Translate a Google Spreadsheet

The recently launched API for Google Translate makes it easier to add translation options to any web application. A Google Spreadsheets gadget uses the API to translate the text from a spreadsheet. The input text should be in English and the destination language should be specified in the settings. To add the gadget to one of your spreadsheets, click on the Insert drop-down, select Gadget, go to the Custom section and paste this address:

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/114448529270295376137/translator-gadget-v1-r2.xml


The gadget can be embedded in any web page and it updates the content every time you republish the spreadsheet. There's also an option to automatically re-publish a spreadsheet when changes are made.

Google Talk, Labs Edition

There's a new flavor of Google Talk: the Labs edition, a desktop client that looks very similar to the Google Talk gadget and has most of its features. The application doesn't support voice chat or file transfer, it's still Windows-only, but it has some new features: it lets you launch Google Calendar and Orkut, while including notifications for Google Calendar events and Orkut scraps. The new Google Talk uses WebKit to render some parts of the interface.

I don't find too many reasons why someone would switch from the full-featured client to the Labs edition: group chats, smilies, tabs, while the missing features are more important. A better decisions would have been to integrate these new features in the desktop client, instead of releasing a separate application. Now we have four different flavors of Google Talk: the original client, Gmail Chat, the gadget and the Labs edition.


{ Thanks, ebass5str . }

Upload Old Email to Google Apps

Google Email Uploader is a tool created by Google to make the transition to Google Apps easier. The application imports to a Google Apps account the messages and contacts stored locally in Microsoft Outlook 2002+, Outlook Express and Thunderbird. It doesn't modify the sent dates from your messages and it converts the folders into Gmail labels. Google Email Uploader is open source and it works only in Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The uploader works only in the premier edition of Google Apps, even though Google says it should work in the standard edition, as well. If you try to use it with a standard Google Apps account, you'll get this error message: "you are not authorized to use this feature". The most likely reason why the application works only in the paid version of Google Apps is that it uses the email migration API, which "allows administrators and users of Google Apps to migrate mail from legacy email systems into their domain's hosted Gmail accounts". The API is enabled for the paid accounts and it's also used by gMOVE, a tool that migrates Outlook calendars, email, contacts and tasks to Google Apps for $19.

You can also import old mail to a Gmail account using IMAP: simply drag your old messages to Gmail's inbox in an email client, but the new application should be more reliable.

Add Powerful Features to Textareas

If you ever start to type a comment on a blog and you realize that the textarea is very small and it doesn't have any of the powerful features from your favorite text editor, you should try It's All Text, a Firefox extension that makes the transition between any textarea and your text editor. The extension adds a small Edit button below the textarea that copies the existing text in a temporary file and it launches Notepad or any other text editor installed on your computer. When you save the file, its content is automatically added to the textarea, so you don't have to use copy-paste.


In case you don't need a text editor, but some comment boxes are way too small, this Greasemonkey script lets you resize them, by dragging a small icon. Another good option is to use the Resizeable Textarea Firefox extension. This bookmarklet should work in most browsers, but you need to click on the bookmark before resizing a textarea.


Somebody suggested that every comment box should be a Google Docs-like rich text editor, but until popular blogging engines support tables and image uploading, Flickr Rich Edit adds some simple editing options for those who don't want to type HTML tags. The Greasemonkey script works only for Flickr's comment boxes by default, but you can add the options to any textarea by replacing http://*flickr.com/* with * in the list of included pages.

New Google Analytics Charts Show Time Patterns

Google Analytics added a new option for charts: graph data by hour, day, week or month. The hour graphs are only available in some of the visitors reports and they could be helpful to find out the time of the day when most people visit your sites. The graph below shows a strange shift that happened in the past year, even if the regional distribution of this blog's visitors hasn't changed too much.


It would be nice to see aggregated graph for days of the week, for months and for years, enhanced with some possible explanations for the changes, like we can see in Google Trends and Google Finance.

{ Thanks, Fede777. }

Which Tips from This Blog Are Still Valuable for You?

