Easy Way to Access Google Sites

Many Google product names have become synonymous with the word itself. Maps means for many people Google Maps, analytics means Google Analytics. Search results reflect that. If a Google product is named "Google X" and you search for X, there's a big chance that the first result will be the site of that service.

Google has a feature called "Browser by name", included in Internet Explorer or Firefox if you have Google Toolbar and in Firefox 2.0 (no need for Google Toolbar). If you want to add it to Firefox 1.5, follow the tip #2 from my list of Firefox tips.

"Browse by Name helps you find a site even when you don't know its URL. Just type the site name into your browser address bar, and Toolbar will take you there automatically. For instance, try typing oxford into the address bar to go directly to the university's home page at www.ox.ac.uk. If you type in something that doesn't have an official home page, like digital cameras, Browse by Name will automatically show you search results for that term."

And it's interesting to see that if you type maps in the address bar, Browse by Name will send you to Google Maps, although maps is a general term.

Here's a list of product names that send you to Google if you type them in the address bar. This is a simple way to get to Google's sites and it's faster than using bookmarks.

image	maps	local
video	groups	froogle
desktop	writely	picasa
earth	blogger	scholar
gmail	talk	alerts
analytics	sets	trends
labs	suggest	more
pack	checkout	toolbar

Although Google sites are the top results for the next keywords, Browse by Name sends you to Google search: spreadsheets, blog, notebook, pages.

It's really interesting to see simple English words transformed into Google brands. Google has become a word, after being just a brand and now simple words become brands. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, all I know is that if I type more in my address bar, I'll get the list of Google products and that's really cool. More to come.

Satellite Imagery Update in Google Maps

Google Earth Blog reports that there's a big update for satellite photos in Google Maps and Google Earth. There are many areas that have high resolution images, including small cities from US like Keene (New Hampshire). The satellite imagery has been updated in Belgium, Norway, Japan and many other countries. So if you see new images from your country in Google Maps or Google Earth, it means you're also a part of this update.

Related:
Google Earth 4
View geographic data on Google Maps
Flickr adds geotagging

Google Recommendations

Google has created a new module for the personalized homepage that shows you recommendations, based on your search history, your location and on the search history of similar users.

The module called "Interesting things for you" features searches, web pages, and gadgets. The searches were previously available in Search History Trends and included the top gaining queries related to your searches. So the recommended items have two qualities: they are popular and related to your searches.

This reminded me of Amazon recommendations and the power of personalized recommendations. Of course, in this case, Google doesn't want to sell anything. It just wants to use the information from your profile for interesting things, and I'm sure there are more things to come in this area. After "Suggested Google Groups", "Recommended Google News", this is another recommendation system that uses implicit data collection (no work from the user).

Fast Disk Defragmenters

To speed up your computer, it's always a good idea to defragment your hard-drive at least once a week. Windows has a defragmenting tool based on a commercial software, but it's too slow.

Fortunately, there are better alternatives. Auslogics Disk Defrag is a freeware for Windows 2000/ XP/ Vista with a simple interface, that runs much faster than the built-in defragmenter. You can't defragment more than one partion at a time or set advanced options, but that also means it's easy to use. The program doesn't use too many resources, so you can continue your work.


Another good option is Power Defragmenter, a GUI for Contig (a program developed by SysInternals). The software allows you to defragment only a file, a folder, or a disk. You won't see a beautiful map of your disk. It's just a command-line utility that does its work quietly.

If you're wondering why Windows needs defragmenting and other operating systems like Linux don't, this article is a simple answer.

The Lesson of Windows Search

Microsoft has never considered search important. As a proof of this affirmation, here's how Windows XP handles this feature:

* no search box for Internet Explorer 6.

"If you want to find information quickly, you can type go, find, or ? followed by the text you want to search for, in the address bar of Internet Explorer," writes Windows XP Help. Or you can use the sidebar.

* inline search dialog that gets in your way (standard Find dialog)

* desktop search that doesn't use an index by default, so it's mostly useful to search file names. However, the UI has a cute dog.

* Windows indexing service is difficult to configure and consumes a lot of resources. It's also buggy.

In Vista, Microsoft shifted the priorities and decided to include a search box in IE7 that uses MSN Search by default. The indexing service has been improved and it's now enabled by default. There's a search box in most applications, in Windows Explorer, in the Start Menu, and Control Panel.



