Google Analytics Finally Launched For Bloggers

Among the many collections that Google has had on its plate over the past two years, and now -- The good news for some enthusiastic Bloggers, Google has quietly moved up the analytics game with their latest feature set in the analytics tool: “Google Analytics for Blogger” has officially entered private beta.

And the discouraging news for Measure Map bloggers: existing analytics data from the original Measure Map cannot be transferred into the Google Analytics / Measure Map platform.

Back in February 2006 Google purchased the Adaptive Path’s innovative set of blog traffic measurement tools called MeasureMap. Since then Jeffrey Veen and his team have redesigned Google Analytics and integrated new features such as Website Optimizer with great success.

“Its key feature was providing blog proprietors with a near-real-time geographical plot of where its readers originated from, along with key data as to what readers were interested in and what they responded to.”

The private beta stage, as its name designates, something that companies often comment on, and on the Official Google Analytics Blog, Group Manager Brett Crosby acknowledged, “We usually do not widely announce private-beta programs.”

But he then continued, “We are moving all existing Measure Map users (including many prominent bloggers) to this new interface. With all the exhilaration around it, we knew we could not keep it a secret, so we decided to let the cat out of the bag early.”

Jeff Veen made the announcement of the latest Google Analytics for Bloggers reporting interface several weeks ago at South by Southwest and had this to say: “the team has been hard at work fulfilling our original promise: to help bloggers understand the impact that their blogs are having on the world. To that end, we have rebuilt Measure Map as an integrated feature of both Google Analytics and Blogger. We hope you like what you see.”

“We are offering our earliest users of Measure Map a chance to use our latest service, built on the powerful Google Analytics platform and continuing to use the interface you are familiar with,” reads an excerpt of the e-mail posted by one blogger whose principal subjects include, among other things, blogging itself.

At present, Google Analytics is a complimentary tool best suited to commercial sites whose goals include driving readers to specific pages, and often converting those readers into customers. Bloggers have other goals in mind; they are intrigued by more personal data about readers’ statistics and their interests.

“I bet I check my stats a half-dozen times a day, anxious to see if anyone has linked to me or see what posts are most popular today,” wrote Google’s Veen, whom the company assigned to the MeasureMap team since February 2006. “Our users agree -- whether their audience is just friends and family or thousands of readers -- they are having more and more fun with their blogs and investing more time in them. And that means content across the web is getting better.”

Google plans to work out all the frizzles and issues using the beta over the next year before they release it to the general public. When it finally is released it will be an optional reporting tool in both Blogger and Google Analytics.

An email invitation sent out to all former Measure Map users telling them their accounts would be transferred to the new application -- sans historical data -– and they were invited to test the new software.

Though each one plays the waiting game, we will be sure to report any indications of how Analytics for Blogger is performing.  Crosby warned that there could be some hiccups, yet the fact that there was a big announcement hopefully indicates it's in somewhat solid shape.

How To Make The Most Out Of Google

Labs
Try out new Google products

Product Search
Search for stuff to buy

Pack

A free collection of essential software

Weather To see weather conditions and a four-day forecast for a particular U.S. location, type "weather," followed by the location. Usually a city name will be enough, but you may also want to include a state or zipcode. For example, to see Palo Alto weather, you could search for "weather palo alto, ca" or "weather palo alto 94301."
example:
All weather conditions and forecasts are provided by Weather Underground, Inc.
Travel Information To see delays and weather conditions at a particular airport, type the airport's three letter code followed by the word "airport." For example, San Francisco International Airport updates can be found by searching for "sfo airport."
example: Enter Man for Manchester Airport & Same shorter codes for other UK airports.

