techno.blog("Dion")

Wow, we are obsessed with media aren’t we? Google is a pretty pragmatic group. They normally add features when it makes sense. Now they have added a movie: tag that you can use.

E.g.

movie: tom hanks talking to a volleyball

movie: awesome car chase

movie: good chick flick

movie: Madison, WI

Next up: “realitytv:” :)

Google has finally released GMail to the masses.

There are aspects about it that I really like (and have talked about before). The main feature is the simple tagging. Folders got taken from the file system, and really break down with email (or with the file system in some cases… hence WinFS).

One frustration is just that I wish there was a rich client, and my email was stored offline. One simple way to get around that is to use their POP access, and use a rich client on that when needed (e.g. on a plane).

This is a bit of a pain, as you are using two systems now. What would be really cool, is to be able to have a smart IMAP integration on their end, so tags became folders. Then, with smart filters on the server side tagging mail, the imap client gets a nice view on things!

Oh, and I *really* want to be able to set the From: address so I can use gmail with my own domain…. a la Y! Mail Plus

I really like the clean design, and great use of the web that we have with Google Maps.

However, there are definitely some features which I would love to see in it (btw, I do know that this is just a beta!)

• Double Left Click: Center + Then Zoom In
• Double Right Click: Center + Then Zoom Out
• Let me store addresses in a nice drop-down list (like Y! and others)
• Integrate this with GMail for addresses “Dion’s Home”
• Let me see other countries ;) again, i know this is beta!
• Let me save direction results
• Don’t confuse with the sample boxes (put in a seperation line)
• Show bike paths
• Show canoe landing points
• Show trails
• Show cross country skiing trails :)

I can’t wait to see what else they come up with.

I thought that this Swiss JavaScript/dHTML mapping app was pretty cool.

Now Google has their own beta Google Maps.

I love the details here. Check out the shading that gets placed on the underlying map (from search results).

I hope they also support keyhole style zooming (which map.search.ch has). There is something fun about starting from a high level and zooming into an area ;)

One interesting UI choice is the ‘Example Searches’ on the right hand side. Where there are two text boxes (with their own ’search’ button), I naturally felt like typing in:

[address]
[city, state, zip]

and it took me a second to realize that they are seperate from eachother.

I installed the MSN Toolbar which is an upgrade from the Lookout guys.

So far, it has been very smooth going, and I prefer it to Google Desktop. It is very seemless, and allows you to get to all of your data. I wish I could just switch out the ‘Search’ that is part of Windows to use this instead.

I was impressed to see news.com using the referrer data (in this case, I was coming from Google) to enhance their interface:

Welcome, Google user!
If this story isn’t what you’re searching for, try these other News.com search results for “FOO”:

… insert other results …

This is a really smart use of context. In a stateless world such as the web, we often don’t know much. It is interesting to think about different ideas that we could put up based on where someone came from.

One crazy idea would be to get some general ‘poll’ data. E.g. imagine a political article. You could record how people came from the democratic undergroup, as compared to rush limbaughs site ;)

Have you noticed the change in ad delivery with Google AdSense?

In the past, if I was viewing a blog on Tapestry, I would see ads from companies selling training for Tapestry, or for a competing framework.

Now when I view a blog entry, the only ads that seem to come up are for bloody BLOG SOFTWARE.

Either the ads have been skewed since so many impressions have been bought, or something is out of wack :)

There has been a lot of rumour surrounding a Google Browser. This was compounded when Ben Goodger (Mozilla lead) got hired by Google.

A lot have said “why would Google care about a damn browser?”.

Blake Ross of Mozilla put it nicely:

Second, Google

Alan wrote about Melissa Mayer (Product Manager for Google), and her presentation at BayCHI lecture at PARC.

Some interesting comments came up:

1. The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. Infact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.
2. Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied "We are waiting for the rest of it". To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.
3. One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the "Did you mean…" feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.
4. The infamous "I feel lucky" is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.
5. Orkut is very popular in Brazil. Orkut was the brainchild of a very intelligent Google engineer who was pretty much given free reign to run with it, without having to go through the normal Google UI procedures, hence the reason it doesn’t look or feel like a Google application. They are looking at improving Orkut to cope with the loads it places on the system.
6. Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example Excite@Home users often get to see new features. They aren’t told of this, just presented with the new UI and observed how they use it.
7. Google has the largest network of translators in the world
8. They use the 20% / 5% rules. If at least 20% of people use a feature, then it will be included. At least 5% of people need to use a particular search preference before it will make it into the ‘Advanced Preferences’.
9. They have found in user testing, that a small number of people are very typical of the larger user base. They run labs continually and always monitoring how people use a page of results.
10. The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’
11. Gmail was used internally for nearly 2years prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.
12. They listen to feedback actively. Emailing Google isn’t emailing a blackhole.
13. Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.
14. This wasn’t a technical talk so no information regarding any infrastructure was presented however they did note that they have a mantra of aiming to give back each page with in 500ms, rendered.
15. Quote: Give Users What They Want When They Want It
16. Quote: Integrate Sensibly

When I go to google.com, I want to go to google.com.

Just because I happen to be in Belgium I don’t want to be sent to google.be ;)

It would be really nice if I couple personalize my google.com front page too. I do like how a search does an automatic search via google desktop.