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Google Base Officially Live Now  (View post)

Andrew Hitchcock [PersonRank 10]

Wednesday, November 16, 2005
18 years ago

Here's mine:

http://google.com/base/a/adpowers

It is nice to see it working and is fairly fast (the searches are way faster than the normal web, right now). I haven't had a chance to play around with everything, but you can also search based on location and it is all integrated with Google maps (so you see all these dots when you search based on location).

It'll be interesting to see what is put up in the next few days.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Nice display of a Google Map on your location. By the way, is the maps display broken for everyone else too, or is it just Germany/ me? I always get missing images in Firefox.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

By the way, I got a time-out from Google's server after clicking on "Andrew's Schedule for Winter 2006"...

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

I tried to add myself as People profile like you did, but it says I'll expire in 31 days, maximum!

David Sanger [PersonRank 7]

18 years ago #

http://google.com/base/a/davidsanger

I've uploaded several hundred more as a bulk upload to test and it takes a bit of time to get processed.

david sanger [PersonRank 7]

18 years ago #

Found this too on their about page which hints that they are going to offer free webhosting and home pages...[your namespace!!!]

http://base.google.com/base/about.html#adwords

12. Can I advertise with AdWords?

Yes, you can advertise your Google Base hosted page using AdWords. We recommend that you use your namespace in the visible URL of your ad so that users are aware that you have a unique page on Google Base. For example, you could use base.google.com/denise or base.google.com/john.

Andrew Hitchcock [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

The maps works for me with Safari and the schedule didn't time out. My profile is going to expire as well, unfortunately.

The party post I put up includes a map with the exact spot, but there doesn't seem to be a way to view the entry page for that item (it automatically forwards you to the linked website). Oh, I see. If I go to my items page I can view it:

http://base.google.com/base/items?oid=2959847212177052846

Is there any way for normal folk to navigate there?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

I wanted to search Google web search for "United State of Electronica" but actually can't reach Google.com right now. I suppose they slowly roll out the display chain to other services... maybe it'll be shown as a onebox result, or to the right-side along with Google AdWords?

Andrew Hitchcock [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Yeah, I was running a few searches earlier that wouldn't return many websites but would perhaps hit one of my Base entries. I also wonder if it'll show in the body or a onebox. I don't really think AdWords, because I haven't paid for anything :)

Andrew

alek [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Nice scoop Philip and great writeup/summary about this.

Terry Donaghe [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

I guess by "all types of content" they really mean all types of content that can be described with words and pictures. I tried to figure out how to stick in an .MP3 or any other type of file, but no dice.

Reto Meier [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Interesting point Terry, though I suppose an enterprising individual might post a MIME encoded file as text, much like Usenet.

Thinking about it, there might be a market for a client that will bulk convert/upload files to gBase – then we just need a reasonable API to pull the data back down.

Anyone spotted a reason this wouldn't work?

Off to do some testing...

Andrei [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

It looks like if you want to create a permanent item, you have to "Create your own item type". Anyway this limit (of 31 days) just doesn't make sense to me; why did they do it?

A nice feature (that would add more privacy) would be to create completely isolated items (that are not linked to my "All items by me" list)

Miel [PersonRank 4]

18 years ago #

http://www.google.com/base/a/coolz0r/15394361673102159804

I'm expiring in 31 days too :)

Andrei [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

I don't think that bird flu was a prank.
It had the labels: prevention and herbal medicine

curtiss langlie [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

i would like a ticket to the vikings-packers game on 11-21-05.

Justin Pfister [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

For the profiles : It appears we might have to have a script or an FTP process that continually updates our data.. Or else.. We die? Does Google Base have a death function?

Alex Dorph [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

Hmm im still not so clear on what it does, a gregs list of sort?

I think what we need much more from google is a hosting site for images, videos, and other small files (under 10 megs lets say). Id use that all the time. I cant stand the other ones around right now.