To check the status of a U.S. flight, type the name of the airline followed by the flight number. For example, to see the status for United Airlines flight 134 search for "United 134."

example: Films

To find reviews and showtimes for films playing near you, type "films", "showtimes" or the name of a current film into the Google search box. If you've already saved your location by using Google Local, the top search result will display showtimes for nearby cinemas for the movie you've chosen.
example:

To find cinemas and showtimes near you for a currently playing film, simply search for the film's name.

example:

Can't remember a film title, or just looking for something new to see? You can use the "film:" operator to search for films related to a specific actor, director or plot detail.

example:

Want to read about the films you find? Your search results for any film will include an average rating out of 5 stars and several snippets from online reviews, along with links to the reviews themselves. Click the "reviews" link near any title for a complete list of online reviews of this film.

Local Search

Google Local enables you to search the entire web for just those stores and businesses in a specific neighbourhood. Include a town or postcode in your search and Google displays relevant results from that region at the top of your search results.

example: Q&A

Want to know the population of Japan? What currency is used in Algeria? The birthplace of Bono? Hit us with a fact-based question or query (like "population of Japan") by typing it into the Google search box. We'll search the web and display the answer at the top of your search results page. We also link to our source for this information so that you can learn even more.


Find the rest of the features below Google Web Search Features In addition to providing easy access to more than 8 billion web pages, Google has many special features to help you to find exactly what you're looking for. Click the title of a specific feature to learn more about it.

• Book Search - New! Use Google to search the full text of books.
• Cached Links View a snapshot of each page as it looked when we indexed it.

• Calculator Use Google to evaluate mathematical expressions.

• Definitions Use Google to get glossary definitions gathered from various online sources.

• File Types Search for non-HTML file formats including PDF documents and others.

• Films - New! Use Google to find reviews and showtimes for films playing near you.

• I'm Feeling Lucky Bypass our results and go to the first web page returned for your query.

• Images See relevant images in your regular web search results.

• Local Search - New! Search for local businesses and services in the U.K., U.S., and Canada.

• News Headlines Enhances your search results with the latest related news stories.

• PhoneBook Look up U.S. street address and phone number information.

• Product Search To find a product for sale online, use Google Product Search.

• Q&A - New! Use Google to get quick answers to straightforward questions.

• Search By Number Use Google to access package tracking information, US patents, and a variety of online databases.

• Similar Pages Display pages that are related to a particular result.

• Site Search Restrict your search to a specific site.

• Spell Checker Offers alternative spelling for queries.

• Stock Quotes Use Google to get stock and mutual fund information.

• Street Maps Use Google to find U.S. street maps.

• Travel Information Check the status of an airline flight in the U.S. or view airport delays and weather conditions.

• Weather - New! Check the current weather conditions and forecast for any location in the U.S.

• Web Page Translation Provides English speakers access to a variety of non-English web pages.

• Who Links To You? Find pages that point to a specific URL.

New Reports from Google Webmaster Tools

Mobile Crawl Validation

I've talked before about the importance of watching the queries that come to your site via mobile devices. Mobile usage is in a state of rapid growth, both in terms of raw searches as well as the types of queries people are using on these devices.

Recently, Google Webmaster Tools began showing a report in its Diagnostics section called "Mobile Crawl." This report tells Webmasters whether Google's mobile crawler experienced any particular CHTML (Compact HTML) or mobile WML/XHTML (mobile wireless markup language/extensible HTML) errors during a crawl of their site.

If you run this report for yourself, remember some important things.

* Full validation doesn't necessarily imply a great user experience. Google's report will tell you about crawling errors, but it won't tell you about graphics that took 12 minutes to load before any text showed up.

* Crawling errors don't necessarily imply a poor user experience. Plenty of terrific sites have validation errors, yet they're invisible to the user and engines have no problem finding key content.

Consequently, the Google Mobile Crawl report is important in showing errors that can potentially stop a mobile crawler in its tracks. But one of the single most effective diagnostic tools you can use on your site is simply to visit your site from a mobile device yourself, such as a BlackBerry, iPhone, or other Web-enabled phone. This will tell you a great deal about how engines and users navigate through your site's mobile version (if you have one). One example of a terrific mobile presence is The New York Times, which redirects to mobile.nytimes.com when you're using a mobile device.

