Googleholic for May 20, 2008

Welcome to Googleholic, your bi-weekly fix of everything Google! In this edition:

• Google gets a new office in Taipei
  
• Third party advertising tags on Google
  
• Google China mourns to commemorate earthquake victims
  
• FeedFlare now available for Blogger comments

Google gets a new office in Taipei
Having been in Taiwan for two years, Google decided it needed to move the office from their 37th floor location in the landmark Taipei 101. The new location? Still the Taipei 101, except now on the 73rd floor. Now Google employees in Taiwan can enjoy their amenity-laden workdays a whole 36 floors higher than before.



Third party advertising tags on Google
Now accepting: third party advertising tags on Google's content network. In North America anyway. Google has established a procedure for reviewing third party ad tags that comply with their standards and policies which allows them to implement this feature. If this prospect thrills you, check out the three part video that explains it all in luscious detail.

Google China mourns to commemorate earthquake victims
As China mourns the 50,000 earthquake victims, Google China has changed its look to a dark theme and features a link to a special search engine designed to find sites that include information about missing people. Google is also donating $2 million to help with relief efforts, $1.7 million of which will come from Google.org.



FeedFlare now available for Blogger comments

Google owned FeedBurner's FeedFlare is finally available for Blogger, allowing Blogger users to show comment counts on their RSS feeds. The comment count links to the Blogger's comment page, allowing readers of the feed to quickly reply to a post and see whether a post is a comment magnet. Which is a good thing, if not just convenient.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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Googleholic for May 13, 2008

Welcome to Googleholic, your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!

In this edition:

• Search for real estate on Google Maps
  
• Faces getting blurred in Street View
  
• Gmail gets slight loading speed boost
  
• Wikipedia comes to Google Maps

Search for real estate on Google Maps

Google Maps continues to get more useful, having made available a new search feature allowing users to browse and look for real estate. To access the feature, select "show search options" next to the search bar, giving you a drop down box from which you can select "Real Estate." After plugging in your query, you can order results according to price, bedrooms, and bathrooms. If you see something that catches your eye, you can then view an indexed property's original listing. This would probably come in really handy if you are prospecting some property in a particular area or just feel like sampling the prices of homes in a given neighborhood - Or looking for another way to play around with Google Maps.



Faces getting blurred in Street View

If you've been cruising through Google Maps with Street View and happened to find that you have been captured by Google's eye on ground zero, there is good news (or bad news if you liked the publicity): Google is experimenting with technology that allows them to blur faces in Street View. At this stage the blurring experiment is limited to Street View in Manhattan - but if all goes as planned all of Street View will be anonymous before long.



Gmail gets slight loading speed boost

It looks like the boys and girls at Gmail have been busy making the best even better by making the already short load time for Gmail even shorter. By measuring every transaction that occurs between the web browser and Google's servers, and then finding ways of reducing the number of requests as well as making them more cacheable, Gmail's initial load time has been reduced to four requests between "sign in" and the Inbox.



Wikipedia comes to Google Maps

And just when you thought Google Maps couldn't have more updates. There is a new button next to Street View called "More" which allows users to check out geo-tagged Wikipedia articles and photos from Panoramio. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a massive influx of additional databases getting geographically tied to Google Maps - because truly, can you ever have enough information on your map?


[Via: Google Operating System ]
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Googleholic for May 9, 2008

Welcome to Googleholic, your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!

In this edition:

• Hello says 'goodbye'
  
• Protect roaming users with Google Web Security for Enterprise
  
• New features added to Custom Search Engine
  
• Cannes comes to YouTube
  
• Selective magnification added to Google Reader

Hello says 'goodbye'

Google is discontinuing Hello, the instant messenger included with Picasa. Basically, Hello was designed as a way to share photos instantly, in a secure fashion.

The program has gone without updates for nearly three and a half years. In that time, Google has launched Google Talk, Picasa Web Albums and the ability to post pictures from Picasa directly into Blogger.

Hello will formally shut down on May 15, 2008.

Protect roaming users with Google Web Security for Enterprise

After acquiring Postini last year, Google created Google Web Security for Enterprise as a hosted security offering aimed at businesses, and designed to protect systems from malware and web attacks in real time.

Today, Google announced an add-on feature that will extend that same protection to users even when they are off network. Once enabled, all off-network traffic for a particular computer is directed at Google's scanning infrastructure, with on-the-fly filtering in place. System administrators can do audit reporting for those systems and enforce access policies as well. The best part? It is all done without the use of a VPN, so the end user doesn't have to change the way they login to use their system off-network.

Google Web Security for Enterprise is available in Europe and North America and is integrated with the professional version of Google Apps.

New features added to Custom Search Engine

Google has just announced the addition of AdSense for Search to CSE (Custom Search Engine). Google's CSE allows users to create their own custom search engine based around one or several sites, and to host that engine on their own website or blog.

In addition to AdSense for Search, Google has also enhanced the way Sitemaps work with CSE. After submitting a Sitemap through Google Webmaster Tools, Google will automatically detect any pages not indexed by Google.com and add them to your customized search engine.

