Fortunately, you don't have stay a week without Google, but this blog takes a break for a week.
A Week Without Google
What would you miss the most if your ISP blocked all Google services for a week? Among other things, the search engine would no longer work, Gmail's web interface wouldn't load, YouTube videos would be blocked, web pages would load slower because the Analytics tracking code would no longer work, all the Google Maps mashups would be completely useless for you.
Fortunately, you don't have stay a week without Google, but this blog takes a break for a week.
Fortunately, you don't have stay a week without Google, but this blog takes a break for a week.
Replacing Desktop Software with Web Applications
Note: This blog takes a break for a week. If you find something interesting related to Google, send a mail to the address from the sidebar.
Web applications aren't, in most cases, real replacements for desktop software. Google Docs or Zoho will never be as fast, as powerful or as easy to use as Microsoft Office or OpenOffice, but their other strengths could convince some people to use them.
On the other hand, Gmail and Google Reader could easily replace many desktop email clients and feed readers, as most of the time when you read your mail or news you're online.
Browsers' limitations, security risks, latency, the lack of offline access are serious problems that won't be solved too soon and will continue to prevent many web applications to become real alternatives for their desktop relatives.
Did you replace a desktop application with a web app that has a similar functionality? What desktop applications do you think will become obsolete in 5 years?
(Originally published in August 2007)
Web applications aren't, in most cases, real replacements for desktop software. Google Docs or Zoho will never be as fast, as powerful or as easy to use as Microsoft Office or OpenOffice, but their other strengths could convince some people to use them.
On the other hand, Gmail and Google Reader could easily replace many desktop email clients and feed readers, as most of the time when you read your mail or news you're online.
Browsers' limitations, security risks, latency, the lack of offline access are serious problems that won't be solved too soon and will continue to prevent many web applications to become real alternatives for their desktop relatives.
Did you replace a desktop application with a web app that has a similar functionality? What desktop applications do you think will become obsolete in 5 years?
(Originally published in August 2007)
Google Reader Adds the Blogs You Follow in Blogger
Google Reader tests a new feature that automatically subscribes you to the "blogs you are following" in Blogger. "The blogs you follow in Blogger have been added as subscriptions in Google Reader. Subscriptions can be managed in Reader without affecting your following list in Blogger."
It's not very clear if "blogs you are following" is a new feature or a synonymous for blogroll, since Google Reader links to a non-existent page that is supposed to reveal more information. A thread from Google Reader Group shows that the new feature was accidentally added and then removed.
"Google Reader automatically added a "Blogs I'm Following" folder on my Reader. I've already got my Reader set up the way I want it and this folder is superfluous and annoying," says Vanessa. "It would be nice if they gave us the option of using it before they just took it over that way! There is no mention of it in any of their help files either, this is just ridiculous," mentions Jackie.
The following screenshot, courtesy of "The Other Drummer", shows the new folder automatically added by Google Reader:
http://www.google.com/reader/view/user/-/state/com.blogger/following.
In other Google Reader news, the iPhone version started to reformat the linked web pages for mobile browser, but this can be changed in the settings. "For users with Nokia and other AppleWebKit-enabled phones, soon your phones won't automatically choose the iPhone version of Google Reader," says a Google employee.
{ Thanks, hlpPy. }
It's not very clear if "blogs you are following" is a new feature or a synonymous for blogroll, since Google Reader links to a non-existent page that is supposed to reveal more information. A thread from Google Reader Group shows that the new feature was accidentally added and then removed.
"Google Reader automatically added a "Blogs I'm Following" folder on my Reader. I've already got my Reader set up the way I want it and this folder is superfluous and annoying," says Vanessa. "It would be nice if they gave us the option of using it before they just took it over that way! There is no mention of it in any of their help files either, this is just ridiculous," mentions Jackie.
The following screenshot, courtesy of "The Other Drummer", shows the new folder automatically added by Google Reader:
http://www.google.com/reader/view/user/-/state/com.blogger/following.
In other Google Reader news, the iPhone version started to reformat the linked web pages for mobile browser, but this can be changed in the settings. "For users with Nokia and other AppleWebKit-enabled phones, soon your phones won't automatically choose the iPhone version of Google Reader," says a Google employee.
