More Search Options in an Experimental Google Video Interface

Google tests a new "tool belt" format that exposes some advanced options and lets you refine the search results without visiting a special page. The format has been tested for web search, image search and now Google Video.

The experimental interface for Google Video includes a link to "search options" which displays a sidebar that lets you restrict the results to a certain video site, choose a date range, the duration of the videos and if they are embeddable. Most of the options are currently available in drop-downs below the search box and in the advanced search, but the new interface makes them more visible and encourages their use.

What I don't like is that Google devotes less space to the videos, it's more difficult to scan the results and the player's position changes when you scroll down.


To try the new interface, go to Google Video and paste in the address bar the following JavaScript code:



{ Thanks, Shaz. }

Import Your Old Hotmail Messages into Gmail

Now that Hotmail started to support POP3, you can import messages from Hotmail accounts into Gmail using the mail fetcher.

Go to the Accounts tab from Gmail's settings page and click on "Add a mail account you own". Type the Hotmail address and use the following settings:

Username: the complete email address
Password: your Hotmail password
POP Server: pop3.live.com
Port: 995
Enable all the four subsequent options (the only option that's required is "Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail").


Since the mail fetcher emulates a standard mail client that supports POP, it will check for new messages periodically. You also have the option to add the Hotmail address as a custom "From" address so you no longer have to compose messages in Hotmail.

Hosted by Google, but Not Open to Search Engines

Like many other sites, Google uses robots.txt files to prevent search engines from indexing some of the content from google.com. In most cases, Google includes search results pages and other pages generated automatically, which would pollute indexes.


But sometimes Google excludes useful content, either directly using robots.txt files or using addresses that are difficult to index:

* published documents, spreadsheets and presentations from Google Docs - I suspect that the main reason why search engines aren't allowed to index Google Docs pages is that many documents would become public if search engines indexed invitation URLs.

* public pages for Google Reader's shared items - most of the content from these pages is copied from other pages, but Google Notebooks can be indexed by search engines.

* the albums and the photos hosted by Picasa Web Albums (the photos are indexed by Google Image Search, while the albums are included in Google's main search results). Picasa Web's front-end uses AJAX and URLs like http://picasaweb.google.com/guedin/AdriChezLesKiwisToutesLesPhotos12#5312778271091234418 can't be indexed by search engines, which usually remove fragments.

* the answers and questions from Google Moderator, another AJAX app that uses addresses like http://moderator.appspot.com/#15/e=cc&t=6. The application powers a new section from White House's website called "Open for Questions", which also can't be indexed by search engines.

* the LIFE photo archive, which is only available in Google Image Search. "It's disappointing that Google gets exclusive access to index these images and every other search engine is out of luck. Exclusivity like this doesn't seem in line with Google's philosophy," says Andy Baio.

* the books scanned by Google that are available in Google Book Search (they're included in Google's main search results, as part of Universal Search)

* the patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office that are available in Google Patent Search

* the charts generated using Google Chart API

* the captions from videos hosted by YouTube and Google Video (they're indexed by YouTube and Google Video)

Drawing in Google Docs

Google Docs added a simple editor for drawings: you can insert shapes, draw lines and arrows, insert scribbles and text, change the color, the line width and other formatting options.

The drawing is inserted as an image, but it continues to be editable after you add it to the document. Google uses SVG in Firefox, Opera, Chrome and other browsers that support it and VML in Internet Explorer, so you don't need third-party plug-ins.

To try this feature, called internally Sketchy, go to the "Insert" menu and select "Drawing". This is one of the few features that works for all types of files that can be edited in Google Docs: documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It doesn't work well when two or more people edit the same drawing simultaneously and the interface is confusing: when you finish editing your drawing, you need to click on the "X" icon.


{ Thanks, Surendra. }

Find Custom Maps

The results provided by Google Maps are diverse: locations, addresses, local businesses, web pages, directions. Google Maps indexes pages that contain geographical content and it sometimes includes them in the list of search results.

Until recently, Google Maps only pointed to items from custom maps and geo-feeds, but now you can find the maps in the list of results. For example, a search for [president birth places] returns a map that shows where each president of the US was born.



You can restrict your search to custom maps and GeoRSS feeds by clicking on "show search options" and selecting "related maps". The index includes the public maps created from the "My Maps" interface.

Google Maps tries to go beyond basic queries like "pizza in ny" or "louvre, paris" by using the web index. Google LatLong gives some examples of complicated queries that return useful results: bridge collapse in MN, falafel carts in nyc. Unfortunately, Google Maps has a very basic understanding of queries and can't always differentiate a general query like "places to go in London" from a search that asks for directions.


{ via FriendFeed }

Find and Replace in Google Docs

Google Docs finally replaced the partially functional "find & replace" dialog inherited from Writely with an inline bar that actually works. Just select "Find & replace" from the "Edit" menu or type Ctrl+F to make the bar visible. To find the next match, click on "Find next" or type Ctrl+G.

