Links For April 28, 2008
Add Images To Gmail’s Interface
Xoopit is a Firefox plugin that adds dynamic image preview to Gmail. You see a strip of images above your email, and there’s some sort of social networking theory at work.
H-1B Visa Situation the Usual Giant Disaster
Read at Techdirt about the H-1B (foreign guest worker) visas, which are once again running into problems due to the government not providing enough visas for American tech companies to bring skilled workers to this country. As usual, the visas for the entire year ran out in a single day, and the Department of Homeland Security is doing what it can to keep those jobs in the U.S. by allowing certain industry grads to stay in the country longer on their student visas.
Google Earth Adds Street View
Google Earth now has Street View built into it, in order to see street level photos of buildings and pedestrians. Not only that, but you can blow the Street View full screen, in order to gawk at total strangers having their privacy invaded in the utmost fidelity.
Google Most Valuable Brand Again
Google has been named the most valuable brand by market research firm Millward Brown Optimor, value at $86 billion and beating out GE and Microsoft ($71 billion apiece). Google’s brand value grew 30% over the last year, though Google has now won three years running.
Earth Day Search Logos
Search Engine Land has a bunch of logos that ran on Earth Day, including this one from Google:
Google Stock Earnings Benefit From Failing Dollar
Google’s earnings report, released last week, showed it beat Wall Street’s expectations by $101 million, sending the stock way up. However, Valleywag explains that, due to the sinking dollar, Google’s earnings were $202 million higher than they would have been if the dollar were stronger, meaning the surprise extra growth didn’t exist almost at all.
Google News Shows Quotes
Google News has a new feature that lets you search for people who are quoted in news articles. Just throw a name into Google News and you’ll see a quote from them at the top. Click their name, and you’ll see a page full of quotes in various news stories they’re in.
Google-Monopoly (The Game)
Box HQ has put together a version of the popular Monopoly board game that replaces everything in the game with Google-related items. For example, the properties are all web companies (Microsoft and Yahoo replace Boardwalk and Park Place) and jail is the Deadpool. You can just print out the PDF and get started, or go all out and modify a Monopoly game board to turn it into Google-opoly. One problem: there aren’t enough I’m Feeling Lucky and Google.org cards.
Google Finds New CIO
Google has named a new Chief Information Officer, with Benjamin Fried from Morgan Stanley’s Application Infrastructure group taking over next month. Fried worked on Google’s IPO four years ago, giving him some experience with the company. Fried takes over for Douglas Merrill, who left for EMI earlier this month.
Website Optimizer Leaves Beta
Google’s Website Optimizer, its tool to help you improve site conversions, is no longer in beta and is free to all, even without an AdWords account. You can use it for all sorts of useful stuff, or as Tamar says at SER:
If you haven’t used Google Website Optimizer yet, perhaps the benefits of A/B Split & Multivariable Testing and Intuitive Reports will woo you. The goals, of course, are to increase sales, improve landing pages, get more leads, determine cost per acquisition (CPA), increase time spent on site, estimate guesswork from your site design, and more.
Lots of Google Doodles
Zorgloob’s got lots of Google Doodles you may not have noticed over the weeks.
Antonio Meucci:
Turkey Doodle4Google:
Baidu ran this logo for Barack Obama:
AdWords API Price Dropped
Google has droppped the prices on using the AdWords API. Search Engine Roundtable has the chart of revised prices, with the cost per API unit dropping as much as 70% on some services.
AdSense Ad Review Center Available To All
Google has released its Ad Review Center for Google AdSense to all publishers. The Ad Review center allows AdSense publishers to control site targeted advertising on their website, including banning and approving targeted ads.
Download YouTube Videos As MP4
Ionut shares the URL parameter that will let you download videos from YouTube as MP4 files, perfect for loading onto a portable media player. Just use a URL like this one, except change the letters “ID” with the video ID code:
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=ID&t=SIGNATURE&fmt=18
A Funny Google Interview Story
Read this story about one guy’s experience interviewing for a job at Google. I guarantee you won’t see where it’s going.
(via Digg)
Arrest Caught On Google Maps Street View
One unfortunate fella was being arrested by authorities, and what happened to pass by? The Google Maps Street View van, that’s who! As a result, he wound up with that moment in his life, one he’d probably like to regret, recorded into Google Maps and now pictured on a number of blogs. Whoops.
