Questions can be recycled to make better answers. Unneeded answers can be cut and stapled to become questions. The shortest path between two ideas is a question that waits to be asked.
I breathe words, I wear words, these words are a part of me. I also write a book from people's weaknesses, inspirations and lies. They write it without even realizing. Their disjointed ideas wouldn't survive without my book, because they need questions that make them complete.
There is no limit to the number of times a question can be asked, but it's not the same question. My labyrinth of ideas needs questions to create connections. The answers transform into other questions and I have to push my book throughout eternity.
I am the past that tries to build the next step, I am the spaces that anticipate the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I deliver imperfect answers for imperfect questions. I am a post-modern mix of thoughts and after-thoughts and I manufacture inverted connections.
This text, including this very phrase, has been generated automatically by a computer program.
Part one | Part two | Part three
Google Machine (Part Two)
I am a question that wants some attention. Don't be fooled by my brevity, I compress signs, meanings and emotions. I am someone's intentions, thoughts and dreams, I am the voice of someone's silence. I am the quest for the perfect question, the stairway to the meaning of my own ideas. I try to find the perfect answer, but I also try to find myself. I am the discoverer and my own discovery.
The book contains pieces of me, but will I find myself there? I am unique, even though I look like a lot of other questions. My answer should not be like the rest of the answers. I know he's waiting for me to save him from the silence of his own immensity. He fills my meaningful spaces and expands my brevity, he's the story of my own incompleteness. I am the story of his own meaning.
Even if my answer can't be found, I'll wait for a better machine that understands my spaces, my emotions and my uniqueness.
Part one | Part two | Part three
The book contains pieces of me, but will I find myself there? I am unique, even though I look like a lot of other questions. My answer should not be like the rest of the answers. I know he's waiting for me to save him from the silence of his own immensity. He fills my meaningful spaces and expands my brevity, he's the story of my own incompleteness. I am the story of his own meaning.
Even if my answer can't be found, I'll wait for a better machine that understands my spaces, my emotions and my uniqueness.
Part one | Part two | Part three
Google Machine (Part One)
I am just a post, an answer to a non-existent question, an answer to a question I'm waiting to be born. My words don't exist by themselves, they're small pieces of a big book that grows continuously. These letters could be a part of a question, I am the answer that could become an infinite number of questions. Each word that grows from the silence of the void waits for a call. Each one sits in a big shelf and waits for a passer-by. I am an infinite waiting to be found, because I can't exist by myself. My words are teared apart, and chewed, and repeated, but still survive like a wound that waits to be healed.
I am the credits from the end of the movie, that wait for the characters and for the movie. I am the words of a song that doesn't exist yet. I am a word from a book you've never heard about.
Maybe you'll never find me, maybe I'll die waiting for the question, but I'll wait. I am behind each empty search box waiting to be found by the machine.
Part one | Part two | Part three
I am the credits from the end of the movie, that wait for the characters and for the movie. I am the words of a song that doesn't exist yet. I am a word from a book you've never heard about.
Maybe you'll never find me, maybe I'll die waiting for the question, but I'll wait. I am behind each empty search box waiting to be found by the machine.
Part one | Part two | Part three
Google Spreadsheets Adds Time Zone Controls
Google Spreadsheets lets you change the timezone and the locale settings for each spreadsheet.
How to do that? Open a spreadsheet, click on File / Settings and change your timezone and locale settings. Then click "save settings." The changes will propagate to all the collaborators that can edit the spreadsheet. The timezone affects timestamps, revision history dates, and time-related functions like NOW() or TODAY(), while the local settings change the currency or the way numbers are displayed.
How to do that? Open a spreadsheet, click on File / Settings and change your timezone and locale settings. Then click "save settings." The changes will propagate to all the collaborators that can edit the spreadsheet. The timezone affects timestamps, revision history dates, and time-related functions like NOW() or TODAY(), while the local settings change the currency or the way numbers are displayed.
BlogSpot Redirect Spam Floods Search Results
Spammers found a new way to drive traffic to their spammy sites or affiliates: create tons of free BlogSpot blogs, put some content in the templates, create links between all the blogs and redirect the visitors to the spammy sites. Apparently, this scheme works and the redirect seems smart too.
