IT News & Technology update

Google minus Google

After the wave of concern by several media companies that Google was favouring its own services and Web sites in search results, as the new service Knol, Timo Palo Heimo, a Finnish digital planner for an advertising agency, had an interesting idea - the people who Option to use Google search, without results from Google's own sites. He went on, and create a service that does this and called it Google minus Google.

A while back, Google has a service called Knol, aimed at contributing to an encyclopedia written by experts (as opposed to Wikipedia, which can be edited by anybody). Not long after it was launched, people began to notice that in the search various names similar goods or services on Google, it is clear from Knol sides appeared higher than the original sites associated with that name.

This raised some questions with advertising and media companies, in which Google was allegedly a partner and not as competitors. Co-Chief Executive at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Wenda Harris Millard, said then that "if in fact a Google property takes money away from Google partners, is a real problem." Google denied these accusations by Gabriel Stricker, a spokesman for the company, pointed out that "when you see Knol pages rank high, they are there because they deserve their position."

This did not stop Timo Palo Heimo, though, as he still believe that search results from Google's free services in possession would be interesting - and he was not wrong when his minus Google Google service had more than 3000 visitors in the the first day and generates a lot of feedback in his blog. The service drew the attention of some Finnish companies IT News, wrote about it, and thereby contributing to their success.

The growing success of the proposals made Timo Palo Heimo even release a second version of the service. This uses the Google Custom Search (CSE) and includes a series of more than 2500 in possession of Google domain names from the search results. Mr Heimo Palo stated that the second version was much more difficult to create, compared to the first, because "CSE not allowed wild card usage in the Top Level Domain (such as Google .*), but it may be included in the normal query."

No Comment | Posted in » Google, google news  

Americans are most satisfied with Google

The American Customer Satisfaction Index study released today by the University of Michigan, in collaboration with consulting firms predict the results show that U.S. citizens are most satisfied with Google. The satisfaction score in his case reached 86%, a 10.3% increase compared to last year. The category of portals and search engines dominated by the Mountain View giant, while the all-time rival Yahoo! If in second place.

With a decrease of 2.5%, Yahoo! satisfaction score hits a bad (compared to Google's shares) 77%. Before seeing results giving three explanations for the sinking of the Sunnyvale-based company in 2007, held the first position. First there was the negative media coverage, including reports on the Yahoo! 'N drop of economic, internal struggles and turbulent negotiations for a takeover by Microsoft, which has its recognition to the company.

Another reason, consulting firms is that the departure of some of the leaders of the former governing board crippled the company's ability to competitive products. Even Yahoo! is said to have failed to offer custom programs, at a time when Google steadily expanded its operations.

The third spot in the table satisfaction that all the portals and search engines are not enough high points may be nominated in the next position is occupied by MSN. Microsoft product has stagnated at 74-75% of the guests since 2003. The company revealed that the results of the study also provides an explanation for this situation and the resolution of Microsoft thought would be appropriate in the situation.

"It is increasingly clear why Microsoft believes that the Internet is not quite big enough for both MSN and Yahoo! - The two companies offer very similar services and tools, with very little to distinguish the two. With MSN Search bleeding market share during the Corporate customer satisfaction score stagnated (MSN has reached 74 or 75 in the ACSI each year since 2003), Microsoft is trying to return to their old familiar.

The following chart positions in the possession of Ask.com (with the 1.3% decline in contrast to last year), AOL, 3% to 69% score. This is the first year that portals and search engines are jointly assessed, since the latter now integrate virtually all of the functions previously provided by portals.

No Comment | Posted in » Google, google news, Yahoo  

Google launches a new tool that offers insights into global and local search behavior

Want to know what was the most popular travel-related query in the last 30 days or during the past year in the country? Some would say that Google Trends fits this work is just perfect. But it was really to be different, and launched another tool to help advertisers, merchants and ordinary users who are interested in the search patterns from a particular region and within a given time.

