Michael Arrington  is reporting that WikiaSearch, Jimmy Wales’ much anticipated open-source search engine has actually launched, today. The closed announcement (mailed through the WikiaSearch  mailing list) stated that selected people will be allowed to get into Wikia in the next couple of days before it hits for public consumption in January 2008.

Wikia is the brain child of Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales and is aimed at establishing  a platform for the development of a new open/source search engine with user-editable search result.

Working on four organizing principles of transparency, community, quality and privacy, the Wikia Search project has been much anticipated by many the past couple of months.WikiaSearch is an ambitious project banking on the success of Wikipedia, to develop a new kind of search engine which relies on human intelligence to do what algorithms cannot.

Although, others have already gone towards the same path as where WikiaSearch is heading to, it still is interesting to follow how WikiaSearch would come up with its much talked about human-powered search engine. Will it be as successful as what Wales had done with Wikipedia? or will it just go towards the land of the forgotten web projects?

Isn’t it ironic that Google is moving towards developing its own Wikipedia while Jimmy Wales is working towards the development of his own search engine?

That’s how life goes in the search engine industry that we are all in.

Anyone who uses Picasa to touch up and manage their photos will testify that it is a wonderful piece of software. I can’t think of much that would make it even better, but maybe Google has been thinking hard enough to come up with some more really great features. In the Official Google Blog Picasa [...]

It’s not as good of a deal as the Healthy Choice pudding frequent flyer miles of 1999, but Google is serving up some of its own punch drunk loving with Double Frequent Flyer Miles on Alaska Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Midwest Airlines, Northwest Airlines, United Airlines, and US Airways for each dollar Google users spend via Google Checkout.

Spend $1 via Google Checkout and receive 2 frequent flyer miles, but the deal ends on December 31st, so US residents who are eligible for this promotion only have about 8 days left.

Not a bad deal however if you’re waiting for all of the after Christmas sales online, and this also counts for end of the year donations, so keep Google Checkout in mind as a payment option.

This post is for those who think Google is still a search engine and wonder why news sites constantly talk about new Google features while Google's homepage still looks the same. Here's a list of my favorite Google updates from this year that should be useful even if you don't use Gmail, Google Docs and you don't have a Google account.

1. Play videos from Google Search
Google lets you play videos from YouTube and Google Video directly from the search results pages. That means you can search for a song, an artist, a TV show and play videos just by clicking on "watch video". E.g.: Mika.


2. Better translations
This year, Google moved to its own statistical translation system, which provides better translations, improves faster and it's easier to scale to new languages. You can access the service if you click on "Language tools" at google.com, from translate.google.com or if you translate search results from foreign languages.

3. More recent web pages
Google indexes web pages faster so you can find them minutes after they're published. If you want to restrict your search to recent pages, there are more options in the advanced search that let you find pages first seen by Google in the past 24 hour, past week and other intervals.

4. Find geographical information
Google Maps is more than a search engine that finds local businesses, shows maps and directions. It's also useful to find content related to a certain place through mapplets or directly from the search box. Find photos, videos, books and maps from the web.


5. Free 411 in the US
GOOG-411 lets you find a local business and connect to it by calling to 1-800-GOOG-411. The service is free and doesn't have human operators.

6. Trends in search results
If you wonder what are the most interesting searches at the moment, try Google Hot Trends. The data is updated every hour and shows the queries that had the most spectacular evolution. For now, Google Hot Trends is only available for the US English version of Google.

7. Explore the sky
Google Earth 4.2 lets you switch to the sky mode and explore stars, constellations, galaxies, find information and high-resolution images.


8. Find faces in Google Image Search
You can restrict image results to faces by going to advanced search and selecting "faces" in the content types section. Google's face detection is really good and you can use this new option when searching for people.

9. Go mobile
Most Google's services have a mobile version and they should be available by going to google.com on your mobile phone (or google.com/m on your computer). There's an unified interface for iPhone, a great mobile version of Google Maps that finds your location even if you don't have GPS and a mobile YouTube.


10. Download StarOffice for free
Of course, you can always get OpenOffice, but Google lets you download for free a more business-oriented version that normally costs $70. The price is that you need to install Google Pack, collection of applications recommended by Google. You can still choose the software you want to install and it's easy to uninstall Google Pack while still keeping StarOffice.

While social bookmarking sites like del.ico.us have a lot of fans, most people aren't comfortable with publicly displaying their bookmarks. Even if many sites allow you save your bookmarks online, the integration between the services and browsers is still not very good, you have to install plug-ins and learn how to bookmark sites and manage your bookmarks.

This year, browsers started to realize that they have a great opportunity: to extend their local bookmarking services and add an online layer. The first browser that integrated this feature was the IE-based Maxthon, then Opera added a bookmark synchronization feature to its desktop and mobile clients. Now Mozilla tests a similar service called Weave, that's available as an extension for Firefox 3 Beta 2, but unlike Opera and Maxthon, Mozilla's product will be open to third-parties.

As the Web continues to evolve and more of our lives move online, we believe that Web browsers like Firefox can and should do more to broker rich experiences while increasing user control over their data and personal information. One important area for exploration is the blending of the desktop and the Web through deeper integration of the browser with online services. (...) Just like Mozilla enables massive innovation by making Firefox open on many levels, we will aim to do the same with Weave by developing an open extensible framework for services integration.

For now, Weave lets you synchronize your bookmarks and your history, but the service should be extended to other kinds of data: passwords, cookies, settings, sessions, extensions. In this limited test, the only service provider is Mozilla, but once the platform matures, we can expect to see important service providers like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft. Instead of using Google Toolbar, you'll be able to bookmark web pages to Google Bookmarks directly from Firefox.

And if other browsers support this platform, you should be able to access the same personal data in Firefox, Opera or other browsers, at home or at work, from your computer or your mobile phone.


Here are some use cases from Mozilla:

* Automatic backup and restore - Dan's hard drive has died. Like many folks, Dan had never gotten around to getting that backup solution he knew he needed. Dan feels miserable when he thinks of all the software he needs to install, the stuff he's lost, and all the account names and passwords he'll never remember. Then he realizes that his family photos, email and calendar are all hosted online, as well as all of the services he uses to manage his life: his banking, shopping, purchased music and more. With his replacement computer in hand, he installs Firefox, logs in to his Mozilla account and resumes his online life without skipping a beat.

* Personalization made portable - Myk likes to visit his Mom on weekends. He doesn't have a laptop, so he uses his mom's computer when he visits. He used to be annoyed because, though he installed Firefox on his Mom's PC, he missed having easy access to his favorite sites and RSS feeds, and having to remember all his account names and passwords. He logs into his Mozilla account and his personalized experience returns. And, just as importantly, when he logs out, all of the cookies, bookmarks and other information is cleared from his Mom's PC so that she doesn't accidentally log in to his email account or anything else he was browsing.

Hopefully, Mozilla's project will become a part of Firefox 4 and other browsers will work in a similar direction. This way, it will be easier to decide who stores your data and to have your data with you permanently.

For now, Weave is available as an experimental extension for Firefox 3 Beta 2. If you use Firefox 2 or an earlier version, you can install Firefox 3 without conflicting with your current version, but it's recommended to create a new profile. You can find more about Firefox 3 from Ars Technica, but one thing is for sure: Firefox 3 is really fast.

If you're constantly nagged by writer's block or struggle to find the motivation to start your work, the LifeClever weblog has a tip to help you get started.

Instead of launching an imposing behemoth like Microsoft Word, call up your humble email program and begin your next writing piece as a simple email...It's my favorite psychological trick for fooling the brain into thinking a writing task is less critical than it is.

In addition to being more convenient and relieving pressure, LifeClever argues that using email to begin your work helps make your writing more concise and sound more conversational.

---

Buyers can find their next home or investment property in the Northeast Florida real estate area without giving out their personal information, no hassles and using the latest Google mapping and search criteria technology. (PRWeb Dec 21, 2007) Post Comment:Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/SGFsZi1Qcm9mLUNyYXMtQ3Jhcy1UaGlyLVplcm8=

An anonymous reader writes sends us to The Register for this security news. The problem is compounded by the fact that some of the most popular Web development tools for generating SWF produce files containing the recently disclosed vulnerabilities. "Researchers from Google have documented serious vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash content which leave thousands of websites susceptible to attacks that steal the personal details of visitors. A web search reveals more than 500,000 vulnerable applets on major corporate, government and media sites. Removing the vulnerable content will require combing through website directories for SWF files and then testing them one by one. Updates in the Adobe software that renders SWF files in browsers are also likely, but they probably wouldn't quell the threat completely... No patch in sight from Adobe, that's the price to pay for depending on proprietary solutions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google News has a new section for the US elections. The elections page also includes a tabbed gadget that shows videos, news and blog posts related to your favorite candidates. While the gadget is customizable, the changes aren't persistent and don't propagate to the entire elections section.


Earlier this year, YouTube and CNN organized two debates with the presidential candidates and most of the questions were from YouTube users. Some of the candidates visited Google's headquarters and spoke with Googlers: from the eight videos, Ron Paul's conversation was the most popular.

Yahoo News has a nice dashboard with up-to-date information from polls, search queries and predictions. I wonder why Google doesn't link to Trends charts that compare the candidates.

Out of all the Google services, iGoogle saw the largest growth this year with a 267% increase according to comScore data. iGoogle is a personalized homepage where users can install “Gadgets” — anything from egg timers to interesting news feeds. iGoogle was launched May 20, 2005, and so the comparison between 2006 and [...]

