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.
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.
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:
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.
Ionut notes that Google is already running April Fools “jokes” around the world. In Japan, there’s something about a joke regarding words that are similarly pronounced. In China, the company blog says they’re launching a human-powered search engine (watch out, Mahalo). In Australia, they’re letting you search the future. And in the United States, they’re possibly firing hundreds of hard-working advertising people — wait, that’s not funny!
But seriously, on the one hand, I’m hoping Google’s April Fools joke is good, on the other I’d rather see all those DoubleClickers keep their job. The “other hand” is weighing a lot more on my conscience than the humor hand, but I suspect that among those writing the pink slips, Google “hilarious” joke will be the only thing they really care about tomorrow.
Google Earth Getting Street View? Webware reports that they’re hearing Google will add Street View, its popular novelty feature in Google Maps that lets you see street-level photographs of businesses, making it available in the Google Earth desktop software. Their source is very non-specific, but the rumor does sound very believable, since there’s no good reason for Google Earth users to lag behind Maps users for this long. Webware says the addition could come in the next few weeks.
Barack Obama Rendered in Google SketchUp
Someone used SketchUp, Google’s 3D modeling software, to create this model of Barack Obama’s head. The whole thing is 400 polygons of rendered facial features, and I gotta say, it creeps me out. At least Obama’s a decent looking guy; I can’t imagine how creepy a 3D rendering of Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton (with giant eyes!) would look.
Sync Google Talk With Twitter Timothy Broder wrote a script that takes your latest Twitter message and makes it your Google Talk/Gmail Chat status message. It’s a simple thing, perfectly useful and good, just like a baby angel.
Crack Deal in Google Maps?
Is this really what this Digger thinks it is? Well, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to conduct a business transaction through your car window with a guy standing in the street. I think.
Does Google Chief’s $1 Salary Mean Anything?
For another year, Google’s head honchos will be taking a $1 salary, supposedly putting the interests of the business ahead of money. It’s a simple token gesture, offset by the fact that the guys taking the pledge, founders Page and Brin and CEO Schmidt, are billionaires, though it, in theory, would make them more focused on the health of the stock price. All three lost billions of dollars in the last few months as the once high flying stock tanked, though you won’t see them sweating it.
The salary/publicity stunt has been criticized as meaningless, and Valleywag has pointed out it means the super-rich taking the salary are contributing six cents to help Social Security and one penny for Medicare, meaning that none of their mega-riches are going to help those served by important government programs.
How To Always Get Higher Quality Videos From YouTube
Now that YouTube is offering videos in different qualities and choosing for you automatically the best one for your connection, you may feel like you are missing out and not getting the best version every time. Turns out there’s a new preference option under Account > Video Playback Quality that lets you tell YouTube to always play higher quality videos, never do it, or keep deciding what’s best for you. Use this new power with great care, young one.
Google Sky Makes It Into Google Maps
Google Sky, a pretty cool but almost forgotten feature in Google Earth, where users could see the constellations and multiple star layers in Earth, is now available in your web browser. Just head to sky.google.com and you’ll get a tricked out version of Google Maps with much of the features of Sky in Google Earth, though I just can’t figure out if the cool time slider is there. While this pales in comparison to Microsoft’s in-development WorldWide Telescope project, it’s light and easy and available now, so check it out.
Google Book Search Gets API Google has released an API for Google Book Search, letting application developers query Book Search and return if a book is available in Book Search and if it has a scanned copy. Using this, some interesting mashups can be created, like a site that shows you if a book is available in your library, available to read online at Google, or showing you how to purchase it at Amazon.
MapQuest Offers Unlimited API
While MapQuest, purely on name and longevity alone, is still in some areas the number one mapping site on the net, it is certainly losing the battle among power users and critics to newer services like Google Maps and the like. One way MapQuest could distinguish itself and show off the abilities of recent upgrades would be to get mashup developers to start using its API, and a recent announcement may help. MapQuest is now letting API developers have unlimited free use of the API.
While Google and its ilk limit use of their API to certain number of views or users per day, MapQuest’s API is both without limits and without costs, making it in some ways the only option now available for super-popular mashups. MapQuest’s API comes with many popular or unique features, including aerial/hybrid views, smooth zoom transitions, a Google Earth-like Globe View, speed and friction settings (possibly perfect for iPhone flicking), and advanced shape overlays. If, in order to avoid API key errors, enough mashups make the switch, users could start noticing that MapQuest is getting a lot better these days.
The Weather Channel has been added as a mapplet to Google Maps, letting you click to display weather data in any Google Map. You can add it by going to MyMaps in Google Maps, and browsing the content directory for The Weather Channel Interactive Weather Layers to activate it. Now, whenever you use Google Maps, you’ll have the option on the MyMaps tab to use the layer to view current temperatures, cloud cover, weather radar in the U.S., and have points of interest flagged for you.
