google is the heat... 2

2/23/2005 5:18:41 PM

http://toolbar.google.com/T3/index

Quote :

"SpellCheck Check your spelling whenever you type in web forms"

That alone is worth a download.

3/4/2005 2:23:35 AM

mac os x has done that for years except it does it in any text box on the system (think aim). It has the translation stuff, too.

Highlight search terms is hot, though


[Edited on March 4, 2005 at 3:44 AM. Reason : i hear spotlight pwns google desktop, too]

3/4/2005 3:26:01 AM

The AutoLink in the Toolbar is causing a bunch of people to complain and draw comparisons to Microsoft's proposed "SmartTags" a couple years ago. Web developers are whining that with things like autolink, they can't control how their webpage appears to the user. The funny thing is, though, it's not really up to the web developer anymore anyway - the user should have complete control how a webpage appears to them. Users can apply their own CSS, block images and ads and change text and image sizes.
http://tinyurl.com/4lf92

To summarize, when you press the AutoLink button in the google toolbar, it searches for addresses that appear on your current page, and turns them into links to Google Maps (also gives you the option to use Yahoo or Mapquest, but defaults to Google). I think it can also link to Amazon or B&N if it sees ISBNs, to FedEx and UPS for tracking numbers, and a couple other linkable strings. Presumably, AutoLink may be developed further to link to other Google products.

If you remember (which I don't very well), MS proposed SmartTags a couple years ago for Office XP that would make similar links all over your computer - in Word and Excel docs, on webpages, etc to MS products. People HATED that idea because they felt MS was taking over their computer and pushing products on them, and MS scrapped it - or at least turned it off by default.

I think the main difference here is nothing is done automatically with the AutoLink button. A person has to see an address on a page, and instead of copying/pasting that address into a map page, they have to click the AutoLink button, then click the address. I think it can be developed further so that the links that are inserted use the same style as the rest of the page, so it shouldn't look too different. Web designers need to remember that the pages they make are for the user, not for themselves. If a user has a way to make the page more to their liking, they should be able to do so.

[Edited on March 4, 2005 at 8:56 AM. Reason : url]

3/4/2005 8:55:28 AM

Another new feature -

Type "weather <zip code or city>" and a snapshot of the current weather and forecast is displayed at the top of the search results.
I would like to it display some links to the location on weather sites like weather.com, http://www.wunderground.com/, and http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ to get more detailed info

I wonder if Google will start archiving all the weather stats like weather.com has and give a good searchable and displayable format for it.

3/5/2005 9:41:30 AM

Google finally takes one of their products out of Beta and into full release, but it happens to be one of the newest beta's.

new full version of Desktop Search available here - http://desktop.google.com/
Improvements include:
- PDF full text search
- search by Meta-Tags for audio, video and image
- web history/cache for Netscape, mozilla, firefox
- Email from Netscape Mail, Mozilla Mail and Thunderbird (cool). The search results for client email show conversations like in Gmail

They're also releasing plugins to search other data - http://desktop.google.com/plugins.html
e.g. search Trillian, OpenOffice, IRC, CHM files (i.e. Help files)

3/7/2005 9:21:47 AM

All of the Larry's plugins are written by a good friend of mine, and also hosted on our servers. We brought in extra servers to handle the load from slashdot as well.

3/7/2005 9:38:33 AM

a friend just sent me this link - fairly interesting:

http://grant.robinson.name/projects/montage-a-google/

-ZiP!-

3/7/2005 3:19:31 PM

YESSS, i just discovered movies: zipcode

no more bloated websites with rollover ads ever again

and some how, it even lists the one theatre that other sites can't find, including hollywood.com, fandango, yahoo, imdb, etc.

[Edited on March 9, 2005 at 12:44 AM. Reason : add]

3/9/2005 12:42:12 AM

Sometime earlier today I went to the Google frontpage and there was a link below the search box to sign up for Gmail. It's not there at the moment - it's a link for Desktop right now.

Anyone else see it? Does that mean Gmail is open to the general public now? It appears to be in beta still. I was thinking maybe they would pull off the Beta tag and release to the public on the one year anniversary of unveiling Gmail (April 1st)

3/9/2005 5:38:02 PM

They've made some big improvements to News http://news.google.com/.

It's now personalizable - you can reorder the sections, increase/decrease the number of stories per section, view headlines only, select your language per section, and add your own custom sections based on search words. And as you would expect, the customizer pane is very fast (no page reloads) and easy to use.

It doesn't require you to log in, so I assume the cusomizations are stored locally. I would imagine that this will be integrated into the Google/Gmail accounts so you can keep your customizations between computers

3/10/2005 12:53:59 PM

Also with the News Customization, there is a link at the bottom of the page to "email custimized new site" so you can share your customizations and special news sections with others.

