Google Launches New Virtual Reality: Lively
Google has finally launched the long-awaited Lively virtual reality service.
Will it be a SecondLife killer, as some have suggested? So far, no, since it doesn’t have one huge planet or room for interacting with everyone as SecondLife does.
But this is the first baby-step Google has taken into VR, and we can expect them to evolve it further, particularly if the service proves popular. I haven’t tried it out just yet, but the feature descriptions include adding VR rooms to webpages, pulling photos and vids into the VR environments, and tying it closely to Google Talk - Google’s chat service. (more…)
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/08/2008 | Permalink | 
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Filed under: Futurism, Google, technologyGoogle, Lively, virtual-reality, VR
Google Photos To Compete With Flickr?
The Google Operating System blog reports that Google is likely changing the name of their Picasa photo sharing service to “Google Photos”.
A few other features are due to rollout as well, including licensing options, email photo uploads, and tagging of people in pics. (more…)
Popularity: 6% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/01/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Image Optimizationflickr, Google, Google Photos, image sharing, Picasa
Town Forces Google To Remove Pics From Street View
North Oaks, a small town in Minnesota, demanded that Google remove pictures of the town from Street View service.
The town apparently has a strong desire to remain private, and since most streets in it are privately owned, they threatened Google with trespassing citations if the pics weren’t removed.
I’m surprised they would attempt to use a trespassing citation for this, since it seems a little bit odd to have open streets for people to drive along, ungated, even with the “No Trespassing” signs. I would think a more viable claim would be copyright infringement since the town might claim that buildings or streets were marked as private, or if they charge some sort of entry fee for vehicles passing through. A similar claim is apparently possible if one takes photos of buildings/places for which admission fees are charged to see/enter — reselling such photos or making money off of them in some way is apparently actionable under copyright law.
Privacy groups have complained about Google Street View since it was introduced, and Google recently responded by initiating the use of software which blurs individuals’ faces in the streetview pics.
Popularity: 13% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 06/02/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Mapscopyright infringement, Google, Google Street View, privacy issues
Interesting Sights To See In Google Street View
Be sure to check out my collection of cool sights in Street View over at Search Engine Land today.
While the piece is strictly fluffy, it does cover a wide range of pictures that illustrate why people are concerned about privacy with the utility along with why it’s cool and fun to have.
Here’s my favorite pic from the set - a photo that captured a bit of skywriting:
Popularity: 14% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/29/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Mapscandid photos, Google, Google Street View, internet photography
Google to launch ‘Friend Connect’ tonight
Google’s newest foray into social media will launch tonight in preview release at Campfire One. Google’s announcement about Friend Connect states that webmasters may use the service to easily set up social media sharing services on their sites, encouraging online communities to develop and potentially help to promote the site. Google Friend Connect functionality includes user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, reviews, and third-party applications provided through Google’s OpenSocial developer community. (more…)
Popularity: 21% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/12/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Social Media OptimizationFriend Connect, Google, Social-Media, Web-2.0
New Ranking Methodology for Google Image Search
The New York Times is reporting on a new research paper about Google’s new image ranking algo which apparently associates an inferred linking relationship between images and uses the PageRank method of iterating ranking values across the graph to come up with final ranking values. This “VisualRank” method was presented in a paper at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing this past Thursday, and the process was also reported at Techcrunch.
Google’s advancements in Image Search
could help keep high-value image results
like this coastal pic stay high in the SERPs
for apropos keywords, while making less-
important images rank far lower.
The new methodology is apparently very adept at weeding out less-important and less-useful images from the search results.
I have earlier reported on Google’s research into Supervised Multiclass Labeling (”SML”) which can assist with associating keywords with the actual content found within digital images. See also Search Engine Land’s article on Google’s VisualRank Paper.
Popularity: 24% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 04/28/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Image OptimizationGoogle, image-search, Image-Search-Optimization, VisualRank
Travel Searches, Local & More Searches Turning Case-Sensitive in Google SERPs
Some of us at Netconcepts have been noticing that keyword rankings in Google search engine results pages (”SERPs”) have been turning case-sensitive for some queries lately. Search Engine Roundtable highlighted that the case sensitivity issue had been reported for queries seen in the UK, but we’ve been seeing it for queries committed from the US as well.
For instance, search for something like “fossil watches” and compare with “Fossil Watches”, and you’ll see that a few of the listings in the SERPs trade ranking positions:
Popularity: 44% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 04/15/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Local Search Optimization, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Searchingcase sensitive, case sensitivity, Google, Keyword-Rankings, search engine results pages, SEO, SERPs
Google’s Ranking Advice in Blended Search at SMX West
Just a quick post here on some simple tips that David Bailey of Google advised in this morning’s session on “The Blended Search Revolution” at the SMX West conference in Santa Clara:
- Publish high-quality, well-captioned images;
- Have pages which already have good PageRank (use traditional SEO to achieve);
- Create a Google Video Sitemap;
- Update business listings in Local Business Center;
- Submit your feed to Google Product Search;
- Create a high-quality company blog;
Popularity: 67% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 02/26/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Conferences, Content Optimization, Google, HTML Optimization, Image Optimization, Local Search Optimization, PageRank, SEO, Search Engine Optimizationblended search, David-Bailey, Google, SEO, SMXWest08, Universal-Search
Origins of the Google Logo
Wired today has an article on the preliminary Google logo designs - something that aspiring internet commercial artists should check out.
One of the designs is obviously referencing Op Art to give a modernistic feel. Another treats the second “O” as a sort of loose metaphor for the web or to symbolize multidimensionality. Yet another uses a magnifying glass for the second “O” — a much more literal representation for a search engine which we used to see really frequently in the earlier years of the internet (remember stuff like the old WebCrawler logo?).
I think the version they ultimately used is the best/strongest one, even though I think it likely owes something to eBay’s playful/colorful logo.
The original designer of the Google logo was Ruth Kedar, an assistant professor at Stanford at the time. She noted, “I had no idea at the time that Google would become as ubiquitous as it is today, or that their success would be of such magnitude”.
Ubiquitous it is indeed. As I noted two months ago, the frequency of use of the Google logo and its familiarity within the popular culture have been growing to the point of actually being a little bit of a danger from the viewpoint of being able to protect the marks as intellectual property.
The Google name is on everyone’s lips.
Copyright Silver Smith 2007. All rights reserved.
Popularity: 47% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 02/12/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Design, GoogleCommercial Art, Google, Google-Logo, Graphic Design, Logo, Logos
Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky Button Enabling Spam
Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” functionality is apparently enabling a lot of email spam to bypass filters.
When you use the button by entering a keyword phrase and hitting the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, Google sends you straight to the very first webpage in their results that matches that phrase.
Spammers have apparently found that they can embed links like this one for Natural Search Blog to the Google I’m Feeling Lucky functionality, and their emails will bypass filters that would automatically catch lots of blacklisted and spammy-looking URLs. Email filters allow links to search engine results through because many people may genuinely send such links to one another.
It was just the day before yesterday that I wrote about how a guy was using the I’m Feeling Lucky button to enable some cool linkbait involving Chuck Norris. That was a benign use of the application, whereas using it to obscure links to evil spammy sites would definitely be unethical/black-hat.
So, how will this get fixed? I’d expect that Google may have to lock down their “I’m feeling lucky” functionality so that it only works for users referred directly from the Google homepage, and from the Google Toolbar (if the user has enabled the I’m Feeling Lucky button on the toolbar).
Popularity: 40% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 01/30/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, SecurityGoogle, I'm feeling lucky, Security, spam
