Archive for Google
Google unveils online PowerPoint
September 19th, 2007 • Google, Social
Tags: Google
So here it is: the final link in the Google Office chain. Presently aims at creating fairly slick presentations, and goes live today within Google Docs. I’ve yet to cook a full presentation using the newcomer, but everything seems to be there - including a whole bunch of themes that, while not fit to lick the boots of Keynote, appear perfectly workable.
Presently deserves to make friends: I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve lost versions of PowerPoint presentations as they pass from author to author. The new Google service wants to put pay to that - you can share your presentation with others (who can edit it), and you can even discuss the thing as you edit using Google Talk. Fast, clever, and free… what more could you want?
Google Reader gets search
August 31st, 2007 • Google, Social
Tags: Google, rss, Search
Silly things please simple minds. I open my browser this evening for my usual trawl through 1001 news stories using Google Reader, and… there’s a search box.
OK, OK, it’s hardly earth-shattering. But I’m a Reader addict, and could never understand why the world’s search giant didn’t have search enabled on its popular newsreader. Daft. Well, today, at long last, it has. And it works - you can either query all results, or drill down by category. Smart, quick, and wonderful.
Wikipedia founder to take on Google
August 25th, 2007 • Google, Search, Social
Arguably, Wales is already half-way down the road to threatening Google’s might - you’ve probably already noticed how dominant Wikipedia is in search results, sewing the seed in your head that you may as well cut out the middle man.
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, the world’s biggest community-written online encyclopedia, announced Friday that he had taken a small step toward his next big goal: a community-programmed search engine that competes with Google.Wales told a group of computer scientists and programmers gathered at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland that Wikia, the for-profit Internet publishing company he founded after Wikipedia, had just acquired search technology that will serve as the foundation for the new search engine.
San Jose Mercury News - Wikipedia founder plans open-source search engine
Google Maps to gain YouTube style embeds
August 13th, 2007 • Google
Now this is cool. Next week, Google will add embed codes to their My Maps service.
Why is this a big deal? Because it just is. If you want the logical ramification, try the fact that any business in the world will now be able to include a Google Maps locator straight into their own sites. And you get to keep the functionality: you can zoom in and move around, just as you do with the Google Maps you know and love today.
With the trip to San Francisco only two weeks away, I’ve become a Maps convert - pin any location you like, and you have an instant reminder of landmarks that you can access from anywhere, and share with family and friends. This announcement just makes it a whole lot better.
Google launches YouTube-style embeddable maps | APC MagazineProfy.com: Google to introduce embeddable maps
Google says ‘trust me’
August 6th, 2007 • Advertising, Business, Google
Google now caching in minutes, not days
July 29th, 2007 • Google, Search
Google Cache Showing Last Retrieve Dates in Minutes
A few guys over at WebmasterWorld are noticing that everyone’s favourite search engine is now showing cache date in minutes, in place of the usual date. Somebody hand those bots another shot of caffeine…
Live: the real Google alternative
July 22nd, 2007 • Google, Search
Not sure if I’m part of a broader movement here, but in recent weeks I have begun to quietly play with other search engines. I reckon I fall into the profile depicted by the Ask tv ads - I’m becoming aware of how dominant Google is in my life, and a natural human reaction is to spread-bet.
Conclusions? I was initially drawn to Ask - the layout is wonderful, and sufficiently different to make it an attractive toy. But in the end, my Flock browser has settled on either Google or Live - the latter is stupidly fast (at least as fast as the Google), and seems to return consistently good results.
Which prompted me into investigating Microsoft’s Special Sauce behind the search rankings. So thanks to the folk over at SearchEngineLand…
As I explained about Ask.com, Microsoft’s Live has its own crawler and ranking system, which means it has a unique search “voice” that’s different than Google’s. You won’t get exactly the same results as you’ll get at Google, which could mean that if Google fails to find what you’re looking for, Live’s might come through because of its different take on the web.
The man behind ‘Don’t be evil’
July 16th, 2007 • Business, Google
Paul Buchheit on Gmail, AdSense and More
Wonderful profile of the Google developer who first coined the famous three words. Now I come to think about it, the most significant moments are usually free of fanfares.
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