Hackszine.com: Google Archives

Archive: Google

Page 2 of 3 << 1 2 3 >>

May 1, 2007

Make your own gadget (google)

Make 600
Starting today you can use Google to make your own "gadget" that can be added to your site. From the Seattle PI -

Getting more people to log in to the site is important to Google because it allows the company to log more data that helps its algorithms better understand the nuances underlying many search requests that could have multiple meanings.

With a personal login, "the search engine is your friend and starts to know something about you" Mayer said during a Monday briefing with reporters.

With more knowledge about a person, Google theoretically will be able to deliver more relevant search results and also select ads that are more likely to induce the revenue-generating clicks that generate most of its profit.

iGoogle - Link.

*This is starting to become The Forbin project.

April 25, 2007

Unofficial Google Translate API

The Unofficial Google Translate API is a combination javascript library and php service that allows you to do AJAX-style language translation. The PHP script serves as proxy to Google's Translate utility, passing data to and from Google on behalf of the javascript code.

Unofficial Google Translate API -Link.
Inspired by Philipp Lenssen's Google Translate API "Announcement From 2009" -Link.

April 19, 2007

Google Web History: Give Google Your Entire Browsing History

Google released a new feature called Google Web History. Once you've enabled it, Google will start recording your entire browsing history. It does this by using grabbing information from the Google toolbar that is sent for every page you access when you have Pagerank enabled. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with giving Google my browsing history, but considering how much adsense is out there, they probably have it anyway, right? At least this will add some utility value to giving up your browsing data.

Enabling Google Web History
First off, you'll need the google toolbar installed and running on your browser. Make sure to enable the Pagerank display, as the web history application uses the pagerank meter's communications to base your history on.

Next, go to http://www.google.com/history/. You'll be asked to sign in and then you'll be presented with an option to either "Enable Web History" or "Limit Web History to searches". It's pretty self explanitory - you can have Google only store the history of your searches, or you can go for the full-meal-deal and have every page you visit stored.

Using Google Web History
The service is actually pretty interesting. On the surface, it's similar to your browser's history tool, except that you can search your history using a similar interface to Google's web search.

Additionally, you can filter your history by media category, Ie. Web, Images, News, Video, Maps, etc.

There's also a "Trends" and "Interesting Items" feature which would appear to offer browsing recommendations, presumably by comparing your browsing patterns against other, similar users' behavior. I haven't been using the service long enough to judge how well this works, but it seems potentially useful.

Pause / Resume
If you want to temporarilly disable the history service, there's an included "Pause" button. You'll need to remember to visit the history service and click this before browsing to anything sensitive, but once you've enabled it, nothing is supposed to be recorded. Clicking resume will start things back up.

Deleting your web history
The privacy policy says that deleting your web history will completely remove it from your account, but there is also a note saying that they maintain a seperate log system as a "common industry practice". What the latter means is anyone's guess, but I'd bet they store that information anyway if you're using the Pagerank meter.

Go to the "My Account" link to manage your account.
Under "My Services" lick "Edit"
There's a link to "Delete web history" - click it.
Click the "ok" box and enter your password. Your history will be removed.

Now, if you really don't want Google's giant eyeballs on your browsing data, make sure to turn off Pagerank or completely disable the Google toolbar.

April 15, 2007

Using Google as a Proxy (or HOW TO: View MySpace at School)

Normally when you view a web page, your computer's browsing software makes a connection to the destination server, downloads the page's data, and displays it for you.

This would normally be the preferred way of doing things, but occasionally you'll find yourself on a work or school connection that disallows you from connecting to certain web sites. In these scenarios, what you need is a proxy. A proxy is a server or service that will connect to the blacklisted server on your behalf and send you back the results.

Now, you still need to directly access the proxy server, so it's important that it's not on the blacklist itself. It's very interesting that Google, a host unlikely to end up on most blacklists, has a couple of tools that can essentially act as a web proxy!

Google Proxy Trick #1
The first tool is Google's translation service. This service will dynamically download and translate any web page you request, and if you specify the "to" launguage as English (or your desired language), Google Translate will just spit out the destination document, acting as a simple proxy. Note that you used to be able to set the "from" and "to" language both as English to ensure no translation, but this feature seems to have been removed. However, I've found that if you specify Chinese to English (or anything to english) on an already english document, you usually get the exact text. The bonus of using the Chinese filter is that you can hover over any text and it'll give you the exact original text.

Just replace www.myspace.com in the URL below with a blocked site to see:
http://www.google.com/translate_c?langpair=zh%7Cen&u=http://www.myspace.com/

The only problem with this is that it doesn't proxy any of the images for you. Those are still coming directly from the destination server, so they will likely be filtered and all you'll see is the page text.