An anonymous reader writes "Google has previously used coding competitions to locate top talent. In a new twist on the idea, an anonymous tech company is posting a help-wanted ad that challenges developers to find out who the company is. A little digging and text mashing reveals a website containing a Web 2.0 puzzle that makes notpron look like child's play. So, fellow developers, who is this company, and, well, what is the significance of the date '01-18-08?'" Update: 12/12 20:20 GMT by KD : Replaced link to a removed Craigslist ad with a mirror.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Columbia University teams up with Google Books. Yale has launched an online archive of free undergraduate courses. Ohio University has a new faculty experts database. Second Life CTO takes off. New Google Maps street views. The Year In Ask. Using Google Maps to catalog disc golf courses. Put your picture on a magazine cover. Cute. [...]

netbuzz brings us an update to a case we discussed earlier this month: "In a widely watched free-speech case, a New Jersey judge has upheld a blogger's right to criticize county officials anonymously. The contention of those officials was that the blogger is actually a former mayor/attorney being sued by the local government for malpractice. This comes less than a month after the Electronic Frontier Foundation began their legal efforts to shield the blogger, claiming that the subpoena for Google to release his identity was 'part of an unrelated and unauthorized campaign to embarrass or otherwise outmaneuver the Defendant.' Score one for the First Amendment."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Frequently using Google Maps for directions? Reader Pham writes in with a simple but interesting way to save time when looking up directions.

Basically, the multi-step process of going to Google [Maps], typing in an address, clicking submit, etc., can be avoided by just putting all your info directly into the URL. For example typing this works:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1683 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA

This simple observation can be coupled with Texter to speed up your searching. This kind of URL hacking isn't specific to Google Maps. You can also roll your own AutoHotkey applications to search Google, Google Maps, or any other site that allows robust URL searching. Hit the jump for the AHK code syntax.

To search Google Maps using an AutoHotkey application (start the application with ALT + 1), use the following code:

!1::
InputBox, OutputVar , Enter your location:,
if ErrorLevel
MsgBox, CANCEL was pressed.
else
Run http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%OutputVar%

To search standard Google (start the application with ALT + 2), use the following code:

!2::
InputBox, OutputVar , Enter your search criteria:,
if ErrorLevel
MsgBox, CANCEL was pressed.
else
Run http://www.google.com/search?q=%OutputVar%

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Saturday 22 December 2007. 00:50:00

The US First Amendment right to free speech prevails

ON FRIDAY, a New Jersey Superior Court judge quashed a subpoena seeking the identity of an anonymous blogger. Known only by the pseudonym "daTruthSquad" on Google's Blogspot service, the blogger was strongly critical of local government in Manalapan township....

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Internet search giant Google unveils software it hopes will power a variety of future mobile phone handsets.

'Tis the season to be jolly, and to spend more time with family and friends than in your feedreader. If Lifehacker's unread post count threatens to take up too much holiday time, turn down the volume by subscribing to our Top Stories feed, a handful of our best posts each day. Alternately, grab our one hit 'o Lifehacker a day Feature stories feed, or get a digest of the week's best posts once on Fridays with the Highlights feed. This week's best posts include:

• Lifehacker's 2007 Guide to Free Software and Webapps
  "Throughout Lifehacker's archive of over 14,000 posts, we've mentioned hundreds of free web and desktop apps that help you get things done—but which are the best? Find out here."
• The 23 Best iTunes Add-ons
  "It's time you take iTunes to the next level."
• Find Secret Amazon Discounts with DealLocker
  "Search for and locate incredible Amazon discounts with DealLocker's secret Amazon Discount service."
• Practicing Simplified GTD
  "Whenever I talk to someone who knows anything about Lifehacker, whether it's a reader or a journalist, this question is inevitable: 'Do you follow Getting Things Done?' My answer is always a whole-hearted 'Sorta.'"
• Slim Down and Speed Up Linux
  "While Linux is pretty efficient with a computer's resources out of the box, there are still ways you can make it run leaner and meaner on your desktop."
• Firefox 3.0 Beta Take Two Even Better
  "We already walked you through the first beta of Firefox's next major version 3.0, and today Mozilla released beta 2 for download by willing testers and impatient 'fox users."
• Launchy 2.0 Adds Polish, Easier Configuration
  "Windows only: Open source keyword launcher Launchy grows up a little with a 2.0 release."
• Lifehacker Zeitgeist 2007
  "2007's been another fantastic year here at Lifehacker, and in case you've missed any of it, today we've got the highlights reel in the spirit of the Google Zeitgeist."
• Organize Your Money in 2008 with Wesabe
  "With Wesabe's plethora of features, open source mindset, and strong community backing, it's the perfect money management app for my needs."

No patch anytime soon

Researchers from Google and a well-known security firm have documented serious vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash content which leave tens of thousands of websites susceptible to attacks that steal the personal details of visitors.…

Ponca City, We Love You writes "More than twice as many Americans googled themselves in 2006 than five years previous — and many are googling their friends and romantic interests as well, according to a report released ecently by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The survey shows that the percentage of US adult Internet users who have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine has more than doubled in the past five years (pdf) from 22 percent in August, 2001 to 47 percent in December, 2006. Only 3 percent of internet self-googlers say they Google themselves regularly, 22 percent say 'every once in a while,' and three-quarters say they have googled themselves once or twice. The original report, 'Digital Footprints,' contains many more interesting observations (pdf)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's so much Google in Remember The Milk, a popular task management service, that you may wonder why Google didn't acquire it. Remember The Milk has a simple interface, can show your tasks inside Google Calendar, Gmail, iGoogle, and makes your tasks available offline thanks to Google Gears.

The integration with Gmail is available only in Firefox (through an extension) and only in the new version of Gmail. "Remember The Milk for Gmail is a Firefox extension that allows you to manage your tasks in Gmail (complete, postpone, and edit tasks), add new tasks (and connect them with your emails, contacts, and Google Calendar events), automatically add tasks for starred messages or specific labels, and much more!" So you can add events to Calendar directly from Gmail, you can flag messages for follow-up and see which tasks are connected with a certain contact. You can also create tasks every time you star or label a message and let RTM to auto-complete tasks using names from your contact list or Google Calendar events.


"It happens to be the product that inspired us when we started building RTM back in 2004 -- that's right, the one and only Gmail. We've always thought it would be incredibly cool if you could manage your tasks alongside your mail -- and have your tasks know what's on your calendar and who your contacts are too," explained RTM's blog.

And Remember The Milk fits great in the landscape by using visual elements from Gmail Chat, Google Reader, by using even small features from Gmail (like undo) and creating a section for tasks in the settings. This is definitely the service that has the best integration with Google services and it looks so good in Gmail that it should be a part of Google's mail application.

The main complaint about using the otherwise-excellent Google Apps For Your Domain is that Google rolls out new features (like colored labels) to vanilla Gmail accounts sooner than GAfyD accounts. But not any more? Eagle-eyed reader Limekiller spotted a checkbox in the GAfyD settings labeled Turn on new application features to my domain before they are rolled out to all Google Apps customers. According to the big G, you check that baby and your GApps account gets new features at the same time they're rolled out to non-domain Google services.

I just checked off the box in both my GApps accounts and alas, no colored labels yet. But this might be the thing that speeds up those features' appearance. To opt into new features early, from the GApps Dashboard, go into Domain Settings' General tab and check off the magic box. Thanks, Limekiller!

You already know how to set up an online "personal nerve center" (PNC), bookmarking, blogging, and scheduling tasks and calendar events from Gmail. But if web-only central storage feels too far away in the cloud for you, PNC user Steve Rubel details how to make a portable, offline version that you can sync to the cloud, take with you and back up as well using IMAP and Gmail. I like the idea of email as the central hub of one's doings—heck, it already is for most of us—and IMAP in Gmail makes that even more possible.

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Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....

One of the best parts of getting a new computer for the holidays—other than that new computer smell—is setting up a fresh, clean system exactly how you want it. Your customized productivity apps, your favorite media players, and maybe even some of the software tools you've seen on one blog or another.

But searching out, click-click-click-installing, and keeping all those programs updated in Windows can add up to some serious time. We've covered automation apps like InstallPad and AppSnap, and updating tools such as FileHippo, but I've found that Appupdater, a Linux-like command line tool, can handle both functions, automatically, with just a little tapping in the command line.

Follow along after the jump and we'll get started on keeping a number of ultra-useful Windows programs up to date and making them easy to load on a new system.

Note: Appupdater is a free, open source program maintained entirely by one man, Neil McNab, who provided gracious guidance for this walk-through. It's technically in beta at the moment, and while it likely won't mess anything up on your system, it shouldn't be installed on a machine with sensitive data, just to be safe.

I'll start off by showing how to install Appupdater and keep a working computer updated. If you just want to set up a freshly-installed system, skip down to the section labeled "Create your applications list."

Installing and updating

The first thing you'll need to do is grab and install the latest version of the Appupdater program. Make sure to keep the "Windows Service" and "Add to System Path" boxes checked—they make running Appupdater easier and let it check for updates once a day (at 2 a.m. by default, but we can change that later). That's all you need to start scheduled updating, but let's get a bit more familiar with this tool.

Head to your Windows command prompt (usually by typing "cmd" into the "Run" box in XP or the "Start Search" field in Vista). Once there, enter this command:

appupdater --update

This searches your system to see what compatible programs are installed and checks with an updated file hosted at the creator's web site to see if newer versions are available. If so, your next step is to run a similar command:

appupdater --upgrade

This will set your system to downloading and installing newer versions of any apps needing an upgrade.

Appupdater also lets you install programs individually from the command line. Whether this is faster for you than downloading and installing an executable depends on your feelings toward that blinking prompt. To install the Opera browser, for instance, you would enter:

appupdater --install=Opera

Use quotes for programs with two names, like "Google Earth".

If you leave your computer on all the time, Appupdater will keep you up to date automatically, running those "--update" and "--upgrade" commands at 2 a.m. every day. To change that time, you could either load the graphical version of the program (appupdaterw.exe, in Appupdater's folder) and change the value in Tools->Options->Index Hour, or open the config-sample.txt file, change the "INDEX_HOUR=" value and re-save the file as appupdater.ini. Or, if you're familiar with Windows' built-in scheduling programs, you could simply have it run the twin commands whenever you'd like.

