Controlling crawling and indexing

Now site owners have a comprehensive resource where they can learn about robots.txt files, robots meta tags, and X-Robots-Tag HTTP header directives. Please share your comments, and if you have questions you can post them in our Webmaster Help Forum.

This Javascript plugin can be downloaded free from: http://malsup.com/jquery/form/

I highly recommend reading the great posts over at http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.post/

Telling JQuery about your Form

In order for JQuery to process your form you need to tell it a few things first.

•    What Form to work on
•    How to validate the form
•    Where to post the form data to
•    What to do next (On success)

Read the full article >>>

Here is an example look at Microdata in HTML5 for use in Rich Snippets:

To learn more about Rich Snippet support in Google, go here.

Credits to: Barry Schwartz

Microsoft, Intel and Nokia — all leaders in their respective markets — have struggled to capitalize on the rise of a new class of smartphones that can tap into a vast pool of software. So these companies have come to the world’s largest mobile technology conference here with a message of change. They’re willing to abandon tradition if it means getting another shot at the fast-growing mobile device market and blunting the advance of companies like Apple and Google.

On Monday at the Mobile World Congress, Microsoft unveiled a new version of its flagship smartphone software, which was called Windows Mobile but has now been dubbed Windows Phone.

Steve A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, took the stage for a few minutes before a demonstration of the new software began.

“We debated a lot about how much we should position and talk about from whence we have come and what we will show you,” Mr. Ballmer said. “At the end of the day, we said, ‘Let’s get on with the show.’”

Windows Phone 7 Series has a cleaner look than most of today’s phone software, with bright blue icons on a black background. One version of the initial screen has four large, square icons for Phone, People, E-Mail and Text functions that Microsoft calls Live Tiles.

Underneath, a rectangular box pulls in calendar information. And below that Microsoft is highlighting its Zune music and video software and its Xbox Live gaming service.

Overall, Microsoft has blended trimmed-down menus with slick applications like an animated calendar.

Read the full article >>>

The Apple ‘iPad,’ a new tablet computing device, is shown in this publicity photo from Apple released to Reuters on Wednesday.

Photograph by: Apple Inc. handout, Reuters

VANCOUVER — Apple’s new iPad is a game changer for publishing, education and other sectors, including Canada’s wireless carriers that could find consumers snapping up the device that Apple is selling without having it locked into any network service.

It could take some time for the full implications of the new device that Apple CEO Steve Jobs described as “so much more intimate than a laptop” and “so much more capable than a smartphone” to be felt, but experts and industry watchers say it could change the way we work and play just as the iPod brought MP3 music to the masses and the iPhone catapulted smartphones into the mainstream market.

While Canada’s major carriers were mum Wednesday when asked if they have plans to introduce the iPad on their networks, Richard Smith, professor in Simon Fraser University’s school of communication, said Jobs’s move to end the subsidy model that locks consumers into long-term contracts with wireless carriers could change the way Canadians buy wireless devices.

“Apple is disrupting their business model which is to lock people into three-year plans,” said Smith. “There is no subsidy; Apple is just selling it as it is.

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I keep tabs open if I want to give something more attention later the same day or if I want not to forget to include the link in the post or discuss it with the friend, etc. I open multiple tabs when doing research or clicking through search engine results.

FireFox tabs help me get orgnized, plan the day or quickly scan huge amounts of information.

Sometimes (often?) it gets really hard to actually find the tab I currently need (especially if there are many tabs from one site with same favicons): so here are the three tools that make that job easier:

Find In Tabs

Find In Tab is an awesome FireFox addon that adds a tiny option to CTRL+F command to search through all open tabs:

• Clicking the “Find in Tabs” button on the find bar will search for text in all open tabs, and show a list of search results.
• Clicking any of the results will jump to the tab on which it was found, and scroll directly to the highlighted text.

URL Lister

URL Lister shows the URLs of all the tabs in a textarea so that it can be copied easily. Just right click any tab and click on the “URL Lister” (or use “Tools > URL Lister“) to open up the main dailog. Links can be listed:

Read the full article >>>

10. Google Public DNS – a DNS resolution system that doesn’t offer too many features, but it’s free and fast. Very fast.

9. Google Fast Flip – a service that lets you quickly browse news. It’s easy to use and it’s a better way to discover interesting news articles than Google News.

8. Google Squared – an innovative way to dynamically generate collections and facts about each item. It’s an extension of Google Sets and you can use it to create lists.

