The Trouble with Google Toolbar for Firefox

Google Toolbar 3 for Firefox has been recently launched, so I was curious to try the new version.

I couldn't open any bookmark. They were listed, but clicking on any bookmak didn't have any effect. The only option that worked was "open in new tab".

I enabled the Docs & Spreadsheets integration, but when I clicked on a doc/xls file, I got a message that said: "Firefox is already running but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system." I tried restarting Firefox and the PC, but still nothing.

I reported the bugs to Google and here is the answer (partially edited):

Thank you for your note. We're sorry you're still having trouble using the Docs and Spreadsheets feature of Google Toolbar for Firefox. Many of our users report this. Please try the steps below:

1. Uninstall the Toolbar.
2. Open Firefox's "Tools" menu and then select "Add-ons."
3. Disable all the extensions in your "Add-ons" screen.
4. Restart your browser, then reinstall the Toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com.
5. If you're able to use the Docs and Spreadsheets feature, please enable your extensions, one by one, until you find the conflicting add-on. Please let us know which add-on caused the conflict.

Please let us know whether this resolves the problem.

I don't think this a good solution, as disabling all extensions and enabling them one by one is time consuming. But I tried to follow at least the first advice: uninstalling the toolbar. I clicked on "Uninstall", restarted the browser, only to see that the toolbar is still there. After restarting the browser, I got the intro dialog that asks you if you want to enable PageRank and other options.

Gmail Opens in Yet Another Country: Russia

After Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Egypt, Gmail is now available without invitation in Russia. This is the third good news for Russian users today, after the launch of Google News and Google Translate in Russian.

{ Spasibo, TomHTML. }

Update. There's even a fourth good news: Google has launched Google AdWords in Russia.

Google Russian Translator

Google Translate added a new language: Russian. Now you can translate text from English to Russian or from Russian to English. Google uses its statistical machine translation system that won many prizes.

Google News Russia has also been launched. The site aggregates 400 news sources. By combining the two services you can get an English version of Google News Russia. As you can see, the translation is not quite perfect.

In a presentation earlier this year, Google recognized that Russia is fast-growing internet market and it intends to launch more products in Russian. The most popular search engine in Russia is Yandex, that has twice the market share of Google.

Related:
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

Google Apps of the Year

This is a personal top 10 of the best Google applications in 2006. I included both software and web applications, applications launched or updated this year, tools that make your life easier.

10. Picasa + ^New Picasa Web Albums
Picasa added many useful features this year (geotagging, nested folder view, better thumbnails), but the biggest update was its online extension. Picasa Web Albums is a place where you can upload your albums from Picasa and share them with your friends. While the space is not very generous (only 250 MB, upgradeable for a fee), Picasa Web Albums lets you add friends, has comments, tags and search. But, most of all, it's only for you and your friends.

9. Blogger Beta
The new Blogger, launched in August, brings dynamic serving, easier-to-manage templates, labels, but - most of all - a reliable platform and integration with Google by using Google Accounts. After being neglected a long period of time, overwhelmed by outages, Blogger has been given a new life.

8. Google Books + Google Scholar
A new interface for book search, PDF downloads for public domain books and a big effort to digitize books. Google Scholar now ranks recent papers by importance and lets you find papers in libraries.

7. ^New Google Calendar
After months of waiting, Google Calendar launched in April as a way "to keep track of all the events in your life, coordinate schedules with friends and family, and find new things to do". Google Calendar lets you share calendars or just events, get SMS notifications, search your calendar, other public calendars and public events. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to synchronize your calendar with Outlook or your mobile phone.

6. Google Reader
Google's feed reader changed its interface and became everybody's favorite. The new views (expanded view and list view) continue to support the idea of "river of news". Now you have more control over what you read, a way to tag posts and feeds, infinite scrolling and an easier to propagate your favorite articles. Google Reader still lacks search, but its big flexibility has the advantage of suiting everyone's needs.

5. Google Maps + Google Earth + ^New SketchUp
Google Maps added more imagery, a better zoom, more mobility, live traffic, and continued to be used in a lot mashups. Google Earth added support for Linux, included more featured content and drawing tools (for the free version). Google also acquired @LastSoftware, the creators of SketchUp, a powerful tool for creating, viewing, and modifying 3D models. SketchUp now has a free version.

