Friday, July 3, 2009
Friendfeed’s Real-time Search
Now that ex-Google employees start-up Friendfeed has real-time search, you can feed their engine with a keyword like google and embed it elsewhere, like below (I could refine this search by restricting it to results which have X comments only, or have Likes, or which are only from my contacts at Friendfeed, and so on):
PS: If you want to subscribe to my links at Friendfeed, it’s there.
[Hat tip to Websonic!]
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Gmail With Drag & Drop
Drag and drop has come to Gmail: you can now drag a message by its left-hand grid, and move it into a label/ folder to the left side. Also, you can now re-arrange labels via drag & drop.
[Thanks Cookie Lee and Niranjan!]
Monday, June 29, 2009
A Changed Google Results Layout, Perhaps Experimental
I’m currently seeing a slightly changed layout for Google results. The Google logo has gotten smaller, and there’s more padding to the left. In Firefox, the file holding the logo for the new layout is called nav_logo6.png (when I open the old layout in Chrome, it’s nav_logo4.png).
This redesign could well be just an experimental prototype, and nothing that’s rolled out for everyone, I don’t know... who else is seeing the changed layout?
(Recently, the Google homepage also presented itself with less padding below the search box, but that may have been a temporary bug... it doesn’t show anymore to me.)
[Hat tip to WebSonic.nl and Tony!]
Friday, June 26, 2009
YouTube Changes Channel Layout, Gets 48,000+ Comments
A YouTube blog entry by a YouTube manager announcing the roll-out of a new channel design has so far received 48,668 comments, and growing. Looks like not everyone is happy (and it may or may not be that unhappy users are more vocal, too, right now). Included in the most recent comments right now are things like:
- “i think u should ask the viewers before u make your choice. please do that ... =]”
- “support this video against the mandatory changes - http://www.youtube.com/wat...”
- “Please allow the choice of both old and new channel designs.”
... as well as full blown ASCII protest art.
![[’Old Channel Rules’ written with @’s]](/files/old-channel-rules.png)
[Thanks Ionut and A.!]
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
HTC Hero, an Android-Based Phone (Video)
[Via Reddit.]
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
A Bigger AdSense Default Font
It’s only a small change to AdSense, but if you’re using Google’s ads on a lot of sites even small changes may make a difference: Google on Monday announced they’ve increased the default font size for AdSense units. However, since last week you can now also change the font size for AdSense ad units yourself. The font size dialog allows default, small, medium, and large. (The old default size equaled “small”, and the new one equals “medium”, Google says).
Google China Removes Auto-Suggest Following Gov’t Anti-Porn Initiative
Fingerpointing towards Google in a report by state-controlled CCTV; the user shows how he enters [xing], later stumbling upon scantily clad people in Google Images.
The search auto-completion feature on Google China’s homepage was recently removed. Why? Apparently, the Chinese government is on a mission to fight porn, and auto-suggestions might help people find adult sites. (A Chinese research mob – a “human flesh search engine” – found some problems with the govt’s tales, though.) Or were there other, more political problems with Google Suggest, of which we aren’t told? Via email here’s Google’s comment on the whole issue:
Google has been working to remove pornography from our search results in China, in accordance with our operating license there. This has been a major engineering effort, and we believe we have addressed many of the problems identified by the Government. As part of these efforts, we have also temporarily disabled the Google Suggest feature on Google.cn.
Google adds:
Finally, we have redesigned the home page of Google.cn to remove the radio buttons that offer language and locale options. These buttons were used by a very small percentage of our users. All other links on the home page of Google.cn remain unchanged.
Part of Google China’s auto-suggest feature was transliteration from Pinyin to Chinese characters, though, a feature that’s also gone now. However, there’s still Google’s nice IME (Input Method Editor) for that.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Experimental Google Product Boxes on Search Results?
Searching Google for tivo and dell inspiron, Steve Baldwin says he saw above Google image product boxes to the side. They’re gone for Steve now, he says, adding that he was probably “randomly chosen to see them.”
