One of the reasons why YouTube became successful and Google Video didn't is that YouTube built a community around videos. Each registered user has a profile, a list of uploaded videos and favorite videos. You can subscribe to the videos uploaded by a user and send him a private message.
Google Video doesn't have any of these options: the only thing you can see about someone who posted a video is a list of other uploaded videos. But what if you want to get notified when this unknown person posts other videos? In Google Video, each user has an unique alphanumeric ID. To find all the videos posted by a user, you need to search for: [source:USER_ID]. The ID can be retrieved from the page's source code, but I made a bookmarklet that gives you the URL of a feed which contains all the videos posted by a user, sorted by date.
GVideo Author Feed
How to add the bookmarklet?
1. Make sure the link toolbar is visible in your browser. You can enable it if you go to the View menu in your browser, click on Toolbars and check:
* Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox
* Personal Bar in Opera
* Links in Internet Explorer
2. For Firefox and Opera, drag and drop the blue box above to the toolbar. For Internet Explorer, right-click on the blue box, select "Add to Favorites", ignore the security warning and choose "Links" from the list of folders.
A good example of interesting Google Video channel is "Google Tech Talks", that shows presentations on different topics from Googleplex. If you go to this tech talk and use the bookmarklet, you'll obtain a feed for all the tech talks uploaded by Google. You can subscribe to the feed using any feed reader, but Google Reader is a good choice because it lets you play videos without opening a new page.
YouTube Video Units
Google tested last year a way to embed videos from different content providers and monetize them with video ads (only MTV participated in this test). Basically, you had a video channel that displayed a playlist selected by the content provider. The playlist was changed every three to seven days and it was an opportunity to deliver premium content that keeps your visitors on your site more.
Google wants to use a similar idea for YouTube. The new YouTube video units will let you create a video channel related to your site's content a monetize it with text or image ads. It's not clear what kind of videos you'll be able to add, but it's likely the videos will be from YouTube's content partners. Music labels and other important content owners already had a special YouTube interface that included AdSense ads, but they didn't allow to embed their videos because they didn't gain revenue from the embedded players (or at least not directly).
"[Relevant, premium content] Deliver high quality video content to your site. Choose categories or have Google target your site content, and decide which categories you want to exclude.
[Targeted, non-intrusive ads] Earn revenue from ads targeted to your site content and to the videos being played. Ads appear as part of the YouTube player and outside of the video content to ensure a smooth user experience."
The new video units are an extensions of the custom players, so they're customizable and look better than the standard YouTube player. The option to create a video unit is not yet available for everyone, but you should be able to see it when you generate the code for a custom player.
{ spotted by ProBlogger }
Update (October 9th): The feature is now live in the US. Video content comes from some small YouTube partners, including: TV Guide Broadband, Expert Village, Mondo Media, lonelygirl15, Extreme Elements, and Ford Models, but Google hopes to add bigger names in the future. "There are three ways to choose video content:
* Selecting individual content providers, YouTube partners who have chosen to distribute their videos to publisher websites along with targeted ads
* Selecting content categories, topics and themes of video content you'd like to show on your site
* Automatic targeting, in which the video content you display will be automatically targeted to the content of your site. You can assist the targeting by providing relevant keywords. (...)
Video units may display two types of ads: text overlay ads, which are displayed in the bottom 20% of the video as it plays, and companion ads, which appear above the video content within the player. The ads displayed can be either contextually targeted or site-targeted, and may be paid on either a cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand impressions basis."
The Disjointed GDrive (or Where Do I Upload My Files?)
It's pretty weird to be a company that wants to move your data online, but not have a central place for uploading and managing that data. The long-awaited and much-delayed GDrive could be that place. But for now you have to spread your files in way too many places, with different interfaces, restrictions and options.
