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Google wants to help make you a better bartender
If you've ever searched for the name of a capital city or a celebrity's place of birth, then you'll probably be familiar Google's Knowledge Graph. It's a cool little feature that picks out and displays the answers to questions, saving you from clicking through all of the links in your search results. After recently equipping it with the ability to dispense health advice, Google now reckons you might need a little help refining your bartending skills. Yep, you're going to cocktail-making school. A simple "How do I make a ..." search will list the main ingredients and recommended garnishes for your chosen cocktail, as well as the correct glass to serve it in. While it can't (yet) teach you all of the cocktail-making flicks and tricks that you might see in a Las Vegas bar, it'll certainly help improve the quality of those homemade Happy Hour refreshments.
Google starts highlighting health facts in search results
Google throws a lot of services at the wall, and unfortunately, Google Health never stuck. However, Mountain View is now taking another crack at the subject through its Knowledge Graph. To remind you, that's basically a box of info and images that appear when you search for historical events, figures or objects. For example, typing in "Leonardo Da Vinci" brings up a quick bio and images of the Renaissance man, while entering "Mona Lisa" shows a card on his best-known oeuvre. The same will now work on various diseases: for instance, "cold symptoms" brings up a card showing "nasal congestion, nasal pain and irritation and sneezing" and steers you toward the National Health Service for more info in the UK .
Google redesigns search to make space for more info, kick the sidebar to the curb
Google loves to tweak its search results whether or not it's something we'd ever notice. Even the most casual of visitors might notice its latest change, though. The Mountain View crew has dropped the sidebar on the desktop in favor of moving everything to drop-down menus up above. It's ostensibly a reflection of the company's tweaks to its mobile page that should scale elegantly through different screen sizes, although a key goal is to fit in richer results: images, the Knowledge Graph and more all have extra room to breathe with the update. Americans tracking down election results will be the first to see the extra-wide view, and they should be followed by everyone else as soon as Google can flick the switch. We'll be content enough knowing that the company isn't spreading sidebars everywhere.
Google Knowledge Graph explains related content, finds the six degrees with less Bacon
We had a bit of a laugh with Google's Kevin Bacon calculator. Not everyone needs to tie their searches to the star of Footloose, though, which is partly why Google is pushing out an update to its Knowledge Graph that explains how searches turn up related items. The effort is starting with actors, celebrities and their links to any movies and TV shows they've starred in. Looking for Orson Welles and mousing over Rita Hayworth's portrait reminds us that the two luminaries were married for years, for example. We won't know when the more intelligent searches will expand, but at least we won't be quite so confused if the animated Transformers movie appears next to Citizen Kane.
Google's revamped voice search coming to iOS, tackles Siri on her home turf
Google has been offering the ability to search the web with your voice using its iOS app for some time. But, it always just spit out a pile of links. While the next version wont be getting quite as creepy as Google Now, it'll be bringing with it the vocalized responses that debuted as part of Jelly Bean's revamped search offerings. The UI is also getting an overhaul to bring it inline with Now and Mountain View's recent aesthetic tendencies towards sharp lines and limited color schemes. Obviously, the new app also taps the Knowledge Graph, allowing you to make natural language queries like, "what's the weather like in San Francisco," and get a detailed vocalized response. According to Google the update should be hitting the App Store in "the next few days," but don't expect it to keep tabs on your favorite sports team for you.
Google Knowledge Graph coming to all English-speaking nations tomorrow, adds lists to results
Google launched its contextual and intelligent search service, Knowledge Graph, only a few months ago. Till now, it's been limited in its availability and, while most nations will still be left out, tomorrow it will be coming to all "English-speaking" countries. The ability to discern your intended search goal and present you with relevant information immediately, as opposed to just a page of links, is the next step in search technology and the secret sauce powering the somewhat creepy Google Now in Jelly Bean. The Graph has also received a few enhancements and tweaks, including the ability to answer queries with collections and lists. So, say you're looking for rides in Disney World, a thumbnail of every attraction will appear at the top in a horizontally scrollable list. How much longer till our Spanish, French or Chinese speaking pals can get in on the action? That's anyone's guess. But, if English is the native tongue of your home, then rest assured your flavor of Google has just gotten a little bit smarter.
Google Now gets an epic 47-question interrogation, survives for now (video)
You've seen us give Google Now a shakedown in our Jelly Bean review, but one JLishere decided to give the voice command system an unusually thorough grilling. The 47-question test goes beyond what Google showed onstage at I/O and shows that, in some cases, Android's new rival to Siri can cover a wide range of answers, whether it's day-to-day queries like directions and image searches to more esoteric trivia, like the minimum height for riding Disney World's Space Mountain. There's even a special treat for those who dare to bring up Google's best-known Easter egg. That said, we wouldn't be too eager to kick earlier voice command systems to the curb: we've tried a few close variants on the questions and sometimes managed to stump Google Now, so it's clear Google could stand to layer on some more polish. JLishere's original video evidence is available after the break.
Bing one-ups knowledge graph, hires Encyclopaedia Britannica to supply results
It may have retired from the cut-throat world of print, but Encyclopaedia Britannica is enjoying a renaissance by supplying results to Bing. Search for a topic and a Knowledge Graph-esque box will offer supplementary information to help you on your way. If it's a topic that the Britannica editors haven't gotten around to covering (Jersey Shore, for example) then the search engine will instead pull the information from Wikipedia, Freebase and Qwicki. Now we're just hoping Bing doesn't plan to revive those door-to-door booksellers, we're a sucker for a good sales pitch.
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.
