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Google goes back to basics, announces GSA 7.0 for all of your enterprise searching needs
Long before retail outlets were flooded with Android-powered electronics, Google embarked on its maiden voyage into the world of hardware. Venturing out into uncharted waters, the then only web search company released a glaring yellow box known as the Google Search Appliance. Sticking to its search engine roots, Google's first piece of enterprise hardware was designed to help its customers perform fast and effective searches of internal networks. While the GSA may not be the search juggernaut's most noteworthy piece of equipment, it doesn't mean that the company has abandoned its original vision for the platform. On Tuesday Google announced its GSA 7 series, which introduces a new user interface, enhanced search tools and the ability to manage larger databases. According to the company, a single rack of its new search appliance can now maintain the equivalent of its web search index in 2000, which is around 1 billion webpages. Not just settling for companies using its office software suite, Google will be targeting large scale organizations with its new GSA. By remembering what brought it to the dance, the search giant appears to be setting the stage to transition from consumer to corporate search kingpin in the coming years. The only foreseeable threat to this enterprise search engine would be Microsoft releasing a corporate Bing Box, but something tells us not to hold our breath waiting for that to happen.
Gmail now searches attachment text, homework hoarders rejoice!
As Google continues to improve other areas of its broad ecosystem, it's always great to see that the company hasn't abandoned its search simplification roots. A spokesperson for the company told us, "we recently added the ability to search within Gmail attachments as part of our ongoing efforts to improve search." This potential time-saver plays nice with Word docs, PDFs, PPTs and many other file extensions. Currently in its infancy, some of your older attachments may not have been indexed yet, so you might not be able to "share" last year's term paper with your younger sibling until Google brings the feature up to speed. However, if you're just looking to locate that recently received Word doc filled with notes from your study buddy, then have at it.
Google adds 'Bacon Number' easter egg to its search engine
Adding to the fun and games already hidden within its search box, Google's new not-so-secret addition gives you a quick way to calculate exactly how many degrees your favorite (or most obscure) actor falls from Kevin Bacon. Sure, it may take half the debate out of it, but at least the definitive answers are now out there -- just type in "bacon number" followed by your thespian of choice.
Google Now update brings public safety alerts, lets sports fans manually pick teams and adds movie listings
If you're sporting Android 4.1 Jelly Bean then one of its most notable features just got better, as an update for the Google Search update is enhancing Google Now (still getting adjusted? check the guide book for a list of commands) functionality in a few key ways. The new version brings public alerts to your Now page, with emergency messages like storm warnings or earthquake alerts, so if you're in range of Hurricane Isaac, it may be worth grabbing sooner rather than later. A more trivial change lets sports fans manually select their favorite teams from 140 pro soccer, baseball, basketball and hockey clubs -- we tried to find our college favorites and were denied, for now. While trying to automatically decipher our preferred squads from searches is nice, it might not be practical when we're just looking up information on our fantasy football players so this should be a help. It has also added support for movie listings as seen above. Search for a flick that's in theaters and you will not only receive relevant information, but also when and where it's playing in your area. If that's not enough, it can be set to pop up on your "movie days" or when you just happen to be loitering outside a theater. Finally, in a move that should please many prospective Galaxy Note II owners it is ready to work in Korea -- grab the new version of the app at the link below.
Google reforms 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button, lets you savor other emotions
While many of us simply gravitate towards the companion search box or address bar to tap into Google's wealth of search know-how, anyone still visiting the original homepage should give that second button another glance. If you float your cursor over the randomized "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, the text will now spin through a handful of new options, reducing its arbitrary nature a little and, as AllThingsD note, guiding you to other Google services within the results, including location data, restaurant reviews and even its collection of doodles.