Mobile crawling is important for search in two distinct ways. First, remember that more "traditional" search patterns are emerging from mobile devices. Mobile searches are far more comprehensive than the stereotypical search for directions or for restaurants in a specific ZIP code. People are using their phones to search for the same things that they search for from their desktops.

Second, Google's search algorithm for mobile devices is similar, but not identical, to its algorithm for desktop devices. Typically, for example, the mobile SERP will contain fewer than 10 results, which affects the SERP due to domain clustering. That means your site might not have an additional indented, second URL appear on the SERP if that URL's true position is lower than sixth place.

Google Webmaster Tools Widgets for iGoogle

This is already a couple months old, but in case you don't follow the official Google Webmaster Tools blog, Google released widgets for your personalized iGoogle home page that correspond to traditional Webmaster Tool reports.

This means that in addition to your iGoogle tabs for local weather, Gmail, Reader, Calendar, and so on, you can now create a tab that lists the following Google Webmaster Tools reports:

* Crawl errors

* Content analysis

* Top search queries

* Subscriber stats

* What Googlebot sees

* External links

* Internal links

* Sitelinks

The usability of these gadgets isn't perfect. It's often difficult or impossible to scroll through large lists (such as lists of URLs showing external link counts), and you need to click over to the main Google Webmaster Tools page to find anything beyond the superficial anyway. So it's helpful as little more than a dashboard, but for many day-to-day Google Webmaster Tools metrics, that's enough because they change infrequently.

In my opinion, the two most helpful widget windows when viewed from iGoogle are the Crawl Errors and Content Analysis reports, because there's no need to scroll, and because you can click directly over to specific error reports.

Conclusion

I'm continually disappointed with the low numbers of online marketing staff who have taken the time to verify their sites through Google Webmaster Tools. Somewhere there's a lack of communication. The verification process, which is a little like learning to ride a bike, intimidates some people. Others have no issues with verification but are apparently unconvinced that it's worth the time. Still others have no idea that Google Webmaster Tools exists. I'll continue to evangelize on the benefits of taking advantage of the tool sets that all engines make available. But the engines need to do some additional promotion themselves.

Google note this, notebook feature

Here is something fun that you can do on Google, if you have a Google account. Note some of the interesting web pages that you come across Google search. There are lot of such cool features on Google that we miss. So it is suggested that you have a Google Account before you search on Google.

The screen shot shows the Google notebook. After making the search, below each search result, you can see the note this link (only if you have a Google account). When you click on the note this link, a box will open up asking you for some additional details. With note this feature, you can have an online bookmark list. Google is also doing its part to get into the social bookmarking region.
Keep looking around in Google, you will find many features like this. Let us know if you know any.

Microsoft: we'll keep 'chipping away' at Google

Microsoft has said that it will continue "chipping" away at Google in the market for internet search, but warned that there would be no magic bullet to increase its share overnight.

The software giant said that its 5 per cent share of the UK search market was "a long way from where it needed to be", but added that it was "in the game for the long haul" and would do "everything it could" to attract more consumers to its search product, Live Search.

The remarks - made by Chris Dobson, the acting head of Microsoft's online services group in the UK - came as the company announced a major overhaul of its search offering to incorporate a greater number of images on the results page, as well as maps and other location-based features.

There will also be a new feature called Celebrity xRank, which will chart the 'performance' of celebrities and other personalities in the news based on how many search queries they generate.


"There's certainly no 'killer app' which will mean we'll have 30 per cent share in search overnight, but it's always been Microsoft's view that you can be in the long game if the game's worth being in in the first place, and we think search most certainly is," Mr Dobson said.

"Ultimately we don't want to be a 'Me too!' product that is simply compared with Google. We want to offer next-generation search. We think we're at the beginning of the journey with search, rather than the end."

At present Microsoft, which is in the process of a $41 billion takover bid for Yahoo!, the struggling internet portal, handles only 4.2 per cent of the search queries conducted in the UK - compared with Google's 79 per cent. Search is seen as a key plank of its overall 'online services' strategy, however, as an increasing proportion of companies' advertising budgets is spent online.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, has said he would like online advertising to be a $10 billion business for Microsoft - but has not specified by when. In the last quarter, online services brought in about $834 million in revenue for the company - approximately 6 per cent of overall earnings.

