Tampilkan postingan dengan label Google. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Google. Tampilkan semua postingan

Selasa, 09 Desember 2008

Google Changes the User Interface for Its Reader


The new Google Reader, although pretty much the same as before on the inside, received a few updates mostly in matters regarding its look and function reorganizing. The old colors are gone, as are the shadows on the menus, which made for a rougher navigation. Now, everything is squared out, and the whole thing moves a lot faster than it did before.

"Out with the old rounded corners, drop shadows and heavily saturated colors – in with a softer palette, faster components and a fresh new look," says Jenna Bilotta, on Google Reader's official blog. "We've removed some visual clutter, simplified some features and given everything a bit more breathing room."

A good thing about the update is that the "collapsible" feature was extended to virtually all sections in the navigation pane, which makes it a lot easier for users to hide those sections that are of little interest to them. Each of the above mentioned sections can be reduced to a single line, so people can keep an eye on what truly matters.

An important feature, and one that was met with satisfaction, is the added possibility of hiding the unread thread count, which relieves some of the stress people working with the Reader undergo each day. "We've added the ability to turn off unread counts for each section of navigation independently. Subscriptions with unread items will still appear as bold, and you can see the number of unread items if you hold your mouse over the subscription name," says Bilotta.

Although the new interface brings some improvements to the basic Reader, in its quest for fluidity in navigation, Google left out a very important thing, which is the color mix. Before the changes were implemented, one could easily see what feed was read and which was not, but now, there is very little difference in the markings on these posts. This makes browsing the whole Reader a bit cumbersome, though it might just be a matter of getting accustomed to the new design.

Article source: Softpedia

Google gives Gmail users a to-do list

Google has added a to-do list to Gmail to help users be more productive.

When the new Tasks feature is enabled, a box shows up on top of the Gmail window. In it, users can add, reorder, and delete tasks. It's also possible to assign a due date to each action and even convert e-mails into tasks.

The feature--announced Monday on a company blog--will also run outside of the e-mail program. Adding items is as simple as clicking on a vacant part of the box and typing.

This may sound like a rehash of the many Post-It Note-like programs popular in the mid-'90s, but because most of us have morphed into e-mail junkies, this list is constantly in our face, reminding of things we wanted to get done.

Since e-mail is where and how many of us get things done, both in our personal and professional life, why not add a list of things that we may not be able to get done via e-mail, such as a reminder to make dinner reservations?

To enable Tasks, go to Settings in the upper right of the Gmail window and click the Labs tab. Click Enable next to the Tasks selection, click Save Changes. After refreshing Gmail, a Tasks link will appear under the Contacts link. Just click that Tasks link and you are ready to be productive.

Article source : CNET

Jumat, 07 November 2008

Google Launches Forum Search


Alex Chitu reports that Google has soft launched a forum search engine as part of an expanded search offering in its Google Groups product. Searches on the site are now no longer confined to just Google hosted groups and Usenet discussions, but include forum topics from across the web.

The technology certainly isn’t perfect, though, as we noticed some pages from blogs and other non-forum sources mixed in with the results. It’s not clear how Google is determining whether a site is a forum, but clearly their method has some kinks to work out.

Chitu points out the Google is using the same enhanced search snippets for the Groups forum search that it added to regular search results last month. For any page that is positively identifies as a forum thread, it includes the numbers of posts, the number of different authors, and the date of the last post. That’s helpful for searchers to determine the how recent the information is and the likelihood of whether a question posted to a forum might have the searched for response.

In other Google forum-related news, the company is migrating its own help forums away from Groups and to a Yahoo Answers-like Q&A service that is apparently code named “Confusions.” The Google Talk, Chrome, and AdSense help forums have already made the switch. Chitu says there is a possibility that Google will release the code for the platform once all of its help forums are migrated over to the new system.

Article Source: Sitepoint

Google CEO Could Be Obama's Tech Advisor


Rumor has it that Google CEO Eric Schmidt will be occupying the newly-formed tech advisor position to the president of the United States. Barack Obama created this position just shortly before visiting the Google headquarters during his campaign, and some believe that the reason this happened was because the job was promised to Schmidt.

The president-elect announced his support for maintaining the Internet neutral, meaning that he (and Google) opposed the addition of more fees for data transfer to end-users. Under Obama's tech policy, ISPs will be strictly prohibited from hampering data flow around the web. He says that the network is an indispensable tool in today's economy, and that it motivates growth by making trade simpler and easier, so any obstacle will mean a loss of capital.


The head of Google endorsed the Democratic candidate throughout the elections, though the ads the company posted on various sites were mostly Republican. However, Google employees donated far more to Obama's campaign than they did for John McCain – about $487,355, and $20,600 respectively, as estimated by the Wall Street Journal.


