How many times did you post something in a blog or in a forum, but felt you need to add a link that explains a concept or a link to the homepage of a product? Laurence Gonsalves from Google used Google AJAX Search to create a bookmarklet that performs a search for the selected text from a form and lets you insert a link to one of the top search results for that query.
The bookmarklet seems to work only in Firefox and Opera. You just have to drag the link to your bookmarks toolbar. (Make sure the bookmarks toolbar is visible in your browser. You can make it visible if you go to View/Toolbars and enable Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox or Personal Bar in Opera. Alternatively, you can just bookmark the link.)
Then everytime you need to quickly add a link in a textarea, type a text that will become both the query and the anchor text, select it, click on "Linkify" in your toolbar and then click on "Create a link" in the Google AJAX search sidebar.
You can use it when you post a comment to a blog, when you write a blog post or in other situations when you write in a textarea. Unfortunately it doesn't work with Gmail or Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Google Maps Adds Support for GeoRSS
GeoRSS is an extension of RSS that adds geographic data. You can use it to clearly state the location of an event you describe in a blog post. As you can see in this example, it's really easy to add a GeoRSS tag to a feed. To get the latitude and longitude for an address, use Address Fix.
There's also a nice RSS to GeoRSS converter that identifies locations in a feed and transforms them into geographical coordinates. Here's how to use it:
http://ws.geonames.org/rssToGeoRSS?feedUrl=[RSS feed URL]
Example: Reuters World News
The reason for this talk about GeoRSS is that Google Maps started to support this format. Yahoo Maps is already using GeoRSS for data overlay; so does Virtual Earth. Google has been using KML, a format created by Keyhole, the company that developed Google Earth.
Here are the Reuters World News, some Flickr bird photos and a travel blog on Google Maps. As you can see, it's so easy to create mashups from a simple feed.
There's also a nice RSS to GeoRSS converter that identifies locations in a feed and transforms them into geographical coordinates. Here's how to use it:
http://ws.geonames.org/rssToGeoRSS?feedUrl=[RSS feed URL]
Example: Reuters World News
The reason for this talk about GeoRSS is that Google Maps started to support this format. Yahoo Maps is already using GeoRSS for data overlay; so does Virtual Earth. Google has been using KML, a format created by Keyhole, the company that developed Google Earth.
We now support GeoRSS as a data format for geographic content in Google Maps. We want to enable users to create data in whatever format is most convenient for them, and feel that by supporting both KML and GeoRSS we can enable a wider variety of people and applications to contribute content to Google Maps. We've built support for the Simple, GML, and W3C Geo encodings of GeoRSS -- all you have to do is enter the full URL of a GeoRSS file into the Maps query box to load the file. (...)
Most importantly, we've extended support for displaying geographic data -- both KML and GeoRSS -- into the Google Maps API. Now in addition to programatically adding content to a Maps API site, you can create your content as KML or GeoRSS and load it into the Map with a simple function call.
Here are the Reuters World News, some Flickr bird photos and a travel blog on Google Maps. As you can see, it's so easy to create mashups from a simple feed.
Google Tests a New Design for the Homepage
It wouldn't be the first time when Google tests new designs for the (classic) homepage or the search results pages, but this time someone saw a radical change. The links to Google's services were detached from the search box and were moved in the top left corner. Because there's no visible connection between the links and the search box, this move allowed Google to add non-search services: Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs. Now that anyone can get a Gmail account and services like Calendar and Docs & Spreadsheets have matured and reached a wider audience, Google plans to make them even more visible.
{ Thank you, Will Shepherdson. }
{ Thank you, Will Shepherdson. }
Summarizing Search Results
Search engines shows snippets next to each search results so you can decide if a page is relevant without visiting it first. But snippets are pretty short and focus on the text that includes your keywords. To find more about a page, a text summarizer that shows the key phrases would be helpful.
