As usual, I'll be delighted if my visitors who use Mac take the time to test the small tool and share their opinion.
{ Screenshots by Floris van Eck. }
Other Google software for Mac:
Picasa Web Uploader, Video Player, Google Earth, Sketchup
Mac Notifier for Gmail and Google Calendar
Mac users have a new way to be updated about the events from Google Calendar. The new Google Notifier, released as an universal binary, alerts you about the upcoming events and includes all the features from Gmail notifier. So now you can check both your mail and agenda with the same tool. Outlook is one step closer.
As usual, I'll be delighted if my visitors who use Mac take the time to test the small tool and share their opinion.
{ Screenshots by Floris van Eck. }
Other Google software for Mac:
Picasa Web Uploader, Video Player, Google Earth, Sketchup
As usual, I'll be delighted if my visitors who use Mac take the time to test the small tool and share their opinion.
{ Screenshots by Floris van Eck. }
Other Google software for Mac:
Picasa Web Uploader, Video Player, Google Earth, Sketchup
The Search Battle For IE7
After my post Google is your default search, that reported a new feature in Google Toolbar 4: a monitoring tool that blocks any attempt to replace Google with other search engine in Internet Explorer, but remains loaded even if it is disabled - Google has updated the toolbar. They removed the bug, so the monitoring tool can be disabled and they also changed the wording in the settings:
4.0.1019.2378:
4.0.1019.5266:
While Google insists that this feature was added to prevent malware to change the default search engine in the settings, I think Google wanted to counterattack the software from Yahoo or Microsoft that includes the option to change the search engine enabled by default (Google's software also does that). If you download Yahoo Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, and keep the default settings, you'll change the search engine to Yahoo or MSN. But what's so important about the search engine in IE? you'll ask. The major battle of the default search engine is for IE7, a browser that has a search box, unlike the previous versions.
"The main issue is that many users do not have security software that prevents their search settings from being changed without their consent. As more advanced browsers and browser features become available, search settings in IE will become increasingly important. The notifier enhances a user’s control over their internet browsing experience. If users want to keep Google as their search setting, we want it to be easy for them to do so," says Benjamin Lewis, Product Manager for Google Toolbar.
4.0.1019.2378:
4.0.1019.5266:
While Google insists that this feature was added to prevent malware to change the default search engine in the settings, I think Google wanted to counterattack the software from Yahoo or Microsoft that includes the option to change the search engine enabled by default (Google's software also does that). If you download Yahoo Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, and keep the default settings, you'll change the search engine to Yahoo or MSN. But what's so important about the search engine in IE? you'll ask. The major battle of the default search engine is for IE7, a browser that has a search box, unlike the previous versions.
"The main issue is that many users do not have security software that prevents their search settings from being changed without their consent. As more advanced browsers and browser features become available, search settings in IE will become increasingly important. The notifier enhances a user’s control over their internet browsing experience. If users want to keep Google as their search setting, we want it to be easy for them to do so," says Benjamin Lewis, Product Manager for Google Toolbar.
What's Next For Google Video?
To further increase its user base and to keep its users more on the site, Google Video will concentrate on personalization.
To feel at home, users need a profile page that contains details about themselves, their favorite videos, their comments, their personal videos and their topics of interest. Google Video will also create a personalized homepage that contains videos that match people's interests. The videos already watched, the ratings and the information gathered from web search will be helpful for creating this kind of service.
Google Video will need to improve its search, by using the labels and the comments to complement video descriptions. They also need to include an advanced search that will allow you to sort the results by rating, number of views, number of comments, number of blog embeddings and to search videos by language, quality of image or safe-for-work status. Speech-to-text conversion will bring more information about the videos and will create a search experience comparable to the current web search, but the technology needs to be improved in order to be used in the real world.
Contextual video ads will allow Google Video to deliver premium content for free, and that will include TV shows, music videos, documentaries and more. As long as the ads are not intrusive and deliver relevant information, they'll be successful.
More quality videos, easier to find videos and a more personal experience. I think this is the key for a better Google Video.
Also see:
A brief history of Google Video
Why is YouTube more popular than Google Video?
Google Video tips
To feel at home, users need a profile page that contains details about themselves, their favorite videos, their comments, their personal videos and their topics of interest. Google Video will also create a personalized homepage that contains videos that match people's interests. The videos already watched, the ratings and the information gathered from web search will be helpful for creating this kind of service.
Google Video will need to improve its search, by using the labels and the comments to complement video descriptions. They also need to include an advanced search that will allow you to sort the results by rating, number of views, number of comments, number of blog embeddings and to search videos by language, quality of image or safe-for-work status. Speech-to-text conversion will bring more information about the videos and will create a search experience comparable to the current web search, but the technology needs to be improved in order to be used in the real world.
Contextual video ads will allow Google Video to deliver premium content for free, and that will include TV shows, music videos, documentaries and more. As long as the ads are not intrusive and deliver relevant information, they'll be successful.
More quality videos, easier to find videos and a more personal experience. I think this is the key for a better Google Video.
Also see:
A brief history of Google Video
Why is YouTube more popular than Google Video?