Google gives mobile search a makeover for quick-answer queries
If you're looking for flight times, currency conversions, word definitions and more, you'll notice that Google has dressed up the responses in new, Now card type clothing. On top of being prettier, the look is designed to make the data easier to parse and also adds an interactive element -- letting you change a distance or unit when doing metric conversions, for example. Currently the refresh is limited to smartphone and tablet searches, but Google has promised to roll it out soon to desktop searches and international users. The change is part of an ever-evolving list of tweaks and updates to Mountain View's venerable search engine -- check the source for more info.
Google to challenge Siri with its updated Google search app
Google's Search app for iOS will soon receive an update that'll improve the voice assistant component and bring it on par with its Android Jelly Bean counterpart. The upcoming version of the search app takes advantage of Google's experience with speech recognition and its Knowledge Graph, which tries to make connections between different pieces of information. For iOS users, the updated Search app will let you ask a question using natural language and receive a spoken answer. You can ask Google whether you need an umbrella, and it will tell you the current weather conditions. The range of information available via voice search spans everything from local movie listings to the height and weight of your favorite sports star. It's a small improvement, but one that Google says is vital in building the search engine for the next generation. This is a sentiment echoed by developer and entrepreneur Ndav Gur, who says that queries based on concepts, not keywords is the future of search and that apps like Siri and Google Search are "on the cusp of an entirely new thing."
Android 4.1 SDK hands-on
Too lazy to download and install the brand new Android SDK yourself and don't feel like tweaking an AVD for optimal operation? Don't know what an AVD is? We don't blame you, and that's why we're here. We fired up Jelly Bean in the Android emulator and started poking around a bit. Sadly, most of the most exciting new features -- offline speech recognition, Google Now -- don't work. And we couldn't really delve deep into the new notifications system thanks to some limitations on the SDK. We could, however, play with the new version of Maps and demo the new widget placement tweaks. Most of the UI should look familiar. In fact, the only obvious changes we noticed were the new search widget and a few tweaked buttons, like notification clearing option. You'll also notice a new layout for the clock and date in the notification pull down. Mostly, from a aesthetic point of view, the refinements are minor, but welcome. Everything feels a little more spacious, less cramped, without becoming overly simple. Want to see it for yourself? Check out the gallery below and the video after the break. %Gallery-159332%
Google to flag 'censored' searches for Chinese users (video)
Google is announcing that it's going to place a flag on contentious search terms for users in mainland China. Mountain View's Alan Eustace euphemistically described how some searches break a connection to the service, leading to users being frozen out for around a minute each time. He theatrically added that the company has checked its servers several times and found no error, so whatever issue causes these outages must be external. Whenever a term is typed that is likely to cause an "outage," the error message in the picture above will appear, with a suggestion to search for something else, or use Pinyin to search for a term where contentious keywords appear inside otherwise natural searches.
Google Search for iPhone gets the 2.0 remake, full-screen search and swipes aplenty
Google gave its official search app an iPad remake late last year, and now it's smaller iPhone and iPod touch devices getting the new UI's treatment. As of Google Search App 2.0, the smaller iOS devices see a big emphasis on full-screen navigation, with an automatic full-screen mode and a dedicated full-screen photo search making the most of the limited display real estate. You can now swipe back to search results like you could with the iPad, and it's overall much faster in the app to hop between different search types as well as web apps like Calendar or Gmail. There's still something in it for you if you've already been deep into the iPad port's interface, as the tablet and the iPhone alike can now save photos directly to the iOS camera roll. You'll need at least iOS 4.2 to live in Google's non-Android mobile universe, but those that measure up can leap in through the source link.
Google bots learning to read webpages like humans, one step closer to knowing everything
Google just launched its Knowledge Graph, a tool intended to deliver more accurate information by analyzing the way users search. Of course, with a desire to provide better search results comes a need for improved site-reading capabilities. JavaScript and AJAX have traditionally put a wrench in Google bots' journey through a webpage, but it looks like the search engine has developed some smarter specimens. While digging through Apache logs, a developer spotted evidence that bots now execute the JavaScript they encounter -- and rather than just mining for URLS, the crawlers seem to be mimicking how users click on objects to activate them. That means bots can dig deeper into the web, accessing databases and other content that wasn't previously indexable. Looks like Google is one step closer to success on its quest to know everything.
