Archive for Search
Google launches anti-piracy tool
October 16th, 2007 • Google, Search
Tags: privacy, publishing, Video
Good news for content producers this week: Google has finally released a beta of its YouTube piracy tool.However, the new tool puts the ball firmly in the court of the makers: they’ll need to upload the videos that they want protected. Google will then run a whizz-bang program that goes hunting for identical material on YouTube or Google Video. Anything found will be removed.As eWeek points out, the tool aims to relieve some of the pressure from publishers angered by a perceived lack of action:
For instance, the tool comes three weeks after National Legal and Policy Center Chairman Ken Boehm blasted Google for allowing some 300 instances of pirated content on Google Video.The NLPC researched Google Video from Sept. 10 to Sept. 18 and found 300 cases of apparently copyrighted films, which logged more than 22 million views in the past year.
Google Watch - YouTube - Google Launches Anti-piracy Tool for YouTube
Google to launch Facebook rival
October 16th, 2007 • Google, Search, Social
Tags: facebook, Google, Social
So the search giant is going to unveil its Facebook rival on November 5 (no source here… just a hail of blogosphere noise).I’m wondering what tricks Google has up its sleeve to bring down the social giant. In case they’re still wondering, and happen to be reading this, here are a few ideas:
- Bring every social profile together in one place: YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Facebook, the lot.
- Include an IM client in the Friends interface.
- Include a way of seeing what other people are reading.
- Ensure that you can export everything if you tire of the service
- And running through that list again, you realise just how close Google is to delivering the killer blow.
10 cringing navigational howlers
September 29th, 2007 • Internet, Search
Tags: Design, usability
Nice summary of some of the most common usability nightmares over at Smashing Magazine. Among the 10 howlers, you’ll find drop-down navigation, blocks that overlay navigation, and Flash sites that demand a seismic leap in human evolution before they can be worked.Of course, you’d never be associated with such horrors, now would you? Confession time: the piece made me think of the times when I have been the culprit - I’ve ignored the advice of others, and happily packed the site’s Tupperware box under the navigation could take no more.10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of | Developer’s Toolbox
New Live.com: fighting relevance battles
September 27th, 2007 • Business, Search
Tags: Google, live, Search
So today, we have a new Live.com, with Microsoft attempting to steal some Google turf by primarily focusing on relevancy of search returns.
Sensible enough: apparently, many billions of hours of analysis by people with large foreheads revealed that most people want to find things.
Being a person, I thought I’d give it a totally unreasonable test - one search query - and compare the big G with the big, er, L. As you’ll plainly see, Google is the infinitely better thing: Stuff.tv is clearly the right thing to return when you search for ’stuff’. Live, on the other hand, has decided that you want some kind of English course. Blagh. Anyway, in total fairness to Microsoft, many millions of queries from humans around this fair planet of ours will settle the debate. Let battle commence.
Google to ’sort’ Facebook? Outside, now…
September 20th, 2007 • Google, Social
Tags: facebook, Google, Social
Put a tick in your diary for November 5 - TechCrunch claims to have a leak from a secret squirrel briefing held deep within Google, aimed at addressing the “Facebook issue”.
The meeting was so secret that all attendees had to sign confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements strictly forbidding them from discussing what was shown to them at the meeting. Notwithstanding that NDA, I’ve now spoken with three of the attendees off record to get an understanding of what Google is planning. Google’s goal - to fight Facebook by being even more open than the Facebook Platform. If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.
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.
StumbleUpon: better than being Dugg?
August 30th, 2007 • Internet, Search, Social
Spent an hour this evening listening to colleagues discuss free online marketing techniques. In fact, the chat was only meant to last 10 minutes - but once we’d started, it proved hard to stop.
Everyone had a tale of free tools that helped spread their site’s word.So no surprise this evening to spot this story, claiming that StumbleUpon is thoroughly good news when it comes to giving your site a traffic hike. I can verify this: the site you’re reading was Stumbled recently, and I’m still bathing in the glow.
StumbleUpon: Exposure That Lasts: “On the contrary, you only need 3-4 thumbs of approval from Stumblers before a decent number of visitors start coming in to your site. The more ‘likes’ (thumbs up, or votes) you get, the more traffic you will get. Unlike Digg, where you can get 5,000 visitors per hour for a few hours and then next to none from there on, StumbleUpon sends you sustained traffic over long stretches of time.”
Three out of four searches driven by ‘offline’
August 29th, 2007 • Media, Search
Fairly gobsmacking research released yesterday by iProspect / Jupiter, suggesting that a whopping 67% of search queries are prompted by ‘offline channels’ - which in English means television, word of mouth and magazines / newspapers.
Even Jupiter expressed surprise at the findings, with the organisation expecting a 50/50 split between on- and offline influences.
‘Though iProspect (the company that conducted the research with Jupiter) is not surprised at the finding that television and word of mouth are the two most frequent offline drivers of search, we are a bit stunned that both of these channels influence over one-third of online search users to perform a search. But even more surprising is that a full 67% of online search users are driven to search as a result of some offline channel.’Search Engine Marketing Research: iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study
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
Recent Comments