Tutorial Proggraming Free

Google Talk to Interoperate with AIM This Year

One of the interesting things from the Google - AOL deal in 2005 was this line: "Enabling Google Talk and AIM instant messaging users to communicate with each other, provided certain conditions are met." Apparently, Google didn't forget about that.

Justin Uberti, who joined Google after working on AIM for almost 9 years, comments on this issue:

I've seen a number of comments on the web regarding the previously announced interoperability plans between AIM and Google Talk, especially as the one-year anniversary of the announcement came up at the end of December. Nothing yet has made it into the hands of users, leading some to wonder whether it is actually going to happen. (...)

On the Google side, I can simply refer to our official statement, and give our stock answer, "We are working actively on integrating AIM access in Google Talk." (...) AOL also appears to be working on an XMPP gateway for AIM, which would allow XMPP/Jabber clients to access the AIM network using AIM screen names. Based on the public information, it looks like this should be available in the near future.

One way or another, looks like 2007 is shaping up to be an exciting year.

Although Justin doesn't explicitly say that Google Talk and AIM will interoperate this year, it's clear that both Google and AOL are working on that and the results should be visible in the near future.

Best Google Gadgets

Google published the results of Google Gadgets Awards 2006, a competition in which US students could submit a gadget for Google Desktop or Google Personalized Homepage.

The best gadget that works in both Desktop and the Personalized Homepage is MapMyWord, a gadget that uses WordNet database to show you definitions, synonyms and relationships between words.

The most useful gadget was considered GadgetMaker, that lets you view any webpage from your Google homepage. Unfortunately, the space is too limited to find it very useful for most sites.

MyMoodJam is the prettiest gadget and also the gadget that "will help you get a date". Slashdot's founder, Commander Taco, said: "Chicks dig sensitive dudes in touch with their emotions, and nothing would trick them faster than something like this." The gadget works this way: you tell me your moods and I'll show you a pretty visualization of your moods.

Sitemaps Are Valuable

If you underestimated the importance of submitting a sitemap for your site to Google, or if you didn't know what sitemap format to choose, watch this WebProNews interview with Vanessa Fox from Google.

A sitemap is useful to let Google discover all the pages of your site. Even though it's not necessary to submit a sitemap if you use internal links properly, sometimes it's just to easy to obtain one. If you have a blog, your feed could be submitted as a partial sitemap. If you have a simple site, ROR Sitemap Generator will crawl it and generate a sitemap.

The sitemap protocol, developed by Google, and supported by Yahoo and Microsoft, is useful to create complex sitemaps that include information about the last update of a page or its importance. "Sitemaps enhance the current model of Web crawling by allowing webmasters to list all their Web pages to improve comprehensiveness, notify search engines of changes or new pages to help freshness, and identify unchanged pages to prevent unnecessary crawling and save bandwidth."

Vanessa Fox recommends to create a sitemap especially for new sites and dynamic sites with a lot inaccessible pages.

Related:
Webzari - visual site explorer
How to create a good site

Google Releases FUSE for Mac

Google developed "MacFUSE, a Mac OS X version of the popular FUSE (File System in User Space) mechanism, which was created for Linux and subsequently ported to FreeBSD. FUSE makes it possible to implement a very functional file system in a normal program rather than requiring a complex addition to the operating system."

An interesting application for FUSE is Gmail Filesystem, which uses Gmail to store files and lets you use the files as if they were on your computer.

It will be interesting to see if GDrive, Google's solution for online file storage, will use FUSE.

Mini Google

If you don't like the cluttered Google homepage and just want a minimalistic homepage with a search box, this page might be for you. You'll also notice that this page doesn't have any links. It was created for the IE explorer bar.

For trimmed-down search results pages, try another page created for Internet Explorer. This time, you'll see only page titles and the snippets if you hover over the search results.

The mobile-optimized Google shows small snippets and the URL for each results, but all 10 results fit the screen. You might also like the transcoded pages that show more content and less JavaScript, animations and Flash objects.

You can also add a gadget to your personalized homepage that will let you search Google (web, local, video, blogs) and see the results inside the gadget.

Charts for Google Spreadsheets

Although Google Spreadsheets doesn't have an option to create charts, there's a very nice site where you can enter the URL of a spreadsheet's XML feed and you'll get a chart for your data*. The site uses PlotKit library
to generate the charts.

To obtain the URL, open the spreadsheet, click on "Publish" and then on "Publish now" and "More publishing options". Select the ATOM format and generate the URL. You'll need to copy the URL and introduce it here.

If you don't want to have a public spreadsheet, go to "Publish" again and click on "Stop publishing".

*Note: the site only looks at the first two columns, that need to have a header with two cells that contain "x" and "y" (here's an example of accepted spreadsheet).

Google Digital Portfolio

R. Barkey sent me this:

I urgently need a digital portfolio with content like:

* ID-card,
* Curriculum Vitae,
* Competences,
* Video message,
* picture gallery,
* presentation

All to inform companies, schools, internship providers etc. on line.
It is a big need everywhere in the world to achieve a better and happier life and I foresee that it will be used as we use e-mail or a blog or other interactive applications. Why not a Google Product?

Better Video Search Presentation in SearchMash

SearchMash, the experimental site created by Google to improve the way search results are presented, introduced a new video search concept. If you search for "sunrise" or any other query, you'll see a list of thumbnails from the results. Hovering over a thumbnail, you can read the title of a video. Clicking on a search result, the video will open above the search results, along with a complete description. This way, you won't lose the results, and it's easier to see if a video is the right match.