3/10/2005 1:52:10 PM

Quote :

" It doesn't require you to log in, so I assume the cusomizations are stored locally. I would imagine that this will be integrated into the Google/Gmail accounts so you can keep your customizations between computers "

more likely they use the infamous google cookie

3/10/2005 1:58:38 PM

yeah, yeah - the infamous google cookie who's real intent is to spy on your for your known life and report all search activities back to Google so they can sell it to credit agencies and the government

3/10/2005 2:21:51 PM

that is mad slick...

i am just now getting to use the map feature more and the way that the image moves as the browser window is resized is amazing...

3/10/2005 3:24:11 PM

I really like the ability to change the sections around on Google News. I always set it as my default home page at home and at work so I look at it many times during the day. I added a section for state news and local (Raleigh) news at the bottom.

3/11/2005 8:43:49 AM

^ ha - i just added a "Raleigh" section to search on the keywords "Raleigh NC", and the 3rd headline this morning in that section is
"WWE Raw Results 3/7/05 - Raleigh NC; Two Matches Added To ...
Wrestling-News.com - Mar 7, 2005"

3/11/2005 9:12:42 AM

I have a section called "State" that searches on North Carolina, and a section called "Local" which searches only on the word Raleigh. Both seem to give fairly relevant results.

3/11/2005 9:40:43 AM

couple new things out today - nothing big though.

Another Google Labs "for fun" project - "GoogleX" - http://labs.google.com/googlex/
It's basically the google front page redone with icons above the search box to popular google tools and they're fashioned to look and act like the Mac OS X dock bar. The icons grow and shrink and the name fades in and out as you mouse over, like the OS X dock bar. It actually works and looks really good and it's a good way to fit more links on the front page without clutter, because the icons take up less space than the words on the normal google page.
I may make it my default Google page - i'd like to see a personalized version, though, where you can specify what links you want.

Here's a way to add/delete your business to the Google Local search - http://www.google.com/local/add/lookup

And according to this blog entry - http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/03/drilling-down-shows-up.html
There is a new format for AdSense ads. The ad-block will now be smaller with less text, but more links. Looks like you'll just get link title, but no short description unless you click on it. But I haven't found an example an any sites that use AdSense


One more thing - check out guide to modfying your Gmail CSS. http://persistent.info/archives/2004/10/05/gmail-skinning
Here's the CSS they wrote that you can modify


[Edited on March 16, 2005 at 11:46 AM. Reason : gmail]

3/16/2005 11:30:03 AM

wtf - Looks like Google pulled GoogleX offline within 1 day of putting it up - http://labs.google.com/googlex/
Google PR told a Google Blog - http://google.blogspace.com/archives/001619 - "Unfortunately, we're not providing comment."

If i had to guess, i would say Apple, in their recent lawsuit happieness, threatened Google about some copyright or something concerning OS X. Sucks - hopefully they can settle something and put it back up.

The original announcement on the official Google Blog - http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/03/google-goes-x.html - is still there though.

3/17/2005 1:10:38 AM

http://code.google.com/

open source projects

3/18/2005 11:04:06 AM

http://print.google.com/

you can now read the entire text of many books online through google

these people are quickly becoming a repository for all knowlege on the internet. it's nuts.

go ahead, google "origin of species" and then read the whole thing!

this is just for books in public domain, of course, but for books not in public domain you can sometimes read a few sample pages

[Edited on March 21, 2005 at 12:45 PM. Reason : .]

3/21/2005 12:44:31 PM

I think this is a new feature that must have been added today, because I do Stock symbol searches almost every day.
Previously when you did a stock symbol search, you only got a link to Yahoo Finance for that stock. Now you get a snapshot of the stock directly on the search results page, including a small graph, currenting trading price, hi/lo, etc.

once again, pretty cool
http://www.google.com/search?q=msft
http://www.google.com/search?q=goog


oh yeah, and in business news, Google just bought Urchin, the web-statistics company. They will likely build Urchin technologies into their AdWord/Sense products to give customers better advertising data.

[Edited on March 30, 2005 at 4:17 PM. Reason : .]

3/30/2005 4:03:19 PM

Google now does prefetching for Firefox and Mozilla based browsers. When you do a search on those browsers, the first search result will start to download before you click on the link, so when/if you do click on the link, it will load faster.
http://www.google.com/help/features.html#prefetch

Personally, I haven't noticed a difference using FireFox. You can also disable that feature if you want (i.e. if you don't want pages being downloaded that you didn't click on).

