Start YouTube Video At Specific Time

Google Blogoscoped — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:40:32 GMT

When embedding a YouTube video, you can add a "start" parameter to define the number of seconds at which the video should start, as Google Operating System explains. Here's a sample snippet:

Google Employee Visions

Google Blogoscoped — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:47:55 GMT

Google put out a promotional video interviewing a couple of Google employees , like Marissa Mayer and Craig Silverstein. In the first part of the video, people are looking back (mostly at fun things, perhaps the message is that the giant Google dog "just wants to play"). In the second part, they're contemplating the future. Here are two quotes (edited for clarity where necessary): <

Associate Email Links With Gmail in Firefox (Natively)

Google Blogoscoped — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:38:13 GMT

The Google toolbar already provided a feature for this, but you can also do it right in the latest version of Firefox*: associate "mailto" links in web pages with Gmail, so that when you click on e.g. info@blogoscoped.com you'll be instantly forwarded to create a new message in Google's email client. Open Tools -> Options -> Applications, and look for the entry titled "mailto". In the dropdown box, pick Gmail. Note this didn't work here,

YouTube Comments Audio Preview

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:37:08 GMT

YouTube's comment box now has an Audio Preview button - like on this video - which reads the comment back to you using text-to-speech technology. YouTube's comments are known for being spontaneous/ flaming/ low-quality, so perhaps the YouTube people read the Xkcd cartoon , as Mrrix32 in the comments points out: On the other hand, YouTube restricts comments to 500 characters. But let's see if too much parental care might scare some kids away from using the site. Or,

Google Says Their Results Will Be RSS-Enabled

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:37:23 GMT

Search Engine Land writes that Google confirmed to them that "they'll soon start offering RSS feeds for web search results. When it happens, the RSS feeds will be an extension of Google Alerts, which currently only allow notification by email." Screen-scraping Google results was already easily possible but once live, RSS feeds should be a nice addition nevertheless, especially for all the tools out there which only work on RSS.

PageRank Checker Bookmarklet

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:09:51 GMT

ChromeFans has a nice PageRank checker bookmarklet. A bookmarklet is a bookmark containing JavaScript, and it might make a nice alternative in case you don't want to install the Google Toolbar (like because it's broken or crashes). This is the JavaScript bit you'll need to add as the bookmark's location in browsers like Firefox or Chrome: javascript:void(window.open("http://www.chromefans.org/pr/?u="+escape(location.href), "PageRank%20Status%20-%20ChromeFans","width=405,

YouTube "In Super HD"

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:22:07 GMT

This experiments puts 4 YouTube players next to each to other to increase the quality of the video. [Via Andy Baio .] [By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: YouTube "In Super HD" | Comments ] [Advertisement] Want to advertise here? Your ad will show in the blog and feed.

German NPD Party in Google News

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:32:58 GMT

Google News is moderated by editors to decide which news sources to accept. How well do they do in figuring out relevant sources? Well, in Germany, they happened to accept a source with the official sounding name "News from Lower Silesian and Upper Lausitz" ("Nachrichten aus Niederschlesien und der Oberlausitz"). A glance at the domain "npd-loebau-zittau.de" and a further look at the site's imprint however will reveal that these are releases issued by the NPD,

Two Alleged SEO Spam Tricks

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:33:41 GMT

Recently at the Barcamp Stuttgart, Stephan Siegloch told of an alleged way to optimize business listings in Google Maps: get a post box (i.e. a business home address, though perhaps not your real one) close to the city center or main station. Then submit that address to Google Maps. This way, your listings would appear closer to the top in local results with Google. Does anyone else have experiences with this? Another tactic reached me via email a while ago,

Google AdSense for Games

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:01:33 GMT

Google released AdSense for Games aka Google In-Game Advertising. This is a way for AdSense ads in text, image or video format to be integrated into web-based Flash games. Currently participating game publishers include Konami, Playfish, Zynga, and Demand Media, Google says. Smaller web game creators need not apply, this is a short tail thing for the moment: applying is restricted to those receiving a minimum of "500,

Gmail Aims to Stop Sending Mail You Might Regret

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:27:50 GMT

A new peculiar Gmail labs feature - opt in via Settings -> Labs -> Mail Goggles -> Enable - lets you solve some math problems at certain times of the day and week before a mail gets send out. Gmail developer Jon Perlow writes : <

Google Russia Classifieds Search

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:12:30 GMT

Google released a classified ads search site for Russia a while ago. Ionut in the forum points to an auto-translated Google blog post from August: <

Planet Google (Book)

Google Blogoscoped — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:18:23 GMT

A new book by Randall Stross is out; it's called " Planet Google " and covers Google's beginnings but also their latest actions and troubles. It's a very good, highly readable, well-researched and up-to-date introduction to the subject and will also offer bits and pieces of interest to those following Google more closely for longer.

