Googolians

Google Q3 conference call

2006-10-21T11:33:00.000-07:00

After a little bullshitting about deals in the first, canned part of the call, Google's top execs made some great points in the Q&A section of their latest investor conference call.

The first questioner asks why Google doesn't use its cash for future purchases, rather than the $1.65 billion in stock it spent on YouTube. The assumption is that Google's stock is undervalued, so using cash would make a better deal for Google. CFO George Reyes says, "Going forward we're going to use cash."
Co-founder Sergey Brin explains about consolidating products: if Google keeps launching new products, users will have to search for a product to use it -- "you will have to search before you can do a search." Instead he wants to integrate what Google already made. Thus the combined image/web page results for some searches.

A senior VP says Google's video ads are doing great. No mention of whether they're coming to YouTube.
Schmidt won't say whether YouTube will be profitable. "We don't give [financial] guidance."
Schmidt also stonewalls on the reaction of MySpace (which recently signed a near-billion-dollar deal with Google) to the purchase of YouTube.
Why did Google have such a great quarter, unlike its competitors? A senior VP chalks it up to "incredible" product improvements, geographic expansion, and the success of new ad formats.
Brin stretches that annoying "low-hanging fruit" metaphor: "In a sense, you might imagine that the low-hanging fruit have been picked. But in fact, we have at the same time built ladders and are reaching for perhaps even larger, higher-hanging fruit."
Schmidt closes by wishing senior VP Omid Kordestani a happy birthday. Cute.

Google Q3 2006 Earnings Call Transcript

Hackers Taking Too Much Advantage Off Google Code Search?

2006-10-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

Security watchers from both sides of the fence have been testing Google's Code Search service to determine whether it can be misused.

Experts at Beyond Security's advisory arm, SecuriTeam, have already discovered that the tool can be used to unearth a treasure trove of vulnerabilities in open source software.

"Like most of Google's tools it can easily be abused for hacking," the SecuriTeam researchers wrote in a blog on the site.

Google Code Search has indexed several billions lines of code from archives hosted on the Web, as well as software control repositories from services like SourceForge and Google Code which host open source projects.

Tom Stocky, a product manager with Google, said at the tool's launch: "We will try to make this useful for everyone from computer science students to serious programmers and even hobbyists and code enthusiasts."

It seems that he forgot to mention hackers. The search tool is also proving to be a source of humour for the geek community.

A number of blogs frequented by coders have already posted a litany of amusing search terms which resulted in comic hits, usually amounting to criticism of coders or 'notes to self' that were presumably never meant to be seen.

Some of the less offensive search terms that return hits on the Google Code Search database include 'In Case Some Idiot', 'The Guy Who Wrote This' and 'I am drunk'.

The Official Google Mac Blog

2006-10-09T17:25:00.000-07:00

We like Google as much as the next guy (unless the next guy works for Microsoft or Yahoo!) but sometimes their Mac support let's us down. It looks like things could be changing since Google just launched the Google Mac Blog. At the moment the blog is pointing to http://www.google.com/mac.html, which lists all the Mac related Google products that are available in one place.

Here's hoping we see support for Macs out of the gate with future Google products.

The Google And YouTube Story May Be A MIstake!

2006-10-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

Everybody's buzzing about Google and YouTube. Stocks went up on the news. Commentators are writing about why it makes so much sense. I'm not so sure.

Mark Cuban points out one big problem: Lawsuits. As if Google weren't being sued enough already (at the last Google Shareholder's meeting, someone asked what the company was being sued for, and head lawyer David Drummond responded, "How much time do you have?") Cuban, who founded the the Web's first popular audio broadcast site, Broadcast.com, and sold it to Yahoo, knows what he's talking about.

What happens when thousands of people who create their own videos start suing Google/YouTube because others keep downloading their videos, which are automatically copyrighted as soon as they're posted? YouTube does downloads, not streams. Most pundits seem to think Google will have blocking technology to deal with that problem. I don't have that much faith in technology, especially when it's attacked by hackers.

Perhaps Google will switch to a streaming model. But unlike Cuban, I also worry strongly about the media companies suing. People are going to be creating mashups of videos, and will post pirated works. It's the direction of the Internet. When there's a copyright violation, who you gonna sue? The company with the deep pockets.

This whole concept of being a content site that lets people post their own stuff is great in theory (that's what blog sites are all about.) But man, you enter into a quagmire when anyone can post anything. Just because Internet companies are now trying to work with established media companies, it doesn't mean they will sit back quietly while their familiar business models disappear. The spirit of Napster still lives in the Internet.

It's going to be bad enough that Google Search will find pirated video all over the Internet. When the stuff is on its own site, the lawsuits will fly. I'm certain there are a lot of lawyers salivating over these trends like drunken sailors on the shores of Tahiti after five years at sea.

I also have a problem with google being in the video posting space for other reasons. It's something that strikes me, finally, as a move that violates Google's original mandate. Google used to avoid being a "media company," instead vowing to send people to other sites to find their content. I think Google may actually manage to keep sending people offsite if the best videos don't reside at home. but why set up the conflict of interest?

People don't seem to get it. Media sites are a great service. But monetizing them is a huge problem. Let/Yahoo be the media/portal. It can't compete with Google, so it may as well step into its own quagmire.

BUT im wrong
look
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/google_youtube.html

Digg Runs Zune Ads

2006-10-07T09:42:00.000-07:00

Take a look at these screenshots of Microsoft Zune ads at the top and side of Digg.com, I didnt think they would run them but they did... I thought they where more of Mac fans than MS.

10 Ways To Be a Better Blogger

2006-10-06T14:19:00.000-07:00

I have seen many articles listing how to become a better blogger, and the latest one on Tech Republic is a little too common sense, but if you are not doing most if not all of these, you better get your act together.

Define your purpose
Create visual appeal
Use the proper tools
Make it easy to navigate
Stay in one place
Engage your readers
Establish a blogging schedule
Keep it concise
Proofread before publishing
Go syndicate yourself

I need to work on a being better at a few of these myself. A good reminder to those that think the are in “the know” when it comes to blogging.

Google Code Search

2006-10-06T13:31:00.001-07:00

Google Code Search is a new search engine created by Google that "helps you find function definitions and sample code by giving you one place to search publicly accessible source code hosted on the Internet". You can restrict your search to a certain language, license, file or package. You can also use regular expressions, so don't forget to escape characters like space (for example, for\ $;;$).

Google does a good job at finding duplicates, and locating a file in a package.

Google Gadgets For Your Webpage

2006-10-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

Google has launched a collection of "Google Gadgets for your webpage" that allows users to browse a gallery of small, web-based devices that display information ranging from calculators to maps to photo galleries.

Upon selecting a Gadget and adjusting the settings, users are then given a string of HTML code to place onto their pages. The Gadgets are distributed free of charge and hosted remotely, so users would not need to upload any data to their web pages other than the widget code.

End users aren't the only target of the expanded Google Gadgets. The company is also attempting to lure developers.

"We're working to connect developers with enthusiastic consumers and to make information universally accessible and useful to the individual user," said Google developer Adam Sah.

Several of the currently available Gadgets offer content from non-Google sites, including Wikipedia and Whitepages.com.

Google hopes that by releasing the Gadgets to users, they can greatly expand the reach of Google Gagdets and bring in more interest from developers.

http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&num=24

Whats SearchMash ?

2006-10-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

SearchMash is a low-profile search tool created by Google that mixes normal search results with Google Images. As shown in this screenshot, the idea is similar to an older version of A9. The Google Operating System has the run-down:

Search results are numbered and you can reorder them. Clicking on the green URL, you'll see a list of options like "cached copy", "similar sites". You don't have click on the search box to type your query. There is no search button, you just have to type enter. Google shows the number of visible search results in the top right corner. Clicking on the "more" link, Google loads a new set of results using Ajax and scrolls to the first result of the new set using a nice animation (this seems broken in Firefox). Actually the entire site uses a lot of JavaScript and Ajax, and it can't be used if you disable JavaScript.

For now, Google will use SearchMash as a place to play around with their technologies, and might be the foundation for a redesigned version of Google's search results.

Blogger Makes 35k A Year?

2006-09-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

indeed is a new site focused on job searches, but they also have a handy tool to let you know the average wages for a job. I put in things like Blogger, Journalist, Reporter, Computer Support Technician, Writer among others and got some interesting figures. I will tell you right now, I make way less blogging than $39,000 a year.

An interesting tool but I question its accuracy. Though it might also be a good way to ask for a raise…

Don't Do It Yourself - Please

2006-09-29T20:12:00.000-07:00

How quickly things can go wrong.

video.google.com/videoplay?docid···=plumber

Get paid to test Google products

2006-09-28T21:29:00.000-07:00

Google is soliciting people to use its products and get paid to provide feedback. As part of Google User Experience Research, people will typically be paid $75 an hour for time spent with Google researchers. Participants can also fill out surveys online or answer questions over the phone.

