Google's Shift From Search Results to Answers

Google's Shift From Search Results to Answers

Google's post about the European Commission antitrust investigation reveals two important things about the Google search engine: the goal is to answer user queries and "the only constant is change".

"Sometimes the best, most relevant answer to a query is our traditional 'ten blue links', and sometimes it is a news article, sports score, stock quote, video, or a map. Today, when you type in 'weather in London' or '15 grams in ounces' you get the answers directly (often before you even hit Enter). In the future, we will need to answer much more complex questions just as fast and as clearly."

Universal Search and the integrated search experience that combines results from different search engines will make it even more difficult to understand Google's algorithms and to find unadulterated web search results. Instant Search will force Google to provide more instant answers and to treat web pages as sources of information. It's the subtle difference between an answer:


... and a potentially useful search result:


The difference between showing links to reviews and showing a clever summary based on sentiment analysis:


Google's conclusion is that the "ten blue links" will soon be a thing of the past and search results will become more dynamic:

"Our results are continuing to evolve from a list of websites to something far more dynamic. Today there's real-time content, automatically translated content, local content (especially important for mobile devices), images, videos, books, and a whole lot more. Users can search by voice - and in a variety of languages. And we've developed new ad formats such as product listing ads and new pricing models such as cost-per-action. We cannot predict where search and online advertising will be headed, but we know for sure that they won't stay the same. By staying focused on innovation we can continue to make search even better - for the benefit of users everywhere."

Google Earth 6: Better Street View and 3D Trees

Google Earth 6: Better Street View and 3D Trees

Google Earth 6 doesn't have too many new features. You can now use Street View just like in Google Maps by dragging the pegman icon. "To view street-level imagery for a specific location, zoom into an area at an altitude of approximately 500km. You will see a pegman icon appear at the top right below the navigation controls. Click and drag the icon across the 3D viewer. A blue border will appear around roads that have street-level imagery available," explains Google.

Another new feature is the "3D Trees" layer that can be enabled from the "3D Buildings" section. Google Earth includes 3D models for city parks (San Francisco, Chicago, Tokio, Athens) and remote forests (Amazon Forest).

Historical imagery is now more accessible: just click on the date of the oldest imagery in the status bar and you'll be able to see all the historical images that are available for the same location.

Google Earth 6 also adds ground-level navigation that lets you explore 3D buildings and 3D trees, 3D measurements for heights and widths of buildings and a much better Tour Recorder that improves motion fidelity.

Google SSL Secure Search

Google SSL Secure Search

With Google search over SSL, you can have an end-to-end encrypted search solution between your computer and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. This provides you with a more secure and private search experience.

To use search over SSL, visit https://encrypted.google.com each time you perform a search. Note that only Google web search is available over SSL, so other search products like Google Images and Google Maps are not currently available over SSL. When you're searching over SSL, these properties may not appear in the left panel.

What is SSL?
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol that helps provide secure Internet communications for services like web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers. When you search over SSL, your search queries and search traffic are encrypted so they can't be read by any intermediary party such as employers and internet service providers (ISPs).

Coming Soon in Google Docs: Third Party Apps, Cloud Printing and Sync

Coming Soon in Google Docs: Third Party Apps, Cloud Printing and Sync

Google Docs' source code includes a message that reveals some important upcoming features: "Coming soon: Third party applications, cloud printers, and sync devices".

Cloud printing is a project that will enable applications on any device to print documents. "This goal is accomplished through the use of a cloud print service. Apps no longer rely on the local operating system (and drivers) to print. Instead, apps (whether they be a native desktop/mobile app or a web app) use Google Cloud Print to submit and manage print jobs." Google says that printers "are treated in much the same way as documents are in Google Docs". Cloud Print will be implemented in Google Chrome and Google Chrome OS, so it will probably launched in the coming weeks.

If you can synchronize your calendar, your contacts or your mail, why not synchronize the documents stored in Google Docs? That's one of the most important missing features from Google Docs. Google already offers some APIs for uploading and downloading files, but they're limited to documents, spreadsheets and presentations if you don't use Google Apps Premier Edition.

Google Docs has applications for editing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and for viewing PDF files, but what about other file types? There's no photo editor, no video editor, no application for editing PDF files or for extracting files from archives. Third party applications could solve some of these issues and make Google Docs even more useful.