Google Video tips
Google Persistent Memory
Google launched many features that deal with saving personal stuff, but the big picture in which all of them will be integrated is yet to be revealed.Search across computers (Google Desktop)
Index and search the documents and viewed web pages from across all your computers.
Save Google Gadget content and settings (Google Desktop)
Access gadget content and settings like To Do lists, Scratch Pad notes, favorite stocks, and more from any computer.
Google Browser Sync
Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers.
Search History
Search History lets you view and manage your history of past searches and the search results you've clicked on.
Gmail
Don't throw anything away. Over 2755.742333 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.
Do you see a pattern here? Google wants to create a persistent memory for all your virtual belongings: your queries, your bookmarks, your history, and ultimately your files. When you leave a footprint on a computer, it should propagate to Google and become a persistent footprint, something you can retrieve from any other computer connected to the Internet. The computer is just a cache, a temporary place until the information becomes universally available. Wherever you go, you have your online history with you. All the pages you've visited, all the searches you've made, all the chat logs, all the documents.
Google wants to blur the distinction between your personal computer and the web. The first visible sign was when they integrated desktop search interface into Google.com. The second step is creating online tools that partially replace similar desktop applications (see Gmail, Calendar, Writely, Spreadsheets). The third step will be synchronizing the files between online and offline applications and solving the right access problem (what's public, private or restricted).
You can have more than one computer, and all the files will be synchronized. You can be at a public computer and still view and edit your files.
While GDrive is not yet here, its first signs are clearly visible. GDrive will have two components: a desktop client which will be Google Desktop and an online interface that will integrate most of Google's online replacement tools.
"With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)" was the prophecy and the first signs are already here. As in Dali's painting, the vague memories erased by time will be recreated and kept alive.
Related:
Mozy - Online backup
Box.net - Free online storage
Add Events To Google Calendar Faster
If you use Google Calendar and the latest Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer or Firefox, you can add a custom button that allows you to view the next 10 events from your agenda. There's also an easier way to add events to your calendar: type the text for the event in the search box and select Google Calendar from the list.
Type, for example, "lunch on 25 august 6pm at Newicks" and Google Calendar will parse you natural language text and transform it into an event.
For Firefox, there is an interesting extension that monitors your Google queries and offers an option to add an event if the queries follow a typical pattern.
Related:
Calendar Gadget for Google Homepage
Upload Pictures From Picasa To Flickr
1. Go here, sign in to Flickr and copy the email address provided.
2. Open Picasa, select the pictures and click on the "Email" button from the bottom of the window.
3. In the subject type the title of the picture followed by the tags.
In the body, type the description of the photo.
Subject example:
Sunny Valley tags:trip july "lucy cradle"
As Picasa is integrated with Gmail, the best thing is to use the Gmail account. Next time you want to send photos, just type Flickr in the "To" field and the autocomplete function will help you find the email address where to send the pictures. Remember to keep it private.
This method has some limitations: if you send more than one photo, all the photos will have the same title, description and tags, so you'll have to edit them from the Web interface. Flickr says there's no limit for the number of photos sent by email, but don't send too many, especially if they are high-resolution photos.
{ Based on a post from Digital Media Minute. }
Related:
Picasa 2.5 review
Online image editor for Flickr
Are Search Engines Biased Towards Popular Sites?
If you think a little about search engines, you'll conclude they make popular sites even more popular. People are likely to find popular sites in the search results, they link to them and increase their popularity. This ultimately leads to a Googlearchy, a hierarchy artificially maintained by search engines. Arstechnica found a study called "Topical interests and the mitigation of search engine bias" that shows these conclusions are not valid.
"Traffic increased far less than would be expected if search engines were enhancing popularity. It actually increased less than would be predicted if traffic were directly proportional to inbound links. In the end, it appears that each inbound link only increases traffic by a factor of 0.8. The results suggest that the reliance of web users on search engines is actually suppressing the impact of popularity."
One explanation for this is that people already know popular sites and they want to discover other interesting sites. Another one would be that popularity is limited by the audience, so it can't grow infinitely.
"Our result has relevant conceptual and practical consequences; it suggests that, contrary to intuition and prior hypotheses, the use of search engines contributes to a more level playing field in which new sites have a greater chance of being discovered and thus of acquiring links and popularity, as long as they are about specific topics that match the interests of users as expressed through their search queries."
Search engines aren't the only way people find information, as is the case with viral content sent by email or instant messages. So until search engines find a measure for interesting content, next time you use search engines think there are a lot of great things on the Internet you've never stumbled upon. And visiting the same sites from your favorite closed circle won't help.
"Traffic increased far less than would be expected if search engines were enhancing popularity. It actually increased less than would be predicted if traffic were directly proportional to inbound links. In the end, it appears that each inbound link only increases traffic by a factor of 0.8. The results suggest that the reliance of web users on search engines is actually suppressing the impact of popularity."
One explanation for this is that people already know popular sites and they want to discover other interesting sites. Another one would be that popularity is limited by the audience, so it can't grow infinitely.
"Our result has relevant conceptual and practical consequences; it suggests that, contrary to intuition and prior hypotheses, the use of search engines contributes to a more level playing field in which new sites have a greater chance of being discovered and thus of acquiring links and popularity, as long as they are about specific topics that match the interests of users as expressed through their search queries."