Create your applications list

If you're starting fresh with a new system and you know the programs you want installed, fire up a text editor (Notepad works fine) and cruise to the list of supported applications. Type or copy-paste just the names of programs as they appear, one per line, and save the file as myapps.txt or whatever you'd like.

You can also set up a system with the same programs you have on another computer. There's a bug in the latest version that blocks an easy list creation tool, but there's a work-around. Open a new command window and run this line:

appupdater --list

With the command window still open, right-click inside the window, select "Mark," then use the mouse cursor to select just the left-hand list of program names. Now hit either Ctrl+C or right-click on the window title bar and choose Edit->Copy to grab the app names (here's more on that). Paste the text into an editor, adjust as needed, save it as a text file and you're on your way.

Setting up a new system

All you need to get a new system auto-installing your favorite apps is the text file you just created and the ability to download Appupdater again. If you really wanted, however, you could run Appupdater from a portable drive—just copy the program folder whole from a computer (after installation) onto the device. Either way, copy your text file onto the new machine, open a command prompt and navigate to where you put it. If you placed it on your desktop in XP, for example, type:

cd c:\Documents and Settings\Your Username\Desktop

Once you're there and ready to start installing, type the following command (substituting the name of your file):

appupdater --load=filename.txt

That's it—Appupdater will quietly go about installing everything. You can also perform this function from the graphical version, but it requires clicking through each of the programs' install screens, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Lifehacker Pack, Appupdater version

Much like Gina did in her InstallPad feature, I'm throwing together a few of the Lifehacker team's favorite apps in an easy-to-install text file for Appupdater. Download the list and run the same "--load" command as above to get a stiff shot of great apps. If you have some of them already installed, don't worry—Appupdater will skip them and head for the new ones.

Lifehacker pack

• 7-Zip (multi-format compression utility)
• Audacity (All-purpose audio editing)
• Firefox (Extensible browser)
• Google Earth (3D maps and search)
• IrfanView (Light and fast image viewing/editing)
• Notepad ++ (Code-friendly text editor)
• Pidgin (tabbed, multi-protocol IM client)
• Thunderbird (email client)
• VLC (all-purpose media player)

Appupdater uses a dynamic XML file, or repository, maintained by its creator to stay up to date. It isn't perfect, but it allows you to stop worrying about whether you're missing an upgrade (and avoid groan-inducing pop-up reminders). The best part is that it runs silently in the background, installing all the programs you want so you can spend time tweaking and discovering the coolest parts of your system.

Got your own new system building techniques or time-savers? Written your own uber-efficient script? Let's hear about it in the comments!

Kevin Purdy is an associate editor for Lifehacker who won't have to shun his family to install applications this Christmas. His weekly feature appears every Friday on Lifehacker.

Kayak.com announced today the completion of a $196 financing round, which they will use to complete a merger with SideStep Inc. and to pursue a more aggressive global expansion. With the merger of Kayak.com and SideStep.com, ‘the world’s first travel search site’, they will have created the world’s 5th largest travel brand.

Both Kayak and SideStep are meta travel sites, and search hundreds of other travel websites including airlines, hotels, and sites such as Orbitz.com. The overlap of users between Kayak and SideStep is just around 10%, according to Kayak.

Combined, Kayak and SideStep will be a powerful force. Together they have more monthly unique visitors than Priceline, every airline except Southwest, and every hotel and rental car brand. It is estimated that consumers will conduct more than 33 million searches on Kayak.com and its affiliates in January 2008, which double their 16 million searches in January 2007. (more…)

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While most of you are pumped for the holidays next week, bear in mind that those of us at Search Engine Roundtable will be caffeinated and toiling away at ensuring that you're not kept out of the loop for anything....

In a pro-Big Media trend by government regulatory agencies, Google was just handed a huge Christmas present by the FTC, which voted 4 to 1 to approve the $3 Billion Google acquisition of DoubleClick. The FTC determined that there is enough competition in the online advertising space to let Google control a very large chunk of the marketplace, especially since Google competitors like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo have taken a similar route in securing their part of the Internet advertising world.

According to the LA Times, Microsoft was one of the largest companies lobbying against the DoubleClick acquisition.

The FTC ruled that Google and DoubleClick are not both focused on the same parts of the Internet advertising market, which is expected to bring in $28 billion in revenue next year.

The FTC did however express concerns about privacy issues in the search and Internet advertising market, since companies like Google and their competition track various person and behavioral web surfing trends to serve the most precise advertising that they can. (more…)

Seems there is a trojan out there that can replace Google AdWords with other ads, according to BitDefender. The bug is loaded when a person visits an infected website and the malware attaches itself to a user's computer.

Then when they surf a publishing site that displays AdWords the ads are replaced by similiar looking ones from other advertisers.

"The threat, which is identified by BitDefender as Trojan.Qhost.WU, modifies the infected computers' Hosts file (a local storage for domain name / IP address mappings, which is consulted before domain name servers and is considered authoritative).

The modified file contains a line redirecting the host "page2.googlesyndication.com" which should point to an IP of the form 6x.xxx.xxx.xxx to a different address, of the form 9x.xxx.xxx.xxx, so that the infected machines' browsers read ads from server at the replacement address rather than from Google," BitDefender noted.

Most of the data from Google's social network orkut wasn't included in search results because orkut requires authentications to see profile pages. Now Google intends to index the information from user profiles and show it in search results as an OneBox.

"Some orkut profiles will appear in Google search results as an orkut OneBox. A OneBox is a summary of your orkut profile, including key details like your name, photo and location. A OneBox appears only when someone who is logged in to orkut performs a search on Google.com for another orkut user. Keep in mind that this project is still in its experimental stage, so for now, only a small percentage of orkut users will see the OneBox in their search results," mentions Google in orkut's help center.

In the privacy sections of the settings page there's an option that lets you remove your profile from the orkut OneBox, but the description doesn't correspond to the one from orkut help center: "show my orkut information when my orkut friends search for me on Google.com".


As previously mentioned, orkut could be the base of a new people search service that integrates data from different sources.

{ Thanks, João. }

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A story that emerges at the SEO Refugee Forums speaks volumes about the power of Google Maps in the natural/universal search results. A florist company in Denver is currently ranking #1 for their key terms in the natural organic listings....

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At Pubcon, Matt Cutts was asked about reciprocal linking. We already explored the reciprocal linking question with Adam Lasnik who said that reciprocal linking with relevant sites is better than reciprocal linking with every possible site on the Internet. A...

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• FTC approves Google's acquisition of DoubleClick
  The FTC's investigation focused on antitrust issues, and in its clearance opinion released today, explicitly rejected any current or potential competition concerns.
• Search Engine Visibility and Crawlability of Dynamic Sites
  Huge databases that generate Web site content on the fly can be the bane of search engine spiders' existence.
• IBM introduces free smart email search software
  While search engines still can’t help you find your missing car keys, prescription glasses or remote control, IBM Research has invented a “smart” email search solution that can figure out what you are trying to find, even when you aren’t so sure yourself.
• SEW Experts: Link Building Case Study: Santa Claus
  Is Santa Claus a savvy Web marketer?
• SEW Experts: SEO.edu: Can You Learn SEO From a Book? - Part 2
  The general consensus from the SEO community and Search Engine Watch readers: learning SEO solely from a book doesn't cut it.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• Google's Feed Indexing Policy
  Google is officially not going to index any feeds, with the exception of multimedia feeds such as podcast feeds.
• Shopping Search Engine Providing Online Safety Tips
  Sortprice - a price comparison search engine - is doing its part this holiday season with a guide to safely purchasing online without falling victim to identity theft.
• Microsoft Cofounder Paul Allen Bidding Against Google For WiFi Access
  Allen heads an investment company called Vulcan Capital and is a majority shareholder in U.S. cable operator Charter Communications.
• SEW Experts: Large Enterprise SEO: Content Development
  SEO for Large Enterprises means content development on a massive scale.
• SEW Experts: Yahoo, Facebook, Life and Death
  The holiday season is a time for sharing, spending time with family, and the time for writers everywhere to hopelessly pontificate about the coming year.

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In April, Google announced its plans to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. A month later, that acquisition was contested and reviewed by the FTC. At that point, Google was confident that the deal would withstand scrutiny. Fast-forward to December, and...

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The holiday season is here, you can tell if you just browse the web and see all the sites sporting fun logos and themes. As you can tell, we have our holiday theme live now. Google has holiday logo number...

Windows only: Look through, and repeat, your recent searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN with MyLastSearch, a free, tiny application that makes your browser histories more useful. The program supports Mozilla products and Internet Explorer (Opera and, presumably, Safari for Windows are left out), lets you search through your, er, searches, and can re-open queries in the same browser they were made in. Those who set their browsers to wipe clean their history on exit are, of course, not going to get much here, but it's an otherwise useful tool to help find that great link you can't remember how you got to before. MyLastSearch is a free download for Windows systems only, and can be run easily from a portable drive.

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Israeli? Speak Hebrew? Also an Google Adsense publisher? Google has recently (December 17th) opened an AdSense forum in Hebrew for you at this URL. AdSensePro Jordan informed us of the 15th supported language for AdSense forums at Google Groups. The...

Misdirection ruse

Security researchers have identified a Trojan that hijacks Google text advertisements, replacing them with "ads" from a different provider that are likely to be laced with spyware.…

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Every day, Danny and I always make a note to each other about how busy the search marketing industry will be today from a news and forum posts perspective. We finally bit the bullet and designed a Facebook application that...

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Search Engine Watch Forums Moderator abbottsys started on a venture to make a tool to help AdWords advertisers automate the process of writing their AdWords ads. You can track the idea to the inception of the tool at the Search...

With the recent announcement that Kayak will acquire SideStep, we wanted to examine the two travel search businesses and what they bring to the party. In this competitive vertical, it’s good to have some visibility into their results.

