Google Mashup Editor

I just got in to the shiny new beta for the Google Mashup Editor and I wanted to share my thoughts on it with you. Like Yahoo! Pipes before it (our review here), the Google Mashup Editor provides a simple interface that enables developers to make basic web applications and mashups quickly. And again, like Yahoo! Pipes, it is very definitely aimed at developers.

The idea behind it is to provide a rapid development framework for mashing feeds into Google services, using common technologies such as XML, JavaScript, CSS and HTML. It also offers a JavaScript API for more advanced behavioral interactions. Google describes the Mashup Editor as "a great tool for grabbing information from feeds and letting users see and manipulate it."

Google Mashups Editor, showing code for a 'Hello, World' application.

Documentation

For keen developers who haven't yet received access to the beta, there is a strong set of resources you can use to start learning the GME application functionality, structure, code and controls that don't require a login. Ample documentation is available, including a diagram of the application structure and a comprehensive tag reference. Typical of Google, the documentation is the bare necessities, without even a index of the listed tags at the top of the reference page. Also, there is currently a short list of articles & tutorials, a FAQ, the official project blog, and, of course, a Google Group.

Components

The application itself is divided into 3 main parts: the Editor, Feed Browser and Sandbox. A screenshot of each is included in this article.

The Editor is for building projects. Each project can have multiple GML files (I'd guess that stands for Google Markup Language, but it's not documented), and you can also upload resource files such as JavaScript or images. Each GML file can contain a mix of XML, HTML, JS, CSS and the GME tags. The examples don't encourage good coding practices, but at least you have a lot of flexibility with how you code the applications.

The GME Feed Browser, browsing the Read/WriteWeb feed.

The GME Feed Browser is a convenient tool for checking your source feeds. You can use Google Base, or external feeds that you source yourself. The documentation frequently suggests using Yahoo! Pipes to clean up feeds before bringing them into GME. It offers some simple options for choosing the maximum number of results and pages you want returned.

The Sandbox is the simplest of the GME components. It's a running version of your applications. Just hit 'Test' in the Editor and, after a sluggish pause, you're automatically delivered to the Sandbox where your application begins running. You can test all functionality and see how your app will look. It also offers a simple option for viewing it as a Google Gadget.

The GME Sandbox, displaying a quick basic app I wrote for reading Read/WriteWeb feeds.

Publication

Publishing is as simple as pressing a button and choosing a name for your application. That name becomes the subdomain at googlemashups.com, such as this sample application at http://mapwiki.googlemashups.com/. Google curates a full gallery of other mashups. Getting your mashup live and into that gallery as quickly as possible will result in massive exposure - the balance will be making sure it's good enough to stand out.

Conclusion

The Google Mashup Editor is an incredibly powerful tool for rapid testing and deployment of mashup concepts, particularly those that utilize Google services or products. This opens the space to all those developers who don't have their own servers to play on and gives them a framework to kickstart development. It's simple easy and fun to produce something very quickly, but it will be much harder to produce fantastic products. Nonetheless, the cost-savings in development time are going to make this a popular testbed for all sorts of concepts. Google Mashup Editor is a name you will hear a lot in future.

Google’s next stop: $600 a share?

Happy days at the Googleplex. Shares of Google (GOOG) hit a new 52-week - and all-time - trading high of about $535 on Monday afternoon. The stock is now up 15 percent so far this year and has gained a stunning 529 percent since its initial public offering in August, 2004.

Last week came news that Google (GOOG) increased its market share lead in search over Yahoo! (YHOO), Microsoft’s (MSFT) MSN, IAC’s (IAC) Ask.com and AOL - which, like this site, is owned by Time Warner (TWX).

And of course, Google, unlike Yahoo, doesn’t have to worry about pesky distractions, such as, say, an overhaul of the management team. Instead, Google can simply focus on staying on top in search and bolstering its presence in the so-called display advertising or rich media market, selling things like banners, videos and other non-text based ads.

A desire to become a bigger player in graphical ads was a prime motivation behind Google’s purchase of YouTube last year and agreement to buy ad serving network DoubleClick in April.

