All posts in Google

Moving FeedBurner account to Google

by Ades on January 24, 2009 in Google, Trackers with 11 Comments

For the past few days my RSS feed counter has been showing wrong count. Instead of showing 1200+ subscribers it is showing 700-800 subscribers. It’s clearly something wrong, because even with fluctuations it should be around 1000+ subscribers. Plus/minus 200 subscribers is ok, but when almost 500 subscribers are missing then there is really something wrong.

I guess it’s time to move my FeedBurner account to Google. As you remember after Google acquired FeedBurner, they have been encouraging people to move their FeedBurner account to Google. Everyone must move by February 28, 2009.

Why is FeedBurner merging its product with Google’s?

Our vision when FeedBurner joined Google was to help bring the best of what FeedBurner offered in syndication publisher tools and solutions to the AdSense platform, and vice versa. In the time since the merger, the FeedBurner engineering team has joined the Google engineering team (but still focuses on the same set of tools for RSS monetization, analysis, and optimization) and is not managed as a separate company or subsidiary.

Why do I need to transfer my account?

We are moving all FeedBurner accounts to Google Accounts.

Since Google’s acquisition of FeedBurner, Inc. on June 1, 2007, we have been moving the FeedBurner application to Google hardware, software, and data centers. This allows the application to scale and perform like most Google applications and integrate easily with other Google platforms. It also means more reliability in delivering your content, analytics, and monetization, as well as a more secure and consistent experience for your users.

In order to provide an integrated experience and to support the new features we have planned for our feed platform, as well as to improve security, it is necessary for logins to be handled via a Google Account. from FAQ

Transferred!

It took few clicks and about 1 minute to transfer the account. My new RSS feed is now http://feeds2.feedburner.com/AdesBlog. Old feeds will automatically point to the new one, but for the new subscribers it’s recommended that you give the new feed url.

Google warns that the RSS count might temporarily show “0″ for the latest day, and it might take around one week for it to work normally.

So, when are you transferring yours? I hope not on the last day – 28th February 2009!

FAQ Page: https://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=126303
New Login URL: http://feedburner.google.com/

Google’s SearchWiki – Next Social Powered Search Engine?

by Ades on December 18, 2008 in Google with 9 Comments

Google had launched a service called SearchWiki sometime last month. But it had disappeared for some reason. And now, for the past few days I have been seeing it back again.

SearchWiki is an additional feature for Google which appears when you login to your Google Account. Yes, it only works if you are logged into your Google Account (Gmail, Google Docs…etc). Once logged, when you do search on Google, small icons will appear beside each search result. With these icons you can either promote (i.e move up) or remove particular result from the results page altogether. (see below).

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The effects of your removing or promoting certain websites will only be visible to you. In other words, it won’t affect the real results of Google.com (at least for now).

So, it’s like… personalizing Google results according to your own needs. What if, you know a site that is not there in the results? Well, you can add them, as simple as that. (see below)

searchwiki add result

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“Add a result” link is located at the footer of the page. You can also manage all your promoted and removed results by going to “See all my SearchWiki notes”

What it means for Google

It means a small step for Google but a giant leap for better search results ;) Seriously, it means a big deal for Google. It’s a matter of time when SearchWiki results will replace the normal Google search results.

Because Google’s current PageRank based system for its search results is prone to manipulation. And it has been struggling to contain this issue – fighting all those who pass PR to other sites (i.e who do not use rel=”nofollow” code on their text ads and other outgoing links. Most banner formats are automatically added “nofollow” by Google).

Google is very smart, by leaving SearchWiki for “personal use only” for sometime, they will actually generate a different set of parallel results for the same keywords searched in Google. And most likely, these combined SearchWiki results will be a better, more accurate results. Simply because they are generated by millions of people.

When leaving it for “personal use only”, it’s also less likely to be spammed. Because people will be improving their own results without knowing that they are actually improving the whole search engine results.

Could it be spammed?

Sure, once it goes public, people will try to spam it. But it’s less likely to affect the results. Because the ratio of the spam entries (submitted by tens of people?) compared to the legitimate entries (submitted by millions of people) would be too small. And even if they make to the first page, people could easily removed such entries by clicking “X” near to it.

Summary

I think Google is onto something great here. When it goes public, we can expect less spam and more accurate results. With all the social networking things going on on the net, it’s definitely the right thing to do for Google – to let the people manage the results.

What do you think? Please leave your opinion in the comments.

Read All Issues of Magazines in Google

by Ades on December 12, 2008 in Google, News with 18 Comments

Google does it again. It announced that it will be digitizing all issues of (certain) magazines.

Currently archives of magazines like Popular Science, Men’s Health, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, New York Magazine, Maximum PC, Popular Mechanics etc. are available in full.

This is due to the court agreement that Google won:

Three years ago, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers filed a class action lawsuit against Google Book Search.

