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Google

Google Correlate

September 6, 2011

For some time, we ran a popular series on TGR called "Trends" -- you can see 'em all right here. We used Google Trends and Google Insight to uncover interesting behavioral relationships. Now Google has gone and stolen our thunder, releasing Google Correlate to the world. Google Correlate lets you directly compare the search histories [...]

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Demand Media, indeed

July 28, 2011

Jason Calacanis writes: Sad to see Demand Media getting crushed in the market. Demand Media is a content farm (in every negative sense of the word) which (by some accounts) was crushed by Google's most recent "Panda" update that was aimed at removing junk spam Demand Media from search results. So to put this tragedy [...]

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Google Refine

November 11, 2010

Google has launched a new open-source project called Refine (formerly Metaweb's Freebase Gridworks) which allows users to easily clean up and transform large datasets. There is nothing more painful than cleaning data at the command line - I'd even go so far as to say it's impossible to do a good job. Sorry, R. Excel [...]

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Google's programming initiative

July 12, 2010

Google has introduced software that allows non-programmers to create relatively simple Android applications. The program wraps pre-written pieces of code in bite sized visual representations that can be linked together to create complex behaviors. The software can tap many areas of the Android API, including hardware functions like the accelerometer, and can autonomously respond to [...]

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Phishing by any other name...

July 12, 2010

If you visit The Huffington Post using Google Chrome, you'll see this alert bar appear at the top of your screen: It looks just like a standard Chrome alert, sharing the same coloring, fonts and icons as the browser's notification bar. But it isn't. It's generated by a piece of code on huffingtonpost.com and is [...]

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The revolution will be translated

March 9, 2010

From an NYT article on Google's translation services, this excerpt sums up the most critical transition in machine learning that has happened thus far: Creating a translation machine has long been seen as one of the toughest challenges in artificial intelligence. For decades, computer scientists tried using a rules-based approach — teaching the computer the [...]

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Google allows scripting across Apps

January 29, 2010

This is huge. Google has enabled a Java scripting application across it's online Apps suite. Previously available only to premier subscribers, the scripting capability is now open to anyone with a standard account as well. This competes directly with Microsoft's cross-Office VBA, allowing users to build their own applications while using the productivity suite as [...]

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The fine print

January 4, 2010

From the "that's a feature, not a bug" file: I always thought my iPhone's ability to continue email searches on the server (as opposed to emails stored on the phone) was broken, since it never returned any results even for emails I knew existed. Today, I learned that remote search is explicitly not supported, according [...]

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Nexus One: "not very different than the Droid"

January 4, 2010

Engadget has gotten their hands on Google's Nexus One phone and while further details will be forthcoming at Google's press event on Tuesday, they have a pretty in depth preview. The most important takeaway is that despite the iPhone-launch-esque frothing of the technology media at large, this is not a revolutionary phone. A couple weeks [...]

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Hypothetically speaking, of course

December 14, 2009

Aaron Swartz makes some good points about Google, but I just can't keep reading once he invokes a tactic I can't stand (and which sadly seems to be gaining currency): If Microsoft had Google’s market share in search, is there any doubt that they’d be systematically demoting or even banning their competitors in the search [...]

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Google Phone addendum

December 13, 2009

CrunchGear may be focusing on the hardware, I'm going to focus on the competition: the most salient outcome of Google's decision not to partner with a carrier is that people will be able to discriminate among carriers based on network quality rather than phone features. This is big (though lest I sound hypocritical, I dont [...]

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The Google Phone: this doesn't change very much at all (yet)

December 13, 2009

In their usual over-enthusiasm for all things with touchscreens (too soon?), CrunchGear has been gushing over Google's rumored phone. Google has confirmed that they are working on "a device" without further specifics. That hasn't stopped CrunchGear from actually writing: ...if and when Google starts selling this thing, prepare for some of the strangest – and [...]

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Unnecessary summary

November 11, 2009

Has Mashable implemented a word count quota? In a post about Google's new search product codenamed Caffeine, they published a brief four-sentence note from the Caffeine development team... and then went on to summarize the note's "key takeaways" with two bullet points: Since the launch of the developer preview however, we haven’t heard much about [...]

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iPhones support push gmail!

September 22, 2009

Finally. I've been using Google's contact and calendar syncing increasingly, to the point that they are almost indispensable to me. Most critically, when my last iPhone broke I only had to wait a few seconds for my new one to download all of my information from the cloud. The addition of push email completes Google Sync's basic [...]

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Speaking of fast flips...

