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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Techmeme adds search, becomes useful to the general public

Over the last few years, technology news site Techmeme has gotten a lot of attention in the technology blogosphere. That's because it's a tool for tracking conversations and hot topics in the tech blogosphere. Yes, part of the reason we as tech bloggers pay so much attention to Techmeme is because we're self absorbed. But the site has also been a great source of news. Want to know what today's biggest stories are? Techmeme will tell you.

But Techmeme has historically done a pretty lousy job of telling you yesterday's big stories. Or last week's. Or last years. Because the site has lacked any sort of a search function. But today, Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera finally added a search box to the site.

Only the top stories are indexed. And by default only the fist few sentences from each story. So Techmeme isn't exactly a Google News killer. You won't find every article ever written about a topic. But what you will find are some of the top stories (or at least the most discussed/blogged about stories) written about a topic. Or if you want to find every article from a certain source that made it onto Techmeme, you can just search for a URL. For example sourceurl:"http://www.downloadsquad.com" brings up a list of Download Squad stories that have been featured on the site.

The launch of the search tool actually makes Techmeme a site worth visiting if you're not just trying to figure out which stories Download Squad, TechCrunch, CNET, ReadWriteWeb, and Engadget are covering today.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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Hulu: People are actually watching us

Much to everyone's amazement, Hulu doesn't suck. Seriously. When Fox and NBC first announced plans to get into the online video streaming business, a lot of commenters spent a lot of time talking about how silly it would be to take on YouTube. And then Hulu started showing full length movies and TV shows with minimal advertisements. The video quality is fairly good, and the content library includes things you might actually want to watch. Now, just two months after publicly launching, Hulu reports that:

• The site has served up more than 63 million video streams
  
• The average Hulu user watches 2 hours of Hulu video each month
  
• Hulu is now the top network video site

Hulu has also launched a distribution deal with TV.com today, and plans to start streaming video through TVGuide.com, Break.com, Zap2it, BuddyTV, Flixter, and MyYearbook in the next few weeks.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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