Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
As I’ve noticed the large amount of news stories focused on the acquisition of Double-Click by Google, I’d guess that you’re not reading upon this entry with a large amount of surprise. However, something as monumental as the world’s largest search giant acquiring, arguably, the world’s largest online-display giant, is something to take some note of. Not only will the combination of a powerful Search and Display team add to the staggering portfolio that is Google, this acquisition could do much more than simply transform Google into a very powerful online-advertising platform.
It might be just the spark Microsoft needed to make their offer to acquire Yahoo all the more inviting. After all, Yahoo’s always had the edge that they held both a recognized and trusted Search brand along with a strong Display platform and while their market-share in the Search market is second by a large margin to Google, they held a powerful combination for those interested in a one-stop platform for both Search and Display advertising. With someone with the momentum and steam such as Google now fighting in both rings, I wouldn’t be surprised if Yahoo’s stance on Microsoft’s subtle wooing quickly became much more welcoming.
Saturday, March 1st, 2008
Now this may be something everyone is using and heard of but me, but I just came across this a few weeks ago and figured I would share.
Google has a great feature where you can get info just by sending a text message. So I’ve used this a few times lately and it is great. You can get an answer to most questions by sending Google a text message (sms). To do it, simply send a message to 466453 (G-O-O-G-L-E).
Here are some example of what you can do:
- definition zenith (returns the definition of zenith)
- weather 80202 (returns the weather conditions for the zip code 80202)
- score Colorado Rockies (returns the score for the Colorado Rockies game)
- movies 80005 (returns list of movies playing, you choose the movie and it returns movie times)
- translate hello in german (returns the word hello in german, ‘hallo’)
- stock goog (returns stock quote for ‘GOOG’)
- 5 gallons in liters (returns conversion results)
There are a lot of other cool things that you can do with it. For more information, and an interactive demo check out Google’s web page on the subject here.
Now some really cool ones:
- pizza 80202 (returns pizza parlors in/near zip 80202)
- aa 2111 (returns flight status for American Airlines flight 2111)
- price ipod player 40gb (returns product pricing for an ipod 40gb nan0 of $124.50 and where product can be purchased)
- Madonna birthday (returns date of Madonna birthday 8/16/1958)
Now remember, text message rates apply - so if you are charged per text or your plan is limited be careful.
And why not just use my mobile browser? I hate to say it, but this is 1,000 times quicker. Thanks Google.
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
I’m kicking it old school for my first blog post. Also, I’m kicking butt…Ben’s butt…on Googlefight. That’s right, supposedly the domain was registered way back in 2002, but according to Google Trends, the site hit the general public in 2005. So I’m reminding us all of a simple time, when all one could do for entertainment was to watch two stick figures battle for a taller bar on a two bar graph. Googlefight just Googles two keywords and gives you the number of search results for each word. The one with the most hits is the winner. In the case below, Keyword #1 and still champion is myself, Dana Costello and keyword #2, less cool, is Ben Kaely. But back to butt-kicking. This is my version of the fight…or a 5-year-old’s, as we have the same level of drawing skill. (click the picture to go to the real fight) 
To make your own fights for hilariousness and bragging rights go to GoogleFight. You know if you’ve never heard of it…or if you were too young to hear about it the first time or if you forgot about it.
Monday, January 14th, 2008
I dare anyone to google “died in a blogging accident.” Based upon the current google trends, blogging is one of the most dangerous actions a person can participate.
In all seriousness, the current google trends have been completely skewed by one comic posted on the hilarious, geeky comic strip XKCD.
This comic and it’s implications upon the google and their results for search terms illustrates just how shifty the internet and the google can be. As of the posting of this comic on Friday January 11, 2007 there were only 2 matching results for the search term ‘died in a blogging accident’. And as of the posting of this entry there are over 17,600 results for died in a blogging accident.
This just goes to show how quickly the internet and the google can shift. One day a completely random and inconsequential search term has only 2 results. The next it is one of the hottest search terms on the internet.
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
I for one am excited about this. Facebook has joined the DataPortability Workgroup with Google and Plaxo. This is positive because it is a sign that Facebook is loosening its previously closed standards. The Workgroup is trying to create best practices that will allow users to access their friends and media across many applications.
