This is the second part of my series about bugs and usability issues with various Google services. My previous post was about Google Picasa and Google Checkout and also included some general comments to Google Storage, which is a paid service provided by Google to increase the amount of data you can have in your account and use for files and other things. Part II talks about the general Google Account, Google Desktop Search and Gmail (Hosted and Regular) as well is the migration of Emails from platforms like MS Outlook into Gmail. (more…)

It’s the end of the year and I have a little gift for Google for the year 2008. It’s a summary of issues and bugs I found in the various Google services, free and paid ones as well. Some are fresh and triggered this post and some others are older where I already send a feedback to Google in the past.

Google is obviously not used to deal with people and their best people for web usability must all be busy with the organic web search page. Okay, it is not easy to manage all the different new services and offerings that are partially in-house developed products and partially products and services that were acquired over the past few years. However, fundamental mistakes and errors should not happen, even under those circumstances. I was lucky today to bump into a whole chain of bugs and usability issues with Google’s Picasa, Google Checkout and Gmail. I also include some older issues, including ones with other Google services while I am at it. It comes down in total to SEVEN usability issues and FIVE real bugs for Picasa and Google Checkout alone.

It’s a long post, broken down into multiple parts and it is primarily written for Google.

If you encountered the same, similar or completely different issues, feel free to use this opportunity to let Google know about it by commenting to this post via the form provided at the end of this post. (more…)

When we launched our Lifehacker Top 10 series back in March we had no idea what a big hit it would be. That Letterman guy's really onto something! While we're milking this whole "best of 2007 list" thing, we compiled the top 20 most-viewed Lifehacker Top 10 lists of 2007.

• Top 10 iPhone Applications
• Top 10 Free Windows Downloads
• Top 10 USB Thumb Drive Tricks
• Top 10 Free Computer System Recovery Tools
• Top 10 Wi-Fi Boosts, Tweaks and Apps
• Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters
• Top 10 Free Wallpaper, Fonts and Icon Sources
• Top 10 Body Hacks
• Top 10 Ways to Sleep Smarter and Better
• Top 10 Google Products You Forgot All About
• Top 10 Must-have Firefox Extensions
• Top 10 Ubuntu Applications
• Top 10 Ways to Clean Up Your PC
• Top 10 Mac OS X Tweaks
• Top 10 DIY Office Projects
• Top 10 Free Mac Downloads
• Top 10 Food and Drink Hacks
• Top 10 New and Improved Apps of 2007
• Top 10 Home Networking Tricks
• Top 10 PDF Tricks

My wife and I just got back from Christmas in Omaha with her family. It was both fun and cold. Some folks in Omaha go all out for decorating. Here’s one house that we drove by over the holidays:

Yes, I believe that is a full-size animatronic Santa in the window.

My wedding anniversary is in January, and last year my anniversary present to my wife was taking a nice trip and going completely offline for a week.

This year I’m repeating my attempt to go offline, so don’t expect any posts from me this coming week.

If you want something deep to think about while I’m gone, consider The Davos Question, which is “”What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?” I’ll post my suggestion when I’m back online.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• How to Track Down Anyone Online
  "When you're trying to find someone online, Google's not the only game in town."
• The 20 Best iPod Utilities
  "With a new generation of iPods on the market this holiday season, your reliable old iPod may not seem as shiny as it once did."
• 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?"
• How to Set Up Your New Computer
  "So Santa left a brand-new computer under the tree this year, eh? Lucky you! If you're spending the holiday setting up a new Mac or PC, it's time to get filled with free software cheer."
• Top 10 New and Improved Apps of 2007
  "When it comes to new technology, 2007's destined to be remembered as "The Year of the iPhone"--but a whole lot more went on in the past 12 months besides Apple's much-hyped gadget launch."
• The 23 Best iTunes Add-ons
  "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."
• Top 10 Free Windows File Wranglers
  "You spend a whole lot of time each day moving, copying, trashing, browsing, and otherwise fiddling with all the files stored on your PC, and you should have the most efficient power tools to get those jobs done."
• 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."

Webapp Flight Wait takes the guesswork out of flight tracking by providing you with a map of FAA flight delays in real time. Simply input the city or airport code and let Flight Wait determine whether there are any traffic delays that you may need to be aware of. If all lines are green, the wait is a maximum of 15 minutes. If the lines are yellow, your airport or area is reporting delays between approximately 16-59 minutes. A red line indicates a wait of an additional one to two hours, and if the line is black, you're stuck for at least two hours. You can already track your flight with Google and view delays with previously mentioned FlightStats, but this application gives you an overall picture of whether an entire airport or city is affected by weather conditions or other delays.

Ads by Pheedo

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Every once in awhile its good to see other metasearch engine come out of the web. While the top five major search engines battle it out, day in and day out in outclassing each other introducing new features here and there, answering privacy concerns of users, its a breather that something like SearchSalad came out of hybernation.

In a nutshell SearchSalad is all about crawling the top search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and wikipedia for relevant results related to a user’s search keyword. So, instead of searching those search engines one by one, SearchSalad crawls through the top search engines and displays the most relevant results, even eliminating duplicate results along the way.

Working as a metasearch engine, SearchSalad does not have a database of its own and relies on the top search engines database properties. SearchSalad even queries product databases of non-search sites such as Kelko and Ebay as an added bonus to search results.

To give users additional flexibility through personal customization. SearchSalad gives users the option to select the search engines to be included in their search, choose search results based on the strenght of the search engines, upload personalized background picture and play music through its My Salad facility.

Paul Sago, Director of Lemon Interactive, SearchSalad owner best summarizes what SearchSalad is all about:

“This is the future of search and we anticipate bringing many new innovations to the site over the coming months.”

SearchSalad covers the web, video, audio, image, news maps by crawling Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Wikipedia as well as non-search sites such as eBay, Kelkoo, Engadget, Review Centre, CNET, YouTube, Blinx and Ciao.

Gmail’s sign-up form is very forgiving. If you leave the first and last name fields blank and enter something like “123456” as user name, you can hit the “check availibility” button. As 123456 is taken, Google will start to be very creative and return randomized login name suggestions for you. “General Rough” doesn’t sound too bad eh?

