oh yeah - it's pretty normal, nothing spectacular right now.

3/24/2006 9:58:49 AM

Updated: Highest Paying AdSense Keywords
via digg

Quote :

"$54.33 mesothelioma lawyers $47.79 what is mesothelioma $47.72 peritoneal mesothelioma $47.25 consolidate loans $47.16 refinancing mortgage $45.55 tax attorney $41.22 mesothelioma $38.86 car accident lawyer $38.68 ameriquest mortgage $38.03 mortgage refinance $37.55 refinancing $35.99 auto accident attorney $35.52 equity mortgage $34.34 mesothelioma texas $34.05 mortgages "

wtf is up with mesothelioma??

3/25/2006 3:42:15 PM

well now i know what to make my fake blog about

3/25/2006 3:47:24 PM

Google Earth just switched to a new satellite image provider for the entire basemap. The new maps look to be a big improvement already, and they will be rolled out into Google Maps later.

Changes include:

Quote :

"# This new data is not in Google Local/Maps yet. - But, Google says it will be later. # The basemap for the whole Earth has been changed to another source called TrueEarth. This new data looks better than the old one. Look at all the continents more closely. The colors are much more vibrant and green. (Read one of the comments below which explains more about the TrueEarth data) # Most of Germany is now in high resolution # Some minor fixes to old data # It also appears many Tropical Islands are in higher resolution than before, this includes French Polynesia, some in the Caribbean and the Azores. # Even many of the Atolls in the Pacific Islands around French Polynesia are much sharper. # The beautiful shallow turquoise waters around the Bahamas have been put back # More of the islands in the Caribbean are in higher resolution (previously just fuzzy blotches) - e.g. some of the Grenadines. "

http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/03/new_data_update.html

the images of Germany are really great, and the Maldives and Carribean/Bahamas are amazing

3/27/2006 4:01:58 AM

lol 2 posts up

3/27/2006 4:48:20 AM

durr.... i remember reading that now.

3/27/2006 5:10:55 AM

Toronto Highway Traffic - AJAX Driven Realtime Traffic Flow via digg

i don't normally post map mashups because there are a lot but this one was kind of noteworthy.

Quote :

"Take one part googlemaps, one part image analysis (of various traffic maps), throw in AJAX (so that the map is auto-updated every two minutes), and you get a traffic page that tells you where the highway is clogged, and where it isn't. Useful to know if you need to take a detour."

3/27/2006 11:40:20 PM

not really an innovation, but hilarious google news regardless

http://google.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/28/google-makes-a-booboo-with-their-corporate-blog/
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/and-were-back.html

[Edited on March 28, 2006 at 9:37 AM. Reason : .]

3/28/2006 9:37:00 AM

Google Maps the census

Quote :

"This Google Maps mashup from AnalGIS and SRC adds census information from the 2000 census to the Google Maps interface we already know and love. Just put in your address and you can quickly see the population, income, and housing statistics for your area in a 1, 3, and 5 mile radius of your home."

http://65.39.85.13/google/default.htm
[extendthereach.com]

3/29/2006 2:40:31 PM

Quote :

"New gmail features Googlified blog post via lifehacker flickr screenshots - HTML - Table, Smiley & Image - Attachments update"

\/ read this first - post may not be accurate

3/29/2006 2:44:26 PM

yeah, i just saw that.....
i think some people are majorly confused though. The flickr photoset doesn't make any sense. Is he asking if "attachments", or perhaps multiple attachments are new? uh... no, they're not.

and the other "new features", like HTML insertion, image inclusion, and smileys - those are features added by the GmailSkins FireFox extension, not new gmail features -
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=2127

GmailSkins is an outstanding extention, though - been using it for a couple weeks and it has a some really nice features

3/29/2006 2:59:24 PM

hey do you have the customize google extension installed? i was gonna try out the new google layout but the javascript didn't work for me - i think it's because of the extension but i'm not sure

3/29/2006 3:07:00 PM

hmm.... not at home (on my mac). On my work computer, I have Customize Google installed, and the google redesign greasemonkey script
http://buckymatters.com/googleredux/

They both work fine. I don't see how the redesign GM script would hvae any problems with the customize google extension

3/29/2006 3:16:49 PM

nah not the redux redesign - that's only for the front page

i'm talking about the new default layout they're talking about for the search pages with the green bars on the left


it's supposed to be enabled with a simple javascript

3/29/2006 3:20:21 PM

oh, that.
no, i haven't tried it because from the screenshots, the "new interface" is not worth the time it takes to add a cookie to my browser (or make this response )
but there appear to be several ways of doing it. The copy/paste the cookie information into your address bar method doesn't seem to work for me in Camino
http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2006/03/27/use-googles-three-fold-interface/
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-03-26-n51.html

maybe the method of manually editing your google cookie would work
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/index.php?p=140

3/29/2006 3:30:37 PM

now onto some actual new features ( ), unfortunate as they may be.
The Google Video play-video interface has been revamped, and for my money, for the worse. Instead of a somewhat clean (albiet almost so clean and minimal it was ugly, i think) tabbed interface, they have a mish-mosh of javascript text links to the right side of the video.