Microsoft seems to follow the reverse path: Google started with search, and now wants to convince people to use its applications. Microsoft started by developing applications, and now they want to do search.


Sergey Brin said in a Playboy interview: "Ironically, toward the end of the 1990s most of the portals started as search engines. Yahoo was the exception, but Excite, Infoseek, HotBot and Lycos began as search engines. They diversified and didn’t take searching as seriously as they should have. Searching was viewed as just another service, one of 100 different services. With 100 services, they assumed they would be 100 times as successful. But they learned that not all services are created equal. Finding information is much more important to most people than horoscopes, stock quotes or a whole range of other things—which all have merit, but searching is substantially more important. They lost sight of that. It’s why we started Google in the first place. We decided that searching is an important problem that requires serious concentration. That continues to be our focus."

My question would be: has Microsoft learned that search is important or they just use this feature to show they are a serious competitor to Google?

User Distributed Search

This project, known as Ajax Search API, wants to transform search results into a commodity. Imagine a site that lets you create your own playlist of videos from Google Video, or a comment form where you can embed information from search results without leaving the page.

"The Google AJAX Search API is an experimental API that lets you integrate a dynamic Google search module into your web pages so your users can mash up Google search results with other content on your site or add search results clippings to their own content."



The phone list from the video is actually a spreadsheet where you can copy results from Google Local. Imagine how this would look in Google Spreadsheets.

There are three gadgets for Google Personalized Homepage that use this API: video search that lets you create playlists based on search results, map search and the combined search (web, blogs, maps, videos).

I think Google UDS will have an interesting future and will be the foundation for many innovative mashups, like Google Maps API is today.

Google Spreadsheets Update

Google has added new features to its experimental Google Spreadsheets. The application preloads your Gmail contacts, so if you want to invite someone, the autocomplete helps you do that faster. You can now make public spreadsheets, that are visible to anyone who has a Google Account (read-only access).

If you want to show spreadsheets to people without specifically inviting them to edit or view, click "Show Sharing Options" to open the sharing options area. Check the "Let anyone view" option.

After you've selected this option, the URL of the current spreadsheet will be shown directly in the sharing options area. You can email or IM this URL to people or post it as a link on a web page. These URLs are also a bit shorter and easier to copy and paste than in previous versions.

Google has two new export formats: PDF and Open Document Format (ODS). There's also a print option available in the File menu.

The limit for imported files is now 1 MB for XLS and ODS files, and the maximum number of people that can simultaneously edit a spreadsheet increased to 50.

While it's good to see that Google updates Google Spreadsheets, I can't help notice there are still no charts and this new version is much less stable (it crashed IE and Firefox often).

Windows Vista Cheat Sheet

Now that Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 is available for everyone, the new operating system is getting closer to launch. Looking at the features and costs, I still fail to see the need for a resource-hungry Windows XP that has a fancy interface, "Google Desktop", some new applications and a better security.

Prices for Vista editions
* Vista Ultimate: $399 (upgrade $259)
* Vista Business: $299 (upgrade $199)
* Vista Home Premium: $239 (upgrade $159)
* Vista Home Basic: $199 (upgrade $99)

Requirements (for best experience)
* 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
* 1 GB of system memory
* Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory, Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel
* 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space

Features
* Windows Aero
* User Account Control
* IE7 (Protected Mode)
* Windows Defender
* Desktop search
* Gadgets
* Better file recovery
* Windows Media Center
* Photo album, calendar
* Parental controls
* more

SWOT

Strengths
* the first Windows that brings the Internet to the desktop
* focused on security

Weaknesses
* needs too many resources
* no killer-feature
* too many features left out

Opportunities
* promote Windows Live
* beat Google at its own game (search)

Threats
* Google makes the operating system irellevant

Screenshots from Vista RC1

Positive and negative feedback

Download Windows Vista RC1

Tips and tricks

Minimize Modules from Google Personalized Homepage

Google Personalized Homepage has added a new option: you can now minimize the modules (gadgets). This is useful if you have many modules or if some of your modules contain personal information and you don't want others to see it. Google has changed the design for the close button and for the edit link. You can see the previous design below:

Sites like Netvibes had this feature for a long time, and it's a rather obvious addition as modules are simplified windows that contain a small quantity of information. Another feature that should be added to Google IG is tabs, so you can have more than one personalized homepage.