4. ^New Google Docs & Spreadsheets
After buying Writely, an online word processor, and a spreadsheet application, Google created the foundation of an office suite. The applications, that weren't meant to replace desktop office suite, made it easy to collaborate with other people and stored your files online, so you can access them from anywhere. In October, the two applications merged and became Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Google targets consumers, organizations and small businesses that don't use all the features of a full-fledged office suite, but need an efficient solution for their daily tasks.

3. Google Video + ^New YouTube
Google Video has shifted its mission from searching TV shows captions to searching all the videos in the world, one by one (including user-generated videos). The video store wasn't successful, but Google Video continued to add features: popular videos, uploading videos online, ratings, comments, labels. But most of them were added a long time after they were included in YouTube, its major rival. Adding Google Video to Google's homepage didn't help it too much, so Google bought YouTube, that has a huge community of loyal users and much more videos. The video ads could help Google monetize the recently acquired website, assuming that Google solves the copyright infringement problems.

2. Gmail
Gmail didn't get out of beta this year, but it added two mobile versions (a Java client and a web page), integrated Google Talk, a delete button, feeds, an MP3 player and an option to fetch mail from POP3 accounts. Gmail is the link between Google's collaborative applications and could influence the adoption of Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Reader.

1. Google Web Search
Google did many interface experiments , tweaked its algorithms, added more OneBox results, more direct answers, malware warnings. Google Co-op, a collaborative effort to improve search results by using experts, is also a platform for developing custom search engines. A unified search engine, somewhat anticipated by the SearchMash experiment, is something to watch in the year to come.

Microsoft and AOL Release Top Searches of 2006

Microsoft released the top searches in 2006 on MSN Search and Live.com. Unlike Yahoo, whose list included mostly pop singers, the top search query on MSN/Live.com was "Ronaldinho". "Harry Potter" is at number 5, while Rebelde, a Mexican TV series, is at number 9. The top 10 gainers from last year starts with 3 football players: Bebo, Kaká and Zidane.

AOL, that uses Google for web search, also released the top searches. From what I've seen, AOL is the most honest, as it's the only search engine that has a top like this:

1. weather
2. dictionary
3. dogs
4. American Idol
5. maps
6. cars
7. gamers
8. tattoo
9. horoscopes
10. lyrics

I'm pretty sure the top doesn't include certain sensitive queries like "Google", "Yahoo" or "MySpace", as it should. But it's a step ahead.

If we don't like AOL's top, we can always mine the 36 million search queries released by the company in August and find a more accurate top.

Chronological Feeds, New in Google Reader

"A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order." (Wikipedia) It's easy to read the latest posts, but it's not too easy to read everything in chronological order, like in most books.

Google Reader offers a partial solution through a new option that sorts posts from oldest to newest. You can find it for each feed, in "Feed settings". If you also click on "show all", Google Reader shows the posts from the last 30 days.

Are Google Kids Happy?

Aaron Swartz wrote a small article about Google and its corporate culture: The Goog Life: how Google keeps employees by treating them like kids.

I was talking with a friend the other day about that perennial subject of conversation in the Valley, Google. And finally she gave me the clue that made the whole place make sense. "It's about infantilizing people," she explained. "Give them free food, do their laundry, let them sit on bouncy brightly-colored balls. Do everything so that they never have to grow up and learn how to live life on their own."

And here's how he describes Google:

Not a whole lot has changed since the last time I visited Google. (...) But the two blatant changes to the campus are a large, terribly fake-looking replica of SpaceShipOne hanging in the middle of the main building and a replica dinosaur skeleton standing outside. "It's as if this place is being decorated by seven-year-olds," a friend comments. It also reminds me of Robert Reich's comment about Newt Gingrich: "His office is adorned with figurines of dinosaurs, as you might find in the bedrooms of little boys who dream of one day being huge and powerful."

SpaceShipOne, the first private-venture craft to attempt to leave the earth's atmosphere and enter space.

The author thinks Google's secrecy is just a way to keep the image of omnipotence.

"It's always frightening when you see how the sausage actually gets made," explains a product manager. And that's exactly what the secrecy is supposed to prevent. The rest of the world sees Google as this impenetrable edifice with all the mysteries of the world inside while the select few inside the walls know the truth -- there is no there there -- and are bound together by this burden.

Keeping employees happy means understanding their needs, hobbies, making them feel at home when they work. If being a child means not having worries, dreaming and playing a lot, maybe Googlers are still kids. More often than not, dreams move the world forward.

