^^ i don't know exactly what you were referring to there, but yes, the Personalized Homepage was updated in the past couple days. http://www.google.com/ig
A marked improvement over before, but still get the feeling of "too little too late". A sliding sidebar now opens to add content, and there is a lot more preconfigured content to add.

The most impressive part, I think, it how you can add your own RSS feeds by simply searching for a page. Under "create a selection", you can either paste a full RSS/XML feed address, or you can just do a search for a page that offers RSS, like "arstechnica" or "engadget", and almost instantly the available feeds are shown. Kind of like what Bloglines does, but better I think. It's still far from being a full fledged RSS reader though, which I don't think it's meant to be. I'm still waiting for an RSS option to show up in Gmail, so I can read, mark and star all my feeds inside gmail using the "conversation" threaded view. that will be sweet (if/when it happens).

The customization isn't working in FireFox for me, though, which is dissappointing, and surprising. It works fine in IE, but when I try to add a feed or move a section in firefox, nothing happens.

7/26/2005 10:02:24 AM

you didn't notice Personalized Search?

7/26/2005 10:35:51 AM

I mis-spoke when I said the Google Personlized homepage doesn't work in FireFox. Turns out it was the CustomizeGoogle FF extension that breaks it. Well either the extension breaks that page, or Google stops the page from working when the extension is installed because it can be used to block google ads (i'm guessing the former).

so if you want to customize the personalized page, uninstall CustomizeGoogle, change it, then reinstall CG if you want

7/26/2005 3:17:23 PM

^^ we've seen personalized search before, but i wasn't aware they had updated it (if they did). I thought it was turned on by default when they announced the "Search History" feature a few months ago.
But seeing that reminded me that I have not used the Search History nearly as much as I thought I was going to (i.e. none). Between Bloglines, del.icio.us and Ta-da/Backpack, I can pretty much keep track of all the webpages that I want to re-visit, without using the search history.

It is kind of interesting, though, looking back over the search history and seeing how many searches a day I've done, and picking random days, and I can basically recreate what I did that day. It also reminded me, that.... errrrmmm, all my searches are being recorded since i'm always signed into Gmail, and i've never bothered to use the "pause" feature.

For the search history, I would like to see a feature where the little calendar of searches per day is scaled to your average number of searches. The levels seem to be pre-set and locked in - they should change according to your activity. e.g. mine are almost all dark green, indicating either 11-20 or 21+ searches a day. It would be much more useful if the scales were adjusted to your average usage (and easy to implement, at that).


oh yeah, the original reason for this post - looks like we may see a return of the Google Web Accelerator soon, as some people who have used it this entire time have seen an auto-update take place, and an increase in performance recently -
http://www.buygoogle.com/2005/07/remember-google-web-accelerator.html
we can only hope it's better tested this time around.

7/27/2005 4:53:49 AM

here's a cool article in Wired on The Birth of Google - http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/battelle.html

Reading it I realized that I know (knew) practically nothing about the real start of google, besides Brin and Page creating it in their dorm rooms. Turns out, Google started as Backrub, Page's thesis on the theory that you could judge the importance of a webpage by counting the number and importance of pages that link to it. At the time, it was virtually impossible to find out who linked to a certain page, but Backrub crawled the web and created an index of links that could be graphed. It wasn't until later they realized they had a search engine on their hands, and it worked better than any existing engine out there.

7/28/2005 11:48:31 AM

The interface for the google home is just a little too clunky. Yahoo definitely has the best one and I visit that page multiple times a day. I wish google would get theirs up to speed.

7/28/2005 12:01:33 PM

Google news finally has RSS/Atom feeds - http://news.google.com/intl/en_us/news_feed_terms.html

8/10/2005 4:31:44 AM

finally

8/10/2005 4:42:09 AM

also, the Google Blog reports better wildcard searching abilities - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/08/fill-in-blanks.html

and here's a google hack called "Google Total" that allows you to access google searches and tools through dropdowns (hosted on Google's own blogspot, btw)
http://goototal.blogspot.com/



oh yeah - over here in Germany, basically the only English channel I get is CNN World, and they have been using Google Earth images a lot lately, for plotting the space shuttle landing, including zooming fly-in's into cape canaveral, and other fly-overs in London and the middle east. In the corner it says something about "google earth images", so I assume they bought the expensive version of GE.
Anybody seen any other uses of Google Earth on TV or elsewhere?

