published @ April 6, 2009 # No Comment Yet
Today is April 4th, which means that it’s 4.04 day — even in Europe where they switch their months and days around. That means it’s a perfect day to learn what a 404 status code is. Essentially, a 404 is a way for web server to return a “Page Not Found” error when a browser [...]
published @ April 3, 2009 # No Comment Yet
(Doing the “type up a quick blog post” thing. Let me know if I had any typos.)
Thanks to everyone that contacted me in the last few minutes and hours about changes in our search products and quality; we’re seeing the impact in our metrics as well. I hear your feedback loud and clear–no need to [...]
published @ April 1, 2009 # No Comment Yet
Since the launch of Google Suggest last August, you may already be used to the magic feeling of getting real-time suggestions just after typing a few keystrokes — that is, if you're searching on Google.com. But what if you're doing a search on Google in the U.K., India, Ireland or Australia?Today we're happy to [...]
published @ March 31, 2009 # No Comment Yet
Google sometimes turns off features. One such feature that I remember fondly is that at the bottom of Google’s search results, we offered nine other search engine suggestions. The idea was if you didn’t find what you were searching for on Google, you could click on the other links and easily run the same search [...]
published @ March 30, 2009 # No Comment Yet
Imagine that you need a refresher on how to tie a tie. So, you decide to type [how to tie a tie] into the Google search box. Which of these results would you choose? Where did your eyes go first when you saw the results page? Did they go directly to the title of [...]
published @ March 26, 2009 # No Comment Yet
I'm happy to announce the launch of iGoogle game themes. These themes offer our users new iGoogle backdrops inspired by their favorite video games, including classics like "Mario" and "Mega Man" and new sensations like "Wii Sports" and "Spore." Like our iGoogle artist themes, fashion and music themes and themes for causes, we hope [...]
published @ March 24, 2009 # No Comment Yet
Today we're rolling out two new improvements to Google search. The first offers an expanded list of useful related searches and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions -- both of which help guide users more effectively to the information they need.More and better search refinements Starting today, we're deploying [...]
published @ March 19, 2009 # No Comment Yet
I just installed a “hello world” Chrome extension from this Chrome Extension HOWTO page. When you surf to www.google.com, the Google logo is replaced with a Lolcat:
Here’s how to write your own Google Chrome extension in three steps:
1. Install the developer-channel version of Google Chrome. I don’t know if this is 100% necessary, [...]
published @ March 18, 2009 # No Comment Yet
Whenever I get the chance to practice my German with a native speaker, there is invariably a point in the conversation where we come across a word that neither of us can translate into English. At that point, the conversation typically devolves into something like the following:Native speaker: "It's a vegetable." Me: "A [...]
published @ March 11, 2009 # No Comment Yet
Expect light blogging for a week or so because I’m traveling. I posted my 2009 travel schedule, but I’m doing a keynote at PubCon in Austin and then I’ll stick around for South by Southwest. It’s my first time at SXSW, so if you see me, say howdy!
For the PubCon keynote, we’re going to try [...]
published @ March 11, 2009 # No Comment Yet
Recently I’ve been playing with linking to specific parts of a video and incorporating YouTube subtitles. Then I realized that you could do a neat trick. YouTube allows you to create closed captioning with a simple text file that looks like this:
00:00:07.000 Hi everybody. Welcome back to another video. We’re doing this thing where [...]
published @ March 10, 2009 # No Comment Yet
I’m about to publish a blog post with a ton of links in it — almost two hundred of them. So before I did that, it seemed like a good time to talk about Google’s recommendation to “Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).” Why do we provide [...]
published @ March 9, 2009 # No Comment Yet
Video captions are interesting. For example, if you subtitle a video in the same language as the video, you can help people with low literacy improve their reading skills. Or if you’re in a meeting, you could watch a video silently and read the captions.
The TED conference is also thinking about subtitles. I think they’ve [...]
published @ March 9, 2009 # No Comment Yet
If you want to link to a specific part of a video on YouTube, you can. For example,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s
Notice the “#t=31m08s” on the end of the url? That link will take you 31 minutes and 8 seconds into that video. Linking to a particular minute and second can be really helpful — for example, [...]
published @ March 6, 2009 # No Comment Yet
Silicon Valley is well known as the home of technology companies like Google, but it's also one of many regions around the world with frequent earthquake activity. When we in the Bay Area feel an earthquake, we want to know how strong it was and where it occurred, as soon as possible. After all, [...]