Today we’re delighted to announce that we’ve settled that lawsuit and will be working closely with these industry partners to bring even more of the world’s books online. Together we’ll accomplish far more than any of us could have individually, to the enduring benefit of authors, publishers, researchers and readers alike. source

That means we can expect more and more books and magazines to be available online in full soon.

Enjoy: http://books.google.com

YouTube’s new feature “deep link” fails usability

by Ades on November 2, 2008 in Advice to Businesses, Google, Usability with 16 Comments

YouTube has introduced a great feature called “deep link”. It’s a feature that lets you link directly to a specific time-frame within the video. For example, if the video is 5 minutes long and you want to show your friend from 2nd minute 15 seconds onwards, you can do that with this new feature.

How to do it?

This is how it is done – you need to add (manually) at the end of the URL, this code – #t=2m15s. It means the video will start playing from the frame 2minute 15 seconds (#t is for passing the time variables to the video, in this case 2min, 15sec).

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI54UauUtSk#t=0m46s

Usability issue…

But as usual, YouTube (Google) seems to be thinking from programmer’s point of view and not from end-user point. Because,

It’s (nearly) impossible for general public to remember this code. It looks easy for you and me but believe me for a non-IT person it will be quite difficult to remember the code structure, symbols, letters…etc
It’s not user-friendly i.e not usable – you need to add the code manually yourself at the end of the link. There is also no instructions on the video pages. So, someone who haven’t heard about this new feature wouldn’t know how to do it.
It’s prone to typo-error. Since users have to type the minutes and seconds into the code themselves, they might put in the wrong numerals or make a wrong structured URL due to Point1 above.

…all in all, it’s not usable!

What I suggest!

I suggest that YouTube make this feature more usable, and make it available on each video page. This can be done easily. It can also be integrated into the video pages seamlessly. Here is my suggestion:

1. Add a small icon (clock?) at the end of the URL field, similar to the generate code icon (see image 3). When you click on the clock, it would enable “deep link” feature.
youtube deep link

2. Once the feature is enabled, you simply drag the slider to the position you want.

youtube deep link

3. The video URL automatically reflects the position of the slider that you are moving. Once you are done, it’s ready for you to copy!

youtube deep link

This would make it much more usable and reduce typo-errors!

Would YouTube heed my recommendation? Who knows. But I hope they will, because it would make people’s lives a lot easier.

Ping: http://uk.youtube.com/blog?entry=EoZa0dlFRao

Gmail: Auto-Responder Feature Added

by Ades on October 23, 2008 in Gmail, Google with 18 Comments

Auto responder feature (kind of) has been added to Gmail. Actually, the main purpose of this new feature is to allow users to create pre-written emails for repetitive replies. So, for example next time you get an email that needs a standard reply, you can just use back one of the “canned responses” (that’s what they are called) that you have created earlier.

Enabling the Feature

In order to enable it, you need to login to you Gmail and go to Settings > Labs > Canned Responses. Click “enable it” and save your preferences.

Creating Canned Response

Now compose a new message, and type the text of your auto-responder. Once you are done, click on Canned Responses link (see screenshot below) and choose New Canned Response. It will popup a window. Give your auto-responder a name and save it.

Creating the Auto-Responder

Now the most important part – creating a filter. As you know gmail allows you to create different kinds of filters. As for your auto-responder, if you want to send everyone who emails you an auto-response, then you have to enter your own email in the To: field when setting a criteria for your filter (see below).

That would mean, all emails that is sent to your@gmail.com would receive an auto-response from you.

In the next step (see below), tick Send canned response and choose the appropriate “canned response” from the drop down menu.

You are done with your auto-responder! Use it wisely though. Don’t spam!

P.S When replying manually, if you want to use particular canned response, you just have to select it from the drop down menu and it will fill your text area automatically.

Google search “by date”, why so difficult?

by Ades on October 18, 2008 in Google with 20 Comments

Otherwise user friendly Google made it so difficult and hidden to search by date. Why? I don’t really know. In this information age where fresh data, latest news and updates are sought upon…. i personally think it’s really time to put that “date drop down” menu on the main page.

Currently if you want to search Google by date, you need to go to “Advansed Search” page. And even on advanced search page, you won’t find “search by date” option easily, it is in fact hidden under some plus icon (+) which you need to expand to see the contents. It is in this place that the valuable search by date option is located. It is as if it was purposely made difficult to find it.

And if you think that is a usability issue, Google’s senior software engineer Matt Cutts teaches you how you can do the same thing (i.e search by date) the easy way – using codes! he writes:

The nice thing is that you can change the value of as_qdr to custom intervals. Here are all the possible values of the as_qdr parameter:

d[number] – past number of days (e.g.: d10)
w[number] – past number of weeks
y[number] – past number of years

… For example, there’s been a lot of fast progress on iphone stuff recently. A query such as http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone+source+code&as_qdr=d1 would show all the new urls for the query [iphone source code] within the last day, because d1 stands for 1 day.

Seems like Google should stop using its programmers as usability professionals. Let them do the coding! And leave the usability stuff to usability experts… I am sure Google has such professionals?

