November 25th, 2009

Be a part of Google's latest experiment

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:07 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags:

Do you want to be a part of Google’s latest experiment? Thanks to Philipp at Blogoscoped, you can easily put more color on the Google homepage, and give your search results a permanent sidebar.

[screenshots from Google Blogoscoped]

To install the new version, you just need to visit the Google homepage (make sure you go to Google.com, not the version for your country), then type this into the address bar:

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

The new design has received mixed reviews — some people really don’t like it, and some find it an improvement. Most of the people who don’t like it complain about the colors, and how they are starting to move more towards a Bing-like experience. The ones that do like it think that it gives Google a fresh face after many many years of a relatively static interface. Which camp are you in?

November 23rd, 2009

Microsoft tries toppling Google with a bribe

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:05 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., News Corp., Garett Rogers

Microsoft is bribing News Corp to remove news content from Google’s index. I wonder if Google will suffer much (or any) from such a deal?

Considering Google doesn’t make any money on Google News in the first place, I don’t think they have much to worry about — even if they do lose some traffic.

On the other hand, News Corp is the company set to lose if it happens. Regardless how “valuable” News Corp perceives traffic from Google, it’s guaranteed to be better than none at all.

What do you think?

November 22nd, 2009

GrandCentral closing up shop

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:52 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Phone, Telecom & Utilities, Garett Rogers

The service Google snatched up in 2007 that lets users attach multiple phones to a single phone number is officially closing its doors on December 31st this year. An email went out to users of the service stating Google’s intentions to close the doors on GrandCentral.com.

No big deal though, because Google Voice is GrandCentral’s replacement — and it’s better. If you are currently using GrandCentral, Google recommends you “download any messages or contacts that you want to keep”.

Dear GrandCentral User (UserName):
We’re writing to let you know that we will be closing down the GrandCentral website as of December 31, 2009.

All GrandCentral accounts were upgraded to Google Voice earlier this year, but since that time, you’ve still been able to log-in to your GrandCentral account and listen to old messages there. You will no longer be able to log-in to your GrandCentral account after December 31. Because of this, we strongly suggest downloading any messages or contacts that you want to keep in the next 43 days.

We will send you another reminder before closing down the site, but we suggest you take action now to download any information you want to keep.

November 17th, 2009

Google Image Swirl: Looks neat, but useless

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:14 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Software, Google Inc., Grid, Wireless, Tools & Techniques, Retail, Wi-Fi, Wireless And Mobility, Management, Garett Rogers

I have a problem with things like Google Image Swirl. Not the offering itself, just the strange notion that somehow cool design equals usefulness. There are tons of examples floating around that have the exact same problem — things like Bing’s “Visual Search”.

I’m the lead software designer at the company I work for — our flagship product is an end-to-end retail solution for the wireless industry. If you go to a store in the mall that sells wireless devices, there’s a good chance they use our software.

What does that have to do with anything? Well, building business software, with a large amount of users, using powerful technologies like WPF (that make it extremely easy to create anything you can dream up) forces you to think about usability rather than simply cosmetics — that said, cosmetics can, and should, still play a big part in usability.

Based on my design experience, I have to say that Google Image Swirl is absolutely useless. Don’t believe me? I challenge you to find a really good reason to use image swirl over a typical Google Images search. I guess you can find “images that look the same” like they propose — but why have a completely new and gratuitously “sexy” front-end to something that’s easier to accomplish in existing ways (by clicking “find similar images” under an actual Google Images search result)?

Now let me talk about Bing’s “Visual Search”. Looks great! Useless. If I click on “cars”, a giant grid of tiny thumbnail images in no immediately apparent order, which all happen to be silver and look similar is shown. Thank you Microsoft. I’m never going to use this tool for any real searches.

Remember “Cuil“? It was that new search engine that was supposed to give Google a run for its money. It’s innovative grid view was one of it’s big features. The grid view put results into three columns rather than a simple vertical list of results. Useless. Scanning horizontally and vertically with your eyes is not natural, and actually made it more of an effort to find your desired result. They have since taken more of a one/two column approach — hopefully because they realized that looking cool and different isn’t always useful.

I could go on for a really long time about examples of gratuitous flare — which often equals terrible usability, but I’ll spare you the details. I think I made my point. Now make your point in the Talk Back!

November 14th, 2009

Is imminent Chrome OS launch reckless?

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:39 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Impression, Tools & Techniques, E-mail Providers, Management, Internet, Garett Rogers

It sounds like Google will be releasing an early version of their Chrome OS sometime this week — that leads us to a question of whether anybody will use the new operating system, and if they do, will they like it?

The initial release of Chrome OS will likely be very bare-bones, bordering on useless — but depending on what kind of feedback they get, it may grow rapidly. The “release early and often” mantra adopted by many software companies that use agile practices can be extremely dangerous, however.

When it comes to releasing new software, I hold the firm belief that first impressions are extremely important. Releasing “early” is asking for dissatisfied early adopters — the most important users for any new product or service. This early debt (bad first impressions, and loss of early adopters) is far more difficult to recover from than physical debt collected as result of the extra time it takes to polish the first version of your software.