Syntatica is a company that combined search results with summarization and the results is Syntatica Search. If you leave behind the fact that Syntatica uses Live Search, you'll notice that the summary gives you a better idea about the content of a page than the snippet. This works well especially with pages that have a lot of content on a single topic.
"Unlike conventional search-and-retrieval programs, Syntactica does not simply match strings of letters to other strings of letters in an index. It analyzes concepts in the context of the sentence structures in which the words reside. (...) The program first determines the semantic weight of the concept from the dictionary. (...) After the semantic weight is determined, the program determines the concept's place in the text's syntactic structure to determine its overall relevance. Once a concept's relevance has been determined, the program follows more rules that compare the weight of all the concepts within a text, and generates summaries based on the relevance of all its concepts to produce the desired output."
This could be a machine-generated replacement of the meta description tag, that was mostly used to mislead search engines. It's the core essence of a page expressed using portions of the text.
The screenshot below shows a search result for [Twitter], a snippet generated by the search engine and an abstract produced by Syntatica.
Syntatica is a company that combined search results with summarization and the results is Syntatica Search. If you leave behind the fact that Syntatica uses Live Search, you'll notice that the summary gives you a better idea about the content of a page than the snippet. This works well especially with pages that have a lot of content on a single topic.
"Unlike conventional search-and-retrieval programs, Syntactica does not simply match strings of letters to other strings of letters in an index. It analyzes concepts in the context of the sentence structures in which the words reside. (...) The program first determines the semantic weight of the concept from the dictionary. (...) After the semantic weight is determined, the program determines the concept's place in the text's syntactic structure to determine its overall relevance. Once a concept's relevance has been determined, the program follows more rules that compare the weight of all the concepts within a text, and generates summaries based on the relevance of all its concepts to produce the desired output."
This could be a machine-generated replacement of the meta description tag, that was mostly used to mislead search engines. It's the core essence of a page expressed using portions of the text.
The screenshot below shows a search result for [Twitter], a snippet generated by the search engine and an abstract produced by Syntatica.
Yahoo Widgets vs Google Desktop
Yahoo launched a new version of Yahoo Widgets (previously known as Konfabulator), a free application that displays small widgets on your desktop. Launched in 2002 for Mac, and then ported to Windows, Konfabulator was bought in 2005 by Yahoo.
Google Desktop was launched in 2004 as a desktop search tool, but it started to include support for widgets in 2005. "Google Desktop is a new, easier way to get information – even without searching. You can think of it as a personal web assistant that learns about your habits and interests to identify and present web pages, news stories, and photos that it thinks you will be interested in," said Marissa Mayer.
While Konfabulator is the real innovator, Google Desktop combined widgets with search and focused on personalization. Here's a small comparison table:
Yahoo Widgets is for people who want to spread a lot of information chaotically on the desktop; there are plenty of sleek widgets to choose from. Google Desktop is for organized people: it lets you search you computer as well as the web, it shows a sidebar that's visible all the time and personalizes the gadgets automatically.
Google Desktop was launched in 2004 as a desktop search tool, but it started to include support for widgets in 2005. "Google Desktop is a new, easier way to get information – even without searching. You can think of it as a personal web assistant that learns about your habits and interests to identify and present web pages, news stories, and photos that it thinks you will be interested in," said Marissa Mayer.
