Google Bookmarks FAQ

A small guide for people that continue to ask how to use Google's low-profile bookmarking service.

What is Google Bookmarks?
Google Bookmarks is an online service that lets you save your favorite sites and attach labels and annotations. Unlike the bookmark feature from your browser, bookmarks are stored securely online, so they are accessible even if you're using other computers.

There are many sites that do that. What's so different about it?
The most important features that set Google Bookmark apart from other services is that all your bookmarks are private (nobody else can see them) and fully searchable. You are no longer restricted to the title of the page, the description and the URL - you can search the entire page. A similar service is the new version of Yahoo Bookmarks, currently in beta.

Can I import my bookmarks?
For Firefox and Internet Explorer, you can download Google Toolbar, and use the "Import bookmarks" option that appears on the drop-down menu next to the Bookmarks icon. For other browsers, you should import your bookmarks to Firefox and use Google Toolbar as explained before.

If you use other online bookmarking tools, you should find an option to export your bookmarks in their support center. For example, in del.icio.us go to Settings and select Export/backup to save your bookmarks in a HTML file that can be imported into your browser.

How can I export my bookmarks from Google?
Easy, just go to this page and you'll download a file called bookmarks.html, that can be imported in your browser. You can also export the bookmarks as a feed, but it won't be very useful unless you're a developer.

How can I add bookmarks?
If you've already installed Google Toolbar, you can use it to add or remove bookmarks. Just click on the blue star to add the current site as a bookmark. Click again on the star to choose one or more labels.

For Firefox, there is a very good extension called GMark that shows your bookmarks in the sidebar and another extension that mimics Google Toolbar and adds drag-and-drop.

But to add bookmarks there's a very simple bookmarklet that should work on almost any browser. Just drag this to the links toolbar: Google Bookmark. You'll also find it at the bottom of the Google Bookmarks homepage.

How can I search my bookmarks?
Googe Toolbar adds a new option for bookmarks in the list of search engines. If you type the first letters from the title of a bookmark, Google Toolbar gives you the option to load that site.

You can also use Gmarks that searches as you type or you can just go to the web interface at google.com/bookmarks. Search the same as you'd do at Google.com. To restrict your search to a label, add label:name to your query (note that labels are case sensitive).

Is there an option to see my bookmarks in iGoogle?
There's a gadget that lists all your bookmarks by label and lets you edit them. You can add it multiple times to see bookmarks from different categories.

Will these bookmarks affect Google's search results?
You'll see the labels selected for a bookmark next to its corresponding snippet in the search results. Bookmarks affect Google's search results only for you. Google improves the relevancy of the search results by tailoring to your interests, so the order of the search results could change in some cases. A bookmark in the search results:


Will I be able to access my bookmarks from any computer?
The bookmarks are stored on Google's servers, so you can just log in and have instant access to your bookmarks from your personalized homepage (if you added the gadget I mentioned before) or at google.com/bookmarks.

Is there a way to store the full content of my bookmarks on Google's servers?
No, but you can try Google Notebook, that lets you select the content of a page and save it as a note.

How can I bookmark my favorite posts from Google Reader?
Install Greasemonkey in Firefox, restart the browser and add this script. You'll see a new "Add bookmark" option below each post.

I want to delete all my bookmarks and start from the scratch.
There's an option to delete all the bookmarks in this page's left sidebar (search for "delete all"). To delete only the bookmarks that have a certain label, use Google Toolbar.

Keeping your Passwords Secure

Many people think it's hard to have a good password because it should be complicated and, as a result, hard to remember. When you create a new Google account, you can read some nice tips that prove you can create a strong yet memorable password.

* Include punctuation marks and/or numbers.
* Mix capital and lowercase letters.
* Include similar looking substitutions, such as the number zero for the letter 'O' or '$' for the letter 'S'.
* Create a unique acronym.
* Include phonetic replacements, such as 'Luv 2 Laf' for 'Love to Laugh'.

And some things to avoid (that could be summarized as: don't use passwords that are easy to guess).