"You'd be helping us to improve Google products, both existing ones and those that are still in development. For example, we might ask you to try out a prototype and give us feedback on it, or we might interview you to help us plan a new product," the Web site's frequently asked questions page says.

Google used to have a "Trusted Tester" program for friends and family of Google employees to test products before they were launched, but the new program may be replacing that one, Garett Rogers speculated in a ZDNet blog.

Google representatives did not return an e-mail seeking comment.

New Google Reader!

2006-09-28T18:39:00.000-07:00

Google Reader got a HUGE update! With a new interface, whole bunch of new features, and a new favorite icon. :D Below is a list of changes,

Expanded view and list view
Simplified sharing functionality
Improved read-state management
Infinite scrolling
Unread counts
Mark all as read
and a bunch more...

Other than the ones listed above, you can now see the number of new updates in the title bar, like the one Gmail has, and from the number next to the "folders" under "Updated Subscribtions". Also, checkout the (new?) Google Reader for Mobile.

Google's Birthday!

2006-09-27T13:09:00.000-07:00

This week we celebrate Google's 8th birthday, and I hope you like the commemorative logo that appears on today's homepage

Google & Saturn Ad

2006-09-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

New Features: Google Calendar

2006-09-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

Google's rolling out a lot of new stuffs and updates today, Google Maps Update, Google Transit Update, New Features for Google Notebook, and now, new features for Google Calendar. :D "You can now get some extra information directly in your calendar view — like the upcoming weather, the phases of the moon, and even a heads up when a new Google Doodle appears on Google.com."

The upcoming weather feature is disabled by default, you can enable it in the Setting page, by entering your location and choose either Celsius or Fahrenhe it for "Show weather based on my location".

Steve Irwin's Last Swim

2006-09-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

»youtube.com/watch?v=q1DiCyui1uA

Blog Search

2006-09-25T07:06:00.000-07:00

Exerpts from a recent article i wrote in my blog....At present there is a lot of talk about blogs. About blogs being used in marketing, customized advertising, customer feedback, customer reviews, “word of mouth” marketing, etc. We are all seeing an increase in the number of blogs being created everyday, hundreds of them just cluttering the web space, like remains of past satellites or spacecrafts cluttering space. They don’t have anything significant to say, no contribution, a great majority of them have been “under construction” since years. When I m searching about some topic, blogs come very low in the list, what comes first are established sites like wikipedia, news sites, etc. When I look at blogs many of them are just about a person’s personal life, his/her daily life, now how useful is that? Yes, it’s a medium of expression for the person, but apart from that what else. In this whole clutter of personal, under construction or just blank blogs how do I find something that I m looking for. It’s only by chance that I’ll land up at the right blog at the right time. So how much can the companies advertising on a particular blog actually make? Yes, I know they are paying only per click. But doesn’t that mean all that talk about blogs being a good medium for internet marketing. Blogs are no doubt a good source of information provided we spot the right one when we actually need it. So what’s the future of blogging? I think they are not going to last for long, till someone somewhere comes out with a way to make available all the information at one place. Our own blogger.com does give us a way to search the blog space for a particular topic, but how many of us actually go to blogger.com to search for anything. What if Google adds blogsearch to it main page, just like image search, video search etc. This will give a lot of blogs a new lease of life, and thus blogging a new lease of life. So happy blogging!!!

OHHHHHHHHHHH..............so i m a little late...there is already google blog search...ya ya who can beat those minds.........but i have a question why isnt it on the home page, as blogs are becoming more and more important, the blog search can have a place one the home page...well thats for Google to decide...

Become a Google Lab Rat

2006-09-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

Google has a form up for you to request to become a "User Experience Research" at. Google is "currently looking for Google Page Creator users to participate in a user study to improve our product."

So if you love Google, like to test things, and enjoy Page Creator, then fill out the form.

Regina of Google, posted this request in the Google Groups forum.

She adds,

Just to let you know, filling out the survey doesn't guarantee you'll be contacted.

The Form | Google Groups Discussion

Create Multiple Sites on Google Pages

2006-09-22T18:38:00.001-07:00

You can now create multiple sites on Google Pages, like what you can do in Blogger. Just click on “Create a site with a different address” on the top of the page, and enter the subdomain you want, choose layout and theme, then click on “Create Site”. With this, you can have more than 100 MB on Google Pages without creating a new account.

Google is actually giving wrong examples on how to create a new site… The subdomain should be longer than 6 characters, and the examples are showing “eve” and “frogs”.

Google Pages | via GoogleOS

New on AdSense

2006-09-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

Inside AdSense let us know that the AdSense team has revamped your Channel page under your AdSense Setup tab.

Besides cleaning up the design by housing each product on its own sub-tab, we’ve also made it easier for you to take action on your channels. Just select the checkbox next to a channel and then choose to activate, deactivate, remove, or rename the channel you’ve selected.

AdSense also launched the small square, a 200 * 200 size ad format. It will support text, image and video ads.

read more | suggestions? | image by Google

Google Video Updates

2006-09-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

Google Video added two links to the end of every videos that played on Google Video site. The links are "Send link to a friend" and "Post to Blog/Myspace". For posting to blog, you can choose either Blogger, LiveJournal, or TypePad, the embed HTML is no longer there. :( [InsideGoogle]

Also, Google has added a new page for you to find captioned videos, "Selected videos with captions", and videos that with captions will have a icon when you search. The caption feature isn't new, but people rarely use it, you can learn more about how to use it here.

Google AdSense Running in Newsletters

2006-09-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

Google AdSense, according to a DigitalPoint thread covered by Barry Schwartz, seems to be letting select publishers serve Google AdSense ads in newsletters and mass commercial emailings. I’ve tried (as a test) placing Google AdSense in Constant Contact powered emails and the ads were served and targeted almost perfectly.

So, if Google AdSense does work in HTML emails and Google has figured out ways to adjust AdSense click costs via Smart Pricing, why not just allow all email publishers the right to run AdSense ads?

Possibly because email spam is more out in the open on the Internet than AdSense powered Splogs and the public backlash against Google Ads in spam mails could be crippling.

On the other hand, a trusted email publisher working with the AdSense team to throw out some targeted mailings could lead to a new revenue stream for both Google and their Premium Publisher mail partners.

Oh yes, Google’s normal stance on AdSense in emails?

Digital Point Thread | Barry Schwartz

Syndicate Search Is Coming?

2006-09-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

Google registered thirty variations of a "syndicated search" domain on the September 15th that hint at an upcoming "syndicated search" feature. When I think syndication, I automatically envision blogs but Google already has Google Blog Search. There are a few possibilities for the meaning of these domains. Google Blog Search could be the recipient of a new name (something similar to Google Syndicated Search), or they are working on a separate service to aggregate all RSS/Atom feeds it can find not necessarily just blogs.

Another possibility (and the one I think is more likely) is support for the OpenSearch format created by A9. The official site for OpenSearch describes it as the following:

OpenSearch is a set of simple formats for the sharing of search results. Any website that has a search feature can make their results available in OpenSearch™ format. Other tools can then read those search results.

OpenSearch basically allows developers to syndicate search results to be consumed by aggregators (like A9 Search or Google if I'm right). Currently, there are over 400 search providers that publish their results using this format they include sites like flickr, New York Times, Wikipedia, imdb and more. If this is what is happening, it would be interesting to see if the feeds integrate with organic search results or if they would be a part of Google Co-op.

Yes, this is all speculation, but when Google registers domains, they are usually getting pretty close to announcing something. If the recent past has any weight, we will be seeing what these domains mean very soon.

Add MSN Cotacts to Gtalk

2006-09-17T09:41:00.000-07:00

GTalk2VoIP is a site that promises to transform Google Talk into a full VoIP application, so you can call from Google Talk to a phone number or from a phone number to Google Talk. Another interesting thing you can do is to talk to a MSN Messenger user and even create a voice conference with users from Google Talk and MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger).

You don't need to install a software, you just have to add a contact (service@gtalk2voip.com) and use it as a gateway.

The creator of this service seems to have a lot of interesting ideas, but I hope it won't take too long before Google starts to offer similar features.

Google and Baidu

2006-09-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Chinese search engine Baidu continues to be far more popular in China than Google, despite the huge amounts of money spent on market research. As a Chinese company started by Chinese people, Baidu seems to cater better to the culture. Yet all of the results returned are paid for by advertisers, unlike Google, which provides “organic” results and shows advertisements only a clearly-marked sponsored links. It seems to have a very similar interface, must be a difference in the search results.

25 Things Danny Sullivan Hates About Google

2006-09-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

Danny Sullivan wrote an article on SEW (Search Engine Watch)where he named 25 things he hated about Google, here are a few that I really would like to comment on.