Google Insights for Search is a tool that was launched yesterday. It provides diagrams and charts on the allocation of areas and specific words in the queries of people from different regions. A global report is also available on demand. Basically, the tool consists of a graph that follows the search trends during the selected time intervals. Even some of the most representative news stories that are written on this subject are marked in the chart and displayed in the right corner of the page.

In addition to the display of trends over a period of time scale, users also show the distribution of interest in a selected area. If someone is looking for a global report, for example, the tool will give them a beginning of the countries in which a particular subject was considered most interesting. In addition, offered a graph of rising searches, which shows the growth of related keywords in selected time.

If the search is related to a term that also has a secondary importance, selecting a filtering category from the Arts, computers, food and beverage, Real Estate, science and many others, allows users to obtain the most accurate results to their questions. Google normalizes data before offering an image of regional interest in a particular topic.

This means that certain variables are excluded from the analyzed data, on the assumption that a country with a small number of inhabitants would never have a chance to appear in a worldwide ranking. Google ignores the population of a country, with an exclusive focus on the percentage of people who are looking for something. For example, a country with 1 million inhabitants will take a better position than the United States in a "watermelon" search ranking, on condition that 90% of the 1 million people contains the name of this fruit of their searches.

No Comment | Posted in » Google, google news, Google Search, News  

Google docs improve the ability to read pdf files

With google Docs you can simply upload or save documents to your desktop, edit anytime from anywhere and able to share your documents in real time. And it’s free at least at now.

As the ever-present as Acrobat Reader is, it's clunky, and I often wish there is a dedicated PDF viewer, as part of Google Docs. Well, now! You simply upload files to your Google Documents to take advantage of this new feature.

After opening one of your uploaded files can be taken on a new PDF viewer that lets you search, see review on each page, and a copy / paste text - one and only three possibilities I interested.

This is strange that they decide to create the wheel here though. Google Book Search and Google Patent Search are many examples of technologies that will work very well for viewing PDF documents - in comparison with those two, the feature that is currently in Google Docs feels very beta.

No Comment | Posted in » Google, google doc, google news, News  

Leeds "Criminal" Finally Banned by YouTube

Andre Kellett, a 23-year-old from Swarcliffe, was banned by Google's video sharing service YouTube after having posted numerous clips, most of them reportedly illegal. According to Web User News, the YouTube user uploaded no less than 80 videos on the website, one of them showing "Kellett being driven in a car at more than 140 mph."

What's interesting is that Andre Kellett said he's not guilty for posting the clips on YouTube because he was only "a bystander filming events" and he wasn't the main "actor" in the movies. However, the Leeds City Council offered even more examples of illegal clips, pointing to a video in which Kellett does not want to pay a taxi driver, Web User News added.

Commenting the YouTube user's actions, councilor Les Carter, chair of Safe Leeds, said that Andre Kellett could win the "dumbest criminal" contest in Leeds taking into consideration the clips he posted on YouTube. "In the last three years we have seen a 32 per cent reduction in crime in Leeds. If more criminals were as obliging, the city would be even safer," he commented according to the same source mentioned above.

This is not the first time when authorities in a certain city or country discover illegal activities after viewing YouTube clips. In the past, several people were identified and sent to police after videos showing them speeding and breaking the laws appeared on YouTube. However, in most cases, police officers could not take any action because they had no information concerning the date of the recordings as some countries have specific laws which prohibit them to issue a fine after more than 15 days since the driver was caught speeding.

Anyway, at this time, there are a lot of YouTube clips showing people breaking speed limits and flooring it. It's enough to type the right keyword and find them all.

No Comment | Posted in » Google, google news, YouTube  

Google is now accepting third party

Google announced to accept third-party advertising, announced today open to third-party ad servers. This means Google partners may serve ads and track data across its network.