* Don't use a password that is listed as an example of how to pick a good password.
* Don't use a password that contains personal information (name, birth date, etc.)
* Don't use words or acronyms that can be found in a dictionary.
* Don't use keyboard patterns (asdf) or sequential numbers (1234).
* Don't make your password all numbers, uppercase letters or lowercase letters.
* Don't use repeating characters (aa11).

And, of course, the obvious: "never tell your password to anyone (this includes significant others, roommates, parrots, etc.), never write your password down, never send your password by email."

So, the next time when you create a new passwords, think of a quote you like, an old saying (maybe not in English or your native language), use punctuation and replace some letters with similar digits or other characters. You can also use short forms for some of the words.

There are many places where you can test show strong a password is. One of them is available if you go to Google.com, sign out and then click on "sign in". Choose "create an account now" and type your password. Google will indicate you if your password is strong, fair or weak. Then you can use the password wherever you need it.

If you can't come up with a new password for each new site you sign up, at least try not to use the same password you have for your mail account (many people sign up using the email address: myemail@yahoo.com and choose the Yahoo password). If that site has security problems and your account is compromised, your Yahoo account will be compromised as well.

Also, be aware that most browsers offer to store your passwords, so they can auto-complete them. Many times they are not stored securely and anyone who has physical access to your computer can find the passwords (for example, go to Firefox > Tools > Options > Security > Show passwords > Show passwords again). That's why it's a better idea to use password managers like Password Safe, KeePass, RoboForm, that store your passwords securely and can manage any kind of password. In Firefox and Opera you could also use a master password, but there are commercially tools that can recover master passwords.

A small summary and some other tips:
* create strong passwords that mix digits, punctuation, capital and lowercase letters by thinking at a memorable quote and making some replacements or using acronyms
* don't share your passwords with anyone
* don't use the same password for all your accounts
* try not to use the built-in password managers from your browser. Use safer tools, if you really need a password manager.
* change your password from time to time
* try to stay away from sites that don't use secure authentication (look for https in the address bar)
* sign out when you finish a session

Do you have other ways to keep your passwords secure?

Google Toolbar's Voting Buttons

In December 2001, when there was no Digg or StumbleUpon, Google Toolbar launched a beta version:

A new version of the Google toolbar now in beta testing sports a new look -- happy and sad faces that let toolbar users rate web pages. (...)

Google says that excessive clicks are watched for. Google also assures that it has mechanisms in place to ensure good sites don't get penalized by competitors voting against them.

Here's how Google describes the feature: "Use these buttons to vote for or against a page or search result. Click the happy or unhappy face to tell Google that you like or dislike a particular page. You can also use these buttons to report especially good or bad results after you do a search with Google."

Matt Cutts explained at that time: "Right now it's just an experiment. Worst case, it's an easy way for people to report spam that we can handle automatically. We might see if we can improve our search with this data."

In 2003, when Google Toolbar 2 was launched, Google was still undecided: "This feature is currently in test mode, so you will not notice any immediate effects based on your action, other than experiencing a warm sense of satisfaction from having shared your feelings with people who really do care."

The tests must have been positive since the feature was included in the next version too. It's interesting to note that the mysterious feature continous to be available in the Internet Explorer version of Google Toolbar (Settings > Options > More > Voting), but it hasn't been included in the Firefox extension.


This small feature may have been responsible for detecting spam sites or for changing page rankings, but Google could resurrect it and make it a part of Google Personalized Search. They already show interesting pages related to your interests, these voting buttons could refine Google's data and improve the personalized search results.

Google China Grows Very Fast

In the last month, Google China launched many services. They added a simple version of Google Maps, Google Suggest was enabled by default for web search, a Chinese version of Google Zeitgeist called ReBang ("hot ranking") was launched, but it's not accessible outside of China.

Google Translate added the traditional Chinese (spoken in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau) and also an option to suggest a better translation if you see phrases that look weird (like in the screenshot below). You can make suggestions only for Arabic, Chinese and Russian, the languages for which Google uses machine translation.


Google Books has just been launched in Chinese, with a very limited amount of books (a search for "China" returns 2325 results).

