Google Starts to Index Images Uploaded to Blogger

Even if this sounds hard to believe, Google Image Search started to index images uploaded to Blogger in December 2007. Until this month, all the images were prevented from being indexed by search engines for unknown reasons. This move is closely related to the fact that the images hosted at Picasa Web Albums started to be indexed by Google.

The chart from Google Analytics shows the number of referrals from images.google.com for this blog:


... and here are some results from Google Image Search:


The images uploaded from Blogger's interface are hosted at Picasa Web Albums, but they're also available at subdomains like bpX.blogger.com, where X is a digit. Another Blogger oddity, inherited from Picasa Web, is that you can't directly link to an image (if you click on a link to one of the two images uploaded above, you'll see a dialog that asks you to download the image). Blogger even has a workaround for this silly restriction: it automatically creates web pages that include the pictures (here's a link to the same image, but this time the image is included in a web page).


Images uploaded before August last year, when Blogger launched the latest major upgrade, are still not crawlable.

Picasa 2.7 for Linux

Google has a preview release of Picasa 2.7 for Linux. The previous version launched last year didn't include the features from Picasa 2.5+ for Windows (like the Picasa Web integration), so this is a good opportunity to add these features to Linux. Here's what is new in Picasa 2.7 for Linux:

* Upload to Picasa Web Albums
Use the new "Web Album" button to post your best photos online to share with friends and family.

* Save edits to disk
Save edits, undo saves, and revert to the original file with ease. We've got batch saving too! Picasa will even match the jpeg quality of the original. Right-click on your saved files to try the new "locate original" feature.

* Folder hierarchy views
Browse through folders Explorer-style. Use the button at the top of your Albums List to try them out.

* Improvements to Import
Import into an existing folder. (...) We've made importing photos from your camera faster too.

* Better RAW support
Now you can work with RAW files from the Canon 30D, the Nikon D200, Adobe DNG files, and more.

* Many other enhancements
Larger thumbnails, better caption editing, ability to configure the row of buttons, special "Starred Photos" album, search by ISO and focal length.

The release still doesn't support videos, full-screen slideshows and it's still using WINE.

More about Picasa for Linux at Google Groups.

{ via Digg }

iGoogle's Winter Theme

For those who like winter, for those who understand its beauty and playfulness, there's an iGoogle theme called Winter Scape. It was available back in March, when Google launched themes, but it was replaced by a theme for spring, now known as Seasonal Scape.

Description: "Brrrrr! Wintertime is here and there's snow on the ground. This friendly snowman will keep you company on your iGoogle homepage as the day goes by."

How it looks like:





How to get it: the theme is no longer available from iGoogle's interface, but you can still add it to one of your tabs. Copy this JavaScript code:

javascript:_dlsetp('preview_skin=skins/winterscape.xml');void(0);

go to iGoogle, paste the code in the address bar, press Enter and click on the Save button in "Select a theme for this tab" to keep the new theme.

{ The second screenshot, that shows the PI easter egg, is powered by Tony Ruscoe's JS tricks. }

Using Google Gadgets to Cache Images

Google Gadgets API has a lot of interesting features for creating gadgets, but you could also use it to improve your site. Instead of creating gadgets that can be added to iGoogle and embedded into other web pages, you're using Google Gadgets API as a proxy for some features that are difficult to add on the client side.

One of the most interesting features is caching images. Let's say you upload a big image to your site and you suddenly get a lot of visitors or you dynamically generate a chart of your traffic stats every 30 minutes. Google Gadgets API has a useful function:
_IG_GetImage(url, {refreshInterval:num}) that returns the cached version of an image from Google's servers.

Using the function, I built a pseudo-gadget has two parameters: the image URL (up_imgurl) and the refresh interval in seconds (up_update), which is optional. Here's an example of gadget call:

http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?up_update=60&
up_imgurl=http://www.parislive.net/eiffelwebcam1.jpg&
url=http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/114716457819959241692/cache-image.xml



The example above uses an image from a Paris webcam that's updated every two seconds, but it's cached on Google's servers every 60 seconds. That means you only need to include an iframe that calls a gadget (hosted by Google), add the two parameters and make sure to add the width/height of the image in the iframe's style attribute.

<iframe src="http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?up_update=60&up_imgurl=http://www.parislive.net/eiffelwebcam1.jpg&url=http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/114716457819959241692/cache-image.xml" style="width:290px; height:355px;" frameborder="0"> </iframe>

The First Year of Google Docs (& Spreadsheets)

Compete, a more trustworthy Alexa, released some data about the evolution of Google Docs, in terms of US traffic. From October 2006, when Google Docs & Spreadsheets was officially launched, the application gained more than 500,000 US users.


A chart from Google showed that the number of active users more than doubled after Gmail added a link to Google Docs next to some attachments in January 2007:


Another turning point was in June when Google improved the presentation of the document lists and started to promote Google Docs on the homepage.