Search engines aren't the only way people find information, as is the case with viral content sent by email or instant messages. So until search engines find a measure for interesting content, next time you use search engines think there are a lot of great things on the Internet you've never stumbled upon. And visiting the same sites from your favorite closed circle won't help.
Free Access to Writely
Writely Blog is proud to announce that Writely access is now free for everyone. Just sign up for an account.Writely is a word processing tool acquired by Google this year. Since it was acquired, users were required to have an invitation to try the product. You can read my negative review, but there are many people who like Writely.
Also:
Google Analytics and Google Spreadsheets are available without invitation
A Brief History of Google Video
January 2005
Google Video launches, but it only searches the captions from TV shows, without providing videos. "Just type in your search term (for instance, iPod or Napa Valley) or do a more advanced search (for instance, title:nightline) and Google Video will search the closed captioning text of all the programs in our archive for relevant results. Click on a program title on your results page and you can look through short snippets of the text along with still images from the show."
April 2005
Google starts to accept user-submitted videos. Users can set a price for their videos.
"Today's video upload program is a new project that enables anyone, whether they produce hundreds of videos a year or just a few, to upload their digital video files to Google Video. The program is ideal for anyone who has valuable content and wants to promote it to a wider audience. While we're not making this content searchable right away, we've started accepting videos and will keep you posted as we make progress in developing the product. The content may be reviewed by Google prior to being made available online. Please see our FAQ for more about our requirements. Eventually, we plan to enable users to search, preview, play and purchase videos on Google Video and allow content owners to choose to charge for the video or get wider distribution by giving it away for free," explained the press release.
June 2005
Google lets people view the user-submitted videos and no longer captions TV shows. To play the files, you need a plug-in based on VideoLAN. It's hard to use and some videos don't play.
September 2005
Google drops their downloadable browser plug-in and starts to use Flash for playing videos. It's faster to use and most people already have the Flash plug-in.
January 2006
Google launches Google Video Store and starts to offer premium content from content providers like CBS, SONY BMG and ITN. The payment is made through a system that will be later known as Google Checkout. The videos bought can be played using Google Video Player and by authenticating to Google.
April 2006
Google introduces Google Video Top 100, a list of the most popular videos.
May 2006
You can now upload videos through a web form. Until now, videos could only be submitted using a desktop client. Google also starts to test contextual video ads, which will turn out to be Google Video's monetization model. Google Video now includes movie trailers.
June 2006
Google starts a limited test with ad-supported premium content, develops a video player for Mac and adds some community features: comments, ratings and labels. Google Videos are now included in the Search History.
July 2006
Google Video launches 8 international versions and integrates an easier system of adding videos to blogs and MySpace.
August 2006
Google Video is linked on Google's homepage.
October 2006
Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion. "The acquisition combines one of the largest and fastest growing online video entertainment communities with Google's expertise in organizing information and creating new models for advertising on the Internet. (...) When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and complementing Google's own fast-growing video business."
January 2007
Google Video starts to index YouTube videos and Google announces plans to transform it into a video search engine. Google Video starts to show personalized recommendations on the homepage.
April 2007
The personalized search results should be more relevant, even if your query is ambiguous.
June 2007
Other video hosting sites are added to the index and Google Video becomes a real search engine. "Google Video indexes videos from tens of video sites, including Metacafe, iFilm, Grouper, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Break.com, Daily Motion, Vimeo, Veoh, AOL Video, Jumpcut, Revver, Guba, BBC, but YouTube dominates the search results."
August 2007
Google closes the video store and those who paid for copyright-protected videos aren't able to view them from August 15.
November 2007
Google Video starts to index videos from the entire Web, not just from a small number of video sites.
December 2007
The service redesignes its homepage to showcase popular videos, recommendations and recently uploaded videos.
April 2008
Video pages are now more flexible and search results pages use a great "TV view" mode that lets you play videos without leaving the page.
January 2009
Google announces that it will drop video uploads to focus on improving the search technology. "We've always maintained that Google Video's strength is in the search technology that makes it possible for people to search videos from across the web, regardless of where they may be hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide."
Also see:
Why is YouTube more popular than Google Video?
Google Video tips
Key press releases
Google Video launches, but it only searches the captions from TV shows, without providing videos. "Just type in your search term (for instance, iPod or Napa Valley) or do a more advanced search (for instance, title:nightline) and Google Video will search the closed captioning text of all the programs in our archive for relevant results. Click on a program title on your results page and you can look through short snippets of the text along with still images from the show."
April 2005
Google starts to accept user-submitted videos. Users can set a price for their videos.
"Today's video upload program is a new project that enables anyone, whether they produce hundreds of videos a year or just a few, to upload their digital video files to Google Video. The program is ideal for anyone who has valuable content and wants to promote it to a wider audience. While we're not making this content searchable right away, we've started accepting videos and will keep you posted as we make progress in developing the product. The content may be reviewed by Google prior to being made available online. Please see our FAQ for more about our requirements. Eventually, we plan to enable users to search, preview, play and purchase videos on Google Video and allow content owners to choose to charge for the video or get wider distribution by giving it away for free," explained the press release.
