Bill Slawski has written a great article on why a search engine might choose something other than meta descriptions for page summaries in search results.
Popular Science Archive
March 2nd, 2010
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Popular Science have made their entire 137-year archive for free browsing on the Internet.
“Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements.”
A fantastic resource.
Google Reader now in real time
February 19th, 2010
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Google Reader now publishes feeds in real time. This means posts appear in Google Reader as soon as they go live on a site. These real-time updates will however only work for PubSubHubbub-enabled blogs.
Every blog on Blogger and Posterous supports PubSubHubbub. If you want to enable PubSubHubbub on a WordPress blog you need to install the PubSubHubbub plugin.
If you use Feedburner to publish your RSS feeds, you can turn on Google’s PingShot service and sent out PubSubHubbub announcements in real time.
Follow site changes to any website
January 26th, 2010
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A new update to Google Reader allows you to follow changes to any website.
Google Reader will create its own custom feed for sites without a RSS feed.
Google on location
January 15th, 2010
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If you use Google on a mobile device you might find that the search suggestion list makes provision for your location.
The search suggestion list is the terms that appear below the text entry field on Google.
For example:
If you are in London and are looking for a sushi restaurant, first on the search suggestion list will be something like “sushi restaurants in london”.
Across the channel in Paris the same query will have as a first suggestion “sushi restaurants in paris”.
This new mobile functionality will currently only work on iPhones and Android-powered devices.
Google Docs for storage
January 13th, 2010
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You an now upload any kind of document up to 250 MB to Google Docs. Larger files can be stored for a small fee. This new functionality adds to the collaborative uses for Docs.
This is just another example of how traditional storage devices is bypassed by online alternatives.
Death to the multitouch, long live bi-directional display
December 11th, 2009
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The MIT Media Lab developed a new bi-directional display (BIDI) that reads your gestures with embedded optical sensors.
The display is lined with optical sensors that track you through the LCD.
A new model acquisition system
December 1st, 2009
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A new model acquisition system is being developed at the University of Cambridge.
ProFORMA: Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition
Google replaces URL hierarchy
November 19th, 2009
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Some Google search results URL’s is showing up as hierarchies.
A URL that links to a search result was normally given at the bottom of the result. It seems that these URL’s are now replaced with site hierarchies.
For example:
You search for Scarlett Johansson.
At the bottom of the result you may have seen:
http://www.domain.com/example/scarlettjohansson
Now you may see:
Domain.com > Example > Scarlett Johansson
Google Translate add new features
November 18th, 2009
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Google Translate recently added two new features to its services.
- Instant translations as you type.
- Phonetic pronunciations for non-Roman alphabets.
