Guide To Using Google Discover Google's Buried Treasure

REFERENCE SERIES VOL. 9 ISS. 5

Guide To Using TABLE OF CONTENTS

All About Google

4 Organizing The World’s InformationHow Google Became The “Word” On Everyone’s Lips

9 Find The Digital NeedleGoogle Helps You Take On That Haystack

13 The Way Of GoogleIt’s More Complicated Than You May Realize

17 Test Drive These ToolsThe Newest Ideas Are At Google Labs

22 Privacy PleaseGoogle’s Privacy Policy Serves & Protects

23 How’d They Do That?Google’s Simple Interface Masks A Powerful Search Engine

The Search

26 Gateway To The WebHow Google Can Help You Find What You Need

30 Helpful HintsGoogle Suggest Streamlines Your Search Time

31 One In A BillionAdvanced Search Options Help You Find What You’re Looking For

35 Image Search ElementsGoogle’s Not Just For Text Anymore

38 Read All About ItGoogle Offers Personalized News

42 It’s Not Cheap, It’s FroogleYour One-Stop Online Shop For Finding The Best Deals

46 In The NeighborhoodGoogle Local Helps You Find Everything From Pizza Places To Pet Stores

49 Google AnswersCall On A Professional For Your Toughest Questions

52 The Ultimate Card CatalogGoogle Print Is A Digital Bookshelf

55 Are We There Yet?Google Maps Revolutionizes Online Mapping

59 Smart SearchesGoogle Scholar Pinpoints Scholarly Research

61 Boutique SearchesSpecialty Search Engines Help You Narrow Your Search

Google and the Google logo are either registered trademarks or

trademarks of Google Inc. in the United States and/or other coun-

tries. The Reference Series: Guide To Using Google is not pub-

lished in conjunction with Google and it has not been endorsed or

sponsored by Google. The use of the Google trademark in this

publication does not represent participation in, or endorsement of,

this publication by Google.

Google (www.google.com) is one of the Web’s great

success stories. According to Media Metrix data

released in July, the company’s search engine handles

36.5% of all Web searches, and at press time Google Inc. boast-

ed just over $82 billion in market capitalization. All this from

two guys applying clever programming and some fairly novel

ideas about business to solving what would become one of the

great challenges of the Internet age: How can I get the informa-

tion I’m looking for quickly online? But as compelling and

popular as Google’s search technology is, it’s just the beginning

of what this dynamic company has to offer. This issue is packed

with information on Google services and tools you can use,

mostly without charge, to do more online than you ever

thought possible starting from a single site.

Stay Connected

64 It’s Not Email, It’s GmailHow To Master Google’s Web-based Email

70 Faster Than A Speeding EmailKeep In Touch With Google Talk

73 Get The Message? Google Groups Makes It Easy To Share Interests Online

78 Google MobileGoogle Comes To The Small Screen

81 Message MarvelGoogle Meets Text Messaging

84 Hello, It’s MeGoogle’s Communications Tool Lets You Share Pics, Too

Google Tools

88 Tool(bar) TimeMake Your Browser A Powerhouse

93 Search Engine Jr.Google Brings Its Expertise To Your Desktop

97 Meet BloggerJoin The Web Log Craze With This Google Tool

104 A View From AboveExplore Google Earth’s Satellite & Aerial Maps

108 It’s Not Picasso, But It’s CloseMeet Picasa, Google’s Photo Organizer/Editor

114 Speaking In TonguesReach Globally With Google’s Language Tools

116 Power To The PeopleGoogle Code: A Little Something For Open-Source Fans

The Business End

120 Let’s Do BusinessGoogle As Cash Cow

123 Get The Word OutAdvertise Your Web Site On Google

128 Give Your Web Site Google PowerAdding Site Search & More To Your Web Site

132 The Ins & Outs Of AdSenseDepending On Your Web Site, Google’s Ad Program Could Earn You Money

136 Google Desktop Search For EnterpriseSimplify Your Search For Documents, Emails & Web Sites

139 Delve Deep With UrchinAnalyze Your Web Traffic For Fun & Profit

142 Beyond Classified AdsGoogle Ad Professionals

145 Google HackingHow Hackers Use Google To Invade Web Sites

Just For Fun

148 Agog About GooglewhackingA New Google Lexicon

151 Beware The Jabberwock, My SonGoogle Talk Is The New “Mad Libs”

153 Search Engine SillinessGooglefight & Guess-The-Google Kill Hours Dead

155 Logos Make The ManWhen You’re Desperate To Demonstrate How Hip You Are

158 What’s Next?Google Takes On The Future

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Copyright 2005 by Sandhills Publishing Company. All rightsreserved. Reproduction of material appearing in Smart ComputingREFERENCE SERIES: Guide To Using Google is strictly prohibitedwithout written permission. Printed in the U.S.A. GST #123482788RT0001. Smart Computing is published monthly bySandhills Publishing Company. 131 West Grand Drive, P.O. Box85380, Lincoln, NE 68501. POSTMASTER: Send address changesto Smart Computing, P.O. Box 85380, Lincoln, NE 68501.

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AL L AB O U T GO O G L E

far too brief and lucid: “To organizethe world’s information and make ituniversally accessible and useful.” Butthen, Google is a rare bird itself.

On the surface, Google is just likeany other free search engine on theWeb—but again, only on the surface.

Underneath, ingenious innovation andefficient processing have made Googlethe number one choice for anyone whowants relevant information right now.At this writing, Google indexes 8.1 billion Web pages and can answer asearch query in 0.25 seconds.

Google’s secret formula is not somuch the search, but more how itsearches. Its PageRank algorithm listsWeb pages in order of probable rele-vance to the user. This is partly based onthe number of other pages that containhyperlinks, or URLs, to them. WhenNetizens find a site or online article theyconsider worth sharing with others, theyput a link to that page on their own sitesor blogs. If more people link to a pagethan any other with the same keywordor phrase on it, it may wind up near thetop of Google’s rankings.

However, merely having a lot of linksto a page doesn’t make a top ranking adone deal. The proprietary and secretPageRank evaluates a number of othercriteria, such as the subjective impor-tance and trustworthiness of the siteslinking to a page, as well as the usual intent of a typical user looking for aterm. Furthermore, Google oftentweaks PageRank to mitigate unscrupu-lous Webmasters’ attempts to “play thesystem.” Obviously, it means bigmoney to companies to have their sitescome up at the top of search result lists,which explains why there are so manybooks on the market about how to foolGoogle into giving higher rankings.

Besides PageRank, the other half ofGoogle’s recipe for success is the waythe company does business. The factthat the site is still relatively uncompro-mised by the usual shenanigans of bigcompanies looking to wring a fewmore bucks out of the bottom line haspaid huge dividends in end-user loy-alty. Paid advertisements keep Google’ssearch free for everyone to use, butuntil recently, they were clearly rele-gated to the right of the screen, notmixed in with the “real” search results.

This minor difference from com-peting sites was enough to convincemillions of users that they could trust

Like AltaVista before it, Google’s clean home page was a welcome relief from the jam-packed pages of competing search engines and portals. Even Yahoo! Search and MSN Search look similar today.

Organizing TheWorld’s

InformationHow Google Became The “Word”

On Everyone’s Lips

“Just Google it.” People everywhere are still coming

to understand just how powerful thosethree words are. And with every newfeature Google adds to its search en-gine, the more powerful they become.

Googling is, quite simply, typingsearch terms into Google’s field andpressing ENTER. Like to compare onenew car’s mileage to another’s? Wanttips on catching panfish? Need to checkout that new fellow your daughter isdating? Just Google it.

Number One

Google’s mission statement is ararity among Internet companies. It’s

4 www.smartcomputing.com / Guide To Using Google

SSupersmart. Righteous. Micromanaging. Smug. Google founders Sergey Brin andLarry Page seem to inspire a different description from every person holding an

opinion on the pair. For perspective, here are some of their basic facts. Both can be for-given for not completing their doctorates in computer science at Stanford University,we think; they’ve been a little busy since 1998. (Sources: Google, EconomicExpert.com)

SSeerrggeeyy BBrriinn,, CCoo--ffoouunnddeerr aanndd PPrreessiiddeenntt,, TTeecchhnnoollooggyyBBoorrnn:: August 1973 in Moscow, Russia EEdduuccaattiioonn:: BS with honors in mathematics and com-puter science, University of Maryland at College Park;master’s in computer science, Stanford University;honorary MBA from Instituto de EmpresaTTrriivviiaa:: Sergey’s mother was a scientist at NASA. He’sreportedly the arbiter at Google as to what the“Don’t Be Evil” motto means in day-to-day business decisions.

LLaarrrryy PPaaggee,, CCoo--ffoouunnddeerr aanndd PPrreessiiddeenntt,, PPrroodduuccttssBBoorrnn:: March 26, 1973, in Ann Arbor, Mich.EEdduuccaattiioonn:: BS in engineering (concentration in computer engineering), University ofMichigan; master’s degree, Stanford University TTrriivviiaa:: Page is one of the trustees on the board of the X Prize Foundation for privatespacecraft advocacy.

The Sergey & Larry Show

Google not to waste their time with re-sults that are obviously paid place-ments. Of course, if users are actuallyGoogling for something they want tobuy, they may appreciate the fact thatthe ads on the right are triggered by thekeywords they typed into the searchfield (not to mention Froogle, Google’sprice comparison feature).

How different is Google? Well, inOctober 2004, accounting firm DeloitteTouche (now Deloitte Touche Tohmat-su) called Google the fastest-growingcompany ever. Between 1999 and 2003,the firm reported, Google’s revenuesgrew by a mind-bending 437,115%.

Primordial Goo-gle

Co-founders Sergey Brin and LarryPage collaborated on Google whenthey were graduate students togetherat Stanford University. (NOTE: Most ofthe events and dates regarding Google’sorigin and growth in this article comefrom John Batelle’s outstanding “TheSearch: How Google And Its RivalsRewrote The Rules Of Business And

Transformed Our Culture,” as well asGoogle itself, except as noted.)

The pair created a search algorithmcalled BackRub, so named for its abilityto assay back links, or the hyperlinkspointing to a particular Web page from

others. Page drew the idea from theacademic world, which places greatvalue on the number of researcherscited in a paper’s footnotes and theprestige of each. The idea wasn’t totallynovel: Brian Pinkerton programmedthe earlier Webcrawler search engine tocount links to Web pages, too.

Of course, an algorithm that couldcount and weigh back links had to be able to take on the scale of a worldwideInternet, in Page’s vision. Forming itposed a formidable challenge. SergeyBrin handled the math, and collabo-rated with Page on the system ofranking each page’s relative merit. Thissystem, which gave Google’s search re-sults unprecedented relevancy andtouched off a word-of-mouth fire-storm, became known as PageRank.Stanford actually holds the patent onPageRank, but the U. S. governmentalso holds certain rights to it thanks toa National Science Foundation grant(patent number 6,285,999 at patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm).

Page made a crawler program, latercalled Googlebot, to search many Webservers at once. PageRank ranked thepages thus indexed, and Brin and Pagecompleted the tool with a simple inter-face for users to visit with their queries.


Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin co-founded Google.

(in billions, less images and Usenet messages)

Source: Google

Web Pages In Google's Database

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0 1999 June 2000

Dec.2000

Aug.2002

Dec.2002

March2004

Aug.2005

• .03 •

1 • 1.3

•2.5

•3

•4.2

•8.1

Reference Series / Guide To Using Google 5

YY ou may love Google’sability to give you quick

access to movie reviews,camera price comparisons,and satellite maps of yournext vacation spot. On theother hand, you may not beso crazy about the fact thatit’s so easy for Google (andother search engines) togive someone your homeaddress, phone number, andother potentially sensitiveinformation.

It’s not Google’s fault, ofcourse. Search enginesmerely report what their

crawlers find on the Inter-net. Still, search companiesraise a lot of questions, es-pecially when they get to beas large and as good atsearching as Google. For ex-ample, what happens to therecords of the keywords aparticular user searches for?Over the years, according toJohn Batelle, author of “TheSearch: How Google And ItsRivals Rewrote The Rules OfBusiness And TransformedOur Culture,” such a log ofterms become a “databaseof intentions.”

“What does the worldwant?” Batelle asks. “Build acompany that answers thisquestion in all its shades ofmeaning, and you’ve un-locked the most intractableriddle of marketing, of busi-ness, and arguably ofhuman culture itself. Andover the past few years,Google seems to have builtjust that company.”

Such a database could be-come the Holy Grail for mar-keters, especially if Googleever decides that more overtcommercialization of its

technology isn’t so “evil”after all. But it could also endup a tool of the courts orgovernment agencies tokeep an eye on citizens, ra-tionalized by the need to sniff out potential crimi-nals and terrorists under legislation such as the PATRIOT Act.

“For now, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has as-sured me, such demands areneither made nor met,”Batelle says. “But in the faceof such power, how longcan that stand?” ❙

Database Of Intentions

companies paid for their ads to be re-lated to particular search terms. Today,ad sales (on and offsite) and search en-gine licensing fuel Google’s revenues.