While Konfabulator is the real innovator, Google Desktop combined widgets with search and focused on personalization. Here's a small comparison table:
| Google Desktop | Yahoo Widgets |
Platforms | Windows 2000/XP/Vista | Mac OSX, Windows 2000/XP/Vista |
Setup size | 1.7 MB | 11.6 MB |
Terminology | gadgets | widgets |
Default widgets | Gmail, clock, To Do list, news, feed reader, sticky notes, photos, weather. | Yahoo! search, maps, notepad, address book, mail, photos, Flickr, Calendar, Weather, Finance, digital clock, CPU monitor, widget gallery. |
Total number of widgets | 360 | 3884 |
Rendering | In the same process as Google Desktop. | Each widget has its own process: as a result, Yahoo Widgets is more stable, but also uses more memory. |
Widgets are built in | XML and JavaScript | XML and JavaScript |
What you can do with widgets |
|
|
What's unique |
|
|
Performance | Google Desktop also indexes your computer, so it has worse performance. If you disable desktop search functionality, you'll reduce memory usage. | The latest version improves memory usage. The performance is similar to Google Desktop without desktop search. |
Yahoo Widgets is for people who want to spread a lot of information chaotically on the desktop; there are plenty of sleek widgets to choose from. Google Desktop is for organized people: it lets you search you computer as well as the web, it shows a sidebar that's visible all the time and personalizes the gadgets automatically.
Picasa Web Albums API
The API has already been available unofficially, but starting today it's a reliable way to interact with Picasa Web Albums. The API lets you send or receive information formatted as GData feeds. After securely authenticating to Google, you can request all the albums and the photos from an album, create new albums, replace and delete photos, and also obtain search results.
Using the API, you can create a new interface for Picasa Web Albums, or you can let users upload photos to Picasa Web from your desktop or web application. Sven Mawson from Google offers more ideas: "Have a great idea for integrating your photos and tags into a semantic network? Want to add a slide show of your favorite photos to your homepage and include user comments? How about autotagging your photos based on image analysis or photo description or title?"
An interesting example is Picnik, which is a very nice online photo editor. Picnik imports photos from your computer, from Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, and search results. If you choose to import photos from Picasa Web, you'll enter your credentials (Picnik should use Google's authentication API), and select photos from your albums. After doing some basic editing (you can crop, resize, rotate, apply some filters), the photo can be saved to Picasa Web Albums, but it won't replace the original copy.
Another new API is for Google Notebook, but this one is limited to read-only access to public notebooks. As more Google applications get APIs, the data you store on Google's servers will become easier to access from other interfaces securely, easier to backup and more valuable.
Using the API, you can create a new interface for Picasa Web Albums, or you can let users upload photos to Picasa Web from your desktop or web application. Sven Mawson from Google offers more ideas: "Have a great idea for integrating your photos and tags into a semantic network? Want to add a slide show of your favorite photos to your homepage and include user comments? How about autotagging your photos based on image analysis or photo description or title?"
An interesting example is Picnik, which is a very nice online photo editor. Picnik imports photos from your computer, from Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, and search results. If you choose to import photos from Picasa Web, you'll enter your credentials (Picnik should use Google's authentication API), and select photos from your albums. After doing some basic editing (you can crop, resize, rotate, apply some filters), the photo can be saved to Picasa Web Albums, but it won't replace the original copy.
Another new API is for Google Notebook, but this one is limited to read-only access to public notebooks. As more Google applications get APIs, the data you store on Google's servers will become easier to access from other interfaces securely, easier to backup and more valuable.
On YouTube's Success
Deepak Thomas and Vineet Buch wrote an interesting about YouTube, titled "YouTube Case Study: Widget marketing comes of age". They explain the key factors that assured YouTube's success.
YouTube was launched when social networks started to become popular, when the bandwidth became cheaper and people wanted an interactive alternative to TV. But other sites did similar things, but couldn't have YouTube's success. I wonder why.
{ via Greg Linden. }
Online video definitely existed before YouTube came into vogue. However, uploading videos, sharing and watching them was quite cumbersome. (...) Video files were too large to be e-mailed. (...) Viewers would typically need to wait for the entire video to download before they could start watching it. This was a problem not limited to just peer-to-peer video sharing. Most professional websites with video content had the same issue. Downloading the video was just half the battle. Users needed to install the appropriate video player, the free versions of which often behaved like "spyware". (...)
Distributing popular and hard-to-find video clips was clearly a success factor. Clips of the popular, long-running television show, Saturday Night Live was a particularly significant example. (...)