3.Stop confusing people. Pick a user interface and go with it!
Google keeps testing and testing various UIs. If I had the time and energy, I'd take all the screenshots people have posted and put them into a single "Google of the future" page. Then again, they probably wouldn't commit. Enough with the testing! Decide on something and go with it, then change it later if you need to.

Well, if we see this in Google's eyes, it means more people talking, blogging and posting about their new update, and more people going to google and trying out the new style. But, I do agree with you that it is confusing, although I think they should have a few styles in your settings and you choose the way your search interface looks.

5.Easier access to all your tools.
Life at Google is more than web, images, groups, news, Froogle and local. Maybe I want to switch to mobile search, book search, catalog search or yes yes yes blog search with an easy click from the existing query I've done. I can't. I can't even if I use your toolbar. Many of these services remain in "visit directly" mode.

Jesus, I could not agree with you more! going to that service page, to then click on labs, to then get to Google Reader and they have services that aren't even there, like Analytics, its a trip, thats why I love saving Links, but whatever, people don't like to bother going to every link and then looking for what they want. Lets face it, people are lazy, like me, and they want things digested and given to them, so do it Google!

7.RSS feed for web search
OK, I know the results don't change much, and I know that RSS feeds of web search that Yahoo and MSN offer are hardly winning over mass numbers of users. Still, why not? Since you offer RSS for news search results and other things, let me monitor web search the same way.

Again, I agree, I do so with news searches of Google in Google News, and it works, why not give it a little update and do so with the plain Web Search.

11.Stop giving away Blogger for free.
It's just full of junk. Junk, junk, junk. If you let anyone have it with no barriers, surprise, some are going to take it and do bad things with it. Problems With Splogs & Time-Based Searching covers how you've reinvented free home page spam that sucked in the 90s. Why are you allowing it again now? Charge people even a token amount ($1 even), and that will be a big barrier. Who's going to ding you for charging a $1 start-up fee that you can levy through Google Payments?

I agree with you on the part of that Blogger is full of junk junk junk, because it is, mostly just dead blogs. But why make it have to be paid, then all you would get is a bunch of angry people, if you just want the junk off Blogger, just start a cleaning process with all the old blogs and set a new barrier for current blogs.

19.Let Gmail display more than 100 items.
After archiving 50,000 messages 100 items at a time, I really wished for the ability to view more than 100 items per page. I still want that when I'm having to review about 300 spam items per day. This can't be that hard. Can't we have it?

100 items is more than enough, and they aren't going to change their product, which is free, because if it was paid it would be another story, because a portion of their users get spammed each day.

21.Give me a list of all my referring pages in Google Analytics and make them clickable.
C'mon. WebTrends has offered stuff like this since, I dunno, WebTrends 1.0? But in Google Analytics, I have to go to Referral Conversion, then see individual URLs rolled up under sites, then cut and paste things if I want to go to the page that sent me traffic. It could, and should, be much easier.

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes! PLEASE!, analytics is an awesome utility, but without referring links is something most Page Tracking utilities have, why cant Google have it too?

These are just some of the things Danny Sullivan mentioned in his post at SEW.

Danny Sullivan's Full SEW Post | Danny's FAQ on The Topic | Digg This Article

Snakes On A Google!

2006-09-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

From Googler Niniane Wang’s blog about a strange day about the Google campus. Following a massive roadway backup caused by a Cisco meeting down the road, and then a network outage (related? Cisco is a network company), an email was sent around Google warning that a snake had been spotted at the Googleplex. Was Microsoft responsible? Or was it Yahoo? Or even Sam Jackson? Either way, Google’s got a different type of problem to tackle, one I don’t think they covered in CS classes at Stanford.

Okay, the headline is a bit over-the-top, but so is the idea of snakes and search engine companies…

Original Post | Digg This Article

Flavor Falve + Google

2006-09-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

Three Six Mafia has sponsored Google!

Google Video Views

2006-09-11T15:27:00.000-07:00

Google Video now shows the number of views for each video I’d love to see this “views” or “yesterday’s views” feature being rolled out on many different Google tools; views of a particular newsgroup posting through Google Groups, clicks on a specific result in web search, views of a thumbnail of an image in Google image search, views of a Sketchup 3D model, views of a Picasa image and so on.

No Index Meta Tag Problem

2006-09-09T11:55:00.000-07:00

Please Listen to this Podcast from Webmaster Radio and Danny Sullivan said something very interesting about the "No Index" meta tag or Robots.txt file which he said that if you put a no index meta tag the Google Bot will not index your page. Please listen from 18:00-20:03 so you see what I mean

powered by ODEO

"A meta no index tag is an easy way to keep a particular page out of the index"..."if you use the no index meta tag google will not show your page in any way shape or form."

So using the no index meta tag will hurt your ranking in the Google Directory, as he says "even if they know about your site, apparently through the open directory or because they can see people linking to it, they still will not list it". So I just wanted to get people who use a free service like Blogger or Wordpad, to not use the no index meta tag because as soon as the Google Bot sees this, it will not index the page. A more effective way to do this is to get the Robots.txt file into your page, but unless you have a site with FTP access you cant.

"they got two different behaviors even though your telling them the same thing, dont index this particular part of my site"

Daily Search Cast Post | Danny Sullivan's Blog | Digg This Article

Riding Over Google

2006-09-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

I found this video in which a guy rides a dirtbike over google, pretty cool

Digg This Article

2006-09-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

8 Years ago on September 7, 1998, two guys name Sergey Brin and Larry Page incorporated Google in Susan Wojcicki's garage. And it turned out to be the most used search engine in the world. Let's take a look at how Google looks like 8 years ago.

This was one of Google's first logos, created using GIMP, download the original file here. Well, you know the rest, they are history. ;) "Google celebrates their birthday depending on when people feel like having cake." -Hopefully Google will out of beta tomorrow. *Smile*!-

Winners of the Google Desktop Gadget contest!

2006-09-06T18:59:00.000-07:00

As the Inside Google Desktop blog promised, they have posted the winners of the Google Desktop Gadget contest today. ;)

First place is diGGGadget by Marius and Yannick Stucki, second place is Multiplayer Reversi Game by Turhan Aydin, and Beatrix Gottanka's Day/Night World Clock as the third place.

Inside Google Desktop also listed eight Honorable Mention gadgets, and they are 10x10 News by Turhan Aydin, Carrier by Petar Petrov, Gate2Home Virtual Keyboard by Ilan Bar-Magen, Hot or Not by Ron Huang, Weather forecasts of Japan by IT Design BitWiz, Memory Smiley by Bijoy Thangaraj & Nirmal Jose, RSS to Speech by Alexey Polkovnikov, and Shortcut Gadget by Teodor Mihai Filimon.

Google News Archive Search

2006-09-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

Google launched a News Archive Search site to allow you to explore historical archives. So now people can search to confirm something or maybe just to look up something for history class.

Google News Archive

A Pretty Error Page

2006-09-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

The Google OS Blog posted this cool new Extension for Firefox which replaces the old HTTP error page with a new cool twist.

An error page page is an error page, but replace it with some pizazz.

Google OS Blog Post | Download ErrorZilla | More FireFox Extensions

More Info On When The GoogleBot Visited Your Page

2006-09-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

Vanessa Fox posted some more information about the Google Bot, this time she explained how do you know when the Google Bot successfully crawled your site. Here are some of the highlights.

if Googlebot accesses a page and gets a 304 (Not-Modified) response to a If-Modified-Since qualified request, Googlebot doesn't download the contents of that page. This reduces the bandwidth consumed on your web server.

Which is very good to know because I had a little problem with bandwith in our forums which was the google bot over crawling the forum and taking up all my bandwith.

When you look at Google's cache of a page (for instance, by using the cache: operator or clicking the Cached link under a URL in the search results), you can see the date that Googlebot retrieved that page.

So now you know thta your cache updates every time the Google Bot crawls your site SUCCESSFULLY, because the crawler can come to update a few things but wont deep crawl sometimes.

Vanessa Fox's Entry | Google Sitemaps | Google's Add URL Page | Digg This Article

New AdWords Terms & Conditions

2006-09-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

After their small update on Tuesday, August 29, 2006, the Google AdWords team wanted their "account holders or their managers to physically “click to accept” the new Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions."

Affected AdWords account holders will have until November 27, 2006 to log in to their accounts and either accept or reject the new Google Advertising Program Terms & Conditions. If an account has not accepted these new Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions by this deadline, API access will be blocked until the user accepts.

We recommend that you speak with your advertisers/clients in order to determine who should review and accept/decline these terms.

Account managers (MCC users) can automatically accept these new Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions for all affected accounts under their My Client Center by logging into the MCC, navigating to an affected child account, and accepting the Google Advertising Program Terms & Conditions. This action will then instantaneously accept the new Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions for all other accounts under that MCC. If you maintain a nested/hierarchical MCC structure, please be sure that you login to your top-most MCC when you accept the changes. This will ensure that all of your sub-accounts will automatically accept the Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions.