So where does Google go from here? Several analysts see another 20 percent upside in the near-term. William Morrison, an analyst with JMP Securities, raised his price target on Google’s stock Monday from $580 to $625.

Morrison wrote in a report Monday that he thinks Wall Street is actually underestimating Google’s growth potential. He currently expects Google to generate revenues, excluding ad sales it shares with affiliates, of $11.8 billion this year, compared to an average forecast of $11.4 billion. What’s more, he is predicting that Google’s sales will hit $16.1 billion in 2008 while the consensus of his fellow Street analysts is just $15.4 billion.

“The general thinking here is that Google’s already large size will likely pose a significant impediment to future growth. A converse perspective, which we hold, is that Google possesses significant competitive advantages that are directly attributable to its size, in particular its computing infrastructure, and that these advantages are likely to drive a higher growth rate for a longer period of time than most investors currently anticipate,” Morrison wrote.

And he’s not alone in this view. On Friday, two analysts at Wall Street firm Bernstein launched coverage on Google, as well as other big Net stocks Yahoo, IAC, eBay (EBAY) and Amazon (AMZN), with a $635 price target. The Bernstein analysts also said current Wall Street estimates on Google, for both sales and earnings, are too low.

It’s a dangerous game to expect Google to keep blowing away Wall Street’s estimates. But remember, this is a company that does not give guidance. And so far, analysts have proven to be fairly conservative in their assessment of Google’s growth potential.

For the past four quarters, Google has surpassed consensus earnings estimates by an average of 10 percent. Google has only missed forecasts once in eleven reported quarters as a public company.

With that in mind, as scary as it may seem to predict ever higher prices for Google, the stock still looks like a reasonable bargain. Shares trade at 27 times 2008 earnings estimates, not too frothy for a company that is expected to post a profit increase of 27 percent next year and 30 percent a year, on average, for the next few years.

In fact, Google trades at the lowest price-to-earnings growth (PEG) ratio, which is often used to measure rapidly growing companies, among the big five Internet stocks. Google’s PEG is 0.9. Only eBay is as reasonably valued on this basis, trading at a PEG of 1 on the nose. IAC has a PEG of 1.5 while the troubled Yahoo trades at a PEG of 1.7 And Amazon trades at 2.2 times its projected growth rate.

So say what you want about how new price targets for Google are reminiscent of the late 1990s bubble. But Google hasn’t shown any signs of stumbling. And until it does, the stock is going to keep heading up. Heck, it might not be long before more analysts start slapping a $700, or even higher target, on Google.

Judge rejects Google's anti-Microsoft antitrust bid

by Anne Broache

WASHINGTON--A federal judge refused on Tuesday to rule on a last-minute Google antitrust complaint about Windows Vista's desktop search, saying she trusted government attorneys who said they were already satisfied with Microsoft's planned changes.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she would rely on the U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys to alert her if any further action is needed to address antitrust allegations lodged on Monday by Google that the search function still won't allow for adequate "user choice."

"The plaintiffs, as far as I'm concerned, stand in the shoes of the consumer," Kollar-Kotelly said at a periodic status conference here. She added that Google "is not a party to the case."

Last week, Microsoft and its government antitrust overseers outlined a number of steps Redmond had agreed to take to address Google's ongoing concerns. Those moves included, among other things, adding a mechanism that would allow both computer makers and individuals to choose a default desktop search program--much as they can choose a rival browser or media player.

But Google argued in a filing on the eve of the already scheduled court hearing that it wasn't convinced those tweaks went far enough. The search giant also asked the judge to consider extending the November 12 expiration date for certain parts of the consent decree to ensure Microsoft was truly complying with an antitrust agreement dating back to 2002.

Kollar-Kotelly said she plans to rule on whether Google was allowed to file the seven-page brief it submitted to the court on Monday (Microsoft has opposed the filing as procedurally out-of-bounds). But she said she was "not going to take any position on it or comment on" the brief's content.

The judge did suggest, however, that perhaps Google lacks complete information about the proposed Vista changes. She said she expected the government attorneys and Microsoft to supply a fuller description than that revealed in their most joint recent court filing.

Google said after Tuesday's hearing that it was encouraged by what it viewed as the judge's sensitivity to its request for more information.

