ok, jumped the gun with the name GBuy, i guess. It's officially Google Checkout -
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/checkout.html
http://checkout.google.com/

Looks like the first time you sign in, you provide CC and payment information, then you can use that information with registered sellers. Lots of companies have tried this before, including MS Wallet.... or Yahoo Wallet and MS Passport. I dunno - i never used them. But seeing as how I'm logged into Gmail at all times when my browser is open, this could be very useful if lots of merchants sign up.
So for you paranoid privacy people out there, add CC#, home address and phone number to the list of things Google knows about you.
After you sign up, it shows a list of sites that already use it. http://www.google.com/buy/m.html For example, go to buy.com and add something to your cart and there is a GoogleCheckout button. This is also nice because the Google Checkout page will keep track of your purchase history across all the stores.


And FINALLY - they've updated the "My Account" page. Instead of the pitiful, ugly Google Account page that didn't give you any useful information, you now have links to all the services that are linked to your Google Account.

6/29/2006 7:59:27 AM

http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=26651&hl=en

Quote :

"Personalized Search is part of Google's ongoing effort to make your search experience more relevant to you. Using Personalized Search, you can: · Get the results most relevant to you, based on what you've searched for in the past · View and manage your past searches, including the webpages, images, news headlines and Froogle results you've clicked on · Create bookmarks you can access from any computer Personalized Search orders your search results based on your past searches, as well as the search results and news headlines you've clicked on. You can view all these items in your Search History and remove any items you'd like. Early on, you may not notice a huge impact on your search results, but as you build up your search history, your personalized search results will continue to improve."

Am I the only one who finds this a bit stalkerific?

7/6/2006 9:33:55 PM

meh

7/6/2006 9:49:31 PM

you have the option to opt in/out i'd imagine

7/6/2006 9:55:10 PM

Google Maps took a page from Yahoo and MS and added double-click to center+zoom, plus "smooth zooming", which just zooms up your current view until the new view loads.
But a new feature i havne't seen anywhere else is double-right-click to zoom out one level. Haven't seen much/any use of the right click in webapps.
I'd like to see more right-click action, like a completely custom context-menu so you can, for example, right click and "add marker", "start directions", etc.
http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2006/07/zoooooooom.html

oh, and mouse wheel scrolling, and a new tabbed interface for search, directions and businesses, which was introduced with the europe maps a couple months ago. and looks like they're linking to a "summer of green" service fromthe front page http://services.google.com/earth/green/

[Edited on July 11, 2006 at 4:33 PM. Reason : .]

7/11/2006 4:19:10 PM

i don't like the double-click=center+zoom. i'm too used to double-click=center and using it as a way to move around the map. i know you can click-hold-drag to move around but i like the other way better. anybody else slightly irritated by this change?

[Edited on July 11, 2006 at 4:57 PM. Reason : i don't like the smooth zooming either. too slow, not all that smooth]

7/11/2006 4:53:52 PM

Yeah, I don't care much for the zooming change on the double click. It's kinda awkward (maybe it's just because it's new) and it drags ass on this (admittedly pretty shitty) PC I'm on at work.

7/11/2006 4:58:05 PM

shit

I used the double click center feature to get GPS coordinates(ripped them out of the URL). Now how will I do that?

There's also no way to turn off those stupid markers. I use google local to get to an area, then like to look around unobstructed. The markers hide important road names, etc.

The whole maps application needs work. I could forgive this shit while it was beta, but now I'm looking for a replacement.

7/11/2006 6:05:57 PM

yeah, after you double click you can still hit "link to this page" and grab the coordinates out of the URL.

if you want replacements, check out MS Live - http://local.live.com/
and Yahoo Beta - http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/index.php
Yahoo is much better in many respects (multi stop directions, directions in general, and the Satellite view zoomed all the way out is astonishing), although i still use Google overall

7/11/2006 6:10:33 PM

Google Maps for Mobile
http://www.google.com/gmm/index.html

Quote :

"Detailed directions: Whether you plan to walk or drive, your route is displayed on the map itself, together with step-by-step directions. Integrated search results: Local business locations and contact information appear all in one place, integrated on your map. Easily movable maps: Interactive, draggable maps let you zoom in or out, and move in all directions so you can orient yourself visually. Satellite imagery: Get a bird's eye view of your desired location. Real-time traffic:New! See where the congestion is, and estimate delays in over 30 major US metropolitan areas. "

7/25/2006 12:44:28 PM

i think we've linked to http://code.google.com/ before, where they have all their APIs and coding resources, but this is new
http://code.google.com/hosting/

it's a repository for open-source projects, a 'la sourceforge, but you don't have to have your projects approved, and with a cleaner interface with better searching. All have easy access to source via SVN URLs

more comments here - http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-07-27-n89.html

more commentary
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060728-7374.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/27/google-challenges-sourceforge-in-open-source-project-hosting/

[Edited on July 28, 2006 at 2:04 PM. Reason : .]