At the SES-Travel show, held in Seattle last August, we heard from many travel search providers and learned about excellent conversion rates: 12-17% for air travel; 8-10% for car rentals; and 4-8% for hotels. Maybe that explains why there have been strong competitive entries!

Both Kayak and SideStep executives took pains to differentiate their offerings. Drew Patterson, who’s VP of Marketing at Kayak, explained that Kayak was streamlined search, more like Google; SideStep was about social media and community, more like Yahoo. SideStep's priority was "to find the best deal or best reservation to meet your needs,” said Sam Shank, VP at SideStep.

Click to read the rest of this post...

There's little doubt that Google Inc. is indeed king of online media. In August 2007 alone, Google captured 57% of worldwide market share among search engines, with more than 37 billion search inquiries. Not surprisingly, this dominance has led to endless rumors about where Google is headed next?

Not to be outdone with the recent news buzz about rivals Microsoft and Google, Yahoo does it end-of-the-year bang with its share of the web limelight. For its part, Yahoo announced that it has inked a deal with Latin American mobile operator America Movil bringing with it is around 143 million subscribers who will all be carrying Yahoo’s oneSearch as the defaul mobile search portal.

Although, this announcement may seem way out of the league of what Google and Microsoft recently accomplished, this deal is a breakthrough on Yahoo’s part as well as its campaign to spread the use of its mobile search portal, oneSearch.

Whereas Google is busy working on its own mobile phone operating system, Yahoo moved on the opposite a bit and instead focused on establishing its mobile search portal as a major player in the mobile web world.

With the American Movil deal in placed, Yahoo moving towards its objective of attracting subscribers to mobile web services. Yahoo’s oneSearch will power the mobile web portal of American Movil subscribers by letting them search the web as soon as they call up. This is very different from computer-based browsers whereby users still needs to go through several screen to reach a mobile web portal.

The deal follows Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Telefonica and is by far the largest deal Yahoo has made this year.

So, who will be next to announce a major corporate strategy move before the year ends?

Wired magazine reports that the year 2007 was the worst ever when it came to airport delays, and they put together a handy Google map of major airports' delay report cards. At my home airport in San Diego, almost 16% of all departing flights are delayed (as was my holiday flight home this week), which is a lot better than New York's JFK airport's whopping 30%. What about yours? Check out the map before you decide what time to leave home for the airport. (Beware: not all airports are on the map.)

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Optimalprint announced today the launch of optimalprint.es - an online printing service dedicated to individuals as well as small and medium sized companies (SMB) in Spain. According to the Spanish National Statistics Institute, there are over 3,3 million registered companies in Spain of which almost 90% have less than 6 employees. Optimalprint's online printing solution reduces print costs for the SMB market with up to 90%. (PRWeb Dec 20, 2007) Post Comment:Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/WmV0YS1QaWdnLU1hZ24tQ3Jhcy1UaGlyLVplcm8=

Soon after installing Google Apps, two customers ask for task management and full Calendar synchronization.

Windows only: Archive all your email messages to DVD or to your hard drive with MailStore Home, a desktop email import, search, and archiving utility. Fire up MailStore Home and import any POP/IMAP email (like Gmail or Yahoo Mail) or Outlook, Windows Mail, or Thunderbird email. MailStore Home sucks in all your messages and lets you burn a backup disk or store and search your entire library locally for when you're offline. MailStore Home also has some disk space conservation smarts, and it doesn't lock your messages into a proprietary format.

Save Disk Space To conserve disk space, MailStore Home saves only a single instance of each attachment, even if it appeared in more than one e-mail. Additionally, a smart compression algorithm is applied. No One-Way Road Messages are stored MIME-compatible, and can be recovered at any time without information loss.

I'd been using a way geekier (read: complicated) method to back up my POP email; this looks much more person-friendly. MailStore Home is a free download for Windows only.

Windows, Mac and Linux: A preview release of the highly-anticipated, cross-platform, open source personal information manager Chandler is now available for download, and while it's still got kinks to work out, it looks as promising as its vision. Called the PIM "for people who use their Inbox as their task list, Chandler picks up where your Inbox leaves off." Chandler's essentially a combination calendar, email inbox and task list for the individual, as well as a collaboration tool for small groups. The Chandler developers say:

Our goal is to serve the way people actually work, independently and together, particularly in small groups, a market segment we believe is underserved. Our belief is that personal and collaborative information work is by nature iterative and that the existing binary Done/Not-Done, Read/Unread, Flagged/Unflagged paradigm in productivity software poorly accommodates the reality of how people work.

Ever since I read Scott Rosenberg's book, Dreaming in Code, I've been dying to see Chandler get released. Dreaming In Code is a chronicle of Chandler's early stages, documenting its development from inception through much of its often painful evolution, which reads like a familiar story to anyone who's ever tried to build software. (Programmers and software designers, read this book.) I love the open source ethos behind Chandler and the vision for its use, which is tightly tied to Getting Things Done.

As for the preview release, well, it has some ways to go. I was unable to get my Gmail account to sync with it via IMAP, for instance, which kept me from doing any real-world testing. So while it's not stable software ready for primetime, the Chandler preview IS an exciting tease at a unified inbox/calendar/task list that keeps all your stuff in one place while offering decentralized sharing capabilities. If Chandler's final release delivers on its promises, it will also deliver users from the evil of Microsoft Outlook and Exchange server. Until then, you can tinker with the preview and hope. The Chandler Preview is a free download for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Today the FTC announced they had no problem with Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick as proposed — but there is a catch. If Google ever does anything to abuse their position in the online ad space, the FTC will act swiftly to diffuse the situation. Because the evidence did not support the theories of potential [...]

Powerset, the search engine that shows results for natural language queries, started to let its testers enter any query.

From the about page: "Our unique innovations in search are rooted in breakthrough technologies that take advantage of the structure and nuances of natural language. Using these advanced techniques, Powerset is building a large-scale search engine that breaks the confines of keyword search." For now, Powerset only indexes pages from the English Wikipedia and it's not publicly available (but you can request an invite).

For example, Google shows almost the same search results for [Pyra Labs acquired by Google] and for [When was Pyra Labs acquired by Google?]. Even if the answer can be found in one of the first snippets, Google doesn't highlight it or display it prominently, like you can see in Powerset.


Do you know a query that shows irrelevant results at Google? Post it in the comments and I'll upload a screenshot of Powerset's results. Obviously, to compare Powerset's results with Google results, you need to restrict Google to en.wikipedia.org, the only site currently indexed by Powerset.

Updated.

Query #1 (from Matt Cutts): How many states are in the United States?
Conclusion: the first 10 Powerset results are terrible. On the other hand, Google shows the answer in a OneBox, but also a strange book search OneBox at the top: "How Many Doctors Do We Need?" by Duncan Yaggy, Patricia Hodgson.



Query #2: What Nobel Prize winners were born in Russia?
Conclusion: Google's results are better even if you restrict them to Wikipedia. The top result from Wikipedia (the third Google result) is a page titled Noble laureates by country. Only few of the people mentioned in Powerset's results are Russian who won the Nobel prize and there's no complete list.



Query #3: Who was the last president of United States?
Conclusion: The results #3, #4, #6 mention George W. Bush, but there are other names of former presidents. Google's fourth results has this title: "George W Bush: Last President Of The United States Of America?".



Query #4: Who are the founders of Yahoo?
Conclusion: the second result includes the answer, but it's only partially highlighted in the snippet. Google's top results has a good snippet: "The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, started their guide in a campus."

Amid flurry of end-of-the-year docket-clearing, Congress passes energy bill and Google's DoubleClick acquisition gets the green light from the FTC. Amid a flurry of end-of-the-year docket-clearing this week by public policy bodies, Congress passed a monumental energy bill later signed by President Bush, and the Federal Trade Commission...

OK, strike "no purchase necessary." Free Flip video camcorder: "big purchase necessary?"

Google gave big-time advertisers and SEMs (whose clients spend big) a Flip Video Ultra Series camcorder with recording time up to 30 min. and 1GB internal memory.

Search marketer Shimon Sandler recorded an Oscar-worthy short film (YouTubed) of his Google Video Ultra gift being unwrapped. You'll watch the film again and again, if only to get into the Xmas spirit of green envy that children of all ages feel during the Holiday Season.

Google Flip flopped with all the SEMs who only received Google 2GB USB memory cards instead of the Google Flip (with MSRP of $149.99!). The 2GoogleByte USB card was described by our friends at SERoundtable as more or less a lump of coal -- way inferior to last year's Google gift gadget: a sweet digital picture frame.

It would seem only the FTC approves of Google acquisitions these days.

Here at Search Engine Watch, we'll be providing the P.O. Box for Google Customer Returns and the address of the secret Google Gift Exchange location.

Blogger has recently added support for posting comments by authenticating with OpenID. The integration is now live for all Blogger blogs and that means you no longer have to show your identity by using a Google account. You already have an OpenID if you have an account at AOL, WordPress, LiveJournal or at one of the other OpenID providers. You can be your own OpenID provider, but this is a little more complicated.

A simple way to use your own domain as an OpenID is to delegate it to another OpenID provider. That means you should get an OpenID from a site like MyOpenID and add these two lines in the head section of your homepage (you should replace http://NAME.myopenid.com with the real OpenID):

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://NAME.myopenid.com/" />

Now you can use your domain or subdomain everywhere you're allowed to enter an OpenID. To post a Blogger comment, select "Any OpenID" from the drop-down and enter your URL. You'll be redirected to the OpenID provider to enter your password.



Google removed the option to enter your URL when you don't sign up with a Google account, but you can still show the URL if you use OpenID.

Update: Blogger brought back the option to enter a URL when post unauthenticated comments.

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Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....