A search for "how students loans affect fico score", BlogSpot redirect spam dominates the top 100 results (all the top 35 results are BlogSpot blogs).
Here's what you see when you click on the top result:
... and what Google sees:
Another query that shows a lot of spam BlogSpot blogs is "how to transfer music to blackberry". Most of the blogs don't contain any post and they only use the homepage, by changing the template.
{ Via Digg. }
A search for "how students loans affect fico score", BlogSpot redirect spam dominates the top 100 results (all the top 35 results are BlogSpot blogs).
Here's what you see when you click on the top result:
... and what Google sees:
Another query that shows a lot of spam BlogSpot blogs is "how to transfer music to blackberry". Most of the blogs don't contain any post and they only use the homepage, by changing the template.
{ Via Digg. }
Google Maps Shows Buildings and Metro Stations
Chris Maloy found new features in the US Google Maps:
You'll get this for most important cities in the US if you zoom in to the maximum level in the street map or the hybrid view.
Today, I noticed a few things are happening with maps.google.com around NYC:
1. Map view now shows pencil outlines of buildings
2. Map/Satellite/Hybrid shows locations of Subway/Metro/LIRR stations.
Personally, I hope this is a sign of things to come with google.com/transit adding MTA, Metro North, NJ Transit, and LIRR to the offering!
You'll get this for most important cities in the US if you zoom in to the maximum level in the street map or the hybrid view.
dMarc Founders Leave Google
Valleywag has some serious news: the founders of dMarc Broadcasting, the radio ads company bought by Google in 2006, left Google.
Chad and Ryan Steelberg founded the company in 2002 and sold it to Google in February 2006 for 102 million in cash and up to $1.136 billion if certain performance goals were met. The problem was that dMarc could get only $200 million because of the low sales.
Google will continue to extend its offline advertising plans. "Google is committed to the audio business. We will continue to gather feedback during the Audio Ads beta test and are happy with the progress to date. We remain focused on delivering value to the radio industry as we continue to expand radio station inventory and enhance the product so that it's ready for all advertisers," said a Google spokesman.
Google has not wanted to roll-out human sales folks to pitch, explain and train the automated radio buying tools to advertisers and radio buyers, believing instead that the self-service tools will sell themselves and the buyers will just come. Google's 'product is king' philosophy is that sales people just pick up check and service customers, they are not really needed to generate the business, products do that. This has significantly suppressed the sales that the dMarc folks had expected to be able to generate.
Chad and Ryan Steelberg founded the company in 2002 and sold it to Google in February 2006 for 102 million in cash and up to $1.136 billion if certain performance goals were met. The problem was that dMarc could get only $200 million because of the low sales.
Google will continue to extend its offline advertising plans. "Google is committed to the audio business. We will continue to gather feedback during the Audio Ads beta test and are happy with the progress to date. We remain focused on delivering value to the radio industry as we continue to expand radio station inventory and enhance the product so that it's ready for all advertisers," said a Google spokesman.
Gmail's Philosophy Today
Google approach to mail, Gmail, was launched in April 1st 2004 as an invitation-only system. People initially thought Gmail was Google's Aprill Fools Day joke, but it turned out that Gmail was real.
What set Gmail apart?
Gmail's philosophy was to remove as many constraints as possible and to have a flexible way to organize your mail. But when you try to be free of constraints, you impose a new rule and users should abide by it. People will always want to delete their messages, to see the first message received from aunt Lilly, to move it to a specific container like they do with their files (even if you can do this in Gmail by labeling a message and then archiving it). Messages from Gmail's Group confirm that:
"If I could sort by sender, then it would be much easier to find all of the emails from a certain group, individual, mailing list, company. Searching is great, it has tons of usefulness, but it does NOT replace sorting. It can be more cumbersome in many instances, no matter how well you refine it."