Some Work, Some Play

“Don’t Be Evil” is Google’s unofficialmotto. The phrase was distilled by engi-neer Paul Buchheit during a committeemeeting meant to define Google’s corevalues, Batelle says. It seemed toBuchheit that “don’t be evil” was thecommon factor of several slogans beingbandied about, and in typical engineerfashion, cut to the chase with the mostefficient solution. For more on Google’sphilosophy and culture, check out “TheWay Of Google” on page 13.

Already an anomaly in the often staidcorporate world, Google loves to flauntits sense of whimsy. On holidays andeven some obscure anniversaries suchas Van Gogh’s birthday, the logo on thehome page gets a fun makeover (www.google.com/holidaylogos.html). EachApril Fools’ Day spawns new jokes,such as the revelation that pigeons arethe secret behind PageRank (www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html).And the languages in Google’s reper-toire include Elmer Fudd and Pig Latin(www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en).


With servers made of parts bought,begged, and borrowed, Brin and Pagewere soon running a popular searchengine from Page’s dorm room. Mathgeeks, they called the search engineGoogle, after the number representedby a 1 followed by 100 zeroes (agoogol). It’s a truly colossal number,and it implies that the tally of Webpages around the world is unimagin-ably huge, too.

At first, Brin and Page wanted to li-cense their technology to existing sites,not build a company. Unfortunately,interest was low at the companies theypitched to, and the partners neededmore and more server space to stayahead of the volume of Web pagesGoogle was indexing. After angel in-vestors and venture capitalists startedhanding them checks—the first one un-cashable until there was a “Google,Inc.” to receive it—Brin and Page hadto form a company, and fast.

Google officially incorporated onSept. 7, 1998. Its first office was in afriend’s spare room in Menlo Park,Calif. To try and preserve their preg-nant friend’s privacy, Brin, Page, andtheir few employees entered and exitedthrough the garage.

Besides the results, users likedGoogle’s speed and simple look. The

cached content links also proveduseful. The company preserves recentWeb content even when the originalserver is down or the content has beenpulled or changed. In fact, Google setup a link during the Sept. 11, 2001, disasters to provide cached online newsat a time when most Internet news siteswere overwhelmed by traffic (theGoogle News aggregation featuresprouted from this event).

Obviously, caching demands datacenters with huge storage capacity, reli-able servers, and lots of bandwidth.Although it started out with Linux,Google eventually wound up cus-tomizing an OS to suit its specificneeds. The company also opted for adistributed computing model usingthousands of networked computersmade of off-the-shelf parts rather than afew expensive “big iron” servers. Thistype of parallel computing makes itcheaper to add servers later, and easierto swap out failed parts without af-fecting the speed of the overall network.

Google’s legend grew, but the fledg-ling company still needed a way tomake money. Although Brin and Pageremained distrustful of ads, they rea-soned that ad revenue would keepGoogle free for anyone to use. UsingAdWords, launched in October 2000,


More paternalistic companies take adim view of what might be construed astime-wasting nonsense, but Google hasfound that a sense of play pays off inemployee happiness and fresh ideas.Speaking of ideas, Google employeesare advised to spend part of their timeworking on side projects, some ofwhich appear as beta features in GoogleLabs (labs.google.com) and go on tobecome permanent features, such asGoogle News and Gmail.

Wolves At The Door

Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL are Google’schief foes in search, as we’ve shown in

the “Web Search Engine MarketShares” chart in this article. A newercontender is Become.com, an onlineshopping search site. Its senior directorof product search and comparisonshopping, Jon Glick, has competedwith Google for years—arguably, evenbefore there was a Google to competeagainst. He’s a former product man-agement head from Yahoo! and was adirector of Internet search at both on-line ad sales service Overture (formerlyGoTo) and AltaVista, the “clean inter-face” search darling of the mid-1990s.

“Starting in 1999, Google enjoyedfive years of unquestioned technologicalleadership,” Glick says. “Their challenge

going forward is that rivals such asYahoo! have caught up, and next gener-ation systems like Become.com’s AIR(Affinity Index Ranking) technologyhave shown the ability to outperformGoogle on many searches.”

Glick says that Become.com’s AIRsearch extrapolates more meaning fromthe context of linking sites than doesGoogle’s PageRank, especially for userslooking to buy. (Of course, shoppersmight use Froogle, not Google proper.)

“For a search on ‘television’ Googlereturns TV stations, while the product-focused search on Become.com returnsinformation on TVs because we knowthat’s what our users are looking for,”Glick says.

Leaving aside the competition, noteveryone loves Google. Batelle’s re-search uncovered tales of an onlineshopkeeper who lost his high rankingduring one of Google’s algorithm ad-justments and suspected that commer-cial results were ranked lower to drivebusiness to AdWords; job applicants,advertisers, and ordinary Web usersresentful of Google’s unresponsivenessto communications (indeed, Googledeclined repeated invitations to com-ment for this article); and the perspec-tives of technological forerunners,erstwhile partners, and former em-ployees. And in 2004, the apparentlyself-righteous Google bowed to theWeb-censoring Chinese governmentand removed links to banned sites inits local edition of Google News. Evenwith relatively “pure” motives and themotto “Don’t Be Evil,” Google has


Google Timeline

(in millions)

Source: Google* Source: Nielsen/Net Ratings, Searchenginewatch.com

Google Searches Per Day

2,400

2,000

1,600

1,200

800

600

200

80

40

0 Aug. to

Dec.1998

Feb. to

June1999

Sept.1999

June2000

Sept.2000

Dec.2000

Feb.2001

•.01

•.5

• • • 40•60

•70

•200

•

May2003

*May2005

3.5 18

2,317

AAuugguusstt 11999966::The first version ofLarry Page’s andSergey Brin’s Googleappears on StanfordUniversity’s site

SSeepptt.. 77,, 11999988::Google incorporatesin Menlo Park, Calif.

‘96

‘98

AApprriill 2277,, 22000000:: Wireless search forWAP (Wireless Application Protocols)phones and handhelds

MMaayy 99,, 22000000:: Google goes multilin-gual with support for French, German,Spanish, and seven other tongues

JJuunnee 2266,, 22000000:: Google becomes theworld’s largest search index with morethan 1 billion pages; Yahoo! enlistsGoogle as its search engine

OOcctt.. 2233,, 22000000:: AdWords sells advertising keyed to search terms,soon becoming Google’s primarysource of income ‘00

EEaarrllyy 11999999::Red Hat be-comes Google’sfirst commercialcustomer

‘99

MMaarrcchh 2266,, 22000011:: Dr. Eric Schmidt becomes chairman ofGoogle’s board of directors; later becomes CEO on August 6.Unlike a traditional CEO, to date he runs the company withfounders Brin and Page, much to Wall Street’s consternation

JJuullyy ttoo AAuugguusstt 22000011:: Google Image Search launches;Google Zeitgeist lists top search terms

SSeepptteemmbbeerr 22000011:: A link to cached news articles about the9/11 tragedies eventually becomes Google News

OOccttoobbeerr 22000011:: Google reaches profitabilityDDeecc.. 1111,, 22000011:: Google adds searchable index of non-HTML

(Hypertext Markup Language) files, such as PDF (PortableDocument Format) and MS Office documents

‘01


found that success in business in-evitably breeds controversy.

Google Today

At this writing, Google is run bynearly 4,200 employees and upward of175,000 computers. The company’sstock is trading at $282, more thantriple the $85 share price at its highlyunorthodox initial public offering inAugust 2004. Google ended a droughtin Internet IPOs dating back to themarket crash of 2000, and did it in abig way: The stock nearly quadrupledby the following July.

Every day, it seems, there’s a newheadline about Google. Occasionally, aforeign government, such as China,blocks or filters its citizens’ access tosome portion of Google. Users invent

games such as Goo-glewhacking (see “AgogAbout Googlewhack-ing” on page 148). Or-ganizations such as theChurch of Scientologyhave complained aboutsites with opposingviewpoints appearingin search results for re-lated keywords. Somebusinesses, such as TheNew York Times, haveobjected to deep link-ing, or indexing ofpages normally acces-sible only to registeredor paying members(Google has removed

pages when asked by their owners).One new service is an instant mes-

saging/voice chat app called GoogleTalk (see page 70 for more), not to beconfused with the random sentencegenerator of the same name (page 151).Something Google hasn’t talked aboutthus far is its reported buying spree ofunused fiber optic network linesaround the country, according to a re-cent Business 2.0 article. Such a movewould facilitate future offerings re-quiring even more bandwidth than thecompany already has, such as motionpicture search and delivery. Business2.0’s Om Malik also believes thatGoogle is preparing to offer Wi-Fi ser-vice in various metropolitan areas inthe near future.

Malik is hardly the only one specu-lating about Google’s next move. The

company’s ambitions are huge, Batellesays: If there is some form of contentor information that hasn’t alreadybeen tapped, digitized, and indexed,it’s safe to say that Google has an eyeon adding it someday. In other words,to paraphrase him, Google wants to fillin the gaps—and become the virtualoperating system to the worldwidecomputer called the Internet.

And if that reminds you of a little company named Microsoft, you’re notthinking big enough.

BBYY MMAARRTTYY SSEEMMSS


RS

Google Image Search can often find photos by context, not just by their file names. Intelligent video and audio search isthe obvious next step.

Source: Nielsen/Net Ratings, Searchenginewatch.com

Web Search EngineMarket Shares, May 2005

Google 48%

Yahoo!21.2%

MSN12.4%

AOL4.5%

Other 13.9%

MMaarrcchh ttoo AApprriill 22000022::Google News beta

DDeecceemmbbeerr 22000022:: Froogleprice comparison search engine released in beta ‘02

JJaannuuaarryy ttoo FFeebbrruuaarryy 22000033:: Acquisition ofPyra Labs, creator of Blogger

JJuunnee 22000033:: AdSense service scans customersites’ text and context, places related ads

AAuugg.. 1133,, 22000033:: Version 2.0 of GoogleToolbar gets a pop-up blocker, making it derigeur for Internet Explorer users

‘03

MMaarrcchh 1177,, 22000044:: Google Local shopping search engineAApprriill 11,, 22000044:: Gmail free Web-based email service in beta, offering

1GB of storage, a unique filing system, and an invitation-only rolloutmechanism

AApprriill 2299,, 22000044:: Google files for an initial public offering with theSecurities and Exchange Commission; an unusual, idealistic letter topotential shareholders written by Larry Page warns Wall Street thatGoogle won’t behave like a typical publicly traded company

AAuugg.. 1199,, 22000044:: Google becomes the first Internet company to gopublic in three years; $85 shares climb to $100 by day’s end, and$108.31 the next

OOcctt.. 1144,, 22000044:: Google Desktop Search for local hard drives in betaDDeecc.. 1144,, 22000044:: Google Print to offer full-text search of books from

several prominent libraries

‘04

JJaann.. 2255,, 22000055:: Google Videobeta allows searches of severalnetworks’ video clips usingclosed caption data

MMaarrcchh ttoo AApprriill 22000055::Google Maps allows combina-tions of satellite imagery map-ping with search, opening uppossibilities beyond the usualdriving directions

AAuugg.. 2244,, 22000055:: Beta launchof Google Talk, a new instantmessaging and voice commu-nication utility

‘05



Find The DigitalNeedle

Google Helps You Take On That Haystack

Although Google’s main pageremains uncluttered sevenyears after bursting onto thesearch engine scene, the

company that revolutionized the waypeople navigate the ’Net offers a lotmore than a word search.

Some features share space with theWeb search engine: News, Froogle,Groups, Images, and Local. But userswon’t get a true sense of Google’sgrip on the Internet until they clickthe More link and peruse the searchengine’s astonishing list of servicesand tools.

Want to put your thoughts on dis-play? Google has Blogger. Have to editsome photos? Google has a free tool.Need satellite images of Earth? Com-plimentary. Want to translate a Webpage? No need to leave the ever-in-creasing confines of Google for thatfeature either. Does this sound familiaryet? Consider the photo-editing, musicplaying, and Web-surfing tools that re-side on your OS, thanks to Microsoft.Of, course, Google also offers its claimto fame, the Google search engine, freeto general users.

Feeling Lucky?

You’ll f ind most of Google’ssearch engines on the main page. Bydefault, the page displays a generalWeb search, but more specializedengines are only a click away. Ifyou’re interested in a particularnews story, for example, you cantype your search term into the page’sonly f ield and then click News.Google’s new search engine willscour the Web for relevant articlesand then display them in a formatsimilar to the one it uses to displayother search results.

Most of the time, you’ll probablyclick the Google Search button (orpress the ENTER key) to start yourWeb search, but if you want to gostraight to the most relevant siteGoogle finds (the site that wouldotherwise stand at the top of thesearch results page), simply click theI’m Feeling Lucky button.

