Thom "dot com" Craver

Hiding Google’s Options Sidebar

Thom — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:38:29 +0000

Don’t like those new options down the left side of your Google search results? There’s an app for that. Sorry – I got carried away. There’s a plug-in for that.

If you use Firefox or Chrome and you don’t want to see those new search refinement options on the Google search results pages, Bruce Clay’s SEO Tools has a plug-in for you.

Until Google’s recent interface change, you had the option to see tools that would help you refine search results. Now, Google is just forcing them on you. Some don’t like the change. If you’re in that group, enter the Hide Google Options plug-in from SEOTools.com. While it hides the Google toolbar from you, it leaves the option to bring it back with one click, should you change your mind.

The New Google – A How-To Guide

Thom — Tue, 11 May 2010 18:44:54 +0000

So, if you hadn’t noticed, Google changed the way you see your search results. Google is now providing “blended results” – search results that combine pages, news, local locations, images, book results and videos. Previously, Google had what they called “one boxes,” a small box at the top of the search results that was an attempt to guess at what results you wanted to see. These one-boxes have now been integrated into the search results, which now makes it possible to have more than ten result links on a page.

A Google one-box for News results for a search for "Google"

The biggest visible change is the new integrated search options column along the left side. It’s been described as “colorful” and that’s probably on purpose. With it, Google has introduced a wide array of filters and new search options. Click more for a complete how-to on the new way to search from Google.

The integrated column is a graphical set of shortcuts to filter your results for only the type of search category on which you click. For example, if you only want video results, you can click “Videos” and the results will change without leaving the search page. Using this new column of links, you can quickly switch back and forth between various categories. While these categories always existed, Google is now accentuating them and trying to help the searcher better utilize (and notice!) their existence.

A more complete list of Google's search options. (listed side-by-side to save space)

Google has packed a variety of new filters and tools, too. First the filters. You can now sort by date by only selecting pages that were added or updated in the past 24 hours, week, month, year or other custom date range you specify. For example, if you were looking for information oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but didn’t want to wade through links about BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill, you could limit the date range by setting the “To” field to April 19, 2010. This would prevent articles prior to the BP oil rig explosion.

“Nearby” Search

Google will use your IP address to determine what city or geographic location you are in and filter search results to what is nearby to you. This is similar to the “local search” option that once existed. Google’s local search later morphed into the Google Maps search. Now you can filter your results. This provides very similar results to mobile local search results that use your cell phone signal or GPS location to filter local search results.

Social Search

If you have a Google account and if you are logged into it, Google has a custom filter for you. The filter limits your results to “your social circle.” If you have added “friends” to your Google account (or if you had Google Buzz do it for you), this will limit the search results to those in your social circle who have posted something related to your search.

Gid Rid of Those – I Don’t Want Those…

One of the more useful filters allow you to look for specific types of sites. For example, you can look for image sites; that could be Google images, Wikipedia, a photoblog or simply a collection of sites’ image results. Images not your thing? There’s a filter to allow you to choose to see fewer – or more – shopping sites. Perhaps you’re trying to compare features between two HD TVs, but don’t want to see the price war yet. You can choose “Fewer shopping sites” in hopes of getting more reviews. Once you’ve decided and you’re ready to buy, you can choose the ”More shopping sites” filter and let the price wars begin!

The Wonder Wheel

What is it? I can only describe it as a Google Suggest Tool on steroids. It has to be experienced for the full effect. I see this as a great tool for search engine marketers who need to find the long tail of their keyword research.

The tool will take your search results and show you related search phrases others have searched upon. Each click will give you more specific searches in a web-like graphical manner and show results for the current phrase on the right.

Wholesale Changes to Google Analytics

Thom — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:25:37 +0000

The Google Analytics team announced new changes to what they’re calling the Google Analytics Ecosystem. Several announcements were made today at EMetrics. Specifically, the team announced Analytics Apps, new reports for tracking AdWords campaigns, includnig AdWords Search Funnels now available in all AdWords accounts and asynchronous tracking is now officially out of beta. If you hadn’t used it before, you can add the code with these instructions.