Mr Dobson said Microsoft was now in a good position to deliver an 'end-to-end' advertising solution, which incorporated not just search advertising - the paid-for links that appear alongside search results, and banner adverts - those that appear at the top of the page, but also 'bidded display' adverts.

The latter, which are similar to banner ads in that they are usually graphical or interactive in nature, sit on other sections of a website and are auctioned off to advertisers.

As a result of the $6 billion acqusition of aQuantive, the online advertising platform, last year, Mr Dobson said, Microsoft now knew much more about the internet population at large. Users' registration data have provided details of age and gender, as well as records of the sites that they have visited.

That meant it could help advertisers target customers in ways that were not possible with older methods. "If you're an advertiser, you need to get away from thinking 'I want to sell a car so I better go to the car channel' and start thinking 'How do I find a 16-24-year-old male?'"

Display adverts would gradually come to account for a greater proportion of the overall online advertising spend, he said, as companies came to realise the value of having their brand appear on a site and weren't solely focused on getting users to click on an advert, he said. The so-called 'pay per click' approach to advertising has largely been driven by search advertising.

At present, search advertising, in which Google is the runaway leader, accounts for about half of the overall online advertising spend.

The new Microsoft Live Search platform goes live globally tomorrow.

Adobe opens up Flash, but leaves out Google and Apple

In a well timed move today Adobe announced the Open Screen Project and lifted restrictions on the use of Flash related specifications. The initiative is supported by several industry leaders including ARM, Intel, LG, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, and Verizon. Notably absent from the list were Google and Apple, creators of the Android and iPhone platforms respectively.

While Flash players have always been free of charge and some Flash tools are open source, until now Adobe has kept tight reins on the format that the player consumes. “Previously, in order to look at the SWF specification you had to sign a licensing agreement not to use it to create competing players,” writes Adobe’s Ryan Stewart, “but in the interest of expanding the reach of the Flash Player we’re removing all of those restrictions.”

Adobe is also publishing the device porting layer APIs for their Flash player, and removing all licensing fees. With this change, any handset manufacturer (*cough* Apple *cough*) who wants Flash to run on their device can do so without paying Adobe a dime. That’s assuming, of course, a version of Flash player has been compiled for the specific processor used by the device. With ARM and Intel on board, the two major mobile architectures are covered.

The reason I say the announcement was well timed is that it came two days after comments from Mozilla warning developers not to rely on proprietary technology like Flash, and a week before the opening of Sun’s JavaOne conference in San Francisco. Java powers many of today’s mobile programs, and Java and Linux form the foundation for Google’s upcoming Android platform.

“You’re producing content for your users and there’s someone in the middle deciding whether users should see your content,” said Mozilla Europe founder Tristan Nitot at a conference Tuesday. “If Adobe or Microsoft decides to compete with you and you’re using their technology, you cannot compete.” Nitot says that HTML5-compliant browsers from a variety of vendors will provide much of what people use Flash for today such as audio and video. This is true, though people use Flash for much more than that. Increasingly, it’s being used for entire rich internet applications.

The source code for the Flash player is still closed source and proprietary, but removing restrictions on licensing and even looking at the format specifications goes a long, long way towards alleviating fears of vendor lock-in. This will give a boost to open source players like Gnash and swfdec. While it’s unlikely that the open source players will ever catch up to the performance and features in the official Adobe player, it’s nice to have the option to get the technology from multiple places in case something happens to Adobe such as, say, getting acquired by Microsoft.

The IBM-Google connection

LOS ANGELES--Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt gave a speech and chatted with IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano onstage Thursday at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference here. The two talked up their relationship, which primarily involves a joint research project. In October, Google and IBM announced a cloud computing initiative, based on Google's expertise in distributed, parallel computing and IBM's industrial enterprise management technologies, for public use by universities.