One problem with blogs that recommend all kids of tips, software, browser add-ons, web applications is that very few will be actually used by someone. I tried to only link to great software, useful Firefox extensions and Greasemonkey scripts, difficult-to-find Google tips, but quality is subjective.

I still view the latest videos from my YouTube subscriptions inside Google Reader, I log into Google using an alternate username, I upload files using drag and drop and share blog posts from the web to my Google Reader link blog, Google Cache is still useful to navigate inside a web site when it's inaccessible and linking to web pages using Google AJAX Search is very convenient. Gmail's built-in labels are great for creating filters or complex queries, wildcards are one of the ways I extract facts from Google search, while Interclue is a smart and unobtrusive link previewer.

Which tips that you first read here are still valuable for you?

Google Detects the Published Date for Web Pages

BPWrap found an interesting tidbit in Google's international sites: in some cases, the snippets start with a date that is displayed in the same language as the Google interface. For example, Google France displays "9 juil 2006", even if the page contains an English date: "July 09, 2006".


What's even more interesting is that Google doesn't include any date from the page: it tries to detect the most likely candidate for the published date. This should be more accurate than the date when Google first found a web page. Most news sites and blogs display the date when an article has been published and this is an useful information for people who try to find recent news articles or blog posts written in a certain period.


Example of queries that show the published date in Google's snippets: [extended Google snippets], [Microsoft bid for Yahoo], but I'm sure you can find many others.

The new date could replace Google's current estimation that is used in an advanced search option. For web pages that don't include the date when they were created, Google could try to estimate it, based on its content and the recency of the linked web pages.

This is not the only information automatically detected by Google and displayed as part of a snippet: the map plusbox includes the most relevant address identified on a page, a static map and links to directions.

{ via SE Roundtable }

Google Gears, a Software Update for the Web

Google Gears started as an open-source plug-in that enabled web applications to work offline, but its real purpose is to speed up the addition of features to web browsers. Developers are frustrated that it takes too long to create standards and they have to wait until they enter mainstream by being included in web browsers. Brad Neuberg from Google says that it takes 5-8 years for an idea to be included in enough web browsers so that developers can actually use it. "We need a better way to get new features out to the Web. Google Gears is an open-source mechanism for updating the Web", explains Brad the underlying motivation for building Google Gears.

Google's Dion Almaer sees Gears as a "bleeding-edge HTML 5 implementation". "There is a lot in common between Gears and HTML 5. Both are moving the Web forward, something that we really need to accelerate. Both have APIs to make the Web do new tricks. However HTML 5 is a specification, and Gears is an implementation." Some pieces from Google Gears could even become standards and it's likely that they'll be added to web browsers faster.

Google Finance Stock Screener

Find the perfect stocks for your portfolio with the new stock screener from Google Finance. You can use criteria like: market capitalization, the P/E ratio, the most recently reported trade price, gross margin and select the values interactively.

Brain Lint notes that Google uses sparklines, "miniature graphs that go inline with text. In this case the graph is a histogram that indicates how much of the stock market falls into each part of the range - this will give one a quick preview how inclusive their search parameters are."

It looks much better than the stock screener from Yahoo Finance, which is anything but intuitive. Even if it looks outdated, Yahoo Finance has more features and content, so its user base won't migrate to Google Finance for the vivid charts and the clever integration of news headlines.


{ Spotted last month, when it was not functional. }

YouTube's Video Identification in Action

Last year, YouTube launched a video identification system for detecting copyright infringements. Content providers were supposed to upload their videos and the system would find YouTube videos that use excerpts from their content. "Video Identification goes above and beyond our legal responsibilities. It will help copyright holders identify their works on YouTube, and choose what they want done with their videos: whether to block, promote, or even - if a copyright holder chooses to license their content to appear on the site — monetize their videos," explained Google when the system was launched.

Some YouTube videos include a special label: "contains content from [link to YouTube channel]". Besides the unfortunate combination of words, it's interesting to notice that YouTube starts to fix some of the problems with copyright infringements by being more friendly with those who own the copyrights.