Dear Lifehacker,

It's pretty hard to believe 2007's almost over! I always spend the holiday week thinking about all the places I went and things I did this year, and since I have a terrible memory, I'd like to start capturing all that. Is there an easy way to set up a timeline of stuff that happened to me this year and past, something I can update each New Year? I don't have the patience to keep a journal all the time, and each event will probably be only a few lines. Suggestions?

Signed,
Timeliner

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Dear Timeliner,

There are a few ways you can set up a timeline to help remember everything you did this year. Previously mentioned webapp Dandelife is a nice place to publish life stories on a timeline, share them with others, and add photos from Flickr and other services (like Twitter, Amazon, etc.) If you don't want to host your data elsewhere, the open source Simile Timeline is really cool. Here's a breakdown on how to roll your own timeline with Simile. More lo-fi solutions include an Excel template, or you could just create a Google Calendar to capture past events, too (the Agenda view isn't quite a timeline, but it's a nice list of events). Update: You can also review your year of Flickr photos on a calendar.

LH readers, shout out your timeline suggestions—or any way you keep track of life events—in the comments.

Have fun timelining 2007!

Love,
Lifehacker

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Optimalprint announced today the launch of optimalprint.es - an online printing service dedicated to individuals as well as small and medium sized companies (SMB) in Spain. According to the Spanish National Statistics Institute, there are over 3,3 million registered companies in Spain of which almost 90% have less than 6 employees. Optimalprint's online printing solution reduces print costs for the SMB market with up to 90%. (PRWeb Dec 20, 2007) Post Comment:Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/WmV0YS1QaWdnLU1hZ24tQ3Jhcy1UaGlyLVplcm8=

INQUIRER Newsdesk the Inquirer, Thursday 20 December 2007. 18:31:00

All your ads are belong to us

GOOGLE'S ACQUISITION of DoubleClick Inc. got the nod from U.S. antitrust regulators The Federal Trade Commission, approved the acquisition by four votes to one. In a statement, the body said, "Because the evidence did not support the theories of potential competitive harm, there was no basis on which to seek...

>

>

Yahoo and Google also agree to settle U.S. charges for accepting advertising from offshore betting sites.

"A gear is a component within a transmission device that transmits rotational force to another gear or device." (Wikipedia)


Most people think that Google Gears is a way to make web applications work offline, but it's much more than. Google Gears addresses many limitations from today's browsers and wants to make the browsers more powerful.

Here's a list of features that could be included in the next releases, but you can find more in Google Gears wiki:

* image manipulation - "a module to give Javascript a way to resize, crop and compose images together on the client side. This will allow, for example, images to be resized into a web-friendly format before being uploaded to a photo album. Another use is for composition of images together as an efficient alternative to server-side composition or CSS layering. Yet another use is for basic photo editing - a user can edit a photo with instantly applied changes before uploading it to the server."

* location - "an abstraction for the various LBS APIs that currently exist on mobile platforms (GPS-based, network/cellid-based). The API consists of the Location class, which encapsulates various location attributes (latitude, longitude, etc), and also provides the means to query the platform for a location fix." This suggests that Google Gears will be available for some mobile phones.

* desktop shortcuts for web applications that lets you click on an icon from your desktop and open the "application" in your browser. This could make the transition from the desktop to the browser easier, even if some people could find it confusing. Mozilla Prism is a similar initiative.

Google's Dion Almaer describes Gears in a very plastic way. "We get to drive a few makes of cars (browsers) on the (information) highway. When we want new features, we have to wait for a new model to come out, and recently it feels like Cuba. The top selling car is a 1950’s Chevy. As drivers that are passionate about the driving experience, the Gears team is trying give everyone a foundation to replace the engine, even as you drive."

Google Gears is still in an early phase of development and it could include many other features, but it will be interesting to see how Google intends to push its adoption. The Gears-enabled services could ask the users if they want offline access or other fancy features, Google could also include it in the toolbar or distribute it with popular applications from third-parties. For now, Google Reader, Remember the Milk and Zoho Writer are the most important applications that use Gears, but next year most Google services will use Gears.

iTunes may not be the best media player on the market, but let's face facts: with its tight integration with our iPods and its excellent playlisting tools, it's very likely the digital jukebox you're using every day to manage your music. With that in mind, it's time you take iTunes to the next level. We've already tackled the 20 Best iPod Utilities, so today we're taking a look at the 23 iTunes add-ons that can take your iTunes experience from good to great.

Notifiers and Universal Shortcuts

• CD Art Display (Windows): Display currently playing track, album art, rating, and tons of other wildly customizable features. In addition, CD Art Display can download missing album art and create universal hotkeys for controlling iTunes. (Download) (Read more)



• moreTunes (Windows): Similar to CD Art Display, moreTunes displays a floating album art notification but instead has an emphasis on completing or repairing your metadata. moreTunes also has a recommendation feature and works with several other non-iTunes media players. (Download) (Read more)



• Quicksilver (Mac): Control iTunes playback, browse your iTunes library, and more from the comfort of your favorite application launcher and beyond Quicksilver. (Download) (Read more)



• DeskTunes (Mac): Another iTunes notifier, DeskTunes floats the current album art, track name, and rating on your Mac desktop. (Download) (Read more)



• You Control: Tunes (Mac): Control iTunes from the menu bar, define universal hotkeys for changing tracks, view current song info or navigate and play any song in your entire iTunes library all from the You Control: Tunes menu bar drop down. (Download) (Read more)



• DockArt (Mac): This plug-in performs one very simple tweak, replacing your iTunes icon in the Dock with the album artwork of the currently playing song. It's not a huge tweak, but it's certainly lovable. (Download) (Read more)



• iConcertCal (Windows/Mac): Installs a new "visualization" to iTunes that scans your music library and then displays upcoming concerts in your area for artists in your iTunes library on a calendar. (Download) (Read more)

Utilities

• iTunes Folder Watch (Windows): Monitor folders for new music and automatically add the songs to your iTunes library if they haven't already been imported to iTunes. It's a feature everyone wants and tons of other players have, so this one's a must-have for a lot of iTunes users—especially if you download from sources other than iTunes (*wink*) (Download) (Read more)



• Senuti (Mac): Copy songs from any iPod to your iTunes library. There are other iPod-to-computer tools available for Mac and Windows, like iPod -> Folder, but Senuti stands out for this list for its ability to tell you want music on an iPod is already in your library and which songs are not, making it easy to slurp new songs from a friend's iPod without introducing duplicates into your library. (Download) (Read more)



• iTunes Export (Windows): Okay, so let's say you decide that you really do want to move your iTunes library to another computer, or maybe you just want to export the perfect playlist to a thumb drive to give to that special someone. Either way, iTunes export gets your music out of iTunes for moving to another computer or device. (Download) (Read more)



• MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter (Windows): Turn your MP3 audiobooks into the iTunes standard M4B audiobook format easily with MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter. (Download) (Read more)



• iTunes Sync (Windows): Love iTunes but haven't shelled out for an iPod? iTunes Sync syncs your iTunes library to your non-iPod MP3 players—like one from this verified working list. (Download) (Read more)



• XiphQT (Windows/Mac): Play back audio files encoded in the popular open source Ogg codec with the XiphQT plugin. (Download) (Read more)




• DRM Dumpster (Mac): Automates the tedious but generally simplest and most effective method for stripping DRM from iTunes music—by burning it to a CD and ripping it back to your library. (Download) (Read more)



• iTunes Remote Control (Mac): Remotely control playback of another iTunes library on your network by playing and skipping tracks, browsing playlists, searching songs, and more. (Download) (Read more)



• iSproggler (Windows) and iScrobbler (Mac): Automatically upload your iTunes listening habits to the popular social music recommendation site Last.fm. (Download iSproggler [Windows], iScrobbler [Mac]) (Read more)

Tagging Tools

• Moody (Mac): Tag your tunes by color-based moods with this simple tagging tool. Not only does Moody take the work out of tagging, but it also automatically creates playlists for you to listen to your mood music. (Download) (Read more)



• Quick Tag (Mac): Quickly add tags to the current song playing in iTunes with a simple, universal keyboard shortcut and autocompletion for quick tagging. Metadata goes into the Grouping field for easy playlist creation later. (Download) (Read more)



• Qloud (Windows/Mac): Cloud adds a button to iTunes for in-program tagging of your music, which—for better or worse—integrates with Qloud's social networking and recommendation feature. (Download) (Read more)

Playlist Generators

• AutoRate (Mac): Some people love rating songs in iTunes, others don't. But the great part about ratings is that they're really handy when you're creating smart playlists, which is why AutoRate—an app that analyzes play frequency and skip count to automatically assign ratings to your music—is a handy download to have in your pocket. (Download) (Read more)



• Soundflavor DJ (Windows): Soundflavor makes audio fingerprints of your music and builds playlists based on similarity of those fingerprints. (Download) (Read more)



• The Filter (Windows/Mac): Another playlist creation and recommendation tool, give The Filter three songs so it knows the feel you're looking for and it will build you a playlist based on that mood. (Download) (Read more)



• Top 13 iTunes AppleScripts (Mac): Whether you're looking to create playlists like a list of all your one-hit wonders or three-for-all blocks of your favorite artists, I highlighted the 13 best iTunes AppleScripts for bolstering iTunes on the Mac. (Read more) To weed through the entirety of excellent iTunes AppleScripts, check out Doug's AppleScripts.

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If you've already read our list of the 20 Best iPod Utilities you may notice one or two repeats where the utility still applies to iTunes, but overall the list features a completely different set of software. And while you're supercharging iTunes with new functionality, be sure to check out a few iTunes power tips for taking advantage of killer iTunes features included by default that you may not know about.

Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who can't stop fiddling with iTunes. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

The agency says the merger poses no competitive risk to the online ad space.