"China Network Communications Corporation (CNC), the country's second largest fixed-line operator, will use search engine giant Google to provide Internet search services for its 16 million broadband users," reports People Daily Online.

Google made a lot of sacrifices to try to become an important presence in China, where Baidu dominates in search and advertising. Google launched last year Google.cn, that delivers censored results to comply with local regulations and to offer a more reliable service to its users: "Google users in China today struggle with a service that, to be blunt, isn't very good. Google.com appears to be down around 10% of the time. Even when users can reach it, the website is slow, and sometimes produces results that when clicked on, stall out the user's browser. (...) Filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. Failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world's population, however, does so far more severely."

Philipp Lenssen quotes some interesting counter-arguments, like this one from Danny Sullivan: "Ultimately, I want Google to pull out and fight back. I can see the argument for being engaged in a country, for trying to help promote change over time. But I feel like Google should be big enough and principled enough to be engaged by not being engaged. That might do far more good now than years down the line."

But maybe Google is not powerful enough to make a difference in China's internal regulations or maybe they try to build something solid there, so they can have more authority. It will be interesting to watch the months to come, when Google will try to add more services to Google China, to build custom ones only for the Chinese audience, and hopefully even to be brave.

Personalized Homepage Adds Community Features

Google Personalized Homepage added new features that will improve the way you find gadgets. If you go to a gadget's profile page (here's Google Operating System's page), you'll see a list of related gadgets, that was compiled based on users' preferences. You can also add a comment to share your opinion about the gadget and even rate it.

The features are similar to what Google Video has and they will definitely increase the number of users because people like to read other opinions before trying something. Developers will be happy as well because they'll get much more feedback and they'll be able to improve the gadgets faster.


When you add a gadget created by a third-party, Google warns you about that. You have the option to disable the warning, although it's nice to know whether a gadget was created by Google and you can fully trust it or was created by independent developers and you should be more careful when you enter personal information.


You also have the opportunity to check the source of the gadget before adding it. This might be useful to see if the code contains anything dangerous (although it's complicated to decide that just by looking at the code) or to learn from it, in case you want to create your own gadgets.

After you add the gadget, you'll notice two new options in the menu: recommended gadgets and a link to the profile, where you can rate it and post a comment. If you like the gadget, there's an option to send it to your friends.


Update: Here's something I missed. If you add a new tab, Google gives you an option to populate it with gadgets based only on the name of the tab. This is a good way to build a homepage if you don't have time to try all the gadgets, as Google Blog says. Nathan Weinberg found out that "the system relies on many factors, primarily other people who have named their tabs the same way you've named yours, sees what gadgets are popular in that set, and gives you a page of them.". If you already have 6 tabs, here's a simple trick to create a new one (and a new one etc.): go to the personalized homepage and paste this in your address bar:

javascript:_renameTab(); _dlsetp('at=')

Google Partners with LabPixies to Show Gadget Ads

Google started to test a new kind of ads, that are basically Google gadgets. In this example, Google included 4 YouTube videos that promote Gmail and 5 tips, that combine text with images. So the ad is more flexible than other Google ads and gives the user more options and even power tips.

The ad was created by LabPixies, a company that uses gadgets to create ads centered on content. "Our novel approach for marketing ensures that rather than just forcing your content on uninterested users, you can reach an ever-growing users community who are actively searching for content. (...) LabPixies builds campaigns based on your content and tools, which provide the user with a real taste of your product and brand."



It will be interesting to see if Google's collaboration with LabPixies will go beyond this Gmail ad and if Google will start to use gadget-ads to monetize the personalized homepage.

Note that the gadget above is detached from its AdSense context, so I'm not getting paid if you click on the links or play the videos. If you like it so much, you can even add it to your personalized homepage.

{ found by Digital Inspiration }

Find Facts Using Advanced Search Queries

If you're trying to obtain simple facts from Google, but you don't get direct answers (like for Japan population), use another strategy. Try to think how would you formulate a statement that contains the answer to your question.