"As a result of our raising concerns about Vista desktop search, the Department of Justice and the states secured remedies from Microsoft that will provide consumers more choices than existed before," senior policy counsel Alan Davidson, who attended the hearing, said through a spokesman. "We are pleased that the authorities have provided important oversight here, and hope they will closely monitor the implementation to ensure that consumers' interests are served."

In their appearances before the judge, attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice and state plaintiffs continued to emphasize they were satisfied the Google complaint had been fully resolved. They also said they expected to receive the beta version of the code in time to test it for compliance before the November expiration date. "Certainly if we don't, we will be back here" in court, said Justice Department attorney Aaron Hoag.

Microsoft attorney Charles Rule told the judge that he believed much "misinformation" has been circulating about the way Vista's desktop search works. Using a print-out of a desktop screenshot as a prop, he walked the courtroom audience through the planned changes and existing features.

For instance, contrary to what some have said, Vista's search indexer has been "designed to back off" when other applications are running, which should assuage any fears about third-party desktop search applications encountering problems, Rule said. He also said users can already set up their machines so that third-party desktop search options appear in the left-hand side of the Start menu and in menus that appear when the desktop is right-clicked--and said that wouldn't change.

Kollar-Kotelly indicated she was also pleased with the progress that Microsoft and antitrust authorities had reported in other areas, such as its communications protocol program, a required licensing regime aimed at helping third-party developers to create software that works with Windows.

"This has been a productive report and a productive hearing," she said near the event's close.

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said in a statement afterward that the company is "going to work hard to implement the resolution we reached with all the governments involved and presented to the court today."

The parties are currently due back in Kollar-Kotelly's courtroom on September 11, with a status report to be filed a few weeks beforehand.

Google Apps to Launch Mail Migration

Google will be adding mail migration to Google Apps this week, along with some new features for Google Apps.

This is being promoted as especially helpful for organizations looking to better organize their emails, and migrating them to Google Apps is a great way to start. Mail will be migrated to a user’s GMail account, organized into conversation threads (Google style) and made searchable (also Google style). Mail migration currently supports only those email servers with an IMAP interface. The emphasize on documents being made fully searchable is important to note in this case of mail migration to Google, as you’ll probably want to first be well versed in the act of searching for emails, since you will no longer have folders to organize your documents.

Other features announced or upcoming with this release include a shared address book, bigger GMail attachment size, and multi-user chats, among other things. The biggest benefit of this is of course the integration with the full suite of tools offered in Google Apps.

Google threatens to close gmail germany over privacy concerns

According to spiegel.de (german), Google is threatening to close down the german version of it’s popular gmail service if the german Bundestag passes it’s new internet surveillance law. According to googles german privacy representative, Peter Fleischer, the new law would be a severe blow against privacy and would go against Googles practice of also offering anonymous e-mail accounts.

If the Bundesregierung has it’s way, then starting 2008, any connection data concerning the internet, phone calls (With position data when cell phones are used), SMS etc. of any german citizen will be saved for 6 months, anonymizing services like Tor will be made illegal.

Personally, I applaud google for joining the protest against this absurd piece of fear-inspired legislation. A big corporation standing up against this might get some politicians to actually have a look at and think about the issue instead of just passing it through, “Cause it’s to defeat the terrorists!”.

Take action now: http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/ (german) | http://www.dataretentionisnosolution.com/ (english)

Please be aware that this is currently a static page, to prevent sudden, flaming death. Comments will not appear until when there aren't a lot of people viewing anymore.

How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo!, and Google.

There comes a time in every young person's life—soon after teething, usually—when she must make a momentous decision: MySpace or Facebook? One's preference is a matter of taste. MySpace, if you ask me, is a spam-infested state of nature. The average user page comes with a crapload of embedded music and video players, some seizure-inducing wallpaper, and a bunch of friend requests from "models" who want to "get to know you." (It also happens to be nearly three times the size of Facebook.) Facebook, on the other hand, is much less customizable but also a lot more reassuring. The interface is comfy, sturdy, and attractive without being showy—the kind of social network you'd bring home to Mom. Think of it as the Volvo of social networking.