7/28/2006 1:56:53 PM

froogle sucks - it displays the ones that make google the most money which are always the most expensive, not being FROOGLE.....and then if you use the price: low to high feature it displays 122,928,939 results!

7/29/2006 3:25:49 PM

Google Content Blocker

http://j-walk.com/other/googlecb/index.htm

Quote :

"What can I do once the content is removed? * Click on the ads: Just click 'em (you don't even have to read 'em). Every time you click an ad, money changes hands. As an option, you can install the free Google Content Blocker "ka-ching!" audio support file. * Look at the ads: You probably already know that ads are interesting, entertaining, and informative. So look at them. You may not even realize it, but just looking at an ad will help our advertisers because eventually you're going to click on that sucker. * Click on the ads: Use your mouse. Move the mouse pointer over an ad, then click the mouse button. * Tell your friends about the ads: Tell them how cute and funny the ads are, and tell them how to find them. Also tell them to click on the ads. * Click on the ads: If you see an ad, click it. It's as easy as that. "

8/2/2006 12:12:59 PM

8/2/2006 12:14:23 PM

heh i like it

8/2/2006 12:16:52 PM

Google gives the Mac some more love - http://picasa.google.com/web/mac_tools.html
an iPhoto plugin to upload pictures straight to the Picasa webalbums

8/2/2006 4:02:44 PM

finally, they're adding some more "basic" functionality to Maps.
Using your Google Account, you can now create Saved Locations in Maps

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/saved-locations-on-google-maps.html

but the "saved locations" link seems to be thrown up in the upper right corner with the ever increasingly confused "top navigation bar", which changes all the time depending on what service you're on, and does not stand out.... they need to get that shit more user friendly and consistent across services

8/4/2006 4:56:28 PM

this is only somewhat related to google but...

http://www.playfuls.com/news_03797_AOL_Beats_Google_at_Free_E_mail_Space_5_GB_from_September.html

anybody seen anything on how google is using their 5% stake in AOL? This article suggests that google may be testing it's ideas using this AOL branded software that's coming out. Seems reasonable but any good evidence to suggest this is actually true? Is this 5 GB mail in coordination with google or are they competing services? obviously they're not branded together but are the strategic business and technology decisions being made to complement each other? Also, anybody seen anything about this "revolutionary" 4-pane interface?

[Edited on August 4, 2006 at 5:23 PM. Reason : .]

8/4/2006 5:20:59 PM

Google Maps Flight Sim
http://www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html

8/5/2006 12:29:16 PM

in the blue navigation area in the top left of my gmail it has links to Photos and Spreadsheets now

8/11/2006 11:23:14 AM

hmm, yeah me too.
I think these navigation bars at the top left and right of the google service pages are half-baked and poorly thought out ideas. It's a crappy way to move people between services, and doens't provide any real integration or interactivity between the services. Not to mention, it wastes space if you don't use 1 or more of the services, so you should be able to choose the services you want up there in the menu.

If they're going to keep that, then at the least they can do something like they rolled out on google.com this week, where the "more >>" link is not a javascript pop-up to some of their other services.

8/11/2006 11:37:15 AM

i agree. the fact that they changed it a little hopefully at least says that they're thinking about how it could be better and will come out with a better, more consistent way of moving between services

8/11/2006 12:19:30 PM

The only Google service I enjoy using is "Gmail for domains". All the other services are subpar and cheap knockoffs.