In addition, Google has chosen the Weather Channel to provide weather data to Google Earth, with a Weather Channel layer available at all times in the Google Earth sidebar.
(via Loren)
As always, Google search is the big boy, with Google Images the only other vertical that performs spectacularly. However, strong growth in Google Maps and Gmail mean that the two have a shot of breaking out of the pack and joining those two.
In the third tier are Google News and Google Video, one growing slightly, one sinking slightly. Guess moving around Video and changing its focus every few months hurt Video, though not as much as you’d expect. The fourth tier has Books, Earth and Groups, which enjoyed moderate growth, Scholar, which sank 32% due to neglect, and iGoogle, which exploded and grew over 250%. iGoogle is Google’s success story for the year, which is great news for the struggling personalized homepage product category and Google’s Gadget developer ecosystem.
There are the also-rans at the bottom, including Blog Search, the Google Directory (shockingly still popular than many of the others), Google Talk (most neglected product of the year), Calendar and Finance. Google Product Search is Google’s biggest failure, losing 73% of its users from when it was Froogle. A year ago, Froogle had a good ten million unique visitors and a nice brand name, now it has maybe two million and two generic names. Google killed Froogle, and hurt itself badly with this one.
Missing from this list is another Google success story, Google Reader. This suggests that Reader, while disrupting the RSS market, is too small to make the list, or that comScore screwed up (since we know Reader had a ton of growth). Also: No Google Apps or Google Docs, no Blogger or YouTube or SketchUp or Desktop.
It’s important to note that, of the 17 Google products listed, the only ones being monetized are Web Search (#1), Gmail (#3), Google Maps (#4) and Product Search (to a very small extent). Not making any money are Images (#2), News (#5), Video (#6), Earth (for the most part), Groups, Books, iGoogle, Scholar, and any of the others. Google would love to monetize Images, News and Video, but the amount of content it doesn’t own in there makes it damn near impossible to do so and not get sued.
Google and NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) are joining together to use Google Maps and Google Earth on Christmas to track Santa Claus as he goes around the world delivering gifts. YouTube is involved somehow too, plus there’s an iGoogle Gadget, and from now until then you can go to noradsanta.com to play a different Flash game every day. Today’s game involves playing Jingle Bells by hitting specific bells in order (pictured above).
Santa maintains a huge list of children who have been good throughout the year. The list even includes addresses, ZIP codes and postal codes. The list, of course, gets bigger each year by virtue of the world’s increasing population. This year’s population right now is 6,634,570,959!
Santa has had to adapt over the years to having less and less time to deliver his toys. If one were to assume he works in the realm of standard time, as we know it, clearly he would have perhaps two to three ten-thousandths of a second to deliver his toys to each child’s home he visits!
The fact that Santa Claus is more than 15 centuries old and does not appear to age is our biggest clue that he does not work within time, as we know it. His Christmas Eve trip may seem to take around 24 hours, but to Santa it could be that it lasts days, weeks or months in standard time. Santa would not want to rush the important job of bringing Christmas happiness to a child, so the only logical conclusion is that Santa somehow functions on a different time and space continuum.
Questions for Santa
As you know, this is Santa’s busiest time of the year. But if it’s really important, click here to send Santa an email. His elves, Chuckles and Buckley, will be sure he gets your mail!
Reads like a solid CIA dossier. There’s also a solid “Is He Real?” page.
KFC, a popular fast food chicken joint, decided to do a giant version of their iconic Colonel Sanders logo, built exactly where they knew Google Earth’s satellites would be going overhead. As you can see in the video above, they assembled the 325-foot tall banner in the Nevada desert last year, and you can view it now with this KMZ link in Google Earth.
(via SELand)
Google Earth added a new layer, which shows you live weather conditions over the globe. You get to see cloud cover (which makes the virtual globe a lot more realistic) plus radar and conditions and forecasts layers, all available now under the Weather folder in your Layers control. There’s also an animated layer of the last 24 hours of cloud data and last 6 hours of radar data that you can get by plugging in the KML files I just linked to.
One cool thing: When you are on the ground, or at least zoomed below the cloud layer, when you look up you’ll see the clouds above you, not straight out into space. That’s really realistic, and I love it. You should just turn on the cloud layer all the time for a better Google Earth experience.
They’ve also re-organized the layers control to make it easier to navigate. Now, most everything is organizaed into folders and sub-folders, so you can activate everything in a category or drill down to get most specific.
Google is going to announce today a partnership with Multiverse Network, maker of virtual world platforms (like Second Life), that will let anyone create a virtual 3D environment using Google Earth terrain and Google SketchUp 3D models. Using the technology, you could grab an area from Google Earth, like the Grand Canyon, and populate it with your favorite landmarks, tossing in the Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower and Wrigley Field, creating a unique 3D world quickly and more easily than ever before.
