Google regularly modifies the logo on its home page to mark an event or occasion. For instance, it replaced the ‘e’ in its logo with a poppy on Remembrance Day earlier this month.
The Google doodles have become a popular feature of the site, with more and more appearing since the first doodle in the year 1998, which was drawn to mark the Burning Man Festival in the US.
Most of the designs are self-explanatory. However, in September this year, Google displayed a series of cryptic doodles apparently depicting a UFO invasion.
The users of internet puzzled over the meaning of the logos for weeks before the company revealed that they were a tribute to HG Wells, creator of science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, on the 143rd anniversary of his birth.
In spite of having designed a new ‘doodle’ every St Patrick’s Day since 2000; it is only the second time the California-based search engine has recognized Scotland’s national day in the same way.
On Nov. 30 last year, Google’s St Andrew’s Day logo features a set of bagpipes in place of the ‘l’ and ‘e’.
Google is experimenting with a bold latest design on its search homepage.
Noteworthy changes to the Google homepage are rarer than hen's teeth, however the new look is about as radical as they come.
The Spartan design remains, but the subtle grey buttons below the search bar have been replaced with garish blue alternatives, most probably to draw greater attention to the "I'm Feeling Lucky" option.
The blue look is retained on the search results page, which now sports a new sidebar, allowing you to search different parts of the Google Empire, including Images, News and Video.
There is also options to break down the search results by time, restricting results to those published in the past hour, day, past week etc.
The sidebar features themselves aren't new - but they have been previously concealed under the Show Options button that appears discretely over the top search result.
Gizmodo has published instructions on how to access the new design. Note down that this only works on Google.com and not in Google.co.uk.
The holidays have been reached here in the U.S., and some people find the time to catch up on movie they normally might not see.
So it is good that Google earlier this month improved its Google movie search site, adding show times, trailers, reviewers, genre filters as well as Google Maps of theater locales.
That’s all well and good, however movie-going can be a spontaneous activity, providing a reprieve from Black Friday shopping sprees that leave shoppers physically as well as emotionally drained.
Shoppers, take heart. Google this week extended its latest movie search capabilities to Apple's iPhone, Android-based devices like myTouch 3G, Motorola Droid or HTC Eris, and Palm WebOS smartphones.
Navigate to google.com in the Web browser, look for "movies," and then tap on the "More movies" link. Users can then browse a list of movies or opt for the "Theaters" button to browse a list of theaters close to them.
As with Google's desktop version of movie search, Google's mobile movie search shows trailers, ratings, show times, and lists and Google Maps of the nearest theaters.
Look into this demo video of how to access the movie search results:
Search results for movies are accessible in English in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.
This will be a boon to moviegoers everywhere, but it's also an instance of how Google is taking everything it does on the desktop Web as well as porting it to mobile devices, part of the company's resolute trust that users want the Web with them everywhere they go.
As soon as it comes to basic Web search and surfing, is there anything on the desktop Web that won't be made mobile one day? I can't imagine of anything offhand. That bodes well for Google's business: Google's mobile ads may follow users everywhere they go.
Google has optimized its Products search feature for the forthcoming Thanksgiving and Holiday season shopping spree. Google has made a few improvements and brought new Gallery View mode, video product reviews, review summaries as well as store locations. Meant for those looking to buy things online, Google offers comparison of products and prices for shopping.
Google Product search has been optimized and tweaked slightly for the holiday season shopping. A new Gallery View shows bigger thumbnails of products that help in checking differentiating between two products say Mobile Phone.
Before one buys a product like netbook, it is wise to check the reviews online. Now, reviews summaries are included in the product pages that will have summaries of reviews posted online and get the consolidated overview from it.
If you desire to see the product working like a laptop or cell phone, test out the video reviews. Google Product search also provides location of the stores close to the ZIP code, City or State entered in the search. Actually, Product Search is in beta stage and shows only those located in U.S.
It would have been great if Google could optimize it for rest of the world as well. But, Google's Product Search is quite similar to Bing's Shopping search. Nevertheless, either of these comparisons based search engines do assist a user to narrow down to a specific stuff to purchase online or from stores.