Some insightful reactions from Googlers:

"Google is a place that it's easy to be passionate about. Without seeming immodest, the work we do there has helped to change the world, and (I hope) will continue to do so in the future. It's a place where I can show up and end up working with some profoundly smart people -- selected not just for the 'smart' trait, but also the 'get things done' trait: good company if you're the sort of person interested in changing things. It's also, and maybe most importantly, a place where the people running the show have a profound commitment to Doing the Right Thing." (Brandon)

"The point of being onsite is not so managers can babysit you, its so that you can have the opportunity to interact with some of the most brilliant minds that the industry has to offer. The fact that I'm able to consult with the world's authority on many of the technologies that I work with makes my work all the more better in the end. At Google, anyone could come in with an idea, and if it is a truly good idea can get the support of the largest, most robust computing infrastructure in the world. Who decides whether an idea is viable? The community of Google employees, not one manager or top exec. Thats a pretty sweet deal for an entrepreneurial spirited person if you ask me." (?)

Also read:
Google Toy Factory
The utopian Google offices

Register Domains from Google Apps

Google Apps for Your Domain added an option to buy a domain from eNom and GoDaddy.com for $10 a year. You can only buy .com, .org, .net, .biz, .info domains using Google Checkout.

"When you register a new domain as part of the sign-up process for Google Apps for Your Domain, we'll work with our partners behind the scenes and automatically configure everything so it works with all of the services available through Google Apps for Your Domain right out of the gate. We also give you full control of your domain settings, so you can use your domain for other services not provided by Google," explains the press release.

While the idea is OK, you can buy domains cheaper than $10 per year. It's interesting to note that Google is a domain registrar since 2005, although it has never used this status to sell domains.

Multipoint Directions in Google Maps

Now you can get inaccurate directions for more destinations in Google Maps. If you're undecided and you want to compare more possible destinations, this may be useful. Each list of directions can be collapsed.

The flashy Yahoo Maps already had this feature and also a way to see reverse directions.

{ Thank you, Dan. }

One Interface for Handling Online and Offline Files

The new Google Toolbar for Firefox lets you view documents and spreadsheets online, no matter if the files are on the web or on your hard disk. Picasa Web Albums hosts videos uploaded using Picasa, without the trouble of using Google Videos. Gmail has a player for MP3 attachments. The new Google Book Search includes a PDF reader, even though you can't use it for your files yet.

What if all these file types and many others were treated the same even if they're online or offline? You wouldn't need special programs to perform basic tasks, you might get advanced features available only in commercial applications (like OCR). You could share your files easily, edit them collaboratively and always have the latest version.

What if a small add-on like Google Toolbar could transfer all the processing burden to an Internet operating system? The Docs & Spreadsheets integration with Google Toolbar might just be the beginning.

Picasa Web Albums Gets Search, Tags, Videos

Picasa Web Albums has many new features.

* Uploading videos. Until today, only users that paid for extra storage could upload videos. Now anyone can do that, but only using Picasa. Another option is to use Google Video to upload unlisted videos.

* Prints. You can now order prints for your photos, but number of options is small.

* Tags. Picasa Web Albums lets you tag your photos. You'll find the option in the sidebar.

* Search. You can search your photos, a certain gallery and your friends' public photos. Google indexes captions, tags, album titles, album descriptions, and album locations.

If Google adds ratings, date search and photo editing, I can say Picasa Web Albums is almost perfect.

Google Patent Search

Google Patent Search is a new tool that searches the full text of the U.S. patents. "Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO — from patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006."

The application has a similar interface for browsing PDFs with Google Book Search. You can search within a patent, view citations and references. There's also an advanced search that lets you enter a patent number, a title, an inventor, an assignee and issue/filing dates.

Google TV Watch

Google developed a gadget that shows TV highlights offered by Entertainment Weekly. You'll find it useful if you live in the US and like to watch TV. Maybe Google Local TV Listings isn't that far away...

Yahoo and IBM Offer Free Enterprise Search

Yahoo makes an enterprise search solution from IBM free and is very proud about that: "we don't believe that small and mid-sized businesses (or even large enterprises!) should need to spend $1,995 or more to get a reliable and robust enterprise search solution". Yahoo refers to Google's search appliances that cost a lot of money: from $1,995 the cheapest Google Mini to more than $30,000 for Google Search Appliance.

IBM OmniFind from Yahoo "indexes up to 500,000 documents and over 200 file types in 30 different languages". It's a software available for Linux and Windows, that can be downloaded for free. System requirements are pretty rough: 2 processors at 3 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, 250 GB free space.