June 2005
Google lets people view the user-submitted videos and no longer captions TV shows. To play the files, you need a plug-in based on VideoLAN. It's hard to use and some videos don't play.
September 2005
Google drops their downloadable browser plug-in and starts to use Flash for playing videos. It's faster to use and most people already have the Flash plug-in.
January 2006
Google launches Google Video Store and starts to offer premium content from content providers like CBS, SONY BMG and ITN. The payment is made through a system that will be later known as Google Checkout. The videos bought can be played using Google Video Player and by authenticating to Google.
April 2006
Google introduces Google Video Top 100, a list of the most popular videos.
May 2006
You can now upload videos through a web form. Until now, videos could only be submitted using a desktop client. Google also starts to test contextual video ads, which will turn out to be Google Video's monetization model. Google Video now includes movie trailers.
June 2006
Google starts a limited test with ad-supported premium content, develops a video player for Mac and adds some community features: comments, ratings and labels. Google Videos are now included in the Search History.
July 2006
Google Video launches 8 international versions and integrates an easier system of adding videos to blogs and MySpace.
August 2006
Google Video is linked on Google's homepage.
October 2006
Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion. "The acquisition combines one of the largest and fastest growing online video entertainment communities with Google's expertise in organizing information and creating new models for advertising on the Internet. (...) When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and complementing Google's own fast-growing video business."
January 2007
Google Video starts to index YouTube videos and Google announces plans to transform it into a video search engine. Google Video starts to show personalized recommendations on the homepage.
April 2007
The personalized search results should be more relevant, even if your query is ambiguous.
June 2007
Other video hosting sites are added to the index and Google Video becomes a real search engine. "Google Video indexes videos from tens of video sites, including Metacafe, iFilm, Grouper, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Break.com, Daily Motion, Vimeo, Veoh, AOL Video, Jumpcut, Revver, Guba, BBC, but YouTube dominates the search results."
August 2007
Google closes the video store and those who paid for copyright-protected videos aren't able to view them from August 15.
November 2007
Google Video starts to index videos from the entire Web, not just from a small number of video sites.
December 2007
The service redesignes its homepage to showcase popular videos, recommendations and recently uploaded videos.
April 2008
Video pages are now more flexible and search results pages use a great "TV view" mode that lets you play videos without leaving the page.
January 2009
Google announces that it will drop video uploads to focus on improving the search technology. "We've always maintained that Google Video's strength is in the search technology that makes it possible for people to search videos from across the web, regardless of where they may be hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide."
Also see:
Why is YouTube more popular than Google Video?
Google Video tips
Key press releases
Google Music Trends
I mentioned last month about an new feature that shows the song you're listening to as a status in Google Talk.
Now that Google Talk 1.0.0.96 is available to public, Google thought it's a good idea to use the songs listened by GTalk users for a new service: Google Music Trends. Every week, you'll see the most popular 20 songs by genre and by country. Currently, only US is an option in the country list.
The service is integrated with Google's music search, so if you click on the artist name you'll find the latest albums and other related information.
The new service is opt-in, so you need to enable it in Google Talk. Go to Settings / Audio and check "Share music listening history with Google Music Trends".
Another interesting side effect is that all the songs played will be included in the Search History, so you can see what you listened last week or how many times you listened to U2. Of course, to record that information, you need to use Google Talk and show the current music track in the status.
A similar ranking can be seen on last.fm, the site that uses plug-ins for music players to send information about the listened songs. The site also shows artist charts, top tracks for an artist and much more. But remember that popularity isn't a measure of value.
Related:
Search history trends
Google Trends
Google Video Ranking
Create an Email Blacklist in Gmail
If you constantly receive messages you'd like to ignore from the same persons or Gmail's spam filters aren't too good for you, it's time to create a blacklist. How to do that in Gmail?
1. Go to Contacts, click on Groups and create a new group (let's say "Blacklist").
2. Click on "All contacts", check the email addresses you don't like and add them to the group (at the bottom of the window).
Each time you send a message to someone not in your Contacts list, Gmail will automatically add the person for you. So if you didn't reply to a person, you'll have to add the mail address in the last step.
3. Go to Groups / Blacklist and click "Compose to group". Copy the text from the "to" field.
4. Paste it here and click "convert". Then click on the resulting text and copy it. (This is a simple JavaScript. No address will be sent to a server.)
5. Create a new filter. Paste the text obtained above in the "from" field, check "Also apply to..." and "Delete it".
If you want to add more addresses, edit the filter by appending " OR newaddress1 OR newaddress2 ... OR newaddressN" in the From field.
Note that if you only want one or two address, you can create just the filter described above, by adding the address in the From field. If you want to block many addresses, it's time consuming to do this manually by copying each email address from the contact list.
Related:
When will you run out of Gmail storage space?
Hide spam counter in Gmail
More interesting Gmail filters
Google WiFi Available In Mountain View
Google WiFi network is now available for all the 72,000 residents of Mountain View, where Google's headquarters are located. The service is free and doesn't include advertising, but it's limited to a download rate of 1 Mbps.