Instead of asking "When did Yahoo buy Flickr?", think that a page that contains a statement that starts with "Yahoo bought Flickr in" should answer your question.

Step 1 - use quotes
Search for "Yahoo bought Flickr in" and you'll actually get the answer in the snippets. Not all the statements will give the same answer, so try to find the most popular opinion or the most reputable source.

That's great, but what if you want to find more complex information, like Yahoo's acquisitions from 2005 and their dates? The template for statements should be "Yahoo bought [company name] in [month] 2005". Replace the words in brackets with an wildcard.

Step 2 - use wildcards
Search for "Yahoo bought * in * 2005". A wildcard replaces one or more keywords, but you'll get pretty accurate data, like "Yahoo bought Konfabulator in July 2005" or "Yahoo bought the social bookmarking site Delicious in December 2005").

But how do you know that your template is good enough? To improve the performance, let Google match the synonyms of important keywords. Use OR between the synonyms of a word.

Step 3 - use OR
Search for "Yahoo bought OR acquired * in * 2005". You'll get the results for these two queries combined: "Yahoo bought * in * 2005" and "Yahoo acquired * in * 2005".

If you want to find some Yahoo acquisitions over the years, try the special syntax for intervals. To match all the integers between 1997 and 2007, add this to a query 1997..2007. This also works with currencies and measurement units.

Step 4 - use intervals
Search for "Yahoo bought OR acquired * in * 1997..2007". Although Yahoo was launched in 1994, they started to acquire other companies in 1997, after the IPO.

Of course, you'll say that a Wikipedia article about Yahoo contains all these acquisitions, but this was just an example. It works with almost any kinds of facts, as long as you use good templates and it has the major advantage that you'll see the answers in the snippets and you don't have to visit each search result. I found this extremely useful on a mobile phone, where it's difficult to read web pages and to find something inside them.

Common Questions About Google, Yahoo, Microsoft

Google Suggest is a handy way to auto-complete a query by using a database of popular queries. It's also a way to see what people want to know about a particular topic. What do they ask about Google, Yahoo and Microsoft?

People are curious to know if Google Earth shows live images, if Google Checkout is safe. They also wonder if Google is a number, a god or if it's down. Other popular questions: "is Google Toolbar/Google Desktop spyware?", "is Google Maps free?".

Yahoo's questions are mostly related to Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger and most people want to confirm that some Yahoo applications are down.

Google's visitors seem to ask little about Microsoft. The top question: "Is Microsoft Vista good?". They also question if Microsoft is evil, down or a monopoly.

CRM Solution for Google Personalized Homepage

I'm not into CRM, but if you have customers to manage, Etelos developed a set of gadgets for Google Personalized Homepage that let you manage contacts, deal with tasks, write reports, manage appointments and more. There's a free version for personal use and two paid versions that let you share data with other people.


Etelos created this package, that is invitation-only at the moment, for small businesses: "We realize that not every company has a multi-million dollar tech budget to implement a CRM or even content management system. What we have done is create a platform that allows for rapid implementation and customization of Web-based Applications, making them affordable and easy to implement for any size business."

This might address the problem of the lack of features from Google Apps, but you'll have to pay more for all these add-ons. I've noticed that many companies started to write software that addresses things like: Google Calendar synchronization, Gmail backup. Maybe these tools will fill the voids and make Google's offering more attractive.

February 2007 Recap: Subscription Services

This month, Google added personalized search for every logged-in user, so now it's even more likely that your search results are different than your friend's Dan. You'll also see plus boxes that extended the snippets with useful information from different Google services.

Google Maps was upgraded. This month, Google included "building footprints for the urban cores of 38 U.S. cities, giving Google Maps a better sense of scale, providing extra visual detail and enabling you to navigate using buildings as landmarks. For example, search for [empire state building] and zoom in all the way to get to the heart of New York City. [They]'ve also added transit information for 8 major U.S. cities (New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.), as well as nationwide Amtrak coverage." Google Maps also started to show real-time traffic data for many important areas in the US.

Gmail became a public beta and was promoted with four amateurish videos on YouTube. We also found out that Google will start to sell more storage space for Gmail.