"I understand that some of the developers of Gmail feel that conversations are fundamental to the Gmail experience. But by not offering the option to disable it, you really are forcing many of your users to interact with their email in a way that they would prefer not to. Where is the choice? Of course I can set up my account to pop all of the mail to Outlook Express or some variant. But that removes me from the otherwise excellent Gmail experience, which I certainly do not want to do."
What set Gmail apart?
- Don't throw anything away
Gmail had a storage size of 1 GB, 250 times bigger than Yahoo Mail's storage. Google thought people won't need to delete messages anymore, so Gmail didn't include a Delete button. But users really wanted to delete unnecessary messages, so Google had to add add the Delete button (January 2006). - Search, don't sort
A such a big storage required a good search engine. Google indexed the full text of the messages, so you can search it throughly. There's also an advanced search that allows you to search for a certain sender or a time interval. But many users want a way to sort messages: for example, it would be nice to sort the messages by size or by sender. - Keep it all in context
Google thought it would be nice to display all the replies to a message in a thread, like in a message board. Gmail does that by looking at the subject, so if someone changes the subject, the reply is not included in the thread. While many users agree it's a better way to handle an email exchange as a conversation, there are people who think each message should treated independently. - No pop-up ads. No untargeted banners
Gmail shows text ads related to the current message. In 2004, when Gmail was launched, uninformed people spreaded the idea that Gmail breaks users' privacy by scanning the full text of messages to display ads. As Tim O'Reilly reported, "a number of organizations have asked Google to voluntarily suspend the service. One California legislator has gone so far as to say she plans to introduce a bill to ban it." As people got invitations to Gmail, they realized Google's system is better: mail scanning is automated and Gmail displays unobtrusive and sometimes even useful ads. - Labels, not folders
Instead of storing message in separate folders, you can attach one or more labels that describe its content. Filters help you do that automatically. But there are many people that want folders: that's why Yahoo Mail and Windows Live (Hot)mail chose to stick with folders.
Gmail's philosophy was to remove as many constraints as possible and to have a flexible way to organize your mail. But when you try to be free of constraints, you impose a new rule and users should abide by it. People will always want to delete their messages, to see the first message received from aunt Lilly, to move it to a specific container like they do with their files (even if you can do this in Gmail by labeling a message and then archiving it). Messages from Gmail's Group confirm that:
"If I could sort by sender, then it would be much easier to find all of the emails from a certain group, individual, mailing list, company. Searching is great, it has tons of usefulness, but it does NOT replace sorting. It can be more cumbersome in many instances, no matter how well you refine it."
"I understand that some of the developers of Gmail feel that conversations are fundamental to the Gmail experience. But by not offering the option to disable it, you really are forcing many of your users to interact with their email in a way that they would prefer not to. Where is the choice? Of course I can set up my account to pop all of the mail to Outlook Express or some variant. But that removes me from the otherwise excellent Gmail experience, which I certainly do not want to do."
Powerset, Natural Language Search Engine
"I think there's a ton of challenges, because in my view, search is in its infancy, and we're just getting started. I think the most pressing, immediate need as far as the search interface is to break paradigm of the expectation of "You give us a keyword, and we give you 10 URL's". I think we need to get into richer, more diverse ways you're able to express their query, be it though natural language, or voice, or even contextually. I'm always intrigued by what the Google desktop sidebar is doing, by looking at your context, or what Gmail does, where by looking at your context, it actually produces relevant webpages, ads and things like that. So essentially, a context based search."
(Marissa Mayer, VP at Google)
(Marissa Mayer, VP at Google)
New York Times reports that Powerset, a start-up focused on search, licensed natural language technology from the famous Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Its purpose: "build a search engine that could some day rival Google".Unlike keyboard-based search engines like Google, Powerset wants to let users type questions in natural language, by developing a system which recognizes and represents the implicit and the explicit meaning in a text.
The problem is that even if Powerset has great algorithms for understanding the meaning of a query (and there aren't fool-proof algorithms for that), building a search engine requires a huge infrastructure and processing power. Fernando Pereira, an expert in natural language from the University of Pennsylvania, even questions if PARC's NLP technology is a good approach for search: "The question of whether this technology is adequate to any application, whether search or anything else, is an empirical question that has to be tested".