Google launches Knowledge Graph today, wants to understand real things (video)
Americans and Brits might chuckle at their respective understandings of words like chips, pants and biscuits -- a search engine, however, can't be quite so discerning. As it turns out, Google actually thinks it can, and has been working on its Knowledge Graph project to prove it. Beginning today, English searches from Google.com might start seeing a new box appearing alongside (unless you happened to see it via the live-trial). If there is more than one potential meaning to your search term, Google will ask you to specify (trousers, not underwear, for example). Likewise, when it's more confident it knows what you mean, you'll get a summary box instead. (A celebrities place of birth, favorite cheese etc..) Google's Shashidhar Thakur, tech lead for search, told us "We think of this as our pragmatic approach to semantic search." And by pragmatic, he means that for the last two years, Google has been working to map the "Universe of things," not just webpages. Over 500 million things, in fact, creating a total of 3.5 billion attributes and connections so far. The hope is, that as this technology evolves, you'll be able to ask more complex questions, like "Which US airports have a Cinnabon stall." Or, you know, other such deep and meaningful queries. If you see some info, and happen to know better, there's a feedback system, so you can let Google know, hopefully making Knowledge Graph continually evolve in accuracy. While it's only rolling out for English searches, it's not just desktop, with mobile and tablet search getting the goods too. There are plans to spread this out to other languages, but no specific dates for this just now.
Google Zerg Rush: That was an order, soldier
Zerg Rush is Google's latest easter egg and it's admittedly a little late for the holiday itself. Search for the term (it's a Starcraft thing), and you'll be welcomed by a point-and-shoot mini-game where your enemy is an infinite number of color-coded, marauding o's. These will proceed to decimate your search results, which is currently a bizarre meta view of people explaining the game's existence. Get your trigger finger ready -- the internet needs you. (You also can publish your final score with pride on Google Plus.) [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Google explains how it searches the internet in under half a second, if you can find the video
Ever wonder how Google manages to search the entire web and return results in half a second? Well, RobertvH from Munich did, and Mountain View's head of web-spam, Matt Cutts, talks you through it in the above YouTube video. The short answer? Lots of backend firepower and, you know, a few years in the search game. If you remember the Google dance, Cutts explains what caused that, before going on to give a good idea about how today's version of the site does what it does. If you're thinking this all sounds a bit too much like SEO 101, you'd be half-way right, but as Matt's delivery is so engaging, we're def hoping there'll be a follow up.
Behind the scenes video reveals Google's attention to search detail (video)
If you're interested in how much detail the engineers at Mountain View pay to every element of Google's search business, check this out. This is footage of the Quality Launch Review, a meeting that takes place every week on Thursdays. Amit Singhal assembles a room full of engineers to delve into "losses," the company term for when a search query goes awry, and turn them into "wins." This week, the team examined error-correction in searches that are over ten words long, and how best to resolve it. It may not be the most exciting thing you'll ever see, but it's a fascinating insight into the effort that begins every time you don't find what you're looking for.
Google search now shows upcoming concerts, helps you find the next gig
Google may stir controversy from time to time, but you can't deny it's one of the better provider of virtual tools that help make your life a bit easier. In this case, the Big G's bringing along some concert listings to its world renowned search engine. All you've got to do on your end is show up, pop a simple hunt query for your favorite band / artist (Kanye, Swift or whatever you're into) and within milliseconds you'll know where and when the next gig's taking place. That is, if that certain musician you're looking for is on tour or has some booked shows coming up (no, it won't get Daft Punk to come play at your house). The fresh tidbit's available now for those G-searching in English, though the plan's to "expand the feature to more countries in the future." You can also make your boy band's next gig show up in results by dropping a rich snippets markup on your site -- hit up the source link below for the full deets.