This is really big news for every webmaster, This will empower advertisers to work with approved third parties to serve and track display ads, including rich media ads, across the Google content network through AdWords, giving them more options, flexibility and control over their campaigns.

All web masters know that the best way of making a website return initial investments is through online advertising. This actually translates into webmasters letting their website feature advertisements for various products. One of the highest used advertising services is Google's AdWords, which uses a site's content to advertise products through content relevant web links.

The service, which has been introduced by Google in 2003, deals with a Pay-Per-Click advertising system, which lets advertisers specify the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click. Since its release, the product has registered significant improvement, but it also had to deal with some controversy. As of today, the service has received a new option that will allow third-party advertising tags to be displayed on the Google content network in North America.

The new "open" strategy will empower advertisers to work with Google-approved third parties to serve and track display ads on the Google content network. This will include rich media ads that, for the time being, will only be available in North America. The reason why this step hasn't been taken until now is that Google has not allowed third-party tags because they lacked a process by which they could review ads. The necessity of reviewing these ads is due to Google's need to make sure that the ads comply with their own standards and policies.

The impediment has been overcome and ad servers, rich media ad agencies can go through a certification process that, provided they pass it, will empower them with the new option. There are already a number of certified third parties, but Google will also certify more partners of this type in the future.

The new option will allow advertisers and agencies to manage their Google content network campaigns in pretty much the same way they do with their own campaigns.

No Comment | Posted in » Advertising network, Google, google news, News  

The new google translation tools – Update!

Will you agree if I said google is the most innovative company in providing internet tools? Today google announce the update of translation tools, while actually the update has been apply a week ago.

the Mountain View-based company officially introduced the new Google Translate languages today, this update includes with several other improvements to the translation technology. Google translate is the best translation tools on the net, The newly introduced languages are Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish, raising the total number of supported languages to 23. This means that you can translate websites, texts and words from and to any language supported by the service.

As mentioned, along with more languages, Google has also came with a few other updates. "You can now translate text and web pages as well as perform cross-language searches between any two languages that we offer. For example, we now support Chinese translation to/from any of our languages (e.g., Chinese to French). So for those of you who will be following or attending the Olympics in Beijing this fall, you'll be able to more easily find and access content from local sources," Jeff Chin, Product Manager, wrote on the official Google blog.

Besides that, a "Detect language" function has been added to Google Translate that helps you detect the language of the website or text, and automatically translate it to the language you choose. "Keep in mind that the longer the text, the more accurate it will be. And for those of you who have embedded the Google Translate My Page gadget in your website to give it global reach, these new languages will automatically appear. Developers can also take advantage of these new languages in our AJAX language API," the Google official added.

Just like in the past, Google Translate also provides the "Suggest a better translation" link, which allows regular users to help the technology improve the quality of the translations and thus provide more accurate texts.

post tags: google ,translate ,romanian ,bulgarian ,language

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Gmail is Faster than Light

Gmail has always been a very popular e-mail service and Web since he was officially released, has been significantly improved, with a variety of new functions. But what is even more important is that since the day on which he was born and until today, Google has Gmail in order to work faster and under Wiltse Carpenter, leading technology, performance Gmail, the company will concentrate on this aspect in the near future.

Gmail loading times are very important for most users, and that the spam filter and POP3 support, it is one of the applause welcomed and characteristics of e-mail service from Google. According to the member from the Gmail team, as the company has worked on the loading time of Gmail, which is now really fast with about 20 percent, as set out in his first days of availability.

"First, we recorded every transaction between the Web browser and the servers of Google, beginning with the date on which the" register "button is pressed. We have many different tools for Web development, as Http Watch, Wireshark, and Fiddler on our own systems to measure performance, "said Wiltse Carpenter.

"We have made good progress on all fronts. We have reduced the weight of each request itself eliminated or reduced the scope of some of our witnesses. We have ensured that all our pictures were taken by the cacheable browser and we have the unique small icon Images Meta images, a technique known as the spriting. We have several applications in a combined question and answer. The result is that now he takes even less that four applications for clicking the "Register" to be displayed in Your inbox, "" Did he added.

