Problem: Google Checkout is not successful.
Solution: Free processing and other incentives for holidays.
Problem: orkut doesn't do well in the US.
Solution: make it available to everyone and integrate Google Talk.
Problem: Gmail needs some Web 2.0 changes.
Solution: a new design for displaying messages.
Problem: Vista comes for Google Desktop too.
Solution: a transparent sidebar.
Problem: Windows Live Local has click-to-call.
Solution: add click-to-call to Google Maps.
Problem: it's hard to read books in Google Book Search.
Solution: new Adobe Reader-like design. Still few full-view books.
Problem: very few people use Google Answers.
Solution: delete Google Answers and come up with a better service. This time a free service.
Problem: people want charts in Google Spreadsheets.
Solution: new functions, easy-to-publish spreadsheets and an API. Also kill iRows.
Comment of the month (from Jon):
"This is sad. Yahoo Answers is pitiful. It should be renamed Yahoo Preteen Opinions, because that's the quality of "answers" one will find there. Unresearched, juvenile, illiterate, asinine, absurd, naïve, giggly, drivel is about the extent of what you will find there. Oh, but wait, at least they have disgusting, cutesy little avatars.
OK, maybe it's not all that bad, but Yahoo Answers does not even come close to the quality of the Google Answers website. The only reason it has succeeded is that there are far more people wishing to hear free, feel-good, life-affirming drivel (and see cutesy avatars), than those who will pay for well-researched answers (life-affirming or not). Just sickening."
No idea why, but people found my 10 tips for Google Image Search useful.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Google Spreadsheets Has an API
I told you Google Spreadsheets is way ahead of Google Docs. Now you can update your spreadsheets programmatically using Google Spreadsheets API. You can use it to get a list of spreadsheets for an account, to add or delete rows from a spreadsheets or to send simple SQL-like queries.
While the API isn't powerful enough to create desktop applications, as you can't manage spreadsheets, you could use the API to synchronize multiple spreadsheets or to import data from the web.
The API uses Google Data, "a simple standard protocol for reading and writing data on the web".
{ Found on Blogoscoped. }
While the API isn't powerful enough to create desktop applications, as you can't manage spreadsheets, you could use the API to synchronize multiple spreadsheets or to import data from the web.
The API uses Google Data, "a simple standard protocol for reading and writing data on the web".
{ Found on Blogoscoped. }
Pieces of Google
If you have a screenshot of a Google product taken in a special moment, if you found something interesting at Google.com and want to share it with the world, if you have a meaningful photo related to Google, send it to ionutalexchitu+pog@gmail.com or post a link in the comments.
The best photos will be a part of an album that will be available at the end of the year.
* Don't submit copyrighted photos. Your photos will be licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike license, unless you request otherwise. Please remove personal or sensitive information.
The best photos will be a part of an album that will be available at the end of the year.
* Don't submit copyrighted photos. Your photos will be licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike license, unless you request otherwise. Please remove personal or sensitive information.
More Feed Actions in Google Reader
Google Reader shows more contextual actions for each feed. Now you can rename the feed's title and change the tags without going to the settings. And if you do go to the settings, Google Reader Team says everything will load faster.
If you subscribe to a feed, you'll see a text that says: "You have subscribed to [this feed]. Add to a folder." Hopefully, all your feeds will be categorized. (And hopefully, someone will decide between tags, folders and labels.)
The new features were available last week for a while, but some problems with Internet Explorer 6 caused a roll back until they were fixed.
If you have suggestions for Google Reader, check this wiki at Google Groups.
Google Display Advertising Network
John Chow has been invited to join Google Display Advertising Network, a new CPM network that uses image and video ads.
"The Google Display Advertising Network was created so Google can go after Fortune 1000 companies, which buy advertising to build a brand more than to sell a product. (...) Every display network member negotiates a flat CPM rate with Google. The contracts are one year long and publishers have to guarantee Google that they will provide a minimum amount of ad inventory each month."
There's no mention of this network on Google's sites and the only way to become a part of it is to be invited by Google.
"The Google Display Advertising Network was created so Google can go after Fortune 1000 companies, which buy advertising to build a brand more than to sell a product. (...) Every display network member negotiates a flat CPM rate with Google. The contracts are one year long and publishers have to guarantee Google that they will provide a minimum amount of ad inventory each month."
There's no mention of this network on Google's sites and the only way to become a part of it is to be invited by Google.
Major Update in Google Spreadsheets
Google Spreadsheets continues to be surprising and miles ahead of the other half of the package, Google Docs. This is probably the biggest update since the product has been launched.
Now you can publish a spreadsheets in every imaginable format (HTML, PDF, XLS, ODS, CSV) or as a feed. What's great is that the file is automatically updated, so you'll be almost certain that someone gets the latest version. You can also publish all the sheets or only some of them. But the coolest thing you can do is to embed a spreadsheet into your blog or site. The spreadsheet you can see here shows the top 20 queries for this blog's search from April 1st until yesterday.
Google Spreadsheets shows you all the revisions of a spreadsheets, so it's easy to go back to an earlier version. And there are two new functions that use information from the web:
* GoogleFinance("symbol", "attribute") that returns information about a stock. GoogleFinance("GOOG", "price") returns the current price for GOOG.
* GoogleLookup("entity", "attribute") that returns answers to simple questions like: population of Italy, Jay Leno's date of birth, that usually appear at the top of search results in Google.com. GoogleLookup("Italy", "population") will return the population of Italy.
Don't forget to place an equal in front of the function name.
