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November 9, 2010

Google Introduces Visual Previews of Search Results

November 9, 2010, 9:00 AM


Even though most people think searching on Google is fast, Google is obsessed with shaving more milliseconds off the time it takes people to search.
Its latest effort is made public Tuesday, when people reviewing Google search results will be able to preview Web pages without clicking on them, a new feature called Instant Previews.
Google users will see a tiny magnifying glass next to their search results. If they click on that image, they will be able to scroll over any of the search results to view a preview of the Web page without clicking on it.

“We’re trying to avoid the case where you click on a result and you discover pretty much instantly that it’s not what you were looking for and you click back and click on a different result,” said Raj Krishnan, a Google product manager who worked on Instant Previews. “That’s a bad experience.”
He said that this builds on other things Google has done to speed up search, like Google Instant, which predicts what people will type before they type it, and snippets, the lines of text that offer information about the Web site on the search results page.
For some searches, Google will highlight the place on the page where the word appears, so the person doing the search can see the context and location of the word. Mr. Krishnan said it is helpful for people trying to figure out whether the page is about the same person they are searching for, for instance, or whether the topic shows up in the heart of the page or in footnotes.
For a few billion popular Web pages, Google will store the images of the pages. For others, it will generate the preview on the fly, in less than one-tenth of a second, Mr. Krishnan said.
Other search engines, including Google, have offered versions of page previews before. And RockMelt, the new browser, lets its users quickly view Google search results and preview the pages.

Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/google-introduces-visual-previews-of-search-results/?partner=MYWAY&ei=5065

November 6, 2010

Hands on with Google's new Voice mail service -CNET


Updated 10/28/09
at 11 a.m. PT with a tip about checking voice mail from your cell phone.

Setting up Google Voice voice mail online.

Setting up Google Voice voice mail online.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

On Tuesday, Google took another step toward bringing Google Voice to the masses, fulfilling the wishes of those who are curious enough to try Google's brand of visual voice mail, but either too jealous of their mobile number to give it up for a Google Voice number, or too weary to go through the hassle of training family and friends on a new number.

Google now lets you access some key features in the Google Voice service using the number you've always had, and no longer forces you to sign up for a new Google Voice phone number. How? Google Voice can now take advantage of what's called conditional call forwarding. I tried out the new feature today with success, and have some tips to share.

With Google Voice in charge of your missed calls, callers are directed to your Google Voice in-box instead of to the voice mail box that your carrier operates. There, friends can leave a message after hearing the greeting you recorded online. You, for your part, can listen to messages online or from your phone, in any order you'd like.

As promised, setup was easy for this existing Google Voice user. In the Settings menu, under the Phone tab, click "Activate Google voice mail for this phone" next to any phone that you've associated with your account. Then, select your carrier (U.S.-only for now) and dial the string of numbers and symbols you see into your phone. Then dial the number. This sets up call forwarding. While many high-end feature phones and smartphones do have separate menu settings for call forwarding, Google's method of entering the forwarding code is faster and removes the guesswork.

New users have slightly more setup involved. You'll first choose if you want to use your own number or sign up for a new Google Voice account. Then you'll need to enter your Google Account credentials or register an account before setting up your phone.

Using the conditional forwarding service is brainless; whomever calls you hears your Google Voice recording, which you can set up online. You may want to tinker in the settings to forward calls straight to voice mail, or else you could annoy callers with a full ring-through to your mobile voice mail and another ring through to the recorded number. However, leave the setting in its default mode and friends may be able to track you down on other numbers associated with your Google Voice number, if you use Google's number and not your own mobile number.

Forwarding options for Google Voice voice mail.

Forwarding options can cut the time it takes for a caller to get to voice mail, or maybe track you down.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

To send a call straight to voice mail, go to the Phone tab in the Settings menu of your online Google Voice account. Click Edit, then click to see advanced settings. At the bottom is a call-forwarding option that you can switch to send straight to your recording.

If you use the call forwarding option from your cell phone, checking voice mail isn't entirely straightforward. If you're forwarding to a Google Voice number, you'll need to dial your new phone number from your handset in order to get to your in-box options. This is because Google now presides over your messages, not your carrier. Google provides a separate access number for those using their own mobile numbers to access Google's visual voice mail, which you'll get when you sign up for an account.

Using Google's call forwarding is an obvious draw for new users, but existing Google Voice users can also benefit. Turning on voice mail for associated phone joins voice messages left on your cell phone to the Google Voice messages in your in-box online if a friend slips up and calls the old number instead of the new Google Voice number.

New users opting to keep their number should know that they'll lose access to some key Google Voice features, including call forwarding to multiple cell phones and landlines, call screening, call recording, call blocking, and conference calling. Google doesn't allowing upgrading from an account that uses your own phone to a Google voice number yet, but being able to make the switch is in Google's plans. So is the ability to one day port over your own mobile number to Google Voice's full-fledged service.

There are two other points new users should know. First, Google isn't the only service offering free visual voice mail with custom recordings and online management. You Mail has been doing this for some time, and it also has native in-box applications for smartphones like BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone (Google Voice has a native app for Android, plus third-party developer apps for some mobile platforms, like Palm WebOS). In addition, YouMail is already generally available, whereas Google Voice is invite-only. Google will undoubtedly get native management apps for mobile phones in the future, and will scale its service for the giddy multitudes, but if you're not ready to take the plunge with a Google Voice number now, you can still shop around.