{ Idea by Philipp Lenssen. }
| What | Where | Limits | How |
| Documents : .html, .txt, .rtf, .doc, .odt, .csv, .xls, .ods, .ppt | Google Docs | Documents: 500 KB. Spreadsheets: 1 MB. Presentations: 10 MB. Maximum 5000 documents and presentations, 200 spreadsheets. | One by one or by email. |
| Photos: .jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp | * Picasa Web Albums * Blogger * orkut | * Picasa Web: 20 MB per image. 1 GB free space. * orkut: 5 MB per image, up to 25 images. | One by one, by email, using an ActiveX control, a Mac uploader or using Picasa. The photos uploaded in Blogger are hosted by Picasa Web. |
| Videos: .mpg, .mp4, .avi, .wmv, .rm | * Google Video * Picasa Web Albums * Blogger * YouTube | * Google Video: 100 MB per video for the web uploader. Unlimited size for the desktop uploader. * For Picasa Web, the maximum space is 1 GB. * For YouTube, you can upload videos that have less than 100 MB and less than 10 mins. | * Google Video: from the web or using a desktop uploader. * For Picasa Web, you can only use Picasa. * For YouTube, you can only upload videos from the web interface. |
| Any file | * Google Page Creator * Google Groups * Google Project Hosting * Google Base * Gmail | * Pages/ Groups/ Project Hoting: Maximum 10 MB per file. 100 MB free space for a site/group/project. * Google Base lets you attach up to 15 files and less than 20 MB to an item; it has restrictions for file types. * The maximum size for Gmail's attachments is 20 MB. You can't upload executable files. | * Only from the web interface. No way to group files. * Google Project Hosting should be used to host open source software. * You can use Gmail Drive, a 3rd party software "that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Gmail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium". Don't upload too many files in a short time. |
{ Idea by Philipp Lenssen. }
Chat Rooms for Google Talk
PartyChat adds one of the many missing features from Google Talk: chat rooms. You need to add partychat@gmail.com as a friend and use commands to create a room or join an existing one. To make sure nobody joins your room accidentally, password-protect it.
PartyChat is an open-source project created by a Google employee: Akshay Patil in December 2005, not long after Google Talk was released. Since then, Google Talk didn't add too much features. Only Google Talk's gadget has an option for group chats, while PartyChat can be used in Gmail Chat, the desktop client or any other Jabber client.
Some useful commands:
/create chat_name [optional_password] - creates a new party chat. If you provide a password, then other users must give this password to enter the chat.
/join chat_name [password] - join an existing party chat. If the chat has a password, you must give the password to enter.
/alias [name] - give yourself an alias; if you do not specify a name, your current alias is removed
/commands - displays the list of commands
PartyChat is like a group chat, except that it's less obtrusive and persistent across different login sessions.
For example, say your friends are in a party chat named "drivel". To enter the chat, IM partychat@gmail.com with the line "/enter drivel." After that, you'll receive messages sent in "drivel" from partychat@gmail.com and all messages you send to partychat@gmail.com will be broadcasted to your friends in "drivel."
If you log out of Google Talk and then log back in, you're still in the party chats you were in prior to logging out. To leave a party chat, IM "/leave" or "/exit" to the address you were chatting with (e.g. partychat@gmail.com).
PartyChat is an open-source project created by a Google employee: Akshay Patil in December 2005, not long after Google Talk was released. Since then, Google Talk didn't add too much features. Only Google Talk's gadget has an option for group chats, while PartyChat can be used in Gmail Chat, the desktop client or any other Jabber client.
Some useful commands:
/create chat_name [optional_password] - creates a new party chat. If you provide a password, then other users must give this password to enter the chat.
/join chat_name [password] - join an existing party chat. If the chat has a password, you must give the password to enter.
/alias [name] - give yourself an alias; if you do not specify a name, your current alias is removed
/commands - displays the list of commands
Google Buys Zingku, Mobile Social Network
Google's plans to extend in the mobile space could include the launch of a mobile phone. For now, Google bought another mobile social network: Zingku. "We've entered into an agreement to have Google acquire our Zingku service," informs us Zingku.com.
Zingku's features include:
The service is limited to the US and, until Zingku migrates to Google's servers, you can't create a new account.
In 2005, Google bought dodgeball, another mobile social network, but the product stagnated and its founders decided to leave Google. Grandcentral, another Google acquisition, links all your phone numbers. Zingku could unify instant messaging, SMS and email.
Update. Google confirms the acquisition: "It is true that we acquired certain assets and technology of Zingku. We believe these assets can help build products and features that will benefit our users, advertisers and publishers."
{ Thank you, Mark and Andrew. }
Our service is designed from the mobile phone, outward, allowing you to create and exchange things of interest ranging from invitations to "mobile flyers" with friends in a trusted manner. On the mobile phone, Zingku uses standard text messaging features that come with every phone. On the web, our service uses your standard web browser and instant messenger. There is nothing to install.
With Zingku, things you wish to promote or share, can easily be created and fetched via mobile, instant messenger, and web browser. Our service integrates your mobile phone with a personalized web site so that you can easily move (zing) things back and forth between the web and and your mobile as well as powerfully connect with friends and optionally their friends.
Zingku's features include:
* Store & fetch mobile photos and txt reminders with alarms on your companion mobile web site.
* Share mobile photos and posts with friends and friends-of-friends with txt msg'ing, instant messenger, & web.
* Gather a big crowd & their friends with txt messaging, IM, and email, all at once!
* Take an instant poll among friends, all with txt messaging. "Hey what should we do ? 1. Movie 2. Dan's party"
* Your own mobile cards that people fetch by txt'ing a magic code. Make as many as you want & link them together.
