Search

Google is celebrating the 113th birthday of sculptor Alexander Calder (Wikipedia article) with an interesting Google Doodle on the main search homepage. Conveniently, it is a digital take on one of Calder’s famous mobile sculptures and interactive, too: You can rotate it around in three dimensions by pointing your mouse at one of the edges until the pointer changes to the drag handle.

The digital sculpture reacts differently depending on which piece of it you “grab” to rotate the whole thing. Notice how it also casts a realistic shadow below the search box, in real-time. Calder is well-known for the Cirque Calder, a miniature sculpture of a working circus he created to fit inside a suitcase. He went later on to perfect the art of mobile sculpting using common materials such as wire, string, pull toys and more.

via the official Google blog

Expand
Expanding
Close

If found in their data center’s servers, Google will now notify you if you have malware running on your computer when making a Google Search. Google announced the new feature today, and hopes to use their vast wealth of information to make this effective. Google explains:

Recently, we found some unusual search traffic while performing routine maintenance on one of our data centers. After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or “malware

Obliviously this won’t pick up every single piece of malware out there, but it’s a nice little addition to an already great search platform.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cWYZculurU]

Can Google’s search UI get any better?  Yes!

Google Operating System is reporting Google is testing an infinite scrolling feature on their search page. As you can see in the video above — the navigation bar, the search box, and the search options sidebar stays fixed at the top as the user continues to scroll down. Google is also testing a new page preview UI, requiring you to hover over the magnifying glass to see the preview.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu-YsZNpkZs]

Remember WDYL, the Google-owned site affectionately named What Do You Love? It rolled out quietly last month to no fanfare as a glorified Google.com frontend to present search results across numerous Google products with pretty layouts. It has gotten some press time before most folks forgot about it so Google made this little video to remind us of the project and showcase the power of HTML5 and Google search.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Bloomberg, The New York Times and Dow Jones today report that Microsoft and China’s Baidu have entered a cooperation pact for former to provide English language results for the the latter’s queries.

“This is not good news for Google,” said Jake Li, who rates Baidu shares “accumulate” at Guotai Junan Securities in Shenzhen. Most Chinese Internet users currently prefer Google’s English-language search results over Baidu, whose service will be improved by the partnership with Microsoft, he said.

The terms of the deal weren’t made public but the deal will likely work similarly to the Bing-Yahoo deal last year where both companies share the revenues from advertisements.  Baidu is the dominant search provider in China, one of the few places that Google doesn’t reign supreme.  It had previously signed a mobile only deal with Microsoft but rumors of this deal first surfaced a month ago.

The Baidu-Bing service will go live later this year.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google said in a tweet four hours ago that they have temporarily disabled  a dynamic stream of real-time content in people’s search results until they figure out how to bake this functionality into their latest social service dubbed Google+:

We’ve temporarily disabled google.com/realtime. We’re exploring how to incorporate Google+ into this functionality, so stay tuned.

Trying to access the google.com/realtime web page produces a 404 page not found error. Google real-time was conceived two years ago as a way to enhance people’s search results with the latest news headlines, blog posts and updates from Flickr, Twitter, FriendFeed and other social sites. With the Google+ service the company has upped the ante in the social department so it makes sense to use Google+ to have one place to connect with your friends, share photos, links and other content as well as track updates from other social services across the web.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Amazon Affiliate members in California got a rude awakening this morning when they received and email from Amazon telling them that all Affiliate programs would be terminated by September 30th.  This is in reaction to a proposed CA law that would tax Amazon purchases because Affiliate Account holders (workers) live and work in the State.

The whole thing is up for debate but we found the last sentence in the letter (whole thing pasted below the fold):

We are also working on alternative ways to help California residents monetize their websites and we will be sure to contact you when these become available.

We noted yesterday that Amazon was getting their own ad network, which would go head to head with Google and others.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Search Engine Land discovered Monday that Google is experimenting with a brand new black navigation bar. Today, the revamped bar goes live for some as the company gradually rolls out the changes to everyone. The search firm rarely messes with its legendary homepage design, so their creative director Chris Wiggins lays out in a post over at the official Google blog the main principles behind the redesign. It’s about focus, elasticity and effortlessness, he explains:

We’re bringing forward the stuff that matters to you and getting all the other clutter out of your way. Even simple changes, like using bolder colors for actionable buttons or hiding navigation buttons until they’re actually needed, can help you better focus on only what you need at the moment.