Unfortunately, we're unable to interpret the meaning of changes in our legal documents for you. If you have questions or you need legal advice on interpreting the terms, we encourage you to consult counsel to help you understand how these changes may affect you.

Again, please note that in order to ensure uninterrupted access to your accounts, the new Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions must be accepted before November 27, 2006.

-- Jon Diorio, Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Google AdWords | AdWords API Official Blog Post | New AdWords Terms & Conditions | Digg This Article

Google Eavesdropping On You

2006-09-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

In the Register: Google developing eavesdropping software, we see the suggestion that Google is going to hijack the microphone on your computer, listen to what TV show you are watching in the other room, and serve you customised ads.

The idea appeared in Technology Review citing Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, who says these ideas will show up eventually in real Google products - sooner rather than later.

The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that's adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject.

As a result, we now have a heated discussion at DSL Reports News Forum: Google Using Your Mic to Listen In?

Looks like Google the Good is turning into Google the spy. Can George Orwell's 1984 nightmare world be far off if Google continues to expand their tentacles into the home. LOL, and people worry about the NSA and AT&T. So look at who the real threat may be.

And a really fun subthread

Personally, I'd start saying really suspicious things, like airliner, bomb, death to America, etc... and see what happens.
The TSA/FBI will be at your door and you can watch what happens on CNN from jail.
This is Google, not NSA. You will start getting ads for fertilizer, fuel oil, detonators, terrorist training, legal services.

LOL.

Google AdWords Big Change

2006-09-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

Google surprised many AdWords advertisers by raising the minimum bid of certain keywords from $0.1 to $0.5 a click to as high as $5 -$10 a click. Google used to determine the minimum cost the advertiser needs to pay to have the ad displayed for a particular keyword, is based on Google's assessment of the 'Quality Score' of a keyword. Relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance on Google, the quality of your ad's landing page, and other relevancy factors."

According to Google, the lower the minimum bid price, the higher the quality score. And in the latest round of changes in their Quality Score algorithm, Google tweaked it to weigh heavily on the "quality of the ad's landing page". The impact of Google's new landing page algorithm can affect an entire AdWords campaign, but for those affected impact is mainly felt at the Ad Group and individual Keyword level.

Google AdWrods | Digg This Article

Google Scholar in Spanish

2006-09-04T16:55:00.000-07:00

Google launched Scholar in Spanish now, since they JUST launched it they are inviting editors and librarians to participate, since, if they sell their papers online, this is a damn easy way to drive traffic while sacrificing nothing. So lets see how this does, at least I know ill be using it. I think that collecting the world’s information isn’t enough, if only parts of the world can understand parts of the information. So I think Google will soon be adding more languages to the listGoogle Scholar, [Spanish] | Digg This Article

A Note Of Google

2006-09-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

While looking for some videos I stumbled upon this Spanish news video about google, which had a few lines that caught my eye, since the video is in Spanish I will translate what the voice says since im from Puerto Rico and know Spanish.

"Its the most used search engine in the world. It indexes about eight thousand million pages all over the planet. If it would exist in other places, im sure it would do it to. The Definition of the word google comes from the mathematic term designed to 1 continued by 100 zeros, its to say, that this company symbolizes the objective to organize the immense information that is available on the web. Google is used by everyone in every corner of the world. With an index of more than 85 thousand million pages of websites this search engine organizes all the information pertinent to everyone in all the parts of the world, and makes them accessible to who is searching for them. In 1998 comes the Google.inc company. Its founders never thought they would make a monster of a search engine on the web. These college students, while locked in their basements, created a machine of information never doubted from their ignorance that they would merdge with one of the best administrators of companies, Eric Schmidt . Like this, these three united to make the idea of these college guys to make one of the biggest companies of our time. Their starting page invites people of ALL languages to search the web without having to comfort to another person's style. Google is one of the most recognized trademarks in the world, this has been made possible by the "word of mouth". But business is business, google makes profits off advertisers that want to appear in google and Sponsoring Links. Without a doubt this has become an indispensable tool for every day life."

I highlighted some of the notes that caught my eye.

The Definition of the word google comes from the mathematic term designed to 1 continued by 100 zeros
Googl comes from that phrase in Latin, they changed the name to Google so it would make more sense and look better.

In 1998 comes the Google.inc company.
This is a big shocker because it is a very big deal for a company to have this much success in 9 years, on a Global scale, they have made a lot of advancements over these 9 years but they also have made some enemies like Microsoft, for more on that read This Article

Google makes profits off advertisers
Which they made a new revolution in advertising because AdWords and the Ads they put in their searches are not really Ads, they are "Sponsored Links" which they fool the user into thinking its not an Ad when it really is. You can read more about that here.

I watched this video and thought it was worth a mention, hope you liked it.

Digg This Article

Click-To-Call in the UK

2006-09-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

Google has now implemented Click-To-Call features in the UK. A search on the word jet2 at Google.co.uk brings up this ad.

If you click on the green phone icon, it opens the ad up to enter your phone number. According to Google’s Click-To-Call FAQ “Google foots the bill for all calls, both local and long-distance“

It was only last week that Google and eBay announced plans to integrate and launch a “click-to-call” advertising functionality within eBay’s U.S. & international marketplaces and on Google’s search platform. So this implementation is pretty rapid!

“The click-to-call capability will allow a user to click on a link or icon within a product or service advertisement to initiate an Internet voice call to participating eBay merchants or Google advertisers directly from either company’s respective sites, using Skype or Google Talk.”

Click-To-Call Info | Digg This Article

Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts Printable

2006-09-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

Gmail has had Keyboard Shortcuts for a while now, but Evan Williams has made a Printable list of shortcuts so you dont have to change the browser window or tab to look at the shortcuts. All you have to do is print the page and activate your Keyboard Shortcuts in your Gmail settings.

Source | Gmail | Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts [Printable] | Digg This Article

The Women Of The Googleplex

2006-09-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

This video is a little insight at the Googleplex, this is mostly of the engineering women at Google.

Pretty Cool huh? I wish I could work there! :)

Multi-touch interface

2006-09-03T17:07:00.000-07:00

This video is not really from google, BUT, it is a col new idea people are working with to make available, its sort of a new interface in which they try to combine touch mouse pad with the screen.

A Video:

Another Video:

Google Page Creator Beyond The Beta

2006-09-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

While I was working on my Google Page I found that they had added a "More..." part which is more utilities you can add to your page, however, these are Beta in the Beta, so there are risks, here is what google has to say about this.

The Google Page Creator team is always busy developing cool new features. Some of these are at the point where they're usable for the most part, but not quite ready for prime time. The astute reader will point out that all of Google Page Creator may be described as not-ready-for-prime-time. But the experimental features we're talking about here are the beta of the betas, designed for early adopters among early adopters, pushing the envelope inside the envelope — you get the idea.

If you turn on experimental features, sometimes you might not see anything special. Other times you might see an entirely new user interface, or new toolbar buttons that will disappear a week later. What you get may have bugs or usability problems — if you find them, please tell us so that we can weed them out before the features go live to the rest of the Google Page Creator population. If you decide later that you don't want these features anymore, you can always go back to the Settings page and disable experimental features, but if you've created pages in the meantime that relied on experimental features, it's possible that those pages will now behave oddly.

Which means that there are risks depending on what utilities you choose.

There are hundreds of them to choose from, because not all of them are from google, which can be a disadvantage or advantage. Here is how to activate them.

1. Go to your Account Page and look for "Page Creator" and hit the "Settings" button.

2. After pressing the "Settings" button click on "Enable Experimental Features" and click Ok on the form given.

3. Go to your google page creator and click on "Manage (Title)" and you will see a button named "More..."

4. Click the button that search the new Gadgets.

1. 2. 3. 4.

Google Page Creator | "Your Account" | Digg This Article

Custom Start Pages for Companies

2006-09-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

Dell, after Teaming Up With Google, got a Personalized Homepage for them.
Google Said

"The personalized start page is a syndicated version of the Google personalized homepage, allowing you to set up dynamic homepages for your users that bring together your content, Google services, and the best of the web.

The personalized start page uses the same technology as the Google's personalized homepage, but lets you create a customized version of the page that is tailored to your users. Combine your own content with additional external content and modules of your choice, and tailor the look and feel of the page with different logos, colors, and fonts. End users of the page still have the ability to incorporate any content from the web, or any Google Gadget, enabling them a degree of customization over the content of the page."

It seems that you don't have to be a big partner with Google to create a shared personalized page. Google will add to its newly-launched corporate package a personalized start page.

The start page could be the one-stop place for all the members of an organization: it will mix personal information (mail, news) with corporate information (news, resources) and Google search. A really useful fusion.

Dell's Google Start Page | Digg This Article

Blogger Beta: Improvements In Silence

2006-09-02T21:35:00.000-07:00

Blogger Beta is getting better. The improvements, though, are being rolled out in silence.