On the other hand, Google Search Appliance is an integrated hardware/software solution that uses Red Hat Linux, 2 dual-core Intel Xeon processors and 16GB of RAM (GB-1001).

Unlike Omnifind, Google's solution looks at the connection between documents and tries to do for intranet what Google does for Internet: ranking search results by relevancy analyzing link structure.

Yahoo's entry in enterprise search market shows that Yahoo continues to outsource search, but it choose excellent products for that.

Patent for Google Search Interface

Search Engine Land reports that Google was granted a patent for the GUI of search results pages. Of course, search engines have very similar SERPs and successful features are always copied, but now Google can sue a company that mimics its interface.

Google Toolbar 3 for Firefox

The new version of Google Toolbar for Firefox adds the features that were available only in the IE toolbar and a special bonus.

Now you can bookmark sites without using third-party tools (although some of them have more advanced features) and add custom buttons that let you search other sites and read their feeds. If you want to add a button for this blog, here's the link.

The latest version of Google Toolbar makes it easy to send snippets from web pages by email, SMS. It's also easy to have a blog without actually writing too much original content.

But the greatest news should be the last one: you can now open files from the web using Docs & Spreadsheets. You can also drag and drop files from Windows Explorer to Firefox or just associate documents with Firefox. Here's the list of available formats: .doc, .rtf, .odt, .xls, .ods, .csv, .sxw.

IE toolbar looks better, has smaller icon arrows and seems to be more stable. But don't forget this is beta software (if that still has a meaning).

Google Web Toolkit is Open Source

Google Web Toolkit, a development framework that lets you develop AJAX applications, is now open source (Apache 2 license). "GWT's mission is to radically improve the web experience for users by enabling developers to use existing Java tools to build no-compromise AJAX for any modern browser."

GWT's advantages are well enumerated in a Slashdot comment:

* You get to write your logic in a language other than Javascript --- that is, one with type safety, compile time checking, sane syntax, and a reasonably consistent implementation.

* You get to use the same form verification logic on the client and on the server, which means you don't have to implement it twice, which makes it much harder to get it wrong.

* You completely avoid the horrific browser inconsistencies.

* You get a real debugger.

* For most tasks, the pain of connecting your front end to your back end is done for you.

Google also uses the framework internally, for services like Google Base, Image Labeler and more. Google says GWT is much more successful than they expected to be, and that's one of the reasons why Google decided to open source it.

Google Office, Server Edition?

The Korea Times reports that Google discussed the possibility of buying ThinkFree, a subsidiary of a Korean company. ThinkFree is a software that wants to emulate Microsoft Office.

* ThinkFree Office is a commercial cross-platform application, that includes: Write (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet) and Show (presentation). The suite also has an iPod edition.

* ThinkFree Online is a free version of these applications that works similar to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

* ThinkFree Server is "a web-based, server-hosted office suite which allows users to edit and create word documents, spreadsheets, and presentation files anytime, anywhere".

I think the most interesting ThinkFree component is the server edition, that could allow Google to create something like Google Search Appliance / Google Mini, or to enhance the two boxes. A server edition for Google Office will be much interesting for organizations, as they don't want to lose control over their information.

"ThinkFree chief Kang [Tae-jin] plans to take a flight to the United States this week, and he may meet with Google officials there to discuss a deal."

Google Finance Updates Homepage

Google Finance has been updated. The homepage shows new information: sector summary, better market summary, top gainers and losers.

"On the Google Finance homepage you can see at a glance how major sectors are currently performing in U.S. financial markets. Scrolling over the bar charts will show you more detailed information about percentage increases and decreases for a given sector. To learn more about a given sector, simply click on the name and you'll see how that particular sector is performing compared to the S&P 500."

Google seems to have problems with homepages for services like Google News, Google Finance, that don't have enough content to make people coming.



Update: Octavian Costache (also known as Vivi) tells the story in a funny video.

What Google Can't Do

Google can't translate.



Google can't do mail.



Google can't do blogs.



Google doesn't understand things.



Google can't do news.



Google can't do ads.



Google can't do search.



Google can't do browser sync.



Google also can't discover new things, understand your queries, build communities, pass Turing test, bring world peace...

GOM Player

[ Windows 2000/XP, 3.94MB, freeware ]

The moment I opened GOM Player, I realized that's how a media player should look. Ok, maybe the colors and icons aren't great, but nobody's perfect and you can always change the skin.

