WebmasterWorld is talking about Google’s redesign, specifically how the new design was done in much better code than the old one. Google’s new look is filled with “CSS up the wazoooo”, “a 40% drop in HTML coding errors”, “65% increase in the raw file size”. Patrick Taylor says design Guru Douglas Bowman has been behind this improvement. Read the whole discussion.
One bad thing: The new menu is done in JavaScript, so if you’re running a less capable browser, you see… nothing. Google now doesn’t work right for many older browser, mobile browsers, and text browsers, which is quite a shame.
(via Tamar at SER)
May 18th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Search, General |
7 comments
Picasa Web Albums, Google’s cumberously-named photo sharing service, has added a new slideshow sharing feature, allowing you to post your slideshows to any place that allows the same type of flash embeds used by YouTube. Here’s an example slideshow:
Move your mouse over the slideshow and you’ll see the control buttons appear. You can use them to view the creator’s photo gallery, enable or disable captions, move backwards or forwards through the slideshow, or just click Play. The Picasa logo in the bottom right-hand corner switches open a description page, giving you the name of the user, slideshow title, and creation date.
May 18th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Web Albums, Products, Picasa, General |
no comments
Google has announced it is adding books it has not scanned to Google Book Search, giving them millions of books they have not yet gotten to. Here’s an example of a page featuring a book not scanned, including the cover of the book, links to buy the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookSense and Google Product Search (which is listed last), as well as web pages that talk about the book, and in some cases, other editions and Google Scholar results. In some cases, Google doesn’t have the book scanned, but Amazon does.
May 18th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Google Book, Search, General |
no comments
Google Korea plans to add an age-verification system to its search engine later this year, in order to prevent users under 19 from finding adult-themed websites in their search results. Users who type in any of 700 words (supplied by the government) will be asked to enter their name and national resident registration number, which will be compared against a national database to determine if the person is over 19 years of age.
Here’s the odd thing: The article only says “Google Korea”, not Google South Korea or Google North Korea. You’d expect to hear stories like this coming from North Korea, but all indications are that this is being done in South Korea (the article does mention Seoul, and Google doesn’t have a search engine for North Korea). This isn’t censorship, and it makes perfect sense to put in extra effort to keep minors away from porn, but…
Effective with this new system, everyone who verifies their age will have their search history potentially linked to their name and national registration number. Nothing has been said as to whether Google will keep that information linked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do so simply due to annoyance factors (who wants to be asked on every search?). Imagine if your searches were linked to your driver’s license? Yikes.
May 18th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
History, Controversy, Search, General |
one comment
