google checkout is the recently launched service that allows users to pay for goods bought on the Internet more easily.

The service is seen as a competitor of eBay-owned paypal. Although Google checkout is intended only for businesses (not person to person) payments, it can do a lot of harm to a profitable service of eBay.

Trying to avoid problems, eBay just announced that they will not allow payment to be done through Google checkout. The updated payment policy says that all methods that are not explicitly allowed by eBay are not permitted for the receipt of payments. As Google checkout is clearly not among the allowed methods, the result is clear.

Given the lack of cooperation with eBay, it may not be so far the day when Google creates its own alternative to eBay. I hope it is closer than we think.

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google Earth shows the Tour de France

2006-07-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

With so much activity going on the Tour de France, it is easy to see how Google Earth can help. It can provide a detailed view of the areas where the tour is being run, the positions of competitors, and nice fly-over visions of the difficulties of the competition.

So it is not a surprise that the official web site of the Tour de France decided to show this information using Google's program. If you click the link (and install Google earth, if you don't have it), you will have enough information about the tour to satisfy even the most fanatic.

With Google Earth, Google makes it more real the promisse of being able to travel without leaving your home town...

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Tour de france, sports, Web 2.0

Google spreadsheet showing promise

2006-06-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

Google is the heavy weight of search, but not so much in the realm of productivity software. Despite the successful launch of some software such as gmail, Google is still trying to find its way in the area of office software.

It is, however, trying hard. Only this year we saw Google buying writely, a novel company with a online service that imitates Microsoft word. Now, they released an online spreadsheet, called, for lack of better name, Google Spreadsheets.

First, we should say that the service is not a replacement for excel, especially if you are a heavy user of more advanced features. However, Google spreadsheets has some nice features, of which I think the more appealing are:

1 - Allow easy sharing of spreadsheet information. You couldn't do that with MS office easily, since excel documents need a copy of excel installed in any computer they will be viewed.
2 - Allow simple computation without excel. In the past, just to do some quick calculations I need to open MS excel. Now, I can just do it easily by clicking on a link to Google Spreadsheets.

It is not much, but I think it is enough to keep people interested in the product and make it grow. Google knows how to improve products incrementally, as it has done with Gmail, and Google Maps. I think Google Spreadsheets will follow a similar pattern. Maybe we are seeing an excel killer just in its infancy...

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google is running ads on videos

2006-06-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

The Google video web site has been one of the focus points of the selling strategy of Google. Their goal is to provide information in new medias, and video has proved to draw increasingly more attention from users.

To capitalize on this audience, Google is now running ads on the videos, which on the past were available only for a fee. With this new strategy, Google hopes to make videos available to a larger group of viewers. This certainly fits with the general strategy of the company, of making information available for everyone.

This new initiative puts Google in an area of advertisement that resembles what TVs have been doing for years: showing advertisement to users instead of charging for the content they are presenting. If successful, this will be an important step for Google video to become even more competitive against rivals such as iTunes.

Link

Google teams up with Adobe

2006-06-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

Google and Adobe announced today that they will be cooperating to provide Google search on all Adobe products. Since adobe owns shockwave, the standard for web animation, this means that the Google toolbar will be installed in practically all windows computers in the near future.

According to the announcement:

As a part of the agreement, Adobe and Google today will launch availability of the Google Toolbar with downloads of Adobe's Macromedia Shockwave® Player. The Google Toolbar will now be offered as part of the Shockwave Player installation process for Internet Explorer on Windows. Under the terms of the agreement, the Google Toolbar will also be offered as part of other Adobe product installations in the future.

With over 200 million downloads to date, the Macromedia Shockwave Player is the Web standard for powerful multimedia playback. Available for free, the Shockwave Player allows users to view interactive Web content such as games, business presentations, entertainment, and advertisements from a Web browser. Hundreds of thousands of Shockwave Players are downloaded every day, and Shockwave Player is installed on more than 55 percent of Internet-enabled desktops.

This is a great step for Google to make sure that everybody can have easy access to their search engine. Since Microsoft will certainly introduce some lock ins into Windows Vista, it is extremely important for Google to do this kind of strategical moves to guarantee that they will not be damaged by Microsoft practices.

Link

Google and the World Cup

2006-06-21T13:45:00.000-07:00

A recent article on the eWeek website suggests that Google is probably not a great fan of the World Cup. The main reason presented is that during the world cup the whole world (ok, not including the US) is watching TV, instead of the Internet, cheering for their favorite teams. Not a Google thing for Google, which relies on people to see more and more Internet in order to increase its ad revenue.

However, despite these problems, one needs to realize that the World Cup presents great opportunities for Internet companies. For one, soccer fans need information about games, commentary on the matches, and to talk to other fans.

In fact, Google is already making money from the World Cup. They run along with Nike a soccer website (joga.com), which provides an online community for soccer fans worldwide. Moreover, the increased activity on blogs, forums, and other web sites that run adsense code can translated into added revenue for Google.

Link

Microsoft employees are Google users

2006-06-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

Google has been the most successful search engine during the last years. However, it is not only the number one browser for normal users. A recent research made on a few web sites has shown that even Microsoft employees have been using mostly Google to find the web data they need.

According to the Google blogoscoped web site, using data from visitorville.com website, it was determined that more than 66 percent of Microsoft employees use Google to access search information. In fact, only 19 percent of the MS people use their own web site.

It is hard to believe how MS search is kept in small regard even by MS employees. After this, I wouldn't be surprised if Steve Ballmer creates new rules for their workers...

Google providing maps for Europe

2006-04-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

Google maps has become a great success for the advanced features it provides: automatic scrolling, high definition images, and well devised controls. But up to now, many of these features were available only for a few countries, including USA.