[Thanks Andy Schneider!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

One of my long time blogging friends, Amit Agarwal, produced this video on how Google AdSense helped him become the first independent blogger in India, after the advertising system gave him the chance to move back home and become his own boss.

The video was selected by Google to become featured on the Google AdSense blog.

Google AdSense also gave me the initial financial freedom to become a full time blogger, and then the opportunity to pick and choose my career path in search marketing. Search Engine Journal currently does not run Google AdSense (except in some select posts), but it’s always good to know that if I have to, I can fall back on AdSense to fill remnant space.

I found Amit’s video inspirational, if not Digital Inspirational, and worth sharing.

So, yes, Google AdSense has led to mass spamming of the Internet via made for AdSense sites and splogs, but the opportunity it has given many of us .. and it’s fueling of the problogging movement, has to offset its negatives.

So, how has Google AdSense changed your life?

There's no better time to develop your scheduling habit than the start of a new year, and few tools are as easy to pick up and get productive with as Google Calendar. While you can quickly get from beginner to black belt scheduler with just the web interface, the real value in GCal is that it's accessible no matter where you are—work, play, or the grocery store—and can help you decide what happens next.

Whether you're a GCal newcomer or seasoned user, there are a ton of ways to further integrate your calendars into your routine, and I've rounded up Lifehacker's wealth of GCal syncing guides, organizers, and other GCal tools for your desktop, mobile device, Firefox, and even iPod. Read on for advice on staying on top of your schedule this year.

Load up GCal with your existing calendar

All Platforms: Two-Way Sync with GCalDaemon, Thunderbird, Plaxo

On Windows, Mac, or Linux, Lifehacker favorite email app Thunderbird can be made into a full-fledged GCal interface using two add-ons, Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar. Those who like to keep their email and scheduling separate can also check out the stand-alone Sunbird calendar app, which can also use the Provider add-on for GCal syncing.

Free web app aggregator Plaxo can also provide free synchronization between Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, mobile devices and lots of other environments, but (usually) requires installation of extra toolbars and feeling comfortable with having all your data stashed at one site.

Windows

• Show Google Calendar in Outlook's "home page"
• Synchronize Outlook 2003 and later with gSyncit
• Add GCal to Outlook (recommended for those who use only one GCal for separate purposes)
• Two-way syncing with SyncMyCal (Limited free version, full version $25)
• For a robust solution that could sync up home and office Outlooks, Google Calendars, non-Touch iPods and cell phones, check out a detailed guide to using ScheduleWorld.

Mac

Linux

Firefox

Mobile phones

• "next" (Receive your next scheduled event)
• "day" (Have today's agenda sent)
• "nday" (Receive tomorrow's events)
You can also add GCal events by voice with Jott or through micro-blogging tool Twitter if you prefer.

Those with browser access on their phone should check to see if GooSync or GCal Sync support their models. Both services can integrate GCal with your phone's built-in calendar, although not without occasional hiccups. BlackBerry fans, Google's got you covered with Google Sync.


iPods / iPhone


Owners of iPhones and iPod Touch models can get connected to Google Calendar with a simple two-step: Their devices easily sync with Outlook, iCal, or Entourage through iTunes, and all three of those applications can be synced or subscribed to Google Calendar. Unfortunately, those who don't use any of those programs have to rely on Google Calendar's mobile web interface for now, as there's no way to force a calendar sync without jailbreaking, hacking into and generally running a whole lot of terminal commands—not that we might not cover how to do that at some point.

Those with non-touch iPods and Macs have an easy solution in iCal, which can subscribe to Google Calendars and sync through iTunes. Windows users with older iPods—the kind that still have "Enable Disk Use" as an option in iTunes—can sync through Outlook or try a stand-alone solution:

• GetCals, a tool that requires a bit of configuration
• iPodCALsync, an automatic tool that seems to work with most iPod models

What hacks have I missed? Which tools do you use to make Google Calendar your ultimate scheduling and reminder tool? Let us know in the comments.

Kevin Purdy is an associate editor for Lifehacker who adds just about everything, including reminders to relax, into Google Calendar. His weekly feature appears every Friday on Lifehacker.

Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Friday 28 December 2007. 16:00:00

Google toolbar feature back in the dock

GOOGLE IS still facing patent infringement charges over its Autolink toolbar feature after a US appeal court overturned an earlier ruling which cleared the search engine giant on all charges. According to PC World, Hyperphrase Technologies sued Google in April 2006, claiming that the Adsense and Autolink functions, both of...

We really do love your software. And we appreciate the fact that you introduce valuable new features so frequently. But please: slow down a little, and spend a bit more time on bug testing.

In the time-honored model of software development (call it "pre-Web 1.0"), teams of programmers worked for years to craft scores of subroutines, knit them together into a megalithic "major release," and then test and re-test the application on a variety of software and hardware platforms. The application would often be "pre-released" to internal and external teams of alpha and beta testers who would run the software under an even wider variety of conditions.

All this methodical testing slowly but surely eliminated major software bugs until the "release" could be dubbed "Golden Master." Only then would it be released to the buying public, hopefully with only minor bugs remaining. Thus Word 2.0 begat Word 3.0, etc.

That model, though still practiced widely for PC- and server-based applications, seems almost anachronistic in today's environment of high-velocity incrementally-released Ajax-based web applications. New features – minor and major – appear overnight, often with little or no warning, explanation or documentation. And all too often, with minor and major bugs.

Click to read the rest of this post...

The nominations for the Search Blogs Awards of 2007 have been compiled and we’re ready to have you vote for your favorite Search Blogs, Communities and other search related categories for 2007.

This year, we have 19 voting categories and had to condense a few due to the new blogs and themes which have become common in our industry. We also have some new additions to the search communities and added search blog tools like Wordpress Plugins into the mix.

We were going to host a vote for the best search marketing post of 2007, but after reading Techipedia’s post on the subject, we decided to give Tamar her due (don’t let this influence voting).

You can vote by using our form on SurveyMonkey, you’ll then be redirected back to Search Engine Journal when finished. Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed to be alerted of the winning blogs and voting results.