From YouTube's help center: "There are three usage policies -- Block, Track or Monetize. If a rights owner specifies a Block policy, the video will not be viewable on YouTube. If the rights owner specifies a Track policy, the video will continue to be made available on YouTube and the rights owner will receive information about the video, such as how many views it receives. For a Monetize policy, the video will continue to be available on YouTube and ads will appear in conjunction with the video. The policies can be region-specific, so a content owner can allow a particular piece of material in one country and block the material in another"

So what would you choose between the three policies: block (no exposure and no money) or track (exposure, but no money) or monetize (exposure and money)? Obviously, many content providers decided to choose the third option. In addition to the exposure, they could also make money from ads or from links to music stores, such as Amazon MP3.

Code Snippets in Google Universal Search

Google shows results from its code search engine when you search for things related to programming languages: function names, classes, objects, methods so you can see real-life examples of use. For some reason, the snippets are always displayed after the third search result and they include up to four lines of code.

Google Code Search indexes "publicly accessible source code hosted on the Internet" and is the only search engine developed by Google that supports regular expressions and case-sensitive searches. It's also the only Google search engine that has keyboard shortcuts: after clicking on a search result, type n and p to go to the next/previous match.


Related:
Google Code Search vs Krugle vs Koders

{ via Google Blogoscoped }

Google's April Fools' Day Hoaxes Go International

Google has a long history of April Fools' Day hoaxes, but this year there's something different: many Google offices from outside of US have created their own tricks.

1. Google Japan added a special Universal Search result for Dajare, "a kind of comic Japanese wordplay, similar in spirit to an English pun relying on similarities in the pronunciation of words to create a simple joke".


2. Google China's blog describes a social search engine that would replace Google's algorithms. "We sort of search results purely from a human decision, [without] machine's intervention."


3. Google Australia announces gDay, a new feature of Google that lets you search today the web pages published tomorrow. "Google spiders crawl publicly available web information and our index of historic, cached web content. Using a mashup of numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis, online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now. We can use this technique to predict almost anything on the web – tomorrow's share price movements, sports results or news events. Plus, using language regression analysis, Google can even predict the actual wording of blogs and newspaper columns, 24 hours before they're written!"


4. Google Korea found a new technology for translating dialects that was integrated in Gmail and Google Talk.

But Google's US teams didn't lose their humor.

5. Google's main blog announces Virgle. "Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars."


6. Google Docs has a new option: create a new airplane. For now, the only model available is the one below:



7. If Google Australia lets you see the future, Gmail gives you the option to change the past with Gmail Custom Time. "Just click Set custom time from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox."


8. YouTube tries to rickroll everyone by linking all the featured videos from the homepage to Rick Astley's (in)famous song "Never Gonna Give You Up".

9. Google Book Search has a new feature: capturing a book's smell. "I'm pleased to let you know that we've made some headway with one type of volume we've struggled with in the past: books employing scratch-and-sniff technology. Using special equipment and tricky JavaScript, we're now able to capture some of the smells during the scanning process and then embed them in your web browser when you preview these titles in Google Book Search."


10. Google Calendar launches a wake up kit. "The wake up notification uses several progressively more annoying alerts to wake you up. First it will send an SMS message to your phone. If that fails, more coercive means will be used. The kit includes an industrial-sized bucket and is designed to be connected to your water main for automatic filling. In addition, a bed-flipping device is included for forceful removal from your sleeping quarters."

11. There's also a new "I'm Feeling Lucky" button that lets you automatically add events like "Date with Eric Cartman".



13. Google Talk goes green by launching a bot that translates conversations into the IM lingo. "In honor of Earth Day (3 weeks from today: April 22, 2008), on that day our Google Talk servers will start automatically sending your conversations using IM-speak instead of normal words. We know you'll all want to practice your IM-speak, so we're helping by introducing a new translation bot, en2im@bot.talk.google.com, which will translate your conversations into IM-speak, to help you get used to the new lingo." LOL!