Google has launched an automatic video captioning service for YouTube videos to make the content easier to get to deaf people or anybody search for videos online. Though, experts say that it the new feature also has advantages for search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns.
As the captioning feature is still in its raw stages, experts state that it can optimize people searching for videos in search engines. Theoretically, video scripts will provide YouTube content stronger online presence.
“Having a transcript in the video is huge for SEO,” added Andrew Shotland, an owner of a local SEO Guide in California. “Having targeted text on a page helps the video rank in search engines for specific searches.”
At present, very few videos are being captioned on the web. YouTube captions will be indexed in search engines for keywords placed in the captions.
Andrew Shotland cited: “If we are talking about a plumber video, that page will have words like leaky pipe, city name, change your toilet and many others the publisher cannot have added to the written description on YouTube. The videos will catch the attention of search engines even more. I would not be surprised if YouTube’s traffic goes through the roof. The video pages will have so much more text they may rank on.”
Also if the transcripts will work like embed codes, users can tag YouTube videos, which will also advance its search engine rankings.
Google Chrome is lightning-fast, holds more than 3% of the browser market, and will soon become an operating system. Yet while it has quite a lot of decisive advantages over Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and other browsers, there is one thing it does not have: extensions.
We have known that extensions were coming to Chrome since February, but so far only the developer version of Chrome has extensions. Here’s a look at some of our favorites.
It now looks similar to the wait for third party Chrome Extensions is nearing an end. Today, the search behemoth announced that it has opened up the Google Chrome extension gallery for submissions.
The process for submission is very simple: log in with your Google account, zip your file code and your extension’s icon, submit supplementary info similar to a description or a YouTube video, and you are done! The process is automatic for about all extension: ones that include an NPAPI component (Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface) or content scripts that affect “file://” URLs will need additional information and review.
We are one step closer to extensions within Chrome. This might spark a whole new development ecosystem and spur new competition in the web browser space. At the very least, Chrome wouldn’t go down so badly to Firefox in our weekly reader vote.
In a step to make YouTube videos more accessible to hearing-impaired people and to anyone else who is searching for videos online, Google has launched an automatic video captioning service.
Captioned videos are not completely new at YouTube. Google first introduced manual user-generated video captioning 3 years ago, and people have previously used the existing service to caption hundreds of thousands of videos.
However the new auto captioning service will utilize the speech-recognition algorithms used in Google Voice to produce captions automatically.
Ken Harrenstien, the software engineer who created the new "auto-cap" technology, acknowledges that the captions will not always be perfect right now.
But Harrenstien, who is deaf, also predicts that the latest technology will continue to improve over time. "The greater part of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me," he wrote in a Google blog.
At first, the machine-generated captions will be generated in English only, and they will only be visible on 13 partner channels; however Harrenstien suggests that, with machine translation, the captions will ultimately permit people around the world to access video content in any of 51 languages.
"Captions may also improve search and even enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they are looking for," according to Harrenstien.
Beyond the auto-captioning, Google also launched a new service known as automatic caption timing, or auto-timing, aimed at lessening the process of creating captions manually.
"With auto-timing, you no longer want to have special expertise to create your own captions in YouTube. All you need to do is create an easy text file with all the words in the video and we'll use Google's ASR technology to figure out as soon as the words are spoken and create captions for your video," he explains.
Until now, if you want to view real estate listings on Google Maps, your finest bet was to select "Real Estate..." from the "More" menu at the top of the map. Now, merely searching for "real estate" will return – real estate search results! You can also try "homes for sale" or "homes for rent". Otherwise while you’re at it, check out "apartments for sale" or "homes for rent". Also required integrated real estate listings with Place Pages.
At present clicking "more info" link next to a listing takes you to a faster, easier-to-read page that gives you all of the information we have about a listing: inspection times, photos, videos, details, a Street View preview as well as nearby public transit information if available, allowing you to rapidly find the listing you want and click through to the sources of the listing, announced Google.