But worst of all, they have a new "feature" called Continuous Playback, that is ON by default. This means that after viewing any video, another seemingly random video (but presumably related to the current one via tags or something) will start playing automatically! A terrible, terrible idea. You should never start playing a video that someone didn't explicitly request to see.

Else nasty things like this could happen:
http://tinyurl.com/lbxrp

i agree with everything from Nathan there, and Philipp in his blog
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-03-29-n66.html

i don't see how YouTube could have gotten this online video sharing thing so right on their first try (and iTunes, also, but for a differen market), and Google continues to fuck it up so bad....

[Edited on March 29, 2006 at 4:49 PM. Reason : link]

3/29/2006 4:48:06 PM

did the "Add Content" mechanism for Personalized Home change?

3/31/2006 9:23:16 AM

looks like it.
it used to slide out a left hand column where you would pick your content. Now i guess it goes to a whole new page where you see thumbnails.
I wish you didn't have to click "advanced options" to add your own feed URL. That won't do anything to help promote the use of RSS by 'normal people'. Google seems to be obsessed with unsorted galleries of thumbnails in a table layout (this content directory, Google video, Google Services page). Don't they know it's difficult (i think) to see large amounts of data that include text in a layout like that? That's like using icon view in Windows Explorer to try to navigate your directory structure (which, for some reason, is the default in Windows so 95% of people still use that view)

3/31/2006 9:42:22 AM

Google Related Links
http://www.google.com/relatedlinks/

Quote :

"Google Related Links use the power of Google to automatically bring fresh, dynamic and interesting content links to any website. Webmasters can place these units on their site to provide visitors with links to useful information related to the site's content, including relevant news, searches, and pages. Learn more... Getting started is simple. Just choose a format, copy and paste the code we provide onto your pages, and Google Related Links units will appear on your site, providing your visitors with links to related news, search, and pages."

4/3/2006 11:47:31 PM

lotta' discussion about how Google is slowly adding specialized searches, generally based on Google Base, possibly to turn into fully specialized seaches on their own.

See the loosly named Google Auto and Google Real Estate/Housing (loosly named beause these aren't "official" search portals or services. They are specialized searches build on top of Base)

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/04/google_autos_to.html
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/04/google_real_est.html
http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2006/04/05/google-real-estate-google-autos-not/

the Google Base homepage shows 20 search categories that you can get specialized results for.
I guess G-Base is starting to shape up. Has anyone here actually used it to buy or sell?

4/5/2006 9:57:08 AM

google calendar is taking too long, anyone know how long stuff stays in alpha testing? or pre-public-beta or whatever the correct term is?

4/6/2006 7:08:36 PM

here's a (3rd party) collection of google search services and blogs http://www.usabilityviews.com/simply_google.htm

and ^, here are some latest screenshots of Calendar, showing extremely tight integration with Gmail. no word on release date though
http://tinyurl.com/gegug

4/11/2006 10:45:14 AM

huh, this is interesting.... Google has teamed up with Sony Pictures for a The Da Vinci Code movie promotion
here http://google.com/davincicode or here http://flash.sonypictures.com/movies/davincicodequest/

You are directed here - https://www.google.com/ig/add?davinci=US - where you add a Da Vinci code widget to your Google Personalized page. It says the "quest" starts on April 17, so I guess the idea is to keep an eye on the widget until then, then you'll start on some google/da vinci oriented searches i guess....

via http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-04-12-n31.html

4/12/2006 3:01:46 PM

oooooo, untold riches!

4/12/2006 3:35:39 PM

damn, google earns 12 cents per search and "Americans alone did more than 2.7 billion searches via Google in January 2006" via digg

4/12/2006 6:09:52 PM

I want to see a line of Google-branded sex toys

4/12/2006 8:57:21 PM

i can log in to Google Calendar now

4/12/2006 11:53:40 PM

me too

4/12/2006 11:59:02 PM

sweet, i'll have to test it out tomorrow

4/13/2006 12:02:39 AM

phone notifications, sweet!