Unmarked Google Ads

Google Blogoscoped — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:40:31 GMT

In AdSense ads Google serves to websites, they don't always disclaim the ads as such; arguably, this job could be left to webmasters (though they sometimes do show the disclosure, which causes redundancy for those webmasters adding their own disclosure). However, even Google at their own site doesn't always add a disclosure, apparently.

New Google Spreadsheets Design Live

Google Blogoscoped — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:25:15 GMT

Google has rolled out their new interface design to the last of the Google Docs trio, Spreadsheets (presentations and Documents already had this new style). The tabs are replaced by an application menu. Google had announced this change last week; in the announcement they said that these changes would also allow them to have room to add more features and that users should "Stay tuned." [Thanks Hebbet and Avrohom Eliezer Friedman!

"Human Flesh Search"

Google Blogoscoped — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:25:13 GMT

Xujun Eberlein at NewAmericaMedia.org earlier this year writes about "human flesh searching" - rénròu sMusuò, äººè‚‰æœç´¢* -, a kind of research mob of the digital world (this is a smaller excerpt, the article contains more details and examples) : <

Picasa Unlisted Albums Privacy Issue Fixed

Google Blogoscoped — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:52:57 GMT

Google's photo storing app Picasa Web Albums had a bit of a privacy vulnerability. When you create an unlisted album to send to friends, you'll usually not expect the URL to get out to non-friends - that's why Google included an authentication key parameter in the URL so it's not possible to quickly guess the address (they didn't in the beginning, which allowed you to e.g. see Larry Page's unlisted album, but Google were later convinced it makes sense). However,

G1 Android Phone Emulator

Google Blogoscoped — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:29:30 GMT

You can check the upcoming (Google) Android phone by T-Mobile in a rotateable view as well as in an emulator that lets you click through the menus . The emulator is rather incomplete though, so on a lot of screens you'll be seeing dysfunctional mockups. [Thanks WebSonic.nl !

Speech Output for Knol Articles

Google Blogoscoped — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:10:42 GMT

Google added text-to-speech capabilities to some Knol articles, like the one titled " File Formats in Digital Photography ". You can download the MP3 as well as hit a Listen button in the top right. The quality of the speech output - I strongly suppose it's all a software reading indeed, but asked Google for more background info in any case - is amazing. Macbeach in the comments at Google Operating System writes, "This is the best text-to-speech I've ever heard.

A Broken Link on the Google Homepage

Google Blogoscoped — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 22:39:25 GMT

Right now, Google wants to promote their desktop photo app Picasa 3 on the google.com homepage, but the link is dead... at least for some of us, me included.* "This is very wrong. 40 minutes, and still 404," Jérôme Flipo comments. [Thanks David Hetfield!] *In one browser, I'm getting a link to picasa.google.com/learn_more.html, in another to picasa.google.com/download_promo.html, but both show a "not found" message.

Google Image Search Ads Showing to Some

Google Blogoscoped — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 12:02:41 GMT

Colin Colehour in the forum spotted a couple of image ads in Google image search . In previous times image search was ad-free, but Google had already announced they're experimenting with ads there. I can't reproduce these here from Germany, but Colin saw the following light-yellow box titled "Sponsored Links" in a search for canon camera : Colin writes: <

A Removed Dictionary Link in Google Results

Google Blogoscoped — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:50:23 GMT

Google has removed the dictionary link in search results for at least a portion of users, or perhaps all users (who of you is still seeing it? I'm not seeing it on computers in two different locations tested). Before, when you searched for a word in the dictionary - e.g. "house" - there would be a link leading to a definition in the top blue bar. Some years ago this was linked to dictionary.com and afterwards, to answers.com. Answers.

