What do these texts have in common?
"Looks like when you're on Google Reader and click a feed that leads to an external page, it now opens within Google Reader as opposed to opening in a new window. Not sure if this feature was rolled out for everyone or if it's still in testing. It opens up in a 'Preview' pane and you can click a button to open other posts up in Google Reader as well." (The Army of Gnomes)
"I opened my Gmail to find quite the surprise this morning – there's now a Feeds link the in the left nav, and reader opens up into the mail space. It's a little awkward, but pretty cool." (mail from a reader)
"Maybe we missed it but gmail.com has a new feature that was unanticipated. When you right click on a gmail email, you get a preview of the email. Just one more way to view all of that wonderful email." (NoHeat)
All the three texts talk about what seem to be new features in Gmail and Google Reader. The new features are actually introduced by Greasemonkey scripts or extensions, but people sometimes forget they installed them. Since the add-ons directly modify web pages, you'll see something else than most other people.
Custom Views in Google Calendar
Google Calendar has an option to define custom views: you can replace the "next 7 days" with other intervals like the "next 3 days" or "next 2 weeks". In the settings you'll also find an option to make your custom view the default.
Another way to change the current view is to use the small calendar from the left sidebar. Click on the small arrows to change the month and select a date to see the corresponding events. To see the events from a date range, click on the start date and drag it to the end date. Note that this only works for short periods of time.
Google Calendar has two useful shortcuts that let you easily move between periods of time: p (previous date range) and n (next date range). To see the events from a certain month in the past, click on "Today", go to the month view and repeatedly press p. Alternatively, type a date in the search box and click on "Search my calendars".
{ via Google Calendar Group }
Another way to change the current view is to use the small calendar from the left sidebar. Click on the small arrows to change the month and select a date to see the corresponding events. To see the events from a date range, click on the start date and drag it to the end date. Note that this only works for short periods of time.
Google Calendar has two useful shortcuts that let you easily move between periods of time: p (previous date range) and n (next date range). To see the events from a certain month in the past, click on "Today", go to the month view and repeatedly press p. Alternatively, type a date in the search box and click on "Search my calendars".
{ via Google Calendar Group }
Publish Blogger Posts to Future Dates
Sometimes you want to take a week off from your blog, but it's difficult to stop posting and keep your readers and search engine bots waiting for new posts. One way to handle this is to write a number of posts in advance that are automatically posted while you are away.
Blogger didn't offer this feature, so the only workaround was to use a service that schedules email delivery (like LetterMeLater) and Mail-to-Blogger. But Blogger constantly improve and adds a lot of interesting features, especially lately. Blogger in Draft tests a scheduled posts feature that changes the way Blogger publishes posts: if you publish a post with a future date, Blogger will delay the publishing until that date.
"Publishing a post in the future is pretty simple: in the post editor, reveal the Date and Time fields using the Post Options toggle and enter a post date and time that is in the future. When you then click the Publish button, your post will become scheduled. When the date and time of the post arrive, your post will be automatically published to your blog." This only works from Blogger in Draft, but the feature will soon be available from the regular interface. For those who want to see all the new Blogger features before they're released to everyone, there's a Greasemonkey script that redirects you to Blogger in Draft.
Blogger didn't offer this feature, so the only workaround was to use a service that schedules email delivery (like LetterMeLater) and Mail-to-Blogger. But Blogger constantly improve and adds a lot of interesting features, especially lately. Blogger in Draft tests a scheduled posts feature that changes the way Blogger publishes posts: if you publish a post with a future date, Blogger will delay the publishing until that date.
"Publishing a post in the future is pretty simple: in the post editor, reveal the Date and Time fields using the Post Options toggle and enter a post date and time that is in the future. When you then click the Publish button, your post will become scheduled. When the date and time of the post arrive, your post will be automatically published to your blog." This only works from Blogger in Draft, but the feature will soon be available from the regular interface. For those who want to see all the new Blogger features before they're released to everyone, there's a Greasemonkey script that redirects you to Blogger in Draft.
Video Ads in Google's Search Results Pages
A small bit of news from New York Times took a lot of people by surprise: Google experiments with video ads in the search results pages. The intention was announced last year, when Google launched Universal Search, a new format that integrates images, videos, books and other types of content in the main search results and also provides additional information for some web pages. For example, Google shows a thumbnail, the duration and the rating next to videos, while providing the option to play the video inline. This is a big shift from the regular format that only included ten blue links and some small snippets.
Obviously, Google will introduce video ads conservatively, without disrupting the entire experience. The ads will continue to be mostly text, but they'll include the option to play a short video. Google's Marissa Mayer "said, however, that the company would explore adding small thumbnail photos to the video ads as well. And a spokesman said the company is considering testing other formats that may include ads with images."