Google apps added a premium version, mostly business-oriented, with 10 GB email accounts, 99.9% guaranteed uptime, phone support and APIs. They'll still offer free versions for education institutes, small organizations and personal use. But the move caused another wave of comparisons with (wrong) Microsoft products, mostly with Office, as Google Apps started to include Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Google faced an unusual business proposal and is closer than ever to include charts in Google Spreadsheets (they'll be rendered as SVG objects in Firefox and VML in Internet Explorer), but I'm sure that people will still want pivot tables and macros.

It's interesting to see Google offering non-advertising supported services. If successful, they could become an important part of their revenue and a sign of maturity.

Read more:
All the posts from February

GOSwards

GOSwards are Google Operating System's awards for all Google-related things. They're like Oscars, except that the jury has a single member, there's no funny host and the winners have more to say (but they don't). Here are my awards for 2006:

The most expected Google product - GDrive, an online storage service that could integrate with many existing Google products.

The biggest change in Google's philosophy - tie between more features, less products and censoring search results in China.

The best document leaked from Google - the Analyst Day presentation plus some confidential information.

Best new product in 2006 - Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It may not be perfect, fast or fit for replacing Microsoft Office, but it's a very important part of Google Operating System.

Best group of a Google product - ex-aequo for Google Reader and Webmaster Group. There aren't many Google groups where people actually get answers from Google.

Best video about Google - Behind the Screen (a 47 minutes documentary, produced by SBS Broadcasting Group). Controversial issues, inside stories, discussions with smart people from Google and a speechless Marissa Mayer (that's rare).

Best Googley image - I couldn't decide between all these colorful photos of Google (free) food.

Best personal blog of a Googler - Niniane Wang, for being honest, funny and expansive.

Best unofficial Google Blog - Google Blogoscoped. No surprise here.

Best blog about Google from inside - Xooglers, not active anymore. A blog written by former Google employees.

Best official Google Blog - Google Reader Blog, for being smart and packed with cool tips and information about one of the fastest growing Google product in 2006.

How Popular are Google Gadgets?

That's a tricky question. But Google decided to reveal a part of the mystery by showing the number of page views per week for the universal gadgets - those gadgets that work in the personalized homepage, in Google Desktop or syndicated in other sites.

Fortunately, it's very easy to see the numbers for almost any gadget (but not for feeds), so here's a list of some of the most popular gadgets:


* Date & Time - 130,290,121 page views per week

* Google Calendar - 91,491,639 page views per week

* Driving Directions - 38,615,797 page views per week

* Map Search - 31,460,719 page views per week

* Wikipedia search - 27,314,972 page views per week

* Dictionary.com search - 12,520,786 page views per week

* YouTube search - 9,515,502 page views per week

* Google Reader - 3,383,720 page views per week

Google explains that: "Gadget pageview statistics are approximate only (...) and represent the number of times that the gadget was rendered, including Google Personalized Homepage, Google Pages, Blogger, Google Desktop, and across thousands of independent pages around the web."

Google Maps Shows Real-Time Traffic Data

Google Maps shows real-time information about traffic for many US cities (like Kansas City, New York). To see this, switch to the map or hybrid mode and click on the new traffic tab. Google Maps will add a layer that colors the roads in green, yellow, red, or gray. The colors represent how fast the traffic is moving:

* Green: more than 50 miles per hour
* Yellow: 25 - 50 miles per hour
* Red: less than 25 miles per hour
* Gray: no data available



Until now, this feature was available only in the mobile client of Google Maps.

Export a Notebook to Google Docs

Sometimes a good notebook is just the start of a good document. You grab pieces from interesting places, do your research, and then you try to merge them and use these pieces to create something original.

Google Notebook has a new option: export to Google Docs. While the new document keeps the same formatting as the notebook, it's interesting to note that the images aren't saved in your document, so they still reference the original source. The transition is facilitated by the fact that Google Notebook and Google Docs use the same internal format


One might argue that Google Notebook should be a part of Google Docs, as they're both collaborative productivity tools. And maybe it will be, but I like to see Google Notebook as a web clipboard that stores crumbles from a goal-oriented web browsing.