OK, so please vote for your favorite Search Marketing Blogs of 2007. (more…)

Looking back on 2007, you can't say there was a shortage of new products and services. While the word "beta" became a synonym for "new and free," there were a few projects launched this year—including TV-watching site Hulu, Pownce, GrandCentral, and Joost, to name a few—that remain invite-only, and others, like Google's to-do list, the full Windows Live suite, and third-party iPhone apps, set to drop after the new year.

What productivity tools, web apps, or software are you most looking forward to seeing unveiled or made fully public in 2008? Which products have you gotten in on the ground floor of and are eager to have your friends start using? Give us your predictions, thoughts, and user experiences in the comments.

What's behind the latest cockup?

Google can count itself fortunate that a serious privacy storm it caused took place in the run up to Christmas - when world+dog was otherwise occupied. By altering the behaviour of one of its web-services, Google ran foul of its own Privacy guarantee - and continues to violate it.…

If you've thought about the damage of having your Google account disabled or hijacked—like with the script vulnerability that left one designer completely out of the loop—it might be time to do something to ensure all your Google tools can't be taken away in one fell swoop. The Google Operating System blog recommends a few moves to ensure uninterrupted access to your web apps, such as cloning your email into a new account, sharing Google Calendar and Reader, and creating extra authorized accounts. It's not a total solution, but as the author points out:

... You'll still be able to read your email, send messages, post blog posts, check your calendar, add new events, access important documents etc.

Launched about a year and a half ago, Otavo is famous as the intention engine. Headquartered at Canada, the engine is loosely coupled around search results and result seekers. Founder Amanuel Tewold named it after “Organizing Text, Audio and Video” which is what Otavo seeks to do of course, but with a social twist.

The basic premise is this : You get to start a search or a quest and add links to it. You could also join in a quest. So by way of social participation and tagging, Otavo creates a database of quality links on keywords.

Its a social angle to the activity of searching but has its share of criticism. Most of online searches are done for instant results. Starting a quest and waiting for the results to come from the community does not fit in the reality of a fast paced world. (more…)

Web designer holds out against extortion

Web designer David Airey has succeeded in recovering his domain after hackers exploited flaws in Gmail to trick his hosts into authorising a fraudulent transfer.…

Google’s precursor in 1996 was called “BackRub,” a search engine research project headed by Larry Page at the computer science department at Stanford. BackRub might have been a reference to the underlying algorithm which counts backlinks as affirmative votes, the same approach that was then turned into PageRank.

In August 1996, according to a cached copy of the BackRub engine from C63.be, the number of “HTML URLs” this “web search engine” indexed was 75 million, with 30 million HTML pages downloaded by the crawler. BackRub was written in Java and Python based “on several Sun Ultras and Intel Pentiums running Linux.”

On the backrub homepage, Larry Page thanked Scott Hassan, Alan Steremberg and Sergey Brin for their help. Larry Page was still pretty much the owner of the project at the point. The hand in the logo was his own, scanned. And as the FAQ stated, if there was any question unanswered, his email address and phone number were available for you to directly reach him.

Later, BackRub turned into “the Google Search Engine,” which may have looked like the following in 1997, though it’s quite possible the logo back then was different than the one in the screen shot:

I’m using a gray background color as default as the HTML doesn’t serve its own color, a color set-up which wasn’t too unusual in 1997, and the white background color on the logo may be another indicator the logo file as used by C63.be isn’t the original (Google was not able to confirm this in either direction).

As the cached copy shows, searching Stanford was still a priority over searching the web – or at least, it was listed first. Also, Larry and Sergey found themselves with 1.7 million crawled email addresses in their hand back then... though utilizing those would have become quite a different, more shady business model than the one of search ads introduced in 2000.

[Thanks Beussery, Colin Colehour and Tony Ruscoe!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Doug Caverly of WebProNews is reporting that Google News has added coverage of the U.S. 2008 elections. The Official Google News Blog has announcement about this new feature last week.

To provide direct access to extensive coverage of the candidates, the campaigns, and the issues, Google News has launched a new Elections section on our front page. This brings you the top stories on national, state, and local elections throughout the United States.

Although this new feature may seem temporary and would last only until the elections, it is still a useful feature for readers who want their daily dose of elections news. The Google News portal would feature top stories on anything and everything about the 2008 elections so it would be a good source of information.

Just like any other part of the Google News Portal, you can add the Elections Coverage into your personalized pages. It will become part of the other news categories and would be update as often as the news items in the portal are updated.

Interestingly, Yahoo News treatment of the U.S. 2008 elections is more comprehensive than that of Google. The 2008 Presidential Election on Yahoo! News is a full sub-portal coverage and is induced with heaps of news and information about the incoming U.S. elections.

I wonder which web portal would gain more traction in terms of reader visits and page views? And which would matter in terms of helping U.S. voters decide on who to vote in the elections?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google announced a small change to Google Reader back on December 14 which seemed innocent enough, and in line with their goals of making all the world’s content searchable. Nevertheless, users of the service have been none too pleased with the change, citing serious privacy concerns and raising hell over the holidays.

The update to Google reader now takes blog posts and articles that one has marked for sharing and has made them available to everyone that person had listed as a friend or contact on the Google Talk instant messaging service. What’s wrong with that you say?

Well, I don’t know about anyone else’s settings, but when I’m in Gmail, it seems like it adds everyone I’ve ever emailed or chatted with to my list of contacts.

Some of those people aren’t really “friends” and I’d like to limit the personal information that I supply to them. (more…)

There’s no all-knowing glass bowl in reach for our predictions for Google in 2008, but in the meantime, we have some official announcements from Google Inc, outstanding rumored products, and a couple of visible trends. To recap, there’s...

... Google Health

Google Health was announced by Google’s Marissa Mayer for early 2008 (at least for the US, I suppose). Leaked screenshots of the program show the service aims to store information on your conditions, medications, allergies, surgeries, family health history and so on. With that extremely sensitive data in hand, Google’s computers may be able to help you and your doctor to put the puzzle pieces together. This way, via an automated health guide you may be informed about preventive measures, drug interactions or potential treatments, and your doctor may downsize their, to quote Marissa, “minutes per patient” to become more effective.