[Edited on August 10, 2005 at 5:22 AM. Reason : .]

8/10/2005 5:15:39 AM

hmm, this is kinda cool - if you add text in ( ) in a Google Maps query, that text will show up in the pop-up balloon at the address. So you can add little notes or something to your perma-links, annotating the addresses that you show on the map.

e.g.
http://tinyurl.com/9vhwp

[Edited on August 10, 2005 at 7:38 AM. Reason : .]

8/10/2005 7:37:56 AM

good to see that Google is using it's own tools - http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/map/
A Maps hack showing reviews of the google Mini server

and here's a ... uhhh, poor attempt at humor by Ask Jeeves, with it's Virtual Netpture - http://neptune.ask.com/

and here are some Google supported FireFox extensions, including "Google Suggest" integration into the FF search bar
http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/extensions/

8/11/2005 7:52:25 AM

ok, i've decided that the Google News RSS feed sucks. The problem is that on Google News, while the headlines remain the same for hours or a day at a time, the text and pictures drawn from the articles it links to changes. So an RSS feeder see this as a whole new post and marks it as unread again.
In Bloglines it says I have like 20 new posts every 30 minutes from Google News, but when i check them maybe 2 or 3 are new, then the rest are just updated text or links...... very annoying - they should figure out some way so the RSS feeds aren't updated except for new headlines.

8/19/2005 11:09:02 AM

Desktop2 released - http://desktop.google.com/
with the big addition being a sidebar, which is customizable via an API and has several plug-ins already - http://desktop.google.com/plugins/

my comment is: Welcome to Portal-ville. Population: Google

other's not too impressed with it yet
http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2005/08/22/google-releases-desktop-2/

and here they think this is starting a greater assault on MS for control of the Desktop
http://google.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000130055397/

8/22/2005 6:56:49 AM

holy crap - check out this Gmail + Greasemonkey script - http://persistent.info/archives/2005/08/20/gmail-preview-bubbles
Add's email preview to gmail by right clicking on any message. works good and looks great.

and if you're still worried over which is better - Maps or VirtualEarth, here is another GM script that gives you easy links between the 2 apps
http://persistent.info/archives/2005/07/25/maps-fight

8/22/2005 12:27:46 PM

^ OMFG that rules

^^ the desktop sidebar looks pretty good, but it still says "Currently indexing Gmail messages...", although there is no longer any disk activity or network accession...has it finished for anyone else? maybe it has to do with the fact that I have over 2500 messages in my inbox?

8/22/2005 4:17:04 PM

http://talk.google.com/

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fi-google23aug23,0,1191504.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=morenews

8/22/2005 11:53:01 PM

^ 404 not found right now, but supposedly its gonna be released Wednesday?

^^ nevermind what I said about indexing Gmail, it was just not finished at the time...now it works fine

8/23/2005 12:19:40 AM

google is doing what MS did back in the late 80s and throughout the 90s in a world that hates large companies - i'm amazed - i wonder how long till a large hate movement comes about

8/23/2005 11:18:10 AM

Most people didn't start really hating M$ until they became complacent and developed "massive corporation syndrome". I still don't have any outright hate for them, but I am becoming more and more disappointed with their new products and their attitude towards development and 'improvements' to existing products, as well as their suspect methods of acquiring companies and new technology

[Edited on August 23, 2005 at 11:27 AM. Reason : ]

8/23/2005 11:26:15 AM

^^ http://www.google-watch.org/
I wouldn't call it a full-on "hate movement", but there are plenty of people who are suspicious of google's business practices, privacy rules, etc.