"Wireless customers with Google e-mail, instant messaging or home page accounts can sign in using with their normal passwords. Those wishing to remain anonymous can create a temporary user name and sign in to a default Google home page featuring local information on Mountain View and the surrounding region," informs Reuters.
Google also offers a free software that allows secure access by creating a virtual private network (VPN). By using the software, the Internet traffic will be encrypted.
Google's purpose of this initiative is to be an inspiration for broadband entrepreneurs that want to build high-speed municipal WiFi networks in other cities. Google says it doesn't plan to expand its initiative and that the wireless network for San Francisco is currently on hold.
More Google Services Available
More Google services will be available for everyone. You don't need invitation from Google to test them, and you don't need to try a testing version, like in Google Talk's case (see below).
Google Analytics, which is basically the former Urchin hosted on Google servers and delivered for free, is now available without invitation. You can see more information about the visitors of your site and analyze your performance. While Google Analytics had some problems that slowed your page loading and was even down for short periods, the service scalability has been improved. Google itself uses Analytics for most of its pages.
Google Spreadsheets, the service that allows you to create spreadsheets online and edit them collaborating with other people, is now a public beta. Although the spreadsheets have limitations and you can't add charts or macros yet, it's an interesting application, not intended to replace Excel.
The latest version of Google Talk, that includes support for file transfer and voicemail, will be released today, at Google Talk's 1 year anniversary. Although the client is not yet mature and it lacks basic VoIP features and a rich-text editor, the clean interface is a big advantage in the future developments. When Gmail will be out of beta (which is not that far away), the userbase will increase and the biggest problem of any messenger client (I don't use it because my friends / co-workers don't use it) will be solved.
Google Analytics, which is basically the former Urchin hosted on Google servers and delivered for free, is now available without invitation. You can see more information about the visitors of your site and analyze your performance. While Google Analytics had some problems that slowed your page loading and was even down for short periods, the service scalability has been improved. Google itself uses Analytics for most of its pages.
Google Spreadsheets, the service that allows you to create spreadsheets online and edit them collaborating with other people, is now a public beta. Although the spreadsheets have limitations and you can't add charts or macros yet, it's an interesting application, not intended to replace Excel.
The latest version of Google Talk, that includes support for file transfer and voicemail, will be released today, at Google Talk's 1 year anniversary. Although the client is not yet mature and it lacks basic VoIP features and a rich-text editor, the clean interface is a big advantage in the future developments. When Gmail will be out of beta (which is not that far away), the userbase will increase and the biggest problem of any messenger client (I don't use it because my friends / co-workers don't use it) will be solved.
Firefox 3 Improves Memory Usage
If you use Firefox, you know that your browser has problems with memory leaks and will eat even 200 MB of RAM at times. I hoped that Firefox 2.0 (Bon Echo) will fix this issue, but unfortunately it's not the case, as this version focuses more on cosmetic issues. So I've decided to try the alpha version of Firefox 3 (Minefield), that is developed in parallel with Firefox 2.0. And the results are incredible: the browser has never consumed more than 70 MB of RAM even with 10 tabs opened.
This version of Firefox, due to be released next year, has more rendering problems than Firefox 2.0 and doesn't have too many new features (the most notable are Places - a unified interface for bookmarks, history, feeds, and a new data storage layer for bookmarks and history that uses SQL), but the memory management is clearly superior.
If you want to read more about the new features of Firefox 2.0 and how to make your extensions compatible, read this small review. Most of the things are still available for Firefox 3.0.
You can install the latest build of Firefox 3.0 from this page. For example, the Windows version can be downloaded from here [5.8 MB].
Remember it's an alpha version, so if you have problems, uninstall it and continue to use your current version of Firefox.
Related:
Decrease RAM usage in Firefox (any version)
10 useful Firefox tips
Synchronize Firefox settings across your computers
Object Recognition Is The Future Of Google
Well, the post about Gmail avatars used for face recognition has a nice follow up from Google. They've acquired Neven Vision, a company specialized in image recognition."Neven Vision is changing the way we interact with the world by providing innovative applications for mobile devices based on image recognition technology. Neven Vision has developed a suite of mobile recognition technologies that enable images to become the interface to digital content—photos of advertisements become hyperlinks to branded content portals, while your camera phone can snap a picture of your face to secure verification of identity and control access to your private data. By equipping customers with an intuitive visual interface that anyone can use, this technology is unlocking vastly untapped market opportunities in Mobile Marketing and Commerce, Personal Security, and Biometric Identity Verification."
This technology will be used by Google to improve Picasa, by detecting and recognizing obects and persons in the picture. But the biggest challenge would be to integrate this into their image search engine and to create a mobile version for local search that will allow you to upload pictures and get information about the place / objects in the picture.
"Neven Vision comes to Google with deep technology and expertise around automatically extracting information from a photo. It could be as simple as detecting whether or not a photo contains a person, or, one day, as complex as recognizing people, places, and objects. This technology just may make it a lot easier for you to organize and find the photos you care about," says Picasa's product manager.