{ Found by TonyB. }

How to Read Blogs on Your Mobile Phone

If you use Google on your mobile phone and click on a search result, you'll notice that Google optimizes the site, by adding pagination, removing navigation, resizing images and altering the layout.

But if you want to read a blog, this is not the most efficient way to do it because the homepage shows all the recent posts and it's hard to find only what interests you.

Fortunately, Google Mobile (available at google.com on your mobile phone) shows links to the feeds at the top of each page in the mobile-optimized view.


If you click on the link, you'll be able to read the headlines and short snippets in Google Reader. It's much easier to navigate a blog this way and you can read only the interesting posts. Google Reader lets you use keyboard shortcuts to go to a certain post and if you select "more" you can go back in the history of a blog almost indefinitely.


Of course, you can also subscribe to the feeds and read them at google.com/reader/m on your mobile phone, but this may come in handy if you don't use Google Reader or if you want to read the latest posts from a site someone recommended you in the train.

Goal-Oriented Browsing

This is something very small, but useful if you have a very clear target in mind. Let's say you're trying to download an application: you go to its homepage and find some interesting description of a customer, the features. Instead of trying to visually find a link that says "Download", use the find feature of your browser.

* Ctrl+F in most browsers, including Internet Explorer and Safari (Cmd+F)
* / or ' in Firefox (use the single quote to search only the links)
* / or , in Opera (use comma for link search)
* to find the next match, type Enter if the search box has focus or F3 in most browsers
* Google Toolbar has a nice feature called word find

You'll find what you're looking for much faster and you won't get distracted by shiny pictures and irrelevant news.

Google's Australian Flyover Disappoints

In January, Google tried to take high-resolution photos from Sydney. It was Australia's national day, so the photos should've been special. Microsoft tried to do the same, but Google was unlucky: "Google's plans fell apart due to no-fly zone restrictions due to air safety on low-flying planes. Google’s plane was too low for the government, which did not let it fly over Sydney, although some of the other areas were photographed. Microsoft’s plane was fine, since its photographic equipment allowed it to fly higher, but many who had planned to be seen by Google were out of luck."

Now the photos are live in Google Maps. "As you may know, Sydney was the first city Google chose to undertake an initiative like this at such a grand scale. While we couldn't reach everywhere we'd hoped, we captured some great imagery and want to thank everyone who participated for helping make this celebration so much fun. We hope you'll take a look, explore and re-live the day with us," explains a Google representative.

You can take a look at some of the images (Queenscliff Bay, Luna Park, Fort Denison and more) and here are Microsoft's photos.

Some Australians aren't happy with Google's photos. "Well, it looks terrible. Not because we're not on it (and we we're certainly there when they flew over), but it's so patchy. (...) People were having a party on the roof of our building - I see no-one there (or maybe 3 dots, indistinguishable). It's a big disappointment."

Viacom's Viewers

The Onion reports that... (oh, it's a parody) The Onion makes fun of Viacom's latest stunt: the 100,000 videos removed from YouTube.

In a cease-and-desist letter sent to Google's attorneys last week, media conglomerate Viacom demanded that YouTube immediately pull 400,000 ex-TV viewers from its industry-leading video-sharing site.

"These viewers clearly belong to Viacom and its related entertainment subsidiaries," stated the letter, which called the co-opted viewership "the result of an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars by our company."

The message is simple: you can't force people to choose a single medium where they can watch your content. You have to be open and treat your audience with respect. They're, after all, human beings and can't be forced to leave their computers and return to their TVs. Every music video or clip from a TV show is free advertising for your content and a gentle invitation to buy the album or to watch the TV channel.

On a related note, Fimoculous complains there's an increasing number of embedded YouTube videos that only show "This video is no longer available". For example, half of these 100 great videos aren't available anymore.


{ via Google Blogoscoped }

Shallow Comparison of Blog Search Engines

The purpose of a blog search engine is to index blogs and to show some information easy to find in a feed, like the date of a post, the author or the tags associated with a post. Unlike web search engines, blog search engines have less sites to crawl and the feeds save them a lot of time, so they pick new posts much faster.