Practically every Google service which stores your information is a trade-off between privacy risks and the value you can get out of the service. Google Health may be no different, though (if it will be connected to your real name, e.g. to your Google Account) it may stretch the limit of what people deem acceptable to offer to Google’s great server farm.

... Maka Maka

On September 6, 2007, Google’s Ben Darnell gave an internal tutorial for new Google employees (the so-called “nooglers”). The video was filmed by another employee. So far, nothing unusual, except that later this confidential video surfaced on Google Video... perhaps uploaded there by accident.

Among coming changes to Google’s RSS Reader service, the video was foreshadowing a service called “Maka Maka.” This was supposed to be the new social back-end across different Google services, part of it being the roll-out of so-called “activity streams” in Google Reader. Already, a Google Profile service was released recently, and Reader introduced a feature showing your Google Talk friends’ shared items. It may be possible that this is just the beginning of the social Google back-end we’ll be seeing more of in 2008.

... Google My World

It’s hard to keep something in the vicinity of Google secret... even when you remove all Google brand features from the service. That was what Google did with their “MyWorld” program. All we know from the outside is that the sign-up screen to this program, which was tested at the Arizona State University, is showing some 2D and 3D avatars under the headline “Redefine Your World.” A globe is showing next to the headline.

... Niniane Wang’s “Project in Social Space”

This is becoming one of the oldest rumors around (search for google metaverse to get an idea), even though little to none is known about this project, except that it’s supposed to be in “social space” and product-managed by Niniane Wang (the Google employee who, according to Google, “learned the Lisp programming language at 10, and started college math classes at 11”). Who knows, it may even be the “My World” project outlined above.

What we do know though is that, at least according to Niniane Wang, this service or product can’t be completely boring, as Niniane presented the following mail from a colleague in 2006:

<<i realized today during the meeting that...

- if we’re working on the best project at google, and
- we’re working at the best company on the planet, then

we’re working on the Best Project in the World.>>

Niniane (caricatured) added, “Can’t argue with that logic.”

... Gdrive

If the Google Metaverse rumor above is one of the oldest, then the Gdrive rumor is probably the oldest. To clarify the name, Gdrive aka Platypus is a) an existing internal client for Google to share files (I got hold of the program before, though it requires an existing Google employee log-in to be useful), and b) a rumored project that may bring a unified file sharing back-end to users, and perhaps to Google’s services.

Right now, saving files and moving them from one Google (or other web app) to the next often still requires your “old-school” hard disk. Some of us however might prefer to have all their pictures, movies, music files and other data online... to be retrieved by clicking a special “browse” button from a web application. Maybe in 2008 this will become more mainstream?

One of the most recent times this rumor reared its head was when during a Google song contest, an employee sang “At least around here 5 years ain’t so long overdue”... and that part of the song was overlaid with the Gdrive/ Platypus icon. This video, incidentally, has now been removed. An older mention of Gdrive was left inside “hidden” comments in a PowerPoint file reading:

<<With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive ...>>

... relaunch of Jotspot

Google acquired office web app and wiki software Jotspot in October 2006. Since then, Google has been working to integrate it into their offerings. It’s possible that in 2008, Jotspot’s wiki page editing software will become part of Google’s web apps, and perhaps replace Google Page Creator.

... Google Android

Google Android, the Google-led open mobile platform (“open” as in OpenSocial, the Open Content Alliance and so on... can you see a trend?), has already been released in early form, but for the general public to see it in action you have to resort to a software emulator. Maybe in 2008, some of us may get to play around with actual phone hardware show-casing the Android operating system? It may become tough to beat the (high-usability) iPhone, except that the iPhone right now is too expensive for many of us. If some Android-driven phones will be only ~90% as good but a lot cheaper, they may find themselves a happy niche. (The kind the Windows Mobile OS might occupy if it wouldn’t suck.)

... Knol

One of the most interesting recent Google announcements (“As a rule, we don’t preannounce new features.” -Eric Schmidt, 2002) was Google “Knol.” Currently in limited test mode, this mixture of About.com expert model and wiki functionality may become one of the failed Google attempts at growing communities, or a (smaller) competitor to Wikipedia.

2008 may not become the service’s success year, but – if the doors to this weirdly-named service are opened to the general public – it may become the defining year in terms of providing seed content for the site. A stable basis of articles may grow more good articles, whereas a site that seems to be abused by spammers from all sides may lead to more spam (“broken window phenomenon" style). You may argue the basis for user-generated content is karma, not money (I help Wikipedia because they don’t suck/ rip me off), and while Google has money, their karma is sometimes flaky.

... new China tools

China may be the market getting the most attention from Google next to their US home zone. In 2008, we might see even more locally optimized releases from the Google Beijing and Shanghai offices. In 2007 and before, expansion and research & development already spawned 1) a Google Input Method Editor to transliterate Pinyin/ Chinese, 2) partnerships with Tianya.cn which power social network Lai Ba and questions & answer site Wen Da*, 3) an experimental Google homepage, not the default live homepage and not officially linked yet, 4) more customized Google censorship than any other country is getting, to my knowledge, including “special” versions of Google Maps, Google Books, Google Image Search, Google News and Google web search.

*The Chinese “Lai ba” means “come here,” and “wen da” means “answering a question.”

... new Gmail design

Screenshots of a slightly changed Gmail layout have been circulating over at the Google Operating System blog. More to come in 2008?

... Google event oneboxes and logos

... like a Google logo doodle series for the Beijing Olympic games in August 2008, or a special Olympics results onebox/ Google News segment/ event news page/ gadget. Another logo doodle for the US in November 2008 may be urging people to vote*.

*Wonder if Google employees by and large are rooting for Barack Obama due to his tech-friendly message presented to them at their headquarters before?

... Google Gears

Google Gears is an installation which extends the browser to allow web applications to provide offline functionality. Such as Google Reader letting you download some posts to then continue reading them even when you’re offline (I suppose some of the younger ones among us will have to look up that word in the dictionary!). Right now, Google Gears – an open source project which Google may be hoping will gain traction in the overall market as it may be neat Trojan horse to bring more power to web apps (last not least Google’s web apps) – is still missing for such services as Gmail or Google Docs. Maybe in 2008, we’ll be seeing it rolled out to those as well?