Google Personalized Homepage also shows featured modules, a way to discover new content. It would be nice if Google's recommendations were personalized.

Google vs Yahoo

It's always interesting to compare two search engines. Some people say Yahoo Search is almost as good as Google Search, others say they show similar results. There are many sites that compare the results provided by the two search engines.


My favorite site is Google vs Yahoo, that uses Flash to compare the first 100 results.

GahooYoogle splits the screen in half and lets you compare the results for web search, image search, video search, news and shopping.

If you want to compare Google Maps with Yahoo Maps, Sergey Chernyshev's site is helpful. You'll notice that Google Maps' satellite imagery is better, especially in Europe.

Related:
Consistency vs innovation

Sandbox for Windows Applications

Sandboxie is a small program that lets you run any application in a sandbox. What does it mean? Instead of writing files to the normal location, the applications writes files to a sandbox, a temporary storage area. "Data flows in both directions between programs and the sandbox. During read operations, data may flow from the hard disk into the sandbox. But data never flows back from the sandbox into the hard disk."

If you launch an application in the sandbox, it won't be able to write configuration files, edit the Registry, edit files on your hard-disk. For example, if you launch Internet Explorer in the sandbox, you won't be able to install plug-ins or ActiveX controls, so it's useful to launch the browser in the sandbox if you visit potentially dangerous sites.

The application is also useful if you want to test programs you don't trust or if you want to run programs from your USB drive without leaving traces. You can then explore the sandbox, delete its content or recover files.

Sandboxie is not extremely stable, but it's a good solution for a small sandbox environment if you don't want to install a virtualization tool like VMWare.

[ Windows 2000/XP/2003, 242 KB, Freeware ]

Google Mobile Ads

After expanding the offering for mobile devices (web search, image search, news, local, personalized homepage, Gmail), Google intends to monetize their services. Entering Google Mobile Ads.

"Mobile ads are shorter text-based AdWords ads that appear when users search Google from a mobile device. Send users to your mobile web page, or offer them the option to connect to your business phone after clicking on your ad.

Mobile ads contain two lines of text, with a limit of 12 or 18 characters per line, depending on the language in which you write your ad. Your destination URL appears on a third line if you choose to enter one. If you select the option that allows customers to directly connect to your business phone, a Call link will appear next to your destination URL."

What's interesting is that mobile ads are a simplified version of the ads from the standard Google results page.

"When a user searches Google.com from a PC for your keywords, your standard text ads will appear alongside the search results. And when someone uses a mobile phone to search Google.com for your keywords, your mobile ads will appear."

Click-to-call, a feature that makes it easier for businesses to connect with customers, is more appropriate for mobile phones, where people don't have time to browse web pages and need information fast. Google also intends to use click-to-call VoIP ads on eBay.

For the moment, the ads are displayed only in Japan (a country where the Internet usage via mobile phones grows rapidly), but RCRNews.com reports that Google launched the service in the US:

"The Internet giant quietly launched the offering that allows AdWords customers to place marketing messages — including clickable links — in listings retrieved through Google’s mobile search service."

Best Gadgets From Google Desktop Contest

Google has announced the winners of the Google Desktop Contest. The most appreciated gadgets are:

*** Day/Night World Clock that shows information about a city or country (the map, location, sunrise, sunset).

** Multiplayer Reversi - play Reversi against the computer or a contact from Google Talk.

* DiggGadget - find the latest posts from Digg in a compact view. You can also browse the posts by topic.

Google News Archive Search

Google has launched News Archive Search, a service that expands Google News with newspaper articles from the last 200 years. Google has digitized newspapers from the archive and used the online editions for the recent content.

"The goal here is to be able to explore history as it unfolded. It's fascinating to see how people's attitudes and emotions have changed through time," explained Anurag Acharya, a Google engineer.

Google News is limited for the moment to the last 30 days of news and shows only the headlines and brief snippets from the news. The new service will have less sources than Google News, but the earliest news is from "somewhere in the mid-1700s". Some of the most important sources are: Time, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Financial Times, Reuters, International Herald Tribune. Google clearly labels subscription-based sources and even shows the cost of a subscription.