7. Google Wave – an online platform for collaboration in real-time. While there are many interesting features in Google Wave, Google’s implementation of the Wave protocol is too confusing and difficult to use.

6. Google Translate added new languages, made it easier to find web pages written in other languages and to translate web pages in real-time. You can now use Google Translate in Gmail, Google Docs, Google Groups and many other Google services.

5. Google Maps aggregated information about locations in place pages, started to show more search results and to use its own mapping data in the US. Google also launched Google Maps Navigation, “internet-connected GPS navigation system with voice guidance. It is part of Google Maps for mobile and is available for phones with Android 1.6 and higher.” Unlike other navigation apps, Google’s Android app is free, but it’s limited to the US.

4. Google Image Search added many advanced search options: color filter, size filter, Creative Commons search and an option that lets you find similar images. There’s also a great Android app that helps you search the web visually: Google Goggles.

3. Google Search added a toolbelt with many options that help you refine search results: you can restrict the results to forums and recent web pages, find pages shared by your friends, view page thumbnails and explore related searches. Other changes include a redesigned homepage with bigger buttons and less links, Google Suggest as a standard feature and more sitelinks.

2. Android, Google’s mobile operating system, had 3 major releases and it’s now used by more than 20 devices. Companies like HTC, Motorola, Samsung bet on Android and there are many cool applications that are only available for Android: Goggles, Sky Map, Google Navigation.

1. Google Chrome, the most innovative Google software released last year, continues to be a trendsetter when it comes to simplicity and great performance. It now supports themes and extensions, it has a bookmark sync engine and you can download native versions for Linux and Mac. Chrome is the most significant component of Chrome OS, a browser-centric operating system for notebooks, and a strategic project that helps Google push the web forward. Even if that means improving Internet Explorer.

Credits to: Google Operating System

Meanwhile, the source code for Chrome OS is already available. Here’s the login screen:

… and one of the wallpapers that are included:

Chrome OS is a lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian that uses a lot of open-source software: Host AP Linux drivers, PAM (an authentication mechanism), Syslinux (a lightweight bootloader), IBus (Intelligent Input Bus for Linux / Unix OS), ConnMan (Internet connection manager), XScreenSaver and other software. More on this later.

Other sites live blogging the event:

* Gizmodo
* Matt Cutts

Live blogging:

- Chrome OS launches next year

Chrome, the foundation of Chrome OS
- Chrome has 40 million users
- Chrome focuses on: speed, security, simplicity
- new stuff: Chrome for Mac/Linux and extensions

HTML5: making the web more powerful
- powerful web apps
- web apps should use threads
- offline web apps

Converging trends
- netbooks have an explosive growth
- millions of users are living in the cloud

Chrome OS:
- instant boot
- Chrome on Chrome OS is faster
- every app is a web app
- all data is in the cloud
- browser security model

Demo:
- 7 seconds boot time
- the UI is a work in progress
- easy to access favorite apps
- app menu
- panels: persistent lightweight windows (example: Google Talk)
- file browser
- local files open in web apps (including Microsoft Office online apps)
- native video player

Under the hood:
- design documents
- no hard disks, only solid-state drives
- verified boot
- security: the OS does not trust any app
- read-only root file system
- user data synced to the cloud
- automatic updates for the entire OS

Market:
- reference hardware
- you can’t download Chrome OS and install it on your machine
- the only way to install the OS is to buy a Chrome OS machine
- the target launch time: the end of next year

What is Google Chrome OS?
- the web browser is the most important program on your computer
- your browser is your operating system

Credits to: Google Operating System

Google’s announcement today includes an example from product manager Dan Birch using the new feature to track a pair of attempts to summit Mount Ritter, in which the combination of GPS, KML, and My Maps were used together to show the summit attempts on the Google Earth iPhone app.

A more down-to-earth (pardon the pun) improvement aims to help users get through the sometimes cluttered combination of business listings, Panoramio photos, Wikipedia entries, and other icons that appear in the iPhone app.

When a user touches icons that are too close, a new screen will show them in list format for easier selection of the desired data type.

Finally, the new Google Earth iPhone app is now available in 31 languages, up from 18 in the original release.

Google says the app should be available in the next 24 hours.

Credits to: Matt McGee

Some of these features should be available as options because they’re difficult to find in the list of calendars and they clutter the interface.