Google Music Search India

Google Music Search India

Google launched a new music service, this time for India. Google Music India helps you find Hindi songs and play them in your browser. Google aggregates the results from 3 partner sites: in.com, Saavn and Saregama, but it doesn't offer too many additional features.

"Google Music Search (India) Labs licenses meta-data of thousands of songs owned or licensed by partners to make them searchable on Internet. Once you search and find the music you want, our partners stream the music directly from their websites to your computer," explains the FAQ.



The US version of the service is similar and it focuses on finding music. Most of the audio previews are from iLike, a MySpace service. There's also a Chinese Google Music, which is less restrictive: it lets you find songs, play them and even download them for free.

Google plans to launch a music store for Android. "Rubin, Google's vice president of engineering, hopes to have the service up and running by Christmas," according tosome sources.

Google URL Shortener Adds Stats and Web Interface

Google URL Shortener Adds Stats and Web Interface

Google's URL Shortener has been used by Google services like FeedBurner, Google News, Blogger to share links on Twitter. Google didn't provide a web interface for the service, but third-party sites managed to fill the void.

Now you can go to goo.gl, paste any web address and get a short URL. Google also shows stats for any short URL generated using the service: append ".info" to the address and you'll see the number of clicks, a list of traffic sources and some aggregate information about visitors. Here's an example: http://goo.gl/l6MS.info.



If you sign in to a Google account, Google will save a list of recently generated URLs. Another advantage is that Google will always generate unique URLs when you are logged in, so that the stats are more useful.

Google's URL shortener still doesn't have an official API and it doesn't offer all the features that are available at bit.ly (most notably, you can't customize URLs), but it works well. "We've had near 100% uptime since our initial launch, and we've worked behind the scenes to make goo.gl even stabler and more robust," mentions Google's social blog. Google also added automatic spam detection and doubled the service's speed.

If you use Google Chrome, install goo.gl URL Shortener, an unofficial extension that generates short URLs and copies them to the clipboard. For Firefox, there's a similar extension called goo.gl lite.

Google Phone Gallery

Google Phone Gallery

As previously promised, Google Nexus One's site has been replaced by a gallery of Android phones. "The Google Phone Gallery features a selection of Android-powered phones currently available. All the phones in the gallery include Google Search, Android Market, and Google Mobile services such as Google Search, Gmail, and Google Maps,"explains Google.

You can restrict the phones to a carrier or manufacturer, compare them and buy the phones from third-party stores. The list is not comprehensive and the search box is not very useful.


"Here at Google, we're thrilled with the global adoption of Android and with the high quality of devices that are coming to market around the world. Since there are so many great phones, we wanted to make the selection process a little easier for people who are in the market for a new one. Google Phone Gallery [is] a showcase of Android-powered devices that deliver the best Google experience today," says Google's Ben Serridge.

Nexus One was a great reference Android phone better suited for developers and technology enthusiasts. Google's branding didn't help the phone because Google didn't manage explain why the phone was special. Probably not many people cared that the phone was sold unlocked, it was easy to root, had a stock Android interface and it was updated by Google. Hopefully, Google will do a better job at showcasing other devices.

Gmail Voice and Video Chat for Linux

Gmail Voice and Video Chat for Linux:

After two years of waiting, Gmail's plug-in for voice and video chat is finally available for Linux users. "Voice and video chat for Linux supports Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions, and RPM support will be coming soon," says Tristan Schmelcher, from Google.


Justin Uberti says that adding Linux support was really difficult. "This release required significant engineering to develop an all-new video rendering solution and an all-new PulseAudio-based audio handler, along with work to support 64-bit and countless webcam compatibility tests. We spent a lot of effort to make it fully feature-complete, with all the same goodies as the Windows and Mac versions, and we're happy to now support Google voice and video now on all major desktop platforms."

Now that video chat is available on Windows, Mac and Linux, when will it be ported to Android?

How Google Translate Works

How Google Translate Works:

Google uploaded a video that explains how Google's machine translation service works. It's fascinating to see how much Google Translate has improved in the past 4 years andhow many Google services use it.

Here's the full text of the video:

"Google Translate is a free tool that enables you to translate sentences, documents and even whole websites instantly. But how exactly does it work? While it may seem like we have a room full of bilingual elves working for us, in fact all of our translations come from computers. These computers use a process called 'statistical machine translation' -- which is just a fancy way to say that our computers generate translations based on patterns found in large amounts of text.

