Like previous years this year, Google also places a number of logos in the sign of the Christmas / holidays. Google does this every year since 1999 with three to five different doodles. Today is the first and until December 25 every day will see a different logo on the homepage. The alternative text of the logo is “Happy Holidays from Google!”,
When you click on it takes you to the Google Holidays logo page.
The real screenshots of Google chrome OS has finally arrived and we got some exclusively for our iGW readers :). There were rumors’ about Google Chrome OS releasing in a week BUT unfortunately nothing yet. We finally got our hands on the new Google Chrome OS and took some screenshots!
Here is the official screenshots of the Google Chrome OS below.
Click for a bigger picture!!
Google has announced that for certain queries they will be showing site hierarchies in the search results rather than URL’s string information. On first inspection I don’t like the system because in all the examples Google has provided the keyword rich product URL is removed and replaced with a more generic category level keyword.
For example this nice URL “/spidersapien/” (in bold)
This gets replaced with a less clickable “Toys & Games > Robots”
On the plus side the categories in the hierarchy are links through to the category pages on the site but this isn’t clear when you look at them which could lead to confusion.
Here is how the links are generated:
The information in these new hierarchies come from analyzing destination web pages. For example, if you visit the ProductWiki Spidersapien page, you’ll see a series of similar links at the top, “Home> Toys & Games> Robots.”
These are standard navigational tools on web is called “breadcrumbs,” which webmasters frequently show on their sites to help users navigate. Google says ‘By analyzing site breadcrumbs, we’ve been able to improve the search snippet for a small percentage of search results, and we hope to expand in the future’.
What do you think? Is this a good idea? Post your comments below.
There are many websites which host malwares (unknowingly) but they look like pretty nice and authentic sites in order to trap the visitors. Google Safe Browsing tool is a tool developed by Google which helps you to test a website which you think may not be authentic or has malware hidden in the source codes.
In order to check if your site has an suspicious code or malware then, you just need to type the following in your browser address bar –
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=[website url].
For example we checked our site by going to http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=igooglewatch.com
As many of my readers know, the user experience (UX) for OpenID has been a source of confusion and an impediment to broader adoption. That gave rise to an OpenID UX Summit a few weeks ago, hosted by Yahoo and attended by Google, Microsoft, MySpace, AOL, Plaxo, Facebook and many others. It also was a major focus of sessions and late-night discussion at last week’s Internet Identity Workshop. Today, we get to see some of the fruits of those efforts, as Yahoo rolls out (in a limited test) a new implementation of OpenID, currently live with just two test sites, Plaxo and Jyte; and AOL releases preview support for data portability via SREG.
Yahoo’s post describes the details:
Today, we are announcing the start of a limited test of the Simple Registration extension for the Yahoo! OpenID service. The Simple Registration extension allows OpenID RPs to request user profile data from the OpenID provider. Yahoo! will be providing Yahoo! OpenID users the ability to share the following Simple Registration fields for this initial test: Full Name, Nick Name, Email Address, Gender, Language and Timezone. The Yahoo! OpenID user will have full control on whether to share their profile data with the OpenID relying party. We will use the Yahoo! Profiles API to populate the user card which will be presented on the Yahoo! OpenID Review and Confirm page.
Joseph Smarr of Plaxo also has a post on the matter, including screenshots of the improved onboarding flow. As Joseph points out, this is really something bigger than single sign-on; the key is that the identity can bring with it, at the user’s option, some of their social data. This is an important step forward for data portability:
I think we can continue to expect more and more data to flow across the OpenID link, which will make it increasingly valuable for Relying Parties like Plaxo, and should incentivize many more sites to become RPs themselves. It’s great to see this virtuous cycle in motion, and Plaxo is eager to work with any and all OpenID Providers who want to improve their UX and empower their users to use more of their data across the web!
So, if you don’t have a Plaxo account yet, you can sign up for one with your Yahoo OpenID. If you choose to share your basic account info, you’ll land on a registration form that is pre-populated with with almost every field you need to activate your account. You only need to add your birthday and your country. (In a future release, we hope to get those last two fields as well, so we can do away with the form entirely.) Oh, and the user’s language choice will come along, too, so we can drop them into the appropriate localized version of Plaxo. Sweet!
George Fletcher of AOL also has a post on the AOL and SREG, entitled “OAuth and SREG and MapQuest! Oh My!” I’m still trying to figure out where I can go see the AOL OpenID w/ SREG live. Any pointers, anyone?
It’s great to see the pace of innovation on the Open Stack begin to accelerate.
Google’s clever, it knows where you’re opening the google search page from based on your IP address, so if you hit google.com from your browser, and lets say your in Australia then you would be automatically redirected to is google.com.au, same with new zealand or UK it redirects to google.co.nz, google.co.uk etc.
Even if you type in google.com you still get your local Google homepage. American readers may not even know that this regional redirection occurs as they always see Google.com
But what if you DON’T want Google to redirect you to your local\regional home page? There are 3 tricks you can use to stop Google location redirect:
• Hit http://www.google.com/webhp (webhp = web home page), it takes you to google.com
• To permanently turn off the regional redirect always goto: http://www.google.com/ncr (ncr = no country redirect)
• Click on ‘Go to google.com’ on the redirected homepage
If you use the Google Toolbar, you can change the default regional Google.com site you use in the Options.
Try it and post your comments below!
According to reports, Google is about to get into the online music business with the launch of ‘Google Audio.
Two separate reports from TechCrunch and The Street say that the search giant is developing a music service, dubbed as Google Audio, and a smartphone that will not be sold through traditional wireless carriers.
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch quotes multiple sources, saying that Google has “spent the last several weeks securing content for the launch of the [music] service from the major music labels.”
This new service will be available for U.S. users, although it isn’t clear if it’s a download or streaming service, or both. Stay tuned for more on this!
Wordpress 2.9 beta testing starts shortly, and today wordpress has released a hardening patch (getting us ready) for the new 2.9 release.
Somethings to notice in the release of Wordpress 2.8.5:
Also, there’s more, if you think your wordpress blog was infected during the recent exploit attack, there is a plugin that you can install to search the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames.
More information on the Wordpress blog.