On the other hand, users whowant to see a full list of search resultsand want to make sure they’re usingthe best search terms can find some

great options in the Advanced Searcharea, which is one of the few sectionsof the Web site that boasts a linkfrom the main page. This section of-fers special fields that help usersbetter describe what they’re lookingfor. Keep in mind that each enginehas a unique Advanced Search sec-tion. (Find more information aboutthis in “Gateway To The Web” onpage 26 and “One In A Billion” onpage 31.)

I Need More, More, More…

If you’re looking for Google’s otherservices and tools, click the More linkon the main page. As with the mainpage, the More, More, More section isrelatively clutter-free, so you won’thave much trouble tracking down theitem you’re after. Although many fea-tures reside on this page, one particu-larly popular service isn’t present.Google’s Gmail, a beta email servicethat offers users more than 2GB ofemail storage, doesn’t have a link oneither main page or the More, More,More section. You can access Gmail’smain page at gmail.google.com, butyou’ll need an invitation to register anaccount. (Read more about Gmail inthe article “It’s Not Email, It’s Gmail”on page 64.)

Google Growth

Google’s main page rarely gains orsheds links, but Google pages maychange as the company adds newtools. Although our graphics and de-scriptions are accurate as we go toprint, you may discover some changesby the time you read this issue. Also,the titles of some of Google’s new fea-tures include “Beta,” which meansthey’re still at some (advanced) testingstage. That said, don’t ignore a Googletool simply because you’re waiting forthe official release. After all, GmailBeta has been around since 2004, andFroogle Beta started in 2002.

BBYY JJOOSSHHUUAA GGUULLIICCKK

RS



2| Froogle

Google’s betashopping service

combines tons ofonline retailers into

a single store. Youcan sort your re-

sults by price andeven search within

the results foritems that meet

your budgetedprice range.

Getting Around GoogleLooking for something? Google offers much more than Web

searches. You can find most of its services and tools on themain page and in the More, More, More… section. Keep inmind that Google updates its Web site; you may discover somechanges on the site by the time you read this.

1| Images

Forget the encyclo-pedia: Google canhunt down thou-sands of picturesthat relate to yoursearch term in lessthan a second.

3| Local

Google puts theaverage phonebook to shamewith its local busi-ness directory.Simply enter thebusiness category(such as “books”or “pizza”) and

then choose your area. A map sits next to the searchresults. The service can remember your location, so youwon’t need to enter it when you search again later.

4| Advanced Search

If you use popular searchterms, you may have a hardtime picking out the searchresult hits from the misses.Refine your search bychoosing from the engine’sdetailed search options.

5| Advertising Programs

If people visit your Web siteevery day, rake in a little cashby adding a list targeting linksto your site via Google’sAdSense. If you offer productsand want to reach potentialcustomers as they search,check out AdWords.

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Google Services & ToolsGoogle’s clutter-free main page hides dozens of Google

features that help users find information and communicatewith the online world. Almost all of these features are free, soclick the More link and dig into this digital treasure trove.

8| Labs

Check out thebleeding edgeof Google in theLabs section.Many well-received fea-tures, such asGoogle Alertsand Desktop 2started here.

9| Video

Google Video is oneof Labs’ newbies.This search enginescores TV andmovie descriptions, titles, and even content (ifthe show or movie has closed captioning). Googlealso stores movies free of charge, so feel free toupload your home videos or any other movies towhich you own the copyrights.

6| Answers

Are you willing to pay tofind out the answers toyour pressing questions?Google’s Answers expertscharge $2.50 and more to research the answers to questions.

7| Catalogs

Many retailers let customersshop via their Web sites, but

some still publish printed catalogs. Browse Google’s

massive collection of catalogsor donate a few of your own.

10| Ride Finder

Don’t waste timewaiting in the rain fora cab. Thanks to RideFinder, you can seetaxi locations on amap of your area.The service lets youupdate the map asoften as you wantand displays each cab company’sphone number.

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11| Maps

If you have trouble reading traditional maps, you’ll loveGoogle’s mapping tool, whichcan provide a satellite image ofyour location, complete withsuperimposed street names.As a result, you can easily spotparks, stadiums, and otherlarge landmarks.

12| Blogger

If you have something to sayto the world, register a free account with Blogger. Theblogging tool lets you nameand launch a blog in mereminutes. And thanks to Picasa,you can add pictures to it, too.

13| Desktop

This handy tool lets youquickly search your computer for pictures, documents, and other files.And thanks to the newSidebar, it also lets you sizeup the latest news from theWeb at a glance. Sidebaralso displays photos andlets you take quick notes.

14| Hello

Thanks to Hello, you canshare pictures as you chatwith friends. The servicelets your contact see thesame pictures that you see.Hello integrates withGoogle’s Picasa, so whenfriends send you pictures,they’ll land in Picasa folders.(You won’t need to movethem manually.)

OOnn GGooooggllee’’ss PPeerriipphheerryy.. As of press time, theMore, More, More… section included neitherGoogle Gmail nor Google Talk. You can find theemail and calling services at mail.google.comand www.google.com/talk, respectively. Gmailtakes advantage of Google’s powerful search engine to help users keep track of their savedemail message. Talk is a new feature that letsusers hold audible conversations with friendsfree via their computers.

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The Way Of GoogleIt’s More Complicated Than You May Realize

Google has an in-housemotto that we’re pretty sureis unique in corporate Am-erica: “Don’t be evil.” As

company co-founder Sergey Brin hasexplained, it’s intended as an ethicalbarometer to guide decisions in ac-cordance with the management’s pro-fessed desire to be a force for good inthe world.

As an unintended side effect, themotto provides ample ammunitionfor critics—and Google has its share—when they don’t see things the compa-ny’s way. For instance, Google doesn’taccept gun ads, which, predictably,peeves the firearms lobby. And whenGoogle announced that Gmail, itsWeb-based email service, provides somuch storage space that users wouldnever have to delete anything, privacyadvocates had a fit, citing the potentialfor abuse.

Google’s founders, Sergey Brin andLarry Page, have tended to do thingstheir own way much of the time,

regardless of whether it appears tomake sense from a general businessperspective or conforms to the anti-establishment spirit that characterizesSilicon Valley culture.

Nothing illustrates that better thanthe company’s IPO in August 2004.

Google For Sale

An IPO (initial public offering) isthe route by which a privately ownedcompany transforms into a publiclyheld company by selling stock. Whiletaking Google public, its founderswere intent on wielding an unprece-dented amount of control, some ofwhich worked out, and some ofwhich backfired.

They refused to disclose full finan-cial information, even to the banksand brokerage firms that would be in-strumental in the process. They alsoissued a new type of stock, with just10% of the voting power relative tothe stock held by themselves, Google

employees, and the company’s earlybackers. To make the IPO more egali-tarian for small investors, they uti-lized a rare Dutch auction, meaningthat the buyers would determine thelowest possible final price for every-one. This rankled Wall Street, whichis accustomed to giving favored in-vestors discount prices in IPOs.

Further headaches surfaced when itcame out that Brin and Page hadgranted an interview to Playboy maga-zine in April 2004, a week before filingfor the IPO. This raised concerns aboutpossible violations of Securities andExchange Commission regulations onwhat company executives can say whilepreparing for an IPO. This, and therevelation that they’d neglected to reg-ister millions of employee-held shares,reflected badly on their judgment.

In the end the IPO went off onschedule, and although the price pershare fell below their target, a littleover a year later, it’s currently tradingaround 280% higher.


The View From Outside

Google is a company with an in-creasingly complex reputation thatoften depends on one’s perspective.

To be sure, the companyhas built up an enormousamount of public goodwill.It developed better searchtechnology that worked sowell that Google didn’t justbecome top dog amongInternet search engines;the name itself becamesynonymous with search,even entering the publiclexicon as a verb.

The stock is doing well,with the most recent earn-ings reports posting a 400+% rise inprofits over a year ago. And althoughBrin and Page have claimed that theonly thing they’re serious about issearch, the company has been devel-oping more and more software toolsand offering them for free.

Shareholders and users tend tolove that.

Back to the motto, though: “Don’tbe evil.” It sounds positively childlike,reflecting the idealism and evennaivety with which Brin and Pagewent into business, plus their desirefor Google to be counted among thegood guys. On the other hand, it’sconceivable that in addition to hav-ing a clear idea of what they wantedGoogle to be, they also had a model inmind for what they didn’t want it tobecome in the process: Microsoft.

For years, Microsoft has been re-ferred to by many as “the evil empire,”and practically anyone on the streetcan tell you why: its domineeringpresence, draconian business prac-tices, and its seeming love of crushingcompetition, for starters.

Microsoft is still a monolith, but afunny thing has happened over recentyears. After slowed sales growth, aplague of antitrust lawsuits, and well-publicized delays in bringing out thesuccessor to Windows XP, Microsofthas become the devil we know, rather

than the devil we don’t. It can’t sur-prise us anymore.

Enter Google, which, despite its me-teoric rise, is just getting started. If itsfounders wanted to avoid being seen as

the new Microsoft, it’s ironic, then,that this is exactly how many of itsSilicon Valley neighbors are starting toview it. They claim it’s gotten too big,too powerful, too fast, and is stiflinginnovation elsewhere by skimmingaway the cream of the talent pool.

Then there’s the future. As we go topress, Google has just announced plansfor a second stock offering expected toraise another $4 billion in cash. Wherewill it go? Speculation is rampant, and includ-es mobile and Internetphone service, an onlinepayment service, its ownbrowser, and a softwaresuite aimed at competingwith Microsoft Office.

A backlash against phe-nomenal success is in-evitable, but perhaps themost telling (or ominous)indicator of Google’s fu-ture comes from BillGates, in a recent inter-view with Fortune maga-zine: “[They’re] more likeus than anyone else wehave ever competed with.”

Google’s DNA

Want to know some of the thingsthat make Google tick? It’s more

than just an environment thatsounds like a genuinely fun place towork: the informal campus-like at-mosphere and recreational facilities,the onsite masseuse, the cafeteria

chef who used to cook forthe Grateful Dead.

It’s also a corporate cul-ture that tries to avoidputting people at one another’s throats. Employ-ees praise the work envi-ronment’s transparency.“Teams are actively en-couraged to share the mostintimate details of theirprojects with the rest ofthe company,” says onesoftware engineer. “This

means that there isn’t an adversarialrelationship between teams that canlead to longstanding animosities andinformation hiding.”

There are also several specifics.The 20% time policy. Google’s soft-

ware engineers get to spend 20% oftheir work time (or one day a week)on technological projects of personalinterest, rather than their active com-pany projects. This isn’t an option,

but mandatory, and it’sbearing fruit. Giving smartpeople a certain amountof freedom doesn’t justfight job burnout andkeep them fresher andmore energized the rest ofthe time. It can also leadto innovations that mightnot otherwise emerge and

that can improve operations behindthe scenes or join Google’s growingarsenal of tools and services.

This is exactly how Gmail cameabout. The idea began as nothing


If predictions are correct, this current crop of Google softwareis just the tip of the iceberg compared to what’s coming.

The Sidebar in GoogleDesktop is a modular group of utilities, someInternet-connected, similarto Apple’s new Widgets,only for the PC.



more than a Google user’s misgivingsover the limitations of her existingWeb-based email account: It was diffi-cult to manage efficiently, and she wasconstantly forced to delete mail to re-main under the 4MB storage limit.Her complaint came to the attentionof a Google engineer, who thoughtthat developing a solution wouldmake a great 20% time project. Theresult was Gmail, an email service youcan use and search from anywhere,with gigabytes of storage capacity.

The Ten Things. Google’s manage-ment has codified 10 truisms that un-derlay the way it tries to do businessand how it regards Google’s role onthe Web.

1. Focus on the user, and all elsewill follow.

As Google has grown, it has usedone criterion to evaluate each potentialchange: Will it benefit the end user? Ifnot, it doesn’t happen. Nor should anychanges erode what users have come toexpect: a straightforward interface, nowaiting time on search results, resultsthat haven’t been manipulated byselling placement, and advertising thatremains relevant and unobtrusive.

2. It’s best to do one thing really,really well.

Some search engines seem asthough their primary goal is to dis-tract you from what you showed upto do in the first place. Drop by an-other prominent site, and you’rebombarded with news headlines, en-tertainment headlines, a list of theweek’s new movies, links to horo-scopes and a music service, weatherand traffic reports, and more.

Google’s landing page looks as aus-tere as ever. Although the company isdeveloping other products and ser-vices, you never get the sense that theseinterfere with the original mission.

3. Fast is better than slow.Whenever Google provides you

with search results, near the upperright of the page you’ll see how longit took. We’ve never seen one thathas exceeded a fraction of a second. To ensure that things move at the

maximum possible speed, Googledeveloped new computer configura-tions and search algorithms, andprunes the excess from pages to keepthem streamlined.

4. Democracy on the Web works.To determine how Web pages are

ranked in terms of relevance, Googledoesn’t rely on the number of hits thepages get, but by analyzing the numberof other sites that link to them, andthose pages’ place in the rankings.Using this method, Web sites are, inessence, voting for their peers.