The naming of the Democratic candidate as the new president comes at the same time as the decision of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to open up unused TV broadband frequencies to wireless Internet traffic. They will enter use when the entire television grid moves to the digital format.


No one can be sure that Eric Schmidt will be named as Obama's tech advisor until the event actually happens. But, in light of the relation they had during the campaign, and the earnings that Schmidt's endorsement brought the new president, it stand to reason that he will be, at the very least, considered for the job. In addition, Google's efforts to go "green" are in line with Obama's policy towards climate change and global warming, so this is another common ground for the company and the White House.

The Google and Yahoo Marriage Is Dead


Google has backed down from an online advertising marriage with Yahoo amid antitrust concerns raised over the partnership of the number 1 and 2 search providers worldwide. Back in June 2008, Yahoo opted for an alliance with Google, defying cries over a monopoly on the online advertising space from Microsoft and other rivals. Yahoo's measure was first and foremost a tactic designed to keep it out of the grasp of Microsoft, which had made an unsolicited bid to acquire the Internet giant in February 2008.

David Drummond, senior vice president, Google Corporate Development, and chief legal officer, revealed that the Mountain-View search giant continued to believe that the agreement with Yahoo would have been beneficial for all parties involved, even as it was walking away from it. "Why? Because it would have allowed Yahoo! (and its existing publisher partners) to show more relevant ads for queries that currently generate few or no advertisements. Better ads are more useful for users, more efficient for advertisers, and more valuable for publishers," Drummond explained.

Back in June, when the Google and Yahoo partnership was announced, the duo agreed to postpone implementation as long as it took for antitrust regulators to give the agreement a green light. After these four months, Google is walking away from Yahoo, abandoning the online advertising alliance altogether rather than face legal issues.

"However, after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement," Drummond added.

At the debut of the year Microsoft was willing to pay over $30 per share for Yahoo, namely approximately $45 billion. But Yahoo refused the deal and chose to go with Google instead. That unsolicited Microsoft offering must look pretty sweet to Yahoo shareholders right now, as the shares of the Internet giant have dropped to just over $10.

"We're of course disappointed that this deal won't be moving ahead. But we're not going to let the prospect of a lengthy legal battle distract us from our core mission. That would be like trying to drive down the road of innovation with the parking brake on. Google's continued success depends on staying focused on what we do best: creating useful products for our users and partners," Drummond concluded.

Article Source: Softpedia

Selasa, 04 November 2008

Google launches limited API support for OpenID


On Wednesday Google formally announced its support as a provider for the OpenID 2.0 protocol, offering some site owners a way to let users log-in and register for new accounts using existing Google account information. More importantly, Google will be letting these same users manage all their linked account information in one central location.

This new log-in offering is not available to all site owners just yet. Google has set up a sign-up form where developers can apply with their URL and OpenID identification to get access. Plaxo and Zoho are two of the first sites to already have the new system in place, with Zoho having offered a similar option since mid-April.

As many have already noted this isn't OpenID proper. Microsoft's usage of OpenID, announced on Tuesday at PDC, will let users simply drop in their special OpenID URL as their identifier, forsaking the need for a Google account. Google's foray into this is strictly as a provider, adding extra value for those who register for a Google account, while keeping users with OpenIDs from other providers out.

OpenID enthusiasts shouldn't fret though. Just because Google isn't opening up its own sites to OpenID log-ins from others doesn't mean it's not around the corner. Google's Eric Sachs notes that the company is working to try and combine OpenID and identity management service OAuth, which means there's still work to be done on the personal information front. Google is unlikely to jump into being a service provider for OpenID until this is squared away.

Article source: CNET

7 Places to Find the Code You Need


A recent on SitePoint’s forums discussed how best to learn from other people’s code. For many people learning by example is the optimal way to pick up a new programming language, idea, or technique. But finding that ideal piece of code to look at and learn from isn’t always easy. That’s where code search engines and snippet libraries come into play.

The seven listed below are the top places we could find that will help you locate the piece of code you’ve been looking for. But as always, if we’re missed any, please let us know in the comments below.

Popular open source code repository and version control web service GitHub launched a new Code Search feature today. Even though it’s the new kid on the block, GitHub has become super popular in a very short space of time and hosts a ton of public repositories. In a blog post, GitHub’s Scott Chacon classifies the amount of code searched as “a lot.”

Krugle claims to search over 2.5 billion lines of open source code, making them one of the largest source code search engines on the web. They claim to reach over a third of all developers world wide, and their enterprise search product powers code search for Amazon Web Services, IBM developerWorks, Collab.net, SourceForge.net, and Yahoo! Developer Network.

Koders, which claims to search over a billion lines of code, seems to be a favorite among Ruby programmers. In a press release announcing the company’s acquisition by Black Duck Software last month, the site revealed the Ruby searches were up 20-fold over the past four years and have passed PHP, Perl, and Python. Ruby is now the fourth most searched for language on the site behind only Java, C/C+ and C#.