* Fetch postings from any blog or any syndicated feed (RSS, Atom) to your mobile phone via txt message.
The service is limited to the US and, until Zingku migrates to Google's servers, you can't create a new account.
In 2005, Google bought dodgeball, another mobile social network, but the product stagnated and its founders decided to leave Google. Grandcentral, another Google acquisition, links all your phone numbers. Zingku could unify instant messaging, SMS and email.
Update. Google confirms the acquisition: "It is true that we acquired certain assets and technology of Zingku. We believe these assets can help build products and features that will benefit our users, advertisers and publishers."
{ Thank you, Mark and Andrew. }
Google's 9th Birthday
Two weeks ago, AFP informed us that "Google, at age 10, is the official heart of the Internet. Born 10 years ago, the Google Internet search engine has grown into the electronic center of human knowledge by indexing billions of web pages as well as images, books and videos." That's true, except that Google is 9 years old. Even if Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered the google.com domain in 1997, Google was officially launched one year later.
"Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake," says Google's help center. You can read more about it directly from Google. In the recent years, Google's birthday has been celebrated on September 27th with a doodle displayed on the homepage. Happy birthday, Google!
Update: "Happy Birthday, Google!" is in Google Hot Trends.
Update 2: A reader noticed that Google used in this year's logo a piñata, "a brightly-coloured paper container filled with sweets and/or toys. It is generally suspended on a rope from a tree branch or ceiling and is used during celebrations".
"Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake," says Google's help center. You can read more about it directly from Google. In the recent years, Google's birthday has been celebrated on September 27th with a doodle displayed on the homepage. Happy birthday, Google!
Update: "Happy Birthday, Google!" is in Google Hot Trends.
Update 2: A reader noticed that Google used in this year's logo a piñata, "a brightly-coloured paper container filled with sweets and/or toys. It is generally suspended on a rope from a tree branch or ceiling and is used during celebrations".
Live Search Launches Major Update
Nobody remembers exactly how many times Microsoft updated its search engine hoping to attract more users. But this time Live Search (formerly known as MSN Search and Windows Live Search) received a major update, "our biggest update since our debut in January 2005", according to its corporate blog.
Even though the update isn't yet... live, you can't still see the new version if you click on the URLs from this post. They contain a parameter that triggers the updated interface and set a cookie. To compare them with the results from the old Live Search, open a different browser and perform the same searches directly from live.com.
Old version:
New version:
The new design moves the search box to the left, transform the tabs for other search engines into links, changes the text colors and the fonts (from Verdana to Arial) and the page is easier to read. The page also loads faster because Microsoft optimized the code (7.23 KB vs 15.9KB when you search for [Google]).
Microsoft says the new index is four times bigger than the previous one, but that's not a measure for quality. As you can see in the screenshot above, Live Search 2.0 shows two spammy web pages at #3 and #4 when you search for [Google Pack]. The same pages have lower ranks in the previous version.
Microsoft updated the instant answers to show more information about celebrities, including a Celebrity XRank, which is similar to Google Hot Trends. You'll also find rich information about products from MSN Shopping.
The new video search engine shows video previews while you hover over the thumbnails. This is useful to decide if a video is right for you, but it's also very easy to accidentally trigger a video while moving your mouse on the page. Unfortunately, if you click on the thumbnail of a YouTube/MySpace/Metacafe video, Microsoft will only show the embedded player, without any description, comments, ratings. Other videos, like those from MSN Video, are played at their original page.
Live Search detecting more subtle misspellings and includes related terms by expanding your query. "The new Live Search does a much better job in predicting the intent of the query to return the best results possible. New investments improve the search service's ability to read and understand queries in a way that more accurately determines intent despite common problems such as spelling errors, stop words, punctuation and synonyms," says Microsoft in a press release.
The new ranking algorithm is closer to Google, although it seems to not be influenced too much by the number of links or their importance. A search for [Google OS] returns as the fourth result a page that was linked from this blog and very few other sites.
Live Search is still far behind Google in terms of quality, but this is the first time when Microsoft focuses on the important things: relevance, speed and user interface.
Update: Read this very cool live blogging from Microsoft's Searchification event where they launched these updates. The post was written by Vanessa Fox, a former Google employee.
Even though the update isn't yet... live, you can't still see the new version if you click on the URLs from this post. They contain a parameter that triggers the updated interface and set a cookie. To compare them with the results from the old Live Search, open a different browser and perform the same searches directly from live.com.
Old version:
New version:
The new design moves the search box to the left, transform the tabs for other search engines into links, changes the text colors and the fonts (from Verdana to Arial) and the page is easier to read. The page also loads faster because Microsoft optimized the code (7.23 KB vs 15.9KB when you search for [Google]).