Whether these boxes are ads or just plain oneboxes in a special position, I can’t tell, thought from the looks of it they may well be unpaid. Steve remarks that the first link in the Dell box goes to Google Products, whereas the links below that go straight to the landing pages for “Express IT Options” and “Codemicro.com”, but that mirrors the results shown at Google Products, too.
Note Google Korea also features lots of graphic boxes to the right hand side of SERPs, and more graphical sides have also been sporadically seen on elsewhere.
[Thanks Steve!]
Google Adds Facebook Friends to Results
By Tony Ruscoe
I’m not sure how new this is, but when a Facebook user’s profile is returned in Google’s search results, you can now see the user’s location (or network) and a random selection of their friends, as shown on their public profile.
I’m not seeing any special markup in the Facebook profile page, but could this be Google’s “Rich Snippets” feature in action, as announced at this year’s Searchology conference?
[Thanks Luke!]
Question on Taking Photos in Public Spaces
If your country’s police were to drive around town with cam-equipped cars, automatically taking photos of all public spaces, would you mind? If so, why? If not, why not?
Sunday, June 21, 2009
I Googled My Dad (Pic)
By Tony Ruscoe
... and LEGEND came up a million times!
I got this Father’s Day card for my dad. He’s definitely one in a million!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Satirical Paper "Weekly World News" in Google Books
Google Books was recently redesigned. I’m not sure for how long, but they also feature Weekly World News these days – a parody-style magazine with sensational fake headlines like “I Married Bigfoot”, “Interview With an Angel!”, “Satan’s Burial Ground Found!” or “Loch Ness Monster Photographed”.
One interesting new display mode you can use for this magazine and others is the thumbnail mode, part of the bar displayed on top of Google Books; also, you can embed books by clicking “Link”.
[Hat tip to Ionut!]
Friday, June 19, 2009
Google Street View Imagery Leads to Arrest
Dutch twin brothers who mugged a teenager in the northern town of Groningen were arrested after being caught on camera by a car gathering images for Google’s online photo map service, police said.
The pair stole the 14-year-old boy’s mobile phone and 165 euros ($230) in cash last September.
“The picture was taken just a moment before the crime,” a police spokesman said.
In March, the victim recognized himself and the two robbers while surfing Google Maps, which has a “Street View” feature allowing users to see images of buildings.
[Thanks Juha-Matti!]
Update: Andries in the forum writes about how apparently Google had the faces in question blurred like usual, but then handed out the unblurred raw material upon being asked by authorities:
I live in the Netherlands, and this story made it to the 20:00-journal on all channels. The story is true, but the crime itself isn’t captured by Google, only the few minutes before. But the images were important, because they didn’t know who committed the crime.
The guy who was robbed only saw the censored version of the pictures on Google Maps. He contacted the police. The Dutch police contacted Google USA, to get the original, uncensored, versions of this pictures.
One of the investigating agents recognised one of the robber’s faces, because he committed a crime before, and the other robber was a brother of the first robber.
I asked Google about a statement and will update should they reply. Also, according to some sources pointed to in the comments, the location is Merwedestraat (I don’t know if this is true and if the screen shows the actual scene).
[Thanks Luca, Andries and Scjm!]
Google’s Gay Pride Results
Searching Google.com for keywords like gay, lesbian or sf pride currently shows a rainbow-colored stripe at the top of the results. While well-intended, I wonder if editorial engagement in supposedly neutral-and-automated-as-possible result pages is the right way to go. Put differently, while I personally agree with the notion of promoting gay pride (much needed still in many to most countries of the world where there’s no full acceptance or equality), here I wonder if it’s expressed in the right place (i.e. on result pages instead of a company blog post, a homepage doodle and so on).
Also see talking gayglers with Google’s Bennet Marks.
[Thanks Caleb, D. and M.!]
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