... Google web result experiments

There’s the Google 80/20 rule (employees get 20% of their time for projects of their own choosing and liking... though perhaps it’s more like 100 + 20 for some employees). But there’s also the less known Google 70/20/10 rule, meaning that 70% of Google’s focus are search and advertisement. In 2007 and before the motto was “universal search,” meaning that web search results are intermingled with special boxes showing direct video, picture, blog, news results and so on. However, already a new prototype surfaced which moved these special “oneboxes” to the right-hand side of the results, where usually only ads appear. (As prototypes go, this one may or may not be rolled out as live feature.)

This onebox prototype points to what may become one of the key conflicts in search results in 2008; results integrity vs results cross-integration. Integrity as in: showing mostly neutral results, doing things in organic ways, separating ads from real results, and so on. And cross-integration as in: showing Google-favoring special results such as tips or “promotions,” showing Google Checkout buttons on some ads, showing YouTube results in different formatting, framing pages instead of directly linking to them and so on.

Sometimes cross-integration helps the user and Google; sometimes, it helps only Google at the expense of the user.

Google continues to argue that the user may leave with a single click, but that’s the thing with cross-integration; if you only like service A and B of theirs a lot, you will have a hard time switching from C to D if A and B tightly integrate C, but not D.
As a practical example, if you are a hard-core Gmail user but you find that Google Calendar sucks, you may still end up using Google Calendar over, say, Zoho Calendar, because Zoho isn’t integrated as nicely in the form of Gmail event invitations.
As another example, while you may theoretically prefer PayPal to Google Checkout for making online payments, if you find that Checkout is integrated much better into Google web search results – and you much prefer Google results – then you may end up becoming a Checkout user.
The end result of this phenomenon? Well, progress in all the sub-optimal Google products may stagnate even as that sub-optimal Google product is able to grow its user base anyway... the drawback of monopolies.

... iterative changes to almost every product, with all the fun and risks that brings

Google has a huge array of services, each with their own product teams. All products taken together means there’s a change almost every other week, and sometimes, every other day (or even every other hour in a day). That was true in 2007, it might continue to hold true in 2008.

There’s another noteworthy side-effect: every service hosted at *.google.com also has the power to add a security vulnerability that can impact the general Google Account, or parts thereof. And this may be the biggest risk for Google in 2008 and other years ahead: a big privacy/ security scandal. “Big” as in e.g.: “a hole exposed the emails of everyone.” (Imagine other people going through the emails of a celebrity, say, Larry Page.) This could shake the trust people have in the web apps model more than anything else; a giant win for every desktop application provider (like Microsoft) and a huge loss for every web apps provider (like Google).

On the other hand, if data risks don’t overshadow this new software model, then the growingly feature-rich web apps zone may get more and more new users in 2008. Google seems to be betting on this, if products like Google Docs (Google’s Excel/ PowerPoint/ Word light) are any indicator.

On a side-note, at the far opposite of change frequency are those Google products which seem to be halted. And some of them, we may even see being killed off in 2008. In the past it happened to such things as Google Answers, Google Onsite Advertiser Sign-up (Google: “We found that [it] was under-performing”), Google X, Google Related Links, the Google SOAP API, or the Google Health Advertising Blog (Google’s Karen Wickre last month: “we’re just not generating enough content here to warrant your time”).

... more employees leaving Google

Perhaps naturally Google has a lot of fluctuation: old employees leave the company and new ones arrive. Sometimes, the original company spirit survives, sometimes it is changed... for better or for worse. (I suppose survival of core values on company scale is especially likely if these core values aren’t being eroded by the company bosses themselves, i.e. self-proclaimed values are always strictly stuck to.)

Ever since Google went public in 2004, the company is at least partially split between those that started working there before, and those that arrived later – a two-class society, if you want, between the millionaires and the latecomers. But this divide may not be the only and perhaps not even the core source of employee frustrations; a bigger challenge may be for Google, now a giant machine of thousands of employees, to keep the spontaneous “start-up” creativity & excitement alive. The less they manage to do so, the more brilliant minds may leave.

Facing the choice between a low-impact role in a high-impact company versus a high-impact role in a low-impact company, some developers and designers may prefer the latter... because while there’s added risk, there’s also added potential for explosive growth. With all the money being poured into Silicon Valley, California, it may also seem like good timing for some to leave now before a bubble bursts (though if it does burst in 2008, it may kill some of the seemingly more exciting start-ups with it, and Google may become the much better choice again; after all, while a bubble bursting may kill some of Google’s side products, it’s hard to imagine it will kill all of them).

As a side-effect, with more employees leaving the company, more stories from within the closed Google walls may emerge as well. In 2007, many chapters of the Google story are long past yet unwritten. Non-disclosure agreements blur an important part of technology history, but when an employee stops working for the company, it’s more likely they will share their stories in the form of biographical books, email interviews, television appearances and so on. We may hear more and more about trivialities (such as Google employees losing a bet to then run around in bathing suites to take a dip in the freezing cold water of Lake Tahoe), but perhaps we’ll also find out more substantial things about how products like Gmail, Google Maps, Google Translator, Google Gears, Orkut, China censorship, Google web search, as well as the giant server farm powering it all, came about. Pixels end up looking very clean on screen but there’s a lot of human messiness involved before they reach their final destination.

What do you think we’ll see from Google in 2008?

[MyWorld screenshot by It5five.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

The latest version of our current favorite Windows app launcher, Launchy, saw several nice interface updates and some plug-in improvements in the latest release, and one hugely useful feature improvement that may have snuck in under your radar is the impressively updated Weby plugin, which adds simple customization of web searches directly inside of Launchy's preference pane. For example, reader Nicholai say he prefers the lightning quick definitions from web site Definr, so he simply added Definr to the Weby plug-in by clicking the '+' button, titled the site Definr, added http://definr.com/ in the URL box, and put %s (your search term) in the query section. Then just invoke Launchy, type Definr, press Tab, then enter the word you're looking up. Likewise, another reader is searching his Gmail from Launchy with Weby. Granted, you can accomplish similar tasks with keyword bookmarks in Firefox, but the improved Weby plug-in works like a charm, too. Thanks Nicholai!