But not without dissent

The FTC has voted to approve Google's of web advertising powerhouse DoubleClick, after an eight month investigation - but not without a dissenting voice.…

Within two days it was one of the most popular phrases on Google and one of the most viewed videos. It also showed up on ringtones and T-shirts. Other phrases on the list: "I don't recall." --...."I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody

Bogie Lowenstein is one of many readers letting us know that the FTC has approved Google's acquisition of DoubleClick in a 4-to-1 vote. The FTC essentially blew off the privacy concerns about the merger, saying it lacked the legal authority to block the deal on any grounds except antitrust. The EU's review of the deal is still going forward, with a decision due by April 2, 2008; the privacy sensibility there is more sharply focused.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Smackdown blog by Michael Vandemar mentions that Matt Cutts had made some statements regarding the operations at Google with regards to how it approaches SEO and these suggested changes are finally a reality. First, you no longer need to...

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Yesterday, we reported findings that MSN was returning Google AdWords links in their natural search results. Well, Microsoft has responded to this issue on the Live Search Webmaster Central Blog, explaining that it was a complete accident and that it...

"Today, the FTC has cleared the way for Google's planned acquisition of DoubleClick Inc."

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So, it seems that only Googlers like their cats. WebmasterWorld members who are not Googlers do not. Matt Cutts loves his cat: AdWordsAdvisor plays devil's advocate in the "I hate cats" thread by stating that he/she (can someone please confirm?!)...

Emailed to me this AM: MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (December 20, 2007) – Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today welcomed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's clearance of its planned acquisition of DoubleClick Inc., a premier provider of display ad serving technology and services. Google announced in April 2007 a definitive agreement to... (Go to Searchblog Main)

In a 4-1 vote, regulators give their blessing to the controversial union, despite outcry from competitors and privacy advocates. The Federal Trade Commission announced Thursday that Google's controversial $3.1 billion merger proposal with DoubleClick can proceed, despite earlier complaints raised by competitors and privacy advocates. ...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has formally approved Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, according to an announcement by Google this morning. Google announced the deal in April, along with a purchase price of $3.1 billion.

The FTC's investigation focused on antitrust issues, and in its clearance opinion released today, explicitly rejected any current or potential competition concerns. In a 4-1 vote, the commission wrote in its majority statement that "after carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition."

Google's announcement also noted several recent acquisitions by their competitors, including: "Yahoo's acquisition of Right Media; AOL's acquisition of ADTECH AG and TACODA; WPP Group's acquisition of 24/7 Real Media; and Microsoft's $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive and acquisition of AdECN Inc."

This is excellent news for Google, and provides it with a significant expansion of advertising inventory. Not everyone will be so thrilled though, as privacy concerns will no doubt be discussed in the media for some time to come. The reason for this is that Google now has another extremely rich data source to combine with the information it has on user's search histories. Privacy advocates will be very concerned about this. Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt said that Google will continue to protect the privacy of users.

When the deal was announced, three privacy watchdog groups asked the FTC to investigate the potential implications on user privacy. But privacy is not an antitrust issue, so it was not relevant to the investigation except in the ways those issues would relate to a reduction in competition.

The deal is still being looked at by the European Commission, which has until April 2 to render a decision. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission approved the deal in November.

The folks at Google have put together a series of videos that explain the private and not-so-private features of applications like Google Calendar, Picasa Web Albums, and phone number look-ups, and instruct users on how to change and opt out of them. Long-time Lifehacker readers may have seen a few of these tips before, but they make good explainers for co-workers and relatives. And until Google rolls out a convenient, all-in-one privacy manager, keeping on top of what Google is and isn't sharing with the world is the best thing a privacy-savvy user can do.

Google's $3.1 billion acquisition represents no threat to competition in the online advertising arena, FTC regulators say.

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Barry Welford at Cre8asite Forums stumbled upon a post by Rich Tehrani where Gmail has a feature that translates words on the fly for you, which is especially helpful if you're reading an email within Gmail and need to look...

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The Ultimate Fate of Supplemental Results from the Google Webmaster Central blog announces, what Google calls, the "next major milestone" for Google's supplemental results. What is happening exactly? Google is implying that when you conduct a search in Google.com, Google...

Continent's top consumer group says the planned takeover's intrusion into individual privacy is over the top. Google's planned takeover of online ad giant DoubleClick for $3.1 billion will harm European citizens through greater intrusion into their privacy, the continent's top consumer group said Thursday. "The Google/DoubleClick...

A former spreadsheets addict, Jon Bradford discovered the net in 2000 when he joined a start-up as finance director. Today he works in an accounting practice in Newcastle, UK.

I’ve been surprised by Google’s rapid redesign of its mobile services to support the iPhone: In less than 6 months, Google has created custom iPhone interfaces for all its key services. But it may have an ulterior motive.

The services which have been customised for iPhone include:

Google Service	Comment
Maps	Available at launch 29 June 2007
Calendar	24 September 2007
Reader (RSS / Atom Reader)	UI updated 8 November 2007
Picasa	13 December 2007
IMAP email	Around 25 October 2007
Integrated interface - Search - Email - Calendar - Reader	5 December 2007

In addition Google have developed a specific application to allow YouTube videos to be streamed to the iPhone – to get around the absence of Flash on the iPhone.

It is understandable how the iPhone platform has grabbed the imagination of Google’s employees – it’s the internet in your pocket, with a clean, intuitive interface, and with Eric Schmidt* at the helm it can’t be hard to convince your manager to let you spend your 20% on iPhone related applications. In fact, iPhone-mania at Google has even got Europe’s favorite long-tail cartographer, Ed Parsons dumping his almost new Nokia N95 for an iPhone – even though the latter doesn’t have built-in GPS!

So maybe there’s another reason. Google are gaining considerable experience developing its mobile services for its new platform – Android. But look a little closer. The iPhone and Android share the common foundations in the open source browser WebKit –

<<WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that’s used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. WebKit’s HTML and JavaScript code began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE.>>

And on Google’s Android website:

<<[Android’s] integrated browser based on the open source WebKit engine.>>

Hence, what we may be actually looking at is Google’s mobile services which will be available on Android from its launch, effectively putting iPhone users through the pain of finding the flaws.

In addition, it should be noted that Flash for the iPhone has not been forthcoming, and there are also questions around whether Android will support Flash – which is not unsurprising given Google’s limited use of Flash on its own websites**.

So for those who have looked jealously on the new interfaces being developed for iPhone, have a little patience, because I think what you are looking at is Google’s services for Android.

*Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple’s board of directors, and he’s also using an iPhone himself.

**Services like Google Finance or Google Analytics are among the somewhat rare exceptions of Google using Flash.

[IPhone screenshot in image by Duncan Rawlinson, CC-licensed.]

[By Jon Bradford | Original post | Comments]

[Advertisement] Stephen Arnold's in-depth analysis of Google's patent strategy is now available as a download from Infonortics   [Advertise here]

Google earlier this month announced they’ll stop allowing new gadgets for iGoogle which are using the “html-inline” functionality. An inline gadget, as opposed to a normal gadget, can have more control over the full iGoogle page as it is not wrapped in an inline frame. Typical uses of an inline gadget may be changing the Google logo, creating a themes directory gadget, or uncluttering the iGoogle homepage by removing certain links... in other words, all the kind of stuff you need to do when you want to “break out” of your iframe. As you can imagine, this may pose security risks, in particular when it comes to Google account kidnapping (even though Google did have some preventions against that).

Google on December 8th said:

<<[I]nlined gadgets will officially become deprecated and blocked from being rendered on iGoogle. As promised, we will take a snapshot of all inlined gadgets that currently exist and specifically allow only those that were collected to continue rendering.>>

If the schedule went as announced, the snapshot has been taken on December 12th. Google employee Dann emphasized that existing inlined gadgets will continue to be supported as normal. Additionally, Google says they won’t rule out completely that they may accept proposals for individual new inline gadgets in the future, but that they have no immediate plans to do so.

[Thanks Ionut!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

[Advertisement] Search Engine Meeting, Boston, 28-29 April 2008   [Advertise here]

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There are two scientific papers or patent that were written about by Bill Slawski and Gary Price, who else. Bill wrote about How does Google Pick Snippets for Your Pages to Show in Search Results? and Gary wrote about How...

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A WebmasterWorld thread named Bet on Google Paying Early in December says it all. Yes, as expected, Google has already started the "PIP" or payment in progress notifications to their AdSense publishers this month. Why was it so expected? Well,...

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Many people are now spotted new Google AdSense ads. These ads are named Google Gadget Ads, yes, they are interactive ads, part of the AdSense program, which was launched on 9/19/2007 at http://www.google.com/adwords/gadgetads/. As Darren Rowse explains, yes they are...

"Online gambling is illegal in the US but still widespread Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have agreed to pay a total of $31.5m to settle claims that they accepted online ads promoting illegal gambling."

Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Thursday 20 December 2007. 09:38:00

Puritans strike back

MICROSOFT, Yahoo and Google have to pay more than $31.5 million for flouting the US government's gambling laws. There has been a crack down by the US authorities on its citizens wasting their own money on gambling when they should be spending it on consumer gadgets....

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The Google-DoubleClick deal has been going for too long now, that it is already tiring to follow on how the development of the transactions has been going on. The deal has been on the Federal Trade Commission’s table for several months now that one wonders whether its going to push through or not. But suddenly here comes Bloomberg, getting the latest scoop on the deal.

Bloomberg is reporting that the FTC is close to granting Google the clearance it has been waiting for so long to buy DoubleClick. According to the report, the five-member FTC team is set to approve the buyout deal anytime this week despite complaints by Google’s rival Microsoft and AT&T. The two internet players together with other companies are complaining that the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google is tantamount to unfair competition for internet advertisers, such as Microsoft, AT&T and their band of complainants.

If indeed this announcement come out this week, Google would still have to wait for the antirust review of the European Commission which is set for deliberation in April 2008. But nonetheless Google needs this FTC clearance if it wants to get back at Microsoft’s announcement yesterday of a major strategic alliance with another major company player - Viacom.