Google Proxy Trick #2
The second Google tool that can be used as a proxy service is the Google Wireless Transcoder. This service was designed to make web pages viewable on mobile phone browsers. It will download a destination site's web page, including images, and rework the entire page, on the fly, to fit into an average cell-phone's screen space.

To try it out, go to http://www.google.com/gwt/n and enter the url you'd like to view. You'll quickly see that most of the page formatting has been stripped out, leaving a very simple, single-column page. You'll also notice that all the images are scaled down to mobile phone optimized size. It's a bit of a downside, but google is actually downloading and sending the scaled versions from a google server. So, if you're on a blacklisted site, you'll still be able to view images - they'll just be smaller than usual.

On the plus side, I've found that 99% of MySpace templates look better using the Google Wireless Transcoder.

Update (my poor memory):
I have the long term memory of a goldfish. It looks like Brian Sawyer wrote about this back in January -Link. He also linked to another article on the topic of bypassing a blocked myspace connection, which I've also included below. Thanks, Brian!

Related:

April 10, 2007

Show Full Referring Source in Google Analytics

If you use Google Analytics and you've ever tried to determine what URLs are referring to your site, you may have noticed that the report only includes the file name portion of the URL, excluding the query string. If your referrers are dynamic forums and bulletin boards, this makes it impossible to tell what message or thread has linked to your site. All you may see are a bunch of referrals from "/forums/viewtopic.php" since the full article path is encoded in the query string.

Reuben Yau came up with a nice hack that solves the full-referrer problem. The hack uses urchin's manual javascript tracking mechanism, typically used to track flash events, to register a page view with the full referring URL as the title. Just update your tracking code with the following:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> _uacct = "UA-XXXXXX-X"; urchinTracker(); urchinTracker(document.referrer); </script>

After you've made the change, you'll start seeing referring URLs showing up in the main content reports (as opposed to the "referring source/cross segment performance/content" report). They'll look a little different from typical content, as the content name will contain a full http:// URL. You can then filter the report for "http:" if you only want to view the referrer data.

Google Analytics Full Referrer Tracking -Link.

April 6, 2007

Google voice local search

Logo Sm
Jeez, I just tried this - it worked great.

Google Voice Local Search is Google's experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone.
To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone.

Using this service, you can:

search for a local business by name or category.
You can say "Giovanni's Pizzeria" or just "pizza".

get connected to the business, free of charge.

get the details by SMS if you're using a mobile phone.
Just say "text message".

And it's free. Google doesn't charge you a thing for the call or for connecting you to the business. Regular phone charges may apply, based on your telephone service provider.

Google Voice Local Search - Link.

April 4, 2007

Delete Cached Files in Google Desktop for the Mac?

morerandomgobbledygook in Google Desktop cache

As frustrated as I've been with Spotlight and all that I think it should be able to do but just doesn't quite get right, I was interested in today's news that Google Desktop is finally available for the Mac. Finally, I can search my Gmail account from my desktop and use some more sophisticated search syntax. This could be quite handy and should really put the pressure on Apple to beef up Spotlight in its Leopard release.

But, as is usual with every useful new tool Google releases, this one comes with something that gets me a little nervous (beyond the anxiety associated with the fact that I've become increasingly reliant on Google for so much of my information storage and retrieval). I'm talking about this "feature," pointed out by The Unofficial Apple Weblog:

Thanks to the way that Google Desktop works, it can even search files that you have deleted from your system. Google Desktop creates a cache on your machine that holds information about the various files that it has indexed.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I delete a file, I generally want to delete it. There may be a few occasions when I accidentally or thoughtlessly delete something I'll actually need later, but I'm more concerned with others searching for sensitive material on my computer that I've already decided I want gone, and I'm sure others will find plenty of other reasons for not wanting Google Desktop keeping a cache of their entire file history.

That's why I was happy to find that the TUAW article goes on to suggest that you can actually turn off caching:

Luckily, you can tell Google Desktop not to keep cached copies of deleted files.

That would be great news, if it were true, but it turns out that what I assumed was insider information (based, perhaps, on communication with Google during prerelease evaluation) turned out to be just an ungrounded assumption. I decided to put this preference change to the test, going just just beyond where TUAW ended their own trial.

First, I did everything TUAW did, substituting "randomgobbledygook" (a word I was pretty sure didn't appear anywhere on my computer) for "tuawrocks" in their scenario:

I created a test document that simply said 'tuawrocks,' a phrase that was no where on my computer before I created this file. Both Google Desktop and Spotlight immediately found the file when I searched for the phrase 'tuawrocks.' I then deleted the file, emptied my Trash, and searched for 'tuawrocks' once more. As you would expect Spotlight informed me that there were no files that met my criteria, but Google Desktop had a cached version of the file that I was able to look at (much like Google's web cache that allows you to look at websites that have gone offline for whatever reason).