But a few weeks ago, Facebook pulled a MySpace-like maneuver. The site tore down its walls and opened its pages to outside developers. A new tool kit called Facebook Platform allows any programmer—a bored student or a multimillion-dollar corporation—to peel back the site's breastplate, poke around, and rearrange the innards. None of the nearly 900 (and counting) programs released so far are particularly life-changing—among the most popular add-ons are a "Graffiti" program (downloaded by more than 3.3 million people as of this writing) that lets you doodle other people's profiles and an "Honesty Box" that lets your friends say, anonymously, what they really think of you. Collectively, though, these programs are hugely significant. If the site figures out a smart way to deploy these mini applications, it will be more than just a social network. Facebook will turn into a do-everything site with the potential to devour the whole Internet.

For all the hype about Second Life, Facebook and MySpace are already the closest things we have to "virtual worlds." Sure, Facebook doesn't have large-breasted 3D avatars and a sky and buildings and its own currency. But the whole point of the Internet is that you don't need all that stuff. If I want to buy something, I go to Amazon, not some virtual store. Even before Facebook allowed outside applications, it had millions of users who basically lived inside their profile pages. The typical Facebooker spends hours each day sending messages, posting "notes" or blog entries, and uploading photos, along with trolling for freshmen girls who love the Decemberists. Facebook Platform simply expands this world. (According to the Wall Street Journal, the site's user base has jumped from 24 million to 27 million since Platform launched.) Now you can check the local weather, feed and nurture a virtual pet rabbit, and see what music your friends are listening to. With just a few more additions—e-mail, an instant-messaging program, RSS feeds—Facebook obsessives will become total shut-ins. Users wouldn't have to venture out into the Internet; the Internet would come to them.

If Facebook does decide to become an all-encompassing portal, it would be a bit late to the party. Customizable homepages like My Yahoo! and iGoogle already let you cram your favorite Web stuff onto a single page; there's also the trendy start-up NetVibes, which Slate's Reihan Salam called "the ultimate mashup." But a Facebook homepage would have a huge intrinsic advantage: The social network is already built in. Sure, the other portals incorporate Gmail and BBC headlines and YouTube searches and podcast directories. By adding a social context to all of this content, however, Facebook would immediately trump its main competition. With Facebook's News Feed, it's elementary to see when your friends sign up for a new product or service. That means the best add-ons become viral instantly—Platform's biggest success story so far, a music sharing app called iLike, started growing at the rate of 200,000 users a day.

It's a certainty, too, that outside developers will fall over themselves to deliver great content to Facebook users. The site's growing audience, sterling reputation, and clean look are catnip for corporations.

What kind of stuff will companies offer to Facebook users? Every major corporation, it seems, is trying to add social networking to their core services. Netflix, for example, allows you to keep tabs on what your "friends" are watching. But it makes much more sense to peddle your services on a huge, prebuilt network—no wonder Netflix users can now check their buddies' queues on Facebook. And we're not only talking about businesses: Just look at Barack Obama's campaign. Thousands of users have downloaded the Obama Facebook application since late May, and hundreds of thousands more have joined Obama-themed groups. Compare that to the relatively paltry 70,000 registered users on the candidate's custom-made social network, My.BarackObama.com. Using the Facebook network as a delivery system, it seems, is easier and more productive than creating the system yourself.

For me, an influx of outside content seems like the obvious path to a bigger, better Facebook. But the recent deluge of applications has created a big backlash. I count 15 groups started in the past month, all variations on a theme: "Enough with the @$#%! Facebook Applications Already!" Even my friends have started complaining. When I added a 12^th application to my lineup—I think it was "Pets"—one wall-poster labeled me an "applications slut." Some of this sentiment, dubbed by one developer as "app fatigue," is just a product of the site's growing pains. But it also reflects a real frustration with Facebook Platform, a sense that it hasn't reached its potential. Most of what we've seen so far looks like refuse from an airport gift shop—cutesy Tamagotchi imitations and fortune cookies and virtual presents.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I can doodle multicolored genitalia on my friends' Graffiti walls. But come on, Facebook, where's all the useful stuff? It's reassuring to hear that Facebook plans to add a "wallet" feature for processing online payments. But for the site to really take off, it needs to have an instant messaging system as easy to use as Google's, as well as an embeddable inbox that connects to Hotmail, Yahoo!, and the like. The fact that Facebook hasn't introduced some sort of RSS feed for news—real news, not News Feed news—also borders on inexcusable. It's not clear to me why Facebook hasn't incorporated these seemingly essential elements, and neither their press office nor CEO Mark Zuckerberg (or the guy he probably pays to handle his profile) responded to my inquiries. But I'd be confused and disappointed if these projects aren't in the pipeline, especially considering the rumors that Yahoo! wants to buy MySpace. A merger of that size would dwarf Facebook at the outset. But in the long run, if there's going to be a supernetwork, I'd much rather have it be clean and navigable like Facebook than spam-filled and occasionally creepy like MySpace. If Facebook adds e-mail, IM, and RSS, it's one step closer to becoming as comprehensive as Yahoo! and as p