As I said, in the online industry where we all belong to and which is dominated by Google, the year has to end with a big bang coming from Google and not from somebody else. Otherwise, the industry wouldn’t be as exciting as it is right now.

And so now we wait for the next media buzz.

UPDATE: It’s official, Google gets the FTC clearance. Next step, EU approval.

New chat bots can be added to translate Google Talk chats in real time. As we expected, Google's automated translation yields mixed results, but it's a big step in the right direction.

It isn’t a surprise that Google bid on spectrum in the FCC auction for the 700mhz spectrum, however I found the name it filed under interesting — Google Airwaves Inc. There has been speculation that Google and Apple entered the auction together, and maybe this is the reason for incorporating a separate company on [...]

Google's social network is hit by a fast moving worm that is attacking members of a Portuguese-language community.

Yes, they say, it is Google's DoubleClick

After suing one Google acquisition for $1bn, US media behemoth Viacom has now divorced another, leaping headlong into the arms of Microsoft.…

The three largest Internet companies -- Microsoft, Yahoo and Google will pay $31.5 million to settle federal civil allegations they took ads for illegal gambling. They also agree to stop accepting ads for sports wagering and other online gambling.

The press release lead says:

Companies sign landmark multiyear deal to collaborate on content distribution, advertising, event promotions and gaming; Microsoft’s Atlas to become exclusive ad serving platform for Viacom U.S. Web sites.

How much was the deal worth? A project base value of approximately $500 million in financial considerations and business services between the two companies. The deal encompasses revenue sharing provisions, guarantees and content licensing agreements.

The Microsoft-Viacom deal has four components namely:

• Microsoft will license, on a non-exclusive basis, long- and short-form television and theatrical content from across Viacom’s cable network and motion picture businesses, including MTV, Comedy Central, BET and Paramount Pictures, for use on Microsoft properties such as MSN and Xbox 360.
• Microsoft’s Atlas division will become the ad server for Viacom’s U.S. Web sites and Microsoft will have the exclusive right to sell remnant display advertising inventory on Viacom’s U.S. Web sites.
• Microsoft will buy advertising on Viacom broadcast and online networks over a five-year period and the companies will work together on promotions and sponsorships for MTV Networks and BET Networks award shows.
• Viacom will work with Microsoft on opportunities to become a preferred publishing partner across Microsoft’s casual gaming platforms.

Philippe Dauman, president and chief executive officer of Viacom, justifies the deal by saying that Microsoft’s business plans complement Viacom’s objectives. Specifically Microsoft’s assets and expertise in the ad serving and sales business will drive enhanced value to Viacom’s digital operations.

“We look forward to collaborating closely with Microsoft as we move forward. This partnership will generate significant value on both sides. This deal is an important example of how the growing success of our digital properties is driving greater revenue for Viacom as a whole,” says Dauman.

For its part, Microsoft’s president of Microsoft’s Platforms & Services Division, Kevin Johnson said that Viacom’s portfolio of original content and strong consumer brand connections will complement Microsoft’s Web, gaming and digital advertising assets.

“This deal is another milestone in our quest to build a world-class advertising platform to serve the broad needs of advertisers and publishers.”- says Johnson.

So, amidst all the nitty gritty of this deal, whether we understand this deal or no matter how we look into the details, the only clear picture that we could probably see is the fact that, somewhere in the Silicon Valley, another industry player is probably planning for its next move that would somehow overshadow this current deal announcement. Alright, Google is probably fuming mad and up on its feet for its next major announcement. And with the long break to come, Google better act fast. It’s better to end the year with a bang coming from its rank rather than somebody else ending it.

Over 655,000 served?

Google's Orkut social networking site was hit by a quick-spreading worm that managed to infect a large number of users when they viewed messages that came from friends who were already exposed.…

Google rolls out a new flight tracking feature: just type your airline and flight number into the search box, and get the departure and arrival location and estimated time. I'm also a fan of 4INFO's SMS flight status check on the way to the airport from my cell phone. How are you going to track your (and your arriving loved ones') flights this holiday season? Give it up in the comments.

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Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo pay $31.5m to settle claims they accepted adverts promoting illegal gambling.

BitDefender nabs a new Trojan commandeering Host files to deliver third-party advertising instead of Google's.

IT memory lane; Technology's sex appeal, Part 1; Technology's sex appeal, Part 2; Office of privacy; Credit crunch; Big names eyeing Google Apps; Happy holidays

Mark Glaser asks. My answer: It doesn't matter. What matters is that Google owns the most important distribution network for video on the planet. The rest will follow.... (Go to Searchblog Main)

Google has long argued that its approach to R&D includes the "20 % time" its engineers are encouraged to take for side projects. Gary has a list of top R&D spenders this year, and Google makes the list, but is way down on it (#79), lower than Valley middle... (Go to Searchblog Main)

suntory writes "I am a lecturer at a Spanish university. This week had to attend a workshop on 'Advanced HTML and CSS' for the university staff. Some of the ideas that the presenter (a fellow lecturer) shared with us: IE is the only browser that follows standards; frames and tables are the best way to organize your website; you can view the source for most CSS, Javascript and HTML files, so you can freely copy and paste what you feel like — the Internet is free you know; same applies for images, if you can see them in Google Images Search, then you can use them for your projects. Of course, the workshop turned out to be a complete disaster and a waste of time. So I was wondering what other similar experiences you have had, and what was your worst IT workshop?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google announces a new way of handling the dreaded Supplemental Index: "...we're coming to the next major milestone in the elimination of the artificial difference between indices: rather than searching some part of our index in more depth for obscure queries, we're now searching the whole index for every query."

Google has an awkward way of dealing with contacts in its communication apps. In Gmail, your contact list includes all the people you've ever replied, but you can also add other contacts manually.

"Email addresses are automatically added to your Contacts list each time you use the Reply, Reply to all, or Forward functions to send messages to addresses not previously stored in your Contacts list," according to the help center. While this should save you some time and effort, your contact list will include a lot of people you wouldn't have normally added. For example, if somebody sends me a tip for this blog and I reply to thank him, my contact list includes that person. Gmail doesn't have an option to turn off this feature, so all you can do is to either ignore your contact list or create a group that contains only your real contacts.

By default, if your conversation with someone includes more than 2-3 replies, that person is automatically added to your list of Google Talk friends. To chat with someone you normally need to ask for permission, but this feature bypasses the annoying question because Google assumes you really know that person. Fortunately, you can disable it in Gmail's settings and Google Talk, but not many people will do this. "If there are other Gmail users whom you frequently email, you'll be able to chat and see each other online without having to send an invitation. Gmail automatically determines which contacts you'll be able to talk to without having to invite each other." (Gmail help center)

So the rules are simple:

Rule #1:
if you reply to someone's email, that person is added to your Gmail contact list.
(Error #1: you may not know that person)

Rule #2 (opt-out):
if you reply to someone's messages more than 2-3 times, that person is added to the list of Google Talk friends.
(Error #2: see error #1. Also that person may not be your friend.)

So it's quite likely that your Gmail contact list and Google Talk friends list include people you don't know. Now that we have these two lists (obviously, Google Talk friends are also Gmail contacts), you may wonder where you could use them.

In Google Shared Stuff, a rather obscure social bookmarking site, all the web pages you bookmark are public, but there's also a page with "stuff from people you know". That page shows the most recent bookmarks from your Gmail contacts, but many of these contacts are people I don't know.

Google Reader added a feature that shows shared items from your Google Talk friends. Here's how it was introduced:

One of my favorite uses for Reader is to share interesting stuff with my friends. I click "Share" whenever I find an interesting item, be it hilarious or serious. This way, all my friends can subscribe to my shared items (and I to theirs), and we can easily see if a friend has found something interesting. This can be inconvenient, as I have to distribute my shared items link to my friends and vice-versa. So, we've linked up Reader with Google Talk (also known as chat in Gmail) to make your shared items visible to your friends from Google Talk.

Except that, according to the rule #2, my Google Talk friends aren't necessarily my friends.

Google will probably continue to use your contact list for other services, so at some point your Gmail contacts or Google Talk friends might see your public documents, photo albums, notebooks, personalized maps, blog posts. All of these public actions dynamically generate a news feed (the way you know it from Facebook) and your contacts should be entitled to find things about you. The main problem is that your contact list has been generated automatically and has little to do with you. Those people aren't necessarily your friends, your family, your co-workers, they're just some people you happened to email at some point.

Before using theses random lists of people to broadcast information about you, Google should clearly define their purpose and let you manage them. The problem with creating a social layer over Google's web apps is that Google is not a social network and your contacts are not your friends and not even people you know.

... or: everything you always wanted to know about the Google homepage but were afraid to ask (or didn’t know was worth asking).

Was the Google homepage ever in Beta?

Yes, it was, though not in the very beginning! The Google homepage was first seen in 1997 at the address google.stanford.edu. Only when it moved to google.com was it labeled Beta. (In software development, the Greek letter Alpha usually indicates a first internal test version, and Beta is the released product which yet needs to be checked for errors by the general public. The terminology first appeared at IBM.)

In 2000, the Beta tag was removed from the Google homepage and replaced by a “TM” trademark indicator instead (Google notes they trademarked terms like “Google,” “Trustrank,” “Google SMS,” “I’m Feeling Lucky,” “Hello,” – for picture instant message services – “Scott Studios” and more, adding that “One of the conditions for all uses is that you can’t mess around with our marks. Only we get to do that.”). The loss of the Beta sign did not mean, however, that the Google homepage would not undergo changes over time.

Does the Google homepage ever show special notices or promotions?

Aside from special logos, the Google homepage sometimes promotes Google products below the search box. Usually, these links appear only for a brief time, and sometimes only in a certain country.

Google also sometimes promotes causes outside their own product spectrum. During the World Aids Day, they even displayed a graphic on the homepage, which (outside the logo and smaller icons) very rarely happens. The Google homepage also dressed up in black once to promote a “Lights Out” campaign for energy conservation.

