Google Blogoscoped
Tuesday December 30th, 2008
6.7
What Do You Wish From Google in 2009?
From Google Blogoscoped, 10 days ago,
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Brinke Guthrie in the forum started a Google wishlist thread. Please add your comment -- what would you like to see from Google next year?
On a similar note: what would you not like to see from Google? And what would you like to see from Google's competition?
[Thanks Brinke!]
Tuesday December 23rd, 2008
5.2
Google Stops Research Datasets Program
From Google Blogoscoped, 17 days ago,
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Google is cancelling their Google Research Datasets aka Palimpsests program. Its aim was to provide large data sets for others to use. Wired in January this year wrote that Palimpsests' storage "will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all."
Saturday December 20th, 2008
5.7
Restrict Google Images to Clip Art, Line Drawings
From Google Blogoscoped, 21 days ago,
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There are two new options in the Google image search content selection box: clip art, and line drawings. The former will show colorful drawings and the letter black-and-white style sketches. As usual you can combine these selections with the site: operator, so you could find say all (indexed) clip art on CNN. The other content options at the moment are any content, news content, and faces. [Via Bret ->
Thursday December 18th, 2008
5.5
Google Earth Setup Defaults to an Installation of Chrome As Well
From Google Blogoscoped, 22 days ago,
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When you want to install 3D map Google Earth, Google now pre-selects an option reading "Include Google Chrome, a new web browser for Windows." (Whether or not you uncheck the option, the footnote reads "By installing, you agree to our Terms and Conditions, Google Earth's Privacy Policy and Google Chrome's Privacy Policy.")
A long time ago on a web page far, far away, Google said:
We believe any situation where multiple applications are being in ...
5.6
YouTube's High-Quality Videos Category
From Google Blogoscoped, 22 days ago,
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YouTube now has a page listing videos specifically available in high definition. Also, these HD videos now open in a larger player than before, pushing features like comments, the ad box, or related videos down the page a bit. Note you still need to click "watch in HD" when on the video page.
Google-owned YouTube continues to experiment with additions and changes. Some of these are neat while others are partly distracting, like when YouTube shows a search box when you start an embedded video and hover over the video box. Other overlays include AdSense ads -- cool, I am offered to buy "Www You Tube De" on eBay! -- and creator-added links. A yellow box reading "T ...
5.2
Google Earth Updates 3D New York
From Google Blogoscoped, 22 days ago,
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Desktop app Google Earth has seen an update to its New York 3D buildings, Frank Taylor of the Google Earth Blog reports. Frank compares what the scenery looked like in January 2007 vs today.
You can also open Street View imagery within Earth these days, like you can in web-based sibling Google Maps (the distinction between Google Earth is further blurred by the fact that Maps received a more Earth-like interface recently, and that Google Earth is also available as a browser plug-in by now).
In other recent news, Goog ...
Wednesday December 17th, 2008
5.5
What Do You Dislike About Google Chrome?
From Google Blogoscoped, 23 days ago,
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A while ago Google's Matt Cutts posted reasons why he likes Google's browser Chrome, but now followed up with another post talking about what he doesn't like about Chrome so far. It's refreshing to see Matt take such a balanced stance. I wanted to forward the question on here too: what do you currently dislike about Chrome?
So far, while there may be a number of quirks with Chrome, only two reasons kept me from switching to this nicely uncluttered browser for a longer trial time:
... that you can't completely turn off tabs. As I'm already using tabs in the ...
5.7
Google Czech Republic Xmas Special
From Google Blogoscoped, 23 days ago,
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Český Google (that's Google in the Czech Republic) put up an Xmas special where you can click on the faces of employees to make them sing in choir. (Note a face you click on may not begin singing immediately because the singing is timed to be in sync, I guess.)
[Thanks TomHTML!]
5.6
US Patriot Act's Silencing Gag Provision Ruled Unconstitutional, ACLU Reports
From Google Blogoscoped, 24 days ago,
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The American Civil Liberties Union writes:
A federal appeals court today upheld, in part, a decision striking down provisions of the Patriot Act that prevent national security letter (NSL) recipients from speaking out about the secret records demands. The decision comes in an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the FBI's authority to use NSLs to demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers and then forbid them from discussing the requests. Siding with the ACLU, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the statute's gag provisions violate the First Amendment.
I've asked Google if they ever received such a "national security ...
5.5
PageMap Meta Data for Advanced Google Snippets
From Google Blogoscoped, 24 days ago,
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Search Engine Land writes about a Google experiment which shows advanced snippets -- including such things as the average rating and the number of ratings for a review page -- made possible by a commented XML-style portion within the HTML. The following structured data (slightly reformatted here) is from the CitySearch.com page show in the screenshot:
<!--
<PageMap>
<DataObject typ ...
5.4
Google Results That Let You Jump to a Part of a Page
From Google Blogoscoped, 24 days ago,
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Search Engine Land reports that Google is testing a web search result style that allows you to jump straight to an anchor within a page. In the screenshot, the link text within "Jump to BUYING PROPERTY" is likely taken from the page itself and pointing to "http:// ...tripod.com/monorules.htm#buyingproperty". This could allow users to more directly reach relevant content (though it might require some rethinking for those webmasters who would like to place visible ads in positions that would now be skipped over). I can't reproduce this experiment so I suppose as ...
Tuesday December 16th, 2008
5.5
Google Tests a Different Search Links Design
From Google Blogoscoped, 24 days ago,
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Zim has spotted what looks like one of Google's experiments, rolled out to only a portion of users for some time. In the screenshot you can see a line between the top suggestions like "Web", "Images", "Video" and so on (besides the clearer separation, this is also a more complete selection of related links than what I'm getting when I search for this term).
[Thanks Zim!]
5.7
Google Maps Integrates Video
From Google Blogoscoped, 24 days ago,
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When you click the top More button at Google Maps, you can now select a "Videos" option that will show location-related YouTube videos on the map (not sure if non-YouTube videos are supported too, I just spotted YouTube ones among the several ones I checked)*. Other, older More options are photos from Panoramio as well as Wikipedia entries.
[Thanks Beussery!]
*I'm not exactly sure how new this is...
Monday December 15th, 2008
6.3
Ads and More Spotted in Google Suggest
From Google Blogoscoped, 25 days ago,
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Google Suggest is Google's auto completion feature of their homepage box (you can toggle whether this will show in your Google preferences, though your setting will always be lost when you lose your cookies and login again). Now Search Engine Land reports that special links are appearing in the suggest box... like news results, but also AdWords ads. In the screenshot above courtesy of Danny Sullivan, the ad is shown at the top, but Google were also showing Danny examples of a bottom position placement that's being tested. (Hmm... could these type of ads ever become par ...
5.2
Google and WSJ Argue Over Definition of Net Neutrality
From Google Blogoscoped, 25 days ago,
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The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was steering away from Network Neutrality. "A neutral broadband network," Wikipedia says, "is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed". The WSJ writes:
Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content
At risk is a principle known as network neutrality: Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic the same -- nobody is supposed to jump the line.
But ...