Export Files from Google Page Creator

You probably heard that Google intends to close Google Page Creator and migrate the users to Google Sites, a service that seems to be targeted to a different audience and that lacks many features available in Page Creator. Google Sites will add some of the missing features by the time Google closes Page Creator, but those who want to move to a different service or maybe to buy a domain can already export the files.

Requirement #1. There are three kinds of files that are trapped inside Page Creator: uploaded files and web pages created using the editor which can be public or unpublished. The following exporting tool can only work for uploaded files and the public web pages. If you have pages that are unpublished and you want to export them, click on "Publish all changes" in the sidebar. You can undo this action later.

Requirement #2. Another prerequisite for the exporting tool is a software that downloads all the files linked from a page. For Internet Explorer, try the excellent download manager FlashGet (I use the classic version). For Firefox, there's an extension called DownThemAll that has some of the features from FlashGet. In both cases, you'll have to restart the browser before continuing. As usually, Opera users don't need third-party software for advanced features: there's a sidebar panel that shows all the links from a page.

Requirement #3. If you read this in a feed reader, visit the site to view the exporting form.

How to export the files.

All sites from Google Page Creator have a sitemap that lists all the public files from a site: it's available at SITENAME.googlepages.com/sitemap.xml. Just go to your site's homepage and add /sitemap.xml in the address bar. To copy the content of the XML file in the box below, you could right-click, select "view source" and copy the code (for Firefox, Opera) or open the file http://SITENAME.googlepages.com/sitemap.xml in Notepad.


After clicking on "Obtain URLs", you should see a pop-up window that lists all the files from your Page Creator site. Right-click inside the page and select "Download all by Flashget" or "DownThemAll!", depending on your browser. Make sure to check "All files" in DownThemAll and to choose a folder where the files will be copied. In Opera, press F4, click on the "Links" panel, select all the links using Ctrl-A and click on "Save to Download Folder".


Unfortunately, there's still some manual editing you need to do for the pages created using the editor: replace <img src="name.gif/name-full.jpg" style="border: 0pt none ;"> and similar code with <img src="name.gif" style="border: 0pt none ;">.

Two free alternatives to Page Creator are Weebly and Synthasite. Wall Street Journal has an article that explains how to buy a domain and host a site without paying too much.

{ Inspired by Peter Dawson. }

Google Launches AdSense for Feeds

I noticed a new option in my AdSense account: AdSense for feeds, a program that displays contextual and placement-targeted ads in FeedBurner feeds. FeedBurner announced in May that AdSense for Feeds will be available to a small number of publishers and now it seems that everyone can use it.

FeedBurner has recently closed FAN, its advertising network. "No new applications for FAN publishers are being accepted and we expect the broad variety of options provided through AdSense (including the new AdSense for Feeds product, powered with FeedBurner feeds) will give publishers valuable new revenue-earning potential," says a FeedBurner/Google employee.

The new AdSense for Feeds option lets you create a new ad unit that has a format automatically selected from 468x60 and 300x250. "Generally, the 300x250 size will display when there's more content and when your feed is being viewed in a device with a larger display," explains Google. You can choose if you want image ads, the ad frequency, the position (top or bottom of the post), the colors and a channel that tracks the ad performance.



For the moment, there's no connection between your AdSense account and the FeedBurner account, so Google automatically adds the FeedBurner service to your AdSense account. Unfortunately, your feeds are still connected to the old FeedBurner account and you need to migrate them first. The migration process is manual: just send an email at adsense-support-aff@google.com and mention your FeedBurner username and the AdSense account email address.


From AdSense, you can easily burn a new feed by entering the address of your blog and selecting some tracking options. The feeds can be managed at the new FeedBurner site, but there's no visible change other than the integration with Google Accounts and the new URLs for feeds: http://feedproxy.google.com/NAME.


Here's an ad from a feed of a FeedBurner/Google employee:


I doubt that these ads are an effective way to monetize feeds, since people use feed readers to get timely updates from a lot of sites and spend less time for each item. Besides, feed readers are mostly used by tech-savvy readers that are less likely to click on ads.

At some point, I may experiment with some infrequent ads in Google Operating System's feed and I'll post my findings.

Resources:
AdSense for Feeds Help Center - you should read the tips
Migrating an existing FeedBurner account
The new FeedBurner homepage

Google Search Results Show Metadata for Scientific Papers

Google started to integrate in the search results information about the scientific papers included in Google Scholar. Below the snippet, Google lists the authors, the number of citations and links to related articles and other versions available online. The integration is not perfect and the search results look cluttered, but it's yet another class of results that have richer snippets.

Here's the top search result for buddy tree (a data structure):


... and the same result at Google Scholar:


Google also shows additional information next to videos, books, web pages that include addresses and tests displaying metadata for forums and extracting specialized information from web pages. While Yahoo tries to convince webmasters to make structured data explicitly available, Google has a more practical approach and uses what's already available to enhance search results.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

Plot Feeds in Google Finance

Google Finance has a very cool new feature that lets you plot the items from a feed on a stock chart. For example, you may want to find more information about Google's stock and see how it correlates with the latest news about Google. In addition to the articles from Google News, there's a new tab with blog posts and another one that lets you view the posts from a feed. You can choose from the examples offered by Google, enter the URL of a feed or type some keywords related to the feed you want to find.

For Google, you may select New York Times feed offered as an example, search for [Google blog] or enter the address of this blog: googlesystem.blogspot.com. Google Finance lets you filter the posts from the selected feed using the "search within items" option. There's even an interesting trick that lets you plot some custom events on the chart. "Google Spreadsheets can be treated as RSS feeds and plotted on a chart. Just make sure your document contains a date column and some basic formatting, and that it's published to the web." Here's an example of spreadsheet plotted in Google Finance.