Blogger has 4 avenues for reporting changes to its unpaid staff.

Blogger Buzz.
Blogger Status.
Google Blogger Help - pinned posts.
Google Blogger Help - ongoing discussions.

In rolling out two badly needed improvements, during the past week, they used none of the above to let Bloggers know.

Lets Make Google Better

2006-09-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

Ok guys, I have some great ideas for Google, but, unfortunately one person requesting a feature is not enough, so have I read in the replies I have gotten from the Google Teams, so I decided to grease the wheels a little and see if any of my readers would compel to submit the same feedback and see if we can get some ideas up and in development. Here are some of my ideas for some Google services, I will give the link to the feedback page and you guys can e-mail them and say what I have said here as well as give some of your ideas.

Google Reader:
Mix Google Base With Google Reader
Ok now this idea is to mix Google Reader with Google Base, as in a person can subscribe to a specific author or category in Google Base.
For feedback e-mail them at labs+reader@google.com

Google Pages
More Contact With The Owner
What I mean is to make some sort of Comment Box or something along those lines, because Google Pages has no interaction between the guest and the webmaster
To send them feedback leave them a message here

Google Music Trends
More Than 20 Songs
As you all know, Music Trends only gives the top 20 songs, how about more?
Still looking for the e-mail or request page :(

Google Analytics
Referring Link
As in a link back to the place the guest clicked that lead to your site, easier to track Google Search Hits.

More Conversion Goals
I dont know about you, but 4 is not enough for me, 6-10 would be better.
To send them feedback leave them a message here

Picasa Web Albums
Hotlink Page
Hotlink means that it is a page with nothing else but the picture, which means you can post your picture as a thumbnail and link back to it.

Upload From Web Albums
As you all know you can only upload pictures if you have Picasa, I suggest they make a little upload box on Web Albums making it easier and faster to upload images.
To send them feedback leave them a message here

My purpose for this post is to get people to submit feedback to google and get motivated, please comment on this post and pass the link on, so we can Make Google Better! If you want your idea added here please e-mail me at and I will add it :)

Google Adds Yahoo to Their Toolbar?

2006-09-02T17:22:00.000-07:00

Ok while trying out the new Googling Domains feature by googling "google.com" I landed on the Google Toolbar button gallery and found out that they have added Yahoo! as a button for their toolbar. Now, someone correct me if im wrong but isnt Yahoo one of Google's rivals?

On the face, this would appear to be a mistake on Google's part. If you think about it, though, this makes sense. Users of Google's toolbar now have no need for Yahoo's competing product. All of the users needs can be met with this one product. Genius.

Gallery Page | Google Toolbar | Digg This Article

Google Products in 2020, Part III

2006-09-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

"Where's Part 1 and 2?" You might ask, it's over at Googlified where I originally posted. You might want to checkout Part I and Part II before continue reading this post, but it's your choice. ;)

As you might noticed, I wasn't so often lately, because I was having a field trip to the future, the Year of 2020, just got back. ;)

In the previous two part of the Google Products in 2020, I mainly write about the 2020-version of the now existed products, but haven't write about any products that Google will launch in the future, so Part III and IV will be about these not yet available products/services. "Google Account is required".

Google Space Travel: Google Lunar Station(The Googlunaplex) is no longer a April joke. Unlike Google describe it as a station for scientists, it's a 4 star hotel for the Space travelers, free foods are available. Codename: MadeByLego

Google Operating System: Not this blog I am talking about, it's a real OS like OS X, Linux, and Windows. Using this OS is free and doesn't require high-end computer to process difficult task, all you need is a Internet connection to communicate with the Google Servers, they do the job, and send back to data. Codename: ThinkHuman.

Web π or Web Pi: Web 1.0(1991 to 2004) -> Web 2.0(2004 to 2013) -> Web 3.0(2013 to 2020) -> Web π (2020 to ?) Google in 2020 released the standards of Web Pi, which represents the web is non-stop like the decimals behind 3 in Pi.

Google Video, How To Fix Your iPod

2006-09-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

I was looking through the Google Blogs and I found this post on the Google Video Blog where they had posted 2 videos on how to fix you iPod, LCD Screen and Battery. Very cool, considering Apple does not replace cracked or damaged LCD Screens or batteries.

Fixing Your iPod's LCD Screen:

Replacing Your iPod's Battery:

If you dare yourself to do this by yourself, then this is a great tutorial, but if wouldnt like to mess with your iPod then you can ship it to them and they will repair it for you for a nominal fee.

ifix ipods fast Home Page | Links to Videos 1st One, 2nd One | Digg This Article

Give Google Base Some Feedback

2006-09-02T16:03:00.000-07:00

Preeti Uberoy wrote in the Google Base Blog that they are looking for new ideas and feedback on their current ones

As a member of the Google Base Support Team, one of the things I enjoy is watching Google Base improve according to the feedback that we get from content providers like you. One of my main job responsibilities is to report your suggestions and comments to our engineers, and make sure that we make the changes that you recommend.

Most of the recent developments of Google Base, in fact, are responses to requests from users. For example, people used to write in asking for a way to track the success of the items they submitted to Google Base. We worked hard to develop this functionality, and the reporting statistics that you can now see in your account are a direct result. We've made more minor adjustments in response to your suggestions as well. The sample Excel files that are now available with the bulk upload instructions for standard item types, for instance, were the idea of people like you, to make the upload process as easy as possible.

So, imagine being the guy that wanted to upload a PowerPoint to his post, then submitting feedback and then getting the "bulk upload" feature. I bet people have some good ideas and they should be shared. Especially with the people who can develop them.

Google Base | Google Base Blog Post | Digg This Article | Give Them Feedback here

Googoling Domanins

2006-09-01T19:33:00.000-07:00

Found on Google Blogoscoped by way of Barry Schwartz, Google has changed their method of serving search results for domain specific queries. For example, if one was to search for 'googolians.net’ on Google a week ago, they would have been served links to the domain, info on the domain such as sites linking to it and its cache, along with similar co related sites.

Given the high search volume of well branded domains, it only makes sense that Google would change to a more user friendly result option for these searches. I imagine this will be a breath of fresh air to all of those out there who search for ‘ebay.com’ in their Google toolbar as opposed to entering the URL in their browser address bar.

The new format displays the intended site at the top of the results, along with sub-domains of that site or sites related to it.

Google Blogscoped Post | Example Google Search for Googolians

Google Image Labeler

2006-09-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

Google Image Labeler is a place where you can help Google improve Google Image Search by tagging images.

It's similar to what you do in Google Video. But Google transformed this boring activity into a nice interactive game. Every time you login, Google finds you a partner and shows you the same images for 90 seconds. The first label found by both of you is considered a good answer and brings you 100 points (while two people can both fail in finding a good label, the probability is much smaller than for one person). After the time expires, you can see where the images came from and what were your partner's labels. And then you can start again, as the game is addictive.

The same images will be shown to other people, so, in the end, the images will keep only the best labels. This way, when you search for "car", you'll only find pictures of cars. I wonder if Google will use this approach or it's just a test for their recently acquired object recognition system

You can see an intriguing demonstration of this game, called the "ESP Game" in the tutorial discussed in Captchas and Online Games.

Google Image Labeler | Digg This Article

FireFox Beta2 Improvement of The Theme

2006-08-31T14:45:00.000-07:00

The second beta of Firefox 2 includes a slick redesigned chrome, in addition to the features already available in beta 1.

Mozilla hired Radiant Core, a company from Toronto, to design the new theme. IT Business says that the "criteria for the [theme] proposals included that they respect native OS look and feel (Firefox runs on Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms), that the themes appear modern and contemporary with current Web and client apps and appear consistent across platforms."

So now we have translucent buttons, an improved search box and new tab strip that shows the active tab prominently. There's also an arrow next to the last tab that hides a list of all the open tabs.

Update:
After Downloading, I found that this saves itself as another browser, in other words, it doesn't update your old FireFox, but it does save your links (pheww). It has a spell check for when typing which underlines in read, then right click and choose the correct word, pretty cool. They also added a little Close Button on every tab so you don't have to right click.

Source | Download FF Beta2 Windows, Mac | Digg This Article

Picasa's 503 Message Error

2006-08-31T14:36:00.000-07:00

Picasa's little problem with Webalbums is now fixed, it was a problem with their server, but no content of anyone was lost. Just alot of pissed off people when they couldnt get into Web albums. Allthough it was strange that I uploaded pics when Web Albums was down and they uploaded fine. But hey, its fixed now so no worries :)

Picasa Web Albums

Creating Image Spam Filter For Gmail

2006-08-31T14:21:00.000-07:00

The new groovy thing for spammers is not to e-mail text with spam, ohh no, they have to go the extra mile. Now they attach images with text in them so they can fool you. So I tried this, it is working for now, but some spam is getting in through anyway. So I need to see this in more deeply. But try this filter, it does block SOME image spam.