Gmail was on 1 April 2004, about 3 years old, he was by invitation only. But most people wanted a Gmail account to find an invitation very easy, because each member has received 100 calls delivered to be in the non-users of Gmail. If Gmail was officially published, it will quickly return the general public because of the large space (1 GB at that time). What the Google mail has been improved, the storage capacity was also increased to 6.7 GB step a few days ago.

No Comment | Posted in » gmail, google news, News  

Google News Stays Longer in Clusters

If you use the standard Google search page, you are already familiar with the simple, which you can see multiple links. These links are there to help users to a specialized part of the search engine Google. Among them, you can also find news that you send a page from Google with the latest news from all major categories.

If you are looking to find information about a particular topic, you can do this on the side of Google News. If the subject is of importance in the past, the relevance of search results may also be included in the standard search results page. Login users of Google will have the opportunity, the latest Google Web site, a means by which they may receive the information in a way familiar.

One of the main features of the service Google News is tried, the user the requested information in a simple form-factor. Each time you for the information, the search results will be summarized and provides information on the same topic from different sources. These groups are referred to as clusters and until yesterday the information that the training or in the same group responsible for three days. On the day yesterday, history grapes are in this form for so long that the currency will remain in Google's index. In the end, it means that you will be able to see the group of press for a total of 30 days, the maximum period for which data are indexed by Google.

With respect to specific Google News search engine offers users the opportunity to learn about the latest news, perhaps of interest to them. You can also see how an item from the current development in a month's time, and therefore choose what they read in accordance with the case.

post tags: google , news , update , cluster

No Comment | Posted in » Google, google news, News  

Google send email to wrong persons

If you own an google adsense account, please read this articles

Mountain View the Company has once again the private e-mails to the wrong people, all registered users of AdSense, Google's advertising platform. According to a thread in the forum Webmaster World, a little AdSense user received a message titled "Important information about the account" which they demanded the adoption of the update and conditions, which were revised in February. What is interesting is that the message was to be conducted at all AdSense customers who do not accept the terms and conditions, but also because there is apparently a mistake by an employee of Google, n 'never has made to his Destination.

Some of the users who receive the message said that they were already accepted the new conditions, so that the e-mail has no information on a new method to accept. In addition, the consumer could not answer e-mail and any other information was contacted.

However, a job as AdSense Advisor to the same theme Webmaster World clarify the issue and confirmed that everything was just a message from Google on the poor recipients.

"Our team now has an e-mail with the subject line" information on the important ", a reminder of the changes until February Terms and Conditions. However, we have discovered that we have a number of publishers who have already agreed new terms. We apologize for the confusion caused, and in the next few days we will choose a different message to the publishers, today launched the e-mail by mistake 'AdSense Advisor wrote in a message on Webmaster World drafted.

After search engine roundtable, which is the second error of Google in a row, because there are a few months, Mountain View Company sent a suspicious e-mail to registered editors to ask them to update the tax information. Since the message has a link to the website of the tax update, some readers thought it was an attempt to phishing and asked Google to give them more information.

No Comment | Posted in » adsense, email, Google, google news, News  

Security flaw turns Gmail into open-relay server

This article previously write By Joel Hruska | Published: May 10, 2008 - 01:15PM CT

The main reason to use Gmail is the large mailbox capacity and this is only one free mail server that allows people to get their email to outlook or other mail clients.

A recently-discovered flaw in Gmail is capable of turning Google's e-mail service into a highly effective spam machine. According to the Information Security Research Team (INSERT), Gmail is susceptible to a man-in-the-middle attack that allows a spammer to send thousands of bulk e-mails through Google's SMTP service without fear of detection. This attack bypasses both Google's identity fraud protection mechanisms and the current 500-address limit on bulk e-mail.

