The word count feature available from the Google Docs file menu has added a couple of neat features, Googlified reports. Not only does it count words, characters, paragraphs, or things like average words per sentences. It now also includes the “Flesch Reading Ease" value, a “Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Level,” as well as an “Automated Readability Index.” According to Wikipedia, which Google links from their dialog, the Flesch scores are “readability tests designed to indicate how difficult a reading passage is to understand”. Similarly, the Automated Readaibility Index (ARI for short) is “designed to gauge the understandability of a text," its output being “an approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text.”

Let’s pitch two pieces of text against each other: Simple English Wikipedia’s entry on “moon” vs normal Wikipedia’s entry for that word.

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Dave Winer of Scripting.com criticizes Google’s Feedburner acquisition:

<<When Feedburner first came online I warned that there was danger in giving so much power to one company. They argued that they were just a little company, struggling to make a go of it, and no one should fear them. Some of them even took the predictable political tactic of trashing the personality of the person raising the question. I held my ground. I’ve been around this business a long time, and I was sure their strategy was to sell to a bigger company, and I don’t trust big companies. (...)

So now someone at Google “owns” Feedburner and all their feeds. And they could, if they wanted to, change the feeds to another format, overnight, without asking anyone. Reader software might have trouble working with it. They would say “Oh but the new feeds work better with Google Reader, and that’s the one most people use.” (...)

People at Microsoft used to say that Windows isn’t ready to ship until Lotus doesn’t run. That’s not a typo.>>

Whether Feedburner will start to “prefer” Google Reader or vice versa (it may or may not happen), this issue of cross-integration will grow in scale over time, as it already grew in the past: in each of Google’s services, Google throws some weight towards other of its services. Most of these seem so natural when we think of Google’s point of view that we forget there’s any bias at all. Blogger “prefers” AdSense; Google web search “prefers” Google Finance; Picasa Web Albums “prefer” the Google Account; Gmail “prefers” Google Calendar; Gmail also “prefers” Google Spreadsheets; Orkut “prefers” Google Video and YouTube; Google web search “prefers” Google Maps; Google Products/ Froogle/ Google web search, AdWords and AdSense “prefer” Google Checkout, and so on.

[Via Techmeme. Original photo by Euan with some rights reserved.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

ImageAmerica is in the business of providing updated and new digital orthoimagery* for use in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Customers generally include city, county, state and federal government entities along with commercial enterprises.

Our digital ortho technologies provide a unique combination of benefits including wide area coverage, high resolution, National Map Accuracy Standard (NMAS) accuracy, quick delivery and low cost.

Our Beech Starship aircraft provides the perfect platform for the DDP-2 (Direct Digital Panoramic) system. Able to fly high, fast and with great stability, the aircraft allows us to optimize the camera system capability. (...)

Using ImageAmerica products, customers with existing GIS can now afford to obtain annual highly accurate updates to their ortho base maps.

If you'd like to get a quick guide to personalizing Google Maps, then the Google Maps User Guide is a good place to get you started. Learn how to create placemarks, lines, shapes, and more.

Ever since Google Maps became more customizable, I've been meaning to grok around with it - and this users guide is definitely a good jumping off point. So far, I've been able to embed photos and videos in my map of our recent Columbia Gorge trip, along with pinpointing areas we visited in Google Earth. Have you done anything zippy with Google Maps? Share in the comments.

Sergey Brin is telling employees to stop making old products and start improving new ones. "For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Looking for a bit more Google Reader "oomph"? Try fifteen Firefox hacks for Google Reader written up by Library Clips, a site that focuses on technology in libraries.

Even though I'm a diehard Bloglines fan, I found myself wavering after reading this list. You can add posts to del.icio.us, share on Facebook, blog a feed entry to your own personal blog...the list goes on and on. What's your favorite Google Reader hack? Please share in the comments.

Google’s free web album, Picasa introduces some great new features which were the top requests of Picasa Web Album users. Google’s Data API blog enumerated the new API features as follows:

• Community Search: Use the q query parameter to search through the photos of all public, searchable albums. Example: http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/all?q=penguin will find all penguin pictures
• Retrieving a user’s recently uploaded photos: You can retrieve the photos recently uploaded by a user. Example: http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/userID?kind=photo&max-results=25 will retrieve the 25 photos most recently uploaded by userID.
• Retrieving recently added comments for a particular user: You can retrieve the comments recently added to photos owned by a particular user. Example: http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/userID?kind=comment&max-results=25 will retrieve the 25 comments most recently added to photos owned by userID.
• Searching a user’s photos: You can search through all the photos belonging to a single user using the q query parameter. Example:

  http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/userID?kind=photo&q=penguin

  will find all photos owned by user userID which contain the word ‘penguin’ in the title, caption or tag.

• Filtering by tag: You can filter photos in the album feed or user feed based upon tags using the new tag query parameter. Example: http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/userID?kind=photo&tag=dog will find all photos owned by the user userID which are tagged with ‘dog’.
• Uploading non-JPEG photos: You can now upload bmp, gif, jpeg, and png photos via the API.

Can anyone tell me if there are still some people who users Picasa Web Albums to store their personal photos? I had this impression that Flickr and Zooomr are the most used and visited online public albums right now.

Just before the close of the business week, Google announces via its Lat Long Blog that it has acquired ImageAmerica, a camera maker which specializes in hi-resolution aerial imagery. ImageAmerica is the same company which featured high resolution black-and-white imagery when Katrina wreak havoc on New Orleans.

Google Earth and Maps will soon be rolling out this high-res aerial imagery in the days to come. Google is hoping to strenghten its dominance on web satellite imagery and image mapping technology. ImageAmerica is expected to enhance the depth and quality of Google Earth and Maps imagery.