Has the Words | multipart/related .gif
X Has attachment

And to forward everything to the trash (which will automatically clear after 15 - 30 days.)

I tried that, since I check my e-mail various times a day it did work, but I dont know about people that dont check their e-mail for a long time if this tactic will work, ill post more comprehensive image spam filters once I get to test them all.

Blogger BETA, Template Editing

2006-08-31T13:50:00.000-07:00

Blogger beta now has activated the Raw Template Editor! as in the HTML edit, so now you can add all the meta tags and descriptions you like :D

PChuck's Tips on Raw HTML Editing In Blogger BETA Template

Blogger Beta | Google Groups Blogger Help Group

Analytic's Tips For Optimization

2006-08-31T13:15:00.000-07:00

Google Analytics recently gave a few tips in their blog about optimizing your results and your site in general using analytics. Here are 2 that cought my eye.

Create a funnel path and goal that mimics the expected navigation
You designed your site, so you know how you expect your users to navigate through it. Create a funnel and goal that mimics the expected path that your site is designed for.

So this means for you to Goal Track your main portals of your site. So, this way you where people are going, gives you a better idea of your visitors.

Give it a few days
Give your site a little while to perform, and let Analytics collect at least 3 or 4 weeks of data. Weekends, special events, and holidays may lead to skewed results so giving your site some time to perform enables you to get more reliable, indicative metrics.

So dont expect to put in the code and GET results a day after, let it sit and wait a while, this way you get more comprehensive stats

Google Analytics is a very good utility, but, as all things, it takes time to settle and take impulse.

Official Google Analytics Blog Post | Analytics | Digg This Article

Google Earth, New Layers

2006-08-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Last night Google published and announced an update to the Google Earth Community (GEC) layers. These layers show blue "i" icons in Google Earth which show placemarks posted in the forums when turned on in the Layers pane on the lower left of GE. For those of you who posted in appropriate forums (some of the forums are not included in the layer) before August 18th, your placemarks should appear now. You may have to zoom down lower heights to see more of the placemarks. Since it's been a few months since the last update to this layer there are probably tens of thousands of new placemarks now available. Fortunately, the layer has sub-layers broken down by category (based somewhat on the forums at the GEC). This can help you eliminate unwanted placemarks.

In addition, Google has added a new layer called the "Featured Content" layer. Right now this includes the following: Turn Here, Jane Goodall's Gombe Chimpanzee Blog, and Discovery Channel's National Parks Tour (links point to earlier stories about these collections at GEB). My guess is that Google will rotate featured content from the GE Showcase web page through this new layer.

Written By Frank Taylor,
"Google Updates"

Google Earth Showcase | Google Earth | Digg This Article

Adding HTML to Gmail Messages

2006-08-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

The Digital Inspiration weblog has a step-by-step for adding HTML to Gmail messages.

For those of you who have tried inserting an image or table in Gmail, you've probably noticed that Gmail won'tt really allow embedded HTML (at least not in a traditional sense). In order to embed HTML, you actually need to copy the rendered HTML from either an existing web page or WYSIWYG HTML editor and then paste it into Gmail. Doing so allows you to insert your own tables, divs, images, etc. into Gmail pretty easily.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of embedded anything in emails (give me plain text, please!), but for those of you who have been missing HTML in Gmail, Digital Inspiration's method should do the trick. If that method isn't your cup of tea, you might also want to try the Gmail Skins Firefox extension, which allows you to embed HTML directly in Gmail.

The Tutorial | Gmail | Digg This Article

Download Books From Google

2006-08-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

Starting today, you can go to Google Book Search and download full copies of out-of-copyright books to read at your own pace. You're free to choose from a diverse collection of public domain titles from well-known classics to obscure gems. They made it a PDF download so you could not copy paste. So you can go to google books and download books :)

Here are some Classics:
* Ferriar's The Bibliomania
* A futurist from 1881's 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century
* Aesop's Fables
* Shakespeare's Hamlet
* Abbott's Flatland
* Hugo's Marion De Lorme
* Dunant's Eine Erinnerung an Solferino

Official Google Book Search Blog Post | Google Book Search

Google Talk and Skype!

2006-08-29T13:02:00.000-07:00

The Google Talk Blog announced that they will be adding Skype to the "Other Clients" compatible area :)

Google Talk's got a new gig. Google and eBay have signed an agreement around text-based advertising and "click-to-call" advertising, in which Google Talk and Skype will power voice calls between customers and merchants.

Just as exciting are our plans to explore interoperability between Google Talk and Skype, making it easier for our users to chat with one another. This is just another step in our commitment to interoperability via open, industry standards.

Just another chat client added :) BUT this is a big step towards being compatible with other chat clients, and not to mention Skype is from Yahoo, and Yahoo nad Google collaborating is a BIG deal.

Official Google GTalk Blog Post | Press Release | Other IM Clients | Digg This Article

Blogger Beta: Current Possibilities

2006-08-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

So Gav, in the Googolians Forum Blogger Beta: A Significant Improvement, asks the $64,000,000 question

Hey I just have one question, can I upgrade my old one ?

After some consideration, my answer is

Not if you value your blog, if it has any content or features, or if it's indexed by the search engines. In other words, No.

After much consideration, and examining known issues - Design Deficiencies, and Problems, I have to say that I do not recommend upgrading any existing blog, that's at all mature and has content and value to you.

I am going to recommend a parallel (mirroring) strategy.

Develop a new blog, as a Beta. Make its visual characteristics as close to the current (unupgraded) blog as possible.
Use FeedDigest, or another custom feed service (FeedDigest is free), and build 2 feeds, one from your Classic blog, the other from your new Beta blog. Install the feed from one onto the other, and vice versa.
Then start blogging to the Beta blog, when appropriate.
Note the design deficiencies, and known problems, when considering each of the above steps. There are still bugs in the Beta. Don't subject your current, valued, blog to Beta just yet.

Details>>>Real Blogger Status: Migration From Blogger Classic To Blogger Beta

Google Corporate Packages

2006-08-27T19:47:00.000-07:00

CNet reports that Google will expand Gmail for Your Domain into a much more interesting offer. Google will start to offer Google Apps for Your Domain, a hosted service that includes Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Page Creator. The service is mainly targeted at businesses, universities and other organizations, as it allows them to provide the same great Google experience in a customized package.

The service is free, but Google will start to offer a premium service with larger storage, ad-free and with support at the end of the year.

The offer will most likely be more substantial in the future, with the addition of Writely, Google Spreadsheets and other applications. Google tried to be more attractive for corporate users by creating enterprise versions for Google Desktop and Google Toolbar, but without much success.

Google Apps for Your Domain | More Info on Google Apps | People's Thoughts | Digg This Article

Google Book Search, Searching Libraries

2006-08-27T08:09:00.000-07:00

Google has added to its service for finding books the ability to search local libraries.

Queries in Google Book Search, which is in beta, automatically include results from the new Library Catalog Search feature, and a "find libraries" link. Clicking on the link sends the user to another page where local libraries carrying the book will be listed, based on the user's zip code.

So you wont even have to leave your house to see if the library has the book you want. Although it might take time for Google to get to ALL libraries and keep them updated.

Google Book Search | Learn More About Searching Libraries | Digg This Article

Google Notifier for Mac

2006-08-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

Google Notifier for Mac is formerly Gmail Notifier, which is for you “easy access to your new Gmail messages with a quick preview of the message subject, sender, and snippet.” But now, the Google Notifier combines the Timely reminder, for your upcoming Google Calendar events, including date, time, event title, and location, and became the powerful Google Notifier!

Mac Gmail Notifier | Thanks Haochi! | Digg This Article

Ernesto Tracked By Me!

2006-08-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

Ernesto is a tropical storm in the Atlantic right now. The first Atlantic tropical storm of the season with a real chance to build up to a threat for the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico is moving down hurricane alley right now. You can track the position of Tropical Storm Ernesto using this excellent Hurricane

Google Earth | Satellite View On Ernesto | Digg This Article

OK Go Dancing On Treadmills Video

2006-08-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

This is a british band named "OK Go" which was made dancing on treadmills. Its a pretty cool video

Official Google Video Blog Post | Whatch in Google Video | Digg This Article

Captchas and Online Games

2006-08-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty long video, but it's still worth the time to watch. It discusses these issues, and more.

What is a Captcha, and why is it not the ultimate protection against automated attacks?
Why do I see a Captcha sometimes, when I'm looking at pictures?
Why are there so many free online games?
How does Google Images get their pictures labeled so accurately?

Captchas and Online Games: Human Computation (Luis Von Ahn: July 26, 2006)

Call Users From Gmail

2006-08-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

Garett Rogers found a Gmail feature that lets you call users WHILE your writing e-mails or checking them. This is quite usefull for people that dont use Google Talk and use the Chat feature in Gmail.

