Bowietreks

Google Earth T-Shirt

This a new t-shirt design being sold at the Google Store. Click on the image at left to enlarge and read the wonderful text. I love it!! The shirts sell for $15.75, and come in black, with the Google Earth in front and the globe on the back with the phrase "4.7 billion years and still in beta". Sizes S-XXL. 

Source: blog.outercourt.com

Google Mars

Google has launched Google Mars which lets you pan and zoom around the red planet's surface. It gives you three different views: visible, color-coded elevation, and infrared. Markers are included  for locating landmarks like the legendary "face", the less well-known Happy Face Crater and landing sites. Google Mars commenorates the 151st birthday of astronomer Percival Lowell, born in 1855.

This is beautiful. The colors and landmarks are outstanding. I enjoyed playing with it tonight (spent entirely too much time playing with it, actually).

Source: downloadsquad

Google Page Rank Updated

Apparently Google has just completed an update of their Page Ranking system. This blog went from a page rank of three this afternoon to a rank of four just a few minutes ago.

My other blogs, LibrarySupportStaffJobs went from a rank of zero to a rank of five!!; and BattlestarGalacticaPeople went from zero to four.

What a wonderful surprise!!

GMail This Bookmarklet

GMail This is a handy new bookmarklet for sending web content as an e-mail. Some information about the bookmarklet from its' creator:

"GmailThis! is an easy way to make a Gmail email without visiting mail.google.com. Once you add the GmailThis! link to your browser's toolbar, emailing will be a snap. Or rather, a click. Clicking GmailThis! creates a mini-interface to Gmail prepopulated with a link to the web page you are visiting, as well as any text you have highlighted on that page. Add additional text if you wish and then email or save as draft from within GmailThis!"

Source: Download Squad; and Contrapants

Google Blog Search

Google blog search launched today, and it is generating much discusion and buzz around the blogosphere, according to my Bloglines reading tonight. I am too tired tonight, from an ear infection, to write much, but I would like to give my first impressions of the new search service.

The search is extremely fast, which I definitely like. I searched for all four of my blogs, of course, and found the results a little uneven. For one of the blogs, yesterday's posts were found in the search results, but not for the other three blogs.

When I checked my personalized Google search page, I found all four blogs showing all of yesterday's posts. So, the blog search engine is not picking up everything that a regular Google search does.

I tried getting the search results both by ranking and by date, and found some differences in the results. When I searched by date, I found all of my posts for each blog, but not when I searched by ranking. I need to research this a bit more. Being so tired, I might not be seeing what I should see.

Anyway, I mostly like what I see from the search service. I would like to see links in the search results in the future. When I feel better, I will play with it more and get a better feel for it.

Google's Katrina Search Site

Google has launched a search site for Katrina information. The site lists information about survivors and people who are looking for survivors. This information includes cell phone numbers and other contact information, and is aggregated from many other sites.

While it is helpful to have the information all in one place, will the contact information be removed from the web when it is no longer needed?

Source: Inside Google

GMail "Send As" Feature

Google has added a new feature to GMail, "Send As". Click on the Accounts tab in Settings. You will find "Add another e-mail address". After you follow the instructions, Google will send you a verification code to be entered, then when you compose an e-mail you can choose between the e-mail addresses you want to send the message "from". You can also specify a "Reply to" address.

Source: Download Squad

Wildcard Searches in Google

Google has enabled wildcard searching. You may now use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for part of a search term.

Source: BetaNews

Google News Supports RSS Feeds

Google has announced that Google News now supports RSS and Atom feeds for any Google News category or keyword.

Google Fusion Malfunctioning

I have read several raves about the new changes to the Google persoanl page service, Fusion. Apparently some people have a had a better experience with it than I have today.

Last night, when I first learned that RSS feeds could now be added to my page, I added feeds from my blogs to my page, as well as several other blogs I read regularly.

All the new feeds worked fine last night, but today (all day) none of these new feeds are working. I get a message that says "temporarily unavailable". If this had been so for only a short time, I would no be so unhappy about it, but every time I checked today, I got the same message.

I am not happy with this service at all. If I can't see the feeds I want on the page, especially my own, then it is a waste of time for me. I will stay with MyYahoo.

I am usually pleased with all things Google, but not this time. Fusion needs a lot of work to be as good as MyYahoo.