Vulnerability in Gmail, with the spammer, a potentially unlimited number of messages is certainly a problem, but there is one other factor that could worsen external potential spam campaign. Since the volume of spam, he currently represents 95 percent of all e-mail traffic from many e-mail providers have lists of black and white lists as a first protection against flooding. An e-mail address johdoe@awinnerisyou.com (or IP address corresponding block) May automatically be blocked from any e-mail service, everything from an e-mail from a trust the authentication source such as Google Mail is automatically entitled to through the door. E-mail regularly use the provider of multi-level filter that everything to recognized that the missive forged Gmail is actually spam, but the message has an important hurdle that otherwise would have prevented delivery.

E-mail from Google, it seems, is particularly by Yahoo and Hotmail. The INSERT team tested the level of trust between the three most important e-mail providers of spam messages from Yahoo and Hotmail, with two sources. In the first attempt, the messages were sent from which the personal IP addresses were blacklisted by Yahoo and Hotmail. The second test was to broadcast the same message about Gmail VICE discovered that INSERT.

The difference is important. E-mail to Yahoo and Hotmail from a blacklist of IP is not even necessarily to the account of spam box, while the fake e-mails on the Gmail always came in the box receipt of the invoice. The goal here is not to condemn trusted source filter as bad, but to emphasize as vulnerability in a single product or service through a curling ecosystem. Google will probably act quickly to make this way, but Yahoo and Hotmail want to read, their Russian proverbs a little closer.

No Comment | Posted in » gmail, Google, google news  

Google Slowing Down

By: Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor

Google has witnessed its web search on the market by the fall, some point to three percentage points globally from January to February, according to comScore, the leader in measuring the digital world, but as the crowd favorite all time, I would like to say that all well. In the United States increased during the same period. Those slight drop, however, by the company and its CEO Eric Schmidt announced sometime in the beginning of this year that his company is ready to face whatever the downturn could throw at her. And, frankly, the only thing that anyone has never thrown on Google is money, through its AdSense and AdWords programs.

Google is not only one to see its percentage decline in the number of searches run through its search engine, Yahoo and Microsoft, faced a similar problem on a global scale. In the United States, though, Google upped its share to 0.7 in the main search, while in Sunnyvale company, and the Redmond giant took two hits, 0.6 and 0.2, respectively.

Based on the Top 50 properties in the world where search activity was observed in February, Google clearly leads the pack with 7.4 billion, followed by Yahoo with 2.3 billion and Microsoft, which counted 984 million. The figure provided by comScore shows how important it is to acquire YouTube for Mountain View company. Compared with his counterparts from the two other major players in this field, it belongs to Google for video-1554 billion searches go through them, while Yahoo! "In other bags around 29 billion and Microsoft's killed only 36 billion.

A comScore comparison for the previous three months, might provide an answer to a drop in December saw 66 billion total searches in January raised the bar to 71.9 billion February and then, two days shorter reached 67.4 billion searches.

No Comment | Posted in » Google, google news, Microsoft, Search, Yahoo  

Yahoo and Google talk about OpenID

No Comment | Posted in » google news, intellectual property, openID, OpenID Foundation, yahoo news  

Who’s Second in the Search Market? Google Is!

A situation the company isn’t familiar with
By: Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor

No, nothing happened to the Mountain View-based Internet giant, the catch is that the place the survey has been conducted in is China, and Google never owned the majority of the shares there. Baidu has and, by the looks of it, it will still reign supreme for a couple of years. After all, the China-based search engine had more searches run through it than Microsoft on a global level. You gotta respect that!

Baidu had a 60.1 percent of the pie, according to the Q4 study conducted by research firm Analysts International. Google trailed with (only) 25.9 percent and the third position was taken by Yahoo! China, with 9.6 percent. Things, despite looking pretty cloudy for Google, aren’t all that grim, it actually recorded a growth of 2.2 percent compared to the previous quarter.

