Google
I'm still trying to get my head around Google Base. Here's a brain-dump of my thinking so far. First, some links.
Google Base FAQ
Google Base introduction on the Google Blog (includes testimon...
Google have finally released a Firefox version of the Google Toolbar, with some nice praise for XUL in to the bargain. Of course, the most interesting part of the toolbar from a geeky point of view is...
Google's recently released Web Accelerator apparently has some scary side-effects. It's been spotted pre-loading links in password-protected applications, which can amount to clicking on every "delete...
New Google feature: Google Movies. Displays aggregated movie reviews (like Rotten Tomatoes), looks up local movie times based on your zip code saved in Google Local (more evidence of the fabled Google...
I'll probably write more on this later, but it seems that Google Maps is using XSL. I spotted it loading the following pages while sniffing its activity with LiveHTTPHeaders:
homepanel.xsl
loc...
Reading between the lines (which in this case isn't particularly hard), this and this (don't forget to view source) suggest that Google are soon to announce that they won't be calculating PageRank for...
I'm probably late to the party on this one, but I just noticed that Google Print results are now included in any Google search that starts with "books on". I can't say I like the lousy discoverability...
I have four gmail invites left. The first four people to leave a comment with their email address can have them (put it in the email field and fill in a URL as well if you're worried about spam harves...
Does anyone know what Google means when it says that something is a "Supplemental Result"?...
Thanks to the ever impressive Internet Archive (did you know they host old public information films as well?) here's Google's homepage from 1998. Their searchable index was slightly less than 25 milli...
Via John Battelle, Rick Skrenta's remarkable piece on what Google have actually built. They don't just have the world's best search engine, they have the world's largest and most scalable platform for...
Provided this story about a new 1 GB webmail service from Google isn't a lame early April fool, I'm really psyched about it. A decent amount of space combined with Google's search technology could rea...
Via Boing Boing, this fascinating and utterly chilling photographic journey through the abandoned ruins of the Chernobyl dead zone.
As an aside, the free hosting provide used by the site appears to...
A well documented side effect of the weblog format is that it brings Google PageRank in almost absurd quantities. I'm now the 5th result for simon on Google, and I've been the top result for simon wil...
Evan Williams on Google's intranet weblogs:
How many people blog at Google?
Not sure what the count is, but I know there's a couple hundred or more. It's really interesting to see the network ...
Friends don't let friends...
... use AOL
... vote democrat
... dress like The Crow
... use camera phones
... drive drunk
... type Qwerty
... drive SUVs
... starve themselves
... ...
I guess it really was too good to be true. The AdSense backlash has begun, with Eric Thauvin's dismissal from the scheme for "invalid clicks" prompting Russell Beattie to take a good look at the AdSen...
Microdoc News have a poorly researched story suggesting that Google have been engineering their search results to favour their own properties:
It could be argued that the most important site that s...
In the style of Mark Pilgrim, Googling for fun and profit....
Clearing out another several days worth of tabs. Some day I'm gonna get me a link-roll.
Zeldman's presentation on web standards, including a gallery of commercial sites designed with CSS.
mezz...
Slate: Digging for Googleholes:
Type in the make and model of a new DVD player, and you'll get dozens of online electronic stores in the top results, all of them eager to sell you the item. But y...
Anil Dash suggests Google should start sponsoring the Mozilla project, and use it as a basis for releasing their own browser. He makes a very good case:
Firebird is, finally, a usable browser, an...
Dave Winer:
For several months this Google search
would turn up a UserLand page as the number one hit. Today it's not in
the first ten pages. Must be a bug. Or do they play games with their
se...
Some useful tips from Scribbling.net:
Nine things you can do to make your web site better
Help the Googlebot understand your web site
I also really like the subtle visual effect in that site'...
Search Engine Watch (with a nice new design but horrible markup) have an extensive analysis of the recent "Big Brother" accusations that have been levelled at Google....
