Do you think Google will take over the world?
Google isn’t just a search engine anymore. Let’s face it, Google is a household name (and a verb in some cases). Sure, it started as a search engine, but they have branched out into so many other free services like email, maps, website analytics and even their own web browser. Yesterday, Google introduced the new Google Chrome OS.
“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.” Read Full Article
What’s next for Google? How long will it take before I’m driving to work in a Google car? What about a Google restaurant? “Hun, do you want to eat at Google tonight?” LOL
Google Squared now in Google Labs
“Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. If you search for [roller coasters], Google Squared builds a square with rows for each of several specific roller coasters and columns for corresponding facts, such as image, height and maximum speed.”
“This technology is by no means perfect. That’s why we designed Google Squared to be conversational, enabling you to respond to the initial result and get a better answer. If there’s another row or column you’d like to see, you can add it and Google Squared will automatically attempt to fetch and fill in the relevant facts for you. As you remove rows and columns you don’t like, Google Squared will get a fresh idea of what you’re interested in and suggest new rows and columns to add.”
To test it out, I did a search for “energy drinks”. At first, there was three column headers: Type, Author and Genre. I removed those and added “caffeine”. Six out of the seven results filled in the new column with an amount of caffeine. The one that didn’t wasn’t even an energy drink. In order to add more energy drinks to the list, I clicked on “Add next 10 items”. My favorite (Monster) was then added to the list of energy drinks to compare.
In my personal opinion, I think that this may come in handy every once in a while, but it wouldn’t get used on a daily basis. You’ve got to give Google a pat on the back though.
More Information:
Square your search results with Google Squared
Different types of energy drinks (in case you’re thirsty)
Google Chrome (BETA) for Windows
According to the Official Google Blog, Google has launched their new web browser to the public. You can read the original post here. It seems that Google has also created a 39 page “comic” that goes with the release. I started to read through it, but it lost my attention… look, something shiny… Anyways, you can view the comic here. If it’s more convenient for you, I’ve saved all the images used in the comic and zipped them up for my readers. You can download that here.
I tested it out today to see if I liked it, but only for a few minutes. It’s weird looking at first, but it seems pretty fast. I opened a few of my pages just to see if they rendered differently and for the most part, they were fine. As a web designer, all I need is another browser that I have to design my pages for. I’m hoping that Chrome renders code the way it should (like Firefox). Just out of curiosity, I also checked the memory usage and needless to say, it was a lot less than my current Firefox session (6,656K compared to that of Firefox using 162,340K).
Here’s a screenshot of this site using Google Chrome:
I would have to say that I’m not switching anytime soon, but it will be interesting to keep up on this and see Google’s progress as they come out with new releases. It will also be interesting to see how the general user responds to the release of Chrome.
Useful Links:
Download Google Chrome
Official Google Blog post about Chrome
Comic Book explaining Chrome
Download the Comic Book images
Google PageRank is updating soon
Over at his blog today, Google staffer Matt Cutts has revealed that Google is about to roll out an update to their Toolbar PageRank values.
Hey folks, I wanted to let you know that new toolbar PageRank values should become visible over the next few days. I’m expecting that also in the next few days that we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites.
CoffeeCup Google SiteMapper
Today we’re going to take a look at the Google SiteMapper by CoffeeCup.
By placing a sitemap file on your Website, you enable Google and other search engines to find out what pages are present, which have recently changed and have them spider your Website accordingly. Using Sitemaps allow you to inform and direct Google and other search engines what content you have available on your Website.
Google Sitemaps are an easy way for you to help improve your coverage in Google search results. It’s a system that enables you to communicate directly with Google to keep them informed of all your web pages, and when you make changes to these pages. CoffeeCup Google Sitemapper takes all the work out of creating a Google Sitemap. Just enter your Website Address and click go… Presto! The Sitemap is made and ready to upload.
When you first open the program, you will see the screen below.
For this example, I’m going to create a sitemap for one of my other sites. In the “Website Address:” field, I just type in the address. If you wanted to create a sitemap based off of local files on your computer, you would click the top radio button that says “Create SiteMap based on my Local Files”.
By clicking the “Options…” button in the middle, you are given the opportunity to ignore folders/files, change page colors, set different output options or ignore certain queries. On the example site, I always set it to ignore the blog directory, because my blog on that site uses a different sitemap tool that is designed for Wordpress.
Once you’re satisfied with your configuration options, press “OK” and then “Next”. After that, the CoffeeCup super-spiders will crawl your website and start collecting page data. Once that’s complete, you’ll see a list of all your pages that it found. It will only find pages that are interlinked together. If you have a page that isn’t connected by linking, it will not appear on your sitemap by default. Here is what mine looks like:
If you’re satisfied with the results, choose the desired output location and hit “Save”. You will then be given the option to upload your sitemap or submit it to Google. Normally, I just close the window and upload it myself. The program also creates a .csm file that doesn’t need to be uploaded. That’s a saved program file that stores your sitemap info for later.
Overall, I think CoffeeCup is correct when they say “Just enter your Website Address and click go… Presto!” It really is that easy. You can see a live sitemap created with CoffeeCup Google SiteMapper here.
If you would like to try the software out for yourself, you can download it here.
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