Question Shop

There are so many questions and so little time to find answers for them. Before there was Google and other search engines, people relied on friends, family or books to solve their mysteries.

In 1924, a company from New York launched a question answering service: people asked questions by phone and received their answers after a short while.

Offering to answer any reasonable question telephoned to its office, a firm dealing in general information is said to have set up business in New York City. Subscribers to the service are permitted to put as many queries to the "question shop" as they desire. Each patron is given a code name and, it is reported, can receive aid from the station at any hour of the day or night. It is also claimed that eighty per cent of the queries do not require more than two minutes for an answer.

This reminds me of Kevin Fox's imaginary Google circa 1960.

{ Found by Modern Mechanix. Image used by permission. }

Invisible Mode in Gmail Chat

Gmail Chat added a new status option: invisible. Now you can be logged in to Gmail Chat and see if your contacts are online, but they won't be able to see you're online.


If you simultaneously use Gmail Chat and any other flavor of Google Talk (the gadget or the desktop application), you won't be able to change your status to invisible because they don't support the new feature yet. The feature was first added to Gmail Chat because it's the most used interface for Google Talk, but it's unpardonable to have three separate interfaces with different features.


Note that feature is only available in the new version of Gmail, supported in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2. I wonder if less people will disable Gmail Chat or the feature will become less useful.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

A Russian Ad for Gmail

This incredibly beautiful video is an ad created by Saatchi & Saatchi Moscow to promote Gmail in Russia. As Google Translate doesn't have speech recognition, I would be grateful if someone translates the message of Gmail's ad. From what I understand, the ad illustrates the human side of Gmail by recreating it in real life.


A related idea can be found in Be Kind Rewind's website, where the Internet is rebuilt from scratch.

{ Thank you, Maksym and Kristaps. }

Get GrandCentral Invites

Following the footsteps of Gmail, GrandCentral becomes more available to the world by connecting the invites to Blogger. If you're in the US, you can now get a free invite to GrandCentral, the Google service that centralizes all you phone numbers and adds new features on top of them (the service is free, at least for now). "GrandCentral provides an innovative web-based voice communications platform that helps you manage all your phones and phone numbers through one simple interface. You get a single phone number that forwards to all of your phones, giving you one number for life."

Bloggers can add a widget that allows readers to call them without knowing their phone numbers. Readers enter their phone numbers and GrandCentral makes the connection by calling both parties. "When you add GrandCentral's WebCall button to your blog, your readers can easily call your phone or leave voicemails without ever seeing your telephone number. You can screen calls, either accepting them or sending them to voicemail, and you can even block unwanted callers altogether."

You can receive voicemail notifications by email or SMS, access your voicemail from a mobile phone or from a computer and embed the messages into a site. It's almost like your phone numbers become a part of Gmail, a service that aggregates all the communication tools you use in a single easy-to-access place. GrandCentral is not yet a part of Gmail and it only works in the US, but the integration is inevitable.

If you already use GrandCentral or you're in the US and you can get an invite, what do you think about the service?

The Unnerving Microsoft

In an aggressive post from the Official Google Blog, David Drummond argued earlier this month that "Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. (...) Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets."

Apparently, these ideas are shared by Google's co-founder Sergey Brin, who declared in an interview that Microsoft's bid is not welcome for the Internet. "The Internet has evolved from open standards, having a diversity of companies. And when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that's unnerving." According to WordNet, "unnerving" means "formidable, redoubtable, inspiring fear", so probably the word means "worrisome" in the context.

In the past years, Google was upset that Microsoft decided to make Live Search the default search provider in IE7 and Windows Vista didn't provide a way to integrate third-party desktop search tools like Google Desktop in the operating system. Microsoft will certainly try to increase its online presence by leveraging its software + services strategy and by making it easy to access its online services from applications that are presented as upgrades, but we should not forget that Google also uses its homepage to promote services and bundles its toolbar with popular applications.

Get Email Notifications for Google Groups Threads

Many people visit Google's discussion groups at groups.google.com when something goes wrong in Gmail, Google Reader or any other Google product. The forums are conveniently linked from the support pages and people noticed that email is not the best way to get feedback from Google.