YouTube allowed users to easily embed any hosted videos on web pages or blogs. This turned out to be particularly popular with social-networking websites, especially MySpace. (...)
While the technology platform used by YouTube was not particularly remarkable, it was designed to solve the problem at hand. The technology concept was to encode videos in the Macromedia Flash format and take advantage of the millions of computers which already had the Flash player installed on it.
YouTube was launched when social networks started to become popular, when the bandwidth became cheaper and people wanted an interactive alternative to TV. But other sites did similar things, but couldn't have YouTube's success. I wonder why.
{ via Greg Linden. }
Easter Egg in Google Personalized Homepage
There's an easter egg related to the new themes added in Google Personalized Homepage. If you chose any theme other than Bus Stop and Classic, visit the homepage at 3:14 AM (your local time)*.
In the Beach theme there's Nessie, the Loch Ness monster:
And the "Sweet dreams" theme has a nice Pi:
Tea house:
Seasonal scape:
City scape:
For a way to see these easter eggs, check Ben's comment. You'll have to select a theme and inject the content from the CSS file corresponding to your theme:
http://www.google.com/ig/skins/NAME/NAME_3.14am.css
where NAME is in { teahouse, cityscape, beach, sweetdreams, winterscape }
* As you might know, pi=3.14159...
In the Beach theme there's Nessie, the Loch Ness monster:
And the "Sweet dreams" theme has a nice Pi:
Tea house:
Seasonal scape:
City scape:
For a way to see these easter eggs, check Ben's comment. You'll have to select a theme and inject the content from the CSS file corresponding to your theme:
http://www.google.com/ig/skins/NAME/NAME_3.14am.css
where NAME is in { teahouse, cityscape, beach, sweetdreams, winterscape }
* As you might know, pi=3.14159...
Google Launches Pay-Per-Action Ads
After testing pay-per-action AdSense ads last year, Google officially launches the program (although it's limited to US advertisers).
"Pay-per-action advertising is a new pricing model that allows advertisers to pay only when specific actions that they define are completed by a user on their site. Rather than paying for clicks or impressions, advertisers can choose to pay when a user makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter, or completes any other clearly defined action that they choose."
The new pay-per-action ads will have a format similar to the current AdSense referral blocks. "Publishers can choose to place specific pay-per-action ads in new ad units that they create, or allow us to serve the highest converting pay-per-action ads that are related to a topic that they choose."
Some facts:
* formats: text ads, image ads, embeddable links. The text and image referral ads are available in the same sizes as the existing image ad formats.
* ad scope: you can choose a keyword or a list of up to 15 products. Google will rotate the ads and try to display the best performing ones for a site.
The new ads are a departure from AdSense's philosophy of bringing contextual ads, but they give publishers more control over the products that are promoted. The ads can be endorsed, they're more expensive, but require more than a simple click. Visitors should buy a product, fill a form, register to a service, download a program, or perform other actions selected by the advertisers.
To sign up for the AdSense side of the service (you're a publisher), go to AdSense Referrals Beta. To sign up for the AdWords side of the service (you're an US advertiser), go to Google AdWords.
"Pay-per-action advertising is a new pricing model that allows advertisers to pay only when specific actions that they define are completed by a user on their site. Rather than paying for clicks or impressions, advertisers can choose to pay when a user makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter, or completes any other clearly defined action that they choose."
The new pay-per-action ads will have a format similar to the current AdSense referral blocks. "Publishers can choose to place specific pay-per-action ads in new ad units that they create, or allow us to serve the highest converting pay-per-action ads that are related to a topic that they choose."
Some facts:
* formats: text ads, image ads, embeddable links. The text and image referral ads are available in the same sizes as the existing image ad formats.
* ad scope: you can choose a keyword or a list of up to 15 products. Google will rotate the ads and try to display the best performing ones for a site.