4/13/2006 12:57:58 AM

cool, looks good so far.
.... but as excited as I was for this, i now realize that my life is so boring I barely have anything to put on the calendar, so i'm having a hard time testing all the features!

but the reviews are starting to roll in, and i'm sure there will be dozens more. All quite positive so far
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/04/12/google-calendar-is-live/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/review-google-calendar/
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3598681
http://tinyurl.com/zbfwg
http://tinyurl.com/eqpfc

[Edited on April 13, 2006 at 4:20 AM. Reason : .]

4/13/2006 4:20:01 AM

I like the interface of GL a bit better than Kiko, but I think that they are neck and neck in terms of functionality.

4/14/2006 8:52:32 AM

Just got my invite for Gmail for your domain, and it's wicked sweet, same gmail features plus you can customize with your own logo and such, pretty nice and each user gets 2gb...

http://www.google.com/hosted

[Edited on April 14, 2006 at 9:20 PM. Reason : .]

4/14/2006 9:20:26 PM

nothing innovative, just a reference:
Wikipedia's listing of Google services via digg

4/17/2006 5:53:05 PM

heres a starting list of public Google Calendars you can add to your own
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-04-14-n59.html
and more in the comments section.

I forsee blogs and new sites dedicated to listing GCalendars as more are created, much like the GMaps and GEarth blogs
http://www.gearthblog.com/
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/


Also, here is a cool Greasemonkey script that adds an Agenda box to the left column of GMail. Look down in the comments for some better instructions of how to configure it. In short, you have to add the Calendar XML/RSS feed to your "Google Bookmarks" (remember those? http://www.google.com/bookmarks ) and add it to a new label, then enter that label into the GreaseMonkey script configuration. I guess so you can add multiple calendars, or even other RSS feeds, to that same label and have it show up in the Agenda box
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/3829

4/18/2006 7:34:14 AM

google's playing around with their results page
http://google.weblogsinc.com/2006/04/19/googles-new-search-screens-exposed/

[Edited on April 19, 2006 at 2:45 PM. Reason : .]

4/19/2006 2:45:13 PM

Google has released a set of Atom APIs called GData http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/overview.html.

First one is for calendar - http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/calendar.html
Hopefully this means we'll start seeing ways to embed various calendars into other webpages

via http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-04-20-n33.html

4/20/2006 7:49:47 AM

remember that javascript thing you could do to make the new results format show?
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-01-26-n64.html

my results are showing like that by default now

4/21/2006 8:40:39 PM

aaaaaand it's back to normal

4/22/2006 11:04:07 AM

Google Calendar SMS Tricks via digg

Quote :

"you can add events to your google calendar (and other nifty tricks) by sending text messages to SMS short code 48368"

Quote :

"Google's other SMS short code (googl = 46645) makes so much sense that I thought there must be a name for this one as well. The best one that I can come up with is gvent. "

4/22/2006 11:03:29 PM

Similar to the Google Redux linked to above, here's a Greasemonkey script to give you "Google Dark"
http://www.07designs.com/gdark/

Even if you don't like it permanently, it's fun to install jsut to see what it looks like. I think it's stunning, but I still prefer Redux for day-to-day useage.

Also, last week they changed the name of Google Maps back to... ummm.... Google Maps, just like we've all been calling it. Of course, several months ago with the integration of Google Local, they changed the whole thing to just Local, which I thought was stupid. But now the name Google Maps is back, but of course it's still integrated with Local.

And lots of talk here that Maps may be coming to Europe soon - http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/27644.html
I'm guessing at least Germany will get full coverage within the next month before the World Cup starts. They did that for Turino for the Olympics, and they just upped the satellite resolution for all of Germany last month. Full street coverage and directions would be cool.

4/24/2006 7:26:09 AM

nice, the Google Maps Europe speculation was right! The rolled it out last night
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/04/directions_for.html
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-04-25-n15.html

and it's awesome. Street maps are fully detailed and labeled, directions work, and even public transport depots are marked in major cities.

here's Europe overview
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&om=1&ll=47.665387,11.074219&spn=22.007191,37.529297
here's a search for my apartment in munich with perfect accuracy - http://tinyurl.com/oka2q
here's a directions search from my apartment to Stuttgart, again with perfect accuracy - http://tinyurl.com/gap2t

Look for lots of new and updated Europe Maps mashups to come!