But let's take a step back. If you want to teach someone a new language you might start by teaching them vocabulary words and grammatical rules that explain how to construct sentences. A computer can learn foreign language the same way - by referring to vocabulary and a set of rules. But languages are complicated and, as any language learner can tell you, there are exceptions to almost any rule. When you try to capture all of these exceptions, and exceptions to the exceptions, in a computer program, the translation quality begins to break down. Google Translate takes a different approach.

Instead of trying to teach our computers all the rules of a language, we let our computers discover the rules for themselves. They do this by analyzing millions and millions of documents that have already been translated by human translators. These translated texts come from books, organizations like the UN and websites from all around the world. Our computers scan these texts looking for statistically significant patterns -- that is to say, patterns between the translation and the original text that are unlikely to occur by chance. Once the computer finds a pattern, it can use this pattern to translate similar texts in the future. When you repeat this process billions of times you end up with billions of patterns and one very smart computer program. For some languages however we have fewer translated documents available and therefore fewer patterns that our software has detected. This is why our translation quality will vary by language and language pair. We know our translations aren't always perfect but by constantly providing new translated texts we can make our computers smarter and our translations better. So next time you translate a sentence or webpage with Google Translate, think about those millions of documents and billions of patterns that ultimately led to your translation - and all of it happening in the blink of an eye."

Gmail's Streamlined Interface and Better Contact Manager

Gmail's Streamlined Interface and Better Contact Manager:

Google launched a slightly refreshed Gmail UI that hides unessential features and uses more screen estate to display your messages. Gmail's logo is smaller, the links to mail, contacts and contacts are grouped in a collapsible panel, while the options that let you select all messages, starred or unread messages are available in a drop-down.

"Overall, there's now a smaller header area that puts the first message in your inbox about 16 pixels higher on the screen than before," explains Google.


Gmail's contacts section has also been redesigned to better integrate with Gmail. The updated interface supports keyboard shortcuts, saves the changes automatically, adds structured name fields and lets you sort contacts by last name. The notes field is now really big, but I don't think it deserves so much attention.


These features will be rolled out today to all Gmail accounts. The new Gmail contact manager won't be available in Google Apps right now, but it will be released in the near future.

The Old Version of Gmail Will Be Discontinued in September

The Old Version of Gmail Will Be Discontinued in September:

When Google released a new version of Gmail, back in 2007, you could still switch to the old version by clicking on a link at the top of the page. At some point, the link has been moved to the bottom of the page, where it's still available.

3 years after releasing Gmail 2.0, Google decided to drop the old version, which doesn't include features like themes, Gmail Labs, Gmail Chat, Buzz, hiding labels or multiple file upload.

"You're using an old version of Gmail which will be retired in September. At that point, you'll be redirected to a basic HTML view. To get faster Gmail and the newest features, please upgrade to a modern browser," informs a Gmail message.

Most likely, Google continued to offer to the old version of Gmail because the new version doesn't work well in Internet Explorer 6. If you visit Gmail in IE6 and you haven't installed this patch, you can't switch to the new version, even if you manually change the URL. Staring from next month, IE6 users will be redirected to the "basic HTML" interface, used for outdated browsers.

Google rarely provides the option to switch to an old version of an application or a feature. For example, you can still switch to the old image search interface, to the old Gmail contact manager and you can still use the classic Blogger editor (an option that will be removed soon). Preserving the old version of a service could be helpful to determine if users like the new version, but it's not a good idea to keep an interface that's no longer maintained. Some users might never try the new version of the application because it doesn't look familiar, while other users might never notice that the initial bugs have been fixed.

Search Google Docs and Google Sites in Gmail

Search Google Docs and Google Sites in Gmail:

Gmail Labs has a new feature that extends Gmail's search by showing results from Google Docs and Google Sites. If you enable Apps Search, you'll see a list of results from Google Docs and Google Sites below Gmail's search results. For some reason, Apps Search has a bug and returns incorrect URLs for Google Docs results, but I'm sure this will be fixed.


It's interesting to see that the Gmail Labs feature has been developed by the Apps Search team, which suggests that it's part of a bigger project. Most likely, Google will let you search all your data stored in a Google account from a single search box. If Google's universal search can combine images, videos, books, tweets, news articles in a single search results page, why can't Google develop an unified search service for Gmail messages, Google Calendar events, Google Reader subscriptions, Blogger posts, Picasa Web photos, contacts, tasks, Google Voice history and more?