The option can be used to find a text in your document and to replace it with a different text. If you click on the small arrow next to the first input box, you'll be able to set some restrictions: case matching, finding only whole words or using JavaScript-style regular expressions. For example, to remove all the email addresses from a document, use the following regular expression for email addresses:

[a-zA-Z0-9]+[a-zA-Z0-9._%-]*@(?:[a-zA-Z0-9-]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}

If you know some other potentially useful regular expressions in a word processor, share them in the comments.


{ via Google Docs Blog }

In Google We Trust

This is a guest post from Fixer Dave, a Google user who's disappointed about the latest developments in the Google land.

I chuckle when people tell me that they never use online services. "Read the EULAs" they tell me. They can do anything they want with your data, don't you know! Yes, I know, and I don't really care. You see, I've sold my soul to Google. I let them know everything about me, and, in return, they give me all these super-cool web-based applications that make my life so much easier. It's a pretty good deal, if you ask me. It's not like I'm some kind of secret agent or something. For the price of my online soul, I get the Google suite: Gmail, Picasa, News, Calendar, Notebook, Bookmarks, Docs... It's great, it really is.

Well, it was great; I'm not so sure anymore. Google has always been special to me, a "don't be evil" enterprise. They have wowed me, over and over again, with the cool free stuff they just keep pumping out. I mean, how can you not trust a company that gives you access to an amazing tool like Google Earth, for free? Google is, well, Google. You'd never equate them to the likes of RIAA, or Microsoft. But, a couple of things have come along to set me back, make me wonder about what's going on, and make me think again about this whole "don't be evil" thing.

The first thing that happened was that Google announced they were going to stop development of Google Notebook. Now, Notebook is a very, very cool application. With the browser plug-in installed, it lets you easily clip bits of web-pages into notebooks which they store online, for free. I find it immensely useful and promote it to everyone I know. It just works great; it's one of the best things Google ever did. But, if you want to try it out, well, you're too late. Google says I can keep my data, so they're not being evil about it, but no new users can sign up for the service. This shocked me in a way that's hard to explain. From the moment I first heard about Google, they've been innovating, expanding, doing new and wonderful things. A trip to the labs was like going to a candy store. But, this was the first time I've ever experienced them stop offering a service. Sure, they may have stopped other stuff, but this is the first time for me. Google stopped a service. Google stopped.

The next thing was a cryptic email about "Interest-Based" Adsense. That was another shock. I know Google tracks me as I browse the web; I can see it in my Google Web History page. I also have no doubt that they track a lot more than what they put up on this page. They know things about me that I've totally forgotten, and it doesn't bother me. But, having them package up these histories and then auctioning them off to advertisers does bother me, a lot actually. That's just a little bit evil, don't you think?

It bugs me because Google could have gone so many other ways, where they could increase their revenues without selling out the people that trust them. I can think of several ways that Google could have their users signing up for interest-based advertising, ways that would have people jumping at the opportunity to be part of something. Instead, Google went the way you would expect any other corporation to go in tough times. They're laying people off, shutting down innovation, and grabbing revenue the easiest way they can get it. It just doesn't seem like Google anymore; it's like there's been a coup and the bean-counters have seized control. I get the feeling that Google has become a corporate adult, with all the loss of innocence that entails. I'm not so sure that I can still trust them. I just don't know. While I'm not quite ready to pull back from the cloud, I'm starting to think that maybe I want my soul back.

Google Translate, Added to the Navigation Menu

Google Translate has been added to the navigation menu for almost all localized versions of Google's homepages: from Google UK to Google Japan and Google Canada, but not the main google.com. That means you can now type the text you want to translate in Google's search box and then select "Translate" from the "more" drop-down.


In less than three years, Google Translate added support for 41 languages, becoming the most comprehensive translation service available for free. "Google Translate recently added Turkish, Thai, Hungarian, Estonian, Albanian, Maltese, and Galician to the mix. The rollout of these seven additional languages marks a new milestone: automatic translations between 41 languages (1,640 language pairs!). This means we can now translate between languages read by 98% of Internet users," explained a Google blog post from February.

Even if Google's statistical translation system doesn't always produce coherent translations and sometimes proper nouns are translated incorrectly, Google Translate constantly improves as more parallel text adjusts the language models.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

More Google Search Insights

Google Insights for Search, a more advanced version of Google Trends, started to show data for three specialized search engines: Google Image Search, Google News and Froogle. You can now see the most popular queries from Google Image Search in United Kingdom, the most popular news-related searches in Quebec or the locations where "Michael Jackson" was a popular news search in 2009.


Insights for Search offers a very interesting feature for disambiguating queries. For example, you can find data about the query "tiger" and restrict it to the computers & electronics category or the sports category. Google suggests the appropriate categories and subcategories and it shows their relative popularity. It would be interesting to see a similar feature for web search results.


{ via Inside AdWords }