The new ads are a departure from AdSense's philosophy of bringing contextual ads, but they give publishers more control over the products that are promoted. The ads can be endorsed, they're more expensive, but require more than a simple click. Visitors should buy a product, fill a form, register to a service, download a program, or perform other actions selected by the advertisers.
To sign up for the AdSense side of the service (you're a publisher), go to AdSense Referrals Beta. To sign up for the AdWords side of the service (you're an US advertiser), go to Google AdWords.
Comparing Google and Yahoo in Mobile Search
On Yahoo Mobile homepage, Yahoo launched a challenge to compare its new mobile search engine with Google's. Yahoo recommends you to download a PDF [ 13.1 MB ] that compares the search results for 16 general queries like: "New York", "George Bush", "iPod".
Unlike Google, that only shows web search results by default (and occasionally OneBox results), Yahoo shows the first results from a lot of specialized search engines for some queries. They call this "Yahoo oneSearch" (video) and it's the major feature of their new search engine.
Yahoo explains: "oneSearch results are delivered to you in a new, breakthrough format that redefines search for the mobile phone. It's all about getting instant answers with just one click—no need to sift through a bunch of links to find exactly what you're looking for. (...) oneSearch results are easy to read, scroll through, and expand when you want more information—like more images to view—with a single click. You don't have to "feel lucky" to be lucky every time with oneSearch."
I would argue that anything would be good to answer a such a general query like "New York" and Yahoo should've focused on more precise queries in their report. In fact, for most queries, Yahoo Mobile Search shows 3 web pages and 3 mobile web pages, while Google shows 10 web pages - that means Google shows more information and focuses on web pages, which are more numerous and more interesting than mobile web pages (compare the results for [Oscars 2007] in Yahoo and Google).
{ Thank you, Alexandru Dragan. }
Unlike Google, that only shows web search results by default (and occasionally OneBox results), Yahoo shows the first results from a lot of specialized search engines for some queries. They call this "Yahoo oneSearch" (video) and it's the major feature of their new search engine.
Yahoo explains: "oneSearch results are delivered to you in a new, breakthrough format that redefines search for the mobile phone. It's all about getting instant answers with just one click—no need to sift through a bunch of links to find exactly what you're looking for. (...) oneSearch results are easy to read, scroll through, and expand when you want more information—like more images to view—with a single click. You don't have to "feel lucky" to be lucky every time with oneSearch."
I would argue that anything would be good to answer a such a general query like "New York" and Yahoo should've focused on more precise queries in their report. In fact, for most queries, Yahoo Mobile Search shows 3 web pages and 3 mobile web pages, while Google shows 10 web pages - that means Google shows more information and focuses on web pages, which are more numerous and more interesting than mobile web pages (compare the results for [Oscars 2007] in Yahoo and Google).
{ Thank you, Alexandru Dragan. }
Themes for Google Personalized Homepage
Google Personalized Homepage becomes a little bit more "customizable". Now you can select between the default theme and six other childish themes. Themes change the background, text colors, icons, Google's logo, button sizes and more.
The theme is actually an XML that contains a list of CSS files. Google says that the "theme will dynamically change to match your time of day, including local sunrise and sunset times", so you have to enter your location. If you look in the XML, you'll notice a lot of references to the weather, so it's likely that the theme will change depending on weather, as well.
Because the theme is actually just a CSS file (and its dependencies), Google could let users build their own themes and maybe even host those themes to improve the performance.
{ Thank you, Allen Fuqua. }
How Google Blog Search Ranks Results
Unlike most blog search engines, Google Blog Search ranks the results by relevancy. You can change that by clicking on "sort by date", but the default option is useful if you want to find the most significant blog posts about a topic. But how does Google rank blog posts?
A new patent gives us some answers. Google uses indicators to reflect the quality of a blog or of a blog post.