{ Thanks, hlpPy. }
Bypass Gmail's Spam Filter
If you wanted a way to bypass Gmail's spam filter, now it's possible. Just create a filter that describes the cases when Gmail should not flag the incoming messages as spam and then check "Never send it to spam". To bypass the filter for all the messages flagged as spam, type label:spam in the "Has the words" input box.
I intended to use the new option for my secondary Gmail accounts that automatically forward messages to my main account, but it doesn't seem to work. Until now, the spam messages were not forwarded and I didn't receive many important messages that were mistakenly flagged as spam. Since I can't bypass the spam filter and forward the messages to a different account, another idea would be to use Gmail's mail fetcher for my main account and download the messages from the secondary accounts.
There's one situation that doesn't require to set up a filter: if the messages from certain senders are constantly flagged as spam and they shouldn't be, just add them to your contacts list.
{ via Blogoscoped Forum }
I intended to use the new option for my secondary Gmail accounts that automatically forward messages to my main account, but it doesn't seem to work. Until now, the spam messages were not forwarded and I didn't receive many important messages that were mistakenly flagged as spam. Since I can't bypass the spam filter and forward the messages to a different account, another idea would be to use Gmail's mail fetcher for my main account and download the messages from the secondary accounts.
There's one situation that doesn't require to set up a filter: if the messages from certain senders are constantly flagged as spam and they shouldn't be, just add them to your contacts list.
{ via Blogoscoped Forum }
More Options for Printing Directions in Google Maps
Google Maps has changed the layout to the one tested in May. The new interface is less cluttered and it emphasizes the powerful search box that can be used for finding businesses, locating addresses and even for directions. For some strange reason, the directions can't be collapsed and you can no longer reorder the destinations if you enter more than two.
When you print the directions, you'll notice that there are more options: Google can display a map or street view imagery for every step or only for some of the steps. There's also an option to print a large road map. Google suggests to "save trees and go green" by downloading the mobile Google Maps application and using it to get driving directions.
{ Thanks, Tim and Mark. }
When you print the directions, you'll notice that there are more options: Google can display a map or street view imagery for every step or only for some of the steps. There's also an option to print a large road map. Google suggests to "save trees and go green" by downloading the mobile Google Maps application and using it to get driving directions.
{ Thanks, Tim and Mark. }
Cuil's Query Suggestions
One of the few things that are interesting about Cuil, the search engine launched two days ago, is the query suggestions feature. Most search engines suggest queries using a list of popular searches, but Cuil didn't have this option. The site obtained the suggestions by compiling a list of n-grams from web pages. For example, if you type "web images", you'll get a lot of variations of Google's navigation bar. A Google search for "web images * * *" returns similar results.
A simple way to view just the suggestions is to use:
http://www.cuil.com/suggest?q=click here (replace "click here" with your search). You'll notice that the results are very different than the suggestions from Yahoo, Google or Ask.
A simple way to view just the suggestions is to use:
http://www.cuil.com/suggest?q=click here (replace "click here" with your search). You'll notice that the results are very different than the suggestions from Yahoo, Google or Ask.
Finally, Google!
All the rumors about Google are true. Or at least most of them. I've finally decided to collect some excerpts from news articles and blog posts that announce a new Google service or a new feature and start with "Google has finally". In retrospect, everything seems obvious probably because Google set the bar so high that nothing seems impossible.
#1 "Google has finally launched the long-awaited Lively virtual reality service."
#2 "Google has finally added a link to its privacy policy on its home page."
#3 "Google has finally remembered it has an IM client, releasing a Labs test of a new version of Google Talk."
#4 "Google has finally released its long awaited answer to Amazon's web services."
#5 "Google has finally released a version of its Google Desktop search for Mac OS X users."
#6 "Google has finally enabled offline access to Google Docs using their Google Gears plug-in."
#7 "To google has finally been added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary."
#8 "Google has finally added the long-awaited search box to their popular web-based RSS reader."
#9 "Google has finally come out with Street View."
#10 "Google has finally opened up Orkut subscription for all users."
#11 "Google has finally proved its seriousness about healthcare by opening Google Health release to general public."
#12 "Google has finally launched Google Finance, its Yahoo Finance slayer."