"The big insight of Google wasn't text ads; it was that the ads should be conducive to the format. We were doing text-based search that was all textual. Visual ads don't work in that format. With universal search, something is getting shaken up a bit on the bottom part of the page. The ads on the top part of the page should match," thinks Marissa Mayer.
Google already experiments with local ads that include maps, addresses and driving directions, mimicking the search results connected with local information. In July 2007, Google's promotion for Bourne Ultimatum included the option to watch a movie trailer inline.
"For us, ads are answers as well" is the phrase that sums up these changes and reflects how difficult is to keep the balance between organic search results and ads. "You will not be distracted by image ads or video ads on Google search results pages. Period. Just because other companies use image ads and video ads with the _purpose_ of distracting users doesn't mean Google will do that. Images and videos can be useful and entertaining, if you see them when you want to see them," clarified Daniel Dulitz in a Slashdot thread.
If you spot a video ad in Google's search results, take a screenshot and post a link to it in the comments.
Obviously, Google will introduce video ads conservatively, without disrupting the entire experience. The ads will continue to be mostly text, but they'll include the option to play a short video. Google's Marissa Mayer "said, however, that the company would explore adding small thumbnail photos to the video ads as well. And a spokesman said the company is considering testing other formats that may include ads with images."
"The big insight of Google wasn't text ads; it was that the ads should be conducive to the format. We were doing text-based search that was all textual. Visual ads don't work in that format. With universal search, something is getting shaken up a bit on the bottom part of the page. The ads on the top part of the page should match," thinks Marissa Mayer.
Google already experiments with local ads that include maps, addresses and driving directions, mimicking the search results connected with local information. In July 2007, Google's promotion for Bourne Ultimatum included the option to watch a movie trailer inline.
"For us, ads are answers as well" is the phrase that sums up these changes and reflects how difficult is to keep the balance between organic search results and ads. "You will not be distracted by image ads or video ads on Google search results pages. Period. Just because other companies use image ads and video ads with the _purpose_ of distracting users doesn't mean Google will do that. Images and videos can be useful and entertaining, if you see them when you want to see them," clarified Daniel Dulitz in a Slashdot thread.
If you spot a video ad in Google's search results, take a screenshot and post a link to it in the comments.
Valentine's Day at Google
For Valentine's Day, Google prepared some special logos and design changes. Here's the kitschy Google Docs with custom icons and a prominent "Happy Valentine's Day!" at the top of the page (it reminds me of Slashdot's pink theme for April Fools' Day 2006: OMG!!! Ponies!!!).
There's an interesting doodle on the homepage:
...and YouTube has a commonplace logo:
Over the years, Google changed its logo and even linked to a Java animation. Last year, Gmail removed the invitations and Google surprised everyone with a doodle that seemed to miss a letter.
If you spot something different with Google's sites today, post it in the comments.
{ Thank you, Ilya and Nathan. }
There's an interesting doodle on the homepage:
...and YouTube has a commonplace logo:
Over the years, Google changed its logo and even linked to a Java animation. Last year, Gmail removed the invitations and Google surprised everyone with a doodle that seemed to miss a letter.
If you spot something different with Google's sites today, post it in the comments.
{ Thank you, Ilya and Nathan. }
10 Similarities Between YouTube and Yahoo
YouTube continues to be an independent company and has very little in common with the rest of Google's services. In fact, YouTube has more in common with Yahoo than Google:
1. YouTube's homepage includes content selected by editors, like Yahoo.
2. Both homepages are very cluttered.
3. Signing up for a YouTube account requires to enter a lot of information, including your country, your gender and the date of birth.
4. Both sites include a display ad on the homepage, unlike any other Google site.
5. Yahoo hosts images and other resources at yimg.com, while YouTube hosts them at ytimg.com.
6. YouTube is the only successful community site owned by Google, while Yahoo has a lot of social sites.
7. Both sites show undisclosed ads: YouTube promotes videos from its partners, while Yahoo uses features such as search shortcuts to show ads.
8. YouTube and Yahoo have similar welcome messages: "Hi, Your-Name!" and show the number of messages on the homepage.
9. Yahoo and YouTube use subdomains for the localized versions (e.g.: mx.youtube.com, mx.yahoo.com).
10. They were/are part of unpopular acquisitions.
Add a Blogroll to Blogger
Blogger in Draft (a pre-release version of Blogger) added an interesting widget that lets you display the latest posts from your favorite blogs. It's an enhanced blogroll that displays the recently updated blogs and snippets from the most recent posts.
You can manually add the blogs by entering their URLs or you can select from your Google Reader subscriptions. To add the widget to a Blogger blog, you need to go to Blogger in Draft, click on the Layout section corresponding to the blog and add the "Blog List" page element. You can't add the widget for blogs that still use the classic templates, like this blog.