Neven Vision has one of the best face recognition software, but also a client for mobile phones that searches for relevant content related to an image. They also have the only face recognition software that runs on the microprocessors used in cell phones. Now you see why Google acquired Neven Vision, and not Riya?
Related:
Picasa 2.5 has innovative features
Real-time travel guide
Use camera phones for OCR (free service)
Content Separation
Google uses an interesting system in their Search Appliance for businesses: googleoff/googleon tags disable the indexing of a part of a web page. If you enter this code in a HTML file:
the search engine won't index the text "Appliance". This might be useful for the navigation, irrelevant or sensitive content. There are other ways to use these tags, and the idea is similar to the section targeting from AdSense.
Seeing an article from Wikipedia (now edited) that stated that Google uses these comment tags for the web search engine, Search Engine Roundtable asks if the information is accurate. Most likely Google doesn't use the flags, but they would be useful to improve the quality of the search results. Google should analyze if the flags are used for dubious reasons (prevent indexing most of the page content, hide spam).
I've seen many search results that are in the top positions because of the keywords from the navigation links.
Another idea would be to stop taking into account the keywords from the navigation links. Also Google shouldn't index the most part of a blog's homepage, archive pages and essentially any homepage that changes very frequently, as most of the times the content is available in separate pages (permalinks), so it's redundant. You also have to use the cache to see the page, as it shows different content now.
Google could also separate the content of a page in different clusters so if a page talks about more than one subject, each part will be treated like a different page. This way, the keywords won't be mixed and the different topics will be independent.
The first result for [windows live mail] is ideas.live.com page, and not the product's page, and that's because "windows live" appears a lot on that page.
A combination of flags and automatic content separating will be useful to improve Google Search.
Google Search
<!--googleoff: index-->
Appliance
<!--googleon: index-->
is great.
the search engine won't index the text "Appliance". This might be useful for the navigation, irrelevant or sensitive content. There are other ways to use these tags, and the idea is similar to the section targeting from AdSense.
Seeing an article from Wikipedia (now edited) that stated that Google uses these comment tags for the web search engine, Search Engine Roundtable asks if the information is accurate. Most likely Google doesn't use the flags, but they would be useful to improve the quality of the search results. Google should analyze if the flags are used for dubious reasons (prevent indexing most of the page content, hide spam).
I've seen many search results that are in the top positions because of the keywords from the navigation links.
Another idea would be to stop taking into account the keywords from the navigation links. Also Google shouldn't index the most part of a blog's homepage, archive pages and essentially any homepage that changes very frequently, as most of the times the content is available in separate pages (permalinks), so it's redundant. You also have to use the cache to see the page, as it shows different content now.
Google could also separate the content of a page in different clusters so if a page talks about more than one subject, each part will be treated like a different page. This way, the keywords won't be mixed and the different topics will be independent.
The first result for [windows live mail] is ideas.live.com page, and not the product's page, and that's because "windows live" appears a lot on that page.
A combination of flags and automatic content separating will be useful to improve Google Search.
Coupons For Local Businesses
New York Times reports that Google will start allowing local businesses to add coupons in Google Maps for free. They hope to attract many small businesses interested in promoting their products to a targeted audience and a lot of freebie hunters, that will visit Google Maps more.It's easy to create coupons, users will be able to see them in a couple of hours and print them. If other companies charge businesses for the coupons, Google has decided to make them free. "The big picture here is that to make local search really work you need massive participation by really relevant local businesses. It's hard enough getting small businesses online. It doesn't make sense to put up a lot of roadblocks," says Google's Shailesh Rao, director for local search.
The coupons will be visible starting from today in Google Maps' business listings. Here's one example.
More on Google Local:
New front-end for Google Local
The future of Google Local
Google Checkout
The New Blogger
Blogger finally gets an update and stops being neglected. Here are the new features of Blogger Beta, a new blogging platform:
Dynamic pages
"The biggest change of all is perhaps the least immediately visible, but it affects the entire underlying structure of Blog*Spot. What used to happen was that Blogger would create static HTML files on your Blog*Spot account every time you published, and those files would remain there unchanged until your next update. In the new version, adding a new post simply updates your information in our database. Then, when someone wants to see any of the pages on your blog, those pages are created for them dynamically, on the fly.
This makes the process of updating your blog much simpler and faster. You don't have to remember to republish anymore, or decide whether to do a republish index only or republish all. The instant you save a new post, template design, or settings change, your blog is updated. No more waiting for the publishing indicator to creep its way up to 100%."
Access control
You can make your blog private so you'll be the only one to read or you can let only certain people view it. Just enter their email addresses in the settings. This is useful if you create a blog for your friends or family.
Labels
Organize the posts with labels (categories), so it's easier to read related posts.
Layouts
You don't have to deal with HTML and CSS when you edit your template. Using the new layouts feature, you can drag-and-drop to move parts of your page around, and choose new fonts and colors with just a few mouse clicks. When you change colors and fonts, you'll see a preview of the blog in real-time, so it's easier to decide what's the best choice.