#13 "Google has finally announced its open-source mobile phone software, Android."
#14 "In addition to giving us ever-growing amounts of e-mail space, Google has finally added IMAP access to Gmail."
#15 "Google has finally posted a public message about their new favicon on their official Blog."
#16 "Google has finally released a product/service that is NOT stamped with a 'beta' moniker - Google Checkout."
#17 "Google has finally begun introducing some support for Boolean operators with the addition of an OR operator." (that's from January 2001)
#18 "It may have taken 16 months, but Google has finally done something with its JotSpot acquisition."
#19 "Google has finally announced their long anticipated paypal killer. The name: Google Checkout."
#20 "After gangbuster earnings quarter after quarter, search king Google has finally disappointed Wall Street."
#21 "Google has finally released a beta version of its long-awaited and much anticipated blog search, two years after it acquired the popular Blogger technology."
#22 "Google has finally lifted the invitation-only restriction on opening Gmail accounts."
#23 "Google has finally revealed its hand in the scholarly research market, unveiling a beta search site called Google Scholar."
#24 "Google has finally made another acquisition, and this time, the lucky target was a company known as Jaiku."
#25 "It took nearly a decade, but Internet giant Google is finally honoring Veterans Day with a special holiday design for its famous logo."
#26 "Synchronization is probably the most requested feature for Google Calendar and Google has finally done something about it." (other contexts from this blog)
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Google has finally launched a browser, an operating system, a time travel machine or that it has finally released a search engine for obvious news.
#1 "Google has finally launched the long-awaited Lively virtual reality service."
#2 "Google has finally added a link to its privacy policy on its home page."
#3 "Google has finally remembered it has an IM client, releasing a Labs test of a new version of Google Talk."
#4 "Google has finally released its long awaited answer to Amazon's web services."
#5 "Google has finally released a version of its Google Desktop search for Mac OS X users."
#6 "Google has finally enabled offline access to Google Docs using their Google Gears plug-in."
#7 "To google has finally been added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary."
#8 "Google has finally added the long-awaited search box to their popular web-based RSS reader."
#9 "Google has finally come out with Street View."
#10 "Google has finally opened up Orkut subscription for all users."
#11 "Google has finally proved its seriousness about healthcare by opening Google Health release to general public."
#12 "Google has finally launched Google Finance, its Yahoo Finance slayer."
#13 "Google has finally announced its open-source mobile phone software, Android."
#14 "In addition to giving us ever-growing amounts of e-mail space, Google has finally added IMAP access to Gmail."
#15 "Google has finally posted a public message about their new favicon on their official Blog."
#16 "Google has finally released a product/service that is NOT stamped with a 'beta' moniker - Google Checkout."
#17 "Google has finally begun introducing some support for Boolean operators with the addition of an OR operator." (that's from January 2001)
#18 "It may have taken 16 months, but Google has finally done something with its JotSpot acquisition."
#19 "Google has finally announced their long anticipated paypal killer. The name: Google Checkout."
#20 "After gangbuster earnings quarter after quarter, search king Google has finally disappointed Wall Street."
#21 "Google has finally released a beta version of its long-awaited and much anticipated blog search, two years after it acquired the popular Blogger technology."
#22 "Google has finally lifted the invitation-only restriction on opening Gmail accounts."
#23 "Google has finally revealed its hand in the scholarly research market, unveiling a beta search site called Google Scholar."
#24 "Google has finally made another acquisition, and this time, the lucky target was a company known as Jaiku."
#25 "It took nearly a decade, but Internet giant Google is finally honoring Veterans Day with a special holiday design for its famous logo."
#26 "Synchronization is probably the most requested feature for Google Calendar and Google has finally done something about it." (other contexts from this blog)
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Google has finally launched a browser, an operating system, a time travel machine or that it has finally released a search engine for obvious news.
Cuil, a New Search Engine
Cuil, the start-up founded by Tom Costello and two former Google employees: Anna Patterson and Russell Power, unveiled a search engine that claims to have more than 120 billion pages in the index. According to Cuil, that's "three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft."
At Google, Anna Patterson designed TeraGoogle, a system that is able to index a large number of documents, while Russell Power worked on web ranking and automatic spam detection.