Source of Inspiration | Gmail | Digg This Article

Google Talk's 1 Year Old!

2006-08-23T13:57:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday to Google Talk! Two years ago, Eoban Binder proposed idea of a Jabber-based Google IM service. A year ago, Google launched Google Talk. Tomorrow, Happy Birthday to Google Talk!

Google released a new version of Google last week to celebrate GTalk’s first birthday! Ionut found an easter egg that if you turn your computer date to August 24, you will get a special logo for GTalk, as shown at right.

Blogger's 7th Birthday

2006-08-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

7 years ago, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs, today, Blogger is celebrating their birthday with a new logo (for a day, I guess). Blogger is credited for helping popularize blogging. On August 23, 1999, Evan Williams(co-founder of Blogger) posted on his blog,

We just launched a cool new tool at Pyra. It’s called Blogger. It’s an automated weblog publishing tool. Unlike Pitas, which, don’t get me wrong, is cool, Blogger FTP’s your updated weblog page to your own server after each post. This means you can have everything “under the same roof,” as Jack put it the other day. You retain complete control. In fact, no one even has to know you’re using Blogger. It just makes your life simplier. Check it out. (Coming soon: Automated XML channel creation.)

The new logo with the dog is because of that whole “1 human year = 7 dog year” thing.

Source of Inspiration | Read More... | Thanks Haochi | Digg This Article!

We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

2006-08-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

This seems to be a common problem now. Maybe it's the whole problem. OK, we can dream anyway.

Googolians Blog: We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.
RBS: Guess What?

This problem has been commonly associated with blogs that started out as Classic, and were migrated to the Beta template.

We suspect (but can never be sure) that Blogger Support is working on this symptom, which appears to have several possible causes.

One cause is corrupt feeds being added to the layout. When you see the error, go to the Layout Editor, and look at any feeds that you added to the blog. Edit each one. One or more will show "Invalid URL". Delete any feeds with that error.

Another possibility originates with having multiple contributors, and may be caused by multiple contributors changing the layout simultaneously. I'm not sure whether there's an easy solution to this. Blogger Development may have to add template locking.

I've also observed problems caused by moving layout objects, using drag and drop. If an object is easy to create, you may want to extract its code, and add it in another location. Then delete the old object.

We are currently tracking this issue, in RBS Beta: Corrupted Template?. You will find several threads in the Google Blogger Help - Troubleshooting forum.

Google Merchandise

2006-08-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, I was snooping around the Google Store this afternoon and found this cool iPod skin, bike shirt, Gum, Flshdrives ect... all by Google!

Now I find this to be very cool, considering the clean way they place their logo on things. Google store has free shipping for UPS Ground Continental "For a Limited Time Only". They also have a very flexible Return policy

All merchandise is guaranteed for workmanship and quality for one year from date of purchase. If, for any reason, you are not pleased with your order, please return the item.

Very cool! no other search engine has this :)

Google Store | Return Policy | New Items!

Googles, Fly Over Google Earth

2006-08-21T18:58:00.000-07:00

Goggles is a Game made by Mark Caswell. In this game you can fly over "Google Earth's" images of your choice, between, London, Dublin, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Boston, Philadelphia even Mars and Moon! and many others. You can fly over this using your arrow keys to move around and you can go up and down, if you go down completely you will blow up your plane. You can also shoot little balls into the air and hit things.

Mark Caswell posts some updates on the interface of his game, to see them scroll down. As, "PLEASE NOTE: this game is a beta! It's not actually finished yet and I hadn't intended to release it." so this is still not finished meaning he will add more things to it. So if you want to have some fun, check Goggles out!

Goggles | Read More | Mark Caswell's Blog

GTalk - Adding Contacts

2006-08-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

This is totally kewl.

My bud already had GMail, so I send him an invitation to GTalk. I simply typed his mailbox name ("@gmail.com" already filled in) into the invitation form, hit Next, then Finish.

I went to IM him on MSN Messenger (where we had been in conversation for an hour or so), to tell him to read his email. By the time I got back to MSN Messenger, I see a GTalk popup

Hello.

Thanks to GMail and GTalk integration, the GTalk invitation went straight into GMail. When he opened his email, it was a single click and it installed. No download, no restart system.

Obviously (and I say this with some irony), you do not want unknown and untrusted applications installing automatically, in most cases. Some people (and if you're of this mind I support your concern) may not go for this at all. But if GTalk and GMail are this tightly integrated, there are hopefully some security precautions involved. It's not an unknown application routing an invitation thru an unknown email system, it's GTalk sending an internal message to GMail. It's fast, and it works.

In other words, if your bud has GMail, and if he trusts your judgement, you are seconds away from having another GTalk contact. If you don't have GTalk, get it for yourself. It has its limitations, but it's lightweight, it installs easily, and it works.

Here is yet another version of

I spent longer typing this than the scenario described actually took.

Try it.

Google Analytics Instant Signup

2006-08-20T17:14:00.000-07:00

Google Analytics recently announced in their blog "We're open! Instant access now available" which means that they got rid of their 24-72 hour wait for the invitation code. Which was a mayor turn off for me, and I'm sure for you all too.

If you don't know what analytics is, its a way to track your site that Google has provided. All you do is put in a META TAG as you would do with Sitemaps and it is tracking your site for activity. They give you bar graphs and pie charts of different things like Visits and Pageviews, New and Returning, Visits by Source (meaning referring links). And they also provide "Goal Tracking" which is a way that you can keep track of a special post you made in your blog, or maybe a specific part in your site that you want to keep track of. They have a very good utility called "Site Overlay" which tells you which links of the interface of your site are being clicked the most and others that are called "Dead Links"

Analytics also lets you have up to 10 people in your account, by this I mean, you can have 10 people that can either look at the reports of your site, or 10 people that can create a Sub Account and keep track of their site. So if you have friends that have websites, invite them to get the most out of your account.

Source of Inspiration | Google Analytics | Analytics Google Group | Take a Tour

How Tos of the Google Calculator

2006-08-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

Most people don't even know that there is a Google Calculator, the google calculator, obviously, is used for numbers, cash currencies, cooking measurements,

Numbers

When you are using it for numbers, here are a few pointers.
Use * for multiplying
Use / for dividing
Use ^ for exponents, like 2^2 (2 to the power of 2)
When using fractions use parenthesis
When working with roots, type (root)th of (number) as 5th root of 32
When working with Weight, type the force in parenthesis as (160 pounds force) * 4,000 feet

Example Search for numbers

Cash Currencies

Here is how to search on the change of currencies
Type the type of money then "in" and the currency your looking for, like 200 USD in Yen
When trying to figure out how much is a cash currency versus the other without typing the name of currency just the Country, type currency of "Name of the country" in "Name of other country" money, like currency of Brazil in US money.

Example Search for cash currency changes

Cooking Measurements

When changing cooking measurements do this.
When changing measurements type the measurement "in" the measurement you want to change it to, like half a cup in teaspoons

Example Search for cooking measurement changes

The google calculator has been around for a while now, but people have yet to find out how it works. To run the google calculator you don't need to have a specific link, you can just type your equation in the Google homepage and you will get the same result.

Source of Inspiration | More Instructions | Digg this Article

Google Checkout Video

2006-08-19T20:29:00.000-07:00

Google Checkout is now getting accepted in more and more shopping sites every day, including Dick's Sporting Goods, Timberland, Buy.com, StarbucksStore, Zales, GNC among others. With their simple and easy to use "Checkout" procedure they provide, you can buy your items in a snap. This video shows how easy it is to get started and use it.

Google Checkout is still fairly new and because of their on-going
approach to fraud prevention they havent yet made an appearance on the Big Online Shopping Sites like Amazon, Overstock and E-Bay (E-Bay don't think so because of their feud a few weeks back). But they are promising much. So lets see in a few months where they are.

Source Of Inspiration | Google Checkout | Digg thie Article

Small Insight on the Googlebot

2006-08-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

Most people dont really know the inner workings of the Google Bot, or how it travels and sees your site. Vanessa Fox posted some very helpfull Q & A (questions and answers) about the google bot.

If my site is down for maintenance, how can I tell Googlebot to come back later?
You should configure your server to return a status of 503 (network unavailable) rather than 200 (successful). That lets Googlebot know to try the pages again later.

And this is usefull info cause ive seen this happen a couple of times when im searching for forums.

Is it better to use the meta robots tag or a robots.txt file?
Googlebot obeys either, but meta tags apply to single pages only. If you have a number of pages you want to exclude from crawling, you can structure your site in such a way that you can easily use a robots.txt file to block those pages (for instance, put the pages into a single directory).

I cant even remember how many times people have asked this, even I did when I was starting my first website. This is the best tip she could give to make people stop asking!

What The Googlebot Wont Index
This is your robots.txt file.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Googlebot will crawl everything in the site other than pages in the cgi-bin directory.
For this robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Googlebot won't crawl any pages of the site.