Google has a enormous amount of people who have faith in them because 1) their products have been superieor (up until the last year or two, basically their only known product was Search), and 2) they at least appear to be a new-age, free-thinking, "happy company", where MS now has a giant, faceless beauracracy feel to it.
It also helped that the very first product Google made came in and made a huge splash on the internet because it was immediately superior to anything else available. Then they kept improving the product (Search), and it kept getting better, although it may be argued that the quality has leveled off, or even declined recently, and others have had the opportunity to catch up.

The same can't be said for MS. They were alive for 15+ years before they made a giant splash (I'm counting Windows 95 as the first time MS was a household name). And before then they had lots and lots of products, but I don't think many of them would have been considered even best-in-class, and certainly not miles ahead of anyone else. And even after Win95 came out, I think people were generally happier with their computing experience (vs DOS or 3.1), but it still left much to be desired.

8/23/2005 11:46:25 AM

Quote :

"where MS now has a giant, faceless beauracracy feel to it. "

I would argue the complete opposite. MS is very vocal and visible with their management and very active in the community. If I am not mistaken, Paul Allen and Bill gates are two of the most philanthropic individuals in the world.

Quote :

"It also helped that the very first product Google made came in and made a huge splash on the internet because it was immediately superior to anything else available. Then they kept improving the product (Search), and it kept getting better, although it may be argued that the quality has leveled off, or even declined recently, and others have had the opportunity to catch up."

It wasn't immediately superior and it wasn't a splash that was not seen by most start-ups in that era. I also contend that they did little improvement on their product and only made it slower, more corrupt, and less user-friendly. Google, quite literally, sold-out. They are praised for innovations that were acquired through measures not so different from the much maligned Microsoft. Their search engine is quite useless for many basic searches no small thanks to their sponsored links and the ability to inflate site relevance. I just don't see why there is such love for Google and such hate for Microsoft.

Quote :

"The same can't be said for MS. They were alive for 15+ years before they made a giant splash (I'm counting Windows 95 as the first time MS was a household name)."

A search algorithm takes slightly less time to develop than an operating system. You also can't compare when the two became a household name because for Microsoft's early history the computer was not a household item. I remember 3.1 and it was a pretty big deal. I don't see google's success as being any different than that of Yahoo!, AOL, Amazon, eBay, and Mozilla Firefox.

Quote :

"And before then they had lots and lots of products, but I don't think many of them would have been considered even best-in-class, and certainly not miles ahead of anyone else."

Completely subjective on the praises there and yes you could make those claims about other companies/products.

Quote :

"And even after Win95 came out, I think people were generally happier with their computing experience (vs DOS or 3.1), but it still left much to be desired."

Windows 95 was no small blip on the radar. Its impact was huge. It made home computing a possibility for anyone, regardless of experience with PC's. Microsoft's marketing alone is probably responsible for a significant chunk of the boom to the tech sector. They made people realize that PC's were more than just business machines. Yes, the end-of-life experience with Win95 may have some negative connotations but the fact that it left much to be desired was a positive thing because the future was evident. People actually cared and were interested in the possibilities of using a computer.

8/23/2005 1:55:24 PM

One URL

http://research.microsoft.com/

8/23/2005 2:55:48 PM

http://www.smashsworld.com/2005/08/im-on-google-talk-right-now.php

8/23/2005 5:56:06 PM

Wow, Jabber

8/23/2005 7:29:59 PM

I'm getting a 405, not allowed.

8/23/2005 8:25:34 PM

Quote :

"I'm getting a 405, not allowed. "

8/23/2005 10:17:10 PM

thats because its not released yet everything i read says tomorrow does that mean 12am EST or PST since theyre out west only another hour if its EST but four if PST OMFG I CANT WAIT I AM GOING TO ASPLODE

8/23/2005 10:50:50 PM

its already up....so that explains why notifier hasn't been updated in forever

[Edited on August 23, 2005 at 11:24 PM. Reason : ahh]

8/23/2005 11:22:38 PM

I am glad I brought attention to this innovation before anyone else.