Google Groups doesn't provide an option to be notified when someone replies to one of your topics. Furthermore, when you join a group created for a Google service, the email notifications are disabled by default. There is an option to receive notifications for individual threads, but it's very hard to find it. You have to go to thread you've just created, click on the Options link displayed next to the title and select "Email updates to me". This way, you'll be able to read the answer in your mail client, without having to go to Google Groups and find your post.


Unfortunately, the notifications are sometimes delayed, but Google doesn't provide reliable alternatives. You could manually check the posts from your profile or add an iGoogle gadget that also displays the number of new message from each thread.

API for Static Maps

For those who don't need all the complexity of Google Maps API or can't use JavaScript in a specific context (for example, in a mobile website), there's a new Static Maps API. Similar to the recently-launched API for charts, this API lets you generate maps by simply loading images with a list of special parameters.

The URL below lets you load a map centered on Munich by providing the latitude and longitude of the location:

http://maps.google.com/staticmap?center=48.23930899024907,11.162109375&
markers=48.139127,11.580213,red&zoom=7&size=500x300&key=KEY_VALUE



To use the API, you still need a domain-specific key generated from Google's site and the usage limit is 1000 unique image requests per user per day. If you don't want to read the documentation, there's a wizard that generates the URL for you, but it only adds a single marker to your map.

The new API is a good solution if you want to automatically create static maps from a list of locations, but it's limited to web pages, so you can't use it in a software. You should also know that the images can only be displayed on a page from the web site used to generate the API key. Google uses a similar API to generate static maps when you search for locations or local businesses.

YouTube Presents Itself to Advertisers

Despite the fact that Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube, the most popular video site on the web doesn't make a lot of time. Google tried to find ways to monetize YouTube and chose overlay ads (or InVideo ads) because they're more user-friendly than other formats. Instead of being forced to watch an ad before playing a video, the overlay is triggered only if you click on a small animation displayed at the bottom of the video for 10 seconds. Google made the overlay format an option for other video sites, as well.

It's interesting that YouTube shows ads only for videos created by partners (media companies, popular video creators), a small portion from the total number of videos uploaded daily.

Here's a funny video targeted to the potential advertisers on YouTube that explains how you can advertise on YouTube and why you should:

The YouTube community watches hundreds of millions of videos every day, more than any other TV network, cable network or social network combined. YouTube isn't just about media impressions, it's about the choices people make to be entertained, educated, inspired. It's about tiger vs bear. It's about sharing.

Think of YouTube as the world's largest magazine rack. If it's of interest to somebody, it makes its way here.

YouTube thinks there's a misconception that the site is just about user-generated content and mentions that advertisers can place their messages next to high-quality content that won't diminish the value of their brands.

Cleveland Clinic to Test Google Health

More than a year after Google started developing a service for storing and managing health records, Cleveland Clinic will be the first test a pre-release version of the service. From a prototype revealed last year, we could see that Google Health intends to help you make more informed decisions about your health by putting you in control of your health information.

Cleveland Clinic will start to test the service on at least 1,500 patients. "It will test secure exchange of patient medical record data such as prescriptions, conditions and allergies between their Cleveland Clinic PHR to a secure Google profile in a live clinical delivery setting. The ultimate goal of this patient-centered and controlled model is to give patients the ability to interact with multiple physicians, healthcare service providers and pharmacies. (...) The pilot will eventually extend Cleveland Clinic's online patient services to a broader audience while enabling the portability of patient data so patients can take their data with them wherever they go — even outside the Cleveland Clinic Health System."

The big benefits are that health records become portable, more accessible and more useful, while still being stored securely. Despite the benefits, people might not feel comfortable with storing sensitive data online.

According to New York Times, Google Health will be publicly available after the pilot ends, in around two months.

Microsoft launched in October 2007 its own health service called HealthVault that has similar goals with Google's initiative, while partnering with a number of important medical institutions. It's not the only existing service for managing personal health records online, but their use didn't become widespread, not even in the US.

Update: Google Blog mentions that Google Health uses GData and standard medical information formats. "Patients participating in the Cleveland pilot give authorization via our AuthSub interface to have their electronic medical records safely and securely imported into a Google account. (...) Cleveland is just the first of many healthcare providers that will securely send medical records and information via Google APIs at your request. We've been hard at work collaborating with a number of insurance plans, medical groups, pharmacies and hospitals."