You should use a blog search engine when something important has just happened and you want to find out what people (and not the media) think about it. You can also use them for news that aren't in mainstream and for niche subjects.

I like Technorati's homepage because I can find what's popular right now: the top searches, tags, the most popular content. I like them because they show numbers next to each blog, like number of blogs that link there or the rank of a blog. Their numbers are simply irrelevant because the links aren't equal in importance, but it's nice to have the comfort of a ranking (it's similar to Alexa). Technorati is often down or pretty slow, but they have cool widgets to add to your blog or feed so I forgive them.

Google Blog Search is all about search. Unlike Technorati, Google Blog Search is not down or slow and sorts the search results by relevance. That may seem weird, so you can also sort them by date. Google's search engine is cool because you can easily change the time interval and create mail alerts for your favorite topics. For some queries, you'll also find a lot of spam, mostly from Blogspot.

Ask Blogs & Feeds wants to impress you. Blogs are a domain where Ask.com is strong (they own Bloglines), so their blog search engine must be good, right? Yes, but there are too many options. You can search for posts, feeds and news. You can sort the results by relevance, popularity and time. For each search result, you have the option to subscribe to the feed, send the content to your blog and to preview it right inside the search results page. That's cool, so why should I visit the blog? Ask's strongest point is the preview option and the option to sort posts and feeds by popularity, which uses Bloglines stats.

Sphere is good for only one thing: to find related posts and blogs. So you read something interesting and want some context. Sphere proudly shows you something to read. You can add the "Sphere it" button in your browser and use it when you get lost in a strange article.

Icerocket is a mix of Technorati, Ask and Google Blog Search (in fact, they copied a lot from Google's interface). It's also the best-looking blog search engine, but there's no way to sort the results other than by date or to restrict to a language.

The most original blog search engine is Findory that personalizes the results by analyzing your clicks. It's far less comprehensive than the others, but you'll love the search results recommended just for you. It's a good idea to create an account and to add your favorite blogs.

So if you want to have some idea about a feed and its popularity, try Technorati. If you want good results and a minimalistic interface, go to Google Blog Search. To preview search results, use Ask, and to find related posts, Sphere could help you. Icerocket tries to be a bit of everything, but it only partially succeeds. Findory shows mostly popular blogs, but it's a good filter if you don't want to read too many posts.

It would be nice to have a search engine that sorts the posts by date, but it also takes care to remove irrelevant results (including spam). A blog search engine that clusters the results by topic, like Google News, but also shows the connection between posts and their dependency. A way to monitor what interests you and to filter the good stuff.

Video PlusBox in Google Search Results

I wrote a lot about Google Plus Box, an expandable extension of the snippet that shows up for some sites in Google's search results. Most of the time, this information is retrieved from different Google services.

After introducing the Maps Plus Box and testing the Finance Plus Box, Google experiments with a Video Plus Box that shows a preview of a video inside the search results. Razvan Antonescu, who spotted this experiment, saw it only for a Google Video page, so it's likely that - at least for the moment - Google will add it only for Google Video and YouTube.


Of course, Google should continue to be objective and include it for all the online video sites, but there are some questions:

* What are the videos sites? How to detect all of them and find the embeddable code?

* Will those sites want the Plus Box? Maybe they'll say Google steals traffic from them, because they want to show ads and to have big page views.

* Who will click on the search result to see the video (and maybe some comments and context), like they used to do?

* It will be the first time when content outside of Google control will be included in the search results (for example, the thumbnails from image search results are hosted by Google). Will there be performance issues?

Google also promised to add more video sites to Google Video and to transform it into a real video search engine. They'll have to answer to the same questions for Google Video, so they should connect these two efforts to make videos more accessible.

Tips for Google Toolbar

Google Toolbar is one of the most criticized software created by Google (competing with Google Desktop), mostly because of the privacy issues generated by some advanced features. But Google Toolbar is also pretty useful. Most of these tips work with the latest version of Google Toolbar for IE and Firefox.