If a new iPhone or iPod touch found its way under your tree and you just can't wait until Apple officially supports third-party application development to extend its functionality (who can wait until February?), it's time you jailbreak your favorite new portable device. We've covered two methods for doing so already, but that feisty Apple keeps on changing things up, and the latest firmware (which all of you new owners are likely running) requires a bit more finesse before you gain access to the throng of great apps that have already been developed for the iPhone. So today we're jailbreaking that iPhone or iTouch of yours to open it up to the wonderful world of third-party software.

NOTE: I've only tested these instructions on my iPhone using a Mac, so I can't absolutely guarantee the same level of success on the iPod touch or Windows computers. However, the software was made to jailbreak either the iPod touch or the iPhone on either Windows or Macs, so it should work fine on either. That said, I'll be referring to the iPhone through the rest of these instructions. If you're looking to install apps without activating your iPhone with AT&T;, our pals over at Gizmodo have covered that.

UPDATE: It seems that there have been mixed results for some users attempting to downgrade from the 1.1.2 firmware. The downgrade appears to be working for some, not for others. If you have trouble downgrading to 1.1.1, you can simply restore the current 1.1.2 firmware and everything should be back to normal, but unfortunately you won't be able to install any third-party apps. I'm very curious to hear what kind of luck others are having with this, so if you give it a try, let's hear your experience in the comments.

Check Your Firmware Version

Downgrade or Upgrade to the 1.1.1 Firmware

Well, first you need to download the 1.1.1 firmware, which you can do here for the iPhone and here for the iPod touch. Make sure that the file ends in _Restore.ipsw, which it should by default. While it's downloading, go ahead and reboot your iPhone into recovery mode. To do so, plug in your iPhone, hold down the power and home buttons at the same time until your iPhone restarts (don't slide to power off), and then release the power button. Continue holding the home button until your device enters recovery mode (as indicated in the screenshot).

Since your firmware is probably still downloading, go ahead and download the 1.1.2 jailbreak files here and unzip the contents on your desktop.

When the firmware completes downloading (which—at a whopping 152 MB—can take a little time), make sure you know where you've saved it and fire up iTunes if it isn't already open. Again go to the same Summary tab where you found your current firmware version. This time, though, you're going to restore the firmware to the 1.1.1 version you just downloaded. To do this, Shift-Click the Restore button in Windows or Option-Click on a Mac and browse to where you saved the 1.1.1 firmware, select it, and restore. When the restore process completes, it will end with an error. Don't worry if this happens, as the jailbreak software is made to overcome the error.

Once you get to this point, close out of iTunes completely and then run either the windows.bat file if you're a Windows user or the jailbreak.jar user if you're on a Mac to get your phone past this error and booting into the 1.1.1 firmware. If you're running jailbreak.jar, all you need to do is click the Boot from Recovery button.

Jailbreak Your 1.1.1 iPhone or iPod touch

Point mobile Safari to http://jailbreakme.com/ and tap the Install AppSnapp link. Safari will close after a bit and eventually your phone will return to the Slide to unlock screen. After your unlock the phone, you should see Installer.app on your home screen, meaning it worked. When I used this method my iPhone froze the first time I tried unlocking it, so I restarted my phone and sure enough, there was Installer.app. That's really all there is to it.

Jailbreak and Upgrade to 1.1.2

First, fire up Installer.app on your iPhone, find the Tweaks (1.1.1) section of the Install tab, and install an application called OktoPrep. Nothing special will show up on your phone after you install it, but it will have made a few tweaks on your device making it possible to jailbreak 1.1.2 after you upgrade.

Now you just upgrade your iPhone the normal way—by connecting your device to iTunes and selecting Update from the Summary tab. iTunes will go through the long download and upgrade process and when it's done, you'll be updated to 1.1.2 but not jailbroken. To complete the jailbreak, close iTunes, make sure your device is connected, then head back to the 1.1.2-jailbreak Folder you downloaded earlier and re-run either windows.bat (if you're a Windows user) or jailbreak.jar (if you're on a Mac).

Follow the instructions each app offers, and when they finish, you should see Installer.app on your home screen and be completely updated to the latest firmware and jailbroken. That means it's time to start installing those apps!

My current favorites—for those of you new to third-party iPhone or iPod touch apps—include:

• iFlix, and incredible Netflix account management tool
• iMapIdle, an app that works in conjunction with IMAP email (including Gmail) to enable real-time, push-like email notification
• iPhoneHome, an app that lets you change the default double-click behavior for the home button
• Navizon, a pseudo-GPS locator that determines your location in Google Maps using cell towers your phone communicates with (iPhone only, obviously)
• Apollo, the native IM app
• MobileScrobbler, which uploads everything you play on your iPod to your Last.fm account
• WebSearch, a web search tool for quickly performing a search on any web site without going through the rigmarole of loading a site, finding the search box, and then entering your search terms
• HuaRongDao and iSolitaire, a couple of really nice looking and addictive games for your device.

Now you're probably thinking, Great, my iPhone's all jailbroken, but I sure wish I knew all the ins and outs of this beast, including how I can squeeze the most productivity from this little gem of a device. Lucky for you, the best iPhone book I've ever written (with Jason Chen of Gizmodo) is both in stores and shipping right now!

Finally, if you're looking for more to do with your iPhone, here's how you can:

• Use Your iPhone's Internet Connection On Your Laptop
• Stream Music from Your iPod touch or iPhone to Any iTunes Library
• Set Up Gmail with IMAP
• Remote Control Your Computer with Your iPhone

Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who hacks his iPhone for business and pleasure. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker, and his book, How to Do Everything with Your iPhone, is in stores now. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

When a global VP of marketing for a multinational company gives me advice, I listen. Brand equity Search Engine Watch Expert Erik Qualman told me the Facebook search engine has reached the tipping point for global brand building online. The reason? Facebook's open API that CMOs can leverage to great effect.