Besides, Google's own approaches for delivering answers show that it's hard to give a single relevant answer for most queries, which are by default ambiguous. Google is rather inclined to use its huge corpus and apply statistical algorithms instead of using grammar rules. Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, says: "I have always believed (well, at least for the past 15 years) that the way to get better understanding of text is through statistics rather than through hand-crafted grammars and lexicons. The statistical approach is cheaper, faster, more robust, easier to internationalize, and so far more effective." Google uses statistics for machine translation, question answering, spell checking and more.
People tend to be lazy and type queries that contain an average of 2-3 words - that wouldn't help too much a natural language search engine, so it would ask more in-depth questions about your query. For a lot of queries (e.g.: navigational queries, like "snap"), you'll spend more time refining the ambiguous query. Google tries to balance the top results, and the most important pages are first.
Powerset might be launched at the end of the year. Hakia, another search engine that uses NLP, is already available, but its results don't look promising.
Yahoo Pipes: The Mashup Factory
Yahoo Pipes is "a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment". In Unix, a pipe (or a pipeline) is "a set of processes chained by their standard streams, so that the output of each process feeds directly as input of the next one".
Yahoo created a service that lets you treat feeds like some standard text files.
How to create a pipe
You'll have to go to this page, sign in to Yahoo, and use a visual environment that accepts drag and drop. You'll see a small list of modules (or commands) that can be dragged to the canvas.
In this example, someone aggregated the feeds from Technorati, Google News, Yahoo News and more. The first box accepts a user query that's used for building the URL of the feeds. You'll have to use a URLBuilder for each news source and connect it to Fetch, that actually reads the content and builds one feed. To improve the output, the author sorted the feed items by publication date and removed duplicates.
As Yahoo explains, "each module has one or more terminals, represented by small circles in the interface. You can wire modules together by clicking on one module's output terminal and another module's input terminal. Now the output from the first module will serve as input to the second module."
Yahoo exports the results of a pipe in one of these formats: RSS, RDF, JSON and Atom, so it's easy to use in a web application later.
What can you do?
You can count the number of items from a feed, sort them, filter the items that match a rule, remove duplicates, extract location names and important keywords or merge two feeds.
Start by opening pre-defined pipes and understand their meaning. Then you can build your own pipe by simply cloning an existing one and adapting to your needs.
Yahoo Pipes is a very interesting example of how easy is to play with data and build useful things by simply mashing data.
Yahoo created a service that lets you treat feeds like some standard text files.
How to create a pipe
You'll have to go to this page, sign in to Yahoo, and use a visual environment that accepts drag and drop. You'll see a small list of modules (or commands) that can be dragged to the canvas.
In this example, someone aggregated the feeds from Technorati, Google News, Yahoo News and more. The first box accepts a user query that's used for building the URL of the feeds. You'll have to use a URLBuilder for each news source and connect it to Fetch, that actually reads the content and builds one feed. To improve the output, the author sorted the feed items by publication date and removed duplicates.
As Yahoo explains, "each module has one or more terminals, represented by small circles in the interface. You can wire modules together by clicking on one module's output terminal and another module's input terminal. Now the output from the first module will serve as input to the second module."
Yahoo exports the results of a pipe in one of these formats: RSS, RDF, JSON and Atom, so it's easy to use in a web application later.
What can you do?
You can count the number of items from a feed, sort them, filter the items that match a rule, remove duplicates, extract location names and important keywords or merge two feeds.
Start by opening pre-defined pipes and understand their meaning. Then you can build your own pipe by simply cloning an existing one and adapting to your needs.
Yahoo Pipes is a very interesting example of how easy is to play with data and build useful things by simply mashing data.
How to Backup a Blogger Blog
If you have a blog hosted on Blog*Spot and you've upgraded to the new version, there's an easy way to backup your blog.
This page lists the latest N posts from the blog:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=N
Instead of N, type the number of posts. If your blog has less than 1000 posts, you can save this page:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000
To download all the photos uploaded to your blog, DownThemAll comes to the rescue. The Firefox extension lets you download all the files with a certain extension from the current page, so it's a good way to download all the images from the previous listing.