The article also discusses SceneCaster, a new feature that allows the creation of 3D “scenes” in SketchUp that can be uploaded to the 3D Warehouse and embedded in blogs, Facebook pages or shared to Flickr. The article is not clear of the exact implementation of the Multiverse 3D virtual world product, or even if it will be free (though it appears it will), but it does say that each virtual world can have up to 1,000 users running around, which should make it fun to use as soon as we get our hands on it.
(via Ogle Earth)
The Navy is embarking on a $600,000 alteration of meaningless barracks facility near San Diego, changing the look of the 40-year old building so it no longer resembles a swastika. Because of the availability and popularity of Google Maps, Google Earth, and other satelite maps services, people noticed the shape of the building, which matches the logo of the Nazi party, causing a mini and constly uproar that otherwise would never have happened.
The Navy said officials noted the buildings’ shape after the groundbreaking in 1967 but decided against changing it at the time because it wasn’t obvious from the ground. Aerial photos made available on such services as Windows Live and Google Earth in recent years have since revealed the buildings’ shape to a wide audience.
On the one hand, the building’s shape is unusual but efficient, and not that big a deal, and they could have just ignored it. On the other hand, if we can get the swastika building changed, perhaps we can start cleaning up all the buildings left behind by the Freemasons before their strange architecture begins confusing our Thetan masters.
USA Today has a fascinating article about how some police in Wisconsin used Google Earth to locate some pot a marijuana farmer was growing. Mostly, they just used Earth to find the location of some GPS coordinates the pot farmer was locating, but it makes you wonder if Earth can be used to eventually locate drugs all over the globe so the peddlers of those drugs can be found and their crops destroyed. Google Drugs Search? Maybe.
A cool thing was found in the newest version of Google Earth (the one that comes with all the new space features). If you click on the planet and press CTRL+ALT+A, you get to start up a flight simulator and fly around the globe. While moving around Google Earth has always been fun, hopping in the cockpit of an F16 or SR22 prop plane can be a completely different kind of exciting.
Controlling the plane is by no means easy. If you don’t have a joystick or gamepad, you may not be able to do it at all. Pressing a key to turn is very sensitive, and for the most part sends the plane spinning out of control. You can either work on leveling the plane or work on heading to a destination, not both. In other words, find a gamepad and just do it that way.
If you need help, consult this list of keyboard controls. Spacebar pauses (very important), G retracts the landing gear. Stick to turning with the rudder, not the ailerons, by using SHIFT+the arrow keys. You can also try left-clicking and using mouse controls. I managed to get my speed up to 840 miles per hour and my altitude as high as 41,300 feet. How high can you get it?
I’m not sure if I really understand what it does, but Unype is an application that links up Skype and Google Earth. I think it lets you browse the world with a Skype buddy, and there’s also a Facebook/Google Maps application. Check it out and let me know what you think
(via Andy Beal)
Google Earth added a really cool feature, turning the satellite camera around and looking to the stars. You’ll need to install the latest version of Google Earth, which has a button on the toolbar to activate the new feature. The button will switch you to the view of the sky above your current location, so you can see the sky above your home (though probably without the environmental and light pollution that normally gets in the way.
When looking at the sky, you can activate various layers and zoom in on them as you would if you, too, had a mega-billion dollar space telescope. Layers include constellations (which maps them out for you), “backyard astronomy”, the Hubble showcase (which overlays better images from Hubble in some areas with bubbles for more info), the moon and the planets (which has a time slider so you can actually see them orbiting over a three month period), a user’s guide to the galaxy (what, no Hitchhiker’s Guide?), and the life of a star.
There’s so much more to Sky than what meets the eye. After you download the new Google Earth, check out our Google Earth Gallery for fascinating examples of natural phenomena, Asteroids, or just take a tour of the sky. Since people across the world all share the same sky, we’re happy to announce we’ll be making Sky available in 13 languages.
UPDATE: Here’s another video Google made, featuring Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, talking about the new feature:
Google Earth has a new layer for Google Book Search. Turn on the layer and there will be placemarks all over the globe related to Book Search results for that area. Click on the placemark and you’ll see a snippet from the book and links to find out more. In Google’s example, a placemark will be found in Detroit for “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, linking to a part of the book where he discusses Detroit.
Things I learned today: You can type a blog post with your eyes closed while you are napping. Just make sure to spell check afterwards.