GOM Player, the most popular media player in South Korea, is free, has a simple interface and includes many advanced features. The player includes many codecs (DivX, XviD, MP4, AC3), so you don't have to download them. It's also possible to watch incomplete AVI files or play media files while you download them.

There are options that improve the quality of videos (the player is optimized for TV OUT), boost sound.

It's not better than VLC or MPlayer, which are open source and cross-platform, but it's easier to use.

Google Base Has a New Interface

Google doesn't like to do small things. When I saw the new interface for searching Google Base, it seemed to be the perfect answer for a Computer World story that said: "Google to boost product search in time for holiday season".

Google Base Blog announces today that the new interface is available for any kinds of data. You can check for yourself by going to Google Base and clicking on any category from the page. If you use the search box, you'll see the old interface - this feels weird.

There are two new views: a grid view useful to show images and a map view, that integrates Google Maps. Google used Ajax and took a lot from Window Live's image search. Now you can also rate items and post comments.

Most people don't go to Google Base to search, they search from Google.com and see Google Base OneBoxes like this one. But Google didn't update the interface for these.

Find News from a Time Period

If your Google search query includes a year, there's a big chance you'll see some search results from the news archive at the end of the page. While many results require a subscription, you'll find plenty of free pages.

Google doesn't have a way to search for pages published on a certain date or time period, so this is could be a small replacement.

As you can see, searching for [Yahoo 1997], you can find some news articles from that time and even more if you click on "News archive results". You can also search for [yahoo 1997-2004] to see the news from that interval.

Embed Photos from Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums is probably the best way to view a photo album online, but did you know you can embed those photos into a site? Next to each photo, Google shows a link that reads "Embed in Blog/MySpace". Check "Hide album link" and copy the HTML code.

You'll notice a link similar to this one:
http://lh6.google.com/image/[username]/[id1]/[id2]/[id3]/s288/name.jpg

Google resizes your photo to 288 pixels width. But that's pretty small, I hear you saying. The nice thing is that you can change the width, but only to fixed values. Here's a list of numbers you can use to replace 288:
72, 144, 200, 320, 400, 512, 576, 640, 720, 800, 912, 1024, 1152, 1280, 1440, 1600.

If you want to place a direct link to a photo, you can use 1600, as this seems to be the biggest value.

A URL for Your Health Records

Health is a complicated subject: usually you care about it only when there's something wrong. Google's Adam Bosworth realized people aren't in control of their own health information.

"There is no place individuals can go to get a comprehensive set of health and medical information about themselves. Access to this comprehensive information can be vital to proper and timely diagnosis of the patient, to the patient getting the best possible treatment, and, perhaps sometimes overlooked, to the patient getting the best possible ongoing care and support after the initial treatment, especially for chronic illnesses. (...)

We need to put control into the hands of the sick and their caregivers and to gently suggest that those who treat them, medicate them, test them, or diagnose them, are out of date if they do not instantly deliver this information to the patient. Once this happens, we will see truly great decision support systems and specialists and health coaches help the hapless patients much more rapidly determine what is truly wrong with them."

Your health record can be shared between healthcare providers if that's necessary, so an easy-to-access health URL that works like a private Google Docs document, to which you can invite people, is just an evolution.

This is one of the preconditions of a Google Health product, that manages health records and helps people use them better.

Yahoo Strives for More Innovation

Note: This conversation is not real.


August, Yahoo HQ.

Yahoo User Experience Design Employee: I was googling for ... err ... I was testing Google's usability when I've noticed that Google has changed the "more" link from their homepage. They have a small menu with links to other services. Now we have to add it too...

Yahoo Product Manager: I think we should wait. You know what happened when Google launched Gmail and we suddenly decided to increase the storage from 4MB to... 250MB.

After three months.

Yahoo User Experience Design Employee: I've noticed that Live.com has a "more" menu. Now we're the only one that doesn't have it. Our users will think the competitors are better because they have... more.

Yahoo Product Manager: Oh no. Quick! Add some services. Make sure we have 5 services like G, and "more" doesn't have a capital M.

After one month.

Yahoo Product Manager: Is it ready?

Yahoo User Experience Design Employee: Yes. I cried a little when I had to move the Directory to the more menu. Once our core product, now next to Jobs and News...

Yahoo Product Manager: Don't worry. Google removed it. Now what do you think: should we increase Yahoo Mail storage? You know, just in case.