Apps are apparently where it’s at. After launching the Google Apps Marketplace, Google has now extended the concept of apps for Google Analytics. Meet the Google Analytics Application Gallery. Currently, there are 32 apps that range from helping you visualize your data better, to integrated plug-ins for WordPress and Firefox.

The concept of the Google Analytics Authorized Consultants has migrated into Google Certified Partners.

Developers – Welcome to the new app marketplace. What to have at it? Here’s how.

Google Addreses Security Issues

Thom — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:29:49 +0000

The joy and pain of Google Apps and other services is the single sign-on system. While it’s great to be able to access online your email, document repository, analytics and other services by only logging on once, it can also open yourself up to a world of information theft if your password is compromised. Combine that with browsers that store passwords, malware and phishing scams, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster if you are not careful.Recently, this single sign-on system came under attack by many security experts. Each of the experts points back to the December cyber-attack on Google and other companies. Shortly after announcing the attacks on January 12th, Google dropped supporting IE6, which is believed to be part of the reason for the attack. Writers at eWeek have their own theories on the security of Google’s single-sign on and how safe it may or may not be.

Google Fights Back

As of Monday, Google has a solution to locking down Google Apps accounts. When you sign into Google, a cookie is stored on your computer. A cookie is a small text file that gets sent back to the site who issued it every time you click on it. In this case, the cookie tells Google that you are signed in and not to ask you to sign in again.

Google has always allowed domain administrators to change passwords. Google is now empowering enterprise users who have implemented Google Apps on their domains to expire any user’s cookies in real-time. This means your domain’s administrators can – essentially – automatically log out users who have logged in. Why is this cool? Here’s a scenario:

Someone steals your password (or worse yet, your mobile phone with a saved password)
They log in as you, change your password, locking you out of your own account.
Having your administrator reset the password won’t kick the person out; it merely prevents them from logging in again. (Presuming they ever log out).
By expiring the cookie, the identity thief is forced to log back in again – but this time, they won’t have the password because the administrator changed it.

It’s a start. It certainly brings more credence to Google Apps for a real Enterprise solution. Time will tell to see how this plays out with the security bloggers.

Why Is Apple So Angry Lately?

Thom — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:59:40 +0000

Is it just me or is Apple in the news for all the wrong reasons lately? For the company that has recently been listed as the #3 most valuable brand, they certainly aren’t acting like a good brand to support. This week:

they have issues with: a careless employee who lost his new iPhone prototype.
they’re still mad at HTC for patent infringement.
they have seemingly burned bridges with Adobe.
they fired an employee for showing the iPad to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak at the launch event a half-hour before it started. Seriously?
they are limiting people from buying multiple iPads.
they’ve clamped down retailers to try to bolster their own sales.

In the meantime, Apple has acquired a second mobile device processor company and is trying for a third. Why is that significant? Because these processor companies control which mobile device (like smartphone) manufacturers can license the latest and greatest processors for their devices. All because Apple doesn’t like competition. Anti-trust anyone?

Wall Street Reacts?

Apple’s stock closed at 270.71 last Friday (before the REACT raid on Gizmodo’s editor). Since then, it’s declined steadily and closed today (Wednesday) at 261.60. It’s a small fall at only 9 points. But Apple is coming off a 26-point jump (from 244.60) since announcing their 2Q earnings only a week ago.

A Recap of Lost iPhone iProbe

Thom — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:50:02 +0000

The Internet blogosphere has been alive for a week now with buzz about the iPhone that an Apple employee left behind in a California bar. In a nutshell:

March 18th: Apple employee Gray Powell leaves his iPhone 4G prototype in a bar.
A college-aged gentleman finds the phone and tries to return it.
After Apple ignored him, he tried to contact Wired and eventually contacted Engadget and Gizmodo.
A Gizmodo editor agrees to help him return it to Apple and paid him for an exclusive story.
Apple tracked down this individual at his home, whom the police have identified, but will not release his name.
April 19th, Apple asked Gizmodo to return it and Gizmodo agreed and returned it Monday (April 26th).
In the meantime, Friday (April 23rd), REACT (the CA computer crimes division) obtained a warrant to search the journalist’s home; which they did and seize his computers, servers and UDB drives because they were suspected of being “used to commit a crime.”
The San Mateo DA’s office still claims they are “still not saying it’s a crime.”
In the meantime, the editor retained a criminal defense lawyer, while the prosecutors defend their seizure, but say they won’t investigate just yet.