Tip: If you want to search Google Docs and Google Sites, without displaying Gmail results, add -type:mail to your query.

Unexpected bonus feature: After enabling Apps Search, Gmail will show a "did you mean" message if your query includes misspellings:

Google Spreadsheets Spell Checking

Google Spreadsheets Spell Checking:

Google Spreadsheets added spell checking, but it doesn't find misspellings automatically, like in Google's word processor. You need to click on the Tools menu and select Check spelling. Google starts to find mistakes and suggests corrections from the dictionary. Unfortunately, you can't add words to the dictionary yet and Google's suggestions are sometimes terrible.

"The tool will go through all the cells on your sheet, highlighting each cell which has a misspelled word in red. Words that might be misspelled in each cell are underlined in red and can be changed by clicking on them and selecting the right spelling," explainsGoogle Docs blog.


Google should replace the dictionary-based spell checker with the context-sensitive spell checker that's already used in Google Wave and Google Search. Instead of using a dictionary, this spell checker extracts data from web pages and Google searches to find a statistical language model, much like Google Translate. This model allows Google to predict mistakes and to determine the most likely corrections.

On Gmail's Widget for Selecting Messages

On Gmail's Widget for Selecting Messages:

Gmail updated the interface last week and many people complained about the changes. Some didn't like Gmail's new hybrid button for selecting messages. To select unread messages or starred messages, you need an extra click. Apparently, many Google employees hated this change, as well.


Michael Leggett, Gmail's lead user interface designer, explains how he came up with this widget:

It IS odd. And yet, both the checkbox and the menu part tested very well in the lab. The people who hated the widget outside the lab also understood how to use it but promised others wouldn't b/c it was so "weird."

We tried a few things (like putting the select actions under "More actions") but I didn't have high hopes for any of them except the widget that launched. It tested better than I had hoped (all of the participants in the usability study were able to select all, unread, and none). We launched it to all Googlers months ago and listened to feedback (everyone was able to figure it out... some just hated the change).

More about why the change: The "Select all" link is used by <1% style="font-weight:bold;">I wanted to simplify the interface and give back that space to users.

Since features like "select unread" or "select starred" were used by a lot less than 1% of the users, it made sense to hide them. Power users can always learn how to usekeyboard shortcuts and an extra click doesn't mean too much for a feature that's rarely used.

Michael Leggett also says that the link to Buzz will be added at the top of the page, next to Contacts and Tasks, and users will be able to hide the links to service they don't use.

Play Snake in YouTube's Player

Play Snake in YouTube's Player

YouTube's player has a clever Easter egg: make sure the player has focus, press the left arrow on your keyboard for about 2 seconds and you can play Snake while watching the video.



This trick only works in YouTube's new player, which is only available for videos that don't include annotations or ads. It's limited to the videos played on YouTube's site and it doesn't work for embedded videos. Here's an example of video you can use to play Snake.

YouTube is not the only Google product that lets you play games. Gmail has a Labs feature called "old Snakey" that adds a Snake game inside Gmail.

Google Image Search Adds Infinite Scrolling and Shows Less Clutter

Google Image Search Adds Infinite Scrolling and Shows Less Clutter

Google launched a new interface for Google Image Search which replaces pagination with infinite scrolling, hides the information about the results until you mouse over an image, shows bigger images and uses space more efficiently. When you click on a results, Google shows a larger thumbnail on top of the web page that included the image.



Google says that the new layout is more dense, you can get up to 1,000 images when you scroll and you can scroll using keyboard shortcuts like Page Down and Page Up. Google still shows page numbers "so you don't lose track of where you are".

Another new feature is image search ads that will replace the text ads that are displayed at the moment in Google Image Search. "This ad format combines an image with text, offering richer, more relevant advertising on Google Images search results pages."

It's interesting to see that Google reintroduces two features previously tested without success: image ads and a simplified interface that hides useful information about images. Infinite scrolling was one of the distinctive features of Bing Image Search and Windows Live Image Search.

Google Image Search's new interface makes it easier to scroll through results, but I don't think a regular user will look at hundreds of images. Google's goal is to find relevant results, so showing too many images is overwhelming and a lot of the images aren't useful. Hiding information about the image's size, the domain that includes the image and no longer showing a snippet from the page is a purely aesthetic decision. Sometimes it's useful to know if an image is large, if it's included by a site you trust and even the filename could offer relevant information. Google offers a "show sizes" option in the sidebar, but it's not enough.