Now you can publish a spreadsheets in every imaginable format (HTML, PDF, XLS, ODS, CSV) or as a feed. What's great is that the file is automatically updated, so you'll be almost certain that someone gets the latest version. You can also publish all the sheets or only some of them. But the coolest thing you can do is to embed a spreadsheet into your blog or site. The spreadsheet you can see here shows the top 20 queries for this blog's search from April 1st until yesterday.
Google Spreadsheets shows you all the revisions of a spreadsheets, so it's easy to go back to an earlier version. And there are two new functions that use information from the web:
* GoogleFinance("symbol", "attribute") that returns information about a stock. GoogleFinance("GOOG", "price") returns the current price for GOOG.
* GoogleLookup("entity", "attribute") that returns answers to simple questions like: population of Italy, Jay Leno's date of birth, that usually appear at the top of search results in Google.com. GoogleLookup("Italy", "population") will return the population of Italy.
Don't forget to place an equal in front of the function name.
The Failure of Google Answers
Google Answers, the service where you could ask questions in exchange of a sum of money, is now officially dead. "We considered many factors in reaching this difficult decision, and ultimately decided that the Answers community's limited size and other product considerations made it more effective for us to focus our efforts on other ways to help our users find information."
The problem? While Google Answers is almost invisible, Yahoo Answers is a big success, produces results for many search results page and has a big community. The big difference between the two services is that Yahoo Answers doesn't involve money: no one pays or gets paid. But, as I showed in Asking the Internet, "while Google's researchers give more detailed answers, Yahoo uses the advantage of having a strong community" and sorts the good answers.
So what happened to Google Answers? Let's see what Google Answers experts have to say:
The problem seem to be that people don't want to pay some experts to get detailed answers, they just want simple answers from the man on the street. People don't have time to read books, newspapers with a lot of pages and long articles, but they're eager to watch reality shows. Listening people as clueless as you gives you a comforting feeling.
The problem? While Google Answers is almost invisible, Yahoo Answers is a big success, produces results for many search results page and has a big community. The big difference between the two services is that Yahoo Answers doesn't involve money: no one pays or gets paid. But, as I showed in Asking the Internet, "while Google's researchers give more detailed answers, Yahoo uses the advantage of having a strong community" and sorts the good answers.
So what happened to Google Answers? Let's see what Google Answers experts have to say:
"The quality of GA has become diluted with spam questions that are conceivably attempts from credit card thieves to verify the validity of stolen credit card numbers, webmasters realizing that a mention of their website in a GA question may boost their ranking in the search results (although this may have been resolved), and the disappearance of researchers."
"It would be nice to think that G-A has itself reduced the demand for search assistance by demonstrating how to search and how to use search features that are not immediately obvious to the layman/woman). But it could be that people have just become more savvy to the system by themselves."
"I think a big problem is that there is no obvious link to GA anymore from Google's homepage."
"Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they're not accepting new researchers? I answered two questions (correctly, I might add -- one $5 and one $20) before I realized that I had to be a "researcher" in order to submit an actual answer (as opposed to a comment) and get paid for it."
The problem seem to be that people don't want to pay some experts to get detailed answers, they just want simple answers from the man on the street. People don't have time to read books, newspapers with a lot of pages and long articles, but they're eager to watch reality shows. Listening people as clueless as you gives you a comforting feeling.
Offline Google
Felice M., from Italy, sent me this:
Last Wednesday we had, here in Italy, some big troubles connecting to Google services; we have been disconnected for two days. It was a problem with some routers of our Telecom Operator.
Reading local blogs, people underline that we are too dependent on web 2.0 services (..) In the end, we lend our data to Google in exchange for advertisements and world indexing (and marketing research etc.)
And this is telling me that we need a new feature in our Google Operating System: BACKUP.
Let's call it SNAP (snap.google.com); a service that will present me with all the Google Services I'm subscribed to (personal web site, notes, Gmail, Picasa Web, Docs & Spreadsheets, etc.), allowing me to choose the set of data I want to download to my PC for web backup purposes.
I would like to be able to choose data to download based at least on size and age, but a combination of a lot of other switches is, for sure, welcome.
Opera Mini 3.0 Launched
The new version of the best free mobile browser is out. Opera Mini 3.0 includes a feed reader, makes it easier to share photos, has support for secure connections (SSL) and it's optimized for AJAX web pages. In addition to being slick, fast and easy to use.You can test it using this Java emulator on your computer or just point your mobile phone to operamini.com to download it.
Opera Mini does a much better job than Google's transcoding and tries to keep the browsing experience intact, so you'll see a single page instead of multiple smaller pages, most of the time.
Mobile YouTube
New York Times reports that a select number of YouTube videos will be available next month to Verizon Wireless subscribers. Despite the fact that the service won't be free, YouTube expects to be successful. Modern people don't have patience anymore and don't know how to enjoy the rare quiet moments, so they'll go to YouTube on their mobile phone to view some funny videos.
"Verizon Wireless and YouTube said the service would be available early next month. The companies would not discuss the financial terms of their deal but said Verizon would have the exclusive rights to distribute YouTube videos on mobile phones for a limited period of time."
If the experiment is successful, expect more carriers to make deals for mobile YouTube videos.
"Verizon Wireless and YouTube said the service would be available early next month. The companies would not discuss the financial terms of their deal but said Verizon would have the exclusive rights to distribute YouTube videos on mobile phones for a limited period of time."
If the experiment is successful, expect more carriers to make deals for mobile YouTube videos.
Historical Trends in Google Finance
Google Finance shows historical data in the charts, so now it's easier to see the evolution of a stock. The earliest year available in Google Finance is 1970 (until this update it was 2001), while Yahoo Finance shows data from 1962.
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