Gmail 2.0 and User Happiness

When Gmail released an update to its code base in October 2007, many people complained that it loads very slow and it's buggy. Since the new version was initially released only for the US interface, I suggested to go back to the older version by changing the language to British English. This will no longer work since Gmail will soon be released internationally. Meanwhile, I noticed that Gmail 2.0 loads much faster and it's almost as reliable as the previous version.

Some people are still having problems with Gmail 2.0. Geemo complains at Gmail's discussion group: "it usually takes several attempts to even get my mailbox to load and when it does load the mail links sometimes are unclickable. This is supposed to be an improvement!? Also, I always have to switch to Older Version EVERY TIME I need to send an email in order to get the address book auto-fill to work (It comes up in New Version but none of the address suggestion can actually be selected). (...) Is there a way to set my account to only work in the "older" setting? Or should I just move back to Yahoo? "

I enjoyed the reply to this post:

I share your feelings, and wish I could offer you more than just plain sympathy. Till February 13, we could suggest to users (and personally, I did) how to remain with the "old interface", forgoing only the pleasure of coloured labels and the pain of twenty acknowledged but unresolved issues, besides many more unacknowledged, random, quirky, and unresolved ones ... cf. these Groups.

However, from February 13 as he says, the happy Robby Stein, Associate Product Marketing Manager, has put paid to our escapist timidity in not venturing boldly out to embrace the "new interface" by rolling it out to everyone ... except to the Croatian, Icelandic, Hebrew, and Arabic speaking people, the only ones who -- in my opinion -- are truly blessed for now for not being rolled under or over by this "new interface".

I should not comment on whether you should move back to Yahoo! But with indications that either Microsoft or AOL or any other equally diabolical entity picking up Yahoo!, I would feel that learning Croatian, Icelandic, Hebrew, or Arabic may prove to be a smarter thing to do.

The migration to Gmail 2.0 is inevitable, assuming you use a supported browser, but it's not clear if this upgrade is perceived as an improvement. Unlike desktop applications, web apps can suddenly update to a new version you don't like and you can't remove.

A Great Online Document Viewer Gets Even Better

Scribd, a site that built a community around sharing documents online, launched an improved Flash viewer for documents. iPaper allows you to view PDF files, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets in a lightweight widget, but also do other things like zooming, searching inside a document, sharing or printing.

"The primary design goals of iPaper were that it be fast, light and easy to use. At 100 KB the iPaper application is about 1/1000th the size of Adobe's Acrobat Reader software, making it an incredibly fast way to view documents," explains Scribd. While the viewer lacks some features from Adobe Reader, most notably a way to copy text, it renders documents at a high quality, preserving the layout and the pagination.

Similar to YouTube, you need to upload your document, wait until it's converted to Scribd's internal format (that shouldn't take more than a minute) and embed the code into your site. Scribd lets you upload multiple documents at a time and it displays useful stats: the number of views, search queries that led to your document, a visitor map and more.

The site also launched a platform "that allows anyone to bring the iPaper experience to their own website." You could add some code that replaces the links to PDF or Office documents with links to Scribd's viewer, without having to convert the documents manually.

All in all, Scribd has one of the best online PDF viewers and could complement Google Docs, which lacks very good document viewers, shared spaces and a community.



{ via GigaOM }

The Most Frequently Used Features in Microsoft Office

Online office suites like Google Docs are often criticized because they have a very basic feature set, but the advanced features from software packages like Microsoft Office are rarely used. Jensen Harris, Group Program Manager of the Microsoft Office User Experience Team, published in 2006 a list of the most used features in Microsoft Word 2003, according to data collected from the users who opted for the Customer Experience Improvement Program:

1. Paste (11% of the usage)
2. Save (5.5% of the usage)
3. Copy
4. Undo
5. Bold

These five commands account for 32% of all the command usage in Microsoft Word 2003, as they are used very often.

"Paste is also far-and-away the number one command in Excel and PowerPoint, accounting for 15% and 12% of total command use, respectively. Beyond the top 10 commands or so, however, the curve flattens out considerably. The percentage difference in usage between the #100 command ("Accept Change") and the #400 command ("Reset Picture") is about the same in difference between #1 and #11 ("Change Font Size")," according to Microsoft's data.

Google Docs auto-saves documents so you don't need to press the Save button, while the undo feature has a powerful complement in revisions. On the other hand, because of the security restrictions from browsers, copy/paste doesn't work very well (but there are workarounds).