Old interface:


New interface:


Bing:


If you don't see the new interface yet, try a different browser. Google says that only 10% of the users can see the new UI and it will be available for everyone in the coming days.

Gmail's SHVA Parameter

Gmail's SHVA Parameter

Ever since Google launched a new version of Gmail, back in 2007, some people wondered why Gmail's address includes a parameter called "shva".

"Just curious, what does the SHVA parameter in the new gmail URL stand for? Is it an acronym? I'm not really asking about the technical usage or the functionality; I'm just interested in the choice of name," asked BRKR. "I know GMail is not an Open-Source program so we can trace the code. But every website tries to make the URL shorter so they ideally shouldn't add redundant data to the URL," thinks Omar Dolaimy.


According to Mike Sego, a former Gmail engineer, "shva" is an acronym for "should have valid authentication". Apparently, the parameter is only included after a successful authentication.

Mobile Google Docs Viewer

Mobile Google Docs Viewer

Google Docs Viewer, a service that lets you preview online PDFs, Word documents and PowerPoint presentations, is now available for iPhone and Android devices.

Google added some features that make the service more useful on a touchscreen device: pinch to zoom (only for iPhone and iPad), buttons for zoom and pagination.

Unfortunately for Google, iPhone's built-in PDF reader and Microsoft Office viewer are much better than Google Docs Viewer because they don't convert documents to images. Some Android phones include a document viewer based on Quickoffice, which also does a better job than Google Docs Viewer. There's also Adobe Reader for Android, probably the best Android PDF reader you can download for free.

Gmail to Use More HTML5 Features

Gmail to Use More HTML5 Features

Computer World reports that many of the upcoming Gmail features will use HTML5. Adam de Boor, a Gmail engineer, said that Google's goal is to make Gmail load in less than a second.

"If the browser supports CSS3, Gmail will render the pages using these specifications, rather than its traditional approach of using the Document Object Model (DOM). The company has found that using CSS3 can speed the rendering time by 12 percent. (...) Gmail will also make use of HTML5's database standards. Now, the e-mail service uses Google Gears to store mail for offline reading, but over time that will migrate to the HTML5 standards."

Another feature that will be added to Gmail allows users to drag attachments to the desktop. This feature is not part of HTML5, but Google says that it will encourage other browsers to use it. Right now, you can drag and drop files from the desktop to Gmail, but only if you use Firefox 3.6 or Chrome.

Adam de Boor revealed how many lines of code are in Gmail: 443,000 lines of JavaScript code written by hand.

Gmail has added many features that used to be available only in desktop mail clients: fetching email from other accounts, threading, powerful spam filters, reading messages offline. Now it's time to better integrate Gmail with the browser or the operating system and to add notifications, a simplified way to handle attachments and a better performance.

Google Chrome Tests Unified Menu

Google Chrome Tests Unified Menu

Google started to test an unified menu in the latest Chromium and Google Chrome dev builds. The new menu includes most of the options that were available in the page and tools menus.

If you use a recent Chromium build or Google Chrome dev channel, you can enable this feature by adding a command-line flag to the desktop shortcut: --new-wrench-menu.

To make the menu more compact, Google uses a single menu item for cut, copy, paste and another menu item that combines zoom options with full-screen.

Opera already uses an unified menu that replaces the menu bar, while Firefox 4 will include a single menu button. The unified menu takes up less space, it's less complex and it reduces clutter.

"The general purpose of the menubar is to contain all of the things that you want your program to do but you can't cram into the main UI. So the menubar generally ends up with a lot of stuff that isn't used very often, if at all, and yet is reproduced on every window and takes up a significant amount of real estate. It also has the tendency to become a dumping ground for new or hardly used features. Starting with Vista, and continuing with Windows 7, the menubar has been systematically removed from Windows applications built by Microsoft and other vendors. It has been replaced with alternatives like the Windows Explorer contextual strip or the Ribbon found in Office 2007," explains Mozilla's wiki.

Google OneBox for Sunrise and Sunset

Google OneBox for Sunrise and Sunset

Google shows sunrise and sunset information in a special OneBox at the top of the search results. If you type [sunrise chennai] or [sunset chennai], Google will show the time for sunrise or sunset in that location.