Cannes comes to YouTube

The 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival kicks off next week, but just because you can't make it to France doesn't mean you can't enjoy some of the short films, thanks to YouTube and the National Film Board of Canada. Now in its fourth year, the National Film Board of Canada's Online Film Competition Cannes 2008 highlights ten short films, selected from hundreds of submissions from over 40 countries.

This year, the ten finalists are available for viewing via the NFB's YouTube channel. The winner will be chosen by YouTubers, using the standard one-to-five rating scale.

Who says YouTube can't embrace artistry?

Selective magnification added to Google Reader

The guys over at Google Reader have integrated a pretty cool accessibility option to allow selective magnification to a particular article.

Using CSS and AxsJAX, the team was able to build a magnification tool that works on the selected article, rather than the entire screen (as most magnification tools do), which makes for a better use of screen real estate.

The lens feature has been integrated into Google Reader and pressing = or - will enlarge or shrink the font for the article you are reading.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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Googleholic for May 7, 2008

Welcome to Googleholic, your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!

In this edition:

• Google Maps gets a minor makeover
  
• Increased photo storage on Orkut
  
• Multi-size embedding and select for Google Presentations
  
• Google supports Unicode 5.1

Google Maps gets a minor makeover

Google Maps has gotten a little bit prettier, flushing out some of the orange of the layout and making the search box more powerful, no longer requiring you to specify whether you're looking for a business or just an address. Well, for some users anyway, as the new UI is still in an experimental stage and will only be visible to a small number of users. But, if things go well and people like it, it may be the new face of Google Maps. Which is good because Google Maps does look a little bit more cluttered than other services offered by Google.

Increased photo storage on Orkut

Everybody's favorite unknown yet kind of a big deal Google social network just got a major upgrade, removing the limit of 50 photos per user and upping it to a glorious 10,000. Not only that, each photo seems to have a size limit of 10MB, which comes out to about 100GB of photo space which is nothing short of ridiculous. Maybe this is how Google plans on bringing Orkut to the world that uses Facebook, by making it the place all the photographers throw up their pictures in turn forcing everyone else to go to Orkut to look at them. After that... it is only a matter of time.

Multi-size embedding and select for Google Presentations

If you have been embedding Google Presentations on websites to get your point across (it's our primary means of communication here at DLS - no show no go), today is a good day because Google has decided to grant you more power over your embeds. You can pick between these three mind-blowing sizes: small (410x342), medium(555x417), and large (700x525). But the magic does not end here: you can now use SHIFT click to manipulate a group of objects all at once when working with a presentation. Smashing.

Google supports Unicode 5.1

Google has updated and now supports Unicode 5.1, the web's fastest growing character encoding. According to Google anyway. Apparently, all other language encodings such as ASCII, Latin I, and other language specific encodings have been on the decline. The reason? Unicode supports a variety of languages more handily than any of the others, making it kind of, well, the best. And we know Google wouldn't settle for anything less.

Another bit of Google goodness we covered this week:

• Google Reader gets (more) social - Google has added a number of features and notes for Google Reader allowing you to play with more social dynamics revolving around your feeds.
  

[Via: Download Squad ]
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Googleholic for April 25, 2008

Welcome to Googleholic, your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!

In this edition:

• Google Finance gets a revamp
  
• Google Product Search updated; still lousy
  
• Google Docs initial offline rollout complete
  
• Goolgle annoyances

Google Finance gets a revamp

Google Finance has received a nice facelift. The U.S, Canadian and U.K. outposts all sport the new look -- as well as the newest member of the Google Finance family: China. The new language-specific site covers all the latest Chinese financial news and also offers links to other global markets.

Google Product Search updated; still lousy

Google Product Search, nee Froogle, has received an important update that only underscores the lameness of the service. Now, if you search for a generic item, like "computer" - a list of popular search results will appear with price comparisons, product reviews and more. Unfortunately, searching for an individual product (or a less generic term) still leads to one giant list of product mash-ups, sans the comparable price table or product description.

As Google Operating System pointed out, even the old Froogle service had this ability. Way to innovate Google. Even with the updates Google's Product Search still reminds us of a crappier version of MySimon circa 1999.

Google Docs initial offline rollout complete

After its soft launch last month, the initial rollout for offline Google Docs access is now complete.

In the early stages of the rollout, only word processing documents could be viewed or edited offline. Now Google has added view-only access to spreadsheets and presentations as well. The service is still English-only, and Google Apps users need to specify that they want the service in their preferences, but offline access is developing at a quick pace.

Google Annoyances

We might love our Google, but Google isn't perfect. In fact, lots of aspects of Google and their never-ending list of services annoy us. We aren't alone. The guys over at Google Operating System list some of their top pet-peeves.

Some of our favorites:

• Constantly having to re-enter our password when using Google Analytics, even when already logged in
  
• The craptasticness of Blogger's commenting system
  
• The inconsistent nature of the navigation bar

[Via: Google Finance Blog ]
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