Google acquired ImageAmerica, a company, as they say, building “high resolution cameras for the collection of aerial imagery.” Google hint that they expect this data to be rolled out in Google Earth/ Maps in the future. Already, ImageAmerica provided hi-res New Orleans imagery to Google following Hurricane Katrina. Image-America.com now shows the usual semi-blank “acquired” page, but Archive.org stored an older version I’ve mirrored here.

After Panoramio, PeakStream, Zenter, Feedburner, GrandCentral and Postini, this is the seventh Google acquisition just this and last month. I suppose by now, a typical Google lobby small talk starts with, “So, when were you acquired?”

[Thanks Colin Colehour, Jason, and Frank Taylor of the Google Earth Blog!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

As previously reported, Google started showing a blue box result promoting their iGoogle homepage which received a game for the Bourne Ultimatum movie. A gimmick like this blue box, which was showing for a variety of search terms like bourne ultimatum or jason bourne (some of which, but not all, have now been removed), was likely also aimed to add extra hotness to the movie – in return, Google got a product placement in the movie (someone’s seen using a Google search engine, The Hollywood Reporter informed, as “part of a promotional partnership with Google that did not involve any money changing hands"; not money, but goods, apparently).

Previously this blue box was undisclosed in whatever way (compare with Google’s official philosophy, “Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a ’Sponsored Link.’ It is a core value for Google that there be no compromising of the integrity of our results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results”). But now it carries a label reading “Google Promotion”. Which brings us to another issue of this campaign; Google previously said, calling this statement “important to note” (my emphasis):

<<[O]ur ads are created and managed under the exact same guidelines, principles, practices and algorithms as the ads of any other advertiser. Likewise, we use the very same tools and account interface. (...)

We’re quite proud of the advertising platform we’ve built and it simply makes sense for us to use it. At the same time, the trust of both our users and our advertisers is of paramount importance. We honor that responsibility, and work hard to earn and keep that trust.>>

So I asked Google how I can create this blue box thing on top, being one of the “other advertisers”, to promote my own services, using the “very same tools” they use. Google’s reply (my emphasis in bold):

<<The Bourne Ultimatum promotion is not an ad, but one of the many tests we run to provide users with opportunities to access Google products. Independent of this promotion, Universal is running paid AdWords advertisements on Google.com to promote the movie and the online game.

This is a collaboration to develop a new, more engaging form of movie promotion based on our mutual areas of expertise. Universal offers content while Google provides engaging consumer technology. For The Ultimate Search for Bourne with Google, Google built and implemented the platform and Universal Picture and Big Spaceship built the game. In general, we choose to work on projects that enhance user access to our products and services and which we feel enhance the user’s web experience. Unfortunately, we cannot comment on our specific screening criteria for potential collaborations.>>

To repeat: it’s not an ad, but a promotion, hence it doesn’t fall under the ad guidelines Google proclaimed last year. This is a very interesting way to look at it, because popular dictionaries I queried (all available at Google’s own word definition provider, Answer.com) say a “promotion” is, among other things:

• “Advertising; publicity.”
• “Single element of an advertising campaign”
• “Selling techniques, including advertising, printing, and salesperson commissions.”

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Google reported its second-quarter results yesterday, which showed rapid revenue growth and strength in its business. Unfortunately for Google, expenses rose more than analysts expected, and profits fell short of expectations.

The news sent investors scurrying in after-hours trading, according to the New York Times

"The company spent too much, as they said they might some day," Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, told the Times. "It wasn’t a bad quarter. It was a quarter where the analysts’ models need to be reset at a slightly lower level of profitability, and that hadn’t happened in a while."

Google attributed much of its overspending in the quarter to operating expenses, including payroll expenses for 1548 new hires and a revamping of its bonus plan.

"We ended up somewhat higher on our headcount expenses than we planned," CEO Eric Schmidt said on the investor call. "We will watch it, we will adjust, we will be opportunistic but we are going to be careful about that."

Google reported revenues of $3.87 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2007, an increase of 58% compared to the second quarter of 2006 and an increase of 6% compared to the first quarter of 2007.

In the second quarter of 2007 ending June 30, Google-owned sites generated $2.49 billion, 74 percent higher than the $1.43 billion gathered the same quarter of '06. Its AdSense network sites garnered $1.35 billion in Q2, a 36 percent leap over second quarter 2006.

Paid clicks revenues saw a boost, too, rising about 47 percent since the same period last year. Paid clicks represent the aggregate number of clicks related to ads served on Google sites and AdSense partner sites.

I had not realized how much detail was being put in most directory listings until I came across a site that provides about 8,000 links, but very little detail. Curtain Rising, at http://www.curtainrising.com/ , lists theatres from all over the world but it’s just a link to the theatre’s site, no additional detail that I can see.

Why am I mentioning them here then? Gravity — they have so dang MANY listings. From the front page of the site you can specify a geographical area and then get sublistings for that area. Texas had dozens and dozens of theatres listed, with apparently defunct theatres grayed and line’d out.

But the lists are just link lists, with no description. Even a basic bit of information in a mouseover would be good. Or a screenshot. SOMETHING.

Oh, there’s also material here besides lists of theatres. There’s also lists of Shakespeare festivals, sites, and texts. (These last two actually have nice descriptions to go with the links.) There’s a list of shows, but it doesn’t link back to the theatres and I can’t tell how complete it is. And there’s some pointers to forums and general theatreish stuff.

I like the site’s design and the sheer number of listings — if only for a little… more… information!