Google’s decision to remove public calendar search had a strange side effect: users can no longer find public calendars with features that are missing in Google Calendar. A post from 2007 explained how to show week numbers in Google Calendar by searching public calendars.

Credits to: Google Operating System

Google says mobile app developers can tell Google Analytics what actions taken by users would trigger the analytics tracking. Google uses those triggers to determine views, session lengths, and bounce rates.

Developers can also use Event Tracking to track actions such as watching a video, clicking a button or conducting a download.

The data provided by Google Analytics for mobile apps can be highly useful for developers as they choose to enhance and update their apps over time. It can also inform future app development by helping developers meet customer needs and desires.

Check out this video on how online real estate brokerage Redfin used Google Analytics to track their mobile application.

“Lots of users still complain that Chrome does not support Greasemonkey user scripts. Even though we have had the infrastructure in place to handle user scripts for some time now, it has never been clear how the feature would relate to full extensions, and so it has remained incomplete,” explains Aaron Boodman, a Google Chrome developer who created the Greasemonkey extension.

Now you can visit userscripts.org and any other site that links to Greasemonkey scripts and other flavors of user scripts, click on the link to a *.user.js file and install it in one click.

Like any other extensions, user scripts can be disabled or uninstalled by visiting chrome://extensions/ or selecting “Extensions” from the Tools menu.

This feature is only available in the latest Chromium builds, but it will soon be added to Google Chrome’s dev channel, which already enables the support for extensions.

This week, Google released the first beta version of Chrome 4 for Windows, so the stable version should be available in the coming weeks. Chrome 4′s major selling points should be the support for extensions and the long-awaited Mac & Linux ports.

Credits to: Google Operating System

Seems like a form of behavioral targeting to me and also gives insight in to how Google is working to take the users’ preferences to provide better results. Downside would be that now know people can manipulate this one fairly easily. One wonders if they plan to apply this to Adwords as an addition to their Quality Score or even other advertising mediums.

What it does show is that Google is aggregating search actions and want to use the information, if they are not already. The patent is just making sure the method is theirs.

It shows whether the Facebook Platform is currently working well or not, providing graphs for average API response time and the number of errors, as well as developer updates and top live bugs. Now, when something isn’t right with a Facebook () app, developers know instantly whether it’s their app that’s causing trouble, or the platform itself.

Read the full article >>>

Saying that it wants to bring music fans “closer to your favorite artists,” Google has added a new Music Search OneBox to its search results. The new OneBox includes content from partner sites such as MySpace, Pandora, Lala and others, and lets searchers listen to song clips right from Google’s search results page. Searchers should begin to see the new OneBox in the next 24 hours.

Google has had a music OneBox before, but it disappeared some time ago, perhaps in preparation for the launch of this new Music Search 2.0, as we’re calling it. There’s also a deeper search function that only surfaces music-related content and still appears to be active — see this U2 search, for example.

According to today’s announcement, searches for the name of an artist, album, or song will show the new OneBox in Google’s main search results. If you search for an artist or album name, the OneBox will include a set of four songs that are chosen algorithmically by the partner music site, not by Google. Each song will be linked to an audio clip that will play in a Flash-based pop-up window provided by the partner site. In some cases, the partner may provide one full play of the song before defaulting to a 30-second preview.

Google’s music OneBox will include links to these music partner sites to discover more information about your music-based search, and sometimes the links will help you discover music that’s related to your search. Contrary to recent rumors, you won’t see any links to purchase the songs — at least for now. Google’s RJ Pittman told us today that, while some of their music partners have a commerce element, the focus of Google’s new music search is information, not selling digital songs. In fact, there’s no commercial arrangement at all, we’re told, between Google and the music partner sites included in this launch.

In some ways, this is a case of Google playing catch-up. Yahoo already offers a music shortcut with better features. From Yahoo’s search results, you can listen to up to 25 full-length songs per month (via Rhapsody, which is also partnering with Google now) and watch full-length music videos from Yahoo! Music.

But this shortcut is only shown on Yahoo searches for artist names, not for album or song names. Yahoo used to offer a lyric-specific shortcut, too, but that appears to have disappeared.

Speaking of song lyrics…

This is where Google’s announcement gets really interesting. Many of us don’t know the name of the song or artist, but we remember a line or two from a song and we use that as our search query. Google’s new music search will try to divine when searchers have put song lyrics into the search box and surface the correct song. The Google blog post shows a search for the phrase “static silhouette somehow”, which returns a OneBox about the song “Rome” by Phoenix.