5. You don’t need to be at your deskto need an answer.

The need for infor-mation transcends of-fice computers andwireless-enabled note-book PCs. Google iscommitted to bringingsearch results to cellphones, PDAs, andeven cars . . . and,when necessary, devel-oping new technolo-gies that make Webpages viewable in gad-gets that otherwisecouldn’t display them.

6. You can makemoney without doingevil.

This time, evil comesdown to somethingquite specific: adver-tising. Because Goo-gle refuses to let paidads create a conflict of interest thatcompromises the integrity of its searchresults, ads are labeled “SponsoredLinks,” and no one can buy a higherplacement to override their page rank-ings. The company doesn’t permit ad-vertising to distract from searchresults, either. Ads are text-only, keptseparate from the results, and appearonly if relevant to the search terms.

7. There’s always more informa-tion out there.

Google may have made a break-through by indexing more Web pagesthan any other search engine, but this

was only a start. The Internet consistsof more than just text pages written instandard HTML (Hypertext MarkupLanguage) code. To expand its searchhorizons and make more of the avail-able data accessible, Google developedways of including databases, graphicimages, and PDF (Portable DocumentFormat) files and other document formats, such as work created withMicrosoft’s Office Suite.

8. The need for informationcrosses all borders.

More than 50% of Google’ssearches are conducted by users out-side the United States. Google pro-

vides language toolsthat let users trans-late foreign pages, andwhile the results can begrammatically clunky,you can usually under-stand the point. Aswell, users can limitsearches to pages inany of 35 languagesand set the interface todisplay in any of 116(so far) languages . . .although we suspectthat the Elmer Fuddand Klingon optionswill draw a very limiteduser base.

9. You can be se-rious without a suit.

This applies mainlyto the corporate cul-ture, in which people

don’t take themselves so seriouslythat they never hear innovative ideasthat might get bogged down in astricter hierarchy. Instead, even sug-gestions that emerge from cafeteriaconversations get tested and tried assoon as possible.

As one employee posted in his blog,“[T]here isn’t a lot of ‘stop energy’ atGoogle. My colleagues in engineering,marketing, etc. don’t react to newideas with ‘You can’t do that,’ butusually with ‘cool’ and a tip as to whoto talk to in the organization who islikely to be of the most help.”

Google’s Desktop Searchfunctions bury WindowsXP’s built-in search, whichwon’t be improved untilthe next operating systemrelease in 2006.



10. Great just isn’t good enough.When it comes to technology,

there’s no such thing as a moun-taintop that, once climbed, meansyour job is done and it’s time to enjoythe view. Instead, there’s alwaysfaster, better, and more accurate tothink of. Google’s ultimate goal is toforesee needs that its users don’t yetrealize they have.

No pop-ups. Nobody likes pop-upads. They’re the Web’s version of

pushy salesmen who jam their feet inyour door. Google doesn’t acceptthem from advertisers, period.

If it appears that pop-ups are lit-tering your screen while you’re vis-iting Google, it may be a coincidenceof timing, with the ads coming fromsomewhere else. Some sites launchads that appear under your openbrowser window, and you don’t seethem until later; others fire pop-upsonly when you leave the site andmove to your next stop.

In other cases, ads may come fromwithin your PC. Many music sharingand other programs that are osten-sibly free come with a hidden price:

They install invisible programs thatlaunch ads at random or target youwith ads based on searches you con-duct or words you type while online.

Software principles. Speaking ofunderhanded tools for weaseling intoyour computer and life, Google is op-posed to them, as well. This includesadware, spyware that gathers yourpersonal information and relays it tothird parties, and more nefariousmalware (malignant code, often in the

form of viruses, Trojans, and/orworms) that violates your rights, pri-vacy, and can even assume partialcontrol of your PC.

We’ve reached a point where thou-sands, maybe millions, of users arefinding it easier to scrap otherwisegood PCs that are clogged with junkprograms, starting all over again witha new machine rather than attemptingto clean up the old one.

In the interest of safeguardingusers, Google has codified six generalprinciples for developing and distrib-uting software. Google doesn’t justfollow them in-house; the companyalso encourages current and potential

business partners to adhere to themand promotes them as good for theindustry as a whole.

In a nutshell, these six SoftwarePrinciples are:1. Software shouldn’t be concealed in-

side other programs and install itselfwithout your knowledge or consent.You should know what you’re get-ting and have the option of sayingno to anything you don’t want.

2. Software should come with clear,full disclosure of what it does and ifa third party is going to send any-thing to you or receive informationabout you.

3. If you no longer want a program, itshouldn’t be harder to get rid ofthan a brain tumor.

4. If a program impacts or alters youruser experience, it should identifyitself as the cause and inform youas to why it’s doing so.

5. Programs that collect and relaypersonal data should alert you towhat they’re doing, inform youhow your data will be used, and re-quire your consent before sendingthe information.

6. Software developers shouldn’tallow their products to be bundledwith programs that don’t adhere tothese ethical standards.

With Liberty & Google For All?

Despite truism number 2 (it’s best todo one thing really, really well), it’s ob-vious that Google’s plans for the futureare huge and diverse. Its leaders wouldbe fools otherwise. Although the com-pany’s profits from its search engine’sad revenue have been impressive, all itwould take to topple Google’s preemi-nence is for someone else to develop aneven better engine. When was the lasttime you used former top dog Lycos?

We just hope, as Google continuesto grow, now under increasing share-holder pressure, its leaders will con-tinue to stick to their guns . . . even ifthey don’t accept ads for them.

BBYY BBRRIIAANN HHOODDGGEE

RS

Gmail is just one of the innovations that arose from Google’s “20% time” policy.



Test Drive These Tools

The Newest Ideas Are At Google Labs

As you can see from the sizeof this issue, Google in-cludes many features be-yond its original, basic Web

search engine. Google now includesan image-search tool, links to newsheadlines, newsgroups, and more.Even with so many existing tools,though, Google engineers are notcontent. They continue to developnew tools that may become standardGoogle features in the future. InGoogle Labs (labs.google.com), youcan try out the latest ideas from thefolks at Google.

Lab Work

Google launched its Labs site inMay 2002. The first tools users could

try out were Google Glossary (a quickway to find definitions), Google VoiceSearch (a phone-based search tool),Google Sets (which creates a full listof related items from a few examples),and Google Keyboard Shortcuts(which let users browse search resultsusing a keyboard rather than amouse). Of these four original GoogleLabs experiments, two still exist.Google Glossary is now a standardGoogle feature. Google Sets still ex-ists, but it has never left Google Labs.It is still officially an unsupported“experiment” of a Google engineer.

The tools on Google Labs pages arenothing more than prototypes de-signed by Google employees. TheLabs tools are not necessarily prod-ucts that will ever become full-fledged

Google services. In fact, at any time, aGoogle Labs feature may disappear orchange significantly. According toGoogle, a tool may disappear fromGoogle Labs for many reasons. Often,users find that a prototype just isn’t stable yet or doesn’t work wellenough to remain on the Google Labspage. Sometimes, Google notes that acertain Google Labs project doesn’telicit many clicks, and Google will re-move the tool for lack of interest.Occasionally, Google must tem-porarily remove a feature from theGoogle Labs page because it is so pop-ular that the vast amounts of Webtraffic it creates cause problems forGoogle’s servers. Sometimes van-ishing Google Labs prototypes willreappear after further development,but other times, Google simply aban-dons an idea and it never returns.

These tools are often not as pol-ished as more established, officialGoogle features, such as GoogleImages or Froogle. You may occa-sionally find a Google Labs project

that doesn’t work as expected or thatdoesn’t work at all. Remember thatthe Google Labs tools are experimentsand that they are still in development.Google does provide the means tocommunicate any problems or praiseto the tool’s engineer. We will discussthis in more detail later in this article.Finally, we should also note thatGoogle Labs projects may be slow to

On the Google Labs page, you can tryout several experimental tools thatGoogle has not officially launched.


see improvements because Google en-gineers develop these projects in theirspare time. Although Google encour-ages this experimentation, each engi-neer’s priority is still the support ofcurrent, non-Labs tools.

By browsing the Graduates Of Labslist on the Google Labs page, you canget an idea of some of the prototypesthat were successfulenough to capture theattention of Google’sdecision-makers. PastGoogle Labs experi-ments that are nowstandard Google fea-tures include GoogleSMS (see “MessageMarvel” on page 81),Google Desktop Search(see “Search EngineJr.” on page 93), Goo-gle Groups 2 (see “GetThe Message?” on page 73), GoogleDeskbar (a Google search field on yourTaskbar), Web Alerts (email updatesabout new search results), Google Local(see “In The Neighborhood” on page46), Google Glossary, and Google News Alerts (see “Read All About It” onpage 38).

Now Testing

As of press time, there are manyprototypes available for testing on the

Google Labs page. We’ll cover each ofthe Google Labs tools below. Pleasekeep in mind that Google often pullsexisting Labs prototypes with nowarning, and it also frequently addsnew Labs prototypes. For this reason,some of the features we cover may nolonger exist or may have graduatedfrom the Google Labs area. Likewise,there may be newer Google Labs toolsthat were not yet posted at press time.

Personalize Your Homepage (www.google.com/ig). As of press time,Personalize Your Homepage was themost recent addition to Google Labs.This feature lets you create a startpage from which you will find thetypes of news stories, search tools,and other content that you havechosen. You can personalize this startpage to contain the tools and linksthat you access most often. You musthave a Google Account to create andsave a home page.

To get started, click Personalize YourHomepage. Click Add Content insteadif you’ve already personalized your

page in the past. Alist of options ap-pears in the left pan-el. Google dividesyour potential pagecontent into several

categories (My Stuff, News, Business,Technology, Sports, Lifestyle, Fun, andCreate A Section).

Click the arrow next to any of thecategories to expand the list. You canthen add items, such as Bookmarks,Movies, BBC News, and Weather, toyour personalized page. Any contentyou choose will appear in the rightpane, in a preview of your page.

To change individual items on yourpage, such as Top Stories or Weather,click the Edit link for that item. As an

example, if you click Edit for TopStories, you can choose how manyheadlines appear by selecting from adrop-down menu. When you are fin-ished, click the Save button. If you donot need to make any changes, clickClose Edit.

To remove any items from yourhome page, click the X button next toit. For instance, when we created ourpage, Google automatically displayedthe weather forecast for Happy, Texas.To remove this forecast, we clicked theX button next to Happy, TX.

Finally, you can rearrange the itemson your home page by clicking anddragging them to a new location. Forinstance, you might want to move theWeather and News sections to the topof the page, so you can see the fore-cast and headlines at a glance.

When you are finished editing yourhome page, click the Save Page buttonin the upper-left corner of the rightpane. The site will prompt you to login to your Google Account if you’renot already logged in.

Google Extensions For Firefox(toolbar.google.com/firefox/extensions/index.html). These extensionsare small programs that you can loadinto your Mozilla Firefox browser toadd special Google functions to thebrowser. These Firefox-compatibletools include Google Toolbar, GoogleSend To Phone, and Google Suggest.

The Firefox Google Toolbar is verysimilar to the Google Toolbar alreadyavailable for Internet Explorer. (See“Tool(bar) Time” on page 88 for moreinformation about the standard, IE-compatible Google Toolbar.)

With Google Send To Phone, youcan send short segments of text from aWeb page to your cell phone as a textmessage. To use Google Send To


One of the Google Labs prototypes lets you personalize your Google home page to include the news headlines, bookmarks, and other content that you use most.

Because Google Labs tools are still experimental, they may not always work as expected. Here, you can see thatPersonalize Your Homepage didn’t work perfectly when we tried it out. The Edit and Close (X) buttons didn’t display or function properly for the first news section.



Phone, you just highlight the text youwant to send, click the cell phone icon,type the phone number in the To field,choose your phone’s carrier from theCarrier drop-down menu, and clickthe Send Message button.

Because text messages are short,you will not use Google Send ToPhone to send lengthy news articles orsimilar items. Instead, this tool is mostuseful for sending phone numbers,addresses, movie times, and other in-formation you might look up online.

Finally, you can use Google Suggestwith Firefox. You can learn more aboutGoogle Suggest later in this article. Ofthe three Firefox extensions, GoogleSuggest is the only one that does notrequire you to download and installsoftware. To use the Firefox GoogleToolbar or Google Send To Phone,downloadable utilities are required.

Personalized Search (www.google.com/psearch). This is another GoogleLabs tool that gives you access to morepersonalized content and requires youto have a Google Account. If you signup for Google’s Personalized Search,Google will retain records of your pre-vious searches. As it learns more aboutthe types of searches you run, it willadjust the results of future searches accordingly. For instance, if you fre-quently run searches related to horses,Personalized Search should return

more horse-related results and fewerFord-related results than the averageuser would get. Your search resultsshould get more accurate the longeryou use Personalized Search.

Now let’s say that one day you dowant to search for sites about FordMustangs, but you’re getting too manyresults about horses. Simply click TurnOFF Personalized Search For TheseResults from the page of search results.If you don’t see that link at the top ofthe page, you know that your person-alized results didn’t differ from whatany other user would see.

