What’s New @ Google?
Amit Chowdhry | Thursday October 5, 2006 | 342 views
Google decided to go crazy recently by releasing a large number of applications for the Internet community in such a short span of time! Here’s a quick rundown on the new (and fairly new) Google products:
Google Accessible Search – is a web search designed for the visually impaired. The basic idea behind Accessible Search is to provide an ad-free environment and let the results from a search take up the entire page width, thus making results easier to read and makes it less straining on the eyes.
Google Code Search – is a developer tool that can be utilized to search for programming scripts available on the Internet. Code Search literally searches for code on the internet from various file types such as C++’s .cpp and .h files that may have been uploaded to someone’s FTP or HTTP addresses. I have also seen .java files and .php file types also included in results. This is similar to Microsoft’s MSDN.
Google Groups Beta – For those who have not used Google Groups before, the way it works is that you can create a group and invite others to join or be invited to a group. Once you are part of a group, to send an e-mail to the entire group, all of the e-mail addresses are connected to just one e-mail address created by Google. This is similar to e-mail lists on corporate Intranets/Extranets or university listservs. Google one-upped themselves by adding new features to Google Groups Beta by adding a more personalized feel to the service such as group website storage, file-sharing, and profile visualization enhancements.
Google Literacy Project – Google teamed up with UNESCO and LitCam to form The Literacy Project. The Literacy Project is a collaborative effort to provide videos and other forms of media that stress the importance of being literate through means of Google technologies. Not only that, but Google will be adding an academic paper search features and harvest blogs/group discussions revolving around the spreading of literacy techniques. Google will also flag the Google Earth software with notable literacy projects around the globe.
Google Music Trends – What makes Google Music Trends interesting is that the website captures statistics from your and music players belonging to others. Google sums up the data on the Music Trends homepage. The music players must be Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes or the Yahoo! Music Engine. Also, you must enable Google Talk to capture the information from your music player and report it to Google. Google Talk does all with complete confidentiality, but does maintain your listening history in your Google Search History page unless you disable it.
And lastly…
Google Transit – allows users to plan trips in various cities, but is currently only available in Florida, Hawaii, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Google Transit had imported schedules from several transportation services such as Hawaii’s Oahu Transit Services, TheBus.org. As Google Transit begins to include more transportation services, it would be extremely useful for those that rely on the public transportation industry.
Related Posts:
Categorized under Google
If you liked this post, subscribe to the Pulse 2.0 RSS feed.