There's also a way to get all the posts in an XML feed. This is a better format if you intend to import it in a database.
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=1000
The number of posts can be easily obtained from the dashboard.
You can also backup the comments:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?max-results=1000
This page lists the latest N posts from the blog:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=N
Instead of N, type the number of posts. If your blog has less than 1000 posts, you can save this page:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000
To download all the photos uploaded to your blog, DownThemAll comes to the rescue. The Firefox extension lets you download all the files with a certain extension from the current page, so it's a good way to download all the images from the previous listing.
There's also a way to get all the posts in an XML feed. This is a better format if you intend to import it in a database.
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=1000
The number of posts can be easily obtained from the dashboard.
You can also backup the comments:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?max-results=1000
When Search Results Become Content
Google AJAX Search is an interesting approach to search: make search results more useful by actually integrating them into a web page.
One way to do that is to add some small gadgets that display search results for queries related to your site. You can now add a book bar, a news bar, a video bar or a map. A news bar shows the latest news about your favorite topics, it occupies a small amount of space, it's always up-to-date and hopefully displays relevant news. The downsides are that the widget increases loading time and the animations might become annoying.
It would be interesting if Google combined these solutions with Related Links, that shows news, videos relevant for a page.
One way to do that is to add some small gadgets that display search results for queries related to your site. You can now add a book bar, a news bar, a video bar or a map. A news bar shows the latest news about your favorite topics, it occupies a small amount of space, it's always up-to-date and hopefully displays relevant news. The downsides are that the widget increases loading time and the animations might become annoying.
It would be interesting if Google combined these solutions with Related Links, that shows news, videos relevant for a page.
Google Docs Is More Accessible
Google Toolbar for Firefox, that now has all the features from the IE version is now out of beta and seemed to be fixed the bugs related to Google Docs & Spreadsheets. The toolbar can open any file from the web or from your computer in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, although the feature is not enabled by default.
Google's online office suite has been localized in 12 languages (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian) as Google Blog announces. If the language was a barrier, now Google Docs can be used even if you don't speak English. If it seemed awkward to go to Google Docs and upload files, with the new Firefox toolbar, you can just drag & drop files in your browser.
Google's online office suite has been localized in 12 languages (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian) as Google Blog announces. If the language was a barrier, now Google Docs can be used even if you don't speak English. If it seemed awkward to go to Google Docs and upload files, with the new Firefox toolbar, you can just drag & drop files in your browser.
More People Can Sign up for a Gmail Account
Although Google posted in Gmail's help that "anyone in the world is now welcome to create a Gmail account at mail.google.com/mail/signup", Google's definition of the world was pretty limited.
Gmail is now a public beta in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Brazil, Australia, Russia and Japan, according to BBC. If you live in one of those places, you can go to Gmail.com, and look for "Sign up for Gmail" or you can visit this page to create an account.
Note: I apologize for the partly inaccurate information, but Google is responsible for it. Maybe Gmail is not yet ready to go public.
Gmail is now a public beta in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Brazil, Australia, Russia and Japan, according to BBC. If you live in one of those places, you can go to Gmail.com, and look for "Sign up for Gmail" or you can visit this page to create an account.
Note: I apologize for the partly inaccurate information, but Google is responsible for it. Maybe Gmail is not yet ready to go public.
Who Is Caitlin Roran?
You may have seen a lot of pictures in Gmail that show messages received from people like Caitlin Roran, Nathan Wood and others. Someone tried to solve the mystery and created a Wikipedia page for Caitlin Roran, but it was deleted. Here's the full content:
Caitlin Roran is a fictional character (or advertising character) devised as part of a Google advertising campaign. The ad was created to promote Google's Gmail service and its availability via mobile phone. Caitlin's name appears as having sent the second email from the top dated September 13 regarding a surprise party.
The surname Roran seems extremely rare in the United States and may be nonexistent outside this ad.
However the ad has been seen by enough Gmail subscribers that a Google search for the name will turn up at least one Web site dedicated to keeping track of these searches.