While the interface is similar to Google News, the new layout is focused on time. The key intervals for a search are marked with an arrow, and there's also a timeline view that shows the most interesting news from each computer-generated interval.

Google gives some clues about the underlying algorithms: "News archive search aims to rank results such that the articles/events that would be of interest to users exploring history appear first. We take into account the full text of each article, the publication in which the article appears, how often the underlying event has been referred to or described, in what manner and by whom."

News Archive Search is a new step in including other kind of content that was partly unavailable in Google Search. News archives are a valuable source of information and the way Google implemented this service lets you put persons, ideas and events into perspective.

Everyday (Time Caught on Camera)

I almost cried watching this. He is Noah and this video shows you 6 years of his life in still photos, shot everyday. It's like seeing the time passing in front of your eyes.

10 Great Uses For Google Desktop

Google Desktop lets you search your computer and have tiny bits of information at your fingertips if you use Google Gadgets. Everybody knows that. But Google Desktop can have other interesting uses.

1. Program launcher

If a program has a shortcut in the Start Menu, type the first letters of the program name and you can launch it.


2. Control Panel replacement

Do you want to change your mouse settings or the network setings? Type "mouse" or "network" and you can open the configuration tool without using Control Panel.

3. Address bar

Open files, folders and Internet addresses.

4. Browser history

Your browser can keep the sites you visit for a limited period (a week or more). Google Desktop keeps them indefinitely and makes your history searchable.

5. Browser cache

Google Desktop keeps all the versions of the pages you see in your browser, so you can use it for reference if you want to see how a page has changed.


6. File recovery

If you delete a document, Google Desktop keeps it in its cache, so you'll still be able to recover the content.

7. File versioning

You can use Google Desktop to revert to a previous version of a document (text file, Office document, HTML file). Google Desktop keeps all the versions of a file, so it may be useful if you don't backup your files.

8. Most recent documents

Google Desktop has a timeline that lets you the files created or modified recently.

9. Office / PDF viewer

If you don't have Microsoft Office or Adobe Reader, Google Desktop lets you see a text version for PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT files. It doesn't look great, but it's useful as a text preview.

10. Gmail replacement

Gmail is down or your internet connection is down. You don't use a desktop mail client, but you need to find an important mail. Fortunately, Google Desktop indexes your mail (if you want to), so you can search your messages and read them offline. The attachments aren't saved on your PC.


For most of these features, you need to enable in Google Desktop the indexing for web history, most file types, disable "remove deleted items", enable Gmail and "launch programs/files by default" in quick find.

If you don't like the sidebar, you can disable it in Preferences / Display by choosing Deskbar, Floating Deskbar or None. You can use the "Quick Search Box" (the one from the first screenshot) by hitting Ctrl twice.

ErrorZilla - A Better HTTP Error Page

ErrorZilla is a Firefox extension that replaces the standard "server not found" page and similar page errors with something more useful. ErrorZilla adds a reload button, Google Cache, Web archive, and three buttons for: ping, trace and whois. The most useful is the "Google Cache" button that lets you view the page even if the server is down, assuming that the page has been indexed by Google.

You can also change the error page manually.

Asking the Internet

Yahoo is very proud of Yahoo Answers, a service that allows you to ask questions and get answers. Unlike Google Answers, asking questions is free. Yahoo has integrated Answers into the search page and expanded the service globally. The growth of the service is impressive.

"The popularity of web search has changed the way we think about the Internet in some pretty odd ways. I've heard more than a few people struggling to answer a question who turn to their keyboard and proclaim, "I'll just ask the Internet" while typing something into a search box.

Amazingly, that works in a lot of cases. When it comes to locating facts, such as the capital of India, web search rocks. But there are many times that keywords just don't cut it—times when you need to ask a question to a group of humans. You know, real people."

This is how Jeremy Zawodny explained one year ago the need for Yahoo Answers. Computers can't answer complicated questions, so why not let other people answer them? Google's idea was to hire professional researchers that received money for answering questions.

So let's compare the answers for a complicated question like: "How to speed up my computer?"

In Google Answers, the researcher writes a long answer and explains step by step how to remove unneeded applications, download an anti-virus and defragment the hard-drive. All for only $2.