Google has launched a new tool called 'Swirl', which will help out users to find images in an easier way. The tool automatically groups identical images into categories presented on results pages. "Whatever ImageSwirl does is - it automatically organizes image search results into groups and sub-groups. It is not just the face, the color, the visual features of the images; we look inside the image and ask over how they relate to each other on a pixel level," said Aparna Chennapragada, the Google Product Manager, to AFP.
ImageSwirl expands on technologies developed for similar images as well as Picasa Face Recognition to discern how images must be grouped together and build hierarchies out of these groups. Each and every thumbnail on the initial results page represents an algorithmically-determined representative group of images with related appearance and meaning. These are not just the most relevant images – they’re the most relevant groups of images.
ImageSwirl at present works for more than 200,000 queries and we plan to include more queries in the future. Available queries will auto-complete as you begin to type in the search box, like Google Suggest.
"As humans, we can easily tell which images must be grouped together by looking at them. The actual question is can we train computer algorithms to identify common features in images and then categorize them. It is not perfect. We may possibly have mistakes, but we hope to improve this system as we move forward," added Google Software Engineer Yushi Jing, who has been working on ImageSwirl's underlying technology.
People may dabble with ImageSwirl at Google Labs, and feedback will be used to develop the tool with the ultimate objective being to one day incorporate it in the California Internet giant's public search engine. "We’re committed to how we look at and understand visual information and organize it for our users," added Chennapragada. "This is the holy grail of computer vision."
Google launched image search in 2001 and later on added a 'similar images' feature to hone-in picture hunts.
Over a year after it was first released, Google Earth for the iPhone has gone through a significant version upgrade and has seen the most recent version graduate to the 2.0 scale.
The new version of Google Earth brings in support for new languages and lets you view custom maps by means of the "My Maps" interface. Custom Maps are nothing howevomeone would desire to show them where the have been and what route they took whilst said, on a Trekking trip.er personalized maps created by users and which are shared amongst users. This is useful if s
The new version of Google Earth for the iPhone also offers enhanced performance as well as icon selection. When a user touches an icon, a small glow appears below the finger to let you know which icon you have picked. Google added that Google Earth for the iPhone has been one of amongst the most popular free applications available on the Apple App Store. There is no word of an Android based Google Earth application in sight which has seen an increased demand - since the arrival of devices like the HTC Hero and of late, the Motorola Droid.
Back in September, Google launched Sidewiki. When you are using the Google Toolbar, you can access Sidewiki for any web page (that is been annotated with the tool). You will see comments and notes about the site, as chosen and ranked by Google.
Now, Google is updating the API for Sidewiki. With the update, you can currently view new entries created for a Sidewiki page through RSS.
If you are attracted in developing with the Google Sidewiki API, take a look at the documentation below.
The Google Sidewiki Data API permits client applications to view Google Sidewiki content in the form of Google Data API feeds. Your client application may use the Google Sidewiki Data API to request a list of Sidewiki entries as well as query for Sidewiki entries that match particular criteria.
Here are a few of the things you can do with the Google Sidewiki Data API: • Obtain a list of Sidewiki entries written for a specific web page. • Obtain a list of Sidewiki entries written by a specific author. • Embed a custom gadget on your web page to show Sidewiki entries written about the page.
A latest version of Google's AdWords Editor has been released.
The version 7.6.1's new features include, Ad scheduling and advanced location targeting, Add/Update Multiple Campaigns, Account tree editing, Account tree editing, Account tree editing, Promoted Video ads and Export spreadsheet with images (ZIP).
The updated features include Keyword expansion, Campaign and ad group pickers and Import CSV error export.
There is also new bidding terminology includes Max. CPC Search (previously Max. CPC), Max. CPC Automatic Placements (previously Max. Content CPC), Max. CPC Managed Placements (previously Placement Max. CPC).
There is no change to Max CPA as well as Max CPM terminology.
Google added one more security layer to its search functionality Wednesday, allowing users to lock-in SafeSearch on their accounts as a result questionable material will not pop up.
SafeSearch has been around for awhile, however users can now lock their setting to a "strict" setting that can’t be turned off or changed unless you type in a password. In the meantime, searches that are done using SafeSearch will include an icon of four colored balls in the top, right-hand corner of the results page, thus users know that SafeSearch is on.