Steve Ballmer Talks About "Windows Cloud"

Google Blogoscoped — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:11:27 GMT

Why hasn't Microsoft already made their office tools available as online versions? It could set them up in a good position against Google's online office efforts - the shift to the so-called computing cloud, the buzzword of recent times. I once heard someone argue they don't move to the cloud because it would cannibalize their own desktop office suite. But times are changing, and now Google boss Steve Ballmer said some interesting things,

Google Blog Search Now Clusters Hot Topics

Google Blogoscoped — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:36:41 GMT

As of recently the Google Blog Search homepage consisted of a simple search box, but now it looks more like Google News or Techmeme: it groups related stories into groups. To the left side of each cluster, you'll see how many blogs discussed this story recently, and the way this is formatted it may remind you of sites like social news Digg. It would be interesting to know if Google gives more weight to popular or high-PageRanked blogs here.

What a Google Result in 2001 Really Looked Like (Pic)

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:19:25 GMT

Google recently rolled out a search engine accessing their 2001 index, though the design of that one isn't quite like it was back then. Above actual screenshot from 2001 comes courtesy of Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land . [Thanks Danny and Tony!] [By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: What a Google Result in 2001 Really Looked Li ... | Comments ] [Advertisement] Want to advertise here? Your ad will show in the blog and feed.

Politicians Of Some German Cities Ponder Banning Google Cars

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:09:37 GMT

Imagine dramatic music, bright text on a dark sky background, and the words "Some days ago in a country far, far away...", followed by a floating title reading Privacy Wars: Attack of the Street View Car Clones. OK, back to reality... in a couple of towns in Northern Germany, politicians are starting to protest against Google's Street View cars, which photograph cities to put panoramic photos into Google Maps.

Google SMS Channels for India

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:53:11 GMT

Google in India launched a new Labs service called Google SMS Channels , as Digital Inspiration reports. Digital Inspiration explains the service "lets you subscribe to news alerts, blog updates and other kinds of information like horoscopes, jokes, stocks or even cricket scores via SMS text messages," adding that Google SMS Channels are "free both for content publishers as well as mobile phone users who subscribe to text updates via SMS." [Thanks Amit and WebSonic.

An Election FAQ by Google's Peter Norvig

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:38:45 GMT

Google's director of research, Peter Norvig, put up an FAQ - a list of frequently asked questions - for the 2008 US Presidential election. The list deals with lots of facts and figures and comparisons, as opposed to mainly personal opinions, though of course even stats aren't always neutral (as you can pick from different stats to begin with; also, Peter does state he supports Obama). It's tough to judge the quality of this article in detail but by its intent,

Chromon: Chrome + Simon

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:38:43 GMT

Simon was a memory toy from the late 70s/ 80s*, and as Google Chrome's logo looks similar to it**, we now have Chromon : a browser-based spin off of the game using the Chrome logo. What's your score? *According to Wikipedia Simon's marketing slogan was "Simon's a computer, Simon has a brain, you either do what Simon says or else go down the drain." Try replace "Simon" with "Google" in that slogan for some extra fun... **The logo also looks like a Pokeball ,

Restrict Google Images to Photos

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:24:53 GMT

Google Image Search has a new advanced option: you can restrict results to show photos only (or photos mostly , as Google's analysis may not always get it 100% right). Just go to the image search , click on Advanced..., and tick the "photo content" box. Enter your search term as usual, say, Mickey Mouse , and the search results will now contain a lot more photos than e.g. cartoon drawings in comparison to a normal search. Ionut Alex. Chitu,

Try Google Search As It Was in 2001

Google Blogoscoped — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:13:26 GMT

In honor of their tenth birthday*, Google brought back their search engine the way it was many years ago , in January 2001. Below an old-school Google logo ( in 2001 they were actually already using a newer one) the input box invites you to search through "1,326,920,000 web pages". A search for Barack Obama returns around 773 results, for instance, with the top link leading to the old address as it was,

The Google Story, Updated for Google's 10th Birthday

Google Blogoscoped — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:38:31 GMT

Between Google's 10th birthday, the third Google founder controversy, ordering your G1 and their launch of "10 to the 100th"*, you might have missed the new "Google Story" . This latest iteration of David Vise and Mark Malseed's National Bestseller hit store shelves last Tuesday**. "Updated for Google's 10th Birthday", this new edition is the same "Google Story" you've come to know only updated with new accounts. Like previous versions,

Richard Stallman vs Cloud Computing

Google Blogoscoped — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:32:49 GMT

According to the Guardian , Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project, said: <

An Investigation Into Communication Between NSA and Google

Google Blogoscoped — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:32:47 GMT

A PDF file published at GovernmentAttic.org contains, according to its description, the "NSA [US National Security Agency] administrative processing file for FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request for records on Google and contracts With Google". I asked Seth Finkelstein of the Infothought blog about this set of documents. He only glanced it over but here's what he's making of it: <

Google Toolbar 5 for Firefox

Google Blogoscoped — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:36:25 GMT
Back in December last year, Google released the Google Toolbar version 5 for Internet Explorer. Now, version 5 is also available for Firefox , with a bunch of changes . Unfortunately, this release breaks some of the functionality that used to work with the older toolbar; in my case, as shown in the screenshot above I'm moving the PageRank bar to the top bar and hide the toolbar itself, but now the PageRank icon won't update anymore as it did before,

New Google Translator Languages

Google Blogoscoped — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:36:24 GMT
The Google OS blog reports that Google added a couple of new languages to their translator : "Catalan, Filipino, Hebrew, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian and Vietnamese". Ionut Alex. Chitu notes, "In most cases, Google uses English as an intermediary language, so when you translate a text from Indonesian to Vietnamese, Google translates the text to English and then it translates the result to Vietnamese.

Google Talk's New Help Forum

Google Blogoscoped — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:33:49 GMT
In a post yesterday, the Google Talkabout blog announced they've launched a new help forum for Google Talk (and closed the old Google Talk Group to new posts in the process). It's interesting to see that Google could be moving away from using Google Groups for their own product support forums. Some of you might remember the Pomoc Google service launched in June by Google Poland,

Google Maps UK Adds Traffic Information

Google Blogoscoped — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:40:23 GMT
Google Maps UK has finally added live traffic data to the major roads. As with other areas in Google Maps that have traffic data enabled, you can also let Google predict what the traffic situation will be like on any day at a specific time. In other Google Maps news, NYC has just got Google Transit directions , which allows users to plan their public transportation routes online. You can visit the Google Transit site to see which other cities also have this functionality.

A YouTube Action Game

Google Blogoscoped — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:58:01 GMT
A Car's Life is an interactive Arcade-style game using YouTube. To make it through a given level, all you need to do is click a button which appears. The video makes use of YouTube annotations, which can be linked to other YouTube videos. It's a bit like the 1980s Dragon's Lair in some respects: it has animations and somewhat stretches the limits of its medium, but it also has rather low playability.

Hubert Chang Claims He Co-Designed Google

Google Blogoscoped — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:26:03 GMT
In 2007, Hubert Chang in a YouTube video claimed Google was designed by Larry Page, Sergey Brin and him in February 1997... but that he didn't want to put his name on a paper to be submitted for a conference, because he wanted to do his PhD, a wish of his father. Years later after finishing the PhD, when Hubert contacted Google again the responses apparently weren't too fruitful, according to Hubert. "It's been 10 years, and I think this information needs to be known,

Google Moderator, a Tool to Handle Q&A's

Google Blogoscoped — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:20:13 GMT
Google released a tool called Moderator , a Google App Engine hosted program which accepts questions directed at certain persons, and then lets others vote on the quality of the question. Google's Matt Cutts explains that this tool was called Dory internally, and is used by Google employees during "tech talks or company-wide meetings". Within Google Moderator, anyone can create a specific topic for questions to be asked in.

Iron Aims to Be Chrome With Better Privacy

Google Blogoscoped — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:47:03 GMT
Chromium is the name of the open source code base of Google Chrome, meaning everyone with the right skills can tinker with the code and produce new browser offsprings. The German Iron is one such offspring. According to German Golem (one of the most popular tech news here after Heise.de) as well as the software's maker SRWare, this browser removes different kinds of Chrome features which raised privacy concerns with some people.

Google: "Avoid Reformatting a Dynamic URL to Make It Look Static"

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:37:09 GMT
Google's webmaster blog on the subject of dynamic vs static URLs , in bold and italic, writes: <<"avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static">> Here's the full quote: <

Google Firefox Homepage: Firefox Is Safest Browser

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:52:09 GMT
Take a look at what Google, the company behind the Chrome browser, (still) has to say on their Google Firefox homepage (this message box currently alternates on reload): Wouter, who pointed this out, says "Just a bit strange". [Thanks Wouter Schut !] [By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Firefox Homepage: Firefox Is Safest Br ... | Comments ] [Advertisement] Google books at eBay : background info on Google, AdWords, AdSense, Blogger and more.