Firefox 3.0 may block sites fingered by Google

June 05, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Mozilla Corp. is considering adding a tool to Firefox 3.0 that would automatically block Web sites thought to harbor malicious downloads, but the company's security chief refused to spell out details, saying Mozilla is "not ready to talk about the feature."

Even so, there are numerous details to be found on a blog by a Firefox designer and in a back-and-forth discussion of the feature in Bugzilla, the management system that Mozilla uses to track changes in its software. Together, the two offer a behind-the-scenes look into Mozilla's open-source development process.

"Similar to how Firefox 2 blocks Web sites that are potentially going to try to steal your personal information, Firefox 3 will block Web sites that we believe are going to try to install malicious programs on your computer," said Alex Faaborg, a user experience designer in a blog entry last week. "Mozilla is coordinating with Google on this feature."

And in a Bugzilla entry that offers comments from Mozilla and Google employees -- including Chris Hofmann, Mozilla's director of engineering, and Mike Shaver, its director of ecosystem development -- information is even more free-flowing about malicious site blocking in the next major update to Firefox.

The discussion centers on how Firefox 3.0 will warn or alert users to a potentially malicious site. Faaborg mocks up a warning notice, then someone else offers up another option titled "Scarier error page." But at times the thread lingers on technical issues.

"If a site does not appear in the blacklist, but the response from Google says 'this is a malware site,' will Firefox stop showing the page immediately and load this error page in its place?" asked Jesse Ruderman, a Ph.D. student at the University of California in San Diego, and a unpaid Firefox developer.

"I think the plan for malware is to only use the local lists so we don't have to slow down page load or unload a page (which would probably be too late anyway)," replied Tony Chang, one of the Google software engineers who works full time on Firefox.

"This is an example of how development goes on [at Mozilla]," said Window Snyder, the company's chief security officer. "This is a great example of working with the [open-source] community" in a give-and-take atmosphere where ideas are batted back and forth, she added.

Still, she wouldn't commit Mozilla to adding a malicious blocking tool to the antiphishing filter already present in Firefox. "It's definitely one of the things we're looking at," Snyder acknowledged, while noting that the feature is currently rated P2 (Priority 2). By Mozilla's definitions, only P1 features are mandatory for Firefox 3.0.

If the security tool makes it into Firefox 3.0's final build, Mozilla will rely on long-time partner Google to provide the blocking blacklists. Google already does that for Firefox 2.0's antiphishing feature, which is powered by the search giant's open-source "Safe Browsing" code. (Safe Browsing was offered as a separate plug-in for Firefox before Version 2.0, then baked into the Google Toolbar for Firefox.)

But comments made by developers, designers and others on Bugzilla show that Mozilla has questions about the Google technology. "Will the Google malware blacklist include sites that are known to be exploiting just Firefox, or IE, or all browsers?" queried Hofmann. "Do we need to make that distinction and/or communicate it to the user so we don't overstep our bounds?"

"What we are actually doing here is giving Google veto power over any Web page. Hmm ..." added Gervase Markham, a lead developer for Bugzilla.

Google warns its search engine users of potentially dangerous sites with an interstitial page. Google's current blacklists, and presumably those downloaded to Firefox browsers, come from StopBadware.org, a group created by Google, Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. and Sun Microsystems Inc. that collects flagged URLs. Some Web sites, however, including one associated with a Kansas educational service center, have complained that Google erroneously blocks their sites.