3/31/2005 11:22:48 AM

IE is doing juts fine for me

3/31/2005 12:03:51 PM

they've added rich text formatting to Gmail. I guess its rolling out in phases though. My account has it

3/31/2005 12:28:02 PM

hmm. My account doesn't have that yet. Was it something that just showed up one day?

I was hoping for an April 1 full v1.0 launch of Gmail, exactly one year after the initial announcement. It's getting pretty close! i don't know if we'll make it by tomorrow

3/31/2005 1:08:10 PM

no rich text here either...would be nice because that's a big turnoff of using gmail to send mail - it gets all fucked up when its converted to text usually

3/31/2005 2:17:41 PM

http://gmail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=8260

3/31/2005 2:18:50 PM

sweet

but i want to be a tier one tester dammit!

3/31/2005 2:20:04 PM

maybe I should show them this thread that I started about them, and how much work I put into it. Maybe then they'll make me a teir one tester!

3/31/2005 2:35:28 PM

www.600673.com

3/31/2005 3:02:05 PM

nice, they heeded my call - I was greeted with Rich Formatting when I checked my email tonight.
This is a shot of what it looks like -

3/31/2005 10:27:00 PM

i guess we're tier 2 i got it too

4/1/2005 12:20:11 AM

i have it too.

btw, see: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/006200504011001.htm

4/1/2005 1:20:40 AM

yeh - i already have more than 1 GB of space

i think its rolling

4/1/2005 3:46:44 AM

huh, that's funny - when I woke up this morning and was listening to the radio, i remembered it was April 1st, so I was thinking about what kind of news stories would come out today that would end up being fake. I had resigned the thought that Gmail would go live, so I thought it'd be funny if they doubled their storage, and now I see this!

mine is up to 1322MB.... i guess they're stepping it up slowly. If course I'm still only using 6% of that, so doesn't matter much to me. Yahoo and Hotmail must be shitting themselves right now

4/1/2005 8:46:12 AM

jeez - even more Google News today

1) Google Ride Finder (beta... of course) - http://labs.google.com/ridefinder - for select cities only, see real time locations of cabs, shuttles, and limos. In northern DC and need a ride to the airport? See where the closest cab is - http://labs.google.com/ridefinder?z=8&near=Washington%2C%20DC&src=1

2) I can't tell if this slashdot story is a fake or not - http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/31/2113253&from=rss - it doesn't give a link to a real article, so i'm inclined to think it's a joke. But it's somewhat beliveable, nonetheless. As we know, Google acquired Keyhole, the satellite imagry company last year. The story claims they've named one of the satellites gSat and it is refreshing it's database today with new images of the globe. I dont' know how these statellite companies work, but I doubt they pick one day and blanket the whole globe with new pictures, so this may be fake.

3) and following in the tradition of other Google April Fool's stories (pigeon rank - http://www.google.com/intl/en/technology/pigeonrank.html , lunar base - http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html), they're introducing Google Gulp (beta, and in limited release) - http://www.google.com/googlegulp/ - a drink designed to maximize your surfing efficiency

4/1/2005 10:43:00 AM

ha - go to gmail.com (or log out of your account to get to the regular gmail.com page). It has a moving counter that shows a continusouly increasing amount of MB that each user has in storage - you will see that is actually tracking with what your Gmail account shows. I'm guessing that at this rate we'll all have 2GB by midnight?
and check out the "strategy" for Gmail's storage limit


you will notice too that in the Google Gulp FAQs they poke a good bit of fun at themselves:

Quote :

"4. What if I don't want to use Auto-Drink™? No problem – simply turn off Auto-Drink™ on your Google Gulp preferences page. 5. Well, shouldn't Auto-Drink™ be default-off? You mean we should cripple a perfectly useful feature just because of a little bad PR? 6. Yes. Okay. 7. How can I get my hands on a Google Gulp? This "limited release" beta product is available to anyone who turns in a used Google Gulp bottle cap at any local retailer. If you don't have any Gulp caps, ask a friend to give you one. 8. What if none of my friends have a Gulp cap to give me? Can't you just give Google Gulp to anyone who wants it? Well, we're thinking about it, but, um, you have to understand that there are many considerations which go into deciding how to distribute -- 9. I mean, isn't this whole invite-only thing kind of bogus? Dude, it's like you've never even heard of viral marketing. 11. When will you take Google Gulp out of beta? Man, if you pressure us, you just drive us away. We'll commit when we're ready, okay? Besides, what's so great about taking things out of beta? It ruins all the romance, the challenge, the possibilities, the right to explore. Carpe diem, ya know? Maybe we're jaded, but we've seen all these other companies leap headlong into 1.0, thinking their product is exactly what they've been dreaming of all their lives, that everything is perfect and hunky-dory – and the next thing you know some vanilla copycat release from Redmond is kicking their butt, the Board is holding emergency meetings and the CEO is on CNBC blathering sweatily about "a new direction" and "getting back to basics." No thanks, man. We like our freedom. "

4/1/2005 1:01:00 PM

i love google.