Looking at the "Search Results" area of the Preferences pane, I questioned the name of the "Display results for deleted documents" (emphasis mine) setting, which suggests that this preference is actually a display issue only, not an indexing or caching change. So, I unchecked the setting:

Don't Display Cached Results

Then, I ran the test again with a file called "morerandomgobbledygook," deleting it after I created it and confirmed that Google Desktop had indexed it. As you would expect, after I emptied the trash, it didn't show up in my search results. But all I had to do was go back into the Preference pane and re-enable "Display results for deleted documents":

Display Cached Results

Then, by gosh, running that search for "morerandomgobbledygook" brought that cached file right up:

morerandomgobbledygook in Google Desktop cache

Clicking on the search result opens the entire file (in this case, a text file) in your default browser, like so:

So, if all you're trying to do is unclutter your search results by getting rid of distracting cached files, you can certainly do that. But beware that you're not actually keeping Google Desktop from creating, keeping, and indexing those (deleted) cached files. I'm looking forward to that ability in a future release ... unless some enterprising hacker out there can give it to me first.

March 26, 2007

Picasa Data API

Take a peek at Google's new GData API for Picasa. In addition to providing RSS feeds for albums, tagged photos and user comments, you can use the API to add and remove photos, albums, comments and tags from your own applications. This might be a nice way to manage image data (and offload image storage) within a web app.

Resources:

March 14, 2007

Google for Music

Google Napster DJ Danger Mouse

The Amazon Web Services Blog reveals a simple search syntax to turn Google into your own personal (free) Napster:

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "Nirvana"

Just replace Nirvana with a song or artist of your choice to display a results page of indexes that contain downloadable MP3s.

P.S. Don't steal music.

Update:

In the comments, JLOCK84 adds:

The folks from I-hacked made a little site that does this for you, G2P.org. Finds music files, as well as ebooks, and can also work as a proxy.

Related:

Google Hacks, 2E

March 7, 2007

Mash Up the Hackszine Tag Cloud

Hackszine Tag Cloud

Love tag clouds? Check out this page, which displays the top 20 search terms that drive people to each O'Reilly domain, including Hackszine. As noted on that page, here are a few things to keep in mind about these visualizations:

The terms are organic, which means that these are terms that someone typed into a search engine (e.g., Google) and then followed a resulting link. (In contrast to a search term that someone entered into our own search box.)
While the keyword frequency does give some idea of what people are looking for, keep in mind that the word had to already be on our site in order for it to appear, and it had to be ranked highly enough for someone to find it.
These are raw search terms, so similar but slightly different terms will appear twice. For example, "web 2.0" and "web 2" may both appear.

Tired of tag clouds? We'd love to see how you'd process the data. Here's the data for Hackszine, formatted as JSON.

February 27, 2007

Hacks Authors' Blogs: One Feed to Rule Them All

Hacks Authors' Feed

Ed note: In this guest post, veteran Hacks series author Paul Bausch takes on a challenge that's been on my todo list for a while, providing a solution that should be of immediate interest to all readers of this site and just might serve as a seed for future hacking around here.

I have a shelf full of O'Reilly Hacks books across a wide range of subjects. I contributed a couple in the Web Applications category, but I also have Hacks books about digital photography, hardware, scripting languages, gaming, and operating systems. The series has introduced me to a number of authors who are doing unusual things with technology in their particular area of expertise. I thought it would be interesting to follow each of these authors outside of the Hacks series by subscribing to their blogs, collectively. I figured it would be a good way to keep up with areas of technology that I'm not necessarily tuned into. I have a collection of blogs that I read to keep up with what's happening in Web Applications, but I don't have a sense of what's going on with gaming, for example.

So I went on a mission to gather the Hacks authors' blogs using the tools I know best: Web Applications. I started with an Amazon power query for books by O'Reilly with "Hacks" in the title via the Amazon API, and ended up with a list of 80 authors' full names. I plugged each name into Google by hand, adding the word "blog" (or if that didn't turn anything up, "hacks"). Then I visited the blog to make sure it was the Hacks author I was looking for, clicked the orange feed button in the Firefox address field to get the feed URL, and copied the URL to a text file. I ended up with a list of 40 feeds. (A 50% blogging rate among an arbitrary group isn't too shabby.)

I plugged the feeds into Google Reader, and renamed each feed the author's full name. Here's what the final list looks like (click for larger view):

Here's the list of feeds as OPML if you'd like to try it: Hacks Authors.