Google Voice voice-to-text transcription.

Google Voice's machine transcription is inconsistent at best.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Second, Google Voice for both types of users employs machine transcription to turn your voice messages into text. The upside is that machine transcription is free. The downside is that it is inconsistent at best and useless at worst. It has typically misrecognized most names (including mine), slang, or fast-paced speech. Read-outs are often nonsensical. While Google acknowledges the imperfections, the company also maintains that in most cases you can make out a message's gist. My experience has been opposite.

Users who want more reliable human transcription can subscribe to a premium service like the one YouMail has. Voice-to-text transcription is a premium service that Google will also likely incorporate once Google Voice is truly off the ground, but for now the machine transcription remains for me an amusement rather than a help. Having said that, poor voice-to-text is not at all a dealbreaker for using Google Voice as a whole.

Google Voice is currently available in the U.S. to closed beta users, and to those who receive invites from friends already using the service.

Jessica Dolcourt pits phone against phone as CNET's newest cell phone reviewer and also turns a critical eye to smartphone apps. Email Jessica.

Source: http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10384414-12.html

November 1, 2010

Blekko Search Engine, Where Less Is More -


October 31, 2010, A New Search Engine, Where Less Is More
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, The New York Times



Start-ups and big companies alike have tried to take on Google by building a better search engine. That they have failed has not stopped brave new entrants.

The latest is Blekko, a search engine that will open to the public on Monday. They are at:
http://blekko.com/

Rich Skrenta, Blekko’s co-founder and chief executive, says that since Google started, the Web has been overrun by unhelpful sites full of links and keywords that push them to the top of Google’s search results but offer little relevant information. Blekko aims to show search results from only useful, trustworthy sites.

“The goal is to clean up Web search and get all the spam out of it,” Mr. Skrenta said.

Blekko’s search engine scours three billion Web pages that it considers worthwhile, but it shows only the top results on any given topic. It calls its edited lists of Web sites slashtags. The engine also tries to weed out Web pages created by so-called content farms like Demand Media that determine popular Web search topics and then hire people at low pay to write articles on those topics for sites like eHow.com.

It is also drawing on a fruitful category of Web search — vertical search engines that offer results on specific topics. Many companies assume that Google won the contest to search the entire Web, so they have focused on topical search. Bing from Microsoft has search pages dedicated to travel and entertainment, and Yelp is a popular choice for searching local businesses.

People who search for a topic in one of seven categories that Blekko considers to be polluted with spamlike search results — health, recipes, autos, hotels, song lyrics, personal finance and colleges — automatically see edited results.

Users can also search for results from one site (“iPad/Amazon,” for instance, will search for iPads on Amazon.com), narrow searches by type (“June/people” shows people named June) or search by topic. “Climate change/conservative” shows results from right-leaning sites, and “Obama/humor” shows humor sites that mention the president. Blekko has made hundreds of these slashtags, and users can create their own and revise others.

Mr. Skrenta, who has been quietly building Blekko since 2007, has spent his career trying to improve Web search by relying on Web users to help sift through pages.

He started the Open Directory Project, a human-edited Web directory that competed with Yahoo in the 1990s and was acquired by Netscape in 1998. He ran three search properties at AOL and helped found Topix, the human-edited news site that was acquired in 2005 by Gannett, the Tribune Company and Knight-Ridder.

In some cases, Blekko’s top results are different from Google’s and more useful. Search “pregnancy tips,” for instance, and only one of the top 10 results, cdc.gov, is the same on each site. Blekko’s top results showed government sites, a nonprofit group and well-known parenting sites while Google’s included OfficialDatingResource.com.

“Google has a hard time telling whether two articles on the same topic are written by Demand Media, which paid 50 cents for it, or whether a doctor wrote it,” said Tim Connors, founder of PivotNorth Capital and an investor in Blekko. “Humans are pretty good at that.”

Still, for many other queries, the results are quite similar. Blekko’s challenge is that most people are happy with Google’s search results, which comScore says account for two-thirds of search queries in the United States.

“Most people aren’t saying, ‘I’m just overwhelmed with content farms,’ ” said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land and an industry expert.

Google also enables people to easily search individual Web sites or set up a custom search of a group of Web sites, though it is a more complicated process.

Blekko is also taking aim at Google’s opacity about its algorithm for ranking search results. Blekko offers data like the number of inbound links to a site, where they come from and when Blekko last searched the content of a site.

Blekko has raised $24 million in venture capital from prominent investors like Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway and U.S. Venture Partners. It plans to sell Google-like search ads associated with keywords and slashtags.

Some start-ups that have taken on search have been folded into the big companies, like Powerset, which Microsoft bought in 2008. Others, like Cuil, a search engine started by former Google engineers in 2008, were flops. Blekko’s slashtags could be subject to spam since anyone can edit them, but Blekko says it will avoid that with an editor and Wikipedia-style policing by users.

“They have an interesting spin,” Mr. Sullivan said about Blekko. “It might take off with a small but loyal audience, but it won’t be a Google killer.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/technology/01search.html?_r=1&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065

For a video on how Blekko works, see this link:
http://www.popherald.com/blekko-search-engine/1484