IBM is taking some of the learnings from the project and plans to operate a cloud that will allow partners to house their Web-based applications and sell them to customers, Palmisano said. "It is the first time we have taken something from the consumer arena and applied it to the enterprise," he said.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt joins hands with IBM CEO Sam Palmisano.

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

Schmidt said that over time there won't be much differentiation between consumer and enterprise architectures. The major difference is that enterprise customers will pay for software and services, with required security and other features, and consumers won't.

Schmidt gave IBM lots of credit for pioneering many of the technologies that underlie today's computing architectures. He noted that IBM, which has about 87 years on Google, has figured out that the underlying platform is a server and Web services.

"Cloud computing is the story of our lifetime," Schmidt said. "Eventually all devices will be on the network." Both IBM and Google, and a host of competitors, have the same idea, which was actually first promoted by Sun with its "the network is the computer" slogan. Google figured out how to monetize the fruits of the pages its massively parallel servers manage.

IBM wants to provide the infrastructure and support services to the planet, and Google wants to provide the world's information, and some applications, on its platform. "The two companies are great and have lots of innovation in their gene pool," Palmisano said. "There isn't a lot of overlap in the strategies." Both are committed to open standards and an open Internet, and they are both going in the same direction, he added.

Google's YouTube captures 10 hours of video every 60 seconds, and IBM might like that business if it could figure out how to make money at it. But eventually, IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Google, and other big players will look more similar in their technical architectures and business models.

Google and IBM have more in common than a shared view of the world and an academic research project. It turns out that Google outsources its accounting to IBM and that Schmidt considers IBM's sales organization important to Google's enterprise software efforts.

As more companies look for Web-based tools, mashups, and standard applications, such as word processors, Google stands to benefit. "IBM is one of the key planks of our strategy--otherwise we couldn't reach enterprise customers," Schmidt said.

While IBM isn't selling directly for Google in the enterprise, IBM's software division and business partners are integrating Google applications and widgets into custom software solutions based on IBM's development framework. The "business context" is the secret of the Google and IBM collaboration, Schmidt said. Embedding Google Gadgets in business applications, that can work on any device, is a common theme for both Google and IBM.

Currently, Salesforce.com is selling Google Apps as an integrated part of its platform. It's not far-fetched to think that Google would seek out IBM's help with its business partners to spread the Google word in the enterprise.

Google Help Files: Download Tips

All Google services have help centers that include information about features, tutorials, troubleshooting guides, but if you ever need to find the information in a complicated hierarchy of topics or use the search box, or  you ever want to get a help file for Gmail, Google Docs or for Google Desktop so you can print it or save it on your computer?

Fortunately, there’s a way to save all the information related to a Google service: append ?fulldump=1 to the address of a Google help center. This doesn’t work for all Google services, but here’s a list of addresses that dump all the information from a help center (note that the pages are very large and are frequently updated):

• Gmail Help
  
• Google Calendar Help
  
• Google Docs Help
  
• Google Spreadsheets
  
• Google Presentations
  
• Google Reader Help
  
• Google Video Help
  
• YouTube Help
  
  
• AdSense Help
  
• Analytics Help
  
• Google Desktop Help
  
• Picasa Help
  
• Google Toolbar for IE
  
• Google Toolbar for Firefox
  
• Google Earth (PDF)

IBM To Launch Web-Based Application Market

IBM said it's planning to launch a global, online marketplace for software applications under a plan it's calling the Blue Business Platform.

The marketplace will feature a mix of business applications and services aimed primarily at small- and mid-sized companies, IBM announced Thursday at a conference in Los Angeles for its business partners.

IBM said it believes that the Web-based model will allow it to tap smaller companies around the world, which it says represent a $500 billion IT market that it has trouble serving profitably through traditionally sales channels.

IBM said the marketplace will offer pre-integrated products and services from IBM and independent software developers. Customers will be able to use the software they buy "on premises or in the cloud," IBM CEO Sam Palmisano said Thursday during an address.