"Even from across the room, the colored balls grant parents and teachers a clear visual cue that SafeSearch is still locked. And if you don't see them, it is quick and easy to verify and relock SafeSearch," Google alleged in a blog post.
To lock in SafeSearch, go to Settings on your Google account also looks for "safe search filtering." Click "lock safe search" and then login for a second time. The settings apply to all Google domains, in spite of of which country-specific Google service you are using. However if you have multiple profiles across Google, all these accounts must be locked independently.
In other search news, Google also announced Wednesday that those 17 World Development Indicators from the World Bank are now obtainable in Google search.
"Clicking on the result will take you to an interactive chart where you can compare the United States with other regions around the world," Google added in a separate blog post. "We have also added a new feature to enable you to embed these charts in your own web site or blog by clicking on the 'Link' button in the upper right hand corner of the chart page."
Google's conquered search, online document collaboration, e-mail, telephony, and why not programming? The tech giant has announced its own open source and object oriented programming language, called Go.
"Go combines the development speed of working in a dynamic language similar to Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language similar to C or C++," according to a Google blog post.
If you don't know what that means, don't be bothered about it.
"Typical builds," the blog continues, "feel instantaneous; even huge binaries compile in just a few seconds. Moreover the compiled code runs close to the speed of C."
Go supports multiprocessing, in addition to true closures and reflection.
The Go Web site explains the rationale behind creating Go, repeatedly citing the change of the computer landscape that takes place over the past decade or so. There have been very few, if a few, major systems languages spring up, there are now more powerful PCs, lots of of which use multi-core processors, and there is an increased dependency management in software that is not reflected in the "header files" of C-based languages.
There is also the growing desire for dynamically typed languages (like Python and JavaScript) as an alternative of type systems such as Java and C++, and the poor support for concepts such as garbage collection as well as parallel computation.
Google added that Go takes full advantage of modern, multi-core hardware and simplifies dependency analysis and avoid the overhead present in C-style languages, such as files and libraries. Go's type system in addition has no hierarchy, which saves the programmer from having to define relationships between types, and Go is completely garbage-collected and naturally supports concurrent execution also communication.
If you are interested in getting started with Go, or you now want to learn more about its inner workings, Golang.org is loaded with tutorials, manuals, FAQs, along with other documentation for easy assimilation. There is even a section devoted to C++ programmers who desire to learn Go. Also available are code samples, such as the traditional beginning to all studies, "Hello, world!”
05 package main 07 import fmt "fmt" // Package implementing formatted I/O.br> 09 func main() { 10 fmt.Printf("Hello, world; or Καλημέρα κόσμε; or こんにちは 世界\n"); 11 }
Of course, it's way too early to forecast the impact of Go on programmers or programming. However we have a feeling that in this way, as in so many others, quite a few people will fall behind Google and look at this as a handy way of writing programs for modern hardware. If it won't spell the end of a variety of programming languages in common use, it will unquestionably represent at least the start of a major C change.
Google's Caffeine initiative to improve search results is leaving the sandbox.
First revealed as a "secret project" in the early hours of August, Caffeine is projected to speed up search results as well as improve their accuracy. Google's Webmaster Central blog at the point described Caffeine as "the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness with other dimensions."
A Caffeine Web page had been set up as a developer preview test site asking public to try out the new feature and offer their feedback. However as spotted by Mashable.com, the developer information has been taken down and it has been replaced with a note from Google, pegging Caffeine a hit and briefly describing the next phase.
Based on the success we have seen, we believe Caffeine is prepared for a larger audience. Quickly we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer needed and has been retired, but we be thankful for the testing and positive input that webmasters as well has publishers have given.
Caffeine won't change the look or else feel of Google's popular search engine but will work under the hood to perk up its performance, reportedly delivering faster, better, and more flexible results. However Google continually tweaks its search engine, Caffeine represents the first most important enhancement to its search indexing since 2006.
No word or response yet from Google on when Caffeine may actually go live.
