InsideGoogle-part of the Blog News Channel

links for 2006-02-15

February 14th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Bookmarks | no comments

Google has picked up Measure Map, a very well reviewed web analytics site designed for blogs. I’m assuming Google picked them up more for what the people who made Measure Map can do (its said to have a great AJAX user interface) than the product itself, especially since Google already has analytics software. Measure Map is invite only, so if someone can get me in, I would be most appreciated.

UPDATE: Valleywag said this could happen five days ago.

February 14th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Blogs, General | one comment

Googlers Warned Against Gossiping

A tipster to Valleywag says Google employees have been warned against sending tips or passwords to Google’s intranet to the fast-rising Valley gossip blog. Nick Douglas says he doesn’t need access to Google’s intranet to get tips, even though Google is convinced he already has it. Well, if Nick doesn’t want it, feel free to send your passwords to me

February 14th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Culture, Blogs, General | no comments

Happy Valentine’s Day

Yes, today is Valentine’s Day, so stop blogging and tell someone how much you care for them.

And if you can’t step away from the computer, Gmail Chat has <3 hearts:

(via the Google Blog)

February 14th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Products, Talk, Services, Gmail, Email, General | 2 comments

Google China Blog

Google China now has a blog, although I doubt it’ll be talking about the things we think of when we hear the words “Google” and “China” together. There are two posts so far, and at least I’m enjoying Google’s translation:

If the person which Google most cares about in this world is who, that is our user. Why is this we — clears the Google China blackboard newspaper in today — sweetheart festival the reason. We care about you, hopes and you together shares oneself.

Why is called the blackboard newspaper? Because we hope here becomes the ordinary Google staff (is called googler) with the user share intravenous drip, freely spreads the picture the small field, likes behind our childhood classroom the blackboard newspaper same. We are making whatever, what new matter did the company have, our new idea, new creativity……

Is a blog a “blackboard newspaper”? I kind of like the analogy. I think I’ll call my next blog that. And what is this intravenous drip? SEW says the posts are about Valentine’s Day.
(via Philipp)

February 14th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Culture, Blogs, General | 2 comments

Finally Got Gmail Chat

Google’s Chat in Gmail has been rolling out slowly to everyone, and now that I’ve got it, here are some screenshots and thoughts.

Here’s the basic Gmail interface with chat being used:

You can see the quick contacts list on the left, the IM overlay in the lower right. You’ve got most of the options you’d get normally in Google Talk, and a very similar interface. If you minimize the chat overlay, it becomes nice and tidy, getting the hell out of your way when you have work to do (this is an email program, after all):

Here’s the Quick Contacts list up close:

Contacts are ordered by how often you talk and email them, although you can pin specific contacts to always be there, and you can determine how many are shown in total in the preferences. If you don’t use Gmail often, you might see people in your contact list you only spoke to once, ever, like I did. You can also set your status and status message. And, of course, you can see who’s online and who isn’t.

In IM windows, you can select the option to go “off the record” and disable logging of the chat in both yours and your friends’ account, and to block your non-friends:

One new feature some people are already getting annoyed about is the contact card you see every time you run the mouse over someone’s name:

Philipp notes that there’s a Greasemonkey extension to get rid of it. I don’t mind it, but Google should make it optional. This sort of thing does feel a bit like interface bloat.

Here are the preferences:

Besides turning on/off chat history, you can determine the number of contacts displayed, slightly reorder the position of the contacts box, and determine who can see that they can chat with you.

This seems like a new feature, although I might have just missed it:

For each person, you get a page listing every email and chat you’ve had with that person. I really like this. Its accessible from the contact card.

I’ve had Gmail Chat for how long?

And I’m already seeing that?

Also, since you can “unpin” the IM window, that is make it its own browser window, I tried that without disabling the popup blocker, and saw this:

Gmail’s angry at me for not thinking ahead. I would suggest against clicking the information bar to turn off popups, since it crashed my browser every time. Rather, I found manually white-listing the domain to be more effective.

Here’s what it looks like: