It seems pretty much like a fact already, that more and more people are relating the term ’search’ with ‘Google’. I bet you’ve heard dialogues in movies that sounds like these, ‘Let’s Google it’, ‘I found this in Google’, etc. No doubt Google has done a terrific job in their search engine, but have you ever wonder, how intelligent will Google’s search engine be in the next few years to come?

Folks at The Vacationeers has a clue. Check out these funny video clips, demonstrating how sophisticated and intelligent Google search engine has evolved.

Google Maps

Google Moon

Google My Maps

Google SMS

Is Google AdSense testing out new formats again? Folks at Technospot spotted a different AdSense block on the blog and this time, it’s nothing to do with positioning, instead, it’s a different font.

We all know AdSense allows ads customization. Publishers get to change the ad text colors but never the font type. A large rectangular AdSense block with Comic Sans font type was displayed earlier in Technospot today. Comic Sans is amongst standard font type that most platforms will have. Other examples of font type that can be properly displayed cross platforms are Arial, Helvetica, Georgia, Century Gothic, etc.

Is this a sign that Google AdSense will allow font type customization in future? Well, if they do it’d certainly be something really interesting. Imagine a blog using Georgia throughout with AdSense blocks using Georgia font type – a perfect blend. There’s no news yet from folks at Google AdSense, but we’ll be watching.

The Google design team took more than 100 approaches before they came to this simple ‘g’ favicon. However nothing is final yet, and if you think you know how a Google favicon should look like, Google is inviting you to design one.

Requirements

• resolution: 16 pixel x 16 pixel image
• format: .png, .gif, or .ico
• size: 5 KB
• transparency: 32 bit alpha transparency

And here’s where you can submit your favicon.

via Google blog

As I was running through some old articles, I noticed my AdSense large rectangular unit showing something rather odd. There’s total of 4 ads in grid of 2×2 format. It looks weird at first, but if Google were to confirm this format, I think there’s a lot of potential of blending this style. Notice that the ‘Ads by Google’ on only appears on the bottom right; that makes the 1 column’s ad units look really like content. With good placement, this unit can certainly blend well.

Think of Google Analytics AIR beta as a desktop version of Google Analytics. Thanks to the multiple-platforms supports of Adobe AIR, this cool application is able to run in most operating systems – Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Google Analytics AIR beta allows you to add multiple profiles of multiple Analytics accounts under one roof. If you previously need to logout from one Analytic account to get in another, now with this desktop client you don’t have to. Google Analytics AIR supports most of the functions of the web version. It’s also lighter and greatly enhance the experience in statistics analyzing.

Installing Google Analytics AIR Beta

Google Analytics AIR Beta runs on Adobe AIR, so you might want to make sure you have the platform installed. Click here to download/install Adobe AIR.

Download Google Analytics AIR Beta

Official Google Blog recently announced a new service – Google Ads Manager. In a nutshell, it is a control center for all the ads have in your website, or blog. If you need to edit the HTML, templates or blog widgets to get a new ads reflected on the website, this is definitely what you are looking for. It helps you to manage all ads in one central place. Also with Google AdSense the biggest player in the ad network industry, it’s pretty convincing that publishers will want a Google Ads Manager account.

Google Ads Manager is currently on invitation only, why not request for an invitation? I’ve submitted mine.

Folks at Google announced this cool instant messenging tool for website call the Google Talk chatback. Think of it as a tool to help you communicate better with your website visitors or blog readers. You place a badge or so in your website, and when visitors clicked on them, you will be notified and chat begins.

Your visitors don’t need a Google talk account to use this, but you do. To get started, click on the chatback start page, copy the provided HTML and paste anywhere suitable on your website. Visitors are also able to see your status, whenever you change them on GTalk, it’ll be reflected as well. Sounds simple, isnt it? I’ve be placing this on hongkiat.com for a while, you can chat with me if you want, provided that I’m online :-)

GTalk Blog

Google Gmail Chat has just added invisible mode as one of the statuses. Good news for those who wants to stay online but keep him or herself away from messages. Apparently the invisible mode is one of the most requested function Google Talk Help Center has received. I guess it’ll be just matter of time before GTalk upgraded with this.

via Gmail Blog

Tonight we will be celebrating Chinese New Year – The Year of Rat according to the Chinese lunar calendar. Google, as part of the celebration also have their logo slightly tweaked – a rat flipping the calender from the year of pig to year of rat. By clicking on the logo, you’ll be brought to a result page of the keyword " 鼠年 春节" (Chinese New year, Year of Rat). The first link on the result page will direct you to a Google Service where you can send free SMS to your loves one this festive season. However I don’t think that service works for all users.

Google also added some firecrackers images at left side of Adwords in result page. To see these in action, visit Google China, or now with a shorter url www.g.cn.

Gong Hei Fatt Choi to all who are celebrating this Chinese New Year. For all my friends, please call me up for mahjong session :-)

Google has recently released some pretty neat API for it’s Google Chart. It allows you to create charts on your browser dynamically, on the fly and free. Here’s all you need to do:

1. Open up a browser
2. Paste in the following URL
   http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:20,40,80&chs=250&chl=A|B|C
3. Tweak the settings.
4. Hit enter, download your chart.