Sometimes, the homepage also includes special notes, like after natural or human-made disasters. After the London bombings, the Google UK homepage included a black ribbon and text next to it listing a hotline number. The black ribbon graphic, a symbol of grief (and sometimes awareness or protest) was linked to Google News. A black ribbon was also included on Google Spain in March 2004 after the Madrid bombings.

Also, on September 11, 2001, Google displayed a special notice reading “Breaking news: Attacks hit the US”. Below the notice, Google explained that many news sites were down to the high demand, and – utilizing their server farm – they included links to cached versions of news reports. Google says that on that day, “Among the top 200 queries ... news-related searches were 60 times greater than the number of news-related searches conducted the previous day.”

Has the Google homepage inspired any parodies or clones?

When the Google homepage debuted in the late 1990s, its minimalist layout went against the typical web design standards of the day, which were increasingly complex portals. Apparently, the motto for others was “more is more,” and a focus on just search was now a niche (one which Google happily decided to fill, even though the Google founders were originally trying to sell their algorithms to one of the big portals, like Yahoo... and got rejected). According to Google, they even had to add a copyright footer to their homepage because some people figured the page couldn’t have finished loading yet, because it displayed so quickly.

This minimalism on Google’s part might have inspired quite a number of decisions made by web companies later on. For instance, Today Yahoo has a special, trimmed down version of their search engine at search.yahoo.com. The Microsoft effort Live.com is rather uncluttered as well.

Google has also inspired quite a few parodies and copycats. There’s Googoth, the gothic Google; Cthuugle, the self-proclaimed HP Lovecraft Engine; elgooG, a backwards Google; a fallen Google; Spam Google, finding spam only; Jewgle, a Jewish search engine; Aloogle to search all things Weird Al Yankovic; Google from the 1960s and from 1407, and more.

Mostly, Google seems to be OK with these parodies (parodies also can’t be attacked as easily under US copyright law, as certain forms of parody are protected). However, they have sued copycats before. Booble.com, an adult search engine, got a letter from Google lawyers in January 2004. For instance, adult search engine Booble.com got a letter from Google lawyers in January 2004. Today, they show a vastly different, less Google-like design. Briefly during April 1st 2005, Booble even changed to Biible... according to the site’s claim “because sex is just wrong.” (In case you wondered, there was also a Yasexhoo.com, so Google is far from alone in having adult clones!)

The Google logo, too, has received its huge share of parodies.

Are there any magic tricks you can play with the Google homepage?

Yup, there are some tricks related to the Google homepage. For instance, try the following. Go to Google.com, enter the following into the search box...

... and hit “I’m Feeling Lucky.”

In another trick, you can make parts of the Google homepage logo disappear.

Who designed the Google logo?

According to some sources, the Google logo was originally created by Sergey Brin using the free image editor Gimp. Later versions of the logo were streamlined though it keeps some of its quirkiness to this day, which goes a long way towards making Google Inc appear less like an evil big corporation.

For some occasions, Google spices up the logo with special designs. This happens during certain holidays (like Halloween or New Years), on the birthdays of some famous people (like Martin Luther King or Picasso), and for some special events (like the 2002 football World Cup, or the Olympics). Sometimes, the logo doodles – many but not all created by Dennis Hwang – also turn into a series spanning several days, as happened with the Dilbert logo (which, by the way, was toned down before it went live as it was considered too risque in its original version).

Sometimes, groups of people even create initiatives to try pressure Google into releasing a logo for a particular occasion... partly with success.

What’s iGoogle?

IGoogle.com is a variant of Google.com that lets you add so-called Google Gadgets, like small tools, games and so on. You can also customize the layout of iGoogle by adding special themes. The service is similar to competing products like Netvibes.com or Pageflakes.com, but utilizes the Google Gadgets framework which has also spread to social network Orkut (via “OpenSocial”), the desktop (via Google Desktop), other websites, Google Maps, and even the Google toolbar.

IGoogle in May 2005 when it was launched

IGoogle was formerly called the Google Personalized Homepage (and “gadgets” were formerly called “modules”), though in fact iGoogle was originally proposed as name for the service. It was then vetoed by the Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page as they considered this thing not a product but simply a feature of the Google homepage. When the service became more and more popular though, I guess people at Google realized that “Google Personalized Homepage” was a bit too long for use in blogs, chats, news reports and so on.

Is the Google homepage HTML standards compliant?

No. According to the official World Wide Web Consortium validator, the Google homepage fails validation with 30 errors. It also doesn’t use any document type declaration to begin with. The Google homepage also uses long-deprecated syntax like font tags.

Some have argued that Google uses old-school, invalid HTML to save bandwidth or support older browsers, but tests have shown this may well not be the case. The simpler truth seems to be that many Google departments simply don’t know (or don’t care) about validation and web standards too much. For instance, Google recently released a snippet to be included by users of Google Analytics; a little while later, they had to issue a change asking webmasters to replace the code once again, and some changes were due to the old code not passing validation. You will also often find Google engineers mixing up terminology when they talk about HTML. Also, for instance, iGoogle gadgets are delivered in an inline frame which itself lacks any document type, pushing the gadget HTML – even if the gadget author made their HTML standards-compliant – into a so-called “quirks mode.”

Is there a special mobile version of the Google homepage around?

Yes, there is, and you might be automatically directed to it when accessing Google.com – or 466453.com (the numbers when you type “google” on certain hand phones) – though you can also view it on a desktop browser. Also, a special version of the mobile variant is available for the iPhone. (Though in theory, special mobile versions aren’t needed as HTML was designed to work across different systems... but that’s just the theory.)

Was the Google homepage ever down or has it been hacked?

Google.com goes down very, very rarely... so rarely, in fact, that many people use it to check if their internet connection is down when they see that another website doesn’t render. Not to say Google.com has never been down – it went down in many countries during November 2005, for instance. (Also, other services by Google do happen to be down sometimes. This can get especially bothersome when you include code from these services into your own page. When Google Analytics was originally released, it had outages that took many external sites using the code down with it too.)

As far as hacking goes – well, Google.de once got caught by what you might call a social hack. On January 23rd, the German Google homepage was showing the following layout for some time:

What happened was that someone filed a request with web host Goneo asking for ownership of Google.de. Goneo forwarded this request to German DeNIC, who handles these things, and DeNIC in turn send a message to Google Inc asking if that change was OK. However, Google failed to answer within the set limit of 5 days, which DeNIC treated as a silent confirmation... so the domain ownership was automatically transferred to Goneo. Now, Google.de was showing the no-contents-for-this-domain message as above. After Goneo realized what happened, they allowed DeNIC to free the domain... and it was kidnapped once more, this time by a German domain merchant!

How did the Google homepage change over time?

The Google homepage hasn’t changed a lot over the last roughly 10 years, even though small changes have been made... changes which do get noticed more quickly on uncluttered websites. Google started out looking like this in 1997 (if you think their current logo is as weird as it gets, you might want to reconsider!):

In the year 2000, the Google homepage layout goes a bit ugly for a while. The tendency of many web designs is to get more crowded over time unless you actively work to prevent it – e.g. department X wants a link, department Y wants their animated badge, the boss of department Z wants the layout to be more “sexy,” and so on:

In 2003 – ignore the Valentine’s logo in this specific screenshot – the Google homepage had tabs for web search, image search, news search and so on:

The tabs later turned into plain links, and even later, these links moved to the top of the homepage to give us the Google.com design as we can see it today – with a search box that is still (and more than ever, thanks to a “universal search” approach by Google) the focus of the page:

(If the layout gets any simpler than that in the future, you’ll probably be talking to the Google Brain [WMV video].)

Does the Google homepage look the same in every country?

The Google homepage changes its language for every country (unless you have another language preference defined in your browser), but they also sometimes change the design. For instance, Google Hong Kong lets users to switch straight to iGoogle via a blue box below the search box... and iGoogle will then be pre-configured with things like YouTube videos, Gmail, Google News and more. Google Korea by default comes in a slighty different, more graphical design, including icons that are animated when you hover over them:

Google was also seen experimenting with a different homepage in China, though that one was never live by default. The default Google China homepage (also accessible via the super-short domain name g.cn) too contains one difference, though: auto-completion. Usually to get auto-completion for the English homepage you need to visit Google Suggest, but in China, the feature is enabled by default (and also makes it easier to type in Hanyu-Pinyin, which will then be transliterated to Chinese characters). In a nutshell, the design philosophy Google embraces in many Asian countries seems to be “more push, less pull.”

Have people ever created art out of the Google homepage?

Yes. C.S. Bernay has created paintings inspired by the Google design, which were exhibited in Hamburg, Germany, in May 2006. The Japanese artist group Exonemo created a giant painting of the Google homepage. French artist Valéry Grancher also paints Google, in sometimes NSFW fashion (he also painted Yahoo and Wired, among others).

[Image credits: World Aids Day screenshot by Chris MacDonald. Copyediting by Personman.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

[Advertisement] Stephen Arnold's in-depth analysis of Google's patent strategy is now available as a download from Infonortics   [Advertise here]

Digg.com is officially in the market for sale with a price tag of $300 million dollars. One of the most popular social media sites on the net with millions of visitors per month and one of the largest user-generated content sites around, Digg has one of the lmost loyal user followings on the net.

Venture Beat reports:

A reliable source just confirmed the company’s plans, noting the company has hired Allen & Company, a tiny but influential private investment firm, to help broker a deal. The asking price is still $300 million, the source said.

We asked Digg founder Kevin Rose about a potential sale, and Allen & Company’s involvement. He told us, unsurprisingly, that “we never comment on things related to acquisitions.”

Digg has recently partnered with the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft, and others making the company more desirable to possible buyers.

It is said that Digg has been in the market for a few months now but it is now being put in the market by Allen & Company who have made mergers and acquistions possible for companies such as Disney, Universal Studios, and many others.