This week, Google started providing maps for Western Europe, in an effort to improve the coverage of the service. According to the announcement in the official Google blog:

We're excited to announce that we have just launched beta versions of Google Maps for France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. These sites include the full suite of interactive street maps, driving directions, and integrated local business search. This has been a global effort with Google teams in Paris, Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, New York, Mountain View, Kirkland, Sydney, London, Dublin, and Zurich working together for much of the past year to build a truly "local" product.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google recognizes testing methods

2006-04-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

It is not recent the fact that people has reported seeing different features in the Google search user interface. It has been recognized that this might be just a test method used to debug new features, but no official word was said until today.

In the Google official blog, word has been made of the testing procedures used by the company:

... to learn more, we sometimes randomly select a group of people to see a possible improvement to search options. Or we may select a group of people and try out a new element while they're searching. If you ever wonder why your Google site looks slightly different from that of the person sitting next to you, this is why.

We are currently testing new ways to refine searches so that, for example, a search for jobs might offer a choice of job location or function, rather than forcing you to continually narrow the terms you type in to a standard Google search.

Some of the features discussed in the article are already known, but this signs that Google is always trying to introduce new features, and using random people to test it. It is an interesting idea, that maybe other companies will try to emulate, if they ever want to compete with the pace of development at Google.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, web 2.0

Google helps protect the environment

2006-04-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

In celebration of the "earth day", Google announces its plan for environmental education in schools. Not suprisingly, the plan involves the use of its award wining "Google earth" software, allowing students to see the earth and help protect it.

From the Google blog:

Using Google Earth, teachers can fly their students around the world to talk to them about issues like climate change and how it has affected places like Glacier National Park, the Chesapeake Bay and Los Angeles. And they can introduce students to community initiatives across the country where volunteers are cleaning up their cities, planting trees and beautifying. Using Google Earth, teachers can show their students placemarks of the towns where outreach projects are taking place and students can get involved in cleaning up their own environment.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, News, software, Web 2.0

Google improves its search appliance

2006-04-18T21:25:00.000-07:00

Google announced it is improving its search appliance to work as a general search portal for companies. With the new product, companies can plug into databases (such as Oracle) and perform queries using the well known search syntax.

This product has a great potential -- It can simplify the life of everyone that needs to find corporate data, without worring about query formats, databases, interfaces, etc.

From the Google blog:

Google OneBox for Enterprise is cool because it takes a completely understood and tested design metaphor and extends it to another domain. Um, what I meant to say was, employees already know how to get movie listings, weather forecasts, and flight information through simple Google queries. So it won't surprise them (in fact it may delight them) to learn that they can get real-time contact info, sales forecasts, and customer information the very same way. We launched an initial set of OneBox modules with Oracle, Cognos, SAS and Salesforce.com; some of these partners talk about that here.

Link

Technorati Tags: Computers, Google, search

Google launches the Davinci code quest

2006-04-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

If you like puzzles, and love to spend time on new games, Google has provided what can be one of the greatest past timers of the year: the Da Vinci Code quest, a set of puzzles that have been created around the book of Dan Brown and the movie staring Tom Ranks.

According to the Google blog:

... that dream has come true: a small group of us at Google, in cooperation with Sony Pictures, have managed to create 12,358 original puzzles for The Da Vinci Code Quest on Google.

That's right, 12,358 (I'd make a joke about Fibonacci numbers, but that would be too obvious), all designed to honor both a fanatical puzzler’s sheer love of a mental challenge and the labyrinthine spirit of The Da Vinci Code itself. They'll be released over the next 24 days, in the form of six different challenges at four difficulty levels, with enough variety that I think everyone will be able to find something they like and play it over and over -- although if you're in the U.S., you'll want to try to complete all 24 and make it to the Final Challenge, where I hear there's a pretty nice prize package awaiting the winner.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Entertainment

Integrating you agenda with Google Gmail and Calendar

2006-04-16T17:24:00.000-07:00

Google has recently released a new application that is gonna help all of us that need to keep dates, events, meetings, and other time-related data in our jobs. The Google calendar is a great new web application that allows users not only to keep information, but to share data with friends and collaborators.

Using Google calendar, you can enter events on the daily, weekly, and monthly views. You can also integrate your calendar with Gmail, by sending reminders, daily lists of events, etc.

In the next posts, I will provide more information about Google calendar and how it can help you to get organized and never forget a scheduled meeting anymore!

Link

Technorati Tags: Gmail, Google, Web 2.0

Google Talk with personalization

2006-04-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

If you use Google Talk a lot, you may sometimes get a little bored by the simple graphical interface of the program. If this is your case, great news for you: Google has revamped the interface of Google Talk, adding much more features such as new themes, background pictures, and etc.

According to their announcement:

"Today we're launching a new version of Google Talk with fun personalization features: Pictures and Chat Themes. Pictures. Now you can set your own picture and see your friends' pictures, right from your friends list. It's easy to use: simply click on your picture to select a new picture. In addition you can see the pictures in chat notifications, optional friend online notifications, and new Profile Cards that show up over your friends list. We think pictures are a big visual improvement to Google Talk, and we hope you like them as much as we do. Chat Themes. Customize the look of your chat conversations by choosing from a number of built-in themes. Just select your theme from Settings->Appearances... "

Link: via Google talkabout.

Technorati Tags: Google, IM, web 2.0

Google entering the S&P 500 index

2006-03-23T16:34:00.000-08:00

Google has finally got to the top of traded firms. According to the administration of S&P, after Mar 31st Google will take part on the index.

This is a serious recognition that Google is doing a great job as a publicly traded company. Despite some problems with the disclosure of financial information and discussions about the future of the company, the S&P index seems to be convinced that Google is a solid company with serious growth perspectives for the future.

Technorati Tags: Announcements, Google, News

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