Google News, Inside.

Google…as a Roommate? Part 2

Jonathan Dingman — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:02:39 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Urchin 6.6 is Available

Jonathan Dingman — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:43:31 +0000

Have you heard of Google Analytics? Do you know what Google Analytics was before it was Google Analytics? Google acquired a company called Urchin back in 2005 which then became Google Analytics. Typically, Urchin will run for around $3,000, but Google offers it for free as Google Analytics.

So why is Urchin still being released as its own application while Google Analytics continues to operate as a free application? It’s simple. Data security.

Many companies do not want a third-party owning their traffic data, ie. Google owning their data. If you use Google Analytics, you should be fully aware that Google owns your data and can use it for whatever they want, despite what any “privacy policy” says. Google can and will use your data, including the data that is generated from this site.

So, Urchin 6.6. What’s new?

Deeper Integration With Google AdWords
New Reporting
- Time On Site Report under Content Optimization, Content Performance, Engagement Metrics
- An entirely new reporting section called Advertiser View and Section (If you’re upgrading from an older version of Urchin, you’ll need to reprocess your data to populate these reports.)
External Authentication (LDAP)
New Urchin “Home” Page
Data Export API

Those are just a few things that Urchin 6.6 has improved on. To get the full details, check out the blog post by ROIEvolution.com.

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Urchin 6.6 is Available

Google Announces the Google Chrome Operating System

Jonathan Dingman — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:27:01 +0000

The Google Operating System is real. GoogleSystem, written by Alex Chitu, is finally now a public discussion.

Alex has been writing on his blog for a number of years, dating back to October 2005, nearly six months longer than I’ve been writing on Google Inside, but for a long time, it was simply just the name of his blog.

Now, Google has announced that they will be releasing the Google Operating System, named Google Chrome OS.

Here is what Google has to say about it, officially.

It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we’re definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We’re excited for what’s to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google Announces the Google Chrome Operating System

© jonathandingman for Google News, Inside., 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google Chrome OS

Google Changes Its Logo Size

Jonathan Dingman — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:17 +0000

Today, right before my eyes, literally, the Google logo size changed and they added more space for search results on the sides. Phillip reported on this a day or two ago, but it seemed like the change was only for him. I tested in IE, logged in, logged out, Opera, Safari, any browser I could, but I was seeing the same thing, until today.

Logged out, under Firefox, I saw the change happen. Let’s look at it below.

First, the logo size change:

Next, more padding was added to the sides of the search results. This is definitely a change I agree with, much more pleasing to the eye.

A few changes that I think are going to be really good for Google and its users.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google Changes Its Logo Size

More Google Spam

Jonathan Dingman — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:26:18 +0000

Spam in the Google index is a constant battle that Google is fighting. It is such a huge problem, that they have an entire team dedicated to just dealing with spam.

Google does a great job of fighting spam, but alas, they’re still not perfect — nor will they ever be, sadly.

Here’s some of the latest spam.

All the links above go to a single page to let you “download” the song after filling out a survey. Of course, the publisher intended for all these links to go to a single site, music 0n dot com. It’s all just a bunch of garbage and provides absolutely no value to the user.

Fortunately, Google has some awesome people on Twitter, helping out and commenting on current day activities of the Webspam team at Google.

Fortunately though, we have spammers that are dumb enough to report themselves :)

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

More Google Spam

© jonathandingman for Google News, Inside., 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google Search, Google Spam, Matt Cutts, Twitter

New Googly Patents

Jonathan Dingman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:52:34 +0000

Google was just granted a new patent that will give them rights to a navigation system that doesn’t require any pointing device.

Here is what the patent actually says.

A system and method for navigating within a graphical user interface without using a pointing device is described. A set of one or more keyboard shortcuts is defined, including at least one key. Each keyboard shortcut specifies an action effecting a graphical user interface, which is executed upon input of each key in the keyboard shortcut and at least one key corresponding to a semantically-meaningful hyperlink within Web content. The graphical user interface is navigated. The Web content is provided on a view within the graphical user interface and a graphical pointer indicating a location within the view is included. At least one key input by a user is intercepted and the intercepted key to one such keyboard shortcut is mapped. The action specified by the keyboard shortcut is executed and the view within the Web content is updated relative to the graphical pointer.

Wow. That sounds really awesome. Does anyone else feel like this is a bit like future-ish technology like Minority Report? The same technology used in Minority Report is already be used in applications today.

Here’s a short video of what the technology could look like that Google is developing.

Date patent was filed: June 27, 2003 (nearly 6 years ago)

The technology to actually navigate without a pointing device has been around for at least a year now. Google registering this patent 6 years ago, back in 2003, proves that Google is a very innovative company and far ahead of the curve — probably more of the “trend setter” rather than following in any capacity.

Congrats to Google for being awarded this patent, I’m sure we will see it showing up in new products as the years progress.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

New Googly Patents

© jonathandingman for Google News, Inside., 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google Patents

Google Chrome vs. Internet Explorer 8

Jonathan Dingman — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:54:45 +0000

So I’ve been writing a lot about how Internet Explorer 8 is making Microsoft look worse and worse, saying that they need to spend more time on actually making a better product.

Let’s go head to head and see how they line up.

Right-click options?

IE8 looks a lot like Chrome, with a few other options. Which came first? Chrome did. IE8 was released in mid-March 2009 while Google Chrome launched back in September 2008. Was Microsoft being intuitive and being the first to the game? No. Again, we see that Microsoft is still playing catch-up in hopes that their second-to-market product will be successful.

Com’n Microsoft, be first with something and do it right, please.

Under the hood?

Let’s see how they match up for “advanced” options.

Same ole’ options with Internet Explorer. Nothing new, nothing shiny, nothing special. Google Chrome? Oh, Google Chrome. We get all sorts of goodies! DNS pre-fetching to speed up browsing around the web, yummy anti-phishing options, and nifty suggestions for navigation errors.

Thanks Google! You’ve created an awesome browser!

Eminem said it the best, so I want to quote him on this one. Microsoft, “Go home, write some s***, make it suspenseful, And don`t come back until something dope hits you. F*** it! You can take the mic home with you!“

In short, Microsoft, go back to the drawing board and don’t come back until “something dope hits you,” because that’s what you need to save Internet Explorer. I hate to be so critical, but releasing the same old thing that copies every other great browser just isn’t going to cut it anymore. You need to come up with something real, creative, unique, and something that shouts “wow, Microsoft did something awesome!”

Google Chrome vs. Internet Explorer 8

© jonathandingman for Google News, Inside., 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google Browser, Google Chrome, Microsoft

Father’s Day 2009

Jonathan Dingman — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 06:12:42 +0000

A huge happy Father’s Day to everyone!

Here is what Google showed for the Google Doodle of the day.

Father’s Day 2009

Google…as a Roommate?

Jonathan Dingman — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:37:56 +0000

What would you do if .. Google was your roommate?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Google…as a Roommate?

Google Translate Now Supports Farsi

Jonathan Dingman — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:10:27 +0000

The Persian culture is a huge culture that can sometimes be overlooked by the critical mass of search. Tonight, Google made the announcement that they are now supporting Persian translation, from X language into Farsi.

Something to note, this new feature is in alpha, not even just beta. It’s still the very early stages of testing, so there may be a few bugs. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like.

Google Translate Now Supports Farsi