Google SketchUp 6

Google launched a new version for SketchUp, an easy-to-use 3D modeling program. This version integrates the Google Earth plug-in, that lets you view models in Google Earth and share them in 3D Warehouse, but also adds:

* Photo Match – Users can now quickly and easily trace a photo to create a 3D model of the photographed object or match an existing model with a background photo for near-instant modeling.

* Styles – New collections of display settings including Watermarks (2D images behind or in front of models) and Sketchy Effects (rendered as though drawn by hand) enable users to create 3D models to fit their professional or personal needs.

* 3D Text – Users can now convert text to 2D outlines, filled surfaces, or extruded 3D objects.

The program is free (there's also a commercial version), works in Windows and Mac, and has a lot of tutorials. But most people will need them only for the basic concepts, as the software doesn't need too many explanations.

You'll discover some building models if you open Google Earth 4 (which is now out of beta), go to the Layers section, and enable 3D Buildings / 3D Warehouse.

iPhone

The new shiny iPhone from Apple promises to bring more from a computer experience to a mobile phone. It only has one button and it's smart enough to show you a context-sensitive keyboard on the screen. This way, you have more space for the screen. You can also browse the Internet with Safari, zoom in the page, enjoy Google Maps, read mail from POP3 and IMAP accounts, have widgets that push information, and an easy way to sync with your computer. If Yahoo Go is brilliant, this is a new way to look at a phone.

"iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers."

Google Is the Best Company to Work For

Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" places Google in front of the pack. The company offers free food, massages, yoga classes, volleyball courts, pools, babysitting, haircuts - everything to make you feel good and able to work hard. "Work is such a cozy place that it's sometimes difficult for Google employees to leave the office, which is precisely how the company justifies the expenses, none of which it breaks out of its administrative costs."

This video from NBC should give you an idea about Google's unique corporate culture and here's the top 100.

Yahoo Go - Most of Yahoo in One Mobile Software

Yahoo launched a year ago a platform that promised to connect your desktop, your TV and your mobile phone: Yahoo Go. Now the company focuses only on mobile phones, with launch of Yahoo Go 2.0, a brilliant application that packs in 415 KB the most important Yahoo services. You'll get mobile-optimized versions of Yahoo Mail, Search, Local, News, Finance and Flickr. To easily access all these services, Yahoo introduced the "carousel", an horizontal list of icons you can navigate using your phone's joystick or keyboards.

Yahoo tried to improve the mobile search experience, by showing results from the most relevant types of searches all at once. So if you search for a movie star, you'll get a top result from the web (that should be the homepage), images, movie showtimes in your area, news - all in one page of results. This should save time, especially if the results are relevant. Usually, people who search from a mobile phone want fast results, so Yahoo mixes the best answers from different categories.

It's nice that most preferences from your Yahoo account will be available in the mobile interface. You can upload photos to your Flickr account and view other photos, you can read your email, compose messages and search them, read news, get the latest sport results and more.

Google has only two applications for mobile phones: Gmail and Google Maps. The rest of the features could be obtained from google.com, where you have access to search, news and a personalized homepage that can mix all the information you need when you're on the go. The beauty of Yahoo's approach is that you only need one software to get everything. And it's faster than using the mobile web directly, because the application uses caching and background loading to optimize the traffic. Some people might see Yahoo Go as a browser, because you can browse the Internet using the search feature.

Unfortunately, the application works only on BlackBerries, Motorola RAZR, Samsung SGH, and many Nokia phones, but it's a very big step towards a rich Internet experience for mobile phones. Yahoo also became the default search provider for Opera's mobile browsers, replacing Google.

Samsung Phones, Bundled with Google Apps

Google announced a deal with Samsung that will bring Google's services to many mobile phones. Staring this year, a number of Samsung phones will include: easy access to Google Search, and two Java applications: Google Maps, Gmail.

"Samsung has already launched, the Ultra Edition 13.8 (SGH-Z720), its first mobile handset installed with GoogleTM mobile search and GmailTM services. The slim 3G Z720 is only 13.8mm in thinness, is HSDPA ready, and comes with a 3-megapixel camera, MP3 Player, and Bluetooth connectivity. The HSDPA connectivity combined with embedded an Internet browser and GoogleTM mobile services will provide users with a rich mobile Internet experience."

This isn't quite the Google Phone, but Google gains a lot of mobile users, if you take into account that Samsung is the number three mobile phone maker.

Google Personalized Homepage, Blue Edition

This BeautyBlue style adds rounded corners and a blue background to Google Personalized Homepage. It also changes the font to Georgia and increases the text size.

Unfortunately, the author restricted the scope to google.de, so I fixed this to work for any Google domain and removed some minor bugs. The updated script is available here and requires Greasemonkey for Firefox or Opera.

Using Google to Search Your del.icio.us Bookmarks

If you use del.icio.us to save your bookmarks, you might want to search inside those pages, not just their titles, tags and descriptions. While you could import them into Google Bookmarks, there's an even more interesting solution: create a custom search engine from your bookmarks.

Vik Singh, who helped Google build the Co-op platform, developed a powerful tool that does more than only importing your bookmarks:

* it generates refinements from the most important tags using a machine learning algorithm

* you can expand links that point to a site, so you can search the entire site

* you can restrict the list of bookmarks to a single tag

* boost the ranking of a page depending on the number of bookmarks.

Related:
Google Custom Search Engines
Add search to Google Reader