He says the new design lends itself to a consistent visual experience across desktop and mobile, “without sacrificing style or usefulness”. Google says a crucial part of the new experience is the use of the latest technologies like HTML5 and WebGL so “you have all the power of the web behind you”. They will roll out the new bar over the course of the following months to other properties, including Google Maps and Gmail.

The original Google.com homepage in 1997.

Expand
Expanding
Close

MG Siegler Techcrunch, Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand and Steven Levy at Wired have a huge exposés on the Facebook killing-er marginalizing Google+ as it is now called.

It is bold, it is entirely new and it is open to some people starting today.

Update: The NYTimes and some others are also weighing in.
Expand
Expanding
Close

TechCrunch is reporting this morning that Google’s new site WDYL is live, but not officially announced. WDYL stands for What Do You Love, and the one suggestion would be 9to5Google. But for testing’s sake, we’ll give you a pass if you search for something else in this sleek new service.

So what is this lovely new service? WDYL allows users to make one search that will turn up results in all of Google’s products. As you can see below, our search for 9to5Google turned up results in Google News, Picasa, Books, Search, Translate, and many more.

Google hasn’t officially announce WDYL, but the product is out there to use.  To give WDYL a try, head to www.wdyl.com. The www. is required in this case, because going to wdyl.com turns up a 404. We should expect to see google announcing this soon.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAyUNI3_V2c]

Google has announced today that their +1 button is going global. At first Google will begin the roll out on google.co.uk, google.de, google.jp and google.fr, but more sites will be following shortly after.

Google is a service to recommend webpages to your friends. While they’re mainly involved with Google’s Search, the buttons are also incorporated on websites. As you’ll notice, we use it on our site.

Better news: We’ve got it on goog authority that +1 will be taking over for Buzz in our Google Reader accounts very shortly.
Expand
Expanding
Close

A lot of potentially far-reaching developments happening right now in China where Baidu, the dominant search engine, is secretly cranking up a mobile operating system of its own. It’s based on – of all things – Android and code-named Qiushi, which means fruits in autumn, explains TechNode quoting a local report by Chinese-language TechWeb.

Baidu says it’s just “an under-developing mobile ad product”, but considering that several Android-built mobile operating systems already exist in the country (i.e. Xiaomi Tech’s MIUI and DianxinOS) – and taking into account that Android benefited a certain search giant in ways more than one – it isn’t so far-stretched a notion that Baidu is leveraging Android to attack mobile on all fronts and further reduce Google’s share of China’s search-based revenue. Should Google be worried? Read on…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Search Engine Land is reporting that Google is testing a new black navigation bar. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s on its way out anytime soon, but it’s worth a look. You’ll notice that it does bring more attention to the top. But for now, this could just be measly a test.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Google has updated  its Goggles app for Android with support for the Russian language. The software also features a handy Google Maps integration and the little things such as the ability to view your search history on a map or the ability to automatically copy your findings to system clipboard. Since 2009, Google has only supported languages that use Latin characters. The latest update brings support for Cyrillic characters, making the Russian language one of the new options.

The new search history feature is especially useful: It lets you visualize on a world map the places where you’ve been (and searched using the Goggles service). The world map overview of your history is in addition to the standard list view. Lastly, Google wants to make it easier to share our findings by allowing people to opt-in to have their findings automatically added to the clipboard for easy and fast sharing. The update is available on Android Market.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtELiwNmTSc]
Some people are claiming they’ve been participating in a design experiment by Google related to the look and feel of the search results page. Although we cannot tell whether the above clip is genuine, it sure strike us as the familiar Google search results. Looks quite nice and a bit easier on the eyes, too.
Notice how the links in the lefthand pane, which provide shortcuts to individual search silos, appear in gray rather than in multiple colors? By the way, where did the search button go? The “I’m feeling lucky” thing is also MIA.