Baidu, on the other hand, did not record significant changes in its percentages, and put together with its runner-up and the bronze winning Yahoo, the three accounted for about 96 percent of the total search market. The total figures, reported into local currency, mean about 946.6 million yuan, roughly 131.4 million U.S. dollars. Compared to the figures from other countries, this might not sound as much for the Mountain View-based company. Let’s not forget, though, that the Chinese Internet using community is the second largest in the world, after that of the United States, with 210 million users at the end of 2007. Mind you, it is still growing and bound to become the largest, early this year.

Google’s increase could be in part credited to the mobile short message search service that it has launched since the beginning of the fourth quarter.

Baidu is currently considering expanding into the Japanese Internet search market, where Google is the leader. They seem to want to battle it wherever there is a battlefield available.

No Comment | Posted in » google news, search engine, search share  

Domain Tasting to Be Disallowed by Google

AdSense generating conflict…
By: Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor

When somebody wants to register a new domain, he/she normally wants to see whether it would be a seller or a bust. That’s where domain tasting gets involved, it is a practice of registrants using the five-day "grace period" at the beginning of a domain registration for ICANN-regulated generic top-level domains to test the marketability of a domain name. During this period, when a registration must be fully refunded by the domain registry, a cost-benefit analysis is conducted by the registrant on the viability of deriving income from advertisements being placed on the domain's web site, according to Wikipedia.

Google has recently thought about banning the newly registered domain names from participating in its Google for Domain Names program. Being the king and queen of the Internet, Google’s decision, if it goes through, will have domain tasting as a process on its knees, waiting to be beheaded.

Jay Westerdal of Domain Tools told Duncan Riley of TechCrunch that: "It was disclosed in court that one partner that Google had was generating as much as $3 million dollars a month from the practice and that was after Google’s revenue share. Oversee.net and other companies have been using this practice for years and it will have a direct impact on them. The gravy train of free money might be coming to a halt very fast. This policy change at Google should be announced to the channel partners soon and it will have a huge echoing impact on the Industry….I think this is a return of the 'Be Good' motto Google had a few years ago. Google has been quietly enabling this practice for years now. This is a smart policy move on Google’s part to ward off impending litigation that might have hit them in the coming months."

Taking into account that he is involved as heavily as can be in the process of domain tasting, his words come bearing an even heavier sentence. Let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that. And even if it does, this will just open the door to a competitor, but the scale of the business from now on… not looking good.

No Comment | Posted in » Domain, Domain Hosting Services, domain tasting, Google, google news, Memorable Domain Name  

A Big NO to Floating AdSense Ads

Official stand on that has finally come
By: Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor | softpedia.com

The rumor that "floated" around a while ago about the possibility that Google might introduce floating ads has seen its end today, as an official Google AdSense representative said that it would never happen. The discussion was interesting to follow, the two parts arguing whether the money-making scheme would prevail in Google’s future orientation or "this type of ads being against the Mountain View based company’s policy" would win the day.

You know the type of ads that just pop out from the background and attract your attention to them. One possible hint as to this never coming to be could be the fact that, back in November, Google reduced the clickable area around its advertisements in an attempt to reduce erroneous clicks. And with that in mind, a floating ad would most likely be a drawback to implementing and backing this idea: they get more clicks than any other type of online ads just because they’re not there one second and in the next moment you find out you’re redirected to some random page because you clicked it.

The statement was short and straight to the point: "I've checked with our policy specialists and placing Google ads in a floating script would be a violation of AdSense policy," AdSense Pro Jordan wrote on the Google Groups forum thread addressing the issue.

Furthermore, some of the users using this technique saw their accounts being deleted and their profiles removed because of it. This must be because of the close connection to what Google is trying to become, the one address somebody would go for anything related to the Internet. No mishaps are to be allowed and the wrongdoers would be harshly penalized if anything happened.