More feeds
"In addition to the usual feed of your blog posts, you can have a feed for all the comments on your blog, and even individual feeds for all the comments on each separate post. Your visitors can use these feeds to find out if someone responds to their comments, or to follow discussions on your blog. The default format of the feeds will be upgraded from Atom 0.3 to Atom 1.0. Also, for you die-hard RSS fans out there, you'll be able to optionally get all feeds in RSS 2.0 format instead of Atom."
Cleaner dashboard
The dashboard looks better and it has more links to useful places like the template or your blog. Blogger also changed the "Edit Posts" page and has removed some of the icons.
Migration to Google Accounts
Blogger moves to Google Accounts, so your account will be more secure and you don't have to remember extra credentials. You'll be able to migrate your Blogger account soon, or you can create a new blog from your Google Account.
The new Blogger version will be available as invitation-only for the moment. "The Blogger in beta program is going to start out small, so only a low percentage of people who log in to Blogger will see the option to switch over. If you're one of them, you'll see a blue box in the sidebar of your dashboard highlighting the new Blogger in beta."
If you want to test the new Blogger by creating a new blog you can do that at beta.blogger.com. Here's a test blog created with the new platform and a tour that shows the new features.
I must say it's much faster to publish posts and upload pictures. Blogger also looks much better and it's more responsive. Although the advantages of the dynamic pages are obvious, it will be interesting to see if they will handle the traffic the same as the static pages. There's one area where I don't see improvements: the comment form is still on a separate page. All in all, the much expected Blogger update is one of the biggest Google news of the year.
Linux Kernel Developer Hired By Google
Andrew Morton, one of the key Linux kernel developers, was hired by Google. Andrew confesses that "it is beneficial to me (and to Linux) that I be in day-to-day contact with people who use Linux for real things. Hence Google is a good all-round fit."
"We are pleased to confirm that Andrew Morton has joined Google as a member of our Linux development team. Andrew joins Google from the OSDL and has an unparalleled background in Linux and open source development. Andrew will continue his fine work on the Linux kernel and with organizations like OSDL. We are thrilled to welcome him to Google," says Google Open Source Program Manager, Chris DiBona.
Google servers run customized versions of Linux, mostly Red Hat Linux and Ubuntu, and use a lot of open-source software, so Andrew's role will be important.
Google has a lot of famous employees, including Vint Cerf, the co-creator of the TCP/IP protocols and Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python.
"We are pleased to confirm that Andrew Morton has joined Google as a member of our Linux development team. Andrew joins Google from the OSDL and has an unparalleled background in Linux and open source development. Andrew will continue his fine work on the Linux kernel and with organizations like OSDL. We are thrilled to welcome him to Google," says Google Open Source Program Manager, Chris DiBona.
Google servers run customized versions of Linux, mostly Red Hat Linux and Ubuntu, and use a lot of open-source software, so Andrew's role will be important.
Google has a lot of famous employees, including Vint Cerf, the co-creator of the TCP/IP protocols and Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python.
The Anonymous Google Cookie
After the AOL incident, people are concerned again about their online privacy. While Google wasn't involved in the incident, one can't stop wondering what if Google leaked precious records from their database.
Until creating the Google Accounts, the search engine used to rely on an infamous cookie that expires in 2038 ("the end of the world as far as UNIX computers are concerned", as described here). The cookie contains an unique ID useful to identify users between sessions and to save user's preferences. If you delete the cookie, Google recreates it and assigns you a new ID. Despite that, the cookie connected with the (static) IP and other information from Google Toolbar or Google Desktop are a good way to uniquely identify users.
Here's a quote from Google's Privacy FAQ:
Like most Web sites, our servers automatically record the page requests made when users visit our sites. These "server logs" typically include your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.
Here is an example of a typical log entry where the search is for "cars", followed by a breakdown of its parts:
123.45.67.89 - 25/Mar/2003 10:15:32 - http://www.google.com/search?q=cars - Firefox 1.0.7; Windows NT 5.1 - 740674ce2123e969
* 123.45.67.89 is the Internet Protocol address assigned to the user by the user's ISP; depending on the user's service, a different address may be assigned to the user by their service provider each time they connect to the Internet;
* 25/Mar/2003 10:15:32 is the date and time of the query;
* http://www.google.com/search?q=cars is the requested URL, including the search query;
* Firefox 1.0.7; Windows NT 5.1 is the browser and operating system being used; and
* 740674ce2123a969 is the unique cookie ID assigned to this particular computer the first time it visited Google. (Cookies can be deleted by users. If the user has deleted the cookie from the computer since the last time s/he visited Google, then it will be the unique cookie ID assigned to the user the next time s/he visits Google from that particular computer).
While many people say it's a good idea to use proxies, TOR, or to not use Google anymore to protect your privacy, this site has a more interesting idea: let's change our ID to a value that has an added benefit of allowing us to see one of Google's design experiments (it's from March, but it hasn't been released).
If you drag this bookmarklet [ Anonymize me ] to your toolbar or if add it to your bookmarks, go to google.com, click on it, click OK and then save the preferences. You'll have the same ID as many other people.
Of course, being logged in your Google Account will make this cookie not very useful. A funny tip: after changing the cookie, go to Google Groups (without being logged in) and look at the recently visited groups. You'll have a surprise.
Gmail Pictures Used For Face Recognition?