via Search Engine Roundtable
Expand
Expanding
Close

If you’re concerned about data people see when they google your name, you should check out a new section in your Dashboard, aptly named ‘Me on the Web’. It’s a one-stop shop for your online identity needs, Google says, stressing the section helps you “understand and manage what people see when they search for you on Google”. ‘Me on the Web’ features a useful at-a-glance overview of all the outbound links published on your Google profile, the stuff like your social profiles, YouTube and Flickr accounts and so on. There are also links to Google help files explaining how to manage your online identity and how to remove unwanted content.

More importantly, you can create custom search alerts for your own name to receive email notifications when your personal data is posted publicly. You can also set up additional alerts for your specific personal data, such as telephone number and address. In the example below, I’ve set up an alert for my author byline, allowing me to track in near-real-time when my posts go up or other people mention my name in references to my articles. You could have created those alerts before in Google Alerts, but now everything is in one place, which should appeal to non-techies.

Google’s Android Market, Amazon’s Appstore for Android and other lesser known outlets, specialized websites and carrier-specific app bazaars are all nice venues to discover software for your Android device, but they’re far from perfect – especially if you access them directly on your device.

Not surprisingly, Google and Microsoft wouldn’t drill through their index in order to create a dedicated search page for mobile warez so Yahoo! took it upon themselves to fill the void (after all, they don’t have a mobile platform of their own to protect). Today, Yahoo! unveiled new search tools that help seek apps for your Android device easier than ever before. The initiative consists of a dedicated search engine called Yahoo! App Search and a mobile app dubbed Yahoo! AppSpot which is so far available only for iOS devices (Android version is in the works)

Expand
Expanding
Close

Not sure how this one went unnoticed, it’s a lovely tweak to Google’s mobile search page on iOS and Android devices. It is also noteworthy as Google rarely alters the look of its mobile landing page. Now, when you visit google.com from your mobile browser, you’ll notice four big icons sitting right below the search field: Restaurants, Coffee, Bars and More (which includes shops, ATMs, fast food and attractions).

Each icon takes you to a location-based listing with corresponding places, taking the pain out of finding the nearest place to eat or have a quick drink, wherever you happen to be. You can browse places in either list or map view, as well as check photos, reviews, business phone numbers and star ratings from credible sources such as Trip Advisor.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8h4bzn8gxU]

Lots of updates today that we highlighted here, here and here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQnZe_Iggx0&w=670&h=411]

Voice Search from mobile is now available on your desktop on google.com in English. From the official Google blog:

We first offered speech recognition on mobile search, but you should have that power no matter where you are. You should never have to stop and ask yourself, “Can I speak for this?”—it should be ubiquitous and intuitive. So we’ve added speech recognition into search on desktop for Chrome users. If you’re using Chrome, you’ll start to see a little microphone in every Google search box. Simply click the microphone, and you can speak your search.

And why does Voice Search matter? Well, it’s for showing off, that’s for sure, but you may find it useful for hard-to-spell searches or complex ones that you can speak aloud faster than type. After all, we first learn to talk before we learn how to type, right?

Expand
Expanding
Close

Search by Image breaks down source image into little blocks matched against Google’s vast content database

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could simply ask Google to analyze an image and return relevant results? Recently, I’ve been discussing this with my beer friends and we came away wishing a feature like that sooner than later. Before any of us could have dreamed of, however, Google at a San Francisco presser this morning took search to the next level with a science-fiction like enhancement. They call it Search by Image and that’s exactly what it does.

You simply drag an image and drop it on the search box to get matching results, just as if you manually typed in your query. Tapping Google’s advanced image recognition back-end, Search by Image works – and this is the cool bit – with offline images that Google has never touched and doesn’t have in its index.

On-stage demos were pretty impressive. One example included dropping a scenery image on the browser’s window, which returned a list of locations Google thought accurately represented what’s on the photo. Similarly  dropping a  logo returns the name of the associated company. There’s more…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t99BfDnBZcI&w=670&h=411]

Expand
Expanding
Close