One of the most important goals of Google Docs was to replace document attachments, especially in a collaborative environment. It didn't achieve this goal because Gmail still sends .doc attachments and not links to editable files available online. Google will probably try other ways to introduce Gmail users to Google Docs, including an option to upload files to Google Docs instead of adding email attachments. Another important integration could be with Google search results, especially with .doc/.xls files, that should become easier to read online. And the public documents produced by Google Docs should become available to search engines and easy to embed in a site, like the video below:


{ via Inside Google }

Update: ReadWriteWeb has some charts from Compete that compare Google Docs and other online office apps in terms of traffic. Google Docs is by far the leader, followed by Zoho and Microsoft Office Live, but the latter doesn't quite fit this category.

Dynamically Generated Charts

I've always wondered what's behind www.google.com/chart, the strange directory used by Google to dynamically generate charts. They use this charts at Google Video to show stats like this one (if you're brave, look at the image location):



The problem is that Google also adds a hash to the URL so you can't play around with the parameters and create your own charts. But now there's Google Chart API, a way to make these charts available to everyone.

"The Google Chart API returns a PNG-format image in response to a URL. Several types of image can be generated: line, bar, and pie charts for example. For each image type you can specify attributes such as size, colors, and labels. You can include a Chart API image in a webpage by embedding a URL within an <img> tag. When the webpage is displayed in a browser the Chart API renders the image within the page."

All these charts can be created dynamically by building some admittedly complicated URLs.







Let's look at the 3D pie chart's URL:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=s:Uf9a&chs=200x100&chl=A|B|C|D

cht indicates the chart type, chd provides the plotted data that's encoded using letters and digits (for example, U represents 20, f - 31, 9 - 61, a - 26), chs is used for chart's size, while chl separates labels using the pipe character.

This is a great way to create simple charts programmatically and I'm sure many web apps will use them. The query limit of 50,000 queries per user per day is more than sufficient.

Update: It seems that the limit is not that generous. "The user is the webpage that links to the chart. We would like to make sure that all users get their charts fast and reliably. Therefore we may temporarily block users (websites) that exceed the limit. A chart request is not counted if the chart image is cached by the browser or by a proxy," clarified Uwe Maurer from Google Zürich.

Google Mobile Updater for Blackberry

Google Mobile Updater. What could that be? After all, Google doesn't have too many mobile apps. Maybe there's some connection with the desktop updater included in Google Pack. Let's see.

"Google Mobile Updater is a free download, currently only for BlackBerry users, that lets you install and update Google Mobile services. Google Mobile Updater will keep you notified of new Google Mobile services as well as updates to installed applications. This way, you can be sure to have the most current version of your favorite Google Mobile applications when you are on the go." (Google Support)

Apparently, to get one you need to go to mobile.google.com and click on "Get Google's mobile products in a single download". But what Google products? Search, Maps, Gmail, News, Picasa, and Reader.



While Gmail and Maps are already available as mobile apps for most phones, it's not clear what you can expect from the rest of the services and if they're more than simple links to Google's mobile sites. So if you have a Blackberry and you want to finish this post, please do.

Small New Features Make Gmail Better

It seems that Gmail 2.0 is all about small new features. There may be small, but you'll find plenty of minor updates and there are more to come.

Contact tooltips

The tooltip that showed up when you hovered over the name of a contact in Gmail Chat was added to the message interface and you can see it when you read a message or when browser through a list of messages. This feature was added in October, but now you can edit the name of the contact directly from that small box.


Other cases when this tooltip is useful: copy the name of someone who sent you a mail, copy the mail address, read a list of recent messages that involve that person, edit the contact details or the photo.


Helpful keyboard shortcuts

Lifehacker found another small new feature: the help pane for keyboard shortcuts. You probably know it from Google Reader: just type ? (question mark) and you'll see a list of the most important keyboard shortcuts. It's difficult to remember all of them and this cheat sheet is always at a click away. Some new Gmail shortcuts:

* . (dot) - shows the "More actions" drop-down to apply a new label, star some messages
* [ - this is a great way to clear your inbox. After reading a message, type [: the message will be archived and you'll see the next message.
* z - after important actions like archiving a message or reporting a message as spam, Gmail shows a small message at the top of the page that lets you undo the action. Instead of clicking on "undo", you can just type z. Maybe in the future you'll be able to undo other actions like sending a message or emptying the trash.


You need to enable keyword shortcuts in the Settings before using them (the option is disabled by default).


Storing recent messages

If you frequently repeat the same search in Gmail (like l:unread to see all the unread messages), you've probably noticed that Gmail caches the list of search results and the next time you use the same query the search results are displayed instantly. For now, there's no option to save searches in Gmail's interface, but you can bookmark addresses like http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/l:unread (the last part of Gmail's address is your query). Gmail seems to have improved the way it caches messages, so it will load faster.