I've only been tuning into this list for a few days, but I'm already getting to know these authors in a new way. And I was right—I am finding out about developments in tech areas I don't normally tune into. I especially found Brian K. Jones's recent post about Fighting Specialization appropriate, something I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Related:

February 22, 2007

Google Apps

150X55-1
Google apps now have a fee version (well, free until April 30th) -- for $50 / year - the 10GB mail option is worth it for a lot of people I bet... Also, check this out -

The 99.9% uptime guarantee for Gmail is offered to organizations using Google Apps Premier Edition.

Google Apps - Link.

Related:

Google goes after Microsoft with software suite - Link.
A Google Package Challenges Microsoft - Link.
Google to launch business software - Link.

The terms of use is like 20 pages, I'm going to try and read it later.

February 11, 2007

Custom Google News for Your Site

Testing out this Google Newsbar I saw on LifeHacker...

Make your own @ Google's AJAX search API - Link.

Tweak the Google with the CustomizeGoogle Firefox Extension

Make 320
I'm setting up a new computer all weekend, so that also means adding a zillion tweaks and add-ons to get stuff done as the week rapidly approaches. One of my favorites is "CustomizeGoogle". Check out the image above and the other search engine links, which you're looking for stuff and need to compare results it's super handy. The extension does *a lot* more - from removing ads to forcing a secure connection for docs and calendar. It's a Google world, we just live in it.

Make 321
If you use Firefox, check it out and post up your favorite extensions.

More:

CustomizeGoogle: Improve Your Google Experience -- Firefox Extension - Link.

Firefox Hacks @ the Maker store - Link.

Google Hacks, 3E @ the Maker store - Link.

February 9, 2007

Call for Hacks: Help the Hacks Team Collaborate

Google Docs

We at Hackszine are all about collaboration, and lately our geographically distributed team has been working on web-based and decidedly non-MS Office ways of doing so. We've been paying particular attention to the Google suite made up of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail, and Google Calendar (and rumored to soon include a PowerPoint alternative), which have generally worked well but have caused some significant hitches as well. Once we all get together on the same document, things have moved smoothly, but it usually takes many failed invitations, foiled uploads, and redirects before we get there.

Ever since Google acquired Writely, the "Email to Google Docs" feature has consistently failed for me when sent from my work email address, requiring me to upload everything from the web interface instead of copying Google Docs with a message that I send to our group with a Word attachment, which would really speed things up for us. So, just getting a document started has been a tedious hassle. But the hassle hasn't ended once the document is online.

This week, Dale Dougherty sent this Google Docs/Calendar request to our group, which I've decided to share with our competent Hackszine readers, since I've been unable to find a workable solution myself:

I've been trying to share a Google Doc with the two Brians. When I use their O'Reilly email, they don't get the message. So I have to use their Gmail addresses. Should I be able to invite anyone with an email address to view or edit a Google doc? Bre sent me an invitation to his calendar using my O'Reilly address and it didn't work--it complained that it couldn't link his calendar to mine. My Google account is set up with my Gmail address. Can someone explain this set of problems--using a non-Gmail email address and your Gmail address interchangeably?

Gcal

Dale's message highlights a problem we've encountered with all of Google's services--namely, that when you're invited to join a document at one email address (that is, when the message actually makes it through spam filters), but the rest of your life is attached to another, you're out of luck. Since I maintain a Google Calendar (shared with others and including others' calendars) associated with my Gmail account, I'm not going to maintain an entirely separate calendar (is that even possible, or wouldn't that still require another Google account?) for collaborations with people who use my @oreilly.com address as their primary means of contact, and there doesn't appear to be any way to merge online identities within the Google system.

Tim O'Reilly puts a finer point on this issue:

The only hack I've been able to figure out is to get people to send me the invitation to both accounts. (I forward all my *****@oreilly.com mail to Gmail, but not the other way around, as that would create a loop, yet I use *****@gmail.com for calendar et al. The alternative would be to make *****@gmail.com my primary email address and forward to *****@oreilly.com.) Seems to me that this is a hidden (maybe even unconscious) power play by Google. There's a race on to get your sticky identity from one site to become your default identity.

This is a good point. Is Google attempting to keep their system closed, locking us into a single online identity associated with their services? If that's the case, it wouldn't be that much better for collaboration than being locked into the MS Office suite, the unfortunate de facto standard for most professional collaboration right now.

So, does anyone have any solutions to this tangled nest of questions? Any specific hacks to help out the Hacks team? In addition to these specific concerns, we'd also love to see any general hacks that help get you use other tools to get things done that would normally require MS Office. This is a hot space on our radar (especially with the launch of Google Apps for Your Domain), both behind the scenes and in terms of what we'd like to cover.