14. orkut makes fun of its strange name and replaces it with "yogurt". In 2006, Loren Baker posted 10 reasons why Brazilians love orkut. Among them, "Orkut sounds like Yakult or iogurte (yogurt). Yakult is the Brazilian version of the popular Japanese Yakult yogurt drink. Everyone drinks it in Brazil when they're kids."


15. Blogger announces Google Weblogs, a service that lets you post content directly in Google's results. "We'll automatically extract the most relevant sentence from your post for the index page, along with any necessary ellipsis. We'll also put some words in bold!"


16. AdSense launched contextual ads for conversations. "You can begin displaying ads that are relevant to the topics you're discussing -- in an unobtrusive screen above your head. Anyone taking part in the conversation can hit the ad with their hand to immediately take advantage of the product or service being offered. With our new Teleportation Technology(TM), you'll be transported directly to the site where the service is available, or have the product appear instantaneously in your hands."

17. AdWords introduced FrankRank, a new way to rank ads. "AdWords rankings are now based on how well a particular ad goes with mashed potatoes and gravy... and quite frankly, how much I like the ad. Some people thought this connection between mashed potatoes and bids was confusing, but since it's really all about what I like, I figured we'd just name it after me," explained Frank the turkey, the new official mascot of Google AdWords.

18. Hopefully, there's no #18.

If I were to choose the best April Fools' Day 2008 hoax from Google, I'd go with Google Australia's gDay. I had a similar idea for this year: monitoring how web pages evolve and predicting how they look in the future, but I decided not to use it.

{ Thanks to everyone who sent tips. }

Offline Google Docs

{ Screenshot licensed as Creative Commons by TJ Blog. More screenshots. }

Google Docs will slowly roll out an option to view and edit documents offline using Google Gears. Unlike the Google Reader implementation, Google Gears will automatically detect when you're offline and will take care of constantly downloading the changes so that your documents are available locally.

When you are offline, you can access your documents by simply going to docs.google.com or by clicking on a desktop shortcut. The documents can be edited offline and Google will try to solve the conflicts if your collaborators edited the documents while you were offline. "In the case where your edits conflict with another collaborator's, you will see [a message]. If you'd like to keep your changes, you have the option of copying them into the document. Also, you can click Show differences to compare different revisions and revert to the one you want," explains Google.

Google Docs blog lists some potential use cases. "It's all pretty seamless: I don't have to remember to save my documents locally before packing my laptop for a trip. I don't have to remember to save my changes as soon as I get back online. And I don't have to switch applications based on network connectivity. With the extra peace of mind, I can more fully rely on this tool for my important documents."

Hopefully you're luckier than me and you see an "Offline" like at the top of Google Docs' homepage. If you get access to the offline Google Docs, share screenshots and opinions in the comments. Don't forget that when you are offline, your documents are available by simply visiting docs.google.com and without entering your Google password. For now, spreadsheets and presentations aren't accessible offline.



Update: Google Docs offline guide.

OpenGoogle

After launching OpenSocial and creating the Open Handset Alliance, Google prepares to launch a platform that opens its most valuable service: the web search engine. The project, dubbed as OpenGoogle, will allow anyone to create a search engine that uses Google's index, but has a custom ranking algorithm and a personalized interface. You'll be able to select from a list of approximately 100 ranking signals like: the page's self-importance, the number of original ideas, the IQs of their authors, the number of links from Wikipedia, and decide their importance. The search engine can also learn from users' feedback and self-adjust the ranking weights.

Google wants to extend the existing Custom Search engines and let its users create some of the best vertical search engines. Obviously, this is also a great way to find new ideas, but, more importantly, Google hopes to accelerate the development of the next generation of its search engine, which will have a different interface and a different ranking algorithm, depending on the query.

"A fresh approach to fostering innovation in search will help shape a new computing environment that will change the way people access information in the future. Our vision is that the powerful platform we're unveiling will power thousands of different search engines," said Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO.

Even if Google's ranking algorithms will still remain a mystery, we'll have access to a powerful platform similar to the one used by Google to deliver search results in less than a quarter of a second.