How does Google know if your search query is a song lyric or not?

Pittman says the algorithm will look at things like the popularity of the search term; if Google starts to see a lot of searches for a popular song or its lyrics, it’ll show the OneBox. He also says it’ll take “at least a phrase” to initiate the lyric search, and the more words in your query, the more likely Google can correctly identify it as a lyric search. Google has partnered with Gracenote for this lyric matching effort.

What about when more than one song contains the same lyric?

In situations like this, Pittman says Google will only show one matching song — at least for now — and that the music partner’s algorithm will determine which song is the best likely match.

But there’s obviously a lot of room for error here, with so many songs sharing similar titles and similar lyrics, not to mention new artists covering old songs and sometimes changing a lyric or two in the process. “There are lots of songs with lots of overlap, and we’ll have to continue to improve,” Pittman says. Google’s announcement today even acknowledges the challenge of identifying search queries as song lyrics and returning the right song: “In some instances, we may not return links to the song you’re looking for.”

What’s missing?

Google has partnered with well known music sites such as MySpace, Pandora, iMeem, and others, to help searchers discover more about their favorite artists. But, as I suggested on the call today, there’s a lot of musical information that Google isn’t surfacing in its new OneBox — information from the many excellent fan-based web sites, for example, or from intelligent music media sites and blogs.

Sure, I’m biased. In 1995, I created @U2, which is the oldest independent site on the web about U2. We’ve been honored by Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and countless others over the years. As I said today, I’ll put our U2 lyrics, band biographies, etc., up against these music portal sites any day of the week.

Google’s announcement says “there’s a lot of music out there in the world,” but by limiting its results to a handful of partner sites, Google is limiting how much of that information will be found in its new Music Search OneBox.

Credits to: Matt McGee ]]> http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/google-music-search-2-0-launches/feed/ 0 http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/google-maps-navigation-for-android/ http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/google-maps-navigation-for-android/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:16:37 +0000 admin http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/?p=4639 One of the most requested features for Google Maps Mobile was to add turn-by-turn navigation. In the past, this wasn’t possible because of the licensing fees that had to be paid for each user of the navigation system. Now that Google no longer uses data from TeleAtlas in the US, turn-by-turn navigation can be added for free.

Google’s blog announces that Google Maps Navigation will be available in Android 2.0, which will be released next month. “This new feature comes with everything you’d expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone’s Internet connection.” And unlike other navigation systems, it’s free.

For now, Google Maps Navigation is only available for the US, but it will certainly be available in other countries when Google collects enough mapping data.

Credits to: Google Operating System

Today’s tools are quite simple and basic but you should seriously have a couple of them bookmarked (at the end of the post I’ll link to the cases when those tools may turn useful):

Now, a few screenshots and details for you to see how the tools work:

Domain Neighborhood Checker

The tool looks at your domain IP and Subnet neighbors and ranks them based on each site incoming links count:

YouGetSignal.com

The site has several free tools apart from reverse IP checking: WhoIs LookUp, Network information Google gadget, etc. Speaking about Reverse IP checking feature, I like how it draws your attention to sites on the same IP that “appear to have explicit content” (obviously based on the “bad” words used in the domains). We don’t know if these sites can in any way affect your Google records but it is some useful information to keep in mind:

SitesOnMyIp

The tool does reverse IP check and displays each site’s design and content preview once you click any:

TraceBullet

This is a handy tool that combines several basic tools allowing you to find out the tool IP address, see headers sent by the server, do a whois lookup, etc. The best thing about the tool is that it is really quick and easy, so have it bookmarked for some basic tasks:

MyIPNeighbors

The tool displays the list of sites on the same IP address in the alphabetical order:

Now, as promised, here are a few relevant discussions:

• Does Google SafeBrowsing Prove “Bad IP Neighborhood” Theory;
• Host level spam detection;
• 3 free tools to make sure your site is in good company;
• Do You Care Who Your Domain IP Address Neighbors Are?
• Dedicated vs. Shared IP Addresses and SEO

Credits to: Ann Smarty

Missing were the surprise celebrity appearances, the lavish accoutrements, and, most notably, Bill Gates, who no longer runs the day to day workings at Microsoft. Instead of the huge Nokia Theater in Times Square, which housed the 2007 launch of Windows Vista, the Windows 7 press event was set in the much smaller confines of Skylight Studios, a popular event space near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.