Google says that this feature works for almost any location. "Whether you're looking to find the best time for a morning jog or trying to plan that perfect moment for a wedding proposal, knowing exactly when the sun rises or sets can always be helpful. (...) Unlike the weather, sunrises and sunsets are quite predictable, and as a result, we don't use a data source. Instead, we calculate sunrise and sunset times based on latitude, longitude and the current time. This calculation has been of interest to astronomers and mathematicians for millennia, so they've had time to get it just right. And for most locations, it's accurate to within a single minute."

You can also type [sunset] or [sunrise] and Google should show accurate information for your location. Google has similar OneBoxes for weather and time.

Save iPhone Notes to a Gmail Account

Save iPhone Notes to a Gmail Account

Apple's iOS 4 (iPhone OS 4) added an important missing feature: a way to save your notes online. If you add an IMAP mail account like Gmail or Yahoo Mail and enable the notes feature, you can create notes that are saved to your email account.

For Gmail, Apple creates a label called Notes and saves the notes created in the Gmail section to your Gmail account. The notes can only be edited from an iPhone or iPod Touch and the changed are reflected in Gmail.




Some other new iOS 4 features that should be useful for Google users: Google Suggest in Safari's search box, an option to search the Web in Spotlight and the ability to add multiple Exchange accounts.

Google Spreadsheets Adds Format Painter

Google Spreadsheets Adds Format Painter

Google Spreadsheets added a feature that lets you copy the formatting a cell and use it for other cells. It's called "format painter", like the similar feature from Microsoft Office.

To use the format painter, select a cell that has special formatting, click on the "paint format" button from the toolbar and then select one or more cell to apply the formatting.

Microsoft offers an example to show why this feature is useful:

"Say you've written a report in Word. You like the look, especially your headings, which are 14 pt. Bookman Old Style, centered, green, and bold, with a nice subtle shadow. Fifteen minutes before you're supposed to present the report to the team, your manager asks you to add four new sections to the report. You spend thirteen minutes adding the information, and the next two wishing that you hadn't chosen such complicated formatting for your headings, since you now have to apply it to all the new ones. Using Format Painter saves you that time and duplicated effort. Instead of having to manually apply the font, font effects, centered paragraph alignment, and other formatting to each new section heading, you can quickly copy all of the formatting attributes by using one toolbar button."

Unfortunately, format painter is not available in all Google Docs applications and you can only use it in Google Spreadsheets. So much for the Google Docs consistency.

Google Voice, Available Without Invitation

Google Voice, Available Without Invitation

If you're in the US, you can now use Google Voice without asking for an invitation. Three years after acquiring GrandCentral, Google finally makes the service widely available.

"A little over a year ago, we released an early preview of Google Voice, our web-based platform for managing your communications. We introduced one number to ring all your phones, voicemail that works like email, free calls and text messages to the U.S. and Canada, low-priced international calls and more—the only catch was you had to request and receive an invite to try it out. Today, after lots of testing and tweaking, we're excited to open up Google Voice to the public, no invitation required," explains Google.

Google Voice has a lot in common with Gmail. They're both innovative communication services and they both help you manage your communication flow. Gmail has been available as an invitation-only service for about 3 years, just like Google Voice.



The next steps for Google Voice should be expanding the service's availability outside US, integrating with Gizmo5 and becoming a VoIP service, integrating with Gmail and Google Talk.

CJ, a reader of this blog, already found some signs of a future integration:

"Late last year, Google Talk appeared as an option for Phone Type when adding a new phone in the Google Voice settings. I added my Google Talk account, but could not verify it. I just left it in there unverified because I knew at some point the day would come. At some point in the past few weeks, I was able to get my Gmail Voice Chat client to ring when attempting to verify the Google Talk account in my Google Voice account, but the call always immediately failed. Now in the past two or three days I've been able to answer the call and hear the prompt to enter the verification code, but there's no way to send the verification digits. I tried generating DTMF tones and sending them through the microphone, but it doesn't work. So close!"

Distance Measurement in Google Maps Labs

Distance Measurement in Google Maps Labs

Google Maps Labs added a feature that used to be available as a mapplet: distance measurement tool. After enabling the Labs feature, you'll notice a small ruler at the bottom of the map. Click on the ruler and you'll be able to use the distance measurement tool by clicking on the map and tracing the path you want to measure.


If you click on "I'm feeling geeky", you'll be able to pick from a long list of measurement units, including light-year, parsec, PostScript points, Olympic swimming pools, American footbal fields, Persian cubits and more.