"Cuil's goal is to solve the two great problems of search: how to index the whole Internet - not just part of it - and how to analyze and sort out its pages so you get relevant results." Cuil thinks that today's search engines can't index all the information that is available on the web (more than one trillion pages, according to Google). Even Google admits that it's selective: "many [web pages] are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content that isn't very useful to searchers".
Regarding ranking, Cuil combines metrics that measure popularity with information about the context of each web page. "Cuil prefers to find all the pages with your keyword or phrase and then analyze the rest of the content on those pages. During this analysis we discover that your keywords have different meanings in different contexts. Once we've established the context of the pages, we're in a much better position to help you in your search."
The most striking new idea is the way search results are formatted. Instead of the ten blue links displayed linearly, Cuil makes better use of the space by using columns. The search engine also shows thumbnails next to some of the results, but they don't always represent images included in the adjacent web page. Another interesting idea is the explorative category section that shows related Wikipedia categories and topics. Cuil has an excellent auto-complete feature and it displays a list of related searches using an design pattern that suggests exploration.
It's probably not fair to compare Cuil with Google, but when Google was launched, users could see substantially better results. Cuil returns results that are either similar to Google's results or substantially worse. In some cases, the site doesn't return any result for your queries, probably because of the huge traffic from the launch day.
Cuil has problems with relevancy, spam, robots.txt (the site indexes albums from Picasa Web) and the number of search results for almost every query is smaller than the number of Google results. This is especially obvious for queries that return a small number of results:
[louis monier altavista research labs]:
- Google: 609 results
- Cuil: 8 results
[teragoogle]
- Google: 634 results
- Cuil: 42 results
All in all, Cuil is the best search engine launched this year, but it doesn't offer convincing reasons to switch from Google. If Cuil focuses on developing technologies that allow faster indexing of web pages, it's probably the perfect match for existing search engines with less frequently updated indexes like Live Search or Ask.com.
Related:
Cuil launches - can this search start-up really best Google?
Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search
TechCrunch's coverage
Cuil shows us how not to launch a search engine
At Google, Anna Patterson designed TeraGoogle, a system that is able to index a large number of documents, while Russell Power worked on web ranking and automatic spam detection.
"Cuil's goal is to solve the two great problems of search: how to index the whole Internet - not just part of it - and how to analyze and sort out its pages so you get relevant results." Cuil thinks that today's search engines can't index all the information that is available on the web (more than one trillion pages, according to Google). Even Google admits that it's selective: "many [web pages] are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content that isn't very useful to searchers".
Regarding ranking, Cuil combines metrics that measure popularity with information about the context of each web page. "Cuil prefers to find all the pages with your keyword or phrase and then analyze the rest of the content on those pages. During this analysis we discover that your keywords have different meanings in different contexts. Once we've established the context of the pages, we're in a much better position to help you in your search."
The most striking new idea is the way search results are formatted. Instead of the ten blue links displayed linearly, Cuil makes better use of the space by using columns. The search engine also shows thumbnails next to some of the results, but they don't always represent images included in the adjacent web page. Another interesting idea is the explorative category section that shows related Wikipedia categories and topics. Cuil has an excellent auto-complete feature and it displays a list of related searches using an design pattern that suggests exploration.
It's probably not fair to compare Cuil with Google, but when Google was launched, users could see substantially better results. Cuil returns results that are either similar to Google's results or substantially worse. In some cases, the site doesn't return any result for your queries, probably because of the huge traffic from the launch day.
Cuil has problems with relevancy, spam, robots.txt (the site indexes albums from Picasa Web) and the number of search results for almost every query is smaller than the number of Google results. This is especially obvious for queries that return a small number of results:
[louis monier altavista research labs]:
- Google: 609 results
- Cuil: 8 results
[teragoogle]
- Google: 634 results
- Cuil: 42 results
All in all, Cuil is the best search engine launched this year, but it doesn't offer convincing reasons to switch from Google. If Cuil focuses on developing technologies that allow faster indexing of web pages, it's probably the perfect match for existing search engines with less frequently updated indexes like Live Search or Ask.com.
Related:
Cuil launches - can this search start-up really best Google?
Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search
TechCrunch's coverage
Cuil shows us how not to launch a search engine
Google Calendar Adds CalDAV Support
After many months of testing, Google Calendar finally adds CalDAV support. "CalDAV is an open protocol that allows calendar access via WebDAV. CalDAV models calendar events as HTTP resources in iCalendar format, and models calendars containing events as WebDAV collections. This allows you to publish and subscribe to calendars, share them collaboratively, sync between multiple users and sync between multiple devices."
For now, the only application supported by Google Calendar is Apple's iCal. "With CalDAV support in Google Calendar, you'll be able to view and edit your Google Calendar events directly in iCal. Any changes you make in iCal will automatically appear in Google Calendar the next time you sign in (and vice versa). If you use iCal while offline, changes you make will be saved and updated in Google Calendar when you get back online."
Rick Vugteveen tested the new feature and found that the 2 way synchronization works well, but there are some problems. "The largest issue that I had is that I needed to create a new CalDav server account for every calendar in Google Calendar. Not only did this make further setup cumbersome, it degraded the iCal UI as a 1-1 relationship between each folder (server) and calendar is created. Normal re-ordering and organization of calendars does not work with this setup so be careful with the order you enter your calendars. This multiple server setup also removed the ability to move events between different calendars within iCal."
This page provides instructions for adding your calendars in iCal and you should also read the known issues.
Google Calendar also provides basic applications for synchronizing data with Blackberry devices and Outlook, but there are many third-party applications that use Google's API to add more advanced functionality: Spanning Sync (iCal - $25/year), BusySync (iCal - $25), Calgoo (iCal/Outlook - free), SyncMyCal (Outlook - $25), gSyncit (Outlook - $10), GCALDaemon (cross-platform/open source), Plaxo (cross-platform/free), GCalSync (Java mobile app - open source), GooSync (SyncML service/mobile app - £20/year), GMobileSync (Windows Mobile - open source), OggSync (Windows Mobile/Outlook - $30/year).
For now, the only application supported by Google Calendar is Apple's iCal. "With CalDAV support in Google Calendar, you'll be able to view and edit your Google Calendar events directly in iCal. Any changes you make in iCal will automatically appear in Google Calendar the next time you sign in (and vice versa). If you use iCal while offline, changes you make will be saved and updated in Google Calendar when you get back online."
Rick Vugteveen tested the new feature and found that the 2 way synchronization works well, but there are some problems. "The largest issue that I had is that I needed to create a new CalDav server account for every calendar in Google Calendar. Not only did this make further setup cumbersome, it degraded the iCal UI as a 1-1 relationship between each folder (server) and calendar is created. Normal re-ordering and organization of calendars does not work with this setup so be careful with the order you enter your calendars. This multiple server setup also removed the ability to move events between different calendars within iCal."
This page provides instructions for adding your calendars in iCal and you should also read the known issues.
Google Calendar also provides basic applications for synchronizing data with Blackberry devices and Outlook, but there are many third-party applications that use Google's API to add more advanced functionality: Spanning Sync (iCal - $25/year), BusySync (iCal - $25), Calgoo (iCal/Outlook - free), SyncMyCal (Outlook - $25), gSyncit (Outlook - $10), GCALDaemon (cross-platform/open source), Plaxo (cross-platform/free), GCalSync (Java mobile app - open source), GooSync (SyncML service/mobile app - £20/year), GMobileSync (Windows Mobile - open source), OggSync (Windows Mobile/Outlook - $30/year).
Google News Source Filtering
When you view a cluster in Google News, there's a new option to filter sources: you can restrict news articles to blogs and to local news sites that are relevant to your query. The filters are a good way to find opinionated articles and more up-to-date information from local sites.
Here's an example of cluster that groups articles about some new information regarding last week's Qantas Airways flight that was forced to make an emergency landing in Manila. Google shows three filters: blogs, Australia (Qantas is the national airline of Australia) and Manila, Philippines.
There's also a search box that is supposed to let you find articles from the cluster, but it doesn't work properly right now.
Here's an example of cluster that groups articles about some new information regarding last week's Qantas Airways flight that was forced to make an emergency landing in Manila. Google shows three filters: blogs, Australia (Qantas is the national airline of Australia) and Manila, Philippines.
There's also a search box that is supposed to let you find articles from the cluster, but it doesn't work properly right now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)