8/11/2006 12:41:12 PM

Google Talk to work with AIM in the future?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/17/google-talk-updates-aol-interop/

Also Google Talk adds file sharing, voicemail, and music status.
http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2006/08/its-finally-here.html

Auto-update in a few days, or download it now:
http://www.google.com/talk/

Small update to the front page:

8/17/2006 9:56:39 AM

^ i was about to mention the voice updates for Google Talk. I saw it earlier, but didn't think anything of it, until I received a voicemail in my gmail. It's pretty sweet - if you're in Google Talk, you can select any contact and choose "send voicemail", and record a message, and that message is sent to their gmail account. But the cool part is when viewing the voicemail in gmail, the message is in an embedded music file that you can play much like Google Videos, right inside gmail. Alternatively, you can download an MP3 version.

also, related to the strange Google Talks Music feature, is the Music Trends page, aggregating stats from Google Talk clients
http://google.com/trends/music

8/17/2006 10:25:16 AM

looks like it's time to go with the actual Google Talk client instead of Trillian

8/18/2006 7:21:52 AM

Writely now open to everyone

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=243

8/21/2006 12:05:29 PM

^ i'm dissapointed and think it is a bad move just to open up writely, basically just as it was when they bought it months ago. It doesn't even require or use your Google Account, or even attempt to create a unified interface with any of the other "Office" webapps - Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheets or Photos. WTF? So we have all these other Google services that at least use the same login account (although still have a ton of wasted potential synergy and integration), and now Writely? Not even Google Writer, or GWord or whatever? Just sitting over there by itself with it's green and orange interface using its own account and completely different structure than any other Google service?
damn, i wonder if those groups over in Mountain View even use each other's products.....

8/21/2006 12:41:51 PM

check it out - you can use a sort of Gmail hack to embed MP3s into your own website, and use the Google audio player interface and controls to play it.
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-08-22-n32.html

8/22/2006 2:23:17 PM

Dammit Google, when the hell will I be able to get rid of Trillian/Gaim and use Gtalk full time? When will you integrate with AIM contacts?? Until then, any other "innovations" are simply a waste of time.

8/22/2006 7:38:21 PM

cool, more "for your domain" stuff.
Google Apps For Your Domain - https://www.google.com/a/

Quote :

"Now you can offer private-labeled email, IM and calendar tools to all of your users for free*, so they can share ideas and get things done more effectively. You can design and publish your organization's website, too. It's all hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain."

Quote :

"Checkout Gmail - Offer email to your members with 2 gigabytes of storage per account, search tools to help them find information fast, and instant messaging built right into the browser. AdSense Google Talk - Your members can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free -- anytime, anywhere in the world. Analytics Google Calendar - Members can organize their schedules and share events, meetings and entire calendars with others. Search for your website Google Page Creator - Create and publish web pages for your domain quickly and easily with this what-you-see-is-what-you-get website design tool."

via http://battellemedia.com/archives/002836.php

8/28/2006 12:23:09 AM

^basically they just added web page creator and the ability to setup XMPP federation for your domain for gtalk... the rest have all been added to what they called 'hosted' domains for some time now.

btw, http://www.google.com/hosted/ now points to http://www.google.com/a/

the urls' are now:

http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com
http://www.google.com/calendar/a/yourdomain.com

to setup page creator you'll need to add a cname for it, that's all.

to setup XMPP federation for your domain:

Quote :

"How do I enable users to chat with people on federated networks? If you'd like your users to have the ability to chat with people connected to the Google Talk network through federated networks, you'll need to edit your Service (SRV) records. When you enter the following information, make sure to replace "gmail.com" with your domain. _xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com. _xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com. _xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com. _xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com. _xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com. _jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com. _jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com. _jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com. _jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com. _jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com."

8/28/2006 9:24:40 AM

anybody else surprised about ebay and google's advertising alliance announced today?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/28/google-scores-ebay-international-advertising-deal/

8/28/2006 11:27:36 PM

out-of-copyright books are available for full-text PDF download from google book search now
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-08-30-n13.html

8/30/2006 1:22:12 PM

google awakes the librarian in me

8/30/2006 1:55:32 PM

http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

when did this come out?

8/31/2006 10:11:09 PM

http://www.gtdgmail.com
if you're a fan of GTD and GMail

8/31/2006 10:38:15 PM

^^ no clue, it's new ... and brilliant, imo.

[Edited on August 31, 2006 at 10:53 PM. Reason : kinda fun too.]

8/31/2006 10:52:53 PM

Google News Archive search - http://news.google.com/archivesearch
pretty cool. can search across decades of news sources like Time Magazine and old newspapers

http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-09-06-n18.html

9/6/2006 10:42:57 AM

here's a better writeup on the News Archive search
http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2006/09/06/google-news-archive/

you can find items back before 1800! most of the really old stuff appears to be US Supreme Court records archived by fastcase
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=the&as_ldate=1754&as_hdate=1800

9/6/2006 11:46:47 AM

ZZZZZzzzzzzz......