Gmail's Redesigned Contact Cards

Gmail's Redesigned Contact Cards

Gmail's contact cards, which show up when you mouse over the sender of a message or a Gmail Chat contact, have a new interface. Action buttons are displayed at the bottom of the card and you can no longer edit the name of a contact inline. When you click on the name of a contact, Gmail opens the contact manager.

Contacts cards haven't changed too much since 2007, when Google released a major Gmail update.


If you'd like to see how much Gmail has evolved since 2007, open Gmail's old version. It's surprising to see that Gmail still offers the old version, which lacks most of the features released in the past three years.

Facebook Hacking Exposed

Facebook Hacking Exposed

Learn the exact techniques Russian Hackers secretly used to hack over 1,562,241 Facebook Passwords Today! Facebook Hacking Exposed will teach you the most sought after underground Facebook password hacking techniques in an easy to understand step-by-step hands on method... Get it now! Equipped with this knowledge you will be able to defend against these same attacks and when you are targeted (and you will be) you will be able to spot them a mile away! Get it now!

Dr. Ali Jahangiri Publishes New Security Policy Cookbook Packed Full of Recipes for Security Policy Makers

Dr. Ali Jahangiri Publishes New Security Policy Cookbook Packed Full of Recipes for Security Policy Makers

New book is a unique guide for IT and security professionals to streamline their security policy formulation. Based on years of information security expertise, this cookbook provides all the ingredients needed to create easy-to-understand security policies covering areas like passwords, intruder detection and wireless networks. Dr. Ali Jahangiri, a world-renowned computer and security expert, is pleased to announce the launch of his new book The Security Policy Cookbook. Providing "recipes" for security policies in all areas, from password and Internet use policies to intruder user detection and public mailing list policies, The Security Policy Cookbook is a unique guide for IT and security professionals to streamline security policy formulation. With over 14 years of experience as a security auditor, security consultant and trainer, Dr. Ali Jahangiri brings the full force of his knowledge and expertise to bear in this exceptional book. When devising security related company policies, expertise is essential, and this book releases Dr. Jahangiri's expertise for IT professionals to tap into when developing security related rules, guidelines and recommendations. As an experienced lecturer and trainer, Dr. Jahangiri was often asked by course participants for a copy of his own personal arsenal of security policy templates. To meet this need Dr. Jahangiri painstaking researched and compiled a complete collection of security policies and published them as this cookbook. "I decided to address the need, "says Dr. Jahangiri", spending more than two years to study and bring together the contents of this book in order to create a comprehensive collection of security policy templates." Dr Jahangiri's informative guide covers a wide range of security policy areas including Antivirus Policy, Back Up and Disaster Recovery Policy, Computer Account Management, Email, Internet Access and Use Policy, Password, Portable Computing Devices, Server Hardening, System Development and Wireless Network policies. One of the unique aspects of this book is that a one time payment of $149.90, gives security policy makers access to Dr. Jahangiri's templates in a fully editable form. This means that they can be used as the starting points for the actual security policies deployed by any company with much of the hard work, research and repetition removed. The templates can be purchased from securitypolicycookbook.com. The 160 page book is available directly from the securitypolicycookbook.com web site or from Amazon.com.

Google Earth Includes a Web Browser

Google Earth Includes a Web Browser

Google Earth 5.2 no longer uses the operating system's web browser when you click on links. Google Earth comes with a WebKit-based browser, so you'll never have to leave the application to open a Wikipedia page or the website of a local business.

"Sometimes when you want more information, you may want to click through to a link to see the full Google Places page for a business, or learn more about a photographer whose photo you really enjoy. In the past, this has required opening a link in an external browser to see the full page. For Google Earth 5.2, we've added an embedded browser that lets you browse the full web. Click on a link, and the browser pane slides across the screen. When you want to return to the Earth view, just click the Back button,"explains Google.



Apparently, Google Earth uses the Qt port of WebKit (QtWebKit) and it doesn't include the V8 Javascript engine from Google Chrome. I tried to run the V8 benchmark suite in Google Earth and the result was very poor: about 10 times lower than the latest Chromium build.

As in the previous versions, Google Earth for Windows and Mac also includes a plug-in that lets you embed a Google Earth view in any web page. Google Maps is the most popular service that lets you use Google Earth in your browser. Now you can browse the Web in Google Earth and use Google Earth in a Web browser.

If you don't like the embedded browser, you can disable it by going to Tools > Options > General and checking "Show web results in external browser".