No other browser currently includes an integrated tool for blocking sites flagged for downloading malicious code. When asked if Mozilla sees this as a chance to pull away from the competition, Snyder said: "We're always looking for ways to keep our users safe."

Mozilla's developers have until mid-July to add the feature to Firefox 3.0. According to Mozilla's development schedule, the browser will be feature-frozen for Beta 1 on July 17.

That urgency was communicated by at least one Bugzilla commenter. "Alex's design depends on being able to render error messages as he mocked up, which I'd love to see, but am not sure we can do," said Mozilla's Mike Beltzer. "We need to scope & determine that feasibility pretty damned quickly, IMO."

computerworld.com

Five things you didn’t know about Google’s search

To be completely honest, I was a little worried about Saul Hansell, a journalist for the New York Times, sitting in on some of our confidential quality meetings at Google. Even though everything was off-the-record, you can’t help but be slightly nervous talking about evaluation methodologies and confidential projects with a reporter in the room. You can read the article now, and in my opinion it does a good job of describing search quality at Google.

I think it was worth the risk of letting a journalist attend our quality meetings. To see why, I’ll highlight five things from the article that you might not have known:

Google continues to have a strong focus on search

All the time I hear things like “If Google doesn’t pay attention to search…” or “If Google loses its focus on search.” That’s not likely to happen, but let me explain why people might worry that Google will lose our focus on search.

- Something like Street View is splashy, cool, and easy to understand, so launches like that tend to get more coverage. It’s much easier for someone to write about a new product or feature than about how Google has improved its semantic understanding of the web, or when we get better at scoring documents. I love Street view, Google Gears, and mobile Calendar, by the way. I’m just using them as examples because they’re easy to understand and recent.
- We don’t always talk a ton about core search quality. Part of the reason is that some reporters are less interested in changes that can’t even be seen (”Google’s search just got a little better in Thai. You can’t see it, but it did!”). Sometimes core search is hard to get other people excited about — kinda like it’s hard to make a picture of someone working on a computer exciting. And sometimes as a business you don’t want to give hints to competitors about how you do things. I’ve got a funny story about “url.host” that I’ll tell someday. Maybe someone will ask me about it in the Q&A tomorrow at the conference.

What happens when you put these two trends together? People see media coverage on neat/wild/fun things that Google does, and they don’t read many stories about core search quality. From those two facts, they extrapolate to what seems like a reasonable conclusion: Google is focusing less on search. But that’s just not true. Hundreds of engineers pay attention to our search quality in ways big and small. Google is practically designed from the ground up so that we can’t lose that search focus. It’s natural to combine these two trends and come to the wrong conclusion. By giving a glimpse at what our search quality engineers do on a daily basis, this article dispels that misconception.

Google makes lots of improvements that most people never notice.

Some people think that Google changes a few things every few months. At least in search quality, it’s more like a few things every week. From the article: “the search-quality team makes about a half-dozen major and minor changes a week to the vast nest of mathematical formulas that power the search engine.” I don’t think we’ve discussed our pace of search quality changes before.

Getting search right is really hard

The article quotes John Battelle:

“People still think that Google is the gold standard of search,” Mr. Battelle says. “Their secret sauce is how these guys are doing it all in aggregate. There are 1,000 little tunings they do.”

In my experience that’s correct. Running a search engine at Google-scale means that you have to get lots of big things and hundreds of little things right. Missing even a few of those things will annoy users (sometimes subconsciously) and they won’t use your search engine as much. I would never claim that we get all of those hundreds of things right ourselves, but we try to. I read a quote from someone from a different search engine last year. They essentially said that “there was no more secret sauce left” in search. After reading that claim, I walked around happy for days.

Google has some good internal tools

This article was the first time that I know of that we’ve mentioned our internal debug tools. When you get hundreds of millions of queries a day, it’s inevitable that some queries won’t return the ideal set of results. At Google, we love hearing about those queries because we can dissect them and plan how to improve our algorithms.