Google Reader already lets you create a blogroll from any public tag, but Blogger's widget is more customizable.
In other Blogger-related news, the comment page make it more obvious that you can sign in using an OpenID and Blogger enabled pagination for posts with more than 200 comments.
You can manually add the blogs by entering their URLs or you can select from your Google Reader subscriptions. To add the widget to a Blogger blog, you need to go to Blogger in Draft, click on the Layout section corresponding to the blog and add the "Blog List" page element. You can't add the widget for blogs that still use the classic templates, like this blog.
Google Reader already lets you create a blogroll from any public tag, but Blogger's widget is more customizable.
In other Blogger-related news, the comment page make it more obvious that you can sign in using an OpenID and Blogger enabled pagination for posts with more than 200 comments.
Google Toolbar and 404 Error Pages
I find it very strange that people have abnormal reactions when Google does something. People have an incorrect perception of the "don't be evil" mantra and like to say that Google doesn't respect it every time Google does something debatable. I didn't hear too many people complaining that Internet Explorer replaces default 404 error pages with its own page, but when Google Toolbar does that, it suddenly hijacks web sites.
Let's take a look at a simple example of a site that doesn't have a custom 404 error page (they're very hard too find these days, so most sites won't fall in this category). If you try to go to news.speeple.com/sunflowers, here's what you see in IE7: a page with useful suggestions like "Retype the address" or "Go back to the previous page".
This is actually a page created by Internet Explorer and you can disable it in the advanced settings, by unchecking "Show friendly HTTP error pages". Here's the page returned by the server, which is displayed in most browsers (Firefox, Opera, etc.):
The latest version of Google Toolbar has a feature disabled by default that replaces IE's error pages with more useful suggestions: the site's homepage or subdomain, some search queries that could help you locate the right page. The idea is that you probably clicked on a bad link or the page was relocated without using a redirect. In this case, Google's query segmentation is not perfect, but it usually does a pretty good job at transforming a URL into an useful query. To obtain the suggestions, the toolbar sends the URL to Google's servers, so this feature has privacy implications. More exactly, the suggestion page is obtained from:
http://linkhelp.clients.google.com/tbproxy/lh/fixurl?sourceid=navclient &hl=en&sd=com&error=http404&url=http://news.speeple.com/sunflowers
Google Toolbar only displays that page for default error pages (that have less than 512 bytes), DNS errors and connection failures. The feature can be enabled from Google Toolbar's settings by checking "Browse by name in the address bar", a feature that also performs searches when you enter keywords in the address bar.
So which of the three pages is more helpful for someone who ends up on a non-existing page from a site that didn't bother to create a custom 404 error page?
Related:
Matt Cutts' reaction
Google tries to fix broken URLs
Browsing the web using Google Cache
Let's take a look at a simple example of a site that doesn't have a custom 404 error page (they're very hard too find these days, so most sites won't fall in this category). If you try to go to news.speeple.com/sunflowers, here's what you see in IE7: a page with useful suggestions like "Retype the address" or "Go back to the previous page".
This is actually a page created by Internet Explorer and you can disable it in the advanced settings, by unchecking "Show friendly HTTP error pages". Here's the page returned by the server, which is displayed in most browsers (Firefox, Opera, etc.):
The latest version of Google Toolbar has a feature disabled by default that replaces IE's error pages with more useful suggestions: the site's homepage or subdomain, some search queries that could help you locate the right page. The idea is that you probably clicked on a bad link or the page was relocated without using a redirect. In this case, Google's query segmentation is not perfect, but it usually does a pretty good job at transforming a URL into an useful query. To obtain the suggestions, the toolbar sends the URL to Google's servers, so this feature has privacy implications. More exactly, the suggestion page is obtained from:
http://linkhelp.clients.google.com/tbproxy/lh/fixurl?sourceid=navclient &hl=en&sd=com&error=http404&url=http://news.speeple.com/sunflowers
Google Toolbar only displays that page for default error pages (that have less than 512 bytes), DNS errors and connection failures. The feature can be enabled from Google Toolbar's settings by checking "Browse by name in the address bar", a feature that also performs searches when you enter keywords in the address bar.
So which of the three pages is more helpful for someone who ends up on a non-existing page from a site that didn't bother to create a custom 404 error page?
Related:
Matt Cutts' reaction
Google tries to fix broken URLs
Browsing the web using Google Cache
Street View Update: 12 New Cities
About every two months, Google Maps adds 6-7 new cities to Street View. In May 2007 the service was launched with images for 5 cities, two months later 4 new cities were added, in October Google added 6 cities, while in December a record of 8 cities were added to Street View.
This month, Google added 12 new cities from the US: Juneau (Alaska), Boise (Idaho), Salt Lake City (Utah), San Antonio (Texas), Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill (North Carolina), Manchester (New Hampshire), Kansas City (Missouri), Milwaukee (Wisconsin), Albany, Schenectady (New York). It's interesting to see that the 12 cities are distributed uniformly and the total number of cities is now 35.