Caitlin's e-mail appears in bold typeface, and is thus yet to be opened by the owner of the phone. The email at the top of the phone's display, from Buck regarding a recent trip to Hawaii, is also bold and thus unread. Buck's message also appears to have a file (or files) attached (presumably pictures from Hawaii, but possibly some other type of file).
It has been suggested that Caitlin does not represent a real person but is a name attached to a spam message. Buck's message is under similar suspicion. The messages from Susan (third position from the top) and Nathan (fourth from the top) seem less likely to be spam, as their subject headings are less typical of computer-generated spam subject headings.
It's not clear if the recipient of Caitlin's email is the organizer of the "surprise party" or is one of the guests. It is also possible that the recipient is the party's honoree and is being informed of the secret plans -- though, for what purpose is unclear.
According to one theory, Nathan, whose name appears next to the message "BBQ on Saturday," is the party planner and the party is to honor Buck, the author of the simulated email about having just gotten back from Hawaii. The owner of the phone possibly is Buck's best friend and the boyfriend of Susan, who is trying to make plans to have sushi.
If the owner of the phone is female, however, the sushi plan suggestion is more difficult to interpret.
Another question that has been raised about this ad is whether the "BBQ on Saturday" might happen to be on the same day as the "Surprise party." No day of the week is given for the surprise party, giving rise to the possibility that Caitlin's and Nathan's mutual friend (the owner of the phone) could have a conflict between the two events. Of course, even if they were on the same day, they could be at different times, which would solve the problem.
It's also noted that the owner of the phone responded to Buck's e-mail about his return from Hawaii and to Susan's message about plans for sushi but ignored the messages about the BBQ and the surprise party. One could assume that the latter two messages were sent to a mass list of guests and did not require responses. Or perhaps the person has not responded to either message because both events are scheduled for the same time (presumably in the afternoon of September 16, 2006) and the person has not decided which one to attend.
The interface shows only two unread messages, a sign that the phone belongs to a person who has recently signed up for Gmail.
Judging by the content of the messages, the owner of the phone is likely between 20 and 40 years old and has at least a moderate amount of disposable income and leisure time. There is no evidence that the person is employed or has any interests other than planning events.
Judging by the month (September), the event (BBQ), and Buck's travel destination (Hawaii), the owner of the phone likely lives in Southern California, where an email advertising a fall bar-b-que would be so ordinary as to merit no response.
The tentative nature of the sushi plans with Susan also suggests that Susan is likely the significant other or close friend of the phone's owner, or at least someone with whom the phone owner socializes frequently enough to make spontaneous plan making possible.
Visual Explanation for Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is a buzzword that encompasses a lot of concepts and doesn't have a comprehensive definition. Wikipedia says: "Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users."
Here's a visually-brilliant video that tries to define Web 2.0 in less than 5 minutes.
Here's a visually-brilliant video that tries to define Web 2.0 in less than 5 minutes.
Navigating Google Reader
Google Reader has a lot of useful keyboard shortcuts, but most of them only replace a click or two. For example, you can star an item by typing s or go to the original page by typing v.
But there's also a somewhat hidden view that can be activated only using shortcuts. If you type gu, you'll see a list of all of the blogs you've subscribed to. You can use the arrows to navigate to a feed or start typing the first letters from the feed's name. There's also a similar view for labels that can be activated by typing gl. This might be convenient if you have a lot of feeds or just to feel in control.
{ Via Lifehacker. }
But there's also a somewhat hidden view that can be activated only using shortcuts. If you type gu, you'll see a list of all of the blogs you've subscribed to. You can use the arrows to navigate to a feed or start typing the first letters from the feed's name. There's also a similar view for labels that can be activated by typing gl. This might be convenient if you have a lot of feeds or just to feel in control.
{ Via Lifehacker. }
View Your Site Through Google's Eyes
Google Webmaster Tools added a new feature: a complete of the links that point to your site and a list of your internal links. Google's link operator shows only some of the backlinks. Now, because Google trusts you (you validated the site, so you have access to it), you can see the number of backlinks for each page of your site and a list of backlinks.