Google Finding Quotes

Google Blogoscoped — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:19:18 GMT
Google added a new service to their Labs called Google In Quotes . This site lets you enter a keyword and then shows you what some politicians - from Canada, India, UK and USA, like Gordon Brown or George W. Bush - said about this topic. Quotes are shown side-by-side for comparison. In the top right, you can switch to another country edition. Already, Google has a quote finder in Google News , and Google In Quotes is also linked to Google News.

Google Privacy Vulnerability May Share Your Full Name, and How Google Might Help Phishers

Google Blogoscoped — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:36:24 GMT
Be careful when you want to share your Gmail email address but not your name. If you signed up for Google's mail app with your real name, people knowing certain privacy holes in Google's applications will be able to find out your first and last name as you provided them. E.g. if your email address is "ExampleElven2000@gmail.com" and you pass it on, someone could take this address, apply the trick, and end up with the full name "Jane Doe".

Google's Project 10 to the 100

Google Blogoscoped — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:27:33 GMT
As part of their 10 year anniversary - in 1998, Andy Bechtolsheim made out a $100,000 check to Google Inc. - Google released an interactive time line of the company history . Danny Sullivan's 1998 look at Google , linked from the time line, is worth a read.* Google also starts off something called Project 10 100 , a contest in which you should submit your idea of how to help the most people in the world. You need to assign a category to your idea, like community, energy,

Wario Land Game With Special YouTube Ad

Google Blogoscoped — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:57:25 GMT
It looks like Nintendo teamed up with YouTube for a special commercial . Watch the full video to find out what happens. [Via Andy !] [By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Wario Land Game With Special YouTube Ad | Comments ] [Advertisement] Find the right keywords for your campaigns at KeywordDiscovery.

The Android Phone T-Mobile G1

Google Blogoscoped — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:53:01 GMT
T-Mobile's G1 phone was officially announced today. It's going to be the first mobile phone based on Android , the Google-and-partners powered (and supposedly soon to be open source released) mobile operating system. T-Mobile says the phone has a touch screen, a keyboard, and includes different Google apps , like Google Maps or Gmail, with data synchronization features to Google's tools. The HTC-built G1 comes with a 3-megapixel camera and is wi-fi enabled.

Google Blogoscoped News Archive

Start YouTube Video At Specific Time

Google Employee Visions

Associate Email Links With Gmail in Firefox (Natively)

YouTube Comments Audio Preview

Google Says Their Results Will Be RSS-Enabled

PageRank Checker Bookmarklet

YouTube "In Super HD"

German NPD Party in Google News

Two Alleged SEO Spam Tricks

Google AdSense for Games

Gmail Aims to Stop Sending Mail You Might Regret

Google Russia Classifieds Search

Planet Google (Book)

Unmarked Google Ads

New Google Spreadsheets Design Live

"Human Flesh Search"

Picasa Unlisted Albums Privacy Issue Fixed

G1 Android Phone Emulator

Speech Output for Knol Articles

A Broken Link on the Google Homepage

Google Image Search Ads Showing to Some

A Removed Dictionary Link in Google Results

Steve Ballmer Talks About "Windows Cloud"

Google Blog Search Now Clusters Hot Topics

What a Google Result in 2001 Really Looked Like (Pic)

Politicians Of Some German Cities Ponder Banning Google Cars

Google SMS Channels for India

An Election FAQ by Google's Peter Norvig

Chromon: Chrome + Simon

Restrict Google Images to Photos

Try Google Search As It Was in 2001

The Google Story, Updated for Google's 10th Birthday

Richard Stallman vs Cloud Computing

An Investigation Into Communication Between NSA and Google

Google Toolbar 5 for Firefox

New Google Translator Languages

Google Talk's New Help Forum

Google Maps UK Adds Traffic Information

A YouTube Action Game

Hubert Chang Claims He Co-Designed Google

Google Moderator, a Tool to Handle Q&A's

Iron Aims to Be Chrome With Better Privacy

Google: "Avoid Reformatting a Dynamic URL to Make It Look Static"

Google Firefox Homepage: Firefox Is Safest Browser

Google Finding Quotes

Google Privacy Vulnerability May Share Your Full Name, and How Google Might Help Phishers

Google's Project 10 to the 100

Wario Land Game With Special YouTube Ad

The Android Phone T-Mobile G1