New York Times: Yahoo Plans Improvements in Effort to Regain Lost Ground. I'm guessing this is what it's going to look like (via thelist)....
Jeremy Allaire has posted notes on an interview with Sergey Brin of Google, conducted at the PC Forum conference. Some highlights:
When or will you go IPO?
I was really impressed with his answ...
I'm finding myself slightly confused about the Google backlash washing around the blogosphere, which is summarised quite well by Gavin Sheridan. Most of the arguments against using Google unsurprising...
Jeremy Zawodny drops a so-subtle-that-I-probably-misread-it hint that the Yahoo search page might some day follow AllTheWeb in Google's footsteps....
Lots of analysis around the blogosphere today of Google's surprise aquisition of Blogger. Cory Doctorow's analysis is (in my opinion) especially worth reading. Personally, I just hope Google do someth...
Scott is horrified by the fact that some American political organisations are co-ordinating massive "letter to the editor" campaigns using email lists and websites. It's certainly a worrying trend, bu...
Every now and then I stumble across this and then lose it again, so I'm blogging it for safe keeping. The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine is the research paper that kicked off ...
I've missed out on a whole bunch of Google news lately (all of which has come via the Google Weblog). Google labs have a couple of interesting new demos; Google Viewer, a weird slideshow thing that cy...
Phil Ringnalda: The perils of good semantic markup. A throwaway comment by a blogger about some trashy manufactured band results in his (properly marked up) site ending ranked higher by Google than th...
Usability Views (via Zeldman) lists articles from a number of Usability related sites in a variety of different ways, including order-by-most-popular. Popularity appears to be judged by the number of ...
Googlism knows too much:
simon willison is becoming more and more obvious
simon willison is an undergrad at the university of bath
Spotted on Jeremy Zawodny's blog. As a side note, the site...
Information for Sale: My Experience With Google Answers is a fascinating insight in to the world of Google Answers:
The most money still goes to the researcher who answers the most high-paying qu...
Mark Pilgrim explains why Google's latest update tweaks (mentioned yesterday) are a lot less harmless than they first appeared....
It seems Google have tweaked their algorithm a bit, resulting in several high profile webloggers losing their top ranking positions for a search on their name. Scott Andrew summarises the situation ni...
Stuart has outdone himself with his latest piece of javascript wizzardry. searchhi will highlight search terms when someone visits your page from a link on Google - all using the DOM and all without y...
Google cooking (via Kottke). This is going to be very useful when I get back to uni....
Sam Buchanan: The Netscape Google mystery. A user complains of a non functional web appli ation, and when asked what browser they are using replies "Netscape Google". Sam suspects that this is because...
Things that make Baby Jesus cry (stolen from Mark Pilgrim). Google as social commentary?...
Red Herring: Dinner with the mind behind the mind of God, an informal interview with Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google. The "mind of God" reference stems from this quote:But in the end, the conversatio...
I've long been wondering what kind of research Google are doing with respect to the Semantic Web. August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (via From the Orient) is a superbly w...
Paul Freeman has come up with new use for the Google API - generating random links. The idea is simple but effective - a random theme is selected and searched for (via pygoogle), then another search i...
The Register: Tiscali to launch Excite across Europe. From Excite.co.uk:We are back - and we have created the most complete search channel on the web for you. Take advantage of our collection of 2,100...
Another gem from the Google Weblog - Google not only accepts OR as a search modifier but allows you to use | instead and still get the same results.
...
elgooG (via the Google Weblog)....
Slashdot are carrying an interview with Craig Silverstein, Google's director of technology. The interview is actually quite disapointing - the answers given are relatively short and little new informa...
Boston.com, via Slashdot: Online search engine AlltheWeb claims bigger index than Google. I was under the impression that the 2,073,418,204 quoted on Google's home page is no longer accurate (it hasn'...
This site has been here for less than four days yet it already shows up as the top result if you search for simon willison on Google - and I never even submitted the URL. In fact, asking Google to lis...