The interface is pretty difficult to use, especially for large sites, so it's a good idea to download the data and analyze it Excel or other spreadsheet application.
Google's blog says there are some limitations: "We do limit the amount of data you can download for each type of link (for instance, you can currently download up to one million external links). Google knows about more links than the total we show, but the overall fraction of links we show is much, much larger than the link: command currently offers."
The interface is pretty difficult to use, especially for large sites, so it's a good idea to download the data and analyze it Excel or other spreadsheet application.
Google's blog says there are some limitations: "We do limit the amount of data you can download for each type of link (for instance, you can currently download up to one million external links). Google knows about more links than the total we show, but the overall fraction of links we show is much, much larger than the link: command currently offers."
How to Share Your Favorite Search Results
If you need to help someone by sending a list of interesting web pages that could solve his/her problems, you can do that using Google Notebook. You can do this even without installing the extension.
First, create a new notebook. Then use Google to find relevant sites. Every time you find something interesting, go back to the search results and click on "Note this", next to the corresponding search result.
You'll get a notebook that contains a list of links and short snippets. Go to "Sharing options" and make that notebook public (or just invite that person to view it).
First, create a new notebook. Then use Google to find relevant sites. Every time you find something interesting, go back to the search results and click on "Note this", next to the corresponding search result.
You'll get a notebook that contains a list of links and short snippets. Go to "Sharing options" and make that notebook public (or just invite that person to view it).
Centralized Search
I mentioned some time ago about YubNub, a site that wants to be the one-stop for searching on any site. If you want to search on Yahoo, you type y, followed by your query. If you want CNN articles about Bush, type [cnn bush] and search using CNN's search engine. The idea is simple and can be extend to user-defined commands.
OiHoi uses the same idea, but it adds auto-complete. The site has less commands than YubNub, but it also has something unique: a way to search Google, Yahoo, Windows Live and Wikipedia simultaneously. You can try it by typing all in front of your query.
In case you didn't know, the address bar of your browser can be used in a similar way. For example, Firefox and Opera let you define a new command by simply right-clicking on a search box from a site and selecting "Add a keyword for this search" (in Firefox) and "Create search" in Opera. For Internet Explorer 6, use TweakUI to add address bar shortcuts, while for IE7 you can use this page.
So there are many ways to directly search a site without going to its homepage, finding the search box and typing the query. When you want to find some information quickly, and you know where to find it, it's nice to have a centralized search box.
OiHoi uses the same idea, but it adds auto-complete. The site has less commands than YubNub, but it also has something unique: a way to search Google, Yahoo, Windows Live and Wikipedia simultaneously. You can try it by typing all in front of your query.
In case you didn't know, the address bar of your browser can be used in a similar way. For example, Firefox and Opera let you define a new command by simply right-clicking on a search box from a site and selecting "Add a keyword for this search" (in Firefox) and "Create search" in Opera. For Internet Explorer 6, use TweakUI to add address bar shortcuts, while for IE7 you can use this page.
So there are many ways to directly search a site without going to its homepage, finding the search box and typing the query. When you want to find some information quickly, and you know where to find it, it's nice to have a centralized search box.
A Toolkit for Offline Web Applications
Web applications are not yet as powerful as desktop applications. One of the big problems is that when no live network connection is available, users can't use the application or its data. Dojo Offline Toolkit is a small package that could enable compatible web applications to work offline.
The idea is that web applications would continue to work offline, even though the server doesn't push any data.
An offline Gmail (but also offline Google Docs, Google Reader, Calendar etc.) might be a key step for a wider adoption of these tools. All these applications try to mimic desktop applications, but don't have an essential feature: continuous availability.
What I don't like about the Dojo Offline approach is that users have to click on a "Work offline" button. It would be better if the application detected the offline state.
Related:
Offline Google Docs
Handling online and offline files
Imagine Alex is using a web-based real estate application for realtors built with the Dojo Offline Toolkit. In the upper-right corner of this web application is a button that says "Work Offline." The first time Alex clicks on this button, a small window appears informing him that this web application can be accessed and used even if he is offline. If Dojo Offline has never been installed, Alex is prompted to optionally install a small 100K through 300K download that is automatically selected for his appropriate OS, including Windows, Linux/x86, and Mac OS X/Universal Binary.