8/24/2005 12:35:18 AM

http://www.flickr.com/photos/indiefan/36713730/

8/24/2005 12:36:26 AM

http://www.google.com/talk/

8/24/2005 2:41:14 AM

The N&O integrated the CheapGas mashup into their front page
http://www.newsobserver.com/

8/24/2005 5:00:40 AM

jesus overrated christ

8/24/2005 5:47:01 AM

how exactly does Talk replace gmail notifier? its not really doing anything to notify me

8/24/2005 8:47:43 AM

look harder

8/24/2005 9:03:33 AM

nope, it still says "one unread conversation" in the system tray but guess what? I READ THAT TWO HOURS AGO

8/24/2005 10:20:46 AM

Maybe I should change the name of this thread to "perpedtual Google innovation-killer thread"

Quote :

""Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did," said Reid Hoffman, the founder of two Internet ventures, including LinkedIn, a business networking Web site popular among Silicon Valley's digerati. "It's largely that they're hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they're working on so many different things. It's harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now.""

http://tinyurl.com/bzk9g

[Edited on August 25, 2005 at 6:25 AM. Reason : .]

8/25/2005 6:25:06 AM

HELL YES

Gmail has added a "send mail as" feature...now you can send mail as your NCSU address or whatever else you want to go by (of course they verify it's actually yours first). Finally I am completely separated from NCSU webmail.

http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2005/08/23/exclusive-new-gmail-feature/

8/25/2005 11:43:14 PM

i think that's what everyone was waiting on. gg

8/26/2005 2:25:26 AM

damn... this muuuug exploded


i was about to download the new indexing thing at work today


looked pretty cool.... any cons?

8/26/2005 2:33:30 AM

you could possibly be a con

who the fuck types mug
you might say it if you're black. but who the fuck TYPES it for fuck's sake.

8/26/2005 2:36:47 AM

Google accounts are now public in the US as of today (since they have released Google Talk)

https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1

You have to sign up with a mobile phone (text message) to prevent spam bots from creating accounts. One account per phone number.

8/26/2005 10:18:34 AM

Adi Oltean blogged about how google mail determines the size of each user's disk quota:

http://blogs.msdn.com/adioltean/archive/2005/08/25/456504.aspx

8/26/2005 10:48:19 PM

^that is old as shit. agentlion did something similar around page 3

8/27/2005 1:57:28 PM

ya, here's my prediction I made in April from the GMail 2GB thread (and posted on page 3)

Quote :

"Well April 16 came and went, and we're now over 2100MB quota. They've once again updated the JavaScript on the gmail.com page to var CP = [ [ 1112439600000, 2050 ], [ 1114308000000, 2125 ]]; That indicates we'll be at 2125MB by Sunday, April 24, 2005 2:00:00 AM GMT, still increasing at ~3.5MB/day. I've refined my calculations a bit - we are actually increasing at 3.4682MB/day, or 0.114508671MB/hour, calculated from the time between the 2050 and 2125MB quotas. ? Why 0.1145... MB/hour? Well if you pick an arbitrary goal of 3000MB (3GB), it would take exactly 6055 hours to get there, starting at 4/24/2005 2AM GMT when the quota will be 2125MB, if the rate stays constant. The UNIX epoch time (in ms) 6055 hours from 4/24 2AM is 1136106000000, which happens to translate to Sunday, January 01, 2006 9:00:00 AM GMT. So you heard it here first, folks - Gmail will offer 3GB of storage on January 1, 2006! "

8/27/2005 2:58:51 PM

Kottke updates his views on a "GooOS" or WebOS or whatever
http://www.kottke.org/05/08/googleos-webos

nothing too alarming. He (and others i've read) seems to be convinced that Google Desktop is officially the launching pad that will begin a sort of Google/Web-based OS.

8/29/2005 9:25:50 AM

how long has this "Web Clips" thing been up on Gmail?

https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en&answer=18219

8/30/2005 7:49:20 PM

just a couple weeks

8/30/2005 8:14:08 PM

i want google calendar!!!

8/30/2005 8:29:42 PM

wtf is a web based os

8/30/2005 8:32:58 PM