To rank the search results, Google combines a quality score obtained by mixing those signals with a relevance score (IR score) that depends on the query. "The IR score may be determined based on the number of occurrences of the search terms in the document. The IR score may be determined based on where the search terms occur within the document (e.g., title, content, etc.) or characteristics of the search terms (e.g., font, size, color, etc.). A search term may be weighted differently from another search term when multiple search terms are present. The proximity of the search terms when multiple search terms are present may influence the IR score." (the quote was slightly altered for clarity)
We learned that Google uses all kinds of factors to determine the popularity and the quality of a blog, but that doesn't mean less popular blogs are left out if they have relevant content. You should also try to avoid all the negative signals that may indicate your blog is spammy.
{ via Search Engine Roundtable }
A new patent gives us some answers. Google uses indicators to reflect the quality of a blog or of a blog post.
Positive signals | Negative signals (spam signals) |
|
|
To rank the search results, Google combines a quality score obtained by mixing those signals with a relevance score (IR score) that depends on the query. "The IR score may be determined based on the number of occurrences of the search terms in the document. The IR score may be determined based on where the search terms occur within the document (e.g., title, content, etc.) or characteristics of the search terms (e.g., font, size, color, etc.). A search term may be weighted differently from another search term when multiple search terms are present. The proximity of the search terms when multiple search terms are present may influence the IR score." (the quote was slightly altered for clarity)
We learned that Google uses all kinds of factors to determine the popularity and the quality of a blog, but that doesn't mean less popular blogs are left out if they have relevant content. You should also try to avoid all the negative signals that may indicate your blog is spammy.
{ via Search Engine Roundtable }
YouTube Awards
Associated Press reports that YouTube will hold the first video awards from its short history this week. Users will be able to vote for the best original videos uploaded in 2006 at a special YouTube channel.
"YouTube community members can vote on their favorites beginning Monday and concluding on Friday. The winners, as chosen by the community, will be announced March 25. Each will be prominently featured on YouTube and receive a trophy, the design of which will be revealed later."
The nominees include Internet video stars Lonelygirl15 and "Ask a Ninja" and these awards are an opportunity to give them an official recognition and a big "thank you" for contributing to YouTube's success.
Here are the nominees (via NewTeeVee):
Update: And the winners are...
Customize Google Reader's Clips
Google Reader lets you tag blogs and blog posts and share those items with your friends. You get a feed, a web page and a widget you can add to your site.
If you use Google Reader's code, you'll only be able to show the titles of the most recent items and a link to the source. Fortunately, Google Reader has a JSON API, so you can use the callback parameter to create a JavaScript function that adds more features.
1. Make a tag public
Go to Settings/Tags and click on the broadcasting icon next to the tag you want to make public. You can also customize the clips for shared items, which are already public.
2. Get the code
Click on "add a clip to your site", choose the "None" color scheme, select the number of items you want to display and copy the code.
The code will look like this:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/publisher-en.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/reader/public/javascript/user/13577231804381328821/label/ex-googlers?n=5&callback=CODE"></script>
You can drop the first script element, because it's not necessary. The second script element will be customized below.
3. Customize the callback function
You'll notice that the second script calls an URL that has a "callback" parameter. You need to place the name of a JavaScript function with a single parameter - a Google Reader object that has more fields. The most important field is "items", an array that has the following structure:
"items": [
{
"title": "Blog title",
"published": 1173471960,
"updated": 1173481776,
"alternate": {
"href": "http://blogname.blogspot.com/2007/03/test.html",
"type": "text/html"
},
"content": "The first words from the post...",
"annotations": [
{
"content": "\"This is a very interesting post.\"",
"author": "Daniel",
"userId": "13377231804381328721",
"profileId": "125880905881548216826"
}
],
"author": "Dan Bush",
"origin": {
"streamId": "user/13377231804381328721/source/com.google/link",
"title": "Dan's Blog",
"htmlUrl": "http://blogname.blogspot.com"
}
},
....