When do you think Google will add all the important cities from the US and the rest of the world? Shouldn't Google outsource this job to other companies or at least accept photos from users and use technology like Photosynth to combine them?
Bonus question: can you find the formula for an integer sequence that has the first 5 values: 5, 4, 6, 8, 12?
{ via the unofficial Google Earth Blog. Updated with more information from Google LatLong. }
This month, Google added 12 new cities from the US: Juneau (Alaska), Boise (Idaho), Salt Lake City (Utah), San Antonio (Texas), Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill (North Carolina), Manchester (New Hampshire), Kansas City (Missouri), Milwaukee (Wisconsin), Albany, Schenectady (New York). It's interesting to see that the 12 cities are distributed uniformly and the total number of cities is now 35.
When do you think Google will add all the important cities from the US and the rest of the world? Shouldn't Google outsource this job to other companies or at least accept photos from users and use technology like Photosynth to combine them?
Bonus question: can you find the formula for an integer sequence that has the first 5 values: 5, 4, 6, 8, 12?
{ via the unofficial Google Earth Blog. Updated with more information from Google LatLong. }
Designing Google's Logo
Wired has an article about the design of Google's logo and its iterations. "Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who developed the now-famous logo, shows the iterations that led to the instantly recognizable primary colors and Catull typeface that define the Google brand. Kedar met Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page through a mutual friend nine years ago at Stanford University, where she was an assistant professor."In the process, Ruth used a lot of symbols: from a pattern that suggests the infinite to interlocking rings that symbolize the power of search to transgress cultures, from a happy magnifying glass to sheer playfulness. "By taking out the magnifying glass, Kedar opens up the logo to signify that Google can become much more than just a search engine. By playing with the angles and colors of the letters, she tries to make clear that Google isn't a square corporation."
Ruth Kedar explains that she chose the Catull typeface because "Catull borrows elements from traditional writing instruments such as the quill and the chisel with a modern twist. Search, by nature, is an activity that requires we look into the past. Therefore Catull's historical ties seemed appropriate, as did the bridging between the old analog world and the new emerging digital era."
As you can see, the simple and cheerful Google logo hides a lot of interesting ideas and it's still relevant to the company, even if it's no longer just a search engine.
Before adopting a professional logo, Google used a logo created by Sergey Brin in GIMP. "Tinkering one day with a graphics program called GIMP, Sergey created a color rendering of the Google letters with an exclamation point at the end, mimicking Yahoo! He seemed quite proud of the new logo, which was composed of kindergarten-style block letters in primary colors. But it wasn't the look that meant the most to him. He was pleased that he had been able to teach himself how to use GIMP, free software that was tricky to employ," writes David A. Vise in The Google Story.
Intuitive Mobile Search
Image licensed as Creative Commons Attribution by Mac Funamizu.
Mac Funamizu imagines a more intuitive way to search by just pointing at objects or selecting text. An Internet-enabled mobile device that incorporates a camera, scanner, GPS could make use of services like Google Maps or an improved image search to recognize objects and deliver useful information about them.
"You can use it when you want to know a car model, an insect name, what kind of food is served at a restaurant and how much, who built a bridge, etc. etc. But as a designer myself, I hope it's able to tell me a name of a font of the type I see, the size, color (in RGB), and so on," explains Mac.
There are already commercial applications like GeoVector 3D Search that let users access data about some points of interest, but this could be extended to non-local search. GeoVector "currently provides products and services which significantly simplify local searches, allowing users to point their mobile device toward objects of interest to access information about them. Users can point and click with their mobile phone the way a computer user navigates using a mouse," according to a press release.
Google tests introducing barcodes in print ads to increase their accountability. "2D barcodes (...) allow readers to click on interesting print ads with their cellphones and seamlessly connect to relevant online content." A barcode could encode URLs or any other short text. "When you capture a picture of it with your cellphone, special decoding software reads the encoded information, and prompts your phone's browser to visit a URL." Barcodes are very popular in Japan, where a lot of mobile phones include decoding software. "Japan, the first country with a highly developed 3G network and high usage of the mobile internet, was also the country where telecoms like NTTDoCoMo and KDDI achieved a breakthrough by bringing QR code readers to mobile phones. Today QR Codes are so pervasive in Japan that it's almost impossible without seeing one. You can find them in advertisements, mobile campaigns, on maps, in magazines, on billboards etc. and nobody want to miss them anymore."
Point-and-click is an intuitive way to interact with objects and obtain information from search engines, but it's necessary to be able to analyze images and recognize objects, the same way barcode decoders transform codes into text. Google's acquisition of Neven Vision is a step in this direction.
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