InsideGoogle

Sergey Brin's Father, Michael Brin

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 14:42:51 +0000

Microsoft's Phillip Su offers a glimpse into the man who sired Google founder Sergey Brin, his father Michael, whose classes he took back at the University of Maryland. You can see a bit of Google in Sergey's dad, especially the tendency to use brilliant vexing puzzles.

Findory Lets You Pick Favorites

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 06:45:31 +0000

Findory has a new feature called Favorites that lets you pick the blog and news sources you like best. Your Favorites become permanent influencers of Findory's personalized results, giving you more results like those. You can select InsideGoogle as a favorite by clicking this on the profile page:

Or InsideMicrosoft:

Or Apple Watch:

Or Business Bits:

Or technovations:

Or Society Junto:

Or the Independent Film blog:

Yeah, you read right, ladies and gents. Blog News Channel has a brand spanking new seventh blog, this one all about independent films, and written by fellow Marqui blogger and all-around talented guy Richard Murray. And if I might say, it is one spiffy looking blog. We'll be adding it to the front page as soon as we can add it to the database. Visit it at indies.blognc.com.
(via Greg Linden and Search Engine Watch)

Mark Jen Answers Another "Pressing" Question

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 03:08:20 +0000

Mark Jen explains in his blog where the AdSense ads came from that we noticed a little while ago:

which reminds me, in case any of you out there were wondering, i took out those google adwords ads promoting this blog. i did it so i could get a jump start on getting to know the google ads system. it was one of those start-up assignments you get at a new job where you are supposed to familiarize yourself with the product.

Pretty good idea for checking out the system from the customer's perspective and kind of "kicking the tires. I wonder if that's standard Google job training, or something he brought to the table.

I like Mark, and I like his blog, but for his own well-being, I'd rather he just found some job and got back to work. Everyone who's worked with him says he's a good guy and a good worker, and hopefully he'll be back behind a desk soon enough.
(via Blogoscoped)

Google Developing Collaborative Software?

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:27:57 +0000

Phillip Lensen reports that a source close to Google has told him Google is developing collaborative software that would allow users on different computers to perform tasks together.

Google Extranet Service?
A source close to Google told me Google is working on an extranet service with a Gmail-like interface. The new collaboration software would allow users to upload files, get on the same page together, view thumbnails, perform massive searching, assign tasks to each other and more. I do not have further information yet, nor do I know if this is true, but I emailed Google and will post updates here.

I know Phillip has good sources, but why would Google do this? What does this have to do with organizing the world's information? Otherwise, what would you call the service?

Happy Valentine's Day From Google

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 13:56:41 +0000

Today is Valentine's Day, when you are supposed to honor your loved ones. I think Google loves its customers, since it's presenting us all with this romantic logo:

This via Google's David Krane, who says:

Got a doodle idea of your own you'd like to see Dennis create for our home page? Send mail to: doodle@google.com

Also, Google Blogoscoped informs that Froogle has a logo too:

*cough*buy chocolates*cough*

UPDATE: Thanks to Zorgloob, its the Gmail Valentine's logo:

More to come? Who knows!

Take A Look At My Marqui Site

Sun, 13 Feb 2005 03:27:56 +0000

This post sponsored by Marqui

Apparently, I am now the CEO and sole employee of "National Corp". Check out our company site. Of course, this is my Marqui demo site, but I'm still going to fantasize about my 2002 quarterly dividend, and my listing on the S&P 500. Wow, I have 4400 employees. And of course, you can get a National Visa card, pictured at right.

But, lets be honest. We all know National Corp is just a front for the Russian mob, intent on conquering the corporate world by murdering the CEOs of our competitors. Who are our competitors, you ask? Anyone who tries to sell tampons, of course.

You may laugh now, but soon, Tampax will be no more!

All seriousness aside (yes, I wrote that correctly), I'd like to issue a news release. Any suggestions? If you've wanted to test out Marqui's software, send me a "job application" and I'll set you up as my "public relations manager", at least after you fetch my "coffee".

Hacking Google Maps

Sun, 13 Feb 2005 00:44:10 +0000

Lots of little hacks are popping up for Google's new mapping service.

Zmarties has a bookmarklet to show lattitude and longtitude, displaying it where Google Maps normally displays its "permalink".
[link]

This page has bookmarklets that move the map along your driving directions route, effectively animating your path, one that puts a little person walking around on the map, automatic panning of the map, and loading an XML file into the page.
[link]

This one gives you a link to the Weather Underground page for that location so you can see the weather where you're going.
[link]

Show the location of a blog based on its GeoURL.
[link]

Show's satellite imagery of that location (via Blogoscoped).
[link]

Any others? I'll add them.

Yahoo Developing Blog Search Engine?

Sun, 13 Feb 2005 00:26:13 +0000

Sites are reporting that they are being visited by a new crawler, one called "Yahoo-NewsCrawler Test", which is indexing their RSS feeds. Steve Rubel has seen it in his Feedburner feed. A WebmasterWorld user has seen it in his RSS feed. You can see it in these site logs and these as well. This could point to Yahoo building a Technorati-like RSS search engine.
(via Google Blogoscoped)

Ask Jeeves Looking To Open Source Desktop Search And Firefox Tools

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 22:20:38 +0000

The Ask Jeeves blog has a little tale of a Firefox meeting that says the company is looking to do some cool things. Tuoc Luong and Jim Lanzone recently went to Mozilla.org's offices in Mountain View to talk Firefox. They discussed the possibility of open sourcing part of or all of Ask Jeeves Desktop Search. Also, Jeeves is impressed with Firefox, and wants to build functionality for the browser, and maybe even release a co-branded version of it. Both ideas are very cool. Open source desktop search would be a boon for everyone, and could be leveraged to make Jeeves Desktop Search a very good product. A co-branded Firefox browser could be a great move for the company, and Firefox addons and plugins would be just super.

Jeeves seems to be hot for Firefox. You have to believe Google is, too. Who will bring the most Firefox coolness to the table?

UPDATE: It bears mentioning that Yahoo has released a toolbar for Firefox, but not Google.

How Google Maps Works

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 18:14:37 +0000

Joel Webber disects Google Maps. Fascinating stuff, and it explains how Google thinks outside the box and makes their products run so fast.
(via Boing Boing)