Now this is helpfull info if you have a Forum and maybe you set up a Staff Forum or a private forum for members that donated or something, and you dont want the bot to index that part, because eif it does when they click the link they will get a message that says, "You dont have permission to access this page"

So these are just some tips on how to control the Googlebot in your site.

Vanessa Fox's Entry | More Info... | Tools For Webmasters

New Google Desktop

2006-08-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

Google has released Google Desktop4, and this is the best version they have had in a long time. In this version they took out some known bugs they had before, like the IE Bug that
Let Hackers Phish With Google Desktop, among others. Also they have added 410 Gadgets or "Utilities" as I like to call them, with all ranging from these topics News, Tools, Communication, Finance, Fun & Games, Google, Sports, Lifestyle, Technology, and more!

They have also made it a "Side Bar" instead of a bulky searchbox in your start bar. There is also a Mac version coming in late November.

And they made the new version multilingual now, they cover 26 languages. read more...

The whole thing takes a few minutes to set up because of all the options they give you, but its all worth it, you have everything organized and placed where you want.

Official Google Desktop Post | Get Google Desktop4 | Digg this Article

Google Video's Shortcomings

2006-08-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

Google's video service is easy to use, but is it coming short when it comes to programs you actually want to watch

The websites that allow you to upload videos is growing every day, which most have short clips of spoofs, odd videos, extreme, and informative videos. Some offer instant uploading like YouTube, and some edit videos, like Google. Now I know google edits videos for profanity and course words. Just like this video I uploaded, which they "bleeped". I know this is good, so we can keep it clean, but, this is also a turn off for some users, not because of the bleeping part, but because of the time it takes for it to get accepted and be "Live". Because of all the people uploading, it takes time to edit the video.

The Good: An endless supply of viral and funny videos, and a simple upload procedure.
The Bad: Some videos are paid, and a poor selection of them, and users are limited to their controls.
The Ugly: Good for a few laughs, but not the place to see The Complete Season Of CSI.

So Google Video is a good utility from google, but because of the edit and the strong selection of what they let online its a bit of a turn off. Now what I ment by saying "not the place to see The Complete Season Of CSI" is that, I have the complete 5th season of The Sopranos, and I uploaded an Episode to see if they would accept it. I ended up getting warned, you do the math. Google Vdeo is a good utility, according to the user's intents and needs.

Yahoo's Imitation Of Google Sitemaps

2006-08-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

So, I was submiting my feed to yahoo this afternoon, and I came across this new look (of the submition page)which is not such a copy of Google's Add URL Page but thats not what im trying to point out here.

I found a link that said "Manage Your Site And Get Indexed" so I clicked it, sounded interesting, and it is a COMPLETE copy of Google Sitemaps. Here is a screenshot of "Yahoo Site Explorer BETA" and "Google Sitemaps"

You can see that the "Add Site" box is at the same place as Google has it. The feeds row is in the same place, the site veryfied row is also in the same place. The "Delete Selected Sites" is in the same place. The only changes I can see are that Yahoo has a searchbox on the top of the screen. Also I noticed that Yahoo does not have all the indications Google has, like "robots.txt Analysis"

Allthough this is kind of a rip off, I think its good that yahoo and google are one step ahead of MSN, Yahoo has a very smart "Yahoo Slurp Spider". And people (well I do) like to get, not only google, but more search bots to get indexed in different places. So I think this was a good move from Yahoo, but lets see how Google takes this Rip Off.

If you want to get Yahoo Site Explorer click this link,

Picasa Web Albums

2006-08-17T17:17:00.000-07:00

http://picasaweb.google.com

Its a pretty cool utility, you can upload your pics to the internet but with picasa, and they give you 250MB of space to upload! (You are currently using 15 MB (6%) of your 250 MB.) The only downside I can see of it is the fact that you have to use Picasa2 BETA to upload them. But it makes it easier because you have complete control, and Picasa Scans your computer for all Pictures, I found pics I never knew I had! They also give you a sub-domain so all your friends can see your pics, mine is http://picasaweb.google.com/gavilan1010 just so you get a peek, and considering its google thats a pretty sweet SHORT URL. People can comment on your pictures and you can add captions (as in a little cloud with text) Online.

Here are some snapshots

Although I think they did an amazing job, I think there is still some room for improvement, like multiple users in one account, like analystics, this way friends can post their pictures and share them online, plus, they can fill up one account instead of just having 1 person with an empty account. And if they would let people edit their templates, now what I mean by this is, to let them add Meta tags and meta descriptions, this way they can keep track of their site with analystics, submit their page to SiteMaps.

So if you have lots of pics upload them and let others see in a organized, clean and cool fashion

Writely is Now Open for Registration!

2006-08-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

Go Writely! Writely is now open for registration to anyone! If you don’t already have an Writely account, come and get one! All you need to have is an email address, and a password, it’s just so simple! I assume that you already know what Writely is, if you don’t, take the official tour, or look it up on Wikipedia. The Writely team kept their promise, they open the public to register by the summer. If you are using Writely to publish your blog, you should be careful of the little security hole that Writely shows your password in their “Blog Site Settings”. Just a note.
read more | sign up

Blogger Beta: Edit, and Manage, On The Fly

2006-08-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

Here we have a winner.

I can't count how many times I've been distracted by blog updating, where I have gotten into the habit of keeping an open window (Firefox tab) open for each blog that I'm working on. One window to make the changes (edit content or make setting changes), and another window to view the changes. And if you have multiple blogs, and / or multiple blog posts that you're updating (maybe making a forward / backwards pair of links), you can really rack up a collection of windows.

Of course, you have the Pencil at the end of each post (if enabled) for edit on the fly. This would put you into post editor mode. But after you publish your change, and want to view the result, you would select View Blog, and it would open another window (tab). Arrrgh.

But with Blogger Beta, to add or change a post, or make a settings change, select Customize from the Blogger navbar. Want another blog in your library? Select Dashboard from the Customize view, and get a menu of blogs. When you're in Customize or Dashboard view, and you want to see the blog, select View Blog.

That's all you need to do to switch back and forth.

I know I'll find things I don't like. But unless it's something really broken, I can't imagine not wanting to upgrade all of my blogs immediately.

And, by putting something useful in the Navbar, there is a real reason for having the bloody thing there in the first place. How many folks are going to be asking

How do I hide the Navbar?

now? Not me, anyway.

Colour me impressed.

(Edit 8/20): Have you ever just added a post, looked at it in real form, and immediately known that it needed editing? Have you ever not? With Beta, when you finish typing a post (edit or new), you hit the Publish button in the Post Editor. This takes you to a screen with several choices

View Blog
Edit post
Create a new post

Select View Blog, and there are your changes. Decide to change something, hit the Back button in your browser, you're back at the previous screen. Select Edit Post. Now you're back in the post editor, in the same post again. No refreshing the post list (for a new post), no searching the list (period). Just back where you need to be.

Just one more detail. Probably not the last though.

Ten Things Google Found To Be True

2006-08-15T20:08:00.000-07:00

These ten things Google suggests are mostly their releasable insights to their success, what they suggest is very very practical and usefull

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There's always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn't good enough.

If you want to read more on how to apply these concepts to your site, or blog please read the details here Ten Things Google Has Found To Be True

New Version Of Google Talk [1.0.0.95]

2006-08-15T19:00:00.000-07:00

Google hasent yet to relese the new version in IT'S website but, as always, the system leaks and other places get the download. They have added a "Voice Mail" feature that you can leave a voicemail to a contact that is offline or busy and they can hear it later, even if they have the old version. Also they have added the most requested feature "File Transfer" which you can send ANY type of file

"Google Talk now has file transfer! Your friend will also need to have 1.0.0.95, but currently it does not look like you need any ports to be opened, making it a very handy and extremly useful feature to have

A small percentage of users (such as those behind restrictive proxies) will not experience the highest level of file transfer speed possible. "

So the file transfer thing might take a while for all your friends to get, but hey, its a start. Other than that, they did not add much more, although they did get rid of all the bug problems.

To download the new version you can go here http://www.customizetalk.com/ at the very lower left corner click "Testing version:1.0.0.95" and click run.

Here is the link post to the Ofiicial Google Talk Blog Entry and here you can see what they have added new on Google Talk

Google Video Updating Equals HUGE Pay Out

2006-08-15T18:56:00.000-07:00

Here is what happened after the revision of Google’s homepage: The Video link replaced the Froogle and Groups. The chart below shows that Google Video’s traffic from the homepage surged from 50% to 70% in a single day.

That is A W E S O M E

MS06-042

2006-08-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

Rumour has it that Microsoft will be re-releasing MS06-042.

Stay tuned.

Chuck said here's a blockquote.

Yay

2006-08-15T17:16:00.000-07:00

So where's the beef?

PChuck's Network
PChuck's Kitchen
The Real Blogger Status