So instead of adding advanced features, Google Docs should focus on the most frequently used features and try to make them easier to use, while addressing the main goal: "enabling people to manage and collaborate on the documents and spreadsheets they rely on in their personal and professional lives, no matter where they are or when they need to access them".

{ via Jeff Atwood }

Translate Text From a Web Page Inline

gTranslate is a Firefox extension that lets you select some text from a web page and translate in another language. For short texts, you can read the translation in Firefox's contextual menu, but in most cases you'll have to click on the short preview to read the full translation. One of the most useful features is replacing the original text with the translation in text boxes. For example, you can write a reply to a post from Google Groups or compose a Blogger post in a language and instantly translate it to another language.

gTranslate uses Google Translate to perform the translations, so it supports the same language pairs.



Related:
System-wide translations using Enso
Google's translation bots

{ via μblog }

Google's Glossary Search Engine

It may not have a separate address or stand-alone identity, but Google's glossary search engine is a simple way to look up a word or a group of words in many of the glossaries available online. There are many definitions for "glossary", but one of the best is: "an alphabetical list of words or expressions and the special or technical meanings that they have in a particular book, subject, or activity." (source)

It's difficult to create a comprehensive dictionary with all the words from a language and all of their meanings, so specialized glossaries explain the terminology from a domain (for example: philosophy). There are many glossaries available online, but it's not easy to find all of them using a general-purpose search engine.

Launched in 2002 as a labs project, Google's glossary search engine restricts the index to glossaries and other resources like Wikipedia or WordNet, while allowing you to find all the definitions of a word or expression. To use it, add the define: operator in front of your query: for example, type define:isometry in Google's search box.


The search engine works for 9 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, Russian. You can change the language at the bottom of the page.

So when should you use the define operator? If you search for:
* obscure words
* specialized terminology
* acronyms and abbreviations

An interesting alternative is OneLook, which supports pattern matching and reverse queries, but it only shows links to the definitions.

Add Full Web Pages to iGoogle

If you don't find appropriate iGoogle gadgets for your favorite web sites, there's a way to create tabs that include these sites in iframes. Michael Bolin, from Google, created a gadget that loads almost any web page. Before adding the gadget, it's recommended to create a new iGoogle tab, but don't forget to uncheck the "I'm feeling lucky" option that populates the tab with gadgets. If you add the gadget to an existing tab, all the current gadgets will be hidden and they'll be visible again after you delete it.

The gadget loads by default Google Calendar's homepage, but you can change the URL from the settings: click on the small arrow from the gadget's title bar and select "Edit settings".


Another useful gadget has a rich text editor and you can use it to create content or to paste code from other pages (like Yahoo Video's embeddable code).


iGoogle should have more bare bones containers that can be filled with user's content: HTML code, web pages, dynamic images or structured data and add them to the gadget creator page.

Gmail's Humble Beginning

Paul Buchheit, Gmail's first engineer, writes about the first steps in the evolution of Gmail.

I wrote the first version of Gmail in one day. It was not very impressive. All I did was stuff my own email into the Google Groups (Usenet) indexing engine. I sent it out to a few people for feedback, and they said that it was somewhat useful, but it would be better if it searched over their email instead of mine. That was version two. After I released that people started wanting the ability to respond to email as well. That was version three. That process went on for a couple of years inside of Google before we released to the world.

And even when it was released, Gmail stayed in a closed beta for more than a year. After almost four years since the release, Gmail constantly adds new features and it's still in beta ("There's no good reason in the world for Gmail to still have the beta tag. It was supposed to have gone away a long time ago," says Paul).

Paul Buchheit, who left Google and currently works for a startup with other ex-Googlers, thinks it's important to release applications in an incipient phase to get feedback from users.

So what's the right attitude? Humility. It doesn't matter how smart and successful and qualified you are, you simply don't know what you're doing. (...) What is the humble approach to product design? Pay attention. Notice which things are working and which aren't. Experiment and iterate. Question your assumptions. Remember that you are wrong about a lot of things. Watch for the signals. Lose your technical and design snobbery.

Gmail got a delete button after many months of requests from users, even if Gmail's philosophy was "archive, don't delete". Gmail will also add some functionality from folders to its labels, most likely drag and drop.

The key step is to build a product that's interesting enough to a attract an audience and learn from people who use the product. "The sooner you can start testing your ideas, the sooner you can start fixing them," explains Paul.