Yacoblog - Google

Safari Windows uses parts of IE

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:29:00 -0600

I just found something odd...if you have Safari Windows installed, apparently it uses IE's proxy settings instead of it's own. If you click Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Change Settings, Safari pops open the IE Internet Options dialog box. Firefox has it's own proxy settings built-in, but apparently Apple decided to use the Windows proxy settings. I guess that's not a bad idea, but it surprises me. On a whim, I checked how Google's chrome handles proxy settings, and it does the same thing as Safari, it uses the IE settings.

Google Maps: Find Latitude/Longitude

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:06:00 -0600

I have been working with Google Maps a lot lately, and one of the things I find myself doing a lot is figuring out the exact lat/long of a point on the map, so that I can place a marker, or center the map. There are numerous sites out there that let you click a map and get the lat/long, but I don't like most of them. Today I found one that really works well, at iTouchMap.com. The reason why I like it more than the others is because it's a lot easier to fine tune your coordinates to get the marker exactly where you need it. When you first click the map to start pinpointing your location, it sets a marker on the map. If you find that the marker is not quite where you need it, you can just drag the marker a little to get better coordinates (and it has a fun bouncing animation when you drop the marker). With the other tools I've used you have to click on the map again to get a new coord. set, and when using that little hand cursor instead of a pointer (as is standard in all Google Maps), it's hard to get it just right.

Google Chrome: My First Take

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:10:00 -0600

I installed Google Chrome, Google's new browser. My first impression is that it's very plain. I don't expect this to take off in large numbers, because I think most web surfers will want more features than it currently offers. As far as web site support, I tried CFQuickDocs, and everything worked fine. I was expecting parts of the site to be nonfunctional, because Google wrote a new JS engine (dubbed V8) from the ground up, but everything works fine. I also tried Gmail, and holy crap it's fast! In Firefox on my machine, Gmail takes from 5-15 seconds to load. In Chrome, it loaded in about 1 second! It will be interesting to see how fast JavaScript heavy sites run in Firefox 3.1, which will have a much faster JS engine dubbed TraceMonkey.

Google's search market share falls

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:05:00 -0600

...but very slightly. They still have the #1 spot, but their numbers fell a bit from June to July. I was a bit surprised to see that Google doesn't even have more than 50% of the market...I was under the impression that their lead was much wider than it is. According to this c|net blog entry, two companies released numbers for July this last week: comScore Networks:
43.7%-Google (down from 43.7 % in June)
28.8%-Yahoo
12.8%-Microsoft
5.9%-AOL
5.4%-Ask Jeeves
Nielsen/NetRatings:
49.2%-Google (down from 49.4 % in June)
23.8%-Yahoo
9.6%-Microsoft
6.3%-AOL
2.6%-Ask Jeeves

Google's Calendar app

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 12:50:00 -0600

I'm now officially drooling over the new Google CL2. It's a calendar app that looks very cool, and I'm drooling because I can't have it (here's an unauthorized review with screenshots). It's a very limited beta right now, but I'm assuming that it will be free like most of their other stuff. The thing I'm most excited about is SMS notifications. Create an event, set an alert, and tell it to SMS you. Your calendar will then follow you everywhere (as long as you remember to charge your cell phone). :)

I converted someone to Firefox!

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 12:28:00 -0600

Ok, I've actually been the instigator of a lot of Firefox conversions. But I just noticed today that someone clicked my 'Get Firefox with Google toolbar' button a few days ago, and actually downloaded and installed Firefox! :) That means Google pays me $1, and there's one more person browsing happily. I've had that button in the top left of my blog since Novemeber 7th, 2005. 10 people have clicked it, but only one person actually installed Firefox. 1 out of 10 ain't bad though.

Superbowl Ads

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 12:13:00 -0600

I've been checking Google Video more and more these days, because there's some pretty good stuff there. Yesterday I was going to show my parents the Office Linebacker video, and I saw that you can view all the superbowl commercials there. It's a nice setup, as you can view them all at once and it will play them back-to-back. I really think that the Internet will take more and more market share from TV. I don't think TV will ever go away, but TV networks might lose people that don't mind watching things on a computer, and are on the computer anyway. And you have a lot more control over your programming on the Internet, DRM aside; Which shows to watch, and when to watch them. You don't have to pay $40/mo for 150 channels, when you only watch 10 of them.

Google search has more relevant results

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:16:00 -0600

I ran across this site today that is doing a search engine experiment. They let you perform a search using their interface. It grabs search results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You take a gander at the results (and even click on them if you want) and then pick which results are more relevant. But you don't know which results match which engine until after you've made your choice (a typical blind survey). They have had over 7500 participants so far, and the results show Google is ahead: Google-41% Yahoo-32% MSN-26% Am I very surprised that MSN is in last place? No. ;) In case my wife is reading this, yes I do know that this isn't a scientific study.