The best answer from Yahoo is more simple: "Defragment it. Get rid of viruses. Clean out your temporary internet files. Add more memory (expensive but it might help)."

So both answers are OK, but while Google's researchers give more detailed answers, Yahoo uses the advantage of having a strong community.

Another site, called ChaCha, wants to become the next big search engine, by integrating a live chat with experts that will help you find information on the Internet.

"The value of a service like ChaCha lies in its ability to connect users immediately to a knowledgeable guide, who has experience or background a particular field. Think of it as calling 411 directory assistance on the Web.

Users will connect to a live guide via instant messenger from the ChaCha home page. After a connection is made, within 1 minute or less, the user can ask all kinds of questions of their guides until they get the information they need. The guides, who are organized by their areas of knowledge, will pass on information and Web site addresses that will appear on the user's screen," reports San Francisco Chronicle.

ChaCha is still in alpha, but the idea is interesting. ChaCha wants to combine the experts from Google Answers with a free and fun service like Yahoo Answers. We'll see if 3,000 guides can be enough for the demands of a big audience, but one key feature will make people visit the site: you'll get your answer now.

So, while search engines and encyclopedias are a good way to find answers to simple questions, people want real solutions for their concrete problems. Using other people is a good solution for the moment, but a site that mines the web, libraries and other resources might be a better and more scalable idea. Especially if the site knows something about you.

Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts (Printable Version)

If you receive a lot of mail, you'll be more productive in Gmail if you use keyboard shortcuts. A list of the shortcuts is available from Google, but Evan Williams has reformatted the list so it's easier to print it in one page. Don't forget to enable "keyboard shortcuts" in Gmail's settings.

Gmail shortcuts, printable version

Related:
Compose messages in Gmail efficiently
Fast ways to check your Gmail account

Fake Pictures Generator

This site lets you create your own concert tickets, vinyl records and bubble quotes from celebrities. You can write your wise thoughts and choose from a variety of templates. Then you download the pictures and send them to all your co-workers. I'm sure you'll find people who think your generated pictures are funny.

Personalized Start Page For Organizations

I've always liked one thing about Netvibes: you can create more than one personalized page and share it with other people. Google Personalized Homepage doesn't allow you to do that yet, but Google has teamed up with companies like Dell to provide co-branded start pages.

It seems that you don't have to be a big partner with Google to create a shared personalized page. Google will add to its newly-launched corporate package a personalized start page.

"The personalized start page is a syndicated version of the Google personalized homepage, allowing you to set up dynamic homepages for your users that bring together your content, Google services, and the best of the web.

The personalized start page uses the same technology as the Google's personalized homepage, but lets you create a customized version of the page that is tailored to your users. Combine your own content with additional external content and modules of your choice, and tailor the look and feel of the page with different logos, colors, and fonts. End users of the page still have the ability to incorporate any content from the web, or any Google Gadget, enabling them a degree of customization over the content of the page."

What's interesting is that administrators can add AdSense ads to the page. The personalized start pages will have this address: http://partnerpage.google.com/ig/p/your_domain_name . More at Google's help page, which explains that only selected users can have this feature for the moment.

The start page could be the one-stop place for all the members of an organization: it will mix personal information (mail, news) with corporate information (news, resources) and Google search. A really useful fusion.

{ Via Blogoscoped. }

Google Turns Over Data About orkut Users

Google is about to do a small evil for a greater good. Google has agreed to turn over data to Brazilan Government about some orkut users "that encourage racism, pedophilia and homophobia". This way, they comply with a Brazilian court order.

Google says the differences between this case and the request from the Department of Justice are the scale and the purpose.

It should be noted that US Government wanted that information "to make its defense of the Child Online Protection Act, a federal law designed to keep children from sexually explicit content on the Internet". At least, that's what they said.

And unlike DoJ's request for anonymous data, Brazilian Government wants specific information: "The Brazilian authorities are particularly interested in Internet protocol addresses with time and date stamps that can help trace a specific user. Registration information Google could provide includes names and e-mail addresses."

I don't defend the criminals, but Google should remember there's a thin line between being compliant to Government's request and breaching user's privacy. When Google has strong profiles for its users, I know some people interested to mine that information.