In searching for the image for my Aardvark post, I just discovered that Google has added the drop-down suggestion list to Image Search!
I just used it to find the images for this post! As someone who writes 3 (or maybe more 😉 ) blogs, and likes to use relevant images in his posts, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. But this guy can:
According to TechCrunch, Hulu gained 10 million viewers in Feburary, which is an impressive number, but if you look at their chart, what I think is more impressive is the 64.5 minutes per viewer which is second in the top 10 behind only Google Sites (aka YouTube) which had 134 minutes, and 3.6 times more than the next highest average minutes per viewer in the top 10.
Maybe it’s because Hulu rocks the house. I wish CBS and ABC would take note. I would give them more advertising revenue that they are otherwise losing because I’d be all over the past 4 seasons of How I Met Your Mother and the last few episodes of LOST that I haven’t been able to watch yet (and I might even watch Wipeout if I could add it to my Hulu queue).
or: All Your Inbox Are Belong To Us
So, there’s a thing called Google Voice (via TechCrunch). And to quote TechCrunch:
Google also says that full integration with Gmail is coming, but won’t say when. Personally, having all my email, SMS and transcribed voicemails in a single inbox could be life-changing.
Yes indeed. Of course, this post has been skulking around in the background for almost a week, and so I’ve developed a counter-point as well, but let’s start with the positive.
Google Voice is a Google Product, so it has a pretty good chance of being awesome. Being a Google Product, it also has a pretty good chance of sucking, and pretty much no chance of being in between. But since TechCrunch says it’s Very Very Good, then I think the chances of being awesome are pretty good.
As someone who does not have a “smartphone” I would like a phone number that could direct my calls to my home number if I didn’t really want to deal with them, and deliver them to my cell phone if they were important. Of course, since it usually takes 24 hours or more for me to remember to set my cell phone back to Loud after I have to put it on Silent (like for a movie), the announcement of voicemails and SMS in my Gmail seems like a brilliant idea. I also like the idea of getting transcriptions of my voicemails and perhaps even moreso, the ability to save my text messages forever. Storing them in a place where I keep emails that I want to save forever is like getting fouled on a monster dunk.
Of course, if it could also tell me if a SMS message went to anyone else (like, say, and email does), then I would be 100% happy (as opposed to, you know, 99.999%), like getting fouled on a dunk from the three-point line, NBA Jam-style.
I already saw that at least one of my Facebook friends has upgraded from GrandCentral to Google Voice. Lucky b-tard. I don’t even remember hearing of GrandCentral before, but I wish I was part of the in crowd now. If you’re like me, you can find a link here that will give you a form to sign up to be notified when Google Voice is available to everyone.
Here’s the official Google Blog post which doesn’t have much besides a link to the Google Voice About Page. The About Page has a video for every feature (I believe) in the product, though, so that’s pretty awesome.
Since Google’s FriendConnect now has public APIs and Joost de Valk (is that his real name?) already has a WordPress plugin, it seems like only a matter of minutes days until Disqus will add the ability to login through Google to their plugin.
(Would it help if I said Please?)
You can click for a larger view…
I’m not the only one who’s noticed.
Internet Explorer 7 blocking Google AdSense
IE7 disables javascript with the security setting on “high”, which would not allow AdSense ads to show along with numerous features of most websites. IE6 works exactly the same and the phenomenon is definitely not specific to Google AdSense. It is likely that whomever did the test had their security setting on “high”. However, this is not the default setting and we believe most users would not have a good experience on the web having javascript blocked.
I tested with the security setting at Medium-High and Medium and had the same issue, so it’s not just a problem with High security.
And some insight on Internet Explorer 8 which will apparently be doing the same thing. Now, yes, I can see how security experts would be skeptical of AdSense as being a form of spyware, but you could also (and I would think perhaps more successfully) argue that Google Analytics is even worse. (And yes, putting the two together is even worse)
That said, I (and many others) use Google AdSense to make a little extra cash from blogging (not from this blog, mind you, despite the presence of ads in some browsers). I prefer Google’s ads to just about any sort of display advertising which is usually just distracting or annoying, and the face that Firefox, Safari, and Opera (and obviously Chrome) don’t seem to have any issues with displaying Google Ads does make me leary. Microsoft has been known to be fairly anti-trusting in the past, and while the links above explain that the security measures affect more than just Google Ads, my guess would be that the Internet Explorer test suite includes a “security test” that makes sure that Google Ads aren’t showing up.
Nels Wadycki 