Microsoft says the new index is four times bigger than the previous one, but that's not a measure for quality. As you can see in the screenshot above, Live Search 2.0 shows two spammy web pages at #3 and #4 when you search for [Google Pack]. The same pages have lower ranks in the previous version.
Microsoft updated the instant answers to show more information about celebrities, including a Celebrity XRank, which is similar to Google Hot Trends. You'll also find rich information about products from MSN Shopping.
The new video search engine shows video previews while you hover over the thumbnails. This is useful to decide if a video is right for you, but it's also very easy to accidentally trigger a video while moving your mouse on the page. Unfortunately, if you click on the thumbnail of a YouTube/MySpace/Metacafe video, Microsoft will only show the embedded player, without any description, comments, ratings. Other videos, like those from MSN Video, are played at their original page.
Live Search detecting more subtle misspellings and includes related terms by expanding your query. "The new Live Search does a much better job in predicting the intent of the query to return the best results possible. New investments improve the search service's ability to read and understand queries in a way that more accurately determines intent despite common problems such as spelling errors, stop words, punctuation and synonyms," says Microsoft in a press release.
The new ranking algorithm is closer to Google, although it seems to not be influenced too much by the number of links or their importance. A search for [Google OS] returns as the fourth result a page that was linked from this blog and very few other sites.
Live Search is still far behind Google in terms of quality, but this is the first time when Microsoft focuses on the important things: relevance, speed and user interface.
Update: Read this very cool live blogging from Microsoft's Searchification event where they launched these updates. The post was written by Vanessa Fox, a former Google employee.
New Homepage for Google Book Search
Google Books Search's redesigned homepage invites you to discover books by clicking on a category or the cover of a popular book. "At Book Search, we have a lot of books, but we don't have shelves or sections, which can make casually browsing books in our index difficult," mentions the product's blog. The intimidating search box is placed at the top of the page, leaving space for some examples of books:
* interesting: practical books like "How to be an even better manager", Math books, medical books
* classics: Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Goethe, Francis Bacon, Alexander Pope - all of them are in the public domain and can be downloaded as PDF files
* highly cited in scholar papers: authoritative books like Hegel's "Science of logic", Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan"
* random subject: books from a randomly-selected topic
Google also lists the main subjects for fiction and non-fiction books and some random subjects. It's interesting that Google Book Search defaults to the cover view when you explore the books from a subject and to the list view when you do a normal search.
For ambiguous queries like [logic], you'll be able to restrict the results to an appropriate subject. You can also use the subject: operator to make your search more precise (for example: war subject:"Science fiction"). Google doesn't offer the complete hierarchy of subjects, so a clever autocomplete would be helpful.
* interesting: practical books like "How to be an even better manager", Math books, medical books
* classics: Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Goethe, Francis Bacon, Alexander Pope - all of them are in the public domain and can be downloaded as PDF files
* highly cited in scholar papers: authoritative books like Hegel's "Science of logic", Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan"
* random subject: books from a randomly-selected topic
Google also lists the main subjects for fiction and non-fiction books and some random subjects. It's interesting that Google Book Search defaults to the cover view when you explore the books from a subject and to the list view when you do a normal search.
For ambiguous queries like [logic], you'll be able to restrict the results to an appropriate subject. You can also use the subject: operator to make your search more precise (for example: war subject:"Science fiction"). Google doesn't offer the complete hierarchy of subjects, so a clever autocomplete would be helpful.
Google Using Traditional Advertising
Google became popular without having to use advertising to promote its search engine. People liked the tool and started to recommend it to others. Even if Google uses its own advertising system to promote some of its services, Google has always been reluctant to use traditional advertising. Here are some of the few offline Google ads:
* a billboard that asked you to solve a Math problem: find the first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e. If you visited the site and answered other complicated questions, you were directed to Google's jobs site.
* job ads posted in newspapers: "Google is looking for engineers with great aspirations" (Wired), "Are you scary smart?" (New York Times)
* 15-seconds TV ads on a science program from PBS, in 2005. "The spots, which quietly launched at the end of the summer, start with the keywords string theory, Egyptology, and astronomy being typed into a search bar; as the terms are typed in, videos that relate to the subject appear behind the search bar. The spots end with the tagline: Google is proud to support NOVA in the search for knowledge." This is probably the first brand ad for Google (here's the video).
In the recent months, Google started to promote its own products using undisclosed ads or partnerships with media companies. Last week, Google 411 graduated from Labs and it's promoted using billboards and taxi ads in San Francisco.