Erik's Google-powered TripAdvisor facebook app (pictured here) shows just one way anyone can start building a global brand and connecting with other professionals, influencers, and global companies via social search. For details on how Facebook stacks up against the competition and how SEMs and VPs of Marketing can benefit, read it and reap.

So this year, with the help of social search experts, I'll be living local online. Facebooking for the first time; Twittering my time away; experimenting with search engines with a social twist. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627928

I'm a skeptic -- going in with an open mind -- and the hypothesis that living online in the social search world will be a massive waste of time.

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Google is making a push to expand its reach in the Yahoo owned Japanese market via targeting where the majority of Japanese users spend their time online, their cell phones.

Google has partnered with NTT DoCoMo, a major cell phone carrier in Japan to power their default search on all phones, bringing Google power to DoCoMo’s 48 million subscribers.

This is also a response to the huge push Softbank (Yahoo Japan’s parent company) made when they acquired Vodafone Japan, and began offering Yahoo powered phones with lowered payment plans, across the country. (more…)

Bookmarking has become more personalized thanks to the likes of Social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon. Bookmach is another search engine that provides a personalized approach to bookmarking content.

From the outset, BookMach is an engine that indexes several thousands of blogs, e-zines and as they call it, highly reputed sites. A user can select to perform a normal search or create a BookMach.

A bookmach is your own personalized search page at BookMach whereby BookMach maintains a list of the keywords you entered and updates the results that it gets as and when new quality content are added to the roster of blogs and sites they index. (more…)

Sam’s Club, the Wal-Mart owned mega store which is a godsend to small businesses looking to stock locally breaking dependency on wholesale distributors, is now offering a search marketing service targeted towards those same small businesses.

Sam’s Club’s LeadConnect, which seems to be a resold version of Innuity LeadConnect, offers McMarketing for the small business which does not have the time to conduct search marketing themselves and sees an easy $25 per month payment plan for their site as an alternative to the Verizon Superpages and other pay-per-month services which are actively targeting this small biz market [thanks Karl].
(more…)

Google Reader has been opening up more sharing features recently, giving users the ability to publicly share feeds and see Google Talk friends' feeds. Blogger Steve Rubel points out a not-so-obvious way to share only selected feeds with only a choice group of people. His solution:

• Add a unique tag to feeds you want to share (like "friendshare")
• Select "Settings" from Reader's upper-right menus, then the "Tags" tab
• Click the RSS icon on the tag you want to share. Share the "View public page" link only with those you want to see it

Google has blocked the serving of AdWords contextual (or AdSense) display ads in the European market of US lingerie company Pampered Passions because the company has deemed the ads as having adult content.

The Pampered Passions campaign invites men to buy lingerie for their loved ones for Christmas, but the tone and skin shown in the ads were deemed to risque for Google.

Google’s representative stated : “The ad has been disapproved for adult content. Only family safe images will be approved. Images which are classified as non-family safe or adult content are disapproved and will not run. Your image contains nudity and mature themes.”

Trying to soak up all of the publicity they can after the ban, Pampered Passions issued this statement in a press release:

“Google’s refusal to show ads that are completely acceptable to UK audiences on their network is turning out to be an increasingly frequent occurrence. Google are an American company and while they might seem to be really ‘cool’ and ‘liberal’ in the USA, their policies do seem rather conservative for European consumers. An outright ban on ads no ruder than a Christmas cracker joke & featuring less flesh than a swimwear catalogue seems pretty ‘uncool’ to us”

If anyone has a image capture of the ad, please send it to me at lorenmichaelbaker AT gmail.com, I’d like to see how adult the ad was and whether this sexy display ad campaign was uploaded for the goal of being banned and the press it would receive. Thanks!

Hyperphrase case rumbles on

Google has been hit by a setback in a patent row with Hyperphrase Technologies, LLC. A federal appeals court in Wisconsin yesterday rejected part of a summary judgment that could have worked to Google's advantage in the case.…

OK, so we all know what people are really searching for most of the time. But if you filter out the perennial favorites (most of which are NSFW), then you can have a look at the most popular, up-and-coming search terms of 2007. In case you missed these earlier, here are the lists of top queries from various search engines:

AOL breaks down its "Hot Searches" by categories, including movies, bands, and accidental celebrities

Ask.com shows that its search volume can predict World Series winners...now will the Cowboys beat the Patriots and prove that true for the NFL as well? If Ask users are unusually prescience extends to presidential candidates, it looks like Barack Obama has Hillary Clinton beat.

Google brings us its year-end zeitgeist, telling us that the iPhone, Webkinz, TMZ and Transformers were the fastest-rising search terms of the year in the U.S.

Lycos tells us that poker, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton topped the search charts this year.

Yahoo's Top Trends in Search in 2007 reveal that Saddam Hussein, Britney Spears, and Harry Potter were among the most searched-for names this year.

This might make the folks at Facebook feel better about the whole Beacon privacy fiasco. It appears that even Google can make a mistake, as they did this month when they made shared items in Google Reader accessible to all Google Talk friends. Without asking. And without an easy way to opt out, short of deleting contacts or not sharing anything.

I don't know if I'd go so far as some, who claim that the move by Google ruined Christmas, but it was an unnecessarily foolish move by Google, which could have been avoided by making the sharing an opt-in decision, instead of an opt-out one.

This week (being a slow news week and all), many bloggers took offense to the move. Some complained that Google is invading their privacy by sharing items with people who they didn't intend to share with. Others blame users for not understanding what "shared" means.

Last night, the product team responded on the Google Reader blog with a response to the "helpful feedback" it received from bloggers. The sharing feature is still automatic and opt-out, but now users can quickly create a new tag for all shared items and then decide which contacts to share those items with.

And a link is presented at sign-in to a page that explains the process in the Reader Help Center:"If for any reason you'd like to start your sharing afresh, you can always remove all your previously shared items. Just go to the Friends Settings and click Move or Clear Shared Items. You will be given an option to select or create a tag and move your shared items to that tag, or clear your shared items. The items will remain in their original feeds along with any tags you've given them, but will no longer be in your shared items feed."