Some good links on the topic:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/08/this-day-will-be-remembered-facebook-google-and-plaxo-join-the-dataportability-workgroup/
http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/08/facebook-google-plaxo-join-data-portability-lots-of-hype-even-more-work-to-do/
Thursday, December 27th, 2007
What it offers:
- Save state
- External content (RSS, XML, existing websites)
- Tabs
- Localized settings (internationalization)
- Drag and drop content
Why we chose the gadget API:
- Needed a way to deliver the content with out having to install software
- Didn’t want to deal with different operating systems, firewalls, etc…
- Makes rolling out versions much easier
Scope of the project:
Budget wanted a program similar to the Southwest Airlines ‘Ding’ application to deliver special deals on car rentals to customers. Users would choose their preferred rental locations (up to 3 locations max) and specials at those locations would be displayed (3 specials for each location). The user could select a particular special and choose their pick up and drop off dates. The Budget Google gadget would take them into the reservation booking flow on budget.com to complete their car rental. If there aren’t any specials for a chosen location, a message of no specials available will be displayed. If there are no specials for all chosen locations, then the user will be taken to a page where they can enter one of the following three options: city & state, zip code, or airport that they wish to rent from. They can also choose their pickup and drop off dates & times for their rental location. The users are then taken to budget.com where they can choose their rate and complete their car rental.
All of this meant that we would need 4 pages: A preferences page for the user to select their rental locations, a specials page to display the specials for the locations, a chosen deal page where the user can select their pickup and drop off dates/times, and finally a no specials page for users to enter the city & state, zip code , or airport and pickup/drop off date and time. We also needed an RSS feed for users to add their chosen locations to a feed reader.
Issues with the Google Gadget API:
This is not meant to be a bashing of the Google Gadget API. It is simply my experience with using it. There maybe ways to get the API functions to work but since I was on a truncated time schedule, I had to make the project work. Perhaps we were pushing the technology beyond what it was intended to do? All of the Google gadgets that I have seen thus far have been very simple in what they do. Our Budget Google gadget seemed so simple at its inception…
Read the rest of this entry »
Monday, December 10th, 2007
Yes, web 2.0 strategies have come to search or at least that is what RedZee Search is promoting.
RedZee offers regular text based search, similar to Google or Yahoo, which it promotes as Search 1.o, but also a display of the results using thumbnail images, which is promotes as Search 2.0.
Using the Search 2.0 format the results are presented in a graphical rolodex type format that is very interesting. I found that just by seeing an image of a site’s homepage, I was quickly able to determine if it was a place I wanted to land or not. It is very similar to Snap, which I have installed on my own personal blog, that allows you to preview a site before you click to it. The best part of the web 2.0 display was I feel that by using it, I was able to scan through the results faster than I do with Google and I definetely landed on less unnecessary sites.
Now this search engine or format may not be for everyone, but I give this company credit for doing something different and not accepting that all search must be the same.
Friday, December 7th, 2007
Google has created another great API - this one does charts. They are easy to build, very flexible, and nice-looking as well.
Here’s a sample:
Google developed it for their own internal use, but in typical Google fashion, they decided to open it up to the world. For free.
I’ve already got one idea in mind for these: dashboards. There are a number of great dashboard tools that we could build using these charts. I think I’ll start working on some right now…
Thursday, December 6th, 2007
Check out SortFix. It is a new search technology company that has created an interesting user interface on top Google and Yahoo search results. It allows you to drag power words into your search or even exclude these search terms from the results. I personally do not see myself using this, but it is a very interesting concept to me. This is functionality that exists in Google today, however the average user probably does not know how to type into the search box of Google to do the same thing.
For example, if I search truck rental in Softfix, it comes up with results and shows power words such as long distance, apartment mover or self storage. If these are items I want to further filter the results by, I just drag them to the add to search box and click search again. If I dragged apartment moves, now my results are for truck rental apartment moves and in theory I should see more defined results of companies that rent trucks, but specialize in apartment moves. Using the same principle, I could drag anything in the power words or my search string to the remove box and have that item excluded from my results. For example, if I want to search truck rental but want all results that reference self storage removed, I can do that with a simple drag and drop.
The interesting part for me with this search interface, is that they created something Google and Yahoo already offer, but as I said the average person does not know to get results on truck rental but remove all results with self storage all you need to enter in Google is truck rental -self -storage. I personally think if Sortfix wants to be successful in the market, they should market toward elementary kids and create an automatic filter of results based on questionable content. That mixed with the easy, user-friendly drag and drop search method would be a great interface for children. Additionally, their site graphics and video with robots seem perfect for kids.
Friday, November 2nd, 2007
Google dealt a clean slap to the facebook yesterday with it’s acquisition of Myspace, Bebo, and Six Apart for it’s Open Social initiative. They join Orkut, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Salesforce (that makes me happy), Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle as Google’s new partners in the battle against Facebook.
I’ll avoid the obvious anti-trust jabs and say that Open Social looks like a pretty solid platform. Orkut has opened a limited sandbox for developers to start getting their feet wet with what is sure to become as ubiquitous as, well, Google.