9/6/2006 2:30:16 PM

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060911-7707.html

google released a "Interesting Items for You" gadet for Personalized Homepage. i've been hoping they would come out with something like this and it's about time they did. basically it looks at your search history and recommends searches, pages and more homepage gadgets. doesn't seem like very strong recommendations yet, but i'm hopeful it'll get better with time.

9/11/2006 1:46:12 PM

google is still pushing out updates to the Personalized Home. you can now add tabs and put widgets on whichever tabs you want. And dragging/dropping widgets is getting slicker too
http://tinyurl.com/e94ko

at the least, hopefully this will mean it will load faster if you put some of the slower widgets on other tabs.

[Edited on September 14, 2006 at 5:26 PM. Reason : .]

9/14/2006 5:26:26 PM

some really cool features in the latest Google Earth 4 beta - download it here - http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html
When you view a KML or KMZ file with timestamp data (like a track or route from a GPS file), you can now animate that track in GEarth.

here's a better write up with a sample file for whale tracking - http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/09/google_earth_4_time.html
but even better is the file here from a ski trip - very cool
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/09/gpsvisualizer_suppor.html

i'm gonna give it a shot after I gather GPS data from a 100 mile bike ride i'm doing this weekend in the mountains.

9/15/2006 9:52:44 AM

Gmail phishing proof of concept:

Don’t enter your password into this site ( http://www.google.com/u/gplus ) – it’s a proof of concept of how a phishing attack could be launched using the Google Public Service Search ( https://services.google.com/publicservice/login ). The page looks like it’s official, and it’s indeed hosted on Google.com, but it’s not by Google. You’ll notice by the message you get after logging in:

Quote :

"You (could have) gotten served! username = username you entered password = password you entered No data was actually taken, just displayed to you This is just a proof of concept of what a malicious user could do with this exploit."

Eric Farraro has more info: http://ericfarraro.com/?p=6

The discussion started in the forum: http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/67582.html

via Google Blogoscoped: http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-09-15-n16.html

9/15/2006 10:46:15 AM

yeah, and speaking of phishing on gmail, i've had several phishing attempts show up in my gmail in the past week that Gmail didn't catch or flag at all. They were blatant and obvious phishing messages, with URLs that didn't match up with text in the email, false header addresses, etc. i'm disappointed that gmail isn't catching those, knowing that a lot of people will fall for them since they're showing up in their gmail accounts....

9/15/2006 11:04:07 AM

picasa 2.5 now out of beta
http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/09/14/googles-picasa-25-now-out-of-beta/

http://picasa.google.com/ (direct DL: http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasa2-setup-3291.exe )

Quote :

" * Share photos online * Nested folder view * Save changes to disk * Improved import * Screensavers * Geotagging * Larger thumbnails * New RAW features * Improved caption editing * Starred photos organize automatically into a special album * “Just raw frames” option lets you export time-lapse sequences in the movie maker * The bottom row of buttons can now be configured to suit your needs"

9/15/2006 11:17:17 AM

well the phishing site was taken down

and the Public Service Search site is not letting anyone log in

looks like they're fixing it.

9/15/2006 12:12:12 PM

not bad for the guy's 3rd blog post

9/15/2006 3:16:09 PM

Google Testing Removing Top Blue Ads Based on User Behavior
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006169.html

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that the top blue AdWords ads have been removed from the Google search results page. But in fact, it seems to be a user by user setting. Some users will see the top blue ads and some users will not. What does it depend on? It seems it is based on your ad clicking behavior.

Check out this quote from the thread:

Quote :

"I spoke to my account rep. They are testing a new feature whereby when a user performs multiple searches and does not click an ad, the ads are all moved to the right side of the page. The rationale is that the user does not want to see the ads anyway and it lessens the chance of a poor prospect clicking on an ad. If you clear your cookies, the results will go back to normal."

Very interesting... First I heard of this.

I tested this myself by refreshing over and over again until the top blue ads dropped off and they did after about 10 refreshes for a search on ipod.
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i already use customizegoogle to get rid of all their ads but this is a nice move on their part

9/18/2006 3:42:56 AM