If Google’s not sure of what first impressions are going to be, an early release of such an important product could be a disaster. In contrast, some of the most successful Google services are ones that had an extremely positive first impression — including Google Maps, Gmail, and Google Voice.

Let’s hear what you think in the TalkBack!

November 11th, 2009

Google can be your alibi

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:14 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Policies And Procedures, Web Site Development, Notebooks, Mobile Applications, Human Resources, Internet, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Garett Rogers

Wrongly accused? Got no alibi? If you turn a new feature released today, Google Latitude lets you retrace your footsteps — complete with timestamps. The fact that you can now re-play your life is a bit creepy, but it’s your choice if you want to enable it or not.

In addition to this new feature, Latitude now lets you do a couple more things that you may or may not find useful:

1) You can have Google Latitude automatically update your Google Talk “status” to reveal your current city-level location.

2) Be alerted if you and any of your friends get close to each other by accident. This feature will only be triggered if:

• You or your friend are at an unusual place, filtering out routine alert cases at home or work.
• You or your friend are at a routine place but at an unusual time.

3) You can now publish your location using a latitude “badge” on your website. You can restrict this to city-level if you’re worried about everyone knowing your exact location.

What do you think of the new features in Google Latitude?

November 11th, 2009

Google gives you movie showtimes in a fraction of a second

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:54 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Movie, Garett Rogers

Google just announced some updates to their feature that lets you get movie times for movies playing in theaters near you. This feature isn’t exactly new, but they have made some pretty great enhancements that make it even better.

Search for a movie that you want to see right in the familiar Google search box. You will notice that you are shown actual showtimes and ratings for that movie right at the top. That was easy.

I actually prefer going directly to www.google.com/movies though — it gives me more of a detailed view, showing me all the theaters in my area, and showtimes for all.

If you click on a movie title, Google gives you a new detail page that covers everything — including synopsis, movie times, rating, reviews, trailer, and photos. Google hasn’t displaced IMDb or anything, but it’s definitely a great one-stop shop for your movie-going needs.

November 9th, 2009

Google spent about $780 million today

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:50 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Acquisition, Phone, AdMob, Gizmo5, Mergers & Acquisitions, Corporate Law, Investment, Finance, Business Operations

Two acquisitions were announced today — together totaling around $800 million dollars. This comes about a month and a half after Eric Schmidt told us that acquisitions are back on. Both acquisitions are significant — but one cost a lot more than the other.

AdMob was the the most expensive acquisition — Google signed an agreement to acquire the company for $750 million dollars. AdMob is an advertising network that has taken root in the mobile app space — something that Google hasn’t done a good job with themselves.

According to their website, they have served over 125 billion ads through the mobile app world. That number looks really good — how could Google not be interested in this company? There is no word on whether there were any other bidders.

The second acquisition we learned of today was Gizmo5 for $30 million. This service is a lot like Skype — in fact, it was a target for acquisition by Skype, but that deal fell through recently.

Gizmo5 is a free service that lets you accept or make free phone calls to other Gizmo5 accounts or SIP phones. In addition to the free calls, you can also make cheap outbound calls to real phone numbers.

In addition to the obvious usefulness of this technology with Google Talk, Google may begin allowing people to place outbound calls right from their computer through Google Voice.

November 8th, 2009

Coming Soon: Free video conferencing from Google

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 11:21 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Google Apps, Video Conferencing, Cloud Computing, E-mail Providers, Internet, Garett Rogers

According to Rishi Chandra (a Google Apps product manager) who talked to SFGate, Google is set to roll out their first update in a long line of updates that will include multi-user video conferencing. The video conferencing will be rolled out soon — the rest of their plan will be executed within the next 12 months.

“This [current Gmail capability] is the first step in a much broader set of features we hope to roll out over the next six to 12 months around video [and voice] chat capabilities,” said Rishi Chandra, a Google Apps product manager. “It’s a great opportunity for us to push that space along.”

Integrating video conferencing across many Google apps, like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, iGoogle, and hopefully even the Google Talk windows client could shake things up quite a bit. I wonder how long until Google creates their own free WebEx or Breeze type product?

November 5th, 2009

See what Google knows about you, kind of

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:47 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Garett Rogers

Google has launched an all-in-one dashboard that attempts to show you what they know about you. It’s basically an updated “Google Accounts” page that gives you more information than was available previously.

The complete list of Google services that are participating in “Google Dashboard” include:

• Google Account
• Alerts
• Blogger
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Docs
• Finance
• Gmail
• Health
• iGoogle
• Latitude
• Orkut
• Picasa Web Albums
• Product Search
• Profile
• Reader
• Talk
• Tasks
• Voice
• Web History
• YouTube

Not every Google service is represented — there are several that haven’t joined the Dashboard camp yet — including the likes of Google Analytics, Google News, Checkout, AdWords.

Saying that you are now able to see exactly what Google knows about you is a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s nice to see that Google is at least thinking about transparency. What do you think?