September 15, 2009

My Google Reader was filled with a lot of headlines on Google's new Fast Flip service this morning, but none of them amused me quite as much as Silicon Alley Insider's confused monologue: 7:45 a.m.: Google's Fast Flip Makes Reading Print Publications Online Easier 8:40 a.m.: Google FastFlip Is A Gigantic Step Backwards 10:29 a.m.: [...]

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Search forecasts

September 8, 2009

Google Insights recently rolled out a new feature: 12 month search forecasts. The forecast comes from a relatively simple decomposition of the search volume into trend, seasonal and residual components. The model's out-of-sample performance is tested on the most recent 12 month period; if that prediction proves accurate, then the model is accepted. Here's what [...]

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A real traffic network

August 25, 2009

Traffic (and cars more generally) are a particular interest of mine - both the algorithmic component (path finding and navigation) and the behavioral/mechanical side (see here). Today, Google announced that they are now crowdsourcing traffic data in Google Maps. This represents a fantastic use of technology, and one which I've often wondered why no one has [...]

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The flow of information

June 16, 2009

This NYT article on Twitter and Iran sums it all up (emphasis mine): “We’ve been struck by the amount of video and eyewitness testimony,” said Jon Williams, the BBC world news editor. “The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over.” It's an amazing and deserved accolade for the young service. But. [...]

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Is Opera Unite the anti-cloud?

June 16, 2009

Opera Unite lets users turn their computers into zero-effort servers, allowing easy peer-to-peer access. Unite: store data locally, access it globally. Cloud: store data globally, access it globally. I'm curious about what advantages there are in Unite, other than strict peer-to-peer uses (i.e. sharing photos with just one other person) and the "I don't want [...]

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Don't Bing me

June 11, 2009

The great Bing experiment has come to an end, having lasted just more than a week. Google resoundingly won. It wasn't so much that Bing's results were bad, per se, as much as I found myself constantly feeling sure that "hmm... Google would have better results." I can't say that Google's results were objectively "better", [...]

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Sponsored by GM

June 1, 2009

I was searching for "GM" (in Bing) and a sponsored ad came up at the top of the results. It said: Official GM Site: www.GMreinvention.com Change at GM is Under Way. Visit the Official Site to See How. I assumed the ad was an outdated one referencing GM's (well, Chevrolet's) "An American Revolution" campaign, and [...]

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Bing me!

June 1, 2009

Reviews of Microsoft's new search engine Bing keep rolling in - and are utterly disappointing. I'm talking about the reviews, not the engine. Invariably, the reviewing site searches for itself followed by a few key words the site finds relevant. The most "helpful" reviews show side by side screenshots of Google and Bing. Forgive me [...]

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Google Wave

May 29, 2009

If Google Wave is successful, will anyone care about Twitter anymore? To me the most exciting thing about Google Wave isn't that it's real time; nor that it's live; nor that it combines email, IM, and social networking; nor that it lets people send photos quickly; nor that it is the first "web application" that [...]

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The Datarati

May 28, 2009

Wired takes a fascinating look at Googlenomics and Google's Chief Economist Hal Varian in particular: Varian believes that a new era is dawning for what you might call the datarati—and it's all about harnessing supply and demand. "What's ubiquitous and cheap?" Varian asks. "Data." And what is scarce? The analytic ability to utilize that data. [...]

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Tuesday trends like an Apple a day

May 19, 2009

All this talk of Microsoft and Apple's relative values sent me quickly to Google, where I pulled up the following chart: The blue line is searches for "Microsoft;" the red is for "Apple." I've filtered it by "Computers & Electronics" to limit the impact of a certain fruit. The blue spike around April first is [...]

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42

May 16, 2009

I am absolutely ecstatic that Wolfram Alpha knows the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Indeed, it comes right back with "42" and a parenthetical citation: "(according to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)." On reflection, it turns out Google knows the answer too, but doesn't cite its source (which I think I actually [...]

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Real time and the data society

May 16, 2009

The Times has gone all Twitterish - a new feature called Times Wire displays stories as they are published. It is the latest effort to cash in on the growing phenomenon of "real time search." The new Times page implies very simply that recency = importance, which just isn't the case, but somehow our need for [...]

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When are users right about design changes?

May 12, 2009

I just saw this article about Google's data-driven design philosophy. It seems Google will not make design choices unless they are backed by quantitative findings that the change is a measurable improvement; users vote with their clicks. Adhering too rigidly to a design philosophy guided by “Web analytics,” Ms. Dunn [of the Stanford Institute of [...]

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Thursday trends are so hot right now

April 30, 2009

Based on the reaction to Monday's Google Trends post, The Don (you may also know him as R) is going to help me with a new regular section analyzing interesting trends and insights that can be found using Google's public search data. We're going to leg into trend analysis with something relatively simple: extracting seasonality and trend [...]

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