Google Video (video.google.com).Google Video is similar to GoogleImages, except that it searches for videocontent rather than still images. Youcan search only for videos that you canplay on your computer by selecting thePlayable Video radio button, or youcan select the All Video radio button tosearch for all video, including televisioncontent that is not online.

If you choose All Video, you willsee thumbnail images of still shotsfrom television shows and a brief de-scription. If you click the thumbnail,you will see larger still images fromthat episode, as well as excerpts of thescript taken from closed captioning.On the left side of the page, GoogleVideo may also show air times for theprogram under About This Show.You may need to click Edit Locationto enter your ZIP code. Google Videois a very new tool, and we found thatwe couldn’t get any listings for ourZIP code, so the usefulness of this fea-ture depends on your geographic lo-cation and the participation of yourlocal TV stations.

In addition to results from TVbroadcasts, you will also see onlinevideos that you can play. If you canplay a video, a play icon will appearnext to the video’s title. To play thesevideos, you will need to download andinstall the Google Video Viewer (video.google.com/video_download.html).

Google Web Accelerator (webaccelerator.google.com). Google Web Accel-erator is another tool that requires a

download. Once you install the GoogleWeb Accelerator, if you have a broad-band connection, your pages shouldload faster. Google accomplishes this bydedicating specific servers to handlingGoogle Web Accelerator traffic, storingcopies of or prefetching pages you visitoften, letting your system download

only changes to a Web page rather thanthe entire content, and compressingdata. Google Web Accelerator has acounter that shows you how much timeyou’ve saved by using it.

We were not able to try out Google’sWeb Accelerator because the projecthad already reached its maximum ca-pacity. A message on the project’s pageindicated that Google planned to in-crease the number of users that itsWeb Accelerator can support.

My Search History (www.google.com/searchhistory). If you choose toactivate this tool, which recently be-came part of Google’s PersonalizedSearch, you can access records of yourprevious searches. This could be usefulif you are conducting academic re-search, looking for genealogy recordsonline, or doing other long-term workin which you might want to see whichsearches you’ve already done. Onceyou activate My Search History, youcan view past searches by signing intoyour Google Account and clickingSearch History. If you want Google notto store some searches, click SearchHistory and Pause. To begin storingsearch data again, click Search Historyand Resume.

You can add items such as bookmarks to favorite sites, movie listings, news headlines, and even RSS (Really SimpleSyndication) or Atom feeds to your personalized home page.

Google Video is a new tool that lets yousearch for playable videos and TV listings.



If you forgot to pause this featureor know that you no longer needrecords of certain searches, clickSearch History and Remove Items.Select the checkbox for any searchesyou don’t want to save and click theRemove button. Finally, to protectyour privacy, remember to always logout of your Google Account whenyou are finished if others will use thesame computer.

Google Ride Finder (labs.google.com/ridefinder). You can use thistool to find a ride, such as a shuttleservice, a taxi, or a limousine. Thisservice is currently only available inselected areas, including Atlanta,Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Mil-waukee, New York, Phoenix, SanFrancisco, San Jose, St. Louis, andWashington, D.C.

Google Maps (maps.google.com).Google Maps is similar to other onlinemapping services, such as Yahoo!Maps (maps.yahoo.com) or MapQuest(www.mapquest.com). One of themost striking differences, though, isthat you can view satellite imagery aswell as basic maps. For more detailsabout using Google Maps, see “Are WeThere Yet?” on page 55.

Google Suggest (www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en). GoogleSuggest is an interesting tool that pro-vides suggestions of keywords as youtype. These keywords appear in adrop-down menu underneath themain search field. To learn more aboutGoogle Suggest, see “Helpful Hints”on page 30. Google Labs also features aJapanese version of Google Suggest.

Google Scholar (scholar.google.com). Google Scholar is a tool that isuseful primarily to students and re-searchers, although anyone willing towade through scholarly works mayfind some benefit to this Google Labsproject. Google Scholar searches onlyscholarly literature rather than all on-line sources. Scholar returns resultsnot only for free online content butalso subscription-only content andprint-only articles (which GoogleScholar identifies through citations

in other scholarly works). GoogleScholar serves as a giant catalog ofacademic literature. This project isquite popular but still growing andwill likely see more improvementsbefore it officially becomes a stan-dard Google feature. For a detaileddescription of Google Scholar, see“Smart Searches” on page 59.

Site-Flavored Google Search (www.google.com/services/siteflavored.html). This is a prototype available toWeb site owners and administrators.You may have seen Google searchfields on some third-party Web sites;the Site-Flavored variety is similar,but you can customize the search fieldto return results that are more in linewith the content of your Web site.

Froogle Wireless (labs.google.com/frooglewml.html). This is a mobileversion of Froogle (froogle.google.com), a Google tool that lets yousearch for products and prices online.Froogle Wireless lets you search fordeals online using a WML (WirelessMarkup Language)-enabled cellphone. The benefit to using FroogleWireless is that you can do compar-ison shopping while you’re at a store.You can easily compare the priceyou’d pay in town to the price you’dpay online.

To use Froogle Wireless, you needto use your cell phone’s built-inbrowser to visit wml.froogle.com. Asearch field will appear on your

phone’s screen. Use the phone’skeypad to type the product for whichyou want to search. Then select theSearch button. You can use the arrowkeys on your phone to browse the on-screen search results.

Google Compute (toolbar.google.com/dc/offerdc.html). As you’venoticed, most of Google Labs’ proto-types are designed to help you insome way. Google Compute is theexception in that it’s designed to letyou help others. By installing GoogleCompute, you can donate your PC’sunused processing cycles to research.

You may have heard of SETI-@home (setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu), a well-known distributed-computing project. SETI stands forthe Search for Extraterrestrial Intelli-gence. Project volunteers donate theirprocessors’ unused cycles to processradio signals in hopes of discoveringabnormal, possibly extraterrestrialsignals. This type of computingpower would normally require a su-percomputer, but through distrib-uted computing, many computerscan combine their processing powerto create a “virtual supercomputer.”

Google Compute works in a similarmanner, except that instead of do-nating your CPU’s unused cycles tothe search for aliens, you donate yourcomputer’s untapped potential to sci-entific research. Currently, GoogleCompute donates your CPU’s spare

Google Ride Finder shows available taxisand shuttles for select cities. Here, youcan see a map of the available rides andcontact information for each company.

Google Maps is unique in that it not only can show you maps for locations and routes but also satelliteimagery of the area.



processing power to Folding@home(folding.stanford.edu), a project thatmodels protein-folding, the processby which proteins form in the body.When an error occurs in protein-folding, the result is often a medicaldisorder. Folding@home seeks to findthe mechanism by which various dis-eases, such as Alzheimer’s, develop.For those of us who know very littleabout science or medicine, donatingour processors’ unused cycles to re-search may be one of the only wayswe can truly contribute to importantmedical research.

Google Sets (labs.google.com/sets).Finally, the last of Google Labs’ pro-jects is Google Sets, one of the orig-inal Google Labs prototypes back in2002. The Google Sets page providesyou with five blank fields in whichyou can type a series of words orphrases that are related in some way.You then click either the Large Set or

Small Set (15 Items Or Fewer) buttonto see a list of words or phrases thatGoogle thinks are related. Each wordor phrase in the list is hyperlinked. Ifyou click the link, you will see aGoogle Web Search list of hits for thatword or phrase. This can be a usefultool if you need to find terms or con-cepts that are related to a topic youare researching.

Other Goodies In The Lab. In addi-tion to the many prototypes you can

test on the Google Labs page, you willalso find links to technical papers aboutGoogle technology. You can read theseby clicking Here Are Some Papers to-ward the bottom of the Google Labspage or by visiting labs.google.com/papers/index.html. You’ll find all types ofscholarly works about how Googleworks. Some examples include “TheGoogle File System,” “Query-FreeNews Search,” “Who Links To Whom:Mining Linkage Between Web Sites,”and “Hierarchically Classifying Docu-ments Using Very Few Words.” Thesearticles are quite in-depth, but if you’reprepared to dive into the mathematicsand research involved, some are a fasci-nating read.

Your Two Cents

Because Google Labs tools are stillprototypes that are not yet polishedand ready for actual release, the engi-neers may need feedback about theirtools. You may have noticed a bug inone of the Google Labs tools, or youmay have thought of a way that theengineers could improve on one ofthe offerings.

Each of the listed tools on theGoogle Labs page has a brief descrip-tion of the prototype, followed by theoriginal date of release, a Give UsFeedback link, and a Discuss With

Others link. Some tools, such asGoogle Compute, require a softwaredownload and will also include aDownload Now link.

As you might expect, you can giveengineers feedback about their tools byclicking the Give Us Feedback link forthe corresponding Google Labs proto-type. This will launch a window tocompose a new message in your emailclient. The To or Address field will au-tomatically contain the email addressof the appropriate Google engineer.You can send any thoughts you mayhave about how the tool works, whatissues you experienced, what you liked,what you didn’t like, or how Googlecould improve the tool.

If you aren’t quite ready to shareyour thoughts with the engineers butwould like to discuss a Google Labstool with other users, click the DiscussWith Others link. You can browse themessages others have posted about theGoogle Labs service. If you want topost your own thoughts or questions,you will first need to log in. You can dothis by clicking the Sign In link in theupper-left corner of the Google Groupspage. If this is the first time you’ve vis-ited a particular Google Group, youwill need to join the group by clickingJoin. Follow the on-screen instructionsto create a Google Account. You willneed to type your current, non-Googleemail address and select a password.For more information about usingGoogle Groups, see “Get The Mes-sage?” on page 73.

Put On Your Lab Coat

Google Labs offers many uniqueand interesting tools. Many of themwill eventually move to become fullysupported Google features. There isno need to wait to try out the latestexperiments at Google. With a visit toGoogle Labs, you can take advantageof advanced search tools that haven’tyet made their official debut.

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RS

Google Scholar searches for publishedscholarly papers. You can view thepaper if it is available online, andGoogle Scholar can also display otherarticles that cited the work.

If you want to discuss your opinionsabout or seek help with one of theGoogle Labs tools, you can join aGoogle Group. A Google Group isavailable for each of the items currently in Google Labs.



Privacy PleaseGoogle’s Privacy Policy Serves & Protects

In 2004 the Federal Trade Com-mission reportedly received morethan 635,000 complaints of iden-tity theft and consumer fraud.

Monetary losses in these claims sur-passed $547 million. With that inmind, it’s important to know exactlyhow Google will use the informationyou submit when using the site’s fea-tures and what Google is doing to en-sure your information stays private.That’s where Google’s privacy policycomes in. To view the policy, click theAbout Google link at www.google.comand then click the Privacy Policy link atthe bottom of the About Google page.

Collect Data

Google classifies the data it collectsfrom its users into two categories: per-sonally identifying information andnonpersonally identifying information.The former is data that can identify youindividually, such as your name, ad-dress, or email address, while the latteris data that does not identify you, suchas your browser type, browser language,the IP (Internet Protocol) address usedfor a query, or the date and time yousubmitted a query.

Online tools such as Google Search,Google Toolbar, and Google News

don’t require any personally identifyinginformation, but that doesn’t meanthey aren’t collecting nonpersonallyidentifying information. Google keepstabs on what sorts of search queriesusers are making at its site; the compa-ny’s analysts then look for patterns inthe queries to see if there are ways toimprove its search offering.

Google typically asks for personallyidentifying information when youcreate a new account for one of its fea-tures. For instance, if you get an inviteto create a Gmail account and go to setone up, Google asks for your name andZIP code. Also, when you create an ac-count for Google’s Blogger tool, the siteprompts you to enter your email ad-dress. The good news is that anytimeGoogle asks you for personally identi-fying information, the site always tellsyou how your info will be used.

Information Sharing

Google devotes a section of its pri-vacy policy to the conditions underwhich the company would share cer-tain personally identifying or non-personally identifying information yousubmit. First of all, it is Google’s policynever to rent or sell any personally

identifying information with othercompanies unless Google has yourconsent. The only other times Googlewill share your personal information isif the company uses a trusted third-party to process the information on itsbehalf; if law requires the company todo so; or if Google has reason to thinkthat sharing your information is neces-sary to protect the rights, property, orsafety of Google, its users, or the public.

The third-party businesses that Googlehires to process your personal informa-tion are legally bound by contract toabide by Google’s privacy policy andkeep your information confidential.

As You Like It

When you first visit Google, the sitesaves a cookie on your computer’s harddrive. A cookie is a small file that iden-tifies your computer and alerts Googleof your preferences, such as how manysearch results you want per page andthe language in which these pagesshould be displayed. It also tracks whatyou search for. For instance, if yousearch for “hard drives” one time, thenext time you type the letter H in thesearch box the term “hard drives”should pop up if the AutoCompletefeature is enabled in your browser. Thiswill save you the few extra seconds oftyping the entire word or phrase.

BBYY SSAAMM EEVVAANNSS

RSYou can view Google’s privacy policy byclicking the link found at the bottom ofthe About Google Web page.