There are a lot of people “behind the curtain” at Google that improve search

I think it’s important to get more Googlers out into the spotlight. Sometimes search engine optimizers attribute (say) some crawl change to me when the most I might have done was relay a problem report to the experts in the crawl/index team, who then do the real work of deciding how to tackle an issue and implementing that idea.

So I’m glad that the article sheds light on some new people in search. The article discusses Amit Singhal, who is a wonderful guy and a strong influence at Google. The newspaper article also includes a picture of Jianfei Zhu. Jianfei is a colleague that works with me and others on Chinese webspam; Jianfei also spoke at SES China recently and has done interviews about SEO and Chinese search.

Most importantly, the article mentions that there are hundreds of engineers that pay attention to search and quality at Google. These are phenomenal people who work on everything from international issues to evaluating our quality to crawling/indexing to personalization to fixing bugs to new quality initiatives. (Not to mention all the other people who make a difference at Google in hundreds of ways outside of search.) I know that Saul Hansell talked to several other engineers when he visited Google, so over time I believe we’ll get even more Googlers out into the spotlight.

So, five things you might not have known about Google’s search until you read this article:
- Just because Google doesn’t always talk about search and journalists don’t always write about core search doesn’t mean stuff isn’t happening. Google devotes a ton of effort to improving our search in many different ways.
- Google makes a go/no-go decision on several different quality changes each week.
- If you want to build search loyalty, you have to get a lot of different things right.
- Google has many ways to prioritize feedback and tools to look at how to improve search.
- I’m glad we’re shedding light on some additional people at Google. Many people work behind the scenes to improve the user experience at Google, and we should look to highlight even more of those people.

Source: mattcutts.com

A Look at Google Gears Working with Google Reader

Yesterday, at Search Engine Land I wrote the story on Google Gears just from the press release, so I didn't have time to play with it before hand. The Google blog mentioned it, and they told us about the new Google Gears Blog. But I wanted to show you how it works, and since Google Reader is one of the first web applications that utilize Google Gears, I will show you Google Gears with Google Reader in action.

Step 1: Download the Google Gears extension to your browser.
Step 2: Enable it, when it asks you to.
Step 3: Google to Google Reader and click the offline icon and agree.

Notice I have 6 items unread in the general news folder.

Step 4: Clicking on the green icon with download all your unread feeds into the Google Gears format. Google Gears will then download them, showing you this status display.

Step 5: When it is done downloading, you will see that green icon turned grey.

Step 6: Go offline by unplugging your internet or using this little trick.

Step 7: Browse your unread feeds offline.

Notice how I now have 3 unread items in the general news folder, so I read three items offline.

Step 8: Go back online.

Step 9: Sync back up with Google Reader by clicking the green icon.

A status display will come up quickly, like in step 4.

Step 10: Google Reader will load up again.

Step 11: Continue browsing online...

Notice it removed those 3 feeds I read in online mode.

With Google Gears, Google is trying to create a standard for working with online web applications in an offline mode. This can be applied to anything. Just see the Google Gears API Developer's Guide.

