Thumbnails in Google Blog Search

Just like Google News, Google Blog Search started to show small thumbnails next to the search results. The images that illustrate blog posts are sometimes more helpful than the title or the snippet when you're trying to find a relevant result.


Back in 2008, Google launched a new homepage for Blog Search that included the most interesting stories in the blogosphere. Google clustered related posts and used thumbnails to illustrate them. The homepage no longer includes the top blog posts, but one of its features is now available for all blog posts: thumbnails.

{ Thanks, Herin. }

Google Reader's New Share Button

When Google Reader released the new interface, I complained that sharing a post takes too many clicks: you first need to +1 the post, then click the share box and finally click "share". Now it's easier to share a post: just click the new "share" button and click "share" once again in the modal dialog.



Another advantage is that you can use the old keyboard shortcut for sharing items: Shift+S. Unfortunately, you can't use keyboard shortcuts in the modal dialog, so you still need to click "Share".

Decoupling the "+1" button from the "share" button is a good idea and Google should adjust the code of the +1 widget to make this possible. "Liking" and "sharing" are two different actions and should be treated separately, especially considering that +1's are always public, while sharing can be limited to a few people or circles.

{ Thanks, Zachary and Herin. }

Tips Cara Upgrade Handphone Android

"Om Swastiastu"

Bagi kalian yang memiliki ponsel dengan Sistem Operasi Android, ada satu kelebihan yang dapat diandalkan ponsel Android, dimana kalian dapat mengupgrade ponsel Android kalian ke versi yang lebih baru. Misalkan saja kalian mempunyai ANdroid dengan versi 1.5, maka kalian dapat mengupdgradenya ke versi 2.0 bahkan yang lebih baru.

Sebelum melakukan update, perhatikan beberapa hal dibawah ini agar ketika kalian melakukan update, tidak ada data yang hilang, terutama data-data kalian yang penting.

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Google Starts Exporting Notebooks to Google Docs

Google Notebook is one of the many Google Labs services that will be shutdown. The team stopped developing the service three years ago and it's surprising that you can still use most of the features in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and other browsers.

A message now informs users that Google "will automatically export your Notebooks to Google Docs starting November 11, 2011". The FAQ explains that "once we start the transition, each notebook you have will automatically be exported to Google Docs. We will do this for every single notebook, and you won't have to do anything. This export will work the same as the existing 'Export to Docs' feature in Notebook. The format of the new documents will be as if you manually exported each of your notebooks to Docs."


Google hasn't released a new app for notes probably because the Google Docs word processing app is good enough to handle notes. There's even a cool Chrome extension developed by Google that lets you take notes and synchronizes them with Google Docs.

{ Thanks, Shahed and Taylor. }

A Farewell Message From the Code Search Team

It's rare to read such an honest apologetic message in an official Google site. Here's the farewell post from the Google Code Search team:

Hi Folks,

We're quite sorry about the impending shutdown as well, but it's a done deal, unfortunately. You may have noticed that things were quite passive on our side for the last while, and that's because we had to fight to justify any investment in the project. People are also definitely sad within the company, but it was decided at the highest levels.

There is something of a silver lining. googlecode.com will take over search for their projects, and also take over hosting the Chromium search page. (If ChromiumOS or Android are important to you, reach out to whatever contacts you have at Google *now* and let them know!) Not all the details have been nailed down, which is why we didn't put it in the official announcement.

Our apologies to you all, for letting you down, and thanks for all of the appreciation you've shown.

PS As alternatives http://koders.com/ http://opensearch.krugle.org/ http://grepcode.com/ and http://www.antepedia.com have been mentioned by various people. We're not endorsing or not-endorsing or anything, we're just mentioning them so you can try them out, and see if they meet your needs.

Google+ Badges

Now that you've created a Google+ page for your company, product or blog, how do you get people to follow the page? The answer is the Google+ badge, a customizable widget that helps you connect your site to a Google+ page. "The Google+ badge helps you grow your audience on Google+ and show more recommendations in Google search by letting people add you to their circles and +1 your page, all without leaving your site," explains Google.

Right now, the badge is only available if you sign up for the Google+ Platform Preview, but it will soon be publicly available. If you already have a Google +1 button on your site, you only need to add two lines of code.

1. connect your site with the Google+ page by adding this code to the <head> section of the HTML document:

<link href="https://plus.google.com/PAGE_ID/" rel="publisher" />

(where PAGE_ID is the long number from the URL of your Google+ page).

This has the added benefit that the page may qualify for Direct Connect and people can visit the page by typing +PAGE_NAME in Google's search box. "In addition to helping us better index your Google+ page, this snippet will help you show more personal recommendations around the web by linking your +1's on sites, your Google+ page, search and display ads," mentions Google.

2. add this code where you want to place the badge:

<g:plus href="https://plus.google.com/PAGE_ID/" size="badge"></g:plus>

You can also add static badges that only include an icon and a short text, although it's probably easier to manually add the icon and link to the Google+ page.

Use this page to generate the code, but make sure that you subscribe to the Platform Preview group to see the badge. Please note that only those who subscribe to the group can see the badges and try other new features that aren't publicly available.