Google, which is still trailing behind Baidu in China, intends to heavily advertise its products to gain more market share. "Google has not done any marketing until now. But in China there are many users who are new to the internet, and many other name-brand search engines," said Lee Kai-fu, Google China's president.
"By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another," says Google in "Ten things Google has found to be true". But even though search is almost synonymous with Google, the company still has services that are unknown to the general public and important markets to conquer.
* a billboard that asked you to solve a Math problem: find the first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e. If you visited the site and answered other complicated questions, you were directed to Google's jobs site.
* job ads posted in newspapers: "Google is looking for engineers with great aspirations" (Wired), "Are you scary smart?" (New York Times)
* 15-seconds TV ads on a science program from PBS, in 2005. "The spots, which quietly launched at the end of the summer, start with the keywords string theory, Egyptology, and astronomy being typed into a search bar; as the terms are typed in, videos that relate to the subject appear behind the search bar. The spots end with the tagline: Google is proud to support NOVA in the search for knowledge." This is probably the first brand ad for Google (here's the video).
In the recent months, Google started to promote its own products using undisclosed ads or partnerships with media companies. Last week, Google 411 graduated from Labs and it's promoted using billboards and taxi ads in San Francisco.
(Creative Commons, photo by Steve Rhodes)
(Creative Commons, photo by Niall Kennedy)
Google, which is still trailing behind Baidu in China, intends to heavily advertise its products to gain more market share. "Google has not done any marketing until now. But in China there are many users who are new to the internet, and many other name-brand search engines," said Lee Kai-fu, Google China's president.
"By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another," says Google in "Ten things Google has found to be true". But even though search is almost synonymous with Google, the company still has services that are unknown to the general public and important markets to conquer.
Google Hosts Videos from Third-Party Sites
I was complaining in May that Google Video served content from third-party sites (not from Google-owned sites) in a Google Video-branded player and hosted all the content on its servers. Google changed its mind in June and started to only show thumbnails from the videos.
Apparently, this was only a change in exposing the content, because Google continue to host FLV videos from third-party sites like Metacafe. Searching for [Sunshine Metacafe] on SearchMash, an experimental Google site, you'll notice that, even though all the videos come from Metacafe, the interface doesn't communicate this. The only way to realize that the source of the videos is Metacafe is by clicking on "see larger video". You'll be sent to a Google Video page that shows the original source in a frame.
All the videos from third-party sites are displayed in a Google Video player...
... and they're hosted on Google's servers:
I agree that it's more convenient to host all the videos in the world and play them using a standard interface, but I don't think copyright laws allow you to do that. It's the same reason why Google only shows thumbnails in Google Image Search and sends you to the original site to see the images in full size.
Other video search engines have different ways of displaying videos: Yahoo Video shows a thumbnail and sends you to the original site, Truveo displays the embedded player of the original site, while Blinkx hosts a 30 seconds preview for each video.
Apparently, this was only a change in exposing the content, because Google continue to host FLV videos from third-party sites like Metacafe. Searching for [Sunshine Metacafe] on SearchMash, an experimental Google site, you'll notice that, even though all the videos come from Metacafe, the interface doesn't communicate this. The only way to realize that the source of the videos is Metacafe is by clicking on "see larger video". You'll be sent to a Google Video page that shows the original source in a frame.
All the videos from third-party sites are displayed in a Google Video player...
... and they're hosted on Google's servers:
I agree that it's more convenient to host all the videos in the world and play them using a standard interface, but I don't think copyright laws allow you to do that. It's the same reason why Google only shows thumbnails in Google Image Search and sends you to the original site to see the images in full size.
Other video search engines have different ways of displaying videos: Yahoo Video shows a thumbnail and sends you to the original site, Truveo displays the embedded player of the original site, while Blinkx hosts a 30 seconds preview for each video.
More Google Alerts
Executive summary: Google adds video alerts and you have more options to monitor search results.
Sometimes a search results page is not the best medium for finding things: if you want to find great new web pages about Google Web Toolkit, searching every day for this query and trying to find what's new is time-consuming and inefficient.
Google Alerts lets you receive email notifications when new web sites appear in the top results for your query. You can get alerts for results from web search, blog search, Google News, Google Groups and now Google Video. There's also a type of alert that combines the results from three search engines (web, news, blogs): you could call it the universal alert, but the official name is comprehensive alert. The number of top results that are potential candidates for Google Alerts is: 10 for blogs/news/videos, 15 for Google Groups and 20 for web search.
Depending on how often you want to receive the alerts, there are two types of alerts:
* as-it-happens: this is useful if you want to monitor an event or an important news. You should choose this option if you want to receive the alerts as soon as a new web page becomes relevant for your query. If your query is too general, you'll receive a lot of alerts, so use quotes or negative terms to make your query more precise.