I’m just happy that floating ads aren’t going to happen because I know how annoying they can be, in case they have the X for closing it very small or not there at all, as I’ve seen some. It’s damn frustrating to not be able to read a part of an article because there’s an ad for something probably stupid floating over it.

No Comment | Posted in » adsense, floating, google news, News  

Google’s Search Share Drops

Still kicks the others’ a**es though
By: Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor | softpedia.com

Nielsen has released the numbers for the search share ratio for December 2007 and they confirmed what needed no confirmation, that Google rules the land, that it is king of the castle and an array of expressions similar in meaning. There are really not enough words to explain the way the Mountain View-based company has risen from a garage project to ruling the market ahead of names that have a history on the Internet and with huge impact.

Over half of all the queries run in the United States have had the Google logo standing right next to them: 56.3 percent, or 4,062,536,000, according to the stats. The runner-up, Yahoo!, has had a little over a quarter of that number, 17.7 percent with 1.2 billion. Even lower than that we find Windows Live Search, 5 million shy of reaching the billion round number and there’s no point in digging even deeper.

Despite the obvious dominance, Google’s Search Share actually dropped from 57.7 in November to 56.3 in December. A descending train that the other major player in the field, Yahoo!, has jumped on as the Sunnyvale-based company saw its percentages drop from 17.9 to 17.7. All of that came to be good news for Microsoft who saw a rise like it hadn’t seen for ages with the missing percentages from the previous two gatherings under its protective wing: 1.8 % higher than the last month with 13.8 % compared to 12%.

The Nielsen data came on the heels of comScore releasing the numbers that showed how, every year, fewer and fewer Americans trust the results returned by the search engines. With Google owning such a big piece of the pie, it was only logical for it to be the number one target affected by the lack of trust.

No Comment | Posted in » Google, google news, search share, windows live search yahoo  

The Story Behind Designing the Google Logo

Did you know that Ruth Kedar was responsible for it?
By: Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor | softpedia.com

A very interesting interview by Philipp Lenssen was posted on blogoscoped.com, that of Ruth Kedar, the design teacher at Stanford University in 1999, the time of the logo’s birth. The question was asked via mail and the answer came the same way, but despite not having the flavor of the personally taken interview, it gives information that few people are aware of.

Ruth was introduced to Larry Page and Sergey Brin by a mutual friend at Stanford after they had previously admired her work and thus decided to hire her. The idea behind the
logo was for it to be unique and differentiate the company from the others on the market (like Yahoo!, Excite, HotBot, LookSmart and Lycos) as well as to embody their unique vision. The main difference between the sites mentioned above was that they were commercial portals at first and later on search engines, something Google wanted to make clear it was not the case.

"Google wanted to convey that it was as a search provider first and foremost. It offered fast, comprehensive, and above all trustworthy search results. It was innovative, algorithmically complex yet incredibly simple to use. Furthermore, Google as a brand should repudiate all things corporate, conventional or complacent," Ruth Kedar wrote in the response to Philipp Lenssen.

The first Google logo, back in 1997
Enlarge picture
There were several meetings between her and the (now) Mountain View based company’s founders, each reconciling the vision and the expression that lead to the final design.

They decided on the design we still see on the homepage because it hit several of the main points that the (now) multi-billionaire duo set ahead of her. Most of all, it was playful and its simplicity swayed them, no effort was needed for reading it and the colors "evoke memories of child play, but deftly stray from the color wheel strictures so as to hint to the inherent element of serendipity creeping into any search results page and the irreverence and boldness of the "I am feeling lucky" link." The shading was well thought of, giving the letters both weight and lightness: "It is solid but there is also an ethereal quality to it," as Ruth said.