Some of Google’s tools (such as Blogger,for example) require you to enter personally identifying informationwhen creating a user account.


NNot everyone craves the high rank-ings that drive traffic to their

Web sites. Some Web site administra-tors don’t want the general publicpoking around their sites, while otherssimply want to keep certain, sensitiveWeb pages off Google’s radar screen.If you’re trying to camouflage some orall of your Web pages, you’ll need toadd a Robots.txt document to yourserver, which instructs Web crawlersto ignore the page or site. You canconfigure the Robots.txt file to waveoff only Google crawlers or all otherengine crawlers. You can find Google’sdetailed instructions for removingyour site from its index by clickingAbout Google on the main page andthen clicking Webmaster Info,Removals. If you have additional ques-tions about Robots.text files, checkout www.robotstxt.org. ❙

Google Schmoogle


How’d They DoThat?

Google’s Simple Interface Masks A PowerfulSearch Engine

Thanks to Google’s simple inter-face and casual, colorful head-line font, a person unfamiliarwith Google might mistake it

for a wimpy search engine running outof a college kid’s dorm room. But be-cause the search engine boasts suchphenomenal accuracy and speed, there

aren’t many Web searchers who aren’tfamiliar with this multibillion dollarcorporation’s Web search tool. (Andfor the record, Google did get its startin a dorm.)

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Goo-gle’s co-founders, met at StanfordUniversity in 1995 and began workingon the search engine that later becameGoogle. The most important part ofthe search engine was the technologythat allowed them to rank pages.Instead of focusing on a large com-pany whose employees would deter-mine Web site rankings manually,Brin and Page developed algorithmsand software that could rank pagesautomatically. Web crawlers, or pro-grams that scour the Web catalogingthe contents of Web servers, weren’tunheard of, but Google’s page-ranking methods were. Instead of fo-cusing on the number of times akeyword appeared on a Web page (orother such factors which Web admin-istrators could manipulate), Google’sPageRank technology focused suchfactors as the number and importanceof pages that linked to the page inquestion.(Of course, it also uses pagecontent technology to supplement itsnew method.) We’ll show you whatmakes Google tick.

Behind The Scenes

Googlebot is Google’s Web crawler;it’s also the software that keeps Goo-gle’s database up-to-date. Also known

as a spider or a bot, the software racesthrough the billions of Web pages thatmake up the WWW (World WideWeb) and returns copies of the docu-ments to Google. In addition tomaking an initial survey of each page,Googlebot returns to sites from time totime to get updated page information.Google relies on a number of charac-teristics, including the site’s impor-tance, when determining how often tosend spiders out to sites.

Google creates an index based onthe words it finds (and the PageRankrating; more on this later) amongthese pages and then stores the pagesthemselves on different servers.Thanks to this setup (and, most likely,thanks to other tweaks or technologiesthat Google hasn’t made public),Google’s search engine provides an-swers extremely fast. After all, when aquery sails into the index servers, theindex software doesn’t need to retrievethe pages from out on the ’Net.

Instead, it turns to this well-organized database and then calls upthe stored pages.

Wondering whether you’re visiting apage that has a high Google PageRank?You can check at a glance if you haveinstalled the Google Toolbar.


Don’t worry: When you click asearch result’s link, you’ll visit the true Web site, not a page stored onGoogle’s servers. Google uses itsstored pages only to create the searchresults page, which displays 10 (by de-fault) search results. Each search re-sult includes portions of the sentencesthat feature your search term, a linkto the page that has your search term,and other information, including thepage’s size and, in some cases, thedate it was created. Google generallyfinds search results and provides themain search results page in less than0.2 seconds.

Google takes speed seriously. And itshould: An increasing number ofAmericans are adopting broadbandInternet access, but many other resi-dents in and out of the United Statescontinue to rely on slower dial-up con-nections. So Google keeps an eye outfor opportunities to deliver search

pages faster than it already does. One ofthese tricks is called prefetching. If youuse a browser that supports prefetching(such as Firefox or Mozilla, both ofwhich are available free at www.mozilla.org), you’ll find that whenever you

click the first unsponsored link on thesearch results page (the search resultthat Google deems to be the best matchto your query), it loads faster thanother pages, including the search resultjust below it.

That’s prefetching at work: Googleplugs some HTML (Hypertext MarkupLanguage; the programming languageused to construct most Web pages)code into its search results page thatcommands the page to download thetop search result’s page to your com-puter right away. As a result, the page isalready on its way to you while youbrowse the list of search results. If (andwhen, Google’s betting), you click thetop search result, your computer willdisplay it almost instantly instead ofdownloading it a few kilobits at a time.

Climbing To The Top Of The List

Google doesn’t reveal all of its cardswhen it explains how Google’s searchengine determines a Web site’s rela-tionship to your query, but it makesno bones about PageRank’s backlinkidentifier playing a huge role in theprocess. When Google’s PageRankanalyzes a page, it counts the page’sbacklinks, which are links from otherWeb pages to the page that PageRank

is analyzing. PageRank considers eachbacklink to be a vote for the Web siteit’s analyzing, but not all votes arecreated equal, of course. Pages thathave high numbers of votes createmore valuable votes than less impor-tant Web pages.

Backlinks are only part of the equa-tion, however. Google uses a cus-tomized version of the text-scanningprocess that many other search en-gines use (checking to make sure thesearch term is actually on the page).According to Google, its Hypertext-Matching Analysis tool considers avariety of Web page features whenscanning for text. (For example, itnotes a word’s location on the pageand also pays attention to fonts.) Thehigher your page’s PageRank, themore likely it will appear near the topof a searcher’s search result list.

Google’s PageRank assigns a rankto each result on a 10-point scale (10being a very important search result).If you want to know how PageRanknumbers your search results, you cancheck them out by downloading andinstalling Google’s Toolbar, which in-tegrates with your Web browser andgenerally sits near the browser’s ad-dress bar. The PageRank feature isn’tvisible by default, but you can enable


YYou won’t increase your page’s Google PageRank much by simply spraying po-tential keywords all over the place. But, according to Google, you can have an

impact by making your pages “Google-friendly.” Here’s a few ideas Google’sWebmaster Guidelines section and Help Center provide:

11.. One of the most important PageRank factors is the number of sites (that havehigh PageRanks) that link to yours. Make your online content worth linking to.

22.. Add a ssiittee mmaapp (a single-page, hyperlinked index of the pages within your site).You can also add your site map to Google’s index via Google Sitemaps(www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/stats).

33.. Don’t use shady tactics. In particular, don’t hide tons of keywords on your Webpage. If you’re putting text in your page’s code but not letting that text appearon the page, you’re heading in the wrong direction.

44.. Make sure that Google is aware of your site. You can ensure that crawlers scanyour new site by submitting it to Google via its Submit Your Site page(www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl).

Google Goggles

Submit your site map to Google tomake sure the company’s crawler coversevery page in your Web site. If you don’thave a site map, you can create it withGoogle’s free Sitemap Generator.


2| Search query

You’ll start thesearch by typing a

search term into thequery box. Don’t un-

derestimate yourrole in the search: The better you describe

your query, the more accurate your search re-sults. Also, Google will drop some common

search words when you click the GoogleSearch button. If you absolutely must include“the” in your search term, use quotes to indi-

cate its importance (“the power surge”).


3| Google Index

Google’s array of index servers match your search words to Web pages.

The servers scan their own presorted index ofWeb pages. The servers update the index periodically via Webcrawlers that search the ’Net for changed and new pages. The

index includes more than 8 billion Web pages.

4| Document Servers

Here the your query draws pagesfrom the index’s information tocreate the search results page that

you’ll see. The servers add a small portionof text (which contains your search term) to each searchresult before passing the finished product along.

5| Search Results

The reasonably clutter-free search resultspage lists the top 10 results, as well as a few

sponsored results. Don’t worry about mistaking a sponsored link for a genuine search result, however.

Google separates sponsored results from general search results.

it easily. Click the Toolbar’s Googlebutton and then click Options. Whenthe Toolbar Options window appears,click the Options tab and then selectthe PageRank Display checkboxunder Page Information. When youclick the OK button, PageRank willappear on the Toolbar. Hold thecursor over the PageRank icon to seethe page’s exact rank.

Not all Web search services use afully automated ranking system.Many services, such as MSN, mix

Web crawlers with manual site list-ings. But many users rely on Google’sautomatic, adaptable system.

The Search Never Ends

Although Google started with Websearch and continues to refine its Websearching techniques, it’s also applyingits understanding of search technologyto a host of other uses, such as GoogleDesktop 2, which searches for files onyour computer’s hard drive. Need to

search Outlook for a particular email?If you’ve had it with Outlook’s searchfeature, simply enter your search terminto the Google query box that in-tegrates with Outlook’s interface.Although the company launches newproducts regularly, almost all of themhave search features. No matter howfar Google wanders into the digitalworld, we doubt that it will forget its roots.


RS

M any traditional search services clog theirmain pages with links to popular Web sites,

news, stock quotes, sports scores, and horo-scopes. Some searchers enjoy these features, butmany aren’t interested in distracting material.

Google’s main page, on the other hand, has farmore white space than content. But more impor-tant than its simple interface is what powers thatunassuming Google Search button: one of thefastest, most accurate search engines on the ’Net.

1| Web surfer

Different WebSurfers bring dif-

ferent search termstrategies to thetable. They also

bring different lan-guages and, in some cases, question-

able spelling skills. Google’s searchengine must adapt to all of these

strategies, languages, and quirks tofind the most relevant Web pages.


TH E SE A R C H

Gateway To The Web

How Google Can Help You Find What You Need

Since its 1998 inception,Google has grown from aMenlo Park garage inCalifornia to a sprawlingcorporate campus. As the

company has grown, so have the ser-vices and products it offers. TodayGoogle lets you scour the Web fornews and pictures, get driving direc-tions, edit digital images, and fly (vir-tually speaking of course) from theEiffel Tower to the Pyramids in aboutfive seconds.

Whatever growth and success thecompany has, however, it owes to itsWeb search. Even today, despite all ofits products and services, if you’re vis-iting Google it’s probably becauseyou’re looking for something on theWeb. It’s only appropriate then tolook at Google’s search feature beforewe start talking about all the extrasthe company offers. We’ll cover allthe basics you need to know to effec-tively use Google, and we’ll offersome general tips that’ll makesearching the Web more efficient.

The Interface

Compared to Yahoo!, Google’shome page is Spartan. The company’scolorful logo is the only graphic on thefront page. By default, www.google.com takes you to Google’s Websearch. Directly below the Googlelogo, however, are links to the compa-ny’s other search services: Images,Groups, News, Froogle, and Local.You can also bring up links to addi-tional services by clicking the Morelink. We cover all these options inlater articles, but we’re going to stickto searching the Web here.

To begin a search usingGoogle, just enter relevantsearch terms in the text field

and click the Google Search button orpress ENTER. Google displays a list ofresults it deems relevant to yoursearch with the most relevant pageslisted first. Alternatively, you can clickthe I’m Feeling Lucky button to skipthe results and load the most relevantWeb page (or, to be more accurate,what Google thinks is the most rele-vant Web page).

Results

Depending on your search terms,you may only have a handful of re-sults or you may receive millions ofreturns. In the upper-right corner ofthe results page, you’ll see a rough es-timate of total results for any searchstring. If we’re looking for informa-tion about the (possibly) upcomingfourth Indiana Jones film, we mightsearch for Indiana Jones 4. Doing soreturned 3,770,000 results when wetried this search. Before you break outin a cold sweat wondering how you’reever going to visit all 3,770,000 pages,remember that terms are sorted byrelevance (in this case, the first resultwas from an entry in the InternetMovie Database). Usually by the timeyou make it through the first 20 or soresults, you’ll notice the relevancydrop to a point where you feel com-fortable ignoring any further results.The twentieth result, for instance, is aWeb page on the Entertainment ZoneWeb site that lists the movie’s releasedate as July 1, 2005 which kind ofmakes you wonder how accurate theconfirmed cast list is.

When two results come fromthe same site, Google indents

the less relevant result. If additional results from thesame site are present, youcan view them by clicking

the More Results From Link.


TH E SE A R C H

Placement in Google’s search re-sults is not for sale, but Google doessell ads on its results page. Ads onGoogle, however, are a far cry fromthe flashy, distracting ads you findelsewhere. Google ads are small, dis-creet, and usually relevant to yoursearch terms. Ads typically appear farto the right of the results, but they canappear above the results in a blue box.In either case, these links are clearlymarked as Sponsored Links. All adson Google are text-only ads. There areno pictures or (shudder) animatedgraphics to distract you.

You may also notice additional in-formation above the search results. Insome cases, Google offers tips that itthinks may help you with your search.In some cases, Google may pass alonglinks to relevant news articles or stockinformation when appropriate.Searching for a geographical locationmay turn up a link to Google Maps.