* daily or weekly summary: this option is useful to monitor the latest news about a product, a company, a person, a research subject. The most common type of alert is the daily summary.
Usually, to monitor an event you should choose Google News, to find opinions about a product choose the Blog Search alerts, for new important pages about a subject Web Search alerts are the way to go, for answer to technical or not-so-technical question Google Groups alerts are helpful, while the new video alerts are great to find the latest video of your favorite band or a demo for that Google killer that's still not ready for the prime time. The comprehensive alerts are useful to get the full picture of a subject, for example to find if there's anything newsworthy or at least interesting about Google Reader.
Some of Google's search engines (Google News, Blog Search, Google Video) provide feeds for search results, so you can monitor the results in a feed reader. You should note that Google's alerts only include the top results sorted by relevance, while the feeds can also be sorted by date. So if you've wanted feeds for Google's search results, you could use Google Alerts as a partial replacement or subscribe to Yahoo's search feeds.
Google Alerts are also a way to produce "content" for your site with minimal effort. For example, Blogger has an option that lets you post by email and it's so easy to setup a Gmail filter that automatically forwards Google Alerts to Blogger's mail address. A way to monetize this "content" is to use Google's contextual ads. A simple Google search reveals a lot of sites that pollute the web with search results in disguise. Indirectly, Google Alerts, Blogger, Gmail and Google AdSense can be connected to generate revenue and pollute the search results.
Hopefully, Google will start to detect patterns in your search results and offer the option to create alerts if you search for some keywords frequently. The alerts might be combined with recommendations in a web interface that shows search results without having to type queries. Google could also add SMS alerts for important Gmail messages, traffic increases in Google Analytics, breaking news, weather changes, sports results and combine the service with Google SMS. Until then, you could try other alert services from Yahoo, Microsoft or AOL, which are less focused on search.
Sometimes a search results page is not the best medium for finding things: if you want to find great new web pages about Google Web Toolkit, searching every day for this query and trying to find what's new is time-consuming and inefficient.
Google Alerts lets you receive email notifications when new web sites appear in the top results for your query. You can get alerts for results from web search, blog search, Google News, Google Groups and now Google Video. There's also a type of alert that combines the results from three search engines (web, news, blogs): you could call it the universal alert, but the official name is comprehensive alert. The number of top results that are potential candidates for Google Alerts is: 10 for blogs/news/videos, 15 for Google Groups and 20 for web search.
Depending on how often you want to receive the alerts, there are two types of alerts:
* as-it-happens: this is useful if you want to monitor an event or an important news. You should choose this option if you want to receive the alerts as soon as a new web page becomes relevant for your query. If your query is too general, you'll receive a lot of alerts, so use quotes or negative terms to make your query more precise.
* daily or weekly summary: this option is useful to monitor the latest news about a product, a company, a person, a research subject. The most common type of alert is the daily summary.
Usually, to monitor an event you should choose Google News, to find opinions about a product choose the Blog Search alerts, for new important pages about a subject Web Search alerts are the way to go, for answer to technical or not-so-technical question Google Groups alerts are helpful, while the new video alerts are great to find the latest video of your favorite band or a demo for that Google killer that's still not ready for the prime time. The comprehensive alerts are useful to get the full picture of a subject, for example to find if there's anything newsworthy or at least interesting about Google Reader.
Some of Google's search engines (Google News, Blog Search, Google Video) provide feeds for search results, so you can monitor the results in a feed reader. You should note that Google's alerts only include the top results sorted by relevance, while the feeds can also be sorted by date. So if you've wanted feeds for Google's search results, you could use Google Alerts as a partial replacement or subscribe to Yahoo's search feeds.
Google Alerts are also a way to produce "content" for your site with minimal effort. For example, Blogger has an option that lets you post by email and it's so easy to setup a Gmail filter that automatically forwards Google Alerts to Blogger's mail address. A way to monetize this "content" is to use Google's contextual ads. A simple Google search reveals a lot of sites that pollute the web with search results in disguise. Indirectly, Google Alerts, Blogger, Gmail and Google AdSense can be connected to generate revenue and pollute the search results.
Hopefully, Google will start to detect patterns in your search results and offer the option to create alerts if you search for some keywords frequently. The alerts might be combined with recommendations in a web interface that shows search results without having to type queries. Google could also add SMS alerts for important Gmail messages, traffic increases in Google Analytics, breaking news, weather changes, sports results and combine the service with Google SMS. Until then, you could try other alert services from Yahoo, Microsoft or AOL, which are less focused on search.
Gmail Mobile Improves the Interface
Gmail updated the mobile version available at m.gmail.com by adding more features from the desktop version. Now you can configure the links to some of your labels and add other views like Spam or Drafts. Next to the messages you'll see a checkboxes that allow you to perform one of these actions for all the messages: archive, delete, report as spam, add a label, star or mark as read.