Codase is the little guy on the block, weighing in at just 250 million lines of code searched, according to the site. That might be because development on the search engines appears to have stalled a couple of years ago. Codase focuses mainly on Linux C/C++ open source projects and appears out of date, so unless that’s what you’re looking for, there are better options out there.

With over 13,000 users contributing to over 5,000 code snippets, the DZone Snippets library is a great place to find good code examples. It’s certainly not the easiest site to browse, but there is some gold hidden for those who look. Exercise patience and you may find exactly what you need at DZone’s site.

Snipplr is a nicely designed code snippet library that has less users than DZone (just under 10,000), but more code snippets to crawl through — almost 8,000. And it seems to be gaining steam — more than half of the site’s snippets were added in the past year, even though the site is over 2 years old. Oh, and they have handy plugins for Textmate, Gedit, and Wordpress, and bookmarklets for Firefox and Safari. Very nicely executed.

Last, but certainly not least, is Google Code Search, the grand daddy of all code search engines. While the people at Krugle and Koders may argue the point, and Google doesn’t say how many lines of code they’re searching, when you’re talking search, Google is always the team to beat. Their code search engine searches a ton of public source code repositories — including GitHub, Sourceforge, and their own Google Code site. And Google supports a ton of languages.

Article source: Sitepoint

Selasa, 28 Oktober 2008

Google reaches $125 million settlement with authors


Google will be paying authors and publishers $125 million as part of a settlement agreement that resolves a suit against its Google Book Search initiative, the Authors Guild and a group of publishers announced Tuesday.

The settlement enables authors and publishers to receive compensation for online access to their works.

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, called the settlement "the biggest book deal in U.S. publishing history."


Google is digitizing the works from many major libraries, including the New York Public Library and the libraries at Stanford and Harvard universities, and is making those texts searchable on pages with advertisements. The Authors Guild, which represents more than 8,000 authors, sued Google in September 2005, alleging that the company's digitizing initiative amounted to "massive" copyright infringement. Five large publishers filed a separate lawsuit as representatives of the Association of American Publishers.

Under the terms of the settlement, Google has agreed to pay the authors and publishers $125 million. It will also be responsible for selling access to copyrighted works in its repository. Most of the revenues from such access would go to the authors and publishers.

Currently, users of Google Book Search are able to view snippets of books online. The settlement agreement allows Google to make whole pages of copyright works available to online searchers. Users will be able to preview up to 20 percent of a book and purchase the book if they choose to, said David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer for Google.

All public libraries in the United States will be offered a free online portal to Google's digitized collection, said Aiken, and patrons will be able to print an unlimited number of pages for a per page fee. Google will also be offering institutional subscriptions to colleges and universities. Google Book Search services available outside the United States will remain the same, Drummond said.

Article source: CNET

Minggu, 05 Oktober 2008

Google, Microsoft, Apple Dominate the Conversation


Despite all our griping about certain companies, there are some that the blogosphere just loves to write about more than others (whether positively or negatively). Yesterday, while looking at Techmeme, it struck me just how much a handful of companies really dominate the discussion in the tech blogosphere. So I decided to do some low level digging.

I came up with a list of 35 companies, groups, or web sites that I perceive to have dominated at least my coverage and reading the last couple of years as a professional tech blogger. Feel free to suggest anything that I may have missed! I then did searches on Techmeme to see how often these companies were mentioned in headline stories (these results are current as of this morning, October 2).

Not surprisingly, Google is easily the most talked about company in the tech blogosphere (especially when combined with some other much-buzzed Google properties, such as YouTube). More surprisingly, we apparently talk about Microsoft more than Apple. That makes sense, given how many different product lines Microsoft has, but it doesn’t jive with the perception I had in my head that Apple gets a lot more press attention.

The full results are below.

Term Mentions
Google 11922
Microsoft 9971
Apple 7338
Yahoo! 4907
Facebook 2478
YouTube 2168
MySpace 1493
AOL 1190
Amazon 1095
Twitter 1019
Verizon 978
eBay 938
Digg 936
Firefox 930
Skype 835
Adobe 658
IBM 602
Sun 593
Time Warner 557
Comcast 532
Flickr 500
Wikipedia 488
Second Life 447
RIAA 431
Cisco 373
Slide 351
Oracle 292
Netflix 290
Friendfeed 238
MPAA 170
Joost 143
Hulu 135
Delicious 119
Ning 92
StumbleUpon 84

Article source: sitepoint

Google Blog Search - The Memetracker for the Mainstream?


Google Blog Search has launched a new homepage that highlights trends and groups similar posts in a style similar to Google News or Techmeme. That will make Blog Search much more of a destination.