Protect yourself from being tracked by Google, Facebook, and others
There have been a lot of stories lately about websites trying all sorts of things to keep track of people and invade their privacy. First it was Facebook, and now Google. I protect myself from Facebook tracking me by using a Fluid browser for Facebook. Because I paid the US$5 to register the app, I can use separate cookies from Safari. Here's how I setup Facebook in Fluid. This is how I created the app: Once the app is created, launch it, and separate the cookies from Safari: And then set it so that any link off of Facebook will open in another browser (note: this is the default, you don't have to change anything to get it to do this): Fluid for Google I do a similar thing for Google, but it's actually more restrictive: no JavaScript and no cookies allowed: No JavaScript means no Google instant, which I loathe, no little popup telling you they are changing their privacy policy. The whitelist settings only let the browser bring me to Google sites, so any results I click on will open in my regular browser. I've been trying to get Google to open results in a new window for years and they always forget that setting. You can also change the User Agent which is sent to Google, which can change the format of the results. For example, maybe you prefer the iPad (oh, I mean "tablet") format. You can get that by telling the Fluid app to report itself as an iPad: Don't want a separate browser? How about a fast logout? Maybe you don't want a separate browser, but want to make sure that Google isn't associating your searches with your Google login. Well, assuming that Google hasn't found another way to track you even when you aren't logged in, you can make a bookmark shortcut to make sure that you are always logged out before you do a Google search. Just bookmark this link https://accounts.google.com/Logout?hl=en&continue=http://www.google.com/ and click it whenever you want to do a Google search. Or drag this link to your bookmarks bar: Safe Google Search "But if I'm always logging out of Google, won't I have to keep logging in to check my Gmail?" Logging out of Google is easy, but if you want to use Google services like Gmail or Google Voice, you'll probably want to be logged in. There are a couple of ways to work around that. Option 1: Use a different browser for Google - If you usually use Safari for your regular browsing, use Google Chrome for Gmail, Google Voice, etc. Option 2: Use Fluid or Mailplane for Gmail - I've been a Mailplane user since its days in beta, and it's my favorite way to use Gmail. Of course you could also use a Fluid browser instead. Option 3: Use an app instead - This may be too obvious to even suggest, but there are good alternatives for using Google's services in a web browser. You can use Mail, Sparrow or Postbox instead of Gmail, or BusyCal instead of Google Calendar. I vastly prefer GrowlVoice to using Google Voice's website (although there are some Google Voice settings you can't access except through the website, but they aren't ones you'll probably use often). Option 4: Log in to Google quickly using 1Password - If you use 1Password , you can make a "one click" bookmark for logging into Google/Gmail/Google Calendar/etc. Just drag the entry from 1Password to your the bookmark bar in your browser of choice. Brett Kelly did a nice write-up about that feature. "I don't trust anyone! I want to delete everything!" This seems like a huge overreaction, but in just a few minutes of casual web browsing, there are 44 websites which have stored cookies and other cache files on my computer. Are Google and Facebook the only companies out there doing nefarious things with tracking activity online, even if you've told Safari not to accept 3rd party cookies? That seems doubtful. Google and Facebook may be the largest companies, but probably not the only ones. So maybe it isn't a terrible idea. The question is how to do it. If you try to disable cookies, caches, and everything else from within the browser, you'll find a lot of sites just don't work. Instead, it's probably easier to just let the browser work as designed, but then clean up after it. There are two ways to do this: the manual, GUI way, or the automatic, scripted way. The manual, GUI way is to use the "Reset Safari..." That option will bring up a whole host of "cleaning" options: By default there's no keyboard shortcut for it, but you can make one in System Preferences » Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts. I use Command + Option + R: Note that you need to have that menu item exactly as shown: Reset Safari... with an ellipses ... not three periods. The automatic, scripted way doesn't allow for as careful or selective deletion, but you also don't have to remember to use it. You can automate it with a LogoutHook, which is basically a shell script which runs whenever you