Google Ads

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 12:11:00 -0600

I've always admired Google for making so darn much money from Ad revenue, but I never really thought Google's Adsense program worked that well for web site owners. Well, now I found out I'm wrong. I have this little site I built for ColdFusion developers called cfQuickDocs. It basically is a quick reference to look up CF tags and functions. I decided to throw a simple 'Google Ads' line at the top of the page, and so far this month I have made more than double the hosting costs for that site and this blog! Admittedly, I am on a very cheap web host, but I never expected to make that much money. The only bad thing is that I have to wait for my total earnings to reach $100 before Google will send me a check...<sigh>, oh well I can wait. :)

Googler's song

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:12:00 -0600

I ran across this song on Google's blog today. Apparently Matt Waddell, of the Google Mobile Team, was so inspired by the things that Google local for mobile can do, that he wrote a song about it. Its called Get lost and found on your phone. Pretty silly, but funny too. I really liked how you can listen to the song easily right there, because they embedded it in a Flash file. So no stinking WMP or Real Player, just push play on their little interface and it goes. I really hope more and more content providers start taking advantage of the flash player, and put their video/audio in flash format. Its SO much easier to deal with, and the flash player has 98% market penetration. And no annoying spyware or other crap like that.

Is the Moon Made of Cheese?

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:45:00 -0600

I noticed today that Google has a different logo (like they always do for the holidays). This time its in honor of the Apollo moon landings. They also have a link to google moon, which is an addition to google maps. You can look all over the moon from a satellite perspective, and zoom down to a pretty detailed level.
I love how Google is willing to do these kind of geeky things. They also have a sense of humor, because if you zoom all the way down to the lowest level, they show a close up of yellow Swiss cheese! :)

Google feature for Firefox

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 19:50:00 -0600

I read the Google Blog now and again to keep up on news from the company. Today I see this post that blows me away. Searching Google with Firefox now does something different than any other web browser...its faster! Google has decided to take advantage of Mozilla's prefetching feature, so now the top search results will be downloaded before Firefox users click on them. That way the resulting pages load faster. This feature can be disabled, and Google gives directions for doing that. But when was the last time you saw a major Internet property release a Mozilla only feature?

Googol

Sat, 12 Mar 2005 08:12:00 -0600

A co-worker of mine has a word-a-day calendar from Merriam-Webster. Most of us know that Google got their name from the mathematical term Googol. The 'Did you know?' entry for this word in my co-workers calendar gives the interesting history behind the term googol:
"Around 1930, American mathematician Edward Kasner found himself working with numbers as large as 10 to the 100th power—that's a one followed by 100 zeros. While it's possible to write that number using standard scientific notation, Dr. Kasner felt it deserved a name of its own. According to his own account, he asked his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, to give him a name, promising the boy that he would use the word in the future. Milton made up a word 'googol,' and so the enormous number was christened. Dr. Kasner kept his promise, and the word has been widely adopted by mathematicians and the general public alike." In the interest of copyrights and such, you can find more info on this calendar at Workman Publishing.

2 types of software companies

Sat, 05 Feb 2005 07:11:00 -0600

  I was discussing why I don't like Microsoft with a friend the other day. Later I was pondering the discussion and I came up with a model that I think can be loosely applied to most software companies.
  I believe that there are companies that are driven by profit, and others that have a passion for good software. I think both types want to make money. But the profit driven companies will put the bottom line above quality software as much as they can.
  Two examples are Microsoft and Google. Microsoft tries to squeeze as much money out of their product line, and particularly their customers. Often this leads to lower quality software because its cheaper to develop. Their customers don't allow them to sell total crap, and if they did Microsoft wouldn't be where they are today. But Microsoft will leave out key features when possible. But more importantly, Microsoft will try to get away with minimal quality assurance testing (QA) and/or security testing. And they get away with it every day! A perfect example is Windows 95. If Microsoft had spent as much time and money on QA as necessary, Windows 95 wouldn't be such a dark stain in their history, and their customers (including me) would be much happier.
  Google seems to be driven by a passion for good quality software. They do have a motivation to turn a profit, but that doesn't seem to be their highest priority. They will never release a product to the market unless the engineers have spent enough time and money to make sure it is quality software. Google is the most widely used search engine, and people from PC to Unix use it. I believe that the fact that Google works as well as it does, on such a wide spectrum of platforms, is a sign that they have a passion for quality software above the need for profit.
  Gmail is a good case in point. I believe Gmail has been available to the public for about a year (by invitation only). Gmail is still a beta, meaning they haven't released it as a final product yet. When they do, I assume anybody will be able to go sign up for an account. But it is clear that Google will not release Gmail until they are content with its quality. Do you think they could make more money with Gmail if they released it now, instead of later? Sure, but Google is not profit driven.

Watch out Google...here comes Microsoft!

Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:33:00 -0600

Or so says Jay Baz, a Microsoft developer that's on the Visual C# IDE team. "So now I have GMail, the Google Toolbar, the Google Deskbar, and the Google Desktop. To search MSDN help, I use google. At home, all my computers use Google as their home page. When I want to browse the web on my phone, I use Google Number Search. See a trend here?...right now Google is kicking our butt", says Baz. But then he adds, "Watch Microsoft pull all the peices [sic] together & produce a highly-integrated, high-performance, high-value story that is 10x better than Google." I kind of doubt it, but we'll see.
They definitely have the money to do it, but do they have the ability/talent/brains? c|net reported that Google keeps stealing a lot of Microsoft's good talent (the details are kind of buried in that story, but they're there), so they might have a challenge living up to Baz's prediction.