4/25/2006 6:55:54 AM

haha, nice - Google cheatsheet
http://www.feedsforme.com/google/

4/25/2006 10:43:13 AM

i'm sorry, but i have to cross-post this to here and the Sketchup thread (?topic=394039)

Google continues it's habit of buying companies with expensive products or services, then turning around and giving them away for free - SketchUp is now FREE - http://sketchup.google.com/

It looks like they've apparently done the impossible and made it a tiered application. You can get the personal use version for free, while the Professional version is still $495. But the Personal version is hardly crippled. You can still create models, export to Google Earth or upload to Google's 3D Warehouse and print. It looks like the Pro version does various file type imports and exports, high-res printing, and I guess everything that the original sketchup could do.

they've started a "3D warehouse" of searchable, taggable models. They've prepouplated it with hundreds (?) of models, and it looks like you can upload your own into the warehouse. You can download directly as Sketchup files, or as Google Earth KMZ files.
you can even load the entire Warehous into Google Earth at the same time (i wonder how that will scale.....) - http://services.google.com/earth/kmz/3D_Warehouse.kmz
there is now a link on the Google Earth page for that http://earth.google.com/3d.html

via InsideGoogle - http://tinyurl.com/z82rr

[Edited on April 27, 2006 at 3:38 AM. Reason : .]

4/27/2006 3:34:01 AM

haha you and your 'i-told-you-so's.

4/27/2006 4:47:51 AM

yeah, well, i thought people would have figured out Google plans by now.....

but a clarification on the 3D Warehouse KMZ file, after I've tried it now. It doesn't actually download all the models of everything in the warehouse. It more or less just puts a marker where each model would be. Then you click the marker and get a little mini-browser window where you can preview the model and get some information about it, then download the model KMZ or SKP file.
very slick

4/27/2006 5:02:54 AM

Google Reader now supports Video RSS feeds from flash based video sites like Google and YouTube.

.... i still refuse to use GReader, but cool nonetheless
http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2006/04/stay-tuned-its-video-in-google-reader.html

4/28/2006 1:01:45 PM

Quote :

"i still refuse to use GReader"

4/28/2006 6:05:02 PM

I didn't follow the Google Press Day today, but there's plenty of coverage here - http://google.blognewschannel.com/

The did just make a press release, announcing what I assume is the biggest annoucements of the day
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/new_tech.html
The links in that press release seems to mostly be dead, so maybe they jumped the gun a bit.

But the 3 big product/service annoucements:
Google Co-op - http://www.google.com/coop (not live yet)

Quote :

"Google Co-op beta is a community where users can contribute their knowledge and expertise to improve Google search for everyone. Organizations, businesses, or individuals can label web pages relevant to their areas of expertise or create specialized links to which users can subscribe. "

It sounds to me like they're re-introducing the idea of creating a web directory, which is what Yahoo and Lycos started out doing years ago, and which google has too, but no one uses. The difference here is that regular people and google users will be the once tagging and categorizing webpages, not Google employees. We'll see how this works - if it can avoid a lot of the pitfalls that Wikipedia has seen. .... and if it can avoid spam.

Google Desktop 4 Beta - http://desktop.google.com/
ummm.... more gadgets and APIs i guess. Google clearly has no company wide product versioning scheme, as Gmail shot past 2 years as a beta and presumably still <1.0, but Desktop is gaining a new x.0 release every month.....

Google Trends - http://www.google.com/trends
Now this is cool, kind of an extension to the Google Zeigest. I imagine it will help AdSense/Words users. It graphs search term frequency over time in a Google Finance-style graph, relating the search terms to news items. For some reason the graph is static, not dynamic like in Finance. And it also doesn't show the actual magnitude of searches, just relative values. The magnitude would probably give too much away for advertisers.


and finally, Google Notebook - http://www.google.com/notebook (not live yet)
It's slipped into the bottom of the press release and doesn't give much details. It's hard to say because the site isn't live yet, but I have to assume this is the/a result of the Writely aquisition a couple months ago. If this is it, it certainly sounds underwhelming - not exactly an "online Office" or Word competitor. But we'll see - maybe that's still to come.



edit - having read more of the play-by-play, it looks like Google Notebook is not the Writely thing. just another stupid Desktop widget:

Quote :

"3:18 PM: Google Notebook will be available on Google Labs next week. Lets anyone with a Google account and the plugin installed to collect links from search results. You can then select pieces of the pages and make notes on them. It’s hard to see from the tiny video that is playing. You can make your notebook public and email it to friends and family."

and Philipp Lenssen has more play by play and stuff about product annoucements
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-05-10-n76.html
He also mentioned Google Health earlier this week - just more integrated searches - http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-05-07-n43.html


[Edited on May 10, 2006 at 5:31 PM. Reason : .]

5/10/2006 5:22:06 PM

hmm, new feature in gmail - you can add pictures to your contact information where people will see it if they hover over your name
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_whatsnew.html

5/12/2006 2:38:33 AM