There's also a link to the AJAX-free version, for mobile browsers that are able to render more complicated web pages. Of course, a better way to use Gmail on your mobile phone is to install the Java application, which preloads some of the messages and requires less clicks and keystrokes.
For example, to read a conversation that has 16 messages at Gmail's mobile website, you have to go to a page that shows previews for the first 9 messages, click on the first message and then move to the next message 15 times (if a message is very long, Gmail uses pagination so you need to click even more). In the desktop version and the Java app, you can read all the messages in a single page.
{ Thank you, Chance. }
There's also a link to the AJAX-free version, for mobile browsers that are able to render more complicated web pages. Of course, a better way to use Gmail on your mobile phone is to install the Java application, which preloads some of the messages and requires less clicks and keystrokes.
For example, to read a conversation that has 16 messages at Gmail's mobile website, you have to go to a page that shows previews for the first 9 messages, click on the first message and then move to the next message 15 times (if a message is very long, Gmail uses pagination so you need to click even more). In the desktop version and the Java app, you can read all the messages in a single page.
{ Thank you, Chance. }
iPhone Interface for Google Calendar
"We wanted the best web browser in the world on our phone, not a baby web browser or a WAP browser, a real Web browser, and we picked the best one in the world, Safari, and we have Safari running on iPhone. It is the first fully usable HTML browser on a phone."
(Steve Jobs, Macworld Conference and Expo, January 2007)
(Steve Jobs, Macworld Conference and Expo, January 2007)
It's unclear whether Safari is the best browser in the world or whether iPhone has the first usable mobile phone browser, but one thing is for sure: many web sites launch iPhone-optimized versions. Maybe it's cool to have a website that looks really well in iPhone or maybe it's fairly easy to target a single mobile phone, because I've never heard about a website that launched an interface optimized for Opera Mini or Nokia's S60 browser.
Google Calendar released an interface for iPhone, based on the mobile version launched in May. Each calendar has a distinctive color, so it's easier to locate important events. Google Calendar for iPhone is available at calendar.google.com, but you can also try it at TestiPhone.com (don't forget to change your user-agent).
Google Trends, Updated Daily
After many complaints about the infrequent updates from Google Trends, Google decided to allocate more resources for the project and update the data daily. Google Trends shows information about queries: how popular they are over time, the locations where they are popular and some news that might have influenced their popularity. Google Trends doesn't show actual numbers, so the best way to draw some conclusion is to compare two or more related queries.
For example, the graph below compares how often people entered in Google's search box orkut, Facebook and MySpace in the last 12 months. As you can see, MySpace's popularity is declining, Facebook grows steadily, while orkut is pretty constant. You can also see that orkut is popular, but mostly in Brazil and India.
Now that Google Trends has fresh data every day, it would be nice to have an embedding option. It's easy to hot link to the image, but Google could provide a mini-version of a Google Trends page that shows the graph and the refinements. Maybe they can even build a site like Swivel that lets you rate Trends comparisons, add comments and find explanations for the bumps.
Another improvement would be to automatically generate related queries using Google Sets or even from Google's live data. This could be even more useful if you could discover related queries that are popular in a region: for example, enter [MySpace, Facebook] and find other popular social networks in Russia.
{ via Google Blog }
For example, the graph below compares how often people entered in Google's search box orkut, Facebook and MySpace in the last 12 months. As you can see, MySpace's popularity is declining, Facebook grows steadily, while orkut is pretty constant. You can also see that orkut is popular, but mostly in Brazil and India.
Now that Google Trends has fresh data every day, it would be nice to have an embedding option. It's easy to hot link to the image, but Google could provide a mini-version of a Google Trends page that shows the graph and the refinements. Maybe they can even build a site like Swivel that lets you rate Trends comparisons, add comments and find explanations for the bumps.
Another improvement would be to automatically generate related queries using Google Sets or even from Google's live data. This could be even more useful if you could discover related queries that are popular in a region: for example, enter [MySpace, Facebook] and find other popular social networks in Russia.
{ via Google Blog }
Gmail 2.0
Garett Rogers reports that Google prepares a new version of Gmail, according to a message from the translation console. It's not clear what are the new features, but one thing that will change is the user interface.