Oh, and as an FYI – Apple is one of the 25 companies on the REACT steering committee and asked for the criminal probe. The Silicon Valley Blog has a great iProbe recap. The EFF calls it OverREACTing.

It’s the Apple Patent Tennis Match

Thom — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:43:05 +0000

Apple has always tried to overextend patent rules. Their new iTunes Concert Ticket patent shows that clearly. Many claim that the patent goes beyond concert tickets. Kit Eaton at FastComany calls it “bizarre and breathtaking in its scope.” Apple was beat to the mobile ticket game. So how can they claim the patent?

Apple is still pursuing HTC for patent infringement; 20 patent infringements to be exact. HTC’s (a large Android phone developer) response is that Apple copied HTC first. Today, however, Microsoft signed a patent agreement with HTC that might trump Apple’s case. I wonder if this has anything to do with TechCrunch’s exaggerated claims that Android Web usage is higher than iPhone’s? SFGate says the numbers aren’t accurate and I do agree on this one.

In the meantime, there’s now claims that Apple infringed on Nokia patents and Apple infringed on Elan Microsystems patents, too. Tennis, anyone?

There is a Lifetime Limit on How Many iPads You Can Buy

Thom — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:40:00 +0000

If you’re the parent of twins who are graduating from High School or have a birthday coming up, don’t go to an Apple Store to buy them iPads and expect to get one of your own, too. Apparently there is a limit to how many you can buy. It might be two. But Apple Store “Geniuses” don’t have that information.

Apparently a medical student who had legitimate reservations to buy iPads was trying to help overseas friends get their iPads, since they were only for sale in the U.S. After purchasing several, he was denied the right to purchase iPads. There is apparently a “lifetime limit” on them.

The Apple Store employee would not give any information, repeatedly dodging they customer’s questions stating “you have reached your lifetime limit” and “I do not have that information” over and over.

And they call these guys geniuses?

A Recap of Lost iPhone iProbe

Thom — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:38:02 +0000

The Internet blogosphere has been alive for a week now with buzz about the iPhone that an Apple employee left behind in a California bar. In a nutshell:

March 18th: Apple employee Gray Powell leaves his iPhone 4G prototype in a bar.
A college-aged gentleman finds the phone and tries to return it.
After Apple ignored him, he tried to contact Wired and eventually contacted Engadget and Gizmodo.
A Gizmodo editor agrees to help him return it to Apple and paid him for an exclusive story.
Apple tracked down this individual at his home, whom the police have identified, but will not release his name.
April 19th, Apple asked Gizmodo to return it and Gizmodo agreed and returned it Monday (April 26th).
In the meantime, Friday (April 23rd), REACT (the CA computer crimes division) obtained a warrant to search the journalist’s home; which they did and seize his computers, servers and UDB drives because they were suspected of being “used to commit a crime.”
The San Mateo DA’s office still claims they are “still not saying it’s a crime.”
In the meantime, the editor retained a criminal defense lawyer, while the prosecutors defend their seizure, but say they won’t investigate just yet.

The Apple-Adobe Apple-Google War

Thom — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:36:45 +0000

Apple has their panties in a wad about Adobe for a while now. Specifically they don’t like Adobe’s shortcomings with Flash. Fine, so the iPhone and iPad will never have Flash and will keep showing the blue box.

HTML 5 isn’t official yet. But Apple is behind it because it reduces the need for third-party software like Flash (Adobe) and Silverlight (Microsoft). Who cares, right? Those are just two pesky little companies anyway. But the behavior of both Adobe toward Apple and Apple back at Adobe are deplorable.

Et Tu, Google?

Apple has also forged a war with Google. Simply put, AppSteve Jobs hates Google for trying to kill the iPhone. Unchallenged for the past four years, Apple finally hates that they have real competition? Are you serious? Oh wait, that’s what all those patent claims are all about, aren’t they?