Google Maps has a new area where you can search for coupons that stores have made available in Maps. Just go to a page like this one, and enter the area you’d like to search for stores with coupons in by the second search box. For better results, put the type of store’s coupon you’re looking for in the first box, like coupons for “pizza” in “flushing ny”.
I noticed last month that Google registered a bunch of “Google-Coupons.com”-style domains, and it looks like that was a real sign of things to come. I usually post about domain name registrations at InsideMicrosoft, so it’d be worth checking out those posts in detail in case some clue is waiting in there.
(via Blumenthals > Praized)
Nick Starr wanted IMAP in his Gmail account, and when he didn’t get it, he decided he needed to complain to Google in order to get the new feature. Finding no real Google customer service to speak of, he headed down to Google’s offices and posted a letter on their front door, letting them know exactly how he felt. How very Martin Luther.
Today, YouTube has given Rob Zombie the front page, and he’s chosen some great videos to display for Halloween. The best has got to be “Wanna Buy A Ghost”, though “Mary Poppins” and “Horror Friends” are excellent too. Check em out.
Google’s SearchMash site, where it runs experiments in search engine design, now has two versions: The regular one we’ve been using for months, and a new Flash-powered version that puts tabs along the top and a preview pane on the right. The pane shows site previews from Snap and a small bit of other information, but it is the approach of using Flash that is questionable.
Google is trying out what others have attempted before, but no Flash search engine has ever taken off, despite the obvious graphical and interface advantages. Flash presents too many difficulties to the user, especially the fact that it breaks the whole “click a result, read result, go back, click another result” habit most searchers use. Hopefully they’ll learn something valuable from this experiment, just not try to use a Flash search engine.
The YouTube blog is talking about a redesign they are working on of the video browsing page, one that you can try out right now by following this link. The design hasn’t changed in any jarring way, unless you count the big red bar (which you won’t see today because of the Halloween logo, but you can see here), but it does feature drop-down menus on all the tabs for fast category switching and a cleaner, better organized grid of video details. Check it out and leave feedback.
There are a bunch of search engines and other websites running special logos today for Halloween, and here they are:
YouTube’s is simple and very effective, a pumpkin replacing half the logo:
It’s the sort of logo Google used to do, before they started treating this thing as art half the time. Don’t know what I mean? Just look at the complexity of Google’s Halloween Doodle:
Spooky, but it also looks like a lot of work. Remember the days where it was obvious the most important tool for creating a Google logo was cutting and pasting?
Yahoo is running this cute little thing, another one of their animated Flash logos:
If you don’t have Flash, you’ll see this simpler static image:
Even AOL’s getting into it, with their own animated Flash logo:
(reload the page to see any of the animations from the beginning)
There’s also Technorati (it works better on a green background:
And Ask.com, they’ve gone full page with another of their huge exciting designs, using this:
Which came out liks this:
And don’t forget Dogpile:
Finally, Search Engine Roundtable has an animated logo, which you’ll have to go there to see. Here’s a screenshot of it, courtesy of Barry:
Google has decided that when it comes to Facebook, if you can’t beat ‘em, API ‘em. Google’s OpenSocial, which will launch at code.google.com/apis/opensocial tomorrow, will be a set of APIs that developers can use to create applications that work on any participating social network. Google’s goal is to create an open layer that runs atop all social networks, diminishing the power of all the networks in the process.
It’s a smart plan, especially with the “fad” nature of most social networks, giving up on trying to have the most popular social network and instead trying to be the application layer that everyone uses. Google failed to buy Facebook, it’ll never get MySpace, Orkut will never be popular in the U.S., and a year from now, some unpredictable new network could be the new Facebook. Even if Facebook doesn’t use OpenSocial, new startups will use it, ensuring the next Facebook is a Google partner, not a competitor.
OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, handling profile information, friend/social graph data, and activity data (news feeds). All participating networks have to do is agree to accept the API calls and give back the requested data, and all that does is the hugely important step of opening up the data in the networks to be used by external applications, or by other social networks.
At launch, participating social networks are Google’s own Orkut, plus Ning, Plaxo, Friendster, viadeo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Oracle. Application providers already signed up are Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide, already the most popular Facebook developers, making it likely that the most popular third party Facebook features could soon be arriving at its competitors. The presence of Google’s Orkut, hugely popular outside he U.S., will be enough to make OpenSocial important despite lacking Facebook and MySpace.
One thing OpenSocial doesn’t do is let one social network access the data from another network, something Marc Canter has been pushing for lately. While the applications can use profile, friend and activity data, it can’t actually grab it and create a profile on a another network, like taking your LinkedIn data and using it to build a Friendster profile. You’ll still need to sign up with and create a profile on every network seperately.
Also participating are ING, Hyves, Tianji and Salesforce.com. There will be a developer sandbox at sandbox.orkut.com. No word on if Yahoo plans to participate, and you can expect Microsoft to stay out of it (Windows Live Spaces is a major social network, and Microsoft’s Facebook ownership stake will make it want to stay out of this war).
The YouTube blog announced a cool opportunity. YouTube members can submit a video response to this video (embedded above) asking a question about the current NBA season, and Charles Barkley will try to answer it on Thursday during Inside The NBA, the commentary show he shares with Magic Johnson, Reggie Miller and others). Hopefully, the segment will be a success, and Inside The NBA (and maybe other shows too) will make soliciting video questions online a part of their regular programming.
Google’s Blogger is apparently now a little more okay with more risque blogs, enacting a warning before users visit a blog that contains objectionable content. Previously, if users marked a blog as such, Google would disable public access to the blog, but now it puts up a warning, but ultimately lets them visit if they want to. With all the censorship going on, its nice to see little reasonable action to let people view what they want to.