In a late August interview with WebProNews, Google engineer Matt Cutts added that the feedback on Caffeine is been very positive.
And in a forecast of Google's latest move, Cutts also added he wouldn't be satisfied if Caffeine were slowly opened up one data center at a time. Then once Google is pleased with the new search indexing, Caffeine must spill out into more and more data centers.
Google is all set to strengthen its voice as well as video chat capabilities. The voice and video chat feature in the company's the email service,Gmail, is at present limited to one-to-one communication; however, Google wants to widen this capability to more than two participants.
The Google Apps product manager Rishi Chandra said to SFGate that Google is set to roll out its very first update in a long line of updates that may include multi-user video conferencing.
Rishi Chandra told the website, “This (current Gmail capability) is the first step in a much broader set of features we hope to roll out over the next 6 to 12 months around video (and voice) chat capabilities.” He added, "It is a big opportunity for us to push that space along."
Google acquired Web as well as video conferencing software in 2007 from Swedish company Marratech.
Google has released a feature this Thursday that lets users see and control data that the Web giant has collected regarding them, known as Google Dashboard, the service provides an online summary of a user's Google files -- Gmail, Picasa photos, Google Docs, and so on, by collecting pre-existing privacy controls in one place.
Dashboard users are able to review and delete recent Google searches, see recently opened and shared documents and survey their interactions all the way through other Google-powered sites such as You Tube.
Google, which has come under fire from politicians as well as privacy advocates for its data-collection practices, announced the service through a blog post headlined, "Transparency, Choice and Control -- now complete with a Dashboard!"
"Over the past eleven years, Google has focused on building innovative products for our users," the company added in its official blog on Thursday. "Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products all around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, plus our responsibility to protect your privacy and data."
The advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which have been critical of the amount of personal data Google stores, known as the dashboard a small step in the right direction.
"If Google really wanted to grant users control over their privacy it would give consumers the ability to be anonymous from the company and its advertisers in the crucial areas like search data and online behavior," spokesman John M. Simpson added on the group's Web site.
"The Dashboard gives the appearance of control devoid of the actual ability to prevent Google from tracking you also delivering you to its marketers."
Reviews in the blogosphere Thursday appeared relatively muted on behalf of a feature Google described as unprecedented in scale as well as level of detail.
"Sure, it is nice to have all these in one place, should you ever want to review all your private information stored at Google at once, but there is nothing really new about this list," added Stan Schroeder, a blogger at social media site Mashable. "Unfortunately, it is also an unpleasant reminder of just how much data you are giving out to Google."
Tech blogger Matt Asay said most Google users won't bother with Dashboard because people are willing to give up some Internet privacy in exchange for being able to store up and share information online.
"Dashboard leaves Google in the prime position of being able to truthfully utter that it doesn't control user data, as still delivering increasingly beneficial services based on that data," he wrote. "It will not change the way that the vast greater part of consumers use Google, but it just may change the way they think about Google."
Google has recently updated its reach of its Analytics product to mobile apps which lots of users will love; this will help the likes of developers to see how people make use of such particular parts of their iPhone and Android applications.
There are no HTML pages in mobile apps like websites developers would be able to find out when apps should set off page view requests, well Google Analytics will aggregate this data in the content reports which will then show the number of session lengths, visits as well as bounce rates.
It is very good indeed to be able to put into practice Google Analytics into your iPhone app, to get this you will have to get the SDK and implement the exact code in order for Google Analytics to work also watch the video below.
Microsoft plans to begin rolling out a redesigned MSN.com on Wednesday in U.S., the first major update for the page in more than ten years.
Regular visitors to the site will instantly notice one major change: The new page has only half the number of links as the old one. That's a sharp departure from the earlier design, which featured about 40 links on just the top third of the page and the site has also dropped the trademark blue background into a simpler white page.
The new design aims to address user feedback as well as complaints, said Erik Jorgenson, corporate vice president for MSN. Customers said they need a single site that is easy to use, he said. "What they don't like is too much clutter," he added. Users also said that they occasionally had a hard time finding what they were looking for, they were disappointed with search results prior to the launch of Bing, and they said the site had an outdated look and the feel.
Microsoft called Wednesday's launch a preview of the redesign, meaning it may come into view for some people immediately but will become commonly available in the New Year.
The site is now divided into just a handful of sections, lots of of which are fed information that might be personally related to the specific user.
For example, a box in the lower right corner of the home page includes three tabs: Windows Live, Facebook and Twitter. The Facebook tab shows a list of friends' current updates to Facebook and lets the user to update their Facebook status from the MSN page.
A box in the lower left corner of the page shows local weather, headlines and events. Clicking on the local link launches a new page, MSN Local Edition and that page uses Bing search to draw in local news and information. It will display more detailed weather information along with a local map where users can view traffic data. The site draws on users IP address to deliver local information to them.
Microsoft will also be testing out a version of the home page that makes use of Silverlight. That page won't launch Wednesday, however in the future people who have Silverlight installed might begin seeing the page. In the Silverlight version, clicking on the Twitter link, for instance, pops up a box where users can see updates as well as trending topics. About 50 percent of MSN.com users already have Silverlight, Jorgenson added.
Yahoo, Microsoft's biggest portal contender, also recently redesigned its home page, but with different results. The Yahoo page still includes a long list of links towards other pages and otherwise mainly features a list of links to news stories. Yahoo users be able to build themselves a customized page to include stock quotes, instant messaging, e-mail, weather, calendar and some other tools.
MSN will also still offer MyMSN, a customizable page; however Microsoft has found that not many people make use of it. "A large majority of users are not eager to put time into customizing and personalizing," Jorgenson added.
The latest design represents a change in thinking at MSN. "We have moved away from the days of being an Internet directory of everything to everyone," he added. As an alternative, MSN wants to deliver useful content across areas that it believes users find most important, Jorgenson added.
As many as 100 million people in the U.S. visit MSN.com each and every month, Microsoft added.
Google has released the first beta of Chrome 4, the most recent version of its increasingly popular web browser.
For those wondering if they have banged their head and woken up in 2018, don't adjust all your sets. Google works in hyperwarp compared to the rest of the browser industry, slapping a most important version number on browser updates that include only minor feature improvements.
It's taken Mozilla about seven years to get to version 3.6 of Firefox, for instance, while Google has raced to version 4 of Chrome in slight over a year.
The standout feature of Chrome 4 is bookmark synchronization – It is a feature that Internet Explorer and Firefox have offered for years through extensions such as Xmarks.
Chrome's version permits you to log-in to your browser with your Google account details and synchronize bookmarks across multiple machines in real time - which means a bookmark added to your work machine will come into view instantly on your home PC.
Google also claims to have made noteworthy performance improvements in Chrome 4. "We have improved performance scores on Google Chrome by 30 percent since our current stable release, as measured by Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core Tests, also by 400 percent since our first stable release," claim Google software engineers Anton Muhin and Idan Avraham on the Google Chrome blog.
The official Google release notes say the browser is just compatible with Windows XP SP2 and Vista, though it installed perfectly on Windows 7 64-bit machine.
The Social networking site Orkut, refreshingly new looks are grounded on the Google Web tool Kit (GWT). The new version of Orkut with extra features absolutely looks promising.
Google is always eager to share updates about its innovations. This month Google is reporting to come with many changes at its social networking platform Orkut.
Orkut.com not only offers to find out friends automatically but also new video enabled chat with Google talk is something which will catch the attention of users to keep on this site for hours.
There are lots of changes took place to bring this new UI of orkut like uploading of photos will be more easier now .The new features are also added to it like video chat, automatic face detection and view friends on the same page. Orkut will allow status massage update functionality similar to twitter and facebook.
Orkut new version seems to be safer than the previous one and it will offer a customized new version for its iPhone users S60 and J2ME platforms.
The new Orkut version promises a better integration with other Google services. It will officiate more advanced with Google bar and likewise it allows a quick access to a range of other Google services.
Google regularly modifies the logo on its home page to mark an event or occasion. For instance, it replaced the ‘e’ in its logo with a poppy on Remembrance Day earlier this month.