If you want to obtain a permalink for your custom chart, click on "Link to chart" and copy the address. Unfortunately, you can't save a list of feeds or connect them with certain companies.

{ Thank you, Alexis K. }

Photo Albums in Google Docs

Google Docs will expand beyond documents. After adding support for storing PDFs, Google Docs will provide ways to create photo albums. It's not very clear if you'll be able to access the photos stored in Picasa Web Albums or create different photo albums, but GDrive is certainly here and its name is Google Docs.

The first screenshot has been created using information from Google's code, which already includes an icon of the photo section. The other screenshots show an empty list of photo albums and a new image search feature.




I suspect Google Docs will become the place where you can upload, share and manage any kinds of files. It's also likely that all the files that are uploaded to other Google services will be accessible in Google Docs in much the same way as the photos uploaded to Blogger blogs can be found in Picasa Web Albums.

Update: Radu noticed that if you go to docs.google.com/#photos and type the first letters from the titles of your Picasa Web Albums, Google shows the full titles as suggestions. It seems that it only works for public albums.

Easier Way to Create Forms in Google Docs

You can now create forms directly from the New menu of Google Docs homepage.


After selecting the Form option, Google opens a wizard that lets you add questions, email or embed the form.


The form saves all the changes automatically and you can now reorder the questions using drag-and-drop.

What I don't like is that Google doesn't link to the spreadsheet which includes the form, so you have to find the spreadsheet by going back to the documents list. The relation between forms and spreadsheet is confusing and it would be nice to detach the forms from spreadsheets and use the forms as one of the many possible data sources, along with feeds, CSV files published on the web, financial data etc.

Gmail's Temporary Error

Gmail is currently down for many users and it shows a 502 error message:

"We're sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You won't be able to use your account while these errors last, but don't worry, your account data and messages are safe. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue. Please try accessing your account again in a few minutes."


Some Gmail accounts can still be accessed using other interfaces: basic HTML, mobile version or IMAP, but you can't receive or send messages.

The problem seems to be widespread, since many people are reporting it on Twitter and Gmail's group. "Gmail Temporary Error (502). Last time I saw something like that from Gmail was 2004," says José. "All my Gmail accounts are down. 502 Temporary Error. for nearly an hour already," complains Jonas. "bitful is all grrr because Gmail throws a 502 (temporary error) and wonders if the cloud can be trusted after all."

Gmail Guide says that "the Gmail team is currently aware of a subset of users being affected by the 502 error on login. (...) Engineers have pinpointed the issue causing the 502 errors and it looks as if users should start to regain normal functioning of their account."

Update: After more than an hour, Gmail is back, but the outage is in Google Hot Trends.


TechCrunch has more information from Google:

"Since about 2 p.m. Pacific Time today, many Gmail users have been unable to access their email. We are very sorry for this interruption in service. The issue is being caused by a temporary outage in the contacts system used by Gmail which is preventing Gmail from loading properly. We are starting to roll out a fix now and hope to have the problem resolved as quickly as possible. Even though you may not be able to get to your inbox right now, your mail is safe, including new incoming messages."

Google Maps, Before the Redesign

For those that hate the most recent Google Maps redesign and miss some of the features that were removed (the multiple search boxes, reordering destinations, collapsing directions), there's a link for the previous interface: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&view=text. The explanation is that Google didn't update the interface for the "text view", an option that minimizes the map and focuses on the search results.


This is just a temporary workaround until Google adds the missing features.

{ via Google Maps Group }

Update: you can now reorder destinations in the standard interface.

Add a Table of Contents to Google Docs and More

Basic features like table of contents, footnotes or thesaurus are still missing from Google Docs. Some of the features are already implemented and they're ready to be added to the interface.

(Update: If you have Google Gears, temporarily disable it for Google Docs by removing docs.google.com from the list of allowed sites in Google Gears Settings.)

For example, to generate a table of contents from the headings of a document, just paste this code in the address bar:

javascript:mr("TocSettings");

You should see a dialog that lets you choose the numbering style.


There's also an option to insert a HTML snippet without editing the HTML code. The dialog can be invoked by pasting in the address bar:

javascript:dy();

A word processor is more useful if you can easily access a dictionary, an encyclopedia and other sources of information. Select some text from a document and paste the following lines to show information from:

Encyclopædia Britannica
javascript:MC=NC();GC("encyclopedia");

Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary
javascript:MC=NC();GC("dictionary");

Merriam-Webster's Online Thesaurus
javascript:MC=NC();GC("thesaurus");


Hopefully, these features will soon be added in the interface.

Google Search Insights

Google Trends is useful if you want to compare the popularity of two or more search terms, but it can't generate lists with popular search terms from a category, like in Google Zeitgeist. You need to provide the search terms and adjust them until you found the most popular keywords, but this is time consuming and ineffective.

Google Insights for Search categorizes searches and shows popular queries from a category like Telecommunications, popular queries from a certain country or from a specific date range. You can use it to find answers to questions like:

* what are the most popular cars in the US this year?
* what are the top searches in France for the past 30 days?
* which file sharing services were the most popular in 2007?
* what was the distribution of the Google searches for iPhone in the US last month?
* what are the top searches related to Google this year?


The service has been created with the advertisers in mind and has many potential business uses: examining seasonality, comparing synonyms, finding regions that are interested in a certain product.

To group multiple keywords, separate them using +. To compare two or more keywords, click on "Add search term" or separate the keywords using a comma.