Just Googling

Just Googling along seeing what shows up about myself in the omniscient oracle, and I find this. This is a comment I made a few weeks ago on a Digg article that got quite a few hits. And it shows up in an online Linux magazine? The Internet (with a capital "I") is an amazing place.

The Omniscient Google

Google knows everything. Or seems to, anyway. I just opened my Search History for the first time in eons, and wow. Just wow. There is so much information in there about what I search for and when. It knows when I search for things down to the hour (see the screenshot). With data like this from millions and millions of users, Google has an enormous aggregate set of data with a lot of power inside. They can analyze this data, see who is searching for what, when they search for it, and where they're from. They're becoming a huge marketing firm where people come to their door begging for a sliver of insight. They can charge what they want.

Why is this? Information is power. And Google can communicate this information. Through the brilliance of their AdSense program, they can reach millions of people. If people put ads on their site, they make a little money. If they put ads on Google's site, Google makes a little money. Either way, Google is gathering more valuable data.

What does this mean for us? I picture it as "the socialization of information." We may lose some privacy with our information constantly being harvested, but there are also benefits. With all that data about us, they can deliver more relevant results. Google can say "Based on what we believe your interests are, we think you might find this interesting."

This is frightening, but isn't it helpful too?

Google Notebook

Google Notebook is now accessible. It's another incredibly slick product from Google. It's pretty much just an easy way to keep track of things on the web. You can also publish your notebook, so it's kind of like a blog. If you're using Firefox (which you should be anyway) you can download the extension and it integrates very nicely. Check it out.

The Google Cheat Sheet

I just found this really cool "cheat sheet" as they call it. It tells you everything you could ever want to know about Google. Here's some of the things included:

• A complete list of all Google domains
• A complete list of all Google services
• Miscellaneous Google information (Revenue, number of employees, etc.)
• The query structure for Google movie and music search
• Google Calculator operators
• Advanced search operators
• Complete list of official Google blogs

It's pretty sweet. You can view and download it here .

Google Innovations

Google is churning out the goods. Maybe I've just been out of it, but they seem to have a ton of brand new awesome stuff. Google Calendar, Google Page Creator, Nifty Firefox Extensions, you name it. And of course, Gmail is always being updated. Here's some quick synopses:

• Google Calendar - A scheduling calendar. I read about it on a blog where the guy said he was going to stop using iCal for Google's alternative. And, since it's on the web, it's accessible anywhere.
• Google Page Creator - An extremely user-friendly personal website creator. I whipped up my home page in about five minutes. It handles everything behind the scenes. Choose your page "look," choose the layout, and you're good to go. You just enter text and use the controls like you would in a word processor.
• Nifty Firefox Extensions - Now, in addition to their Google Toolbar, Google is releasing extensions for Firefox. I only downloaded the blogging one, but the others look good too.
• Google Base - A quick easy way to share a family recipe, tell the world how you feel about chimpanzees, or whatever you want.
  

It's pretty cool stuff. Who wouldn't want to work at Google?

NOTE: To see a lot of this new, elegant stuff when it first comes out, check out Google Labs and The Google Blog regularly.

Imagine the Google Future

It's kind of scary, but it's also exciting. What does the future hold?

Read the Article

They Just Keep Adding On

Gmail. They just keep adding more and more stuff! When I logged on today, I saw the familiar "New Features!" link and clicked it. Now you can automatically read RSS feeds right above your inbox! And that's only their latest addition. Some of the other new features are virus protection, viewing .pdf documents as HTML, and on, and on, and on.
Oh yeah. There another thing: I now have 2673 MB of storage space. Completely free. Pure and utter insanity I tell you. And, of course, there are no advertisements except for the unobtrusive, completely relevant, text links. Actually, they are quite useful at times. Nothing like the enormous ads on things like Yahoo, Hotmail, or any other webmail.
The one downside to Gmail is you can't just sign up. You have to be invited by someone who already uses it. But, it's not that hard to get an invitation. Just ask someone with a Gmail address for one. Every Gmail user can give out 100 invitation. First it was 6 invitiations, then 50, and now 100.
It's Google. You can't go wrong.

Firefox Google Toolbar

Okay, so I was doing some news browsing the other day and I found a article about the new Google Toolbar 3.0. The article was asking why they haven't come out with a toolbar for Firefox. I'll tell you why: It doesn't need it! The only reason Internet Explorer needs it is because it doesn't have any built in search box, and, if you don't have SP2, it doesn't block pop-ups! I was looking on browsehappy.com and they say that IE is very unsafe. I don't use it unless I have to. I use Firefox all the time. I tried Opera for awhile but it's kind of annoying. Being stuck in tabbed browsing. Firefox hides the tab bar if you only have one page open. It's pretty cool.

So, if you're still using old Internet Explorer, join the rest of us:
Get Firefox

Gmail

Lightning fast is what it is. Gmail I mean. No kidding. It's lightning fast even on my dial-up connection! Incredible. I was invited to try out a free Gmail account about a week ago and well, it rocks. It just flat out rocks. You get one gig of space, you can import contacts from most other email programs (Outlook, Eudora, etc) or services (MSN, Yahoo, etc), and you can invite other people to try it out too! Plus, it's hosted by Google. Can't beat that. You can learn more about it's features here:

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/about.html

I would highly reccomend it for anyone looking for a good email provider, change in email or, something that they can check while on the road. Unfortunately, it's not available to just anyone. You have to receive an invitation from someone to create an account. Oh well. Hopefully it will be available to everybody someday.