Palmisano also revealed Thursday that IBM is working with Google to build a worldwide network of connected servers, an architecture sometimes referred to as a computing cloud, from which it plans to deliver software and services.

The online store will be organized geographically and also by industry. Customers will be able to purchase software or services in just four clicks, IBM said. The company plans to pilot the marketplace throughout 2008. It did not say when it plans to formally launch the service.

IBM on Thursday also unveiled a new server for small businesses.

The Lotus Foundations Start server includes Lotus Notes and Domino for e-mail and collaboration, as well as security, backup and recovery features. It's aimed at SMBs with little or no IT support and it can be deployed in as little as 30 minutes, according to IBM.

Google Analytics feature request…

For a free package, you cannot beat Google Analytics. But now surely we are getting to the point where the clever engineers behind the scenes are building a list of new features that will be bundled into a ‘premium’ package, where a subscription fee will be levied.

Personally, I would be over the moon if this were to happen, because then we would be able to request features with more of an expectation that they will take them seriously (not that they don’t now, it’s just that if we paid for it then they would have to take us even *more* seriously).

One of the good things about GA is that they keep your analytics data for a very long time. We’ve had our account with them since 2006, and being able to go back that far to analyse traffic and behaviour is very powerful. Sometimes though, it would be nice to be able to delete or ignore some data - for instance one particular institute in Tempe, US, decided to build a bot that executes javascript and then crawl all over our site. For the most part, we can happily use GA in the knowledge that most spiders don’t execute javascript, but this javascript-executing-bot now appears in my GA data (as GA data-collection is javascript driven).

So I’ve got this nasty spike of data that I’d just like to be able to select, then hit the ‘ignore forever’ button.

I guess, that when Google do decide to tap into the thousands of organisations that really want more features and are happy to pay a premium, this would be one of the many features I’d ask for… as well as more Goals, better page-flow analysis, page-rendering-time data, more than one custom dimension, the ability to break out traffic from Google across the country-specific domains, etc etc etc…

Google Docs Update Adds More Offline Features

Google Docs has rolled out some welcome new features for the company's online office suite. Most notably Speaker, Google's Microsoft PowerPoint alternative, now allows offline access.

At the moment the offline features are limited to viewing, but that allows you to give a presentation without needing an internet connection. The Docs team had previously released limited offline features for other Google apps like Spreadsheets and Presentations. The offline features require the Google Gears plugin (which, regrettably, still isn't Firefox 3 compatible).

Speaker also has a new feature dubbed Notes, which allows you to add notes and make them available in both print and presentation modes. Also new is the ability to embed YouTube movies if you’re looking to spice up your dull presentations with some video. The YouTube tools come with their own custom movie player embedded in your presentation. Unfortunately the new features are YouTube-specific, creating a lock-in with Google’s video service.

Other new features in Google Docs include the ability to save searches as custom views. There’s a new folder pane under a “Saved searches” label, where you can access your saved searches. To create a new one just click “Show search options” and, once you’ve run your search, hit the “Save this search” button and give your custom search a name.

Another new feature for Google docs fixes a small but annoying problem — Google Docs captures your right-click actions and presents its own menu of options rather than the system wide, default right-click menu. While Google’s context menu is helpful when you want it, it was annoying to have to move out of the window to get to the normal right-click menu. Fortunately you can now get to the system menu by holding down the Shift key while you right-click in Google Docs.

While Microsoft is finally starting to ramp up its own online office components, Google Docs is far ahead when it comes to on/offline functionality. Google Docs real competitor at the moment is Zoho’s online office suite, which offers similar, and in some cases, much more impressive features.

Improving Google Image Search Using Implicit PageRank

Image search engines have a very limited usefulness since it's difficult to accurately describe images in words and since search engines completely ignore the images, preferring to index anchor texts, file names or the text that surrounds images. "Search for apples, and they haven't actually somehow scanned the images itself to see if they contain pictures of apples," illustrates Danny Sullivan.