Still to come

Gmail Blog mentioned they're "doing some work to add some folder-y-ish functionality". Other features that could be anticipated by looking at the code: favorite labels, tasks, skins and gadgets. Even if some people think Gmail doesn't evolve fast enough, these small incremental updates bring some of the most requested features without significantly changing the interface.

Open with...

Last month, the online storage service Box.net added an obvious feature: integration with other services that edit your data. They called this OpenBox. "Traditionally with desktop software, all of your local applications had access to the same set of files and data on your computer. The web changed this paradigm because each unique application stores information on its own servers."

You might say that Box.net didn't have a choice: they didn't offer services for editing documents, photos or videos and it was convenient to open that data to application that were able to make it more useful. Google lets you store files in different services and doesn't offer a unified view for your files yet, but there's already some integration between services that store files and services that edit them.


While some Google services have APIs that let you access your files from other applications (Picasa Web Albums, Spreadsheets), it would still be better to select a list of third-party apps and add them as options in the interface. Maybe you want to open your documents from Gmail in Zoho Writer or edit your photos from Picasa Web Albums in Picnik.

The screenshot below shows the same document in Box.net (where you can open it with two third-party services) and in Windows XP (where you can open it in at least three applications).


Today Flickr added the option to edit your photos using Picnik, but Flickr made that choice on behalf of their users. "The Picnik/Flickr collaboration works similarly to other 3rd party services who've built additional tools on top of the Flickr API: You'll need to pass through the step of giving the Picnik service permission to edit and save your photos… It’s a little bit like you're installing Picnik on your Flickr account, but with nothing to download."

The same way you collect Google gadgets, Facebook apps, mapplets, you could also add actions for different apps and make them more powerful.

Related:
The interoperability of online operating systems

Google's Unified Interface for iPhone

Google launched yet another interface for Apple's iPhone, but this time it's more special because it integrates all the existing iPhone interfaces in a beautiful package.

You can switch between search results, Gmail, Calendar, Reader and Google Docs by clicking on the big menu from the top of the page. Google uses AJAX to make the switch almost instantly, as if you were using a desktop application.

"Our guiding principles were fast and fluid. We think we've achieved both, thanks to some AJAX magic made possible by the iPhone's Safari browser," tells us Google Mobile blog, where you can find screenshots from an iPhone.

If you have an iPhone, you can see the new interface by going to google.com. Otherwise, iPhone's user-agent is the only helpful alternative. [Update. Garett Rogers found an URL for the new interface: http://www.google.com/m/gp, but it doesn't work well in any important browser.]





{ The first screenshot has been licensed as Creative Commons Attribution by Duncan Rawlinson. }

The Fastest Rising Google Queries in 2007

Google released the traditional list of popular queries from the year that is about to end. As usually, Google doesn't list the top queries because they're pretty boring and don't change to much (e.g.: weather), but instead it includes the queries that had an impressive evolution and really represent the zeitgeist (spirit of the time).

The fastest rising query in 2007 was iPhone (trend), the mobile device from Apple that a had a big impact this year. Social networks and online video sites were very popular this year: the most notable new entry is Badoo (trend), "a multi-lingual London based, social networking website, offering its users the ability to connect with people at a local and global level, to share photos and videos with friends, to create reportages of their lives, and to promote themselves and their work." Facebook (trend) is another winner, as it managed to launch a successful platform for applications and find a way to monetize its service. Webkinz toys (trend) were also popular this year, the same as virtual worlds: Second Life for adults and Club Penguin for kids (trends).

It's clear that the all these queries have something to do with communicating and sharing (by phone, instant messaging, by sharing videos, interacting with your friends or creating a virtual world).

Chat with Your AIM Buddies in Gmail

Another day, another new Gmail feature. As previously posted, Gmail will let you chat with your AIM contacts. AIM is the most popular instant messaging client in the US, with more than 53 million US users last year. The feature is currently rolled out to Gmail 2.0 accounts and some people already have it.

Gmail Help clarifies that Google doesn't use anything extraordinary, only a public API. "AIM in Gmail is not a Google Talk and AIM federation; it's the ability to sign in to your AIM messaging account from Gmail. Gmail uses Open AIM to provide this feature." That's why you still need an AIM account and you'll have to periodically enter the credentials. "We ask for your password when you first sign in, and we forward it to AOL's OpenAuth service. Once AOL validates your log-in information, they send a token we can use to sign in to AIM on your behalf. We then promptly forget your password. The token is only valid when used by Google, can only be used to sign in to AIM, and expires after a while."


The feature seems to be available in Gmail, but not in Google Talk's gadget or desktop app, which makes it look like an improvisation. In 2005, Google and AOL agreed to enable "Google Talk and AIM instant messaging users to communicate with each other, provided certain conditions are met". Apparently, the conditions have not been met and the interoperability of IM networks is still a distant dream.

