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Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Google Wants to Kill the URL: Chrome 13 Lets Users Hide the Address Bar

19 May

Since Google's official unveiling of the Chrome Web Store six months ago, the company has been on a mission to redefine our perception of what constitutes an operating system, a browser and a program, blurring the lines between each. In Google's world, an OS is a browser and a program - one of those hefty pieces of compiled code we used to download or (gasp!) install from a CD - is now a Web app.

Indeed, even the tiniest, incremental changes point clearly in this direction as word comes that the next version of Google's Chrome browser will give users the ability to kill that final remnant of the fact that they're actually using the Web - the address bar.

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According to independent technology news blog Conceivably Tech, the next version of Chrome - Chrome 13 - will give back 30 pixels of vertical screen space by getting rid of the address bar. More importantly, the browser will slide further into the background and out of plane view of the user.

Instead of showing a URL bar permanently, the user will have to double-click a tab to see a shortened version of the URL that is displayed with a hover effect, if you move the mouse pointer away from the field, the URL bar disappears. The feature has to be enabled via a flag in a recent Canary or nightly build version of Chrome 13. To activate teh hidden URL bar, users will also have to right-click a tab and select "Hide the toolbar"Besides killing the URL bar, the new feature also moves the tools menu, hides any extension and introduces new back/forward buttons.

The company made it more than clear at this year's Google I/O, the yearly Google developer conference, that Chrome would comprise a major focus for the company and that it will be much more than a "browser". In fact, it dedicated its second of two keynotes to the topic, pointing to the browser's more than 160 million active users and the variety of increased graphic and functional capabilities that take it beyond our standard expectations for browsers. In the same keynote, the company announced the soon-available Chromebook, which will center the user experience within Chrome.

With the address bar disappearing further into the background, Web apps will again take on an increased relevance, as users navigate by clicking on Web app icons, rather than typing in URLs - much as they are used to navigating OSX or Windows. In many ways, URLs are a holdover from a past time. Just as we don't type command line strings into a DOS window on a Windows machine very much if ever anymore, Google wants our Web experience to consist of point and click, not mistaken backslashes and misspelled domain names.

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Google Products You Probably Don’t Know

03 May

Google search engine is one of the best product by Google, but there are many other innovative products as well that Google is developing them in  their so-called Google Labs. Many of these products are still in beta stage, but are really useful. Today I’m going to share some of the lesser known products from Google, which can help you. Some of them may even surprise you as you might not even heard about them and yet they’re so useful.

1. Related Links

In WordPress you have used various plugins to show related pages to your post, Related Links from Google does the same thing it generate the list of related pages to the current page & display it to the user. Related Links works using Google search, it uses keyword for your title to search your site for related content & display them on your website. Currently this product is in limited to invited users only & you can ask for invitation by sending mail to relatedlinks@google.com

2. Follow Finder

There are many to tools to find followers on Twitter, but very few tools to find users with similar interest. Follow Finder helps you to find users on Twitter, based on similar interest, mutual followers, users with similar followers & users following similar list to help you identify potential Twitter followers you should follow.

3. Browser Size

Browser Size is a really useful tool for web designer & developer, as it helps them to visualize what part of their websites it getting maximum attention from users. You just need to enter your URL & your website will be segmented using a semi-transparent color layer describing users attention to different segment of your website.

4. Page Speed

As website loading time becomes one of the factors in ranking your websites in Google search engine, you need to know how fast your websites loads. There are many tools for doing that but you surely want to consider what Google thinks. Page Speed is such tool recently made available online by Google where you can check the loading time for your website.

5. Aardvark

Last year Google acquired Aardvark, It’s not just question-answer site for professional, but anyone get help here, the best thing about Aardvark is you get answers to most of the questions in few minutes, I have tried it my self & was surprised to see how fast was my questions got answered. Another great feature about Aardvark is it will deliver you answer to your mail or GTalk.

6. Experimental Search

Google Experimental Search have offers three services +1 Button, Keyboard Shortcut & Accessible view. The only problem with all this features is you can’t use them all at once, that is you use this feature one at time.

+1 Button


+1 Button is a kind of recommending Google search results to your friends, so when anyone in your friend searches Google, your recommendation will appear in search results.

Keyboard Shortcuts


This is really useful feature, I think Google should implement it to the normal search results, as it helps users to navigate between searches using keyboard shortcuts.

Accessible View

Accessible view adds to more feature to Keyboard Shortcuts it does everything the Keyboard Shortcuts does in addition to that it help you to navigate from one page to other using keyboard & magnifies the search results as you browse through them.

7. Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp is 3D modelling software which helps you to create 3D models easily or you can just download available 3D models from Google 3D warehouse & start editing them

8. Image Swirl

Most of you have used Google Image to find some quality images, but when it come to searching similar images using a standard keyword it get difficult. Image Swirl uses your generic query & group down images related to those queries into different search results, as for example if you are searching for “Design” it will groups images in website design, logo design & graphic design, hence making simpler for user to search for related images with a single query.