Image analysis didn't produce algorithms that could be used to process billions of images in a scalable way. "While progress has been made in automatic face detection in images, finding other objects such as mountains or tea pots, which are instantly recognizable to humans, has lagged," explains The New York Times.

An interesting paper [PDF] written by Yushi Jing and Google's Shumeet Baluja describes an algorithm similar to PageRank that uses the similarity between images as implicit votes. "We cast the image-ranking problem into the task of identifying authority nodes on an inferred visual similarity graph and propose an algorithm to analyze the visual link structure that can be created among a group of images. Through an iterative procedure based on the PageRank computation, a numerical weight is assigned to each image; this measures its relative importance to the other images being considered."

The paper, titled "PageRank for Product Image Search", assumes that people are more likely to go from an image to other similar images. "By treating images as web documents and their similarities as probabilistic visual hyperlinks, we estimate the likelihood of images visited by a user traversing through these visual-hyperlinks. Those with more estimated visits will be ranked higher than others." To determine the similarity between images, the paper suggests using different features depending on the type of images: local features, global features (color histogram, shape).

The system was tested on the most popular 2000 queries from Google Image Search on July 23rd, 2007, by applying the algorithm to the top 1000 results produced by Google's search engine and the results are promising: users found 83% less irrelevant images in the top 10 results, from 2.83 results in the current Google search engine to 0.47.

For example, a search for [Monet paintings] returned some of his famous paintings, but also "Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil" by Renoir.


It may seem that this algorithm lacks the human element used to compute PageRank (links are actually created by people), but the two authors disagree. "First, by making the approach query dependent (by selecting the initial set of images from search engine answers), human knowledge, in terms of linking relevant images to webpages, is directly introduced into the system, since the links on the pages are used by Google for their current ranking. Second, we implicitly rely on the intelligence of crowds: the image similarity graph is generated based on the common features between images. Those images that capture the common themes from many of the other images are those that will have higher rank."

For now, this is just a research paper and it's not very clear if Google will actually use it to improve its search engine, but image search is certainly an area that will evolve dramatically in the future and will change the way we perceive search engines. Just imagine taking a picture of a dog with your mobile phone, uploading it to a search engine and instantly finding web pages that include similar pictures and information about the breed.

In 2006, Google acquired Neven Vision, a company specialized in image analysis, but the only new feature that could be connected to that acquisition is face detection in image search. Riya, another interesting company in this area, didn't manage to create a scalable system and decided to focus on a shopping search engine.

Picture searches currently rely on text cues to help decipher the image but, according to Google researcher Shumeet Baluja, the majority of image searches hardly use any image information to rank the pictures. Instead search engines such as MSN, Yahoo and Google itself rely on text on the pages in which the image is embedded. This can, however, throw up unrelated results.

With this in mind, Google researchers developed VisualRank, an algorithm that identifies themes in pictures and then ranks images on how similar they look to other photos that contain the same themes.

Google Talk: Google’s Communication Services

Google’s online communication service, Google Talk has different versions: Google Talk, Gmail Chat, Google Talk Gadget, and Google Talk Labs Edition, which offers different features, like: you can transfer files only in Google Talk, chat with AIM contacts only in Gmail, get calendar notifications only in Google Talk Labs Edition and upload pictures from webcam only in the gadget. It’s quite confusing to switch between all these implementations of the same service. Apparently, the main reason behind the launch of Google Talk Labs Edition was to unify these versions in a common platform.

From Ollie’s Google Talk Guide post on Google Groups:

We certainly haven’t forgotten about our client users and we’ve been listening to your comments (here, in the Google Talk Help Discussion Group, and on the feedback forms). We hear you loud and clear; you love the client and you want it to have all the great new features that have been added to Gmail Chat or the Google Talk Gadget. We know that it’s important to be able to chat inside and outside of your browser and that it’s important to have a full array of features at your fingertips in both places. In short, you want to be able to choose how to connect to the Google Talk service without having to make any major feature trade-offs. We’re completely with you on this one — we want that too!