]
A simple example of a callback function is buildContent, which requires a div element that has the ID "container", where it will place your clip:
function buildContent (blog) {
if (!blog || !blog.items) return;
var container=document.getElementById("container");
var code="";
for (var i = 0; i < blog.items.length; i++) {
var item = blog.items[i];
code=code + "<a href='"+item.alternate.href+"'>"+ item.title+ "</a><div>"+ item.content+"</div><br />";
}
container.innerHTML=code;
}
You'll need to change the callback parameter in the code obtained from Google Reader.
http://www.google.com/reader/public/javascript/
user/[id]/label/labelname?n=5&callback=buildContent
It's easy to customize your content by using CSS because you build the text displayed in your site. To show only the posts from a blog, subscribe to the blog in Google Reader and add it to a new folder.
Here's a very basic page that uses this code.
If you use Google Reader's code, you'll only be able to show the titles of the most recent items and a link to the source. Fortunately, Google Reader has a JSON API, so you can use the callback parameter to create a JavaScript function that adds more features.
1. Make a tag public
Go to Settings/Tags and click on the broadcasting icon next to the tag you want to make public. You can also customize the clips for shared items, which are already public.
2. Get the code
Click on "add a clip to your site", choose the "None" color scheme, select the number of items you want to display and copy the code.
The code will look like this:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/publisher-en.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/reader/public/javascript/user/13577231804381328821/label/ex-googlers?n=5&callback=CODE"></script>
You can drop the first script element, because it's not necessary. The second script element will be customized below.
3. Customize the callback function
You'll notice that the second script calls an URL that has a "callback" parameter. You need to place the name of a JavaScript function with a single parameter - a Google Reader object that has more fields. The most important field is "items", an array that has the following structure:
"items": [
{
"title": "Blog title",
"published": 1173471960,
"updated": 1173481776,
"alternate": {
"href": "http://blogname.blogspot.com/2007/03/test.html",
"type": "text/html"
},
"content": "The first words from the post...",
"annotations": [
{
"content": "\"This is a very interesting post.\"",
"author": "Daniel",
"userId": "13377231804381328721",
"profileId": "125880905881548216826"
}
],
"author": "Dan Bush",
"origin": {
"streamId": "user/13377231804381328721/source/com.google/link",
"title": "Dan's Blog",
"htmlUrl": "http://blogname.blogspot.com"
}
},
....
]
A simple example of a callback function is buildContent, which requires a div element that has the ID "container", where it will place your clip:
function buildContent (blog) {
if (!blog || !blog.items) return;
var container=document.getElementById("container");
var code="";
for (var i = 0; i < blog.items.length; i++) {
var item = blog.items[i];
code=code + "<a href='"+item.alternate.href+"'>"+ item.title+ "</a><div>"+ item.content+"</div><br />";
}
container.innerHTML=code;
}
You'll need to change the callback parameter in the code obtained from Google Reader.
http://www.google.com/reader/public/javascript/
user/[id]/label/labelname?n=5&callback=buildContent
It's easy to customize your content by using CSS because you build the text displayed in your site. To show only the posts from a blog, subscribe to the blog in Google Reader and add it to a new folder.
Here's a very basic page that uses this code.
Add Firefox Features to Internet Explorer 7
Here are some Internet Explorer 7 add-ons that mimic some useful features from Firefox that aren't available in Microsoft's browser (and sometimes add more features).
Inline search - search the current page as you type. It only works with Ctrl+F.
ieSpell - spell checker. Unlike the spell checker from Firefox, you need to press a button before seeing the misspellings.
IE7Pro - adds many features available in popular Firefox extensions. You get crash recovery, ads filter (with a dumb predefined list), mouse gestures, an option to change the user agent plus some tweaks like moving the menu on top and removing the search box.
Feed Folder - similar to the Live Bookmarks from Firefox.
Developer toolbar - explore the DOM of a web page, locate and outline some elements in a page.
Inline search - search the current page as you type. It only works with Ctrl+F.
ieSpell - spell checker. Unlike the spell checker from Firefox, you need to press a button before seeing the misspellings.