9. Art Project


This tool is helpful for artist around the world, as it let them explore museums from around the world & view hundred of art work from the comfort of their home. You can view various paintings in detail & explore various museums.

10. Google Scholar

Want to do some good research? Then forget conventional Google search and use Google Scholar, as it will search for scholarly literature from various sources like

academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories & more so you get more prevalent results & find really things that are really useful.

11.Google In Quotes

Google In Quotes uses Google News to find quotes of political figures. You can search for different keywords & see what have been quoted about it by different political figures.

12. YouTube 3D Video Converter

Create your own 3D videos using YouTube 3D Video converter, its easy & simple you just need to two camera to capture the video & upload them it’s that easy. You can also find the detail guide on here

13. Transit

Using Google Transit you can find about various public transit available in your area, with information about schedules, timing to reach the destination & route the transit systems takes.

14. Google APIs

Want to know about various APIs Google offers, here the periodic table of different APIs offered by Google.

15. Google Apps

Work Smarter with Google Apps as it offers easy communication & sharing data. I have been using Google Apps for more than 2 years now & it has been hassle free operation. The free package is boon to small businesses as it offers 50 free custom emails setup, but after 10 May it’s going to change to 10 users only.

If you have been using any of the above listed products, then do share your experiences on working with them in the comment section.

 
 

‘Scam’ Keyword Suggestions Vanish from Google Autocomplete

30 Mar

Google's autocomplete feature no longer contains the word scam. The autocomplete feature offers results based off search volumes (i.e., if you're seeing something suggested, it is being heavily searched for). However, search queries containing the word "scam" are now filtered out, forcing users to type in scam for themselves rather than see it offered as a top suggestion.

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The History of Web Browsers (Picture)

28 Mar

From the dark ages to this day.

The History of Web Browsers (Picture)

Via: WinBeta
Source: TechKing

 
 

Chrome Loses Volume

17 Mar

Google Chrome Logo, Before and After

First released for Windows XP in December of 2008, Google Chrome is a browser developed by, yes, Google. Versions for Mac OS X and Linux followed a few months later and since then Chrome has become one of the most popular browsers — 19.26% of you are reading Brand New on Chrome, in third "place" behind Safari and Firefox. Chrome's most current stable release is version 10.0.648.134 (but you knew that, right?) and currently in development is dev version 11.0.696.12 which is not released to the public yet but for those that are taking it for an early spin they have gotten a glimpse at the new logo for Chrome. The new logo for Chrome surfaced after a new logo for Chromium — the open source version of Chrome — made its debut earlier this year.

Google Chrome Logo, Before and After

It's certainly nice and welcome to move away from logos that looked as if they came out of a mash-up of Fisher-Price and Tron and the new "abstract," flat logos are slightly slicker but there is still something odd about them. There is shading still involved, so dimension is meant to be implied, yet it's hard to tell what that dimension is supposed to be. If the light source is coming from above, how come there are shadows being cast from bottom to top as seen in the green-to-red transition? The red-to-yellow pane indicates one kind of dimension but the rest doesn't follow. Realistic dimension is not about taking one shape and step-repeating it, shadow and all, a couple of times to form the circle. The previous versions of Chrome and Chromium were garish but at least it was clear what the dimension was. With the new ones, Google tried some kind of compromise between full 3D rendering and flat and it didn't quite pay off. Maybe I'm just misinterpreting what I'm seeing or trying to extract too much sense out of it — indeed, I'm just glad for the move towards simplicity.

Thanks Lucian Marin for first tip.

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Google opens up Public Data Explorer to your data

17 Feb

Public data explorer

With Google's recent data-related offerings, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that they've opened up their Public Data Explorer so that you can upload your own data. Previously, it was only available when you searched for something like "GDP" and a related dataset was supplied by an official provider.

[W]e’re opening the Public Data Explorer to your data. We’re making a new data format, the Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL), openly available, and providing an interface for anyone to upload their datasets. DSPL is an XML-based format designed from the ground up to support rich, interactive visualizations like those in the Public Data Explorer. The DSPL language and upload interface are available in Google Labs.

In terms of visualization, there's isn't anything new. You've got your maps, bar charts, and time series line charts, with the checkboxes on the left (like the snapshot below). Then there's the chart types available via the charting API.

From what I can tell, the data you upload ends up in the public domain, so it kind of has a Many Eyes feel to it, but less exploratory. Then again, Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viegas are now both with Google, so I wonder if this a jumping off point for them to do more. Or maybe they weren't involved at all.

If it's the former, then great, I can't wait to see what comes next. If it's the latter, then the bigger news is that Google packaged a new data format with this release. We'll see how people take to that one.

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Google Is Holding a Global, Web-Based Science Fair

10 Jan


Get your bottle rockets and Bunsen burners out. Tomorrow morning, Google will be making some exciting announcements about a worldwide, web-based science fair.

