WDYL.com by google – What Do You Love?

www.wdyl.com is Google's new product based search engine that was launched quietly today. WDYL (What Do You Love?) lets you search across all the google products like 'Google Translate', 'Google Trends', 'Google Books', 'Sketchup', 'YouTube', 'Google Alerts' at one place.

As usual the user interface of WDYL is very simple and clean with single search box with a button image of white heart on blue background. Cute... The interesting part is that when you brows WDYL without www., you get a 404 (page not found) error.

Type in search box and click on heart, WDYL will display search result from different google’s products on single page neatly arranged in a grid format. There’s a slider on the left part of the page which you can move to quickly access bottom of the page. A big thing that is missing here is Google search result. I think Google search result was supposed to be the first one to be included in this. I have no idea why Google has excluded "Google Search Result" from WDYL?

The concept of WDYL reminds me of iGoogle, a service that lets you add simple apps/websites to your own personalized portal. Overall, it’s a cool idea. You will be able to browse more of the found content without leaving the page. I also found out a few Google products that I didn’t know existed. Cool Idea but I can’t see much use of it in long term. I am including WDYL in my Google’s failed products list. Just another failed product by Google.


WDYSAWDYL (What Do You Say About WDYL(What Do You Love?)?). Why don’t you try out WDYL with different search query and share your interesting discoveries and experiences with me through comment to this post below?

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Google to scan 250,000 old British Library books

Google Books has an ambitious mission statement: "Google Books is an effort to make all of the knowledge contained within the world's books searchable online."

That's a tall order, but the company will make a dent in it with a new agreement to scan 250,000 books from the British Library.

The books, pamphlets, and periodicals are all out of copyright and come from between 1700 and 1870. This is a nice companion project to the British Library's new 19th Century Books app that will eventually put thousands of old books on your iPad.

To put it in perspective, these books were generated during some famous events you may have heard of, including the French Revolution, the invention of rail travel, and the end of slavery. Google will foot the cost for this mammoth digitizing effort.

The digitized books will be available free online through Google Books and the British Library site. Readers will be able to view, copy, and share the text for non-commercial uses.

Thank you Google. I appreciate it.

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Internet Explorer 9 : First look

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is upcoming new browser by Microsoft. Microsoft has released its Beta version 3 days back on 28^th October. Internet Explorer 9 is Hardware-accelerated HTML5. Internet Explorer 9 moves rendering of text and graphics from the processor, to the graphics card. That means, your website’s contents/images will be clearer and video will play smoother on Internet explorer – 9. When I first came to know about IE9, I had few questions in my mind.

1. is it fast enough?
2. is it compatible with different versions of windows?
3. What are the new security features in this new browser?
4. is it good/cool enough to win back former IE users who have migrated to Firefox, chrome and other browser?

Geek’s review:

The first thing which disappointed me a lot, was the system requirements. IE9 is not supported in windows XP & is only for windows 7 and Vista (32 and 64 bits). Thus answering to my 2nd question of compatibility. Sadly Microsoft has ignored its best OS the Windows XP. How hard is it for Microsoft to make a version compatible to windows XP? I still do not understand why Microsoft is wasting money and time on Vista & why Microsoft wants to kill windows XP?

Any way you can download its beta version from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/download/ie-9/worldwide, the size of the installer is around 19 MB and installation is very slow, frustrating and forces you to restart your system after installation. But in the end I was able to install it on my laptop.

First look of IE9:

Ya, it's impressive. It is clean, simple and very minimalist. The address bar box works both as address bar and the search box. Browser options like home, file, history, bookmarks and tools are shifted to top right of the browser and represented by 3 icons only.

Pin website: IE9 has this very impressive feature to pin your favorite website in task bar as apps. You will just need to drag the favicon from the IE9 box down to your taskbar so that whenever you want to open this website just click on the icon in taskbar.

But how much is the use of this functionality is still to be seen? I really do not want to fill my task bar with different websites. Or my task bar space will not be enough for it. As a developer I would like to develop an app or add-ons which will show me the option to choose the website from pined websites when I do a right click on my task bar. Actually this will be very useful for the user if we integrate this option with “pin the website” feature. Regarding to website apps pining functionality I would say it’s new, refreshing but not much useful.

HTML-5 Test (How well does your website support HTML-5?) : Microsoft says that IE9 supports HTML-5 and CSS-3. But when I did html-5 test on http://www.html5test.com/ IE9 scored only 96/300 when firefox 3.6 scored around 130 and chrome scores 231 out of 300. IE9 is lacking behind in HTML-5 support by a huge margin in comparison to chrome and firefox. But ya, there is definitely an improvement from IE8 to IE9. IE 8 scores only 26 in HTML-5 test.

Speed/Security/other features: I can clearly see IE9 is faster than firefox 3.6 but slower than chrome. IE9 has no default ad blocker integrated with it. IE9 uses SmartScreen filter that warns you if the website that you are visiting contains threats.

Finally, Microsoft has realized where search box should be open when we press Ctrl-f. In IE9 it gets opened in the top of the browser just below URL bar, not like IE 8 which opens search bar in the middle of page.