4/1/2005 1:02:28 PM

http://toolbar.google.com/dc/offerdc.html

4/1/2005 1:33:36 PM

ah, here's some of the javascript on gmail.com that controls the counter:

var START = 1112331600000;   
var END = 1112439600000;
var quota;

function updateQuota() { 
  if (!quota) {
    return;
  }
 
  var now = (new Date()).getTime(); 
  if (now < START) { 
    setTimeout(updateQuota, 1000); 
  } else if (now > END) { 
    quota.innerHTML = 'Over 2000'; 
  } else { 
    quota.innerHTML = format(((now - START)/(END - START)*1025) + 1025); 
    setTimeout(updateQuota, 50); 
  } 
}

4/1/2005 1:55:08 PM

april fools!

you get 500 meg now fuckers

4/1/2005 3:33:26 PM

gmail even tells you when your temp internet files are full - they've thought this through very well

4/2/2005 4:19:01 AM

apparantly they didn't stop at 2 gigs

4/2/2005 11:01:10 AM

huh.... I'm up to 2050 now. They've also changed the javascript at gmail.com. It's a bit harder to read now. The variables START and STOP have been replaced with -

var CP = [
 [ 1112331600000, 1025 ],
 [ 1112439600000, 2050 ],
 [ 1113062400000, 2075 ]
];

var quota;

function updateQuota() { 
  if (!quota) {
    return;
  }
 
  var now = (new Date()).getTime(); 
  var i;
  for (i = 0; i < CP.length; i++) {
    if (now < CP[i][0]) {
      break;
    }
  }
  if (i == 0) {
    setTimeout(updateQuota, 1000); 
  } else if (i == CP.length) {
    quota.innerHTML = 'Over ' + CP[i - 1][1];
  } else {
    var ts = CP[i - 1][0];
    var bs = CP[i - 1][1];
    quota.innerHTML = format(((now-ts) / (CP[i][0]-ts) * (CP[i][1]-bs)) + bs); 
    setTimeout(updateQuota, 50); 
  } 
} 

4/2/2005 11:15:42 AM

it's here!
The long anticipated merger of Google Maps, Local, and Keyhole. This is sooner and better than I expected, at least at this point.

Now on any Google Maps or Google Local search, there is a "Satellite" link near the map. Click it and instantly get an overhead photo view that is zoomable and panable just like the regular maps.

NCSU -
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=35.782428,-78.671572&spn=0.008250,0.009817&t=k

The mountain pics are spectacular. This is Boone/Blowing Rock
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=36.106911,-81.717682&spn=0.132008,0.157070&t=k

Here's Asheville - http://maps.google.com/maps?q=asheville,nc&spn=0.528030,0.628281&t=k&hl=en

The pictures seem to have a distinct different in urban and rural areas as you can see in the asheville shot. Looks like they got much more detailed in urban, which I geuss is why cities are washed out in green like the rurual areas are.

downtown san diego -
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=san+diego,ca&ll=32.716813,-117.157087&spn=0.060768,0.062141&t=k&hl=en

Manhatten -
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=new+york,ny&ll=40.711126,-74.008198&spn=0.066004,0.078535&t=k&hl=en

be sure to zoom in to street level

4/5/2005 9:25:42 AM

and in more Google news, Larry Page announced on monday they will be expanding their blogging service soon to include user submitted video blogs, which Google will host. Looks like it will be integrated with the blog community and the video search they rolled out a couple months ago.

In reality, though, looks like it will mostly be a big boon to the amateur porn industry...

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1782210,00.asp

4/5/2005 1:26:20 PM

mapquest used to have satellite images. google maps seems more seemless though.

4/5/2005 2:42:01 PM

yeah, google maps is definately not the first, but I say overall it is the best implemented. The Mapquest images sucked for all the other reasons that MapQuest sucks - you had to refresh the whole page to pan or zoom and the map viewer is very small.

MultiMap actually has a very cool overhead image system - http://www.multimap.com/
Search for "london" on that page, then click "Ariel" in the tool bar. You then get an areial photo, and a road map is superimposed on top of the image wherever your cursor is. It is very slick. But it suffers from the same problems that Mapquest does - it's a huge pain to zoom and pan, and the arial photos are limited to select locations

4/5/2005 4:03:59 PM