1. I'm Feeling Lucky. Type your query in the search box and press Shift+Enter if you want to bypass the search results page and to go directly to the top result.

2. A new window for my search results. To open the search results in a new window, press Alt+Enter after you type your query. You can combine this with the previous tip: Alt+Shift+Enter will open the top result in a new window. Depending on your settings, the page could open in a new tab instead of a new window.

3. Focus on search. If you want to go to the search box without using the mouse, type Alt+G (G is from Google).

4. A better find-in-page. Most browsers have pretty poor options to find some words in a page. Firefox and Opera have inline search, but that's not pretty helpful if you want to find some words in a page, but you don't want perfect matches. Enable in Google Toolbar:

Settings > Options > Highlight search terms AND Find and highlight words on a page (Firefox) or
Settings > Options > Tools > Find bar (Internet Explorer)

Now when you visit a page, type what you what to find in the search box, and click on the yellow crayon from the toolbar. To activate this feature in Internet Explorer, click on the arrow next to the Find button. The words found in the page will be highlighted in different colors, so it's easy to discover the interesting sections at a glance. To move to the next instance of a word, click on that word in your toolbar. To disable the highlighting, click on the crayon icon again.

5. Translation. Do you visit a German page that offers some interesting details about the latest Google Desktop vulnerability, but you don't know German. Just right-click anywhere in the page and select:
Page Info > Translate Page Into English
This should work for most languages available at Google Translate and Google automatically detects the language of the page.

6. Fixing typos. Maybe Firefox shows you the words that are misspelled, but Google can automatically fix the misspellings in a magical way.
Settings > Options > Tools > Spell check
Next time you type something in a text area, right-click on the arrow next to "Check" on the toolbar and select "Autofix". The green words are fixed by Google, while for the red words Google couldn't find a fix. You can click on the colored words to choose another suggestion.

7. Privacy alert. Google Toolbar pings Google's servers automatically to check for updates. If you don't want to send Google additional information, disable this features:
* Google-account related services: Bookmarks, Send to, Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail button
* PageRank (option when you install the toolbar; to show you the PageRank of each page you visit, Google Toolbar needs to send it to Google)
* Send usage statistics to Google (disabled by default)
Google says in the privacy policy that, except for the Google-account features, no other information is connected to your Google account, even though they store it in their logs.

8. Customize the toolbar. In Firefox, you can customize the toolbar to occupy less space.
Settings > Options > Layouts
A good idea is to select "Replace Firefox search box and hide Toolbar". How to restore Google Toolbar icons? Right-click on the toolbar, click Customize and drag the icons to Firefox's toolbar. This way you can occupy a single row for the toolbars. But what about other search engines? See the next tip.

Here's an example of custom layout:


9. Add any search engine. You just have to right-click on any search box, and select "Generate Custom Search". Any search engine can be added to Google Toolbar. Click on the arrow next to search box and select one before or after you type a query.

10. Built-in calculator. Type "87/9", "12 kilometers in miles", or "e^2" and Google shows the answer directly under the search box. (This option is available in the regular search box included in Firefox 2, as well).

11. Change the search engine.

For Internet Explorer: If the search box has focus, press the down arrow and type the first letters from the search engine name (for example, type "im" to get to Image Search). Then press enter and don't forget that the change is persistent.

For Firefox: Type Alt+down arrow and type the first letter of the search engine until your favorite search engine is selected. You can also type Ctrl+down or Ctrl+up to change the search engine to the next/previous one from the list.

The Blank Test Ad

It's meaningful. It has a black background to suggest the lack of light, the power of simplicity and to contrast with the white of the text. It's the ad of the emptiness, of the void. It's an empty piece of paper where you draw your dreams, expectations and ideas.

Google Talk is the void where you put your words. It's the simplicity of an experimental software that started with the naked kernel and grows in front of your eyes.

* Note for the puzzled readers. This is a recent AdSense ad for Google Talk. Many people were curious about its meaning, so I thought it's a good idea to reveal it.