{ via Zorgloob }

Update: Justin Uberti, who stopped working on AIM to become a Googler, writes:

As a longtime resident of the AIM universe, I never thought that I would give up my favorite AIM Lite for a web client. But the AIM integration in Gmail is that good. It's fast, easy to set up and use, and works on any computer. Best of all, it saves your IM sessions in Gmail, which makes it easy to remember a conversation from months ago. Bottom line: if you use Gmail and use AIM, you'll probably really enjoy the combined experience.

Gmail Adds Label Colors

Google promised to add features at a higher pace in the new version of Gmail. The latest addition is label colors: you can now set a different color for each label so you can identify messages easier. Not all Gmail accounts have the new feature, but it will probably be enabled for everyone soon.



It's also easier to find related messages and to remove a label without using the drop-down.


The feature was previously available as a Greasemonkey script. I wonder if all scripts written by Mihai Parparita will become Gmail features.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

Update. The post from Gmail's blog that announces this feature says something interesting: "We actually kinda like folders. In fact, we're doing some work to add some folder-y-ish functionality. Stay tuned." It will probably involve some drag-and-drop.

Update 2. Gmail seems to have fixed the performance issues and doesn't cache messages so aggressively.

Google 2007 in 12 Pictures

This year Google launched less products than in the past, but its initiatives had a much bigger impact and a great deal of importance for the future.

January
Google is the best company to work for, according to Fortune. Google "sets the standard for Silicon Valley: free meals, swimming spa, and free doctors onsite. Engineers can spend 20% of time on independent projects. No wonder Google gets 1,300 résumés a day."


February
Google Apps Premier Edition launches for business users who want to use Google's services and get support, uptime guarantee for email and an integration with their current infrastructure. For $50 a year, you got 10 GB for Gmail, Calendar, Docs&Spreadsheets, Google Talk, Page Creator and a personalized homepage. Since then, Gmail's storage increased to 25 GB and Gmail started to support IMAP, Google Docs added a presentations application, Google Apps got message recovery via the Postini acquisition and Google intends to add more apps in the feature.


March
This year, Google made the personalized search feature available to all users and started to use information from your profile to disambiguate queries, to better tailor search results to your preferences and to provide recommendations. But Google also wanted to feel more at home when you visit the personalized homepage, so it added themes (and easter eggs too).


April
Google buys DoubleClick, a display advertising company, for $3.1 billion. The acquisition hasn't been finalized as regulation committees need to evaluate the impact on the online industry and whether Google is about to become a monopoly.


May
Universal Search is the biggest upgrade since Google launched its search engine. By providing a unified ranking mechanism for web pages, images, videos, news and books, Google is now closer to the model of a single search box that lets you find everything. Google will continue to add results from other specialized search engines and to include more searchable information.


In May, Google also launched street view for a small number of locations in the US.


June
Google acquires GrandCentral, an innovative service that links all your phone numbers and gives additional features. "Grand Central is an abstraction of phone service. (...) It sits on top of your phone service - cell, pots, skype, whatever you have, and adds features by being in front of your phone service," explains an interesting blog post.


August
Google Earth adds a sky view that lets you explore stars, constellations, galaxies.


September
In a rather surprising move, Google started to use traditional advertising to promote GOOG-411, a free directory assistance launched this year.

(Creative Commons, photo by Steve Rhodes)

Shared Stuff is a new bookmarking service that lets you share interesting things you find on the web. You can create a profile and see items shared by your contacts. Later this year, Google Maps adds profiles and Google gadgets become social.


October
Google's machine translation system is now live for all the languages available at Google Translate. In many cases, the translation is more accurate and Google promises to add more languages in the future.


November
Google Phone turned out to be a mobile platform called Android and the first phone that runs Android will be available next year. For now, we can enjoy Google's growing list of mobile apps and wonder if they'll win the bid for the 700 MHz spectrum in US.

Download Picasa Web Albums Without Installing Picasa

Note: this post initially linked to a Greasemonkey script that no longer works, but it now offers an easier solution suggested in the comments.

Unlike other photo sharing sites, Picasa Web Albums offers a way to download an entire album, but that requires Picasa 2.5 or later. If you don't want to install the application or you use Mac or Linux, there are other ways to download a photo album.

For Firefox, you can use DownThemAll, probably the best download manager add-on. After installing the extension and restarting the browser, go to the album you want to download, click on the "RSS" link from the sidebar and you'll get the album's feed. Right-click on the page, select DownThemAll/DownThemAll in the contextual menu, expand the Filters section and check "Images". Don't forget to enter the folder where you want to save the photos.

Update: Read the comments to find a lot of interesting ways to download albums from Picasa Web.