Caleb E [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

After 31 days it just retires and you have to tell it you still exist. keeps people from going on and posting a bunch of stuff then not keeping up with it.

david sanger [PersonRank 7]

18 years ago #

I believe if you set your own item type it doesn't expire. Mine show 'now expiry date' in the dashboard.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Same here... I can set up items that won't expire...
Probably, one could create a People profile but as custom profile to prevent it from expiring. That still goes back to the question: just where does Google intent to show the Google Base data .....?

Danny [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

Nice run through of the facilities, thanks.

Although you're right about the similarity with Semantic Web ideas, I'm afraid I have to quibble with a couple of your points (you get the main point bang on: it's decentralized).

"...meta-information on their available data..." – the Semantic Web isn't just about meta-information, but information, the available data itself (expressed in a sharable model). A Web of data rather than a document repository.

"...we have reason to doubt the success of RSS has anything to do with RDF syntax...", true enough, but then again, RDF is not primarily about syntax (in fact there are several RDF syntaxes).
(I've gone into the SemWeb angle over at http://dannyayers.com/archives/2005/11/16/google-base-rdf-lite-silo/).

Caleb E [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

interesting: [*] works for queries. (http://base.google.com/base/search?q=*) so is that (1,301,336) the item count for base already?

David Sanger [PersonRank 7]

18 years ago #

Google Base seems to have upped its docuemnt limit form 1000 items this morning to unlimited

"There's currently no limit to the number of items you can submit. However, if you'd like to bulk upload more than one million items, please contact us so we can help ensure that the uploading process goes smoothly."

http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=25288

When I uploaded 6200 items it still seemed to get stuck.

Even as a beta though it is being advertised in banner ads in search results

http://www.google.com/search?q=google+base

Also a few pages are now turning up in main google searches

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:base.google.com+BMW

and even

http://www.google.com/search?&q=1987+BMW+for+sale+radio+air+bags

david sanger [PersonRank 7]

18 years ago #

Correction on the 31 day limit. It's a settable default on the /myaccount page

and the bulk upload instructions say to resubmit the feed every 31 days.

ugh. can't it just go out and read my product feed.

Piotr Zgodzinski [PersonRank 4]

18 years ago #

I uploaded one of my photos

http://google.com/base/a/jubiwww

question: do you also see my name

"autor: piotr zgodzi儳ki"

written using something that looks like a broken font?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

I see your name fine Piotr, with Firefox...

Sometimes there's a bug that depends on which page you're coming from. If the target page didn't define the encoding, then sometimes the browser will adapt the encoding from the previous page. But I don't think that's the reason here, because Google's using a UTF-8 meta tag in the HTML...

Andrew Hitchcock [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Philipp, if you search for ["united state of electronica"] again, it will return the Google Base result now (maybe 25 results in). The Base results seem to be turning up fairly high in the results, even though there is hardly anything linking to them.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Andrew, could it be that the Google Base results are so high up the results because Google's PageRank is quite high and the number of links to the http://base.google.com domain is probably quite high too?

Andrew Hitchcock [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

That's true. Oh, also, I just realized. I linked to both my page and the USE page in this thread. This blog has a high PR, so that is being leaked over to my base pages (my user page on Google Base also appeared pretty quickly, as seen in my Google Alert). That is probably why the page ranks so high.

ROR [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

We are shocked to see how similar it is to ROR (http://www.rorweb.com). It even provides an XML vocabulary for bulk uploads (just like the ror.xml file). There is a big difference though, Google does not want this structured data to reside on your website (available to other search engines). Instead Goolge will ask you to kindly upload it directly into their database.

Spanish Googler [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

I've found an Open Source library for helping PHP developers to generate and upload through FTP Google Base valid data.

The website is http://www.phpbase.org

It has a plug-in style for attributes and schemes. But currently only Housing scheme is defined.

Anthony [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

I love Google Base I listed My Hosting site
www.decent11hosing.com
I got top listing on the second page for Keywords (Free Domain Name), and I got page 10 for keyword (web hosting). You can add up to 10 pictures to your listing. If you create your own category the listing does not expire if you post in there categories then they expire in 15days, except for Review Cateogory.

If you use either googles adsense or adwords, You can use google base if you don't. you have to sign up.

It's a real cool service, free site exposure from a PR8, You can't go wrong

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