Customizing your chart

Here’s a general explanation on the parameters of the URL.

• cht=p3 – Type of chart
• chd=t:20,40,80 – Values, separated by commas.
• chs=250×150 – Chart size, width x height
• chl=A|B|C – Labels of each chart sections.

You can create up to 5 different charts (Line charts, Bar charts, Pie charts, Veen diagrams and Scatter plots ) with Google Chart API, as well as tweaking the colors, line styles, markers, etc. All these are well explained on Google Chart API code page.

Google Blogoscoped reported that they are already receiving feedbacks from some GMail users that their accounts are suddenly suspended/disabled. Reason that causes such action – unknown.

Here’s the error message received by GMail user John Welch:

Sorry, your account has been disabled. For more information about Google Accounts, please consult our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/accounts/.

According to John Welch in Blogoscoped comments, his account is somehow partially disabled.

What is odd about the situation is that, one of my computers has a cookie so that my Google Personalized homepage is still running on one of my computers and I can click through the multiple tabs, but when I try to log in to check my email it gives me that error again.

I asked other people I know that use Google Accounts and so far one of them said their account also was disabled.

Google has yet to give an explanation on that.

Updates:

Seems like more and more are getting this problem. Over at GMail Help Discussion, there’s like 151 pages of user postings (for the moment) and majority were complaining about their account being disabled.

Blogger Play from its first impression, looks like a gallery of photos. It is a real time slide show of images Blogger users uploaded to their blogs. Theses images come from blogs that are public and listed on the web.

If you are a Blogger users, this can be one good chance for you to get some exposure on your blogs. Make sure images are watermarked clearly with your URL. But if don’ want images from your blog to appear in Play.blogger, there is an option to remove it from the listing.

16 Interesting facts about Google

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. In fact 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

I personally like #10, What about you?

Where do I find this feature?

I’ll assume you have a Google Webmaster Tools account, else sign up here.

Under Links tab, you will find 2 new extra links:
External links – Pages on your website that have links pointing to them from other sites.
Internal links – Pages on your website that have links pointing to them from other internal pages.

I like Google Gtalk because it’s light and fast. CPU memory usage is lower than MSN Live Messenger. Here are some tips and tricks to make your Gtalk experience more interesting. Content after jump.

Misc Gtalk information

1. You don’t have to say YES or NO when someone adds you. Simply ignore it and the request will go away.
2. A message can be 32767 characters long.
3. You can change your Gtalk chat name in Account Page
4. Adding a web URL in custom message will result it to be clickable.
5. Gtalk supports these following emotions and they are in blue colors
   

   :-| :-O :-x :-P :-D ;-) :-( :| :O :x :P :D :) :( ;-| ;-O ;-x ;-P ;-D ;-) ;-( ;| ;O ;x ;P ;D ;) ;( B-| B-O B-x B-P B-D B-) B-( B’( BO Bx BD B) B( B)

6. Gmail talk supports these following emotions and they are animated
   

   :-| :=P :-D ;-):-( :P :D :) :( ;-) ;) B-)

More parameters for Gtalk Start -> Run

Here’s a complete list of what you can do with Gtalk in run command prompt.

"C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe" /parameter

• /nomutex: Open more than 1 Gtalk.
• /autostart: Check the registry settings to see if Gtalk needs to be started. If the “Start automatically with Windows” option is unchecked, it won’t start.
• /forcestart: Similar to /autostart, but forces Gtalk to start.
• /S upgrade: Used when upgrading Google Talk
• /register: registers Google Talk in the registry, including the GMail Compose method.
• /checkupdate: check for newer versions
• /plaintextauth: uses plain authentication mechanism instead then Google’s GAIA mechanism. Used for testing the plain method on Google’s servers.
• /nogaiaauth: disables GAIA authentication method. The same as above.
• /factoryreset: set settings back to default.
• /gaiaserver servername.com: uses a different GAIA server to connect to Google Talk. Used for debug purposes only, there are no other known GAIA servers.
• /mailto email@host.com: send an email with Gmail
• /diag: start Google Talk in diagnostic mode
• /log: probably has something to do with the diagnostic logging

If you have additional Gtalk tips and tricks, I would like to know.

Yahoo’s version

Google’s version

Yahoo! had personally double checked with Microsoft and Microsoft has not been providing template for this. It seems so much like Google is duplicating, from content to layout, but when I checkout Google’s IE7 page, it was already changed to this.

Similar right? It seems like Google is fast in recovering the situation. Then I began to dig into this copying matter and search if there’s more of these cases around in the past.

And I found a Google’s fight back.

Apparently after a detailed research, Google published their sponsored ad like this. Pastel boxes with a darker border on the right-hand side of the search results.

No long after that, Yahoo! changed their sponsored ads, adding dark border in pastel boxes and it look like this.

A while after that, Google decided to changed their ads UI and came out with something like this. Blue background for to ads and blue line seperating right side ads.

Yahoo! followed and came out with something similar.

So Jeremy, this seems like a tie huh? If Jeremy hates Google so much, why bother using google sponsored ads in the blog?