New Google Toolbar
Google Toolbar 3 is now available in beta, and it adds three new features: in-page spell-checking, translating, and mapping. Here are more details on the new features, from the Help page:
New! AutoLink
The online review of a great new restaurant has the place’s address but no map. You could type the restaurant’s street, city, and ZIP code
into the search box, but why bother, when clicking the Toolbar’s AutoLink button will automatically create a link to an online
map (US addresses only)? AutoLink can also link package tracking numbers to delivery status, VIN numbers (US) to vehicle history,
and publication ISBN numbers to Amazon.com listings.
New! WordTranslator
Ever need to translate words on English web pages into another language? Don’t bother looking up words one by one - just hover your mouse cursor
over an English word and Toolbar’s WordTranslator will tell you what it means in your own language. WordTranslator currently supports translation
from English into Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, German and Spanish.
New! SpellCheck
ARe yu a raelly bad tyipsst? Google Toolbar’s new SpellCheck button finds any spelling mistakes whenever you type into a web form, including
web-based email, discussion forums, and even intranet web applications. The AutoFix option even corrects all of your text with
a single click.
John Battelle talked to Google’s Marissa Mayer, who said that Google’s consumer software should spend less time in beta than its web apps (cough*GDS*cough), so this version of the toolbar should be the default as soon as any bugs have been worked out. Also, expect Froogle and Google News to leave beta very soon. Here’s how he describes the new features:
1. SpellChecker. This feature moves Google’s “Did you mean” concept from search results to the toolbar. For any web form (ie Hotmail, or any web-based input) you can now get spell checking courtesy Google’s algorithms. Cool.2. AutoLink.The Toolbar will not automatically make US addresses appearing on web pages into URLs which are linked to Google Maps. Again, cool.
3. WordTranslator. This nifty feature translates any English word on a page into any of 8 other languages. Mayer said this would be a sought after feature for international users who use English as a second language.
Gary Price explains what the Autolinking feature can recognize, including addresses, package tracking numbers, ISBNs and VINs.
The new toolbar is more graphically fun looking and less serious than the last one. The Autolink feature seems cool, but I’ll have to see if I ever use it. This toolbar contains the same problem as the old ones: the News button takes you to Google News, instead of letting you search Google News. Why aren’t we allowed to search News, but we can search the Thesaurus?
Now where’s the Firefox toolbar?
Comment by Jason | February 16, 2005
Tell me about it, I can’t wait until Google stops ignore firefox like this.
Comment by badrad | February 17, 2005
I realized why Google has not come out with an official toolbar for Firefox. I wrote up an analysis of the situation at my site. Really there are so many nice products out there that Google can focus on winning over IE users and possibly come out with an official Firefox toolbar sometime in the future.
Comment by Jason | February 18, 2005
The latest Google toolbar has no “dictionary” function! Previously, you wrote about Google possibly switching from dicitonary.com to answers.com, but what’s up with dropping the function all together?!?!?
Comment by Don | February 20, 2005
The U.S. copyright office permits the registration of websites.
But registration is not necessary to obtain a copyright.
Copyright is automatic on publication.
Adding links or content to a website without the author’s consent violates U.S. copyright law and is a federal criminal offense.
Comment by H9T | February 28, 2005