For some countries, there's also AlmostOpenGoogle, which uses a slightly modified version of Google's index that doesn't include sites blacklisted by the government.

Along with Yahoo, Google will create the OpenAnything Foundation, a non-profit organization that intends to develop new initiatives for making the world more open and less interested in companies with an inappropriate and illegal influence over the world.

I didn't manage to find the link for the new service, but http://www.google.com/open doesn't seem to be about openness.

{ Logo by Ruth Kedar. }

Google Still Doesn't Know Where to Place Related Searches

Google tries to place the related searches in a more prominent position, but it hasn't figured out what's the right place. Related searches are currently displayed at the bottom of the search results pages and include queries that narrow or expand your search.

Last year, Google added two experimental views that placed the related searches at the left and at the right of the page.




The two experiments have been removed from Google Labs and now Google tests another location: below the search box.


Some people also noticed that Google Suggest is tested as a default feature. In many cases, there are overlaps between the related searches and the suggestions, but Google Suggests hopes to improve your query before you perform a search.

Last year, Yahoo added a search assistent that combines autocomplete with related searches and only appears if you type some letters from a word and then stop for a couple of seconds. Even before Yahoo introduced Search Assist, the innovative Ask.com implemented an entire sidebar that makes it easy to find related names, concepts and other suggestions.

Improving queries by making them more precise is a major challenge for search engines, who often have to find answers for queries like [Vista], [guitar] or [car].

Optimize Google Desktop for Search

The latest version of Google Desktop no longer enables by default the desktop search engine probably because it uses too many resources. I thought this is a good opportunity to list some ways you could improve Google Desktop's performance, especially if you want to use it as a search engine and not as a widget engine.

When you install Google Desktop 5.5 for Windows, the enhanced search option is disabled and you should leave it that way for now. If you don't need the sidebar with gadgets, disable the option from Google Desktop's setup wizard.

Google Desktop will only index the shortcuts from the Start Menu, the entries from Control Panel. To enable the indexing of your files, right click on the system tray icon, select "Options" and click on the check box next to "Enable Enhanced Content Indexing". Some other relevant options:

* Disable the search types you don't find useful. "Web history" indexes all the web pages that you load in Internet Explorer and Firefox, so it uses a lot of disk space. If you use Outlook or other email clients and you don't want to index the email messages from your computer, disable the "email" options. Google Desktop can also search Microsoft Outlook's Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Journal, and Notes, so disable these search types if you're satisfied with Outlook's search options.

* Exclude folders from indexing. Since Google Desktop tries to index files from your entire hard disk, it's important to exclude the folders that don't contain useful files for a desktop search engine. Some examples:
C:\Program Files\ (don't exclude it if you use Google Desktop to launch apps)
C:\Windows\ (don't exclude it if you use Google Desktop to launch apps)
C:\ProgramData\ (in Vista)
D:\ (if D: is used for backup)

* Exclude file extensions from indexing. There's no option for this in the interface, but you can edit this Registry key and add other extensions you want to exclude. The default excluded extensions are: tmp, temp, moztmp, log, pst, ost, oab, nk2, dat, 000, pf, xml, obj, pdb, tlb, pcc, pch, exp, res, map, sconsign, msf. You can also disable other extensions that aren't associated with useful content: bak, chk, old, gid, prv, wbk, dll.

The Registry value can be found at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Desktop\file_extensions_to_skip

* Disable the Google integration. By default, Google performs a desktop search every time you search the web and it displays some results from your computer in an OneBox, above the web search results. If you want faster Google searches, less computer resources used to search your desktop and less embarrassing moments when someone else temporarily uses your computer, you can disable the integration.

* More screen space. To disable the taskbar and show the search box by pressing Ctrl twice, select "None" for the "Display Mode". You can also disable the gadgets button if you don't use the sidebar.

* Disable Safe Browsing. Google downloads and automatically updates a database of URLs that are used for phishing or for distributing malware and shows you a warning when you visit one of these web pages. If you use other security software or your browser has anti-phishing protection, you can disable this option.