Each individual result consists ofseveral parts. Here’s a result from ourprevious example:

Welcome to TheRaider.net Interview with Max McCoy: The

author of the four latest IndianaJones novels. ... Indiana Jones film inthe making? Monday, August 1, 2005(Indiana Jones 4) ...

www.theraider.net/ - 83k - Aug 2,2005 - Cached - Similar pages

The page title (Welcome to TheRaider.net) provides a link to the pagein question while the preview text of-fers some indication as to whether or

not the page may beuseful. The preview

text always includes at least one or twoof the search terms and the words im-mediately surrounding them. Beneaththe preview text is the page URL. Whilethis doesn’t link back to the page, it canbe useful in determining whether ornot a result is relevant. Next to the URLis the size of the page and, occasionally,the date on which Google last indexedit. Usually, the date only appears onitems that Google indexed within thelast few days. Finally, the entry endswith two links, one to a cached versionof the page and another to a link thatlists similar sites that could containmore information.

The Cached link displays a savedversion of the page from Google’sservers. Cached pages are especiallynice when trying to find pockets ofinformation on a larger Web page(such as trying to find a particularterm in a large online glossary) be-cause each search term appears high-lighted. Furthermore, Google’s cacheserves as a nice backup if the real pagesuddenly becomes unavailable or ifimportant information suddenly dis-appears from the live site. An info boxappears above the cached version of aWeb site and includes the date thepage was last cached, a link to the cur-rent page, and a link to a text-onlyversion of the page. Cached pages aresometimes a day or two old and insome cases even older. Frequently up-dated sites and more popular sitesseem to be cached more often. Checkthe date the page was cached in the

info box if you’re looking for themost recent information.

As the name implies, the SimilarPages link lists Web sites similar tothose in the search results. For instance,TheRaider.net is an Indiana Jones fansite, so clicking Similar Pages will listother Indiana Jones fan sites.

In some instances, you may noticeindented results. For instance, whenwe search for Disk DefragmenterStalls, the second result appeared in-dented because it was from the sameWeb site as the first result. The in-dented Web site is the one Google de-termines to be less relevant. If thereare additional entries from the samesite, you can view them by clickingthe More Results link that may appearbeneath the indented entry (as wasthe case with this search).

Search Quirks

Now that we know how to view theresults, we can work on getting better,more relevant results. Before we beginoffering tips, however, it’s a good ideato take a closer look at the basic work-ings of Google’s Web search.

Every search engine has its ownparticular quirks. For instance, Googleautomatically searches for Web sitescontaining all the specified searchterms. If you search for John York ru-ined 49ers (which by the way returned4,810 hits indicating the hostilitymany fans feel toward the currentowner), Google will only return pagesthat include all four terms. If you wantGoogle to return pages with any of theabove terms, use the word OR be-tween each term (in all caps).

Aside from operators such as OR,Google is not case sensitive. Thatmeans smart computing and SMARTCOMPUTING return exactly thesame results. The order of the searchterms you use, however, can affectyour search results.

It’s worth remembering thatGoogle automatically excludes com-mon words such as “with” and“how.” You’ll notice common words

Google saves a copy ofnearly every page it indexes on its ownservers. If for somereason you can’t access a Web page, youcan usually loadGoogle’s cached version. Search termsare highlighted makingthem easy to find.


TH E SE A R C H

GGoogle makes it easy to find the information you need ina timely matter, but what happens when you have time

to kill online? Searching the Web is like surfing with blinderson. You never know what interesting distractions you mightbe missing.

If you’re looking for a little distraction, Web directories are afun way to browse the Web. You’ve probably never heard ofthe ODP (Open Directory Project), but it bills itself as thelargest human-edited Web site directory on the Web. The ODPemploys an army of volunteers to maintain its Web directory,so listings are accurate and relevant.

While you may not have heard of the ODP before, you’veprobably used its directory. The Google Directory(www.google.com/dirhp) is nothing more than a copy ofthe ODP. Don’t worry though; Google isn’t stealing ODPcontent (that would be evil, and we all know how Googlefeels about evil). Rather, Google is one of many Web sitesthat have an agreement with the ODP.

Given that the ODP is edited by humans, it contains afraction of the sites stored on Google’s servers, but the siteslisted in the ODP are likely to be better quality sites.Because of this, you’ll notice a few differences in GoogleDirectory results compared to Google Web Search.

The fun of a directory, how-ever, comes from exploring ratherthan searching. You can find theGoogle Directory by clicking theMore link above the search fieldand clicking Directory. TheGoogle Directory contains 15main categories: Arts, Business,Computers, Games, Health,Home, Kids And Teens, News,Recreation, Reference, Regional,Science, Shopping, Society, andSports. In addition, there’s aWorld category containing Websites from other countries aroundthe world.

Each main category containsseveral subcategories. Within eachsubcategory, you’ll find relatedWeb sites along with additionalsubcategories. The structure letsyou start with a very broad area ofinterest, such as Computers, and focus in on a narrower topic.From the Computer category, you can drill down through theSoftware, Operating Systems, Microsoft Windows, andWindows XP subcategories to focus on sites relating toWinXP. The Windows XP subcategory includes six additionalsubcategories and four related categories along with 25

WinXP-related Web sites. Each subcategory includes anumber in parenthesis next to it. This number indicates thenumber of Web sites within that category.

Google lists sites in the Google Directory according toGoogle’s Page Rank (a complicated formula to determine apage’s relevance). So the ODP may not list sites in the sameorder. Furthermore, Google’s Directory is probably a littleeasier to navigate than the ODP, as the Google Directorylists categories in strict alphabetical order (not always thecase with the ODP).

In some subcategories you’ll notice a list of related cate-gories. These are categories that have some overlap with thecurrent category. They’re often fun to explore althoughthey’re sometimes a bit off-topic. The Windows XP subcate-gory lists four related categories that include Windows 2000,Windows ME, and Windows NT.

As you start drilling down within a category, you’ll noticea new feature in the search engine (which appears at the topof each page). You can search within a given category for aparticular term or terms. Searching for Windows XP in theComputers category, for instance, will display all the articlesin the Windows XP subcategory we explored earlier, alongwith any relevant sites from other subcategories within the

Computers category. If you de-cide you want to search the en-tire directory, click the GoogleDirectory logo to return to thehome page. You can also searchthe Web from within a categoryor subcategory by selecting theSearch The Web option beforeclicking the Search button.

If you do decide to search thedirectory, you’ll notice that resultsare displayed in the same format asGoogle’s Web search. Links tocached pages and links to similarpages are still available whensearching the directory (althoughthey are not available if you’re justbrowsing the directory). This is an-other benefit of using the GoogleDirectory, as the ODP doesn’t offerthese features when displaying itssearch results.

At press time, the ODP claimed to have 5,104,466 sites in-dexed. That may seem like a lot, but remember that a searchfor Indiana Jones 4 returned more than 3.7 million hits on itsown. Nonetheless, 5 million pages are more than enough tokeep you busily exploring the Web on those rare occasionswhen you don’t have anything in particular to search for. ❙

Google Directory

The Google Directory includes a search engine, but because sites in the directorycome from the Open Directory Project’sWeb site directory, you’ll get somewhat different results searching Google Directorythan you would using Google’s Web search.


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are not highlighted in the search re-sults. If a discarded word is importantto your search, place a plus (+) imme-diately before it.

In some instances, Google will sug-gest alternative search terms. This ismost often used to correct spelling. Ifyou search for Micosoft, for instance,Google will ask “Did you mean:Microsoft.” Click the link to searchusing Google’s suggestion. In someinstances, Google may suggest an al-ternative even if all the words arespelled correctly. For instance, if yousearch using our John York exampleabove, Google will ask if you meantJohn York Gained 49ers rather thanJohn York Ruined 49ers.

Finally, Google’s stem-ming technology automat-ically includes results thatcontain a different form ofa search term. For in-stance, singular forms of a

word aren’t omitted if you searchusing a word’s plural form.

Better Searching

Now that we know a little abouthow Google’s Web search operates, wecan focus on finding the best possiblesearch terms. Obviously, given theamount of information on the Web,the more precise you can be the better.Use multiple terms to narrow yoursearch and try to pick unique termsrelevant to your search string. If you’relooking for information about a truck,don’t just search for Dodge. Includethe make, model, year, and even thecolor, if that’s important to you.

There are a number of basic tricksyou can use to narrow a search if youneed to. Placing multiple words inquotes tells Google to search for anexact phrase. This can be especiallyhandy when looking for informationabout a specific error message. Youcan also use the minus sign (-) im-mediately proceeding a term to re-move any results containing theterm. For instance, if you’re usingthe search string Dodge but aren’tinterested in trucks, search forDodge -Trucks. We’ll cover more ad-vanced search strategies in “One In ABillion” on page 31.

Know-It-All

As we said earlier, the most impor-tant thing Google offers is its searchfeature. As you become more com-fortable using Google, you’ll realizejust how much knowledge it putswithin a few quick clicks. So the nexttime you find yourself wonderingwhat string theory is all about, forgetabout hitting the local library. Theanswers are just a search away.

BBYY CCHHAADD DDEENNTTOONN

WWhen you visit Google, you have the option of settingpersonal preferences. Because these preferences can

help you find more relevant information, we recommendtaking a few minutes to set these options.

Start by clicking the Preferences link that always appearsto the right of the search field. Here you can select a languagefrom the Interface Language drop-down list box. This optionaffects the Google interface only and doesn’t affect search re-sults. The next section, Search Language, does affects your re-sults. If you select the Search Only For Pages Written In TheseLanguage(s) option, Google will not display Web pageswritten in a language you haven’t selected.

In the SafeSearch Filtering section, you can set restrictionson the types of results Google returns. By default, this option isset to Use Moderate Filtering. At this setting, Google removesexplicit images from Google Images searches, but it will notblock explicit contents from other types of searches. If youwant to block all explicit content, set the filter to Use Strict

Filtering. Of course, if you prefer, you can turn filtering offcompletely by selecting Do Not Filter My Search Results. AsGoogle points out, no filter is 100% effective, but its SafeSearchFilter can help dramatically reduce explicit content.

To adjust the number of results displayed per page, se-lect 10, 20, 30, 50, or 100 from the drop-down list.Increasing the number of results per page, however, mayslow down the time it takes the page to download if youhave a dial-up connection. By default, Google displays 10results per page.

Finally, by checking the Open Search Results In A NewBrowser Window checkbox, Web pages will open in a newbrowser window any time you click a result. When you’re donesetting your preferences, click the Save Preferences button.Google should confirm that it’s saved your preferences.

Remember that your preferences are stored on a cookie.That means if you clean out your cookies or visit Google fromanother computer, your stored preferences will be gone. ❙

Set Your Preferences

Clicking Similar Pages listsWeb sites similar to a particular result. This is ahandy way to find otherWeb sites you may be interested in.

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Helpful HintsGoogle Suggest Streamlines Your Search Time

Let’s face it; Internet Explorer’sAutoComplete feature is prettyhandy. It’s much easier to typejust the first few letters of a

Web address and pick the page you’relooking for out of the AutoCompletelineup than to type the whole addressyourself. Google is working on a sim-ilar feature for its search engine calledGoogle Suggest; you can try it out atwww.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en. In the meantime, here’s a quick rundown of what GoogleSuggest does and how you can use it toharvest a few extra seconds from yourday as you search.

Real Simple

As you type your search query intothe box on Google Suggest, you will see a list of 10 results that changes with every character you type. This isGoogle’s way of trying to guess whatyou’re searching for and save you thetime of writing out the full term. Forinstance, if we wanted to search forDVD burners, we would enter the first“D.” Google uses a set of algorithms toproduce the top 10 search results thatstart with “D” in hopes that it can cor-rectly predict the term you’re searchingfor. Then when you enter the “V,”Suggest runs those algorithms againand finds the top 10 search results for“DV.” As you get more specific, so willGoogle’s suggestions. In fact, by thetime we entered “DVD b” into thesearch field, Google had already listed“DVD Burners” as the first suggestionfor us. All we had to do was click it, andGoogle directed our browser to a typ-ical search results page for our query.

As we mentioned, this Google fea-ture is similar to Internet Explorer’sAutoComplete feature in that it istrying to predict what you’re going to type, but there are also some differences. The big one is that

IE’s AutoComplete onlysearches through infor-mation you’ve previ-ously typed and that hasbeen saved to a cookiefile on your hard drive.Google Suggest, on theother hand, will searchits entire database of

search topics to try and find the oneyou’re looking for.

Safety First

If this talk about cookies has youhungry, we can’t help out with that,but we might be able to clue you in toGoogle’s privacy policy and how it ap-plies to Google Suggest. For starters,we should point out that similar toGoogle’s basic search function, GoogleSuggest does monitor what you’researching for. Google Suggest com-municates with Google while you typeyour query, allowing Google to keeptrack of such information as whatyou’re searching for and which sug-gestion you chose. But Google knowshow to keep a secret; any personallyidentifying information is kept confi-dential, and Google Suggest is coveredunder the privacy policy Google offersall its users. (For more information,see “Privacy Please” page 22.)