The tech giant is inviting students ages 13 through 18 from all over the world to compete — and the prizes won’t just be shiny blue ribbons, either. Google will be handing out scholarships and work opportunities to the most impressive entrants.

Youngsters will be able to submit their projects online, presumably through the Science Fair’s website, which has yet to launch with full details.

On January 11 at 9 a.m. EST, Google will host a live event on its brand new Science Fair YouTube Channel. More details about the fair will be announced then; we’re assuming the site will be fleshed out at that time, as well.

The global science competition is being hosted in partnership with CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), LEGO, National Geographic and Scientific American. The goal is “to create a new kind of online science competition that is more global, open and inclusive than ever before.”

Teachers who want to receive classroom materials, including posters, stickers and bookmarks, as well as get registration information, can start signing up now.

This is one Google event we’ll be following with great interest; we can’t wait to see what cool entries will be coming in from young minds around the globe.

Check out Google’s adorable Rube Goldberg-inspired YouTube teaser for the science fair:

Image courtesy of Flickr, hendricksphotos.


Reviews: Flickr, Google, YouTube

More About: education, Google, Science, science fair

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These Apps Are Rampantly Stealing Your Info Without Permission [Privacy]

20 Dec
I love Pandora. I really couldn't do without it. But I could do without its sending my demographic information, phone ID, and location to eight trackers across six companies. And Pandora's far from the worst offender, the WSJ shows us. More »


 
 

Google Gives $5M Worth of Java GUI Tools to Eclipse

19 Dec


Google has donated two open-source Java tools to the Eclipse Foundation to join the popular IDE suite in 2011.

The tech giant’s WindowBuilder and CodePro AnalytiX were part of Google’s acquisition of Instantiations in August this year. By September, Google had relaunched some of Instantiations’ tools as open-source software.

One of those tools was WindowBuilder, a WYSIWYG code generator. This drag-and-drop, bidirectional GUI designer for Java played nicely with a variety of frameworks, including Swing, XML Windowing Toolkit (XWT), the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) and more. With support for Windows, Linux and Mac, the Eclipse extension was intended to make Java app creation a lot simpler and faster.

And CodePro is another interesting Eclipse plugin for “comprehensive automated software code quality and security analysis.” The toolkit included features from EclipsePro Audit and EclipsePro Test and generally attempted to improve code quality, maintenance and readability.

Instatiations’ execs estimate the software, which is slated to roll out with the rest of the Eclipse June 2011 release train, is worth around $5 million.

Google’s emphasis on Java tools is hardly surprising; the blockbuster success of the Android platform (and sometimes harsh criticism of the Android Market of apps) has practically mandated a focus on Java, which is a big part of the Android stack. Giving devs better Java tools free of charge is an investment in the future of Google’s own platforms.

That’s not to say either of these Eclipse extensions is, in itself, going to be directly used for Android applications; we’re not sure either tool is intended for mobile development. But better tools make better Java devs, who in turn are better equipped to make more and better Android apps.

We would, however, love to see more drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG-plus-code Android app tools — something along the lines of a less-dumbed-down App Inventor. If you know of any such tools, definitely let us know about them in the comments.


Reviews: Android, Android Market, Eclipse, Google, Linux, Windows

More About: codepro, developers, eclipse, foss, Google, java, open source, windowbuilder

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How Often Did Authors Use the Word “Internet” Over 500 Years? Ask Google

17 Dec


Here’s a nifty little tool to get you through the last grueling hours of Friday afternoon: Fresh from Google Labs comes “Books Ngram Viewer,” a visualization tool that shows you the annual frequency of certain words used in books published between 1500 and 2008.

Predictably, “Internet” was not so popular in, well, the pre-Internet age (check out the above graph to see for yourself), but this viewer is certainly handy for tracking the popularity of terms throughout the decades.

(NB: The word “Internet” seems to pop up a little early because: “Most of those are OCR errors; we do a good job at filtering out books with low OCR quality scores, but some errors do slip through,” according to the “About” section.)

The tool was assembled from data pulled from close to 5.2 million digitized books — which amounts to 500 billion words in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Russian — and takes advantage of Google’s free, online digital library (which has grappled with its share of legal issues in its time). Users can also download the data and build their own search tools.

Of course, the Ngram Viewer was not intended as a mere diversion — according to The New York Times, Erez Lieberman Aiden, a junior fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard, and Jean-Baptiste Michel, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, created this tool as part of a project on language and culture (their paper on the subject is available in a journal called Science).

We imagine that the Books Ngram Viewer could be used not only to track the evolution of language and trends over time, but also to compare and contrast the frequency of certain terms online and in print (perhaps when used in tandem with tools akin to Google Trends).

Test out some words and let us know what you think.

Image courtesy of Flickr, dotbenjamin


Reviews: Flickr, Google, Google Labs, Internet, society, test

More About: books, Books-Ngram-Viewer, Google

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