Here and There

A blog can be proud of itself, eh? I mean, I’m sitting on top of Apple.

The last two places I’ve worked, the San Francisco Examiner newspaper and Wired.com, both suffered from at least one identical deficiency: Both of their internal website search functions sucked a big one.

Awhile back, a friend and colleague showed me the trick on Google Advanced Search wherein one can limit a search to a specific website.

Go to google.com and click Advanced Search. Then, under “Search within a site or domain:” enter the site you wish to search.

And don’t forget to love the google.

And by that I mean the ability to share items and add a note to your share.

Google Reader has done it, and I’m addicted. I liken this to what I imagine Twitter to be: a way to get short, succinct messages to multiple people. Only with Google Reader, it’s based on things you read or see online, not what you’re doing that day.

Now, if only I could get more of my friends to sign up …

PS: I’m not claiming to have coined the term microblogging. But it’s what I first called Twitter, and now call the “share with note” feature. It can also be called macrotexting. Take your pick.

Three out of four post headline words are plural. Rad.

Okay, while I’m dorking out, how the hell did I miss this? I feel like my sweetheart did something really awesome, won a Pulitzer or something, and I wasn’t informed.

Anyway, yes, the Goog has election results. You can view results by state and many other criteria.

Oh, and it’s a Google Gadget, so you can add it to your page. Which I may just do …

The other day, I wanted to remember the story of how a mathematician and his son coined the term “googol,” referring to 1, followed by 100 zeroes (or, in mathematical notion, 10 to 100th power, or 10¹⁰⁰). I remembered the word being spelled like the company, but I guess that’s what years of pop culture and brand loyalty will do for you.

Anyway, as I was reading through the page on wikipedia (mepedia’s distant cousin, maybe you’ve heard of it?), I came across this. True, a lot of things are done, a lot of endeavors undertaken, journeys embarked upon, merely for the sake of it. But “googolplex” (1 followed by a googol of zeroes, or 10^googol) is not one of them.

Googolplex is deep, meaningful, real. Googolplex reaches out and touches you. You are googolplex. Learn to love it.

Yes, I’m unabashedly brand loyal, but it’s because of items like this that I love the Google.

I noticed something slightly off in my gmail today when I got to work. The left navigation seemed to be wider. I also noticed that it had logged me into google talk from the browser, a feature I never use and turned off forever. I didn’t work Wednesday, so I thought maybe someone had used my (Windows-based) machine and something got effed up.

Then I noticed a link at the top right that said “older version.” I clicked it and it looked once again like it did yesterday.

Then slowly I started seeing more changes. When a user mouses over other recipients’ names in the message, more options are now available, such as contact info, recent conversations, and more. I also noticed when composing a new message, next to the “attach a file” link is an “add an event” button with a google calendar icon. Hmmm …

The most significant change, though, was a very sped-up interface. Adding labels, composing new messages, and just general navigation are all faster.

The fishiest part of it all was the fact that my girlfriend (who’s had a gmail account longer than i have) wasn’t seeing any of these changes. Nor was she given the link to the “newer version” of gmail.

I poked around the site looking for some sort of announcement, a “new features” link, but found nothing.

Then I came across this on Wired. “Some users”?

I’m not seeing the feature mentioned in the article, “an option to import photos directly from Picasa,” but I’m always curious when smart companies improve on already awesome products.

Exactly what Google’s founders did, announced today.