Google instant image search available

June 16, 2011June 16, 2011 Jonathan links google, images, search

Google Instant for Image Search

Google Instant for Image Search
Google Instant is now available for image search results, but only as an experimental feature. After you enable “Instant on Images”, Google will start to autocomplete your queries and show image results before you finish entering the query. It’s a great way to try different queries and see the results almost instantly.

(tags: google image search)

Using Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook 2010

March 16, 2011March 16, 2011 Jonathan tips & tricks 2010, calendar, google, integration, outlook

Post from Google support for integrating Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook 2010

There has been a lot of interest in when a version of Google Calendar Sync would be released that supports Outlook 2010. As some of you have already noticed @salocorgan 🙂, we’re happy (Google that is…) to announce that support for Outlook 2010 is now available! This latest release (version 0.9.3.6) supports the 32-bit version of Outlook 2010 only. 64-bit turned out to be harder so we don’t have it ready yet, but we didn’t want to hold back the 32-bit-supporting version in the meantime.

We just posted the official announcement to the Gmail blog today:

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-calendar-sync-now-supports.html

If you have any issues, please post them to the Sync section of the forum:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/label?lid=69ef18c8639e74cc&hl=en

Happy syncing!

Google Calendar Sync now supports Outlook 2010

Posted by Alice Brown, Google Calendar Team

Making sure that your calendar is available to you whenever and wherever you need it is important. That’s why Google Calendar works with a number of desktop applications and mobile devices including iCal, iPhone and iPad, Blackberry, Android, Nokia/Symbian, and Windows Mobile phones. Google Calendar Sync for Outlook is also available, but one thing was missing — until now.

Google Calendar Sync now supports Outlook 2010 — our top feature request. Outlook 2010 comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and currently only 32-bit is supported. To start syncing your calendar with Outlook 2010, download Google Calendar Sync version 0.9.3.6. Once you install it, a Settings window will appear. Enter your account’s email address and password, choose your sync optionand sync frequency, and you’re done! (Note: If you’re already using Google Calendar Sync, you’ll still need to download and install this new version in order to be able to sync with Outlook 2010. If you need help, take a look at our getting started guide.)

Making Websites Mobile Friendly

February 23, 2011February 23, 2011 Jonathan design, SEO, web google, howto, mobile, websites

Making Websites Mobile Friendly

Making website more mobile friendly – Google article on how to make your website more friendly for those people browsing using a mobile phone. This article from Google looks at both SmartPhones and traditional mobile phones (using WAP, etc.). It then talks about how Googlebot-Mobile trawls your website and the user-agent strings that help it ascertain the information required for mobile phones. The format used being:

[Phone name(s)] (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1;
+http://www.google.com/bot.html)

The article then goes on to talk about:

*/ Websites with only Desktop Experience Content

*/ Websites with Dedicated Mobile Content

New Google search options

January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 Jonathan general, tips & tricks google, howto, search

More Compact Google Search Options

Google used to group the options from the search sidebar so you can quickly find the filters related to location, visited pages and the different ways to present search results. All these groups have been merged and Google only kept the group that lets you restrict the results to recent web pages. Google also removed the “related searches” view which showed a list of related searches at the top of the page and allowed you to compare the results for different searches.

The more interesting options now available include:

Wonder Wheel

A kind of mindmap of your search with links that you can follow easily with related information on the right hand side of the search window. Good option for drilling down into information or looking at the search in a different way.

Timeline

The Timeline search view shows a graph of your search term over time with key dates and events over time. You can see from this view the popularity of the search over a period of time. You can also click into the various date segments and drill down further into the information.

As you drilldown into each segment – it expands to show a more detailed timeline of the search term. Again you can drilldown even further. Good for finding date related search information.

Google StreetView now has 3D View

April 3, 2010April 3, 2010 Jonathan gps, web 3d, google, maps

I notice now that Google Maps StreetView now has 3D view (assuming you have the correct 3D Glasses)

Embed Google Docs document within your web page

April 1, 2010March 16, 2011 Jonathan tips & tricks, web docs, embed, google, iframe

One way of showing a formatted document on your web page is to embed a Google Document as an iFrame within your pageThe iFrame would then contain the document you wanted to view, including the ability to scroll the pages and print, etc. this is a good way to show the final document to your viewers in an easy to read format.The document viewer http://docs.google.com/viewer has two parameters:

1. url: the URL of the document
2. embedded: if set to TRUE the viewer will use the embedded mode interface

So, if you wanted to view a PDF or DOC on your web page you would use an IFrame and the document (PDF, DOC, etc.)

http://docs.google.com/viewer?
      url=http://freesoftware.mit.edu/papers/sturmer.pdf
      &embedded=true

I have created an example of the above page here

If, for example you have a document called ‘test.doc’ the various options to view this document would be:

Paste this link into email or IM:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=test.doc

Or, paste this HTML tag into your blog or website for a link to the viewer:
<a href=”http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=test.doc”>View</a>

For an embedded viewer, use this HTML tag instead:
<iframe src=”http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=test.doc&embedded=true” width=”600″ height=”780″ style=”border: none;”></iframe>

The benefit of using this method instead of just using the native Google viewer is that the user still has the focus of your web page with all the surrounding information and is not taken off to the google site to view the document. You can use this technique to view all supported Google documents, which would be very useful for such things as presentations and spreadsheets. The ifame is the container to hold the document, in the above example the width and height were set to keep the document within the page of the web page, these are of course not required. There are other attributes for iFrames such as the frameborder and scrolling properties. You could also apply some CSS styling to make the appearance more in keeping with your sites theme. for example:

You could use the iFrame generator to create all the basic code for you and then just add your Google document to the src attribute. There is a Google Docs Generator that you can enter a url of a document and then generate all the various links automatically.

Lastly… if you just want to view a PDF or other document online you could go directly to: http://docs.google.com/viewer