The Google logo late 1998
Enlarge picture
The font was very carefully considered as well, in order not to place it on the same level as the other logos: Times New Roman was the Internet font of choice back then, so she went for that of the printed world: Sans-Serif. The typeface had to be subtly sophisticated, but it also had to include some humor and irreverence, so the obvious decision was to go for Catull, which "borrows elements from traditional writing instruments such as the quill and the chisel with a modern twist. Search, by nature, is an activity that requires we look into the past. Therefore Catull’s historical ties seemed appropriate, as did the bridging between the old analog world and the new emerging digital era."

Visually, the logo was the baby bred from the two dominant schools of thought at the time, a mélange between the emulating of conventional printed giants such as Sun and SGI and the irreverence of Yahoo!’s non-designed approach.

She ends the interview with acknowledging what Google has become in the pastime: it is "a much more complex entity – it has evolved and grown beyond our wildest imagination – who knew that it would become one of the most ubiquitous and recognized brands worldwide and that Google would be a noun and a verb?"

By the way, how many of you have noticed that the two "o"s in Google are slightly tilted to the left?

No Comment | Posted in » Google, google news, News  

Google Reader Alternative

GobbleRSS
By: Catalin Bocanu, Web News Editor | softpedia.com

RSS Feeds provide a common method to read the latest news from various sources. Even more, the RSS technology allows to publish and distribute web content through web feeds.
If you are using different computers to access your RSS news then an online feed aggregator service, like Google Reader, will help in this direction.

GobbleRSS is an RSS feeds aggregator made in PHP programming language with MySQL database support. As a consequence, it is web based and allows you to access your RSS news from any computer that has an Internet connection. Regarding functionality, GobbleRSS PHP application is inspired by a previous version of Google Reader. It works on any PHP version, but requires on the client side the usage of Mozilla Firefox web browser. Internet Explorer does not render correctly the PHP output.

In order to simplify the installation you can change the .htaccess file into htaccess.txt. The database tables will be created automatically after you specify the username and password into config.inc.php file. After you finish the installation, you will be able to add your prefered RSS links in the Subscription section. The script also provide the option to import RSS feeds from another reader in OPML file format.

The web interface is very intuitive and RSS feeds can be updated manually or automatically if you have access to cron jobs on your web server. The most interesting feature provided by GobbleRSS is the possibility to synchronize your PDA with all unread articles. You can control the number of synchronized articles by editing the corresponding script line in config.inc.php file. If you want to install the application with the .htaccess file, the usage and editing of .htaccess files must be permitted on the hosting web server.

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Is There Life after Google?

The giant looks like the end destination when it comes to careers
By: Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor | softpedia.com

Has Google gotten so big that when it enters a metaphorical room with you in it, it covers at least three light sources? What further heights could you dream to reach with Google after taking over the market in a blitzkrieg kind of way? Many more questions on the topic to follow after this short commercial: "Have you ever felt the need to feel comfort in other people
noticing you? Do you need to think or look at what you’ve accomplished over the years just to have something to think about or look at? Are you feeling a little invisible? Google yourself now! Find the Googler in you today!" Back to the original program.

I've asked those questions because it looks to me that more and more people are leaving the Mountain View based company just because they feel that they are going nowhere, despite the fact that Google is expanding. What it lacks is serious competition, the motivation. Money isn’t an issue for these people, a serious challenge is.

Kevin Fox, Google’s user experience designer who has helped with Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Reader 2.0, has announced in a blog that today has been his last day at Google. Four years of working there were enough for him alone, he felt the need to step it down a notch and join some illustrious anonym startup. He insisted on the anonymity, but said that "Google is the first place I've ever worked where I feel that I'm part of the company as opposed to working for the company."

However, he did leave some hints as to which company he will be joining: "Time will tell, and I'm looking forward to sharing new and making shiny. This is the first of many big changes in 2008 (there's that whole getting married thing as well) and I hope to share them with you. I've neglected the personal side of myself on the Internet for too long, and at least to start off, I'm going to start blogging every day. Shared items and Tweets are great and all, but I do miss the blogging." What can you make of it?

No Comment | Posted in » calender, gmail, google news