IE7Pro - adds many features available in popular Firefox extensions. You get crash recovery, ads filter (with a dumb predefined list), mouse gestures, an option to change the user agent plus some tweaks like moving the menu on top and removing the search box.
Feed Folder - similar to the Live Bookmarks from Firefox.
Developer toolbar - explore the DOM of a web page, locate and outline some elements in a page.
The History of Google Talk Gadget
The history of the Google Talk gadget started in November 2005, when Wes and Dudley Carr launched Gtalkr. Before Gtalkr, they had built Gush, a cross-platform Jabber instant messenger written in Flash and Python, that had a news reader and a free-flow layout. Back to Gtalkr:
GTalkr grew and started to add the features of a personalized homepage: feeds, Flickr slideshows, YouTube viewer. But this personalized homepage was built in Flash and the widgets interacted with the IM client, so you could share blog posts or videos with your Google Talk contacts by simply dragging them from the widget to the IM client. Gtalkr attracted a lot of enthusiasts and it was pretty difficult to keep the service running.
In the meantime, Google launched Gmail chat and started to improve its Ajax personalized homepage. Other web-based instant messengers like Meebo became more and more popular, because they were convenient and weren't blocked by firewalls.
In May 2006, Google hired the two developers behind Gtalkr and the site has been taken down. They now work at Google's Kirkland office, where Google Talk is being developed, and bring back some of the features of Gtalkr. Google Talk gadget, which is one of the first things developed in Flash at Google (along with Google Video and Google Finance charts), can be added to any site, but doesn't have a way to interact with external content.
{ Screenshot licensed as Creative Commons by ASurroca. }
Gtalkr is a web-based IM client that communicates with the Google Talk service. There are a couple of things that stand out about Gtalkr aside from that fact that it's web-based. First, it incorporates indexing and searching of conversations. Second, Gtalkr is an IM client at heart, but it's meant to tie into other webservices such as Yahoo! maps. The Yahoo! maps example doesn't integrate into the presence and messaging infrastructure at the moment, but the capability is there. Flash developers will be able to add their own extensions that can make use of our and Google's infrastructure.
GTalkr grew and started to add the features of a personalized homepage: feeds, Flickr slideshows, YouTube viewer. But this personalized homepage was built in Flash and the widgets interacted with the IM client, so you could share blog posts or videos with your Google Talk contacts by simply dragging them from the widget to the IM client. Gtalkr attracted a lot of enthusiasts and it was pretty difficult to keep the service running.
In the meantime, Google launched Gmail chat and started to improve its Ajax personalized homepage. Other web-based instant messengers like Meebo became more and more popular, because they were convenient and weren't blocked by firewalls.
In May 2006, Google hired the two developers behind Gtalkr and the site has been taken down. They now work at Google's Kirkland office, where Google Talk is being developed, and bring back some of the features of Gtalkr. Google Talk gadget, which is one of the first things developed in Flash at Google (along with Google Video and Google Finance charts), can be added to any site, but doesn't have a way to interact with external content.
{ Screenshot licensed as Creative Commons by ASurroca. }
Who Embedded My Video?
Let's say you upload a video to a site like YouTube and you want to see who viewed your video and where. An important number of views come from other sites that embed your video or link to it. You can use Google Blog Search to find them.
Find links to the video
A YouTube video has an address like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ. Paste the address in Google Blog Search and you'll find blogs and forums that link to the video.
Find sites that embed the video
You'll need to look at the code that needs to be added to a site and note the address included there: embed src="ADDRESS". For YouTube, this is a small alteration of the previous address and is similar to: http://www.youtube.com/v/o-KWYYIY4jQ. Now that you have the address of the embeddable Flash object, paste it in Google Blog Search and find a list of blogs.
An easier to find both kinds of blogs is to go to Technorati and to type the address of the video, but this only works for YouTube, while Google's Blog Search works for other sites too.
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