Google +1 Buttons for Image Search Results

When you mouse over a Google image search result, you'll see a +1 button that lets you recommend the image to the people that follow in Google+.


At some point, Google removed the social features from the image search engine and now only relies on the +1 button to provide social recommendations. The nice thing is that Google annotates image results with the relevant people that +1'd the images.


The social layer is no longer a separate section, but it's less comprehensive: the previous version included "pictures that your friends and other contacts have published publicly to the web on photo-sharing sites like Picasa Web Albums and Flickr". The "results from your social circle" were probably less relevant since Google generated the social circles from your Gmail contacts, Google Talk buddies, the people you follow in Google Buzz and Twitter. It's likely that the social circles were just an approximation of the circles you can create in Google+ and Google will phase out this feature.

Membuat Aplisaki Polling dengan PHP dan SQL

"Om Swastiastu"

Sebenarnya aplikasi polling berbasis web sudah banyak disediakan secara gratis. Aplikasi ini menjadi semacam widget yang bisa dilepas dan dipasang secara mudah, bahkan tanpa pengetahuan bahasa pemrograman yang detail. Tetapi, ada baiknya untuk mengetahui cara pembuatan aplikasi polling berbasis web. Aplikasi polling ini menggunakan PHP sebagai bahasa utamanya dan MySQl sebagai database yang berguna untuk menampung data-data poling. 

Berikut ini cara membuatnya: 

Yang pertama dilakukan adalah berdoa dan membuat tabel. Berikut ini kode SQL yang digunakan untuk membangun tabel. Nama tabel dan databasenya terserah anda, nanti harus disesuaikan ketika menghubungkan PHP dan MySQL.

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No More GoogleLookup in Google Spreadsheets

One of the most useful Google Spreadsheets features is the GoogleLookup function, which allows you to find simple facts and quickly create a spreadsheet using Google's data. Unfortunately, the function will be removed at the end of the month and this will break a lot of spreadsheets that use it.

"As of November 2011, the GoogleLookup function will no longer be supported. This function relies on technology from Google Squared, a Google Lab that's been deprioritized. To save your data, copy the selection that contains GoogleLookup functions. Then, go to the Edit menu, navigate to Paste special, and select Paste values only. When the function is no longer supported, cells containing GoogleLookup functions will return #NAME? errors," explains Google.


Well, GoogleLookup was released long before Google Squared (2006 vs 2009) and it relied on Google's Q&A feature, which is still available.

Here's a way to use the ImportXML function to extract facts from Google Search (the mobile interface):

=RegExExtract(ImportXML("http://www.google.com/m/search?q=sri+lanka+capital", "//span[@class='waa4kx']"), "-(.*)")

Can you find a better way?

{ Thanks, Jérôme. }

Cara Membuat Sudut Bundar atau Rounded Corner dengan CSS

Rounded corner dalam border adalah corner yang bentuknya tidak siku-siku seperti border pada umumnya, tetapi bentuknya membulat. Banyak programmer menggunakan gambar untuk membuat round corner. Tetapi seiring berkembangnya teknologi, kini ada cara yang lebih mudah yang bisa kita gunakan untuk membuat rounded corner. Yaitu dengan menggunakan CSS (Cascading Style Sheet).

Ada beberapa syntax CSS yang harus kita gunakan untuk membuat round corner. Dimana setiap syntax mempunyai perannya sendiri untuk tiap web browser. Webkit untuk browser Google Chrome, Moz untuk Mozzila. Jika ingin membuat rounded corner, maka gunakanlah kedua syntax tersebut. Agar rounded corner yang kalian buat bisa terlihat dikedua browser. Secara dasar syntax untuk membuat rounded corner adalah seperti ini:

-webkit-border-radius: 10px;

-moz-border-radius: 10px;

border-radius: 10px;

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Google+ Pages

After a few months of testing, Google+ pages are available to everyone. You can create public pages for brands, products, local businesses and more.

"For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you'll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello," says Google.


Google+ pages look like Google+ profiles, but there are some differences: pages can't +1 other pages, don't support notifications and "can't add people to circles until the page is added first or mentioned".

People can add pages to one of their circles and there's a new built-in circle called "Following" that can be used to follow pages. The circle is used to automatically follow pages if you enable this option.

If you've been wondering why the + operator no longer works in Google search, the answer is that you can now use it to find Google+ pages. Type +google in the regular Google search box, press Enter and you'll be sent to Google's Google+ page. This only works for a small number of pages and the search box is smart enough to autocomplete the page's name.


To test the new feature, I've created a Google+ page for this blog where you'll find more news and tips about Google.

Prevent Viewers from Downloading Google Docs Files

If you upload a PDF file to Google Docs and share it with other people, they can download it, print it and copy the file to their accounts. Now you can prevent other people from downloading the file from the Google Docs homepage: just right-click the file and select "Prevent viewers from downloading".


For videos, this option is also available in the File menu, where you can uncheck "Viewers can download this file".

While Google removes the download buttons and menu items from the user interface, there may be other ways to download the files.

{ Thanks, Bill. }