Google uploaded this video to their YouTube account showing how game designer Matt Harding has been using Google Earth to show where’s he been around the world (dancing, apparently):
Catching up: I had a crazy week, with me and my wife going on a short wedding anniversary vacation, one of my best friends getting married, and my aunt and her family moving forever to another continent. There’s a lot of stuff filling up the queue, so we’re going to go through it double time
Google Acquires Aerial Image Firm, ImageAmerica
Google bought another company, this time ImageAmerica, an aerial imagery company. ImageAmerica provided the high-res imagery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and can be used to provide high quality imagery of any area in a hurry, an excellent boon for Google Earth/Maps. They’ve got a “Beech Starship” aircraft that can get into an area quickly, get high, fly fast and with great stability, and get great images for Google to use.
Google Maps Now Shows Popular Searches
Google Maps has a new feature that shows the popular searches for a particular area. Search for a city, town, state, or whatever, and you’ll find out what people are searching for in that area. For example, I know that in my area, people are looking for:
subway station
map quest
car service
laguardia airport
lirr
elmhurst hospital
new york hall of science: administration
st johns university
flushing meadow park
While popular searches in Manhattan are:
penn station
port authority
duane reade
bloomingdales
w hotel
madison square garden
moma
car service
soho
YouTube Antipiracy Tool Coming This September
Google is expected to finally release YouTube’s antipiracy system this September, 10 months after buying the company, and many months after getting sued by Viacom and watching competitors take similar major measures at stopping the widespread uploading of copyrighted material. The technology will fingerprint videos so it can recognize when a previously deemed infringing video is uploaded again, and will allow copyright holders to embed a digital fingerprint in videos so the system will never let them be uploaded.
This couldn’t come a moment too soon. Google Video, which shares some of the same infrastructure as YouTube (when watching YouTube videos, I’ve seen them streaming from video.google.com) and presumably will share the same antipiracy system, is a hotbed of piracy. My wife and I have gotten some movies still in theaters from Google Video, something we normally never bother with, because it’s too damn easy to find.
Google Using Community To Grow Indian Maps
Google has decided that the best way to get good maps of India is to ask the locals for help. They’ve sent out GPS kits to some Indians, asking for their assistance in creating more accurate maps of the area, comparing the multiple data points for verification. The program has done 50 cities, complete with driving directions, using the GPS and special software that allows users to literally draw the roads on top of the satellite imagery.
DoubleClick Running Illegal AdWords Ads
Looks like future Google unit DoubleClick has been running some AdWords campaigns that break the terms of service. DoubleClick is running ads on Google search targeted to the term “AdBrite”, a competing web advertising company, actually using the competitor’s trademarked term in the ad copy. While Google has been embroiled in lawsuits protecting the advertiser’s right to target trademarked terms, it clearly bans the use of those terms in the ad itself. Someone should tell DoubleClick.
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
Catching up: I had a crazy week, with me and my wife going on a short wedding anniversary vacation, one of my best friends getting married, and my aunt and her family moving forever to another continent. There’s a lot of stuff filling up the queue, so we’re going to go through it double time
Google Reader Adds Popout For Video & Audio
Google Reader added a smart thing to its media preview, which lets you listen to enclosed audio files or watch embedded video without downloading the file by playing it in a Google Flash player. Since you might want to keep reading your Google Reader while listening to a podcast, you can now hit up a “Popout” link to keep the Flash player going in a new window while you do your business back in Reader. It works for enclosures with podcasts, video, supposedly even YouTube videos.
Google Earth Adds NASA, Night Layers
Ionut Alex reports that Google Earth now has three new layers, courtesy of NASA. Possibly the most interesting is one that shows the Earth at night, letting you see the intensity of light produced by major cities. Also, there are now layers that show photos of the Earth taken by astronauts, and satellite imagery of major geographic phenomena, like the Indian tsunami. Just open up Google Earth to check them out.
Google Personalizing Your Ads
Google has started doing a smart thing, personalizing ads based on your recent behavior. That means that when you run a search, Google will see how it relates to your immediate recent searches, and if it finds a connection, it will present ads based on that. That means Google is usingsome intelligence and providing a unique set of ads on Google search based on your activity, different ads than anyone else would see. Pretty cool.
Google Kills Click-To-Call Feature
Google has stopped offering the click-to-call feature in Google Maps, which would let you click in the search results to initiate a call to a local business. The feature, which involves you clicking on a button in any Maps search result, then entering your phone number, was rife with abuse, as pranksters used it to have local businesses called by their unsuspecting friends (nothing forced you to enter your real personal number), and the phone bill costs to Google probably outweighed any usefulness.
See If You Can Beat The Googol Conglomerate
Google ran a big puzzle competition all over its campus recently, and puzzlemaster Wei-Hwa Huang has posted the puzzles for you to solve. These are meant to be damn hard and solved by teams of very smart people, so be prepared for some tough work if you take this on. They’ve tried to recreate the conditions of the original competition as best as possible, but hacking the JavaScript will spoil it for you, and the original competitors couldn’t do that, so play fair.