Gmail allows you to add pictures for your contacts. If you upload a picture, Gmail will ask you to crop the picture, to separate the face of the person. So Gmail has a database of multiple images for a lot of persons.
This seems like a nice feature, but I think it's more than that. It's a very easy way to obtain a database of faces useful for face recognition. Algorithms for detecting and recognizing faces are good, but not good enough, and this is a great way for Google to improve their AI algorithms using the data obtained from its users.
Google was very close to acquire Riya, a face recognition service that has expanded into a visual search engine for people and objects. They didn't bought the company because they want to develop an in-house solution. This might be integrated into Picasa to automatically detect persons in your photos and organize them better (like MyHeritage does) and might be the foundation of a new kind of image search engine, that understands more from the pictures.
This seems like a nice feature, but I think it's more than that. It's a very easy way to obtain a database of faces useful for face recognition. Algorithms for detecting and recognizing faces are good, but not good enough, and this is a great way for Google to improve their AI algorithms using the data obtained from its users.
Google was very close to acquire Riya, a face recognition service that has expanded into a visual search engine for people and objects. They didn't bought the company because they want to develop an in-house solution. This might be integrated into Picasa to automatically detect persons in your photos and organize them better (like MyHeritage does) and might be the foundation of a new kind of image search engine, that understands more from the pictures.
Windows Live Writer - Blog Publishing Tool
Windows Live Writer is a new tool from Microsoft that allows you to publish to your blog using a desktop client. While the software is integrated with Windows Live Spaces, you can also use it with Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress.
What's nice about Windows Live Writer is that it reads your blog's template and it lets you preview your content while creating it. It's like seeing your blog post growing.
The rich-text editor is not impressing, as it contains the usual elements and doesn't produce clean code (you'll notice many unneeded tags). When you insert pictures, you've got more options: you can resize the picture, add a nice shadow, adjust brightness and even use some simple effects like sepia. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't allow you to publish images for the hosted blogs.
Windows Live Writer also lets you insert maps using Windows Live Local and the maps can be customized to show the aerial view or bird's eye detail.
When you select the preview mode, you'll see how your blog would look if you published the post, so it takes the idea of preview one step further.
Windows Live Writer is available to download here [4.74 MB, Windows] and it's still beta. The simple interface and the innovative additions make this tool a good replacement for the standard blogging interfaces and it's a good alternative to Performancing for Firefox, Qumana, but it's still far from a commercial application like ecto.
Google's Digital Library of Alexandria
Google's founders have intended to digitize library books since they were students at Stanford. The idea that you can find and read books by typing some keywords in a program may seem great for a library, but when it comes to digitizing all the books in the world, material obstacles interfere: many books are copyrighted and are sold in bookstores. Google has started to scan public domain books and out-of-print books in 2004 and wants to continue the process with the rest of the books. Google also has partnerships with some publishers and universities like Stanford.
"When Google announced the library scanning project, in December 2004, it had four library partners besides Stanford. Two of them (Oxford University and the New York Public Library) took a legally cautious approach to digitization, permitting Google to copy only public domain works. A third, the University of Michigan, took the opposite view, asserting forcefully that Google could scan every one of its 7 million books. Harvard hedged its bets, initially agreeing only to a limited test program. Last week, the University of California signed on as a sixth Google partner. Its scanning program will include both public domain and copyrighted material," reports Washington Post.
Last year, Author Guild and major publishing houses like McGraw-Hill and Penguin Group have sued Google, for scanning books without permission. Google says their digitizing process doesn't infringe copyright, as it's a transformative process covered by the fair use. Google also compares scanning and indexing books with crawling and indexing web pages. Google has to store a cache of the content, transform it into an index of keywords and make it searchable. Publishers that don't want to have the website / book in the index can request that. The difference is that web pages are mostly available for free, while books must be bought. Google Book Search shows only a small number of pages from a book, and doesn't allow copying book content. "Copyrighted books are indexed to create an electronic card catalog and only small portions of the books are shown unless the content owner gives permission to show more," says Google.
What publishers fail to understand is that a book search engine will increase their sales, as people will discover books they wouldn't have found otherwise. The vast collection of human knowledge would be available to anyone interested. The quality of the content is also better than the web's frugal information. The book search engine could also morph into a digital library, that allows you to read, download and print books for a price. Publishers are afraid that Google would undermine their power and would take advantage of their content for free, but so were the webmasters when Google started to crawl the web and slow down their servers.
You can read more about Google Book Search in Washington Post's Google Wants to Digitize Every Book. Publishers Say Read the Fine Print First.
The First Google Result Gets Even More Attention
Google's design experiments come alive one by one. After the new homepage that includes Google Video, Google goes live with another design change: more from the first result.
Google shows some of the navigation links (they call them sitelinks) when the top result is the homepage of an important site. This is not new, but until now you could see only the anchor texts on one line, like this:
Now Google shows each link on a line, and includes the URL next to the link for more clarity. The result is that the first result dominates the page. This is useful if your query is general, but you want to access a more relevant page: let's say you search for Opera in order to download the browser. The first result is Opera.com, but it includes a link to the download page underneath.
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