Riya launched Like.com, a visual search engine in the year 2006. Image search in its true spirit should be about the image only. Most image search engines today rely on additional tags and meta data to refine their image searches. Its more like feeling for a color with your eyes closed.

Riya, having accomplished at Facial Recognition, launched the Like.com engine as a true visual tool that used the image content along with the meta data to describe the image. A set of 10,000 plus variables are used to define the many details in an image as a digital signature. The signature is also mapped to the keywords that get associated with the image. The end result is a mapping from keywords to images factoring in the actual content in the image. (more…)

Google and YouTube have taken the Art of Subliminal Advertising and Science of Behavioral Targeting to new heights. Shown here: a whimsical holiday video starring Juno (goddess baby mama of Mars, Roman God of War) paired with humorous Google homeland security Senate testimony aired on The Google Channel -- all seemingly produced by the film studio owned by MySpace mogul and Google content partner, Rupert Murdoch.

Or has Google simply struck a product placement deal with Fox Searchlight for all Google Congressional testimony?

Juno teen pregnancy flick (predictive modeling: Jamie Lynne Spears) appears to get four stars and two thumbs up in this "favorited" YouTube trailer.

Search Engine Watch apologizes to all our holiday readers who received a YouTube Google Video Holiday Card featuring Homeland Security testimony from Google exec J.L. Needham (pictured) instead of the (pirated) Golden Globe nominated flick they wished for.

Disclaimer: Search Engine Watch insists no digital copyrights were harmed in the filming of John Lewis (J.L.) Needham, Manager for Public Sector Content Partnerships at Google, testifying before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on the 11th of December for the sole purpose of discussing Google's efforts to help make federal government website info more accessible to citizens through search engines, and Google's use of the Sitemap Protocol to help government agencies.

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Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension NoScript prevents unauthorized web sites from running JavaScript, Java, Flash, or other plug-ins to keep your browsing sessions safe. The main purpose of NoScript is to protect yourself from browser or web vulnerabilities along the lines of this Gmail exploit by blocking untrusted scripts from executing in your browser. Granted, it may seem like a bit of a pain to enable all your trusted sites (though NoScript makes it simple to add sites to your whitelist in two clicks), but in the end an extension like NoScript turns Firefox into a very safe little browser. NoScript is free, works wherever Firefox does.

Now that NORAD has once again proven its superior technological power by tracking Santa across the globe (a task once thought impossible before the advent of Google), we can all rest a little easier. Who would've dreamed the new, more whimsical military-industrial complex could be so much fun?

Not Ike.

We like Ike, too. But WWII hero and former President Eisenhower never envisioned a military-industrial Googleplex that could Do No Evil.

Google Earth, for example, enables Homeland Security teams to collaborate (encouraging teamwork), focus (attention is paid to the task at hand) and comprehend (converts data into understanding). Google Earth solutions for homeland security include Google Earth Pro (Try it free for 7 Days!) and Google Earth Enterprise Solutions.

So what is Google exec J.L. Needham testifying before Congress about? Here on YouTube, he tackles the SEO debate on the use of Google sitemaps. Will Google protocols help government Web sites rank higher? You decide.

Gmail users might want to check your filters to ensure your account hasn't been hacked like this designer's. Google has fixed the vulnerability, but if you were exposed before the fix the filter could still exist in your Gmail account.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest Mozilla Labs project, Weave, aims to sync bookmarks, passwords, and other browsing tools across systems, and even across browers. For now, Firefox 3 Beta 2 adopters can try it as an experimental extension. [via]

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Round 1 goes to Google/DoubleClick and the U.S. FTC. Round 2: Will the EU strike a blow for global privacy? In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Google vs. the World," Kevin Ryan explores the latest trend in the interactive industry: consolidation.

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

Last week was a trying week for me as on top of the normal day to day responsibilities of managing a search blog and a search marketing company, I was also managing multiple projects which were a bit out of my field of expertise.

We decided to renovate my condo just in time for the holidays with a major overhaul including tiling the kitchen, installing a new tub shower and toilet, tiling the bathroom floor and walls, painting and lastly, installing new carpeting. The carpet warehouse type places were a little overwhelming, and many had to actually order the carpeting from a much larger warehouse, then have it shipped, and installation would take another week. I remembered that Empire Today, which was a competitor to a past client of mine, promised next day installation on carpets, so I called them.

Their salesman came to my place Friday evening, showed me some samples, I selected the colors, I paid, then he placed the order. The result was swift and precise marketing and sales … the kind of environment I’m used to being a search marketer. Today, on Christmas Eve, Empire Today is going to install the carpet. Perfect.

In anticipation of the delivery, I searched for them on Google this morning and found quite an interesting array of search results which is a great example of the anatomy of a balanced and branded Google listing which is not very beneficial to the company and needs to be optimized : Empire Today.

First and foremost, Empire Today rules the top results for their brand on Google, for both paid and organic search. If anything, the AdWords copy kind of leads to the organic link itself, perhaps resulting in the user focusing in on the information and links given in the organic results. Very nice. (more…)

Engines which work on top of search engines has been a growing area ever since Web Search went mainstream.

Most meta-search engines use content from the top engines - Google, Yahoo or Live Search and many also refer to content specific sources such as Flickr, PicSearch for image search. Infact, DogPile was one of the first search engines to offer keyword targeted advertising, via keyword targeted banners; before Yahoo Search Marketing (Goto.com) or Google AdWords existed.

The question here is - are meta search engines of any value today when search itself seems a saturated market. Here are my reasons:

Knowing the Difference

No search engine is perfect. While it is true that many queries can be answered in a succinct line or two, in-depth details on any topic from relevant sources takes research and research entails reference to more than one source.

Search Engines as the Rudimentary OS on the Web

From the desktop perspective, an Operating System is defined as “the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer (Web) and provides programmers (Users) with an interface used to access those resources.” The definition does neatly fit into what the Search Engines are doing on the net today. Meta Search engines are essentially applications that sit on top of this OS for the Web, applying and integrating still more innovations on to those engines.

Looking from this perspective, the present day mainstream engines are performing the rudimentary operations of Operating Systems. Just like the OS is not about a bunch a device drivers, meta search engines have their utility. (more…)