While the space was adequate for the presentation, some members of the press groused about the scarcity of seats and the small tables, which were better suited for netbooks than full-size notebooks. However, unlike the cold weather and the turtle-like pace of the queue at the January 2007 Windows Vista launch, entering Skylight Studios was quick and painless-as long as you were on the official invite list.

Once the press was assembled inside, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s always-energetic CEO, did his best to invigorate the media with his high hopes for Windows 7. However the best-received lines were delivered by 5 -and-a-half year old Kylie, who was the star of a Microsoft TV commercial when she was four. She had the task of introducing Ballmer.

“I’m a PC,” said Kylie to a roomful of wide smiles, “and here’s Steve Ballmer!” Ballmer had barely gotten out a few kind words about the fun he had meeting Kylie earlier in the day when Kylie suddenly chimed in with an almost indignant “You were late!”

“We’re trying to make the everyday usage of the PC better,” Ballmer said once the laughter died down. “Number one: It works the way you want it to work…. The things that you need to do all the time need to be simpler.”

Brad Brooks, vice president of the Windows 7 marketing group, demonstrated a number of features that separated Windows 7 from its predecessors, including the easier networking wizards, the support for multi-touch features on touchscreens, remote streaming of media stored on a distant Windows 7 machine, and the new Windows Live Movie Maker. A demonstration in which a single PC streamed video feeds to seven different monitors on stage without bogging down was well received.

A nice aspect of the event was the way in which Ballmer waded into the audience–something that didn’t happen in larger venues in the past when Gates did the presentation. Toward the end of the event Ballmer was shown a number or new Windows 7-based products not from on stage, but from a demonstration area where attendees could get up close and personal. A brief appearance was made by Dell’s upcoming super-thin Adamo notebook, which Ballmer got a quick look at before it was whisked away back into hiding as it awaits its official launch.

Read the full article >>>

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer celebrated the arrival of Windows 7 in New York with a few hundred people who had helped test early versions of the software that runs PCs. One of them, technology consultant, Jonathan Kay, flew from Toronto to attend.

“Windows 7 will redeem Windows,” said Kay, 27.

Some retailers had opened at midnight to give customers an early shot at buying a new PC or a disc that they could use to put Windows 7 on their existing computers. Such upgrade discs start at $120.

Among the stores was a Fry’s Electronics in Renton, Wash., several miles south of Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond. Mike Naramor, 55, who runs a consulting business called My Computer Guy, was one of about 50 people who were waiting outside when Fry’s opened.

“We’re geeks, that’s what geeks do,” he said. “This is our excitement.”

Naramor, who also had bought copies of the last two operating systems, XP and Vista, the nights they were released, planned to go home and install Windows 7 right away.

“Vista took me about 72 hours,” he said. “I expect this to take me 20 minutes.”

Microsoft is also going to try running its own retail stores, which has been enormously successful for Apple Inc. Hundreds of people lined up Thursday to attend the opening of the first store, in Scottsdale, Ariz., where Microsoft was giving away gift certificates and other goodies.

People cheered as a giant white curtain dropped from the front of the store, revealing an airy space lined with large screens showing scenes from video games. Dozens of employees jumped and high-fived customers as they ran in the store.

Kaelin Jacobson, a 20-year-old Web programmer, said he came to give Microsoft “one last shot,” adding that he’s had a lot of problems with Vista. Jacobson, who was carrying an Apple laptop, said he has to use Windows for his job and that Microsoft has an uphill battle to match Apple’s sleek and popular stores.

Microsoft hopes people like Windows 7 much more than Vista, which was slow and didn’t work well with existing programs and devices. Microsoft fixed many of Vista’s flaws, but it was too late to repair perceptions. Many businesses avoided Vista altogether, preferring to keep using Windows XP, an operating system that is now 8 years old.

Windows 7 promises to boot up faster and reduce the clicks needed to get common tasks done. Microsoft has cut out some redundant ways to start programs and added flourishes that can help users keep track of all their open windows. It promises to put computers into sleep mode and wake them faster, too.

Windows 7 is also meant to be “quieter” — with fewer pop-up boxes, notifications, warnings and “are you sure …” messages. Instead, many of those messages get stashed in a single place for the user to address when it’s convenient.

Read the full article >>>