* Save preferences. Google Desktop will only index files when your computer is idle. "Assuming you leave your computer on, Google Desktop should need only a few days to create your initial index. This initial indexing process occurs only when your computer is idle, so you may want to leave your computer on for an evening or two after you install Google Desktop," explains Google's help center.

If you already have Google Desktop, excluding folders and file extensions will not remove entries from the index, so the best way to clean your index is to delete it and rebuild it. Close Google Desktop by selecting "Exit" from the system tray menu and delete this folder:

%APPDATA%\Google\Google Desktop\ (Windows XP)
or
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Google Desktop\ (Windows Vista)

After reopening Google Desktop, choose "Re-index" from the system tray menu.

Not Your Ordinary Google Interface

Google's interface is available in 116 languages, but some of them are extinct, artificial or invented languages. You can set any language as default by going to the preferences page, but if you don't know how to go back to the original language, select "Google.com in English" from the homepage to reset the language to English or delete your Google cookie.

Extinct languages

The latin interface is monumental and it makes Google more trustworthy and knowledgeable.



Artificial languages

Google in Esperanto is very laconic and it even offers the option to restrict your search to web pages written in Esperanto.

The Interlingua interface uses an auxiliary languages that was created as a common denominator for Romanic languages. "With Interlingua an objective procedure is used to extract and standardize the most widespread word or words for a concept found in a set of control languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, with German and Russian as secondary references," explains Wikipedia.

Fictional languages

For Star Trek's fans, there's a Klingon Google. Klingon is an artificial language that has its own sounds, rules and words. "A small number of people, mostly dedicated Star Trek fans or language aficionados, can converse in Klingon. Its vocabulary, heavily centered on Star Trek or 'Klingon' concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, can sometimes make it cumbersome for everyday use — for instance, while there are words for transporter ionizer unit (jolvoy') or bridge (of a ship) (meH), there is currently no word for bridge (that you drive over). Nonetheless, mundane conversations are common among skilled speakers." Marc Okrand, who invented the language, explains more about its meaning in an interesting video.


Bork, Bork, Bork! is the language of Swedish Chef, a character from the Muppet Show. "Nearly all Swedish Chef sketches begin with him in a kitchen, waving some utensils while singing his signature song in a trademark mock Swedish — a semi-comprehensible gibberish which parodies the characteristic vowel sounds of Swedish. The song's lyrics vary slightly from one episode to the next, but always end with börk! börk! börk! as the Chef throws the utensils aside." You can find Swedish Chef sketches at YouTube and install a cool Firefox extension that translates the content of web pages to Bork.

Elmer Fudd is a cartoon character. "He has one of the more convoluted and disputed origins in the Warner Brothers cartoon pantheon (second only to Bugs Bunny himself). His aim is to shoot Bugs, but he usually ends up seriously injuring himself. His stock line is: Shhhhhhhh, be vewwwy, vewwwy quiet; I'm hunting wabbits, heheheheheheh, although it varies in certain cartoons." This Bugs Bunny episode shows Elmer Fudd trying to capture the "scwewy wabbit".


Language games

The Pig Latin language has its roots in Britain and was initially used by criminals as a simple way to encrypt their messages. The rules are simple: if the word starts with a consonant, it's placed at the end and is followed by ay; if the word starts with a vowel, way is appended to the word. For example, Web becomes Ebway.


Internet languages

Google's hacker interface was an obvious choice for a company with a culture that encourages hacking. According to Wikipedia, leet "is a written argot used primarily on the Internet, which uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters. The term is derived from the word elite, and the usage it describes is a specialized form of symbolic writing." There's no unique way to translate words into leet, but some of the most popular rules are to replace letters with digits or other symbols that look similar (for example, g -> 6, o -> 0, l -> 7, e -> 3). A simple way to access Google's leet interface is to go to 600673.com.


Unfortunately, most of Google's recent services aren't available in any of these languages, so you'll only be able to see Google Search, Image Search and Google Directory. The Google in your language program, which allows anyone to translate the messages from Google's services, includes these languages, but the translations aren't live for Gmail, Google Video etc.