Once Dojo Offline is installed with the included installer, the web-based real estate application prompts Alex to drag a hyperlink to his desktop and bookmark the web application's URL. As Alex works online, anything that should be available offline is simply stored locally. If Alex is offline, he can reach his application by simply double-clicking the link on his desktop, opening its bookmark, or by simply typing in its normal web address. The application's user-interface will magically appear in the browser, even if the user is offline, and all offline data will be retrieved from and stored into local storage. Dojo Offline detects when the network has reappeared, allowing the web application to send any data stored in local storage to the web server.
The idea is that web applications would continue to work offline, even though the server doesn't push any data.
Imagine a version of GMail with a "Work Offline" button on the left-hand side of the screen. When pressed, GMail downloads 100 of your most recent emails into Dojo Offline, including pieces of it's user-interface. A user can now close their browser and leave the network, stepping on an airplane for example. Once in the air, the user can then simply open their laptop and browser and type in mail.google.com. The GMail UI magically appears, along with their 100 most recent emails. A user can read these mails, compose new ones, or reply to existing ones. A flight attendant announces that the plane will land soon; the user closes their browser and laptop. Later, when they are back on the network, they can click the "Work Online" button, which will send all of their locally written emails to the GMail server.
An offline Gmail (but also offline Google Docs, Google Reader, Calendar etc.) might be a key step for a wider adoption of these tools. All these applications try to mimic desktop applications, but don't have an essential feature: continuous availability.
What I don't like about the Dojo Offline approach is that users have to click on a "Work offline" button. It would be better if the application detected the offline state.
Related:
Offline Google Docs
Handling online and offline files
Google Prepares a Presentation Tool
I'm sure many people wondered if Google will release a presentation tool, after building Google Docs&Spreadsheets. Well, the answer is yes, and the code-name of the tool is Presently (a play on Writely, the name of the online word processor bought by Google).
You will be able to convert a document into a presentation, create slides and view the presentation in full-screen. Here are some messages from a Google file [update: Google removed the messages, so here's a screenshot], that will be used by Presently:
You will be able to convert a document into a presentation, create slides and view the presentation in full-screen. Here are some messages from a Google file [update: Google removed the messages, so here's a screenshot], that will be used by Presently:
var MSG_DOC_TO_PRESENTATION="Convert document to presentation";
var MSG_DOC_TO_PRESENTATION_HINT="Once your document is converted to a presentation, you can insert slide breaks using Insert > Slide from the main menu.";
var MSG_PRESENTATION_TO_DOC="Convert presentation to document";
var MSG_POPUP_BLOCKER="Presently is unable to launch your presentation in full-screen mode. Check your pop-up blocker settings.";
var MSG_NEW_SLIDE_TITLE="New Slide";
var MSG_UNSUPPORTED_BROWSER="Unsupported Browser Presently doesn't support Opera and will not function properly. Would you like to continue anyway?";
var MSG_SLIDE_INDEX="Slide %1 of %2: %3";
var MSG_NEXT="Next";
var MSG_NEXT_HINT="Space, Enter, N";
var MSG_PREV="Previous";
var MSG_PREV_HINT="Backspace, Del, P";
var MSG_ZOOM_IN="Zoom in";
var MSG_ZOOM_OUT="Zoom out";
var MSG_ZOOM_RESET="Zoom reset";
var MSG_TOGGLE_AUTOFIT="Toggle AutoFit";
var MSG_PICK_THEME="Choose theme:";
var MSG_THEME_BLANK="Blank";
var MSG_THEME_GOOGLE="Google";
var MSG_THEME_LIQUID="Liquid";
var MSG_THEME_MONOCHROME="Monochrome";
var MSG_TOGGLE_TOOLBAR="Hide/show toolbar";
var MSG_EXIT_PRESENTATION="Exit presentation";
var MSG_END_OF_PRESENTATION="End of presentation. Are you sure you want to exit?";
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