Only then, perhaps the “search by date” option will be put on main page, or at least taken out from its current hidden place.

Google’s 2001 Search Index

by Ades on October 2, 2008 in Google with 15 Comments

Google for its 10th anniversary has released its oldest search engine index available (2001).

Make a search and see what were the results then. Were you on that index? Luckily I could find my website on the 2001 index ;)

Google 2001 Index: http://www.google.com/search2001.html

Google indexes speech in YouTube videos

by Ades on September 20, 2008 in Google, Technology with 11 Comments

Google Labs has a new technology – Gaudi or Google Audio Indexing. Gaudi allows users to better search and watch videos from various YouTube channels.

It uses speech technology to find spoken words inside videos and lets the user jump to the right portion of the video where these words are spoken (see screenshot below).

Google Audio Indexing uses speech technology to transform spoken words into text and leverages the Google indexing technology to return to the user. The returned videos are ranked based on the spoken content, the metadata, the freshness.

Isn’t that something? It will revolutionize the way people watch online videos after this. If the person in the video talks too much, now you have the option to skip his bla bla bla and go right to the points that you want to hear.

It will also be easier (for authorities) to keep track of what people are talking. I hope this option won’t be abused. What do you say?

URL: http://labs.google.com/gaudi

Google: Your local time

by Ades on September 19, 2008 in Google with 3 Comments

Google has been adding some little stuff to their search engine, like the medal count during Olympics. And there is the search box for some sites when you search their name in google.

Latest thing I have noticed is the time feature, which when you type time in google and search, it shows the local time from which the search originated (see below).

I often search google for exact local time, most of the time for synchronizing my PC clock, or wristwatch or to see whether the prayer time is in or not.

Previously I used to check the time here or type “time kuala lumpur” in google.

But now you don’t have to type the location, Google figures that out itself. It’s a small thing but with significant effect on people’s daily lives.

P.S. I am not sure why it shows Ipoh and not Kuala Lumpur though? Any idea? But there is no time difference for both cities anyway.

Google Chrome – New web browser from Google

by Ades on September 3, 2008 in Google, Software with 22 Comments

Google Chrome is a new open source web browser from Google. It’s in beta and available only for Windows based machines at the moment. Mac and Linux version are underway.

Google says: Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better . By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

Since it uses components from Mozilla’s Firefox (and Apple’s WebKit), at times you will think you are using a firefox browser with a different skin. They have kept all the latest browsing standards and have improved some functions like bookmarking, searching, tabbing, security etc. to make them more usable.

P.S Google search is activated directly in the URL field. So just type and press enter to search anything in Google. One less step to do the search on Google with this browser :)

Full features: read here
Download: http://tools.google.com/chrome/

Google Ad Manager

by Ades on August 30, 2008 in Google, Online Advertising with 14 Comments

Google Ad Manager is now open to public. Anyone who has Google Account can login and start managing their advertisements.

Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and network-based inventory.

I have always used phpAdsNew (now OpenX) for managing my ads. Compared to Google Ad Manager, I found OpenX to be much more user friendly (or is it just because I have been using it for a long long time?).

Again Google wins…

Basically besides being the No.1 search engine on the net, Google is an ad-network too — with its Google AdSense on one side and Google AdWords on the other. So, what does that say about this new ad-network platform — Google Ad Manager — that Google introduced?

OpenX has a good answer to that on their blog, below is the excerpt from their article:

Google is Your Biggest Competitor
By allowing Google Ad Manager to serve all ads on your site, you are reducing your ability to get advertising elsewhere. Because Google could ‘cherry pick’ users that are the most lucrative for Ad Sense, they will leave the other users for your remaining advertisers. Therefore, your advertisers will not get as much ROI, and leave you for another website.

The same theory goes for ad networks. If ad networks do not have access to your most lucrative users, then they will not pay you as much for them.

Google’s Margins will Increase, Not Yours
By allowing Google to serve your ads, you allow your biggest competitor for ad revenue to know how much you make from ALL advertising on your website.

Therefore, if your average CPM from Google is $0.75, and your average CPM from other ad networks is $0.50, there is no reason that Google should give you more than $0.51! Remember, it is up to Google to determine what revenue share that they will pass back to websites. source

I think that’s a huge plus for Google and very very big minus for all the other ad-networks.

Search the destination site directly in Google

by Ades on July 14, 2008 in Google, Usability with 12 Comments

You probably wouldn’t understand what the title of this post meant, if you didn’t see the screenshot below right!? (picture says a thousands words!)

As you can see Google has been playing around with its search results. Now you can search “some” sites directly in the Google results. I liked it! Because when you go to the site, you will end up searching the site anyway :) So, why not directly search it from the Google results, right? So the Google team think, and I agree. I think it saves us at least one step.

P.S It only appears for some keywords and sites, searching for adesblog didn’t return such a result for my blog :( How about you, any of your sites has a search field on Google results?