In the past, I’ve mostly used blog search for news opinion searches on recent topics (since regular Google search works fine at finding older blog posts that I already know exist), and have actually found that Technorati generally provides better results in terms of cutting down the noise and finding the most recent, quality posts. By adding a memetracker, Blog Search becomes much more useful as a daily visit.

But it will only make it into my daily (or hourly) rotation of sites if it can beat the sites that I already visit — namely, Techmeme.

The table below compares the top 10 stories right now on Google Blog Search Technology, Techmeme, and Google News Sci/Tech.

So, it would seem that all three memetrackers identify more or less the same content. The test will be: 1. how fast they find it, and 2. how well they display it. In terms of display, my money is on Techmeme, which shows far more content on a single page and does so in a more elegant and easier to read manner than does Google’s new property.

Figuring out which one finds and updates content faster will take some testing over the next few days, but if my experience with Google News is any indication, Techmeme will be the winner there, as well (and couple of Google’s top ten stories on Blog Search right now were tops on Techmeme yesterday or the day before — that’s a bad early sign).

Despite its shortcomings, though, Google Blog Search has the potential to reach a far wider, more mainstream audience than Techmeme. Techmeme is mostly read by the early adopter crowd and other bloggers — links there create links from blogs, but don’t generally generate much traffic. Google Blog Search could theoretically send some real traffic (as Google News has been known to) based on the sheer power of the brand behind it alone.

What do you think? Will Google’s new memetracker homepage for Google Blog Search make you visit more often? Does it have a chance to replace Techmeme, Memeorandum, or other established memetracker sites for you? Let us know in the comments.

Kamis, 25 September 2008

Google Will Reduce IP Retention Time to 9 Months


Google has announced on its official blog that, following the concerns expressed by privacy regulators in Europe and US, it will anonymize IPs in the server search logs after 9 months instead of 18. After being the first major search engine to clearly specify a retention time for IPs of 18 months, Google claims that the new change will demonstrate once again the company's commitment to data protection and users' privacy.

Google's decision to anonymize IPs in the search logs after 18 months was also implemented by the other search engines, although the privacy advocates and government leaders continued to ask the Mountain View giant to justify the necessity of this retention time in detail. The announcement explains that this data was and still is critical to the process of innovation. "When we began anonymizing after 18 months, we knew it meant sacrifices in future innovations," the announcement notes.

In a response to the EU authorities, Google explains that it has been working closely with Irish Data Protection Commissioner, Mr. Billy Hawkes, at the company's European headquarters in Dublin in order to address their concerns. The search giant has complied with one of the requests regarding the presence of a link to the Privacy Policy on its home page and has provided one for all localized versions of the Google website.

It is also noted that Google's engineers have been hard at work to find a way to limit the loss in logs data quality while further reducing the retention time of IPs. The company uses this data to produce better search results and more relevant advertisement campaigns based on the user's location and language preferences. Its current conclusion is that, while the anonymization methods will suffer changes, the time can be reduced to 9 months. "After months of work our engineers developed methods for preserving more of the data's utility while also anonymizing IP addresses sooner. We haven't sorted out all of the implementation details, and we may not be able to use precisely the same methods for anonymizing as we do after 18 months, but we are committed to making it work," the announcement points out.

Even so, the company still has concerns regarding the constant pressure from the authorities regarding strict privacy regulations, because "it's difficult to find the perfect equilibrium between privacy on the one hand, and other factors, such as innovation and security, on the other."

Article source: Softpedia

Three Firefox extensions engage Google, Opera, and Microsoft

There’s a bit of chatter about Google Chrome overtaking Firefox in coming months, after it fulfills more than a few wish lists (like this one). Yet, independent Firefox developers have a record for quickly countering features that crop up in rival browsers with a well-placed extension.

Take Fast Dial, for instance, one answer of many to Opera browser’s speed dial feature, and another potential challenge to Chrome. Like Opera browser, Fast Dial displays thumbnail clips of your nine favorite Web sites. It runs in any blank window or in the current window if you click the toolbar shortcut, and can be configured to reign as your home page if you change your Firefox default to about:blank.

While Chrome may not presently be developed enough to earn its Firefox challengers or converts, that’s not stopping people like Digital Inspiration’s Amit Agarwal from paving a pathway between the two. Open In Google Chrome is a new extension that plunks down an option in the Firefox context menu to see how the Web page looks in Chrome. In the options menu, you can also earmark certain sites you want to open exclusively in Chrome.

Setup requires you to browse for Google Chrome’s executable; a quick enough, but somewhat clunky step. (After opening the download file with Firefox, open the Add-Ons window from Firefox’s Tools menu and click the Options button for Agarwal’s extension. Then browse through your program folders and double-click the file ending in ‘chrome.exe.’)

Agarwal hints that he wrote the add-on, tweaked from code for an Internet Explorer extension, for serious browsers who are weighing Chrome alongside Firefox.

Source: download.com