log out. WARNING! This script will run as root and is going to use rm -rf which is one of the most potentially destructive commands that you can run. If you make a mistake here, you could delete data, or render your computer unbootable. "Be careful" is an understatement. "Use at your own risk" is another. As always, make sure you have a verified backup before testing something like this. If you aren't sure what you are doing, stick with "Reset Safari..." Create a file anywhere you like. I recommend /usr/local/bin/logouthook.sh and make it executable chmod 700 /usr/local/bin/logouthook.sh and then tell it to clean up after Safari every time you log out. (Strange aside: if you quit Safari, delete Safari's "binarycookies" file, re-launch Safari, and try to access one of the sites which had stored information in the cookies file, Safari re-creates the 'binarycookies' file. That does not seem to happen if you delete the binarycookies file via LogoutHook.) Then you have to tell the system to use that script when you logout. You'll need to enter your administrator password:sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook /usr/local/bin/logouthook.sh Note that the script will delete all of your cookies, local storage, and local "database" files from sites you log into. Plenty of good sites use those technologies to make your web browsing faster, easier, and more enjoyable. Deleting them regularly may be more hassle than it is worth. One of the drawback is that you will be logged out of all the websites which use cookies to keep track of your logins. As always, there is a trade-off between privacy/security and convenience. If you do this, I highly recommend creating 1Password bookmarks for easy re-login for sites you use most often, or create separate Fluid.app browsers for them with separate cookies. What's the right answer? Truthfully, I don't know what the right answer is. For years I have thought that concern about 'cookies' was much ado about nothing, but given the motivation of companies like Google and Facebook to gather as much information about you as possible to sell to marketers, I'm less confident as I once was. Instead, I find myself wondering, why not accept a little inconvenience in exchange for increased privacy? If you do decide to use Fluid.app browsers for Google, you can find some great looking app icons at http://csi.nfshost.com/goodies/. There's also a Flickr group for Fluid.app icons.
Google's iOS search app gets a major overhaul, brings instant goodies to iPad users
Dismayed that Google's previous iOS tablet app was merely a thin wrapper around a glorified web view? That duress ends today, as the company's just released a significant overhaul to its mobile search app -- one that, frankly, makes it worthy of your home screen. Headlining the release is the ability to view search results in a slidable tab, enabling you to quickly oscillate between search results and those you've tapped. Also present are instant searches, which pre-load results as you type, and previews which visually display findings in a spiffy carousel. If you're already sold, take it for a spin at the source links below, but before you go, peep the changelog past the break.
Google search promises to get fresh with you
After weathering some less than enthusiastic receptions to Gmail and Google Reader revamps, not to mention the long awaited launch of a Gmail app for the iPhone, the Google upgrade train just keeps on rolling along. This time out, Mountain View is targeting its real bread and butter: search. Google is harnessing its Caffeine indexing system to offer up fresher results -- a change that will apparently affect around 35 percent of the site's searches. The new results include more up to the minute results, prioritization for recent happenings and more frequent updates.
Google encrypts search for users, paranoiacs unsure how to respond
When Al Gore first created the internet (hard wink, everybody), we're pretty sure the plan was for Big Brother to collect your data, not Silicon Valley titans. Now Google, the company that mainly tends the gates to the web's vast array of information, is stepping up to its "Do No Evil" motto, and making encrypted search the norm -- for account users. While Gmail's long had SSL set as a default login, good ol' Joe Public's had to specifically access Mountain View's dedicated encrypted search page for anonymous surfing privileges. No longer, as Gmail users signed in to Goog's suite of web services will be automatically redirected to https://www.google.com where their searches and results will be hidden from prying eyes. The protection doesn't extend out to web advertisements, so those specific clicks will deliver the same metric-relevant info that helps marketers optimize their hyper-targeting. Any of that put you conspiracy theorists at ease? Good, now you can open those curtains again.