Well, IE9 is cool, cleaner, simpler, fast and secure. Now all 3 browser giants are at equal level. Browser war is on now. This is a very good move by Microsoft to get back it's browser market share. It will be very interesting to watch how browser users will reply to IE9. For me, all three are equals now. I have more option now. But still my priority will be chrome-> Firefox -> IE9.

Write your IE9 experience or your questions about IE9 as comment to this post. Remember IE9 is still in Beta version. Use it on your own risk.

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GOOGLE INSTANT : Search Before You Type

8th September, The day when Google officially announced and added another milestone to make search easier, faster and efficient. Google Instant gives result as you type. you will get your search result faster than your typing speed.

I have been using it since the last 2 days and I have only one sentence to describe this i.e. “It’s mind blowing.” Here is some more insight to Google Instant and my first impression of it.

Features of Google Instant:

There are mainly 3 features of Google Instant:

• Instant search result: you get your search results before you can type. As soon as you start typing, Google Instant automatically shows results for a popular search that begins with those letters . You get your results before you finish typing your query and hitting enter.

• Predicted result: Google instant predicts what you are going to type next and gives predicted search query in search textbox in gray text. This predicted search query remains until you type next character.

• Scroll to search: Using up and down arrow keys you can scroll to suggestions and you get a updated search result page as you move on the suggestions. No need to click on “google search” button, no need to hit "enter" anymore.

Google says that Google Instant saves 2-5 seconds per search query and I can clearly see that it is saving our search time.

Also, Google has integrated safe search in Google Instant. If you want to search any uncensored adult things, Google Instant doesn’t suggest anything. You will need to hit enter in order to get search result.

Is it really effective? Generally, when we search anything, we have search query or phrases in our mind and we search or type accordingly. Here in Google Instant for every character, the search result page is being loaded or refreshed. The screen is flickering with results while typing query. I think this is very distracting to user.
Also I can not see any improvement in the quality of search results. It is fast and instant but search results are same as what we get in normal google search.

I think Google Instant is targeted at mobile phone users who are going to be the major revenue sources for google in the upcoming years. Predictive search result is similar to predictive text options which are used in smart phones and designed specifically to expedite the speed of typing on tiny keyboards.

Overall, I really like the instant results and seeing how the results change with just the addition of one letter. It will be interesting to see how the public take to it and adapt themselves to new search techniques.

Please let us know your views and experiences of Google Instant.

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Decorate Your Google Search Home Page.

Google is always upto something new. But this time it enters the already trodden path of Microsoft's Bing. Like Bing it would give you an option of personalizing your search background. Bing had this feature right since its launch.

How does one configure it? Its very simple, go to the Google search home page, you can see a link "Change background image" on the bottom left of the page. Click on the link and you get a popup where you can upload your favorite image from your PC, from your picasa album or from google's public album.
Upload the image and you are done. Your favorite search engine page is now customized and personalized for you.

If you really like the old black & white classy background, click on link "Remove background image" and revert your changes.

What is Google trying to prove with this feature? Is Google trying to say that it's main competitor is Bing? I have almost forgotten Bing, but thanks to Google, I am reminded of Bing again. Is Google forcing us to use Bing?

Please write your ideas and views as comments to this post.

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AdSense : Now serving multiple ad networks

I received this e-mail (mentioned below) from Google AdSense Team last week, announcing new feature of AdSense. Now AdSense will be serving third party ad networks along with it's own Adwords.


Hi,

We have launched a new capability in AdSense allowing Google-certified ad networks compete directly within AdSense, which means that advertisers from these third-party networks will be able to compete with AdWords advertisers to show on the Google Content Network.

These new capabilities will automatically be enabled for your account, and you'll see a new section in your Ad Review Center where you can allow or block specific ad networks or all networks except AdWords. Please note that we'll gradually be adding new ad networks to AdSense accounts over the next few months, so you won't see any immediate impact on your ads or your earnings.

To ensure the quality of the ads that appear on AdSense publisher websites, Google will certify all participating ad networks for adherence to our standards for user privacy, ad quality, and speed. Some participating ad networks use targeting methods similar to Google's interest-based advertising to show more relevant ads to users on the sites they visit. These ad networks won't be permitted to collect data from your site for the purpose of subsequent interest-based advertising, but we'll allow networks that comply with user privacy guidelines to show ads using these tools. Publishers can opt out of user interest targeting from these ad networks, and Google has changed our requirements for third-party ad serving to reflect this.

We are currently only accepting ads from Google-certified ad networks in North America and Europe, but we will make this feature available to ad networks in additional parts of the world in the future.

Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

This feature didn't impress me at all but has raised some questions in my mind.
Why AdSense is going to serve third party network?
Is Google AdSense running out of advertisements and advertisers?
Does Google want to prove that It's ad network is the best by providing a common platform for every other network?

I think this new feature will be a killer for many ad networks. As stated in this e-mail, Google still approves the Ad networks for quality, privacy, speed etc. So, there is a chance that some high profitable ad networks may not clear Google Test. Well, I hope that from this new feature, publishers will have access to higher paying ad networks which will increase their ad revenues.

Your views and comments are welcome.

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