When Google introduced Gmail in 2004, it was one of the first important web applications that used AJAX, but not in an excessive manner. Meanwhile, Yahoo and Microsoft released new versions of their mail services that tried to duplicate the familiar interface of a desktop mail client like Outlook (Yahoo bought Oddpost - an AJAX pioneer, while Microsoft rewrote Hotmail from the ground up). Yahoo Mail Beta had many problems with performance and that's why the classic version of Yahoo Mail is still available as an option. Windows Live Hotmail offers by default a classic version that doesn't use AJAX because the new interface "was too slow to load, too different and, well, just not like the old Hotmail it was intended to replace". The advantages of a desktop-like interface are many: an easier way to move a message to a folder using drag & drop, a reading pane that lets you read messages, "infinite scrolling" for reading your mail, but the trade-off is an interface that reacts very slowly and is not user-friendly.
The new Gmail interface could add some new views for your messages, a way to group related messages, sorting messages by size or sender and improve the search by indexing attachments and providing a better way to filter search results.
Beyond the interface, Gmail 2.0 could be an important part of the new social trend at Google and may even become Social Gmail. Google could use your messages to detect social relations that would the base of a new contact management application. Because you use Gmail's address book in an increasingly number of Google applications to share web pages, photos, documents, blog posts, Google could show you a comprehensive overview of all the items shared with a contact.
Many people asked for a Google Reader integration in Gmail (you can already do that using a Greasemonkey script) and a recently leaked video mentioned this possibility, even though Google Reader still has problems with scaling and wouldn't handle Gmail's traffic.
Gmail should also add offline support using Google Gears. "Gmail Offline will allow users to browse, reply, save drafts and do everything that currently Gmail does in an offline mode even when you don't have an Internet connection," reported an Indian newspaper. More likely, the offline Gmail will provide limited access to some of your recent messages, to your contact list and will let you compose new messages. It's just a small compromise for those who don't want to use a desktop mail client, but need offline access for their mail and contacts.
The IMAP support would make Gmail an even better option for the enterprise, so Google might also consider complement POP3 with a more robust and flexible protocol.
Hopefully, Gmail 2.0 will continue to focus on simplicity and user-friendliness, while polishing the interface and adding new features that connect it with other Google applications. One of the goals for Gmail 2.0 is "70% user happiness", so don't expect it to be perfect.
Update (October 30): Gmail 2.0, now available.
A Social Network for Google Earth?
Arizona State University's students have the opportunity to test a new product "that will be publicly launched later this year". The invitation page mentions that the product is developed by "a major Internet company" and there are hints that the application is related to social networking, 3D modeling and video games. To complete the questionnaire and get the opportunity to test the product, you need to be a student at ASU.
So where's Google in this picture? One of the questions from the form asks you if you have a Gmail account and if you are willing to get one. The product's name is "My World" and the logo shows a globe - this could be related to Google Earth. Google also owns a 3D modeling software that could be used to create avatars.
Arizona State University has a very close relation with Google: it's one of the first large universities in the US that uses Google Apps, the site search is powered by Google Search Appliance, the university uses Google Maps and the ASU campuses already have 3D models in... Google Earth. But there's actually more than this: the university offered photos for the Google Mars project, Google employees serve as guest speakers or adjunct lecturers at ASU and Google has an office on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University.
The speculation about a Google Earth Second Life started last year. "The notion that you can create objects and buildings and place them in a virtual world makes Google Earth sounds less like a mapping tool and more like a metaverse. What's a metaverse? Science fiction writer Neal Stephenson introduced the term in his seminal 1992 novel, Snow Crash. (...) In Stephenson's novel, millions of users uploaded customized "avatars," or virtual personalities, and strolled the street, entering shops and exclusive nightclubs, conversing and trading with the metaverse's other denizens." In fact, Snow Crash inspired the development of Google Earth.
{ via MacRumors }
So where's Google in this picture? One of the questions from the form asks you if you have a Gmail account and if you are willing to get one. The product's name is "My World" and the logo shows a globe - this could be related to Google Earth. Google also owns a 3D modeling software that could be used to create avatars.
Arizona State University has a very close relation with Google: it's one of the first large universities in the US that uses Google Apps, the site search is powered by Google Search Appliance, the university uses Google Maps and the ASU campuses already have 3D models in... Google Earth. But there's actually more than this: the university offered photos for the Google Mars project, Google employees serve as guest speakers or adjunct lecturers at ASU and Google has an office on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University.
The speculation about a Google Earth Second Life started last year. "The notion that you can create objects and buildings and place them in a virtual world makes Google Earth sounds less like a mapping tool and more like a metaverse. What's a metaverse? Science fiction writer Neal Stephenson introduced the term in his seminal 1992 novel, Snow Crash. (...) In Stephenson's novel, millions of users uploaded customized "avatars," or virtual personalities, and strolled the street, entering shops and exclusive nightclubs, conversing and trading with the metaverse's other denizens." In fact, Snow Crash inspired the development of Google Earth.
{ via MacRumors }
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)