Source: seroundtable.com

'Eye counter' brings Google-like ad model to brick and mortar

Source: eetimes.com

Xuuk Inc. unveiled an "eye counting" video camera last week that could enable the highly successful Google advertising-revenue model to be extended to brick-and-mortar advertisers. The system consists of a palm-size video camera surrounded by infrared light-emitting diodes and a Universal Serial Bus interface. Software running on an attached computer can determine whether someone is looking at the camera by recognizing the "red eye" spot, which only appears when a viewer gazes at the camera directly. Using its PageRank technology, Google Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) has been able to collect revenue from advertisers based on the number of user "clicks" per online ad. With the Eyebox technology, brick-and-mortar advertisers would be able to determine how many times a billboard in a mall corridor or a product display on a store shelf drew the direct gaze of passersby, counting those views in the same way Google counts clicks. If placed on a store shelf, the Xuuk camera must be mounted directly adjacent to each product in order to register properly. In addition, products have to be spaced some distance apart, depending on how far away the customer will be standing. For instance, products must be spaced about a meter apart if viewed from 3 meters away (the technology has an eye-contact detection accuracy of 8.5° at that distance). It is possible to track eye movements today, but the laboratory setups to do so cost $25,000 and up. In addition, the viewer must be no more than 2 feet away and must remain stationary, and the setup must be calibrated for each individual. Xuuk (Kingston, Ontario) claims to have extended the range of the Eyebox to 32 feet and to have eliminated the need for personal calibration. Further, people walking by don't have to stop in front of an ad in order to be counted, according to Xuuk. Because the light is infrared, the user is unaware of being observed. Xuuk emphasizes that no data is collected on the identity of the user. Instead, the device simply counts how many people per day have looked at an ad or product. By using a separate Eyebox for each billboard or product on a shelf, facilities that display ads could charge advertisers on a "per look" basis. Xuuk is in discussions with Google, according to Xuuk founder and CEO Roel Vertegaal, though Google would not confirm that talks are under way. Vertegaal is director of the Human Media Laboratory at Queen's University (Kingston). He invented the Eyebox as part of the lab's Attentive User Interfaces project. The aim of the research was to make computers attentive to their users by sensing when to interact with them. In addition to the advertising application, the Attentive User Interfaces project aims to make computers, cell phones and household appliances more attentive to their users. The Xuuk camera measures 3.5 x 3.5 x1 5/8 inches and will be priced at $999 until July 1, when the price will go up. It is available now from www.xuuk.com.

Google to Show Daily List of Hot Topics

© 2007 The Associated Press

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google Inc. is going to start sharing more insights about what's on its users' minds by showing a daily list of the 100 hottest topics on its Internet-leading search engine.

The new rankings will be unveiled late Monday in an upgrade of Google's "trends" service. The breakdown will consist of the fastest-rising search requests on any given day.

The list won't include all of the top queries because it will be edited to exclude pornography and other requests about the weather, popular Web sites like MySpace.com or prominent celebrities that consistently generate lots of searches.

Trying to figure out why certain terms are popping up is part of the fun underlying the list, said Amit Patel, a Google software engineer who oversaw the project. To help provide context, the Mountain View-based company will provide links to news stories and blogs containing the search terms.

"It's very entertaining and it's very addictive," Patel said of the trends list.

Besides appealing to pop culture junkies, Patel believes the rankings will be useful to Web researchers and reporters looking for story ideas.

The improvements also will enable users to analyze search terms within the sub-regions of 79 countries.

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On The Net:

Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends

Check out Google's latest ideas

Google Labs > Experimental search

Google is always experimenting with new features aimed at improving the search experience. Take them for a spin, and let us know what you think.

Timeline and map views

See results on a timeline or map. With the timeline and map views, Google’s technology extracts key dates and locations from select search results so you can view the information in a different dimension. Timeline and map views work best for searches related to people, companies, events and places. Get started with one of these queries View on a timeline: thomas jefferson civil rights movement nanotechnology View on a map: pga tours olympics bioinformatics conferences

Keyboard shortcuts

Navigate search results quickly and easily, minimizing use of your mouse. Current keyboard shortcuts include: Key Action J Selects the next result. K Selects the previous result. O Opens the selected result. Opens the selected result. / Puts the cursor in the search box. Removes the cursor from the search box. Get started with this query: rattlesnake

Left-hand search navigation

Search deeper in a particular type of content—patents, products or news, for example. Google searches across all kinds of content, then ranks results by relevance. If you want to see additional results of a particular content type, just click a link in the left-hand search navigation. You can also refine your results by clicking on related search terms. Get started with one of these queries: ipod, beach, airplanes

Right-hand contextual search navigation

Similar to the left-hand search navigation, right-hand contextual search navigation allows you to search deeper in a particular type of content or to search related terms—but from the right side of the page. Get started with one of these queries: downtown los angeles, python, dancing Source: Google.com

Sergey Brin: The elopement

Some celebrities go to great lengths to confuse the press about the details of a wedding; the ceremony for Sergey Brin's marriage to Anne Wojcicki is undisclosed even to the guests. We hear close friends and relatives of the Google founder and his fiancée, who plan to hitch next month, have been told only to show up to a Bay Area airport, from which they'll be whisked off to the surprise venue on the Google party plane. You see, the founder of the omniscient search engine does care about privacy, after all.