Now, I suspect some of you are thinking: if you’re with us on that, why aren’t all features available on the client right now? Well, we’ve got a lot on our plate here at Google Talk and we’re always negotiating what we can get done. At the moment, we’re focusing our energy on developing platforms that will let us make Google Talk better for all our users, whether they want a web-based experience or a client experience. There is still much to done, but we’re committed to continually improving the Google Talk user experience for everyone.

Microsoft's Deadline to Yahoo Expired Silently

Microsoft's deadline to Yahoo for accepting its offer has expired silently without comments from either side. Yahoo is apparently not willing to accept the offer of $31 a share, arguing that it undervaluates the company. The initial offer made by Microsoft on February 1 was $31 a share, adding up to a grand total of approximately $44.6 billion but after a downfall in Microsoft’s shares, it is now worth about $42 billion, still making it, if finalized, the biggest-ever takeover in the high-tech industry.

Jerry Yang rejected Microsoft's bid saying that it undervalues the company. Yahoo asked for a $12 billion raise in Microsoft’s offer, which has not happened so far. It is common knowledge that Yahoo has been searching for a backup option to Microsoft’s offer, discussing different partnership scenarios with Google, AOL and the News Corporation. However, no deal has been struck or announced.

Microsoft gave an ultimatum to Yahoo in a letter sent on April 5, stating that if the two companies will not begin negotiations on a definitive agreement within the next three weeks, they will take the case directly to the shareholders and start a proxy contest to elect a slate of director for the Yahoo Board.

Microsoft’s mission to take over the Yahoo Inc Company can be better understood now as reports show a below the target profit and a small decrease in share prices.

Apparently, Microsoft’s core business, the globally known Windows, is beginning to slow down, bringing revenues in its client unit to $4 billion from last year’s $5.3 billion. One of the main issues is the slow adoption rate of Microsoft’s newest operating system, Vista, which presents some low-interest new features for the majority of users. The new interfaces need some time to get accustomed to and the incompatibility of Office 2007 documents also causes problems.

The business division was also below the target. The company’s developers and analysts expected revenues of at least $4.8 billion and the reports showed $4.7 billion.

Last month, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said the company is not in a hurry to merge its technology platform to that of Yahoo. Ozzie commented in an interview with the Financial Times that “technology companies, if they dive in and just smash things together for smashing them together’s sake, it’s reckless, it’s just simply reckless,” adding that Yahoo has its own technologies and corporate culture.

At the same time, Ozzie declared himself optimistic that Microsoft will be able to achieve its main goals if the deal with Yahoo will materialize, as long as they will focus on giving users and advertisers the same experience, rather than rushing into getting financial benefits from the deal.

New Features For Google Docs.

The Google Docs team has been hard at work on numerous aspects of the online office suite, and they’re ready to unveil the new features to the public.

Speaker, Google’s answer to Microsoft PowerPoint, received some new features this week, according to the Google Docs Blog. First is the addition of Speaker Notes, which allows the presenter to access chosen highlights of their presentation. These can either be printed out in advance, or you can pop them up on the screen to show off to your audience. You can also now embed videos from YouTube. This could be quite useful if you wish to beat the dead horse further and “Rickroll” a room full of people in the middle of a presentation.

The Docs Blog is also reporting that the offline access feature enabled through the Google Gears plugin has also been added for spreadsheets and presentations. Unfortunately these will be view-only for the time being, but it will at least allow you to show off your work wherever you need to go, and make presentation wherever you choose, regardless of whether you have an Internet connection at the ready.

With the continuing improvements to Google Docs, Microsoft has sufficient reason to be nervous about their future sales of Office. They themselves are building an online version, but with the ease of use of Docs, and quick access/integration with Gmail, it’s going to be more difficult to convince some people to leave the Google empire. As more and more companies learn of their ability to inexpensively make Gmail their default domain email client, and allow multiple users in the company (even those located in remote settings) to collaborate on projects for free, the company’s list of productivity applications will grow more appealing for users all around the world.