Google Suggest is a quick, easy wayto streamline your search time. It uses aset of algorithms in combination withthe search information you provide topredict what you’re searching for, andsaves you the time of typing the entirequery. And although some Google tra-ditionalists may have a tough timetearing themselves away from thehome page they’ve come to know andlove, Google Suggest is sure to helpthose willing to give it a try.


Google Suggest works similarly to theAutoComplete featurein Internet Explorer.

As you type your search query, Googleruns a series of algorithms to determinewhat you’re searching for.

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One In A BillionAdvanced Search Options Help You Find

What You’re Looking For

Last we checked, Google’s indexincluded more than 8 billionWeb pages. That means nomatter what you’re searching

for, you’re probably going to findhundreds if not thousands or millionsof results using regular keywords.Learning to use Google’s advancedsearch features can help narrow thoseresults and make your search resultsmore relevant.

In the previous article, we explainedhow Google’s search engine works andprovided some basic tips to help youfind what you’re looking for. Nowthat we have the basics out of the way,we can show you how to utilize someof those more advanced options.

Advanced Search

Like most search engines, Googlerelies on numerous operators to con-duct advanced searches. An operatoris a special word or symbol thatchanges the way Google conducts asearch when used in a specific con-text. We’ll cover operators later, butfor now let’s start by clicking theAdvanced Search link that appears tothe right of the search field on theGoogle home page.

Instead of using operators, theAdvanced Search page lets youspecify certain options. When youclick the Search button, Google auto-matically formulates a search stringusing the proper operators. This pageis the easiest way use Google’s ad-vanced options.

The first four fields on the Ad-vanced Search page let you specifysearch terms. The first field is similar tothe search field on Google’s home page.Google will return Web sites that in-clude all the words entered into thisfield. The second field is more preciseand lets you search for a specificphrase. It’s more efficient, for instance,to use the second field if you’re lookingfor information about the Los AngelesKings NHL hockey team. Searching forthe phrase Los Angeles Kings in thesecond field returned 867,000 results,while searching for Los Angeles Kingsfrom the search field on the Googlehome page returned 4,260,000 results.(The 32nd result was actually a pageabout the King Tut exhibit’s LosAngeles stopover.)

The third field returns results thatmatch at least one of the words pro-vided. If you’re interested in informa-tion about either Africa or Europe, for

instance, you could enter both termsin this field. Finally, the fourth fieldlets you specify any terms you want toomit. For instance, returning to ourLos Angeles Kings example, you mayopt to omit Sacramento and Lakers toprevent Google from returning pagesthat refer to both the Los AngelesLakers and Sacramento Kings.

You can accomplish all of the op-tions above from the Google homepage using operators. Words enclosedin quotation marks, for instance, aretreated as an exact phrase. Thus “LosAngeles Kings” returns the same re-sults as typing Los Angeles Kings intothe exact phrase field of the AdvancedSearch page. Placing a minus sign (-)directly before a term eliminates anyresults containing that word. For in-stance, typing the search phrase LosAngeles Kings –Sacramento –Lakerswill omit any results that referenceSacramento or the Lakers. Finally,separating words using OR (in allcaps) returns results that contain any of the terms separated by OR.Searching for “Africa OR Europe” re-turns the same results as enteringAfrica Europe in the third field of theAdvanced Search page.

Of course, you can sometimesachieve the best results by using acombination of fields. For instance, ifyou’re planning a vacation and can’tdecide between the Caribbean orRome, you could type Vacation in thefirst search field on the AdvancedSearch page and Caribbean Rome inthe third field.

Further Refinement

Below the various search fields,Google provides additional options torefine your search. For instance, se-lecting a language from the ReturnPages Written In drop-down menuwill only return results written in theselected language. If you set yourPreferences (click the Preferences linknext to the search field on the Googlehome page) to return results in En-glish, then English should be selected


by default, but you can select AnyLanguage if you prefer.

Next, you can choose to limit resultsto specific file types or omit certain filetypes. On the File Format line, selectOnly from the drop-down list if youwant to limit results to a specific filetype or select Don’t to omit results ofthat file type. Available file types in-clude Adobe Acrobat PDF, AdobePostscript, Microsoft Word, MicrosoftExcel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and RichText Format.

The next option lets you limit re-sults to Web pages updated within aspecific time frame. By default, thisoption is set to Anytime, but you canselect Past 3 Months, Past 6 Months,or Past Year. This is a handy way toeliminate outdated search results thatwould otherwise appear.

If you need to, you can specifywhere in a Web page search termsshould appear by selecting an appro-priate option on the Occurrences line.The default option is Anywhere In ThePage, but additional options include InThe Title Of The Page, In The Text OfThe Page, In the URL Of The Page,and In Links To The Page.

The Domain line can be very handyif you need to search for informationon a specific Web site. For instance, ifyou want to find specifications forIntel’s Pentium 4 640, you could enterspecs in the first search field, Pentium

4 640 in the exact phrase search field,and intel.com in the domain field.(When you use this option, specify adomain name only because not allWeb pages have a URL that beginswith www.) You can also use this op-tion to omit results from a given do-main by selecting Don’t in thedrop-down menu instead of Only.

Finally, you can enable Google’sSafeSearch filter. Explicit resultsaren’t usually a problem that mostGoogle searchers run into, but de-pending on your search criteria, theycan be. SafeSearch helps to eliminateexplicit content, although as Googlepoints out, no filter is 100% effective.SafeSearch may be enabled by defaultif you selected Use Strict Filtering inyour Preferences.

At the bottom of the page are twoWeb page-specific options. Enter aURL in the Similar field and Googlewill return results similar to that spe-cific Web site. For instance, if you’reshopping online at Barnes & Noble andwant to find other online bookstores,you could enter www.barnesandnoble.com in the Similar search field. If youenter a URL in the Links field, Googlewill return Web sites that link to thespecified URL. (In this case, if youenter www.barnesandnoble.com, you’llsee a list of Web sites that contain linksto www.barnesandnoble.com.) Notethat because these sites are site-specific,

they don’t take into account any searchcriteria provided elsewhere on thepage, which is why Google uses sepa-rate search buttons for these features.Also note that you can include any do-main prefix such as www. In some in-stances, you may receive some differentresults depending on whether or notyou include the prefix. A Web pagethat links to barnesandnoble.com, forinstance, may not appear in a searchfor www.barnesandnoble.com.

Finally, at the bottom of the Ad-vanced Search page, you’ll find links tospecialty search engines. We’ll coverthese in more depth later in this issue.

Advanced Search Strings

Google’s Advanced Search pagelets you narrow the focus of yoursearch without having to worry aboutusing specific operators. Nonetheless,it’s a good idea to become familiarwith search operators, which let youskip the Advanced Search page, pro-vide additional features, and, as you’llsee in a bit, let you enter more accu-rate search terms.

You’re already familiar with basicoperators such as quotation marks,“OR,” and minus signs. Google some-times omits common words (such as“and”) from a search or, in somecases, includes results where a termappears in links to the page but not onthe page itself. The plus sign (+) is oneway to ensure each result will containa specific word on the page. You canuse other operators to emulate someof the other preferences found onGoogle’s Advanced Search page.

For instance, the “site:” operator letsyou search a specific domain name. Ifyou’re looking for specifications aboutIntel’s Pentium 4 640, for instance, youcould enter “Pentium 4 640” specssite:intel.com. Note that there are nospaces between the operator and theterm that immediately follows. Thisoperator is identical to the Domain op-tion in the Advanced Search page.

The Advanced Search page lets youspecify where Google should look for

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Google’sAdvancedSearch page is the easiest wayto use the site’s advancedsearch featuresto narrow yoursearches.


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specific results. You can, for instance,have Google search for terms in thetitle, the text, the URL, or links to aspecific Web page. The “intitle:” and“inurl:” operators provide a similarfunction. If you can remember the titleof a Web page but not its URL, the“intitle:” operator is extremely helpful.The “inurl:” operator is helpful infinding Web sites that contain a spe-cific term or terms in its URL.

If you’re looking for Engadget but can’t remember its URL, type intitle:engadget to locate the Web site.The “intitle:” operator, however, onlyworks for a single term. If you neededto find the Smart Computing homepage, for instance, and you triedsearching for intitle:smart computing,Google would return Web pages withSmart in the title and Computing any-where on the page. This will get youwhere you’re going, but the “allintitle:”operator provides a more efficient op-tion. This option will only return re-sults with both “smart” and“computing” in the title. The “inurl:”operator works in a similar way to the“intitle:” operator, only it looks forspecific terms in URLs. The “allinurl:”operator works in the same manner asthe “allintitle:” operator.

At the bottom of the AdvancedSearch page are two search fields whereyou can find Web pages similar to aspecific page or pages that link to aspecified page. You can also use thisfeature in a standard search using the“related:” and “link:” operators. If youwant to find Web sites similar to barnesandnoble.com, you’d type related:www.barnesandnoble.com. Typinglink:www.barnesandnoble.com returnspages that link to the URL.

In some instances, using operatorscan result in a more exact searchthan you’d get using the AdvancedSearch page. For instance, if you’replanning a vacation to either Romeor New Zealand, you can try en-tering vacation in the first field andRome New Zealand in the third fieldof the Advanced Search page. Youmay find some helpful information,

but this isn’t thebest search be-cause it’s searchingfor pages that con-tain Rome, New,or Zealand. En-closing New Zea-land in quotes inthe third field doesnot help matters atall. Using operators, however, youcan easily cobble together a more ef-ficient query by typing vacationRome OR “New Zealand.”

Advanced Operators

Although operators occasionallyprovide more flexibility, they don’tprovide all the features found on theAdvanced Search page. There is nooperator to limit returns to a specificlanguage, for instance, or an operatorto limit results to recently updatedWeb pages.

There are operators, however, thatprovide features not found onGoogle’s Advanced Search page. Forinstance, you can search numericalranges, include synonyms in a search,define a word, get stock quotes, andfind information about a Web siteusing special operators.

Numerical ranges are helpful ifyou’re looking for products within acertain price range, defining a histor-ical search to specific years, orlooking for notebooks within a cer-tain weight range. If you’re lookingfor historical information about yourhometown, but you want to narrowyour search to specific years, separatethe low-end and high-end of therange by two periods (with nospaces). For instance, if you’relooking up historical informationabout Ontario, Calif., and want tofocus on the years between 1890 and1925, you’d type Ontario, California1890..1925. This search string resultsin 1,010,000 English language pages.Omitting the date range increases thenumber of pages to 15,300,000English language pages. Our numer-ical search included an old brochuredating back to 1910 and a Web page

Searching forweather forecasting history (top) yields

759,000 results. Using the “allinurl:” operator (bottom)

reduces the numberof results to just 11.


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from the city’s official Web site thatincludes a brief history of the city.

Sometimes it’s possible for a searchto be too specific. For instance, if you’re looking for information about a new car and you search for “car,” you receive about 172,000,000English language results. Unfort-unately, this search omits any Websites that use the term automobile in-stead of car. To bring up synonymsfor car (such as automobile) place atilde (~) directly in front of the wordcar (for instance: “~car”). This searchexpands the number of results to373,000,000 English language sitesand adds a few additional sites to thefirst page of results.

Google has additional specialsearch features that most peopledon’t even know about, much lessuse. For instance, you can useGoogle to look up the definition of aterm. If you stumble across a wordonline and you’re not sure what itmeans, visit Google and use the “de-fine:” operator followed immedi-ately by the term in question. Forinstance, to find a definition for theterm flash memory, you’d type define:flash memory.

If you know a company’s tickersymbol, use Google to pull up a com-pany’s stock information using the“stocks:” operator. Type stocks:msft todisplay the latest stock quotes forMicrosoft. You can list quotes for mul-tiple companies by adding additionalsymbols. For instance, stocks:msft intcbrings up information for bothMicrosoft and Intel. Alternatively, youcan type one or more ticker symbolsinto the search engine (minus the“stocks:” operator) and click Search.Click the link at the top of the page toview the stock quotes.

The “info:” operator provides in-formation about a specific Web site.Typing info:www.smartcomputing.com for instance, returns a link tothe Web site, a brief synopsis ofwhat you’ll find on the site, and theWeb site’s URL. At the bottom ofthe page are l inks to additional

information including Google’scached version of the page. You canalso bring up Web sites similar tothe specified site, Web pages thatlink to the site, Web pages the sitelinks to, and Web pages that containthe URL of the Web site.

In some instances, this informationcan be handy for research. Google’scache, for instance, can provide youwith information about a Web sitewhen the site is inaccessible. Theability to see who links to a certainURL can be very helpful if you’re run-ning a Web site, such as a personalblog, and you want to see who, ifanyone, is linking to your site.

Finally, you can bring up thecached version of a Web site byusing the “cache:” operator. To viewGoogle’s cached copy of www.smart-computing.com, you’d type cache:www.smartcomputing.com. If youadd additional words after the URL,Google will highlight any instancesof the word or words that appear onthe cached version.

Results Matter

Why bother using Google’s ad-vanced features at all? To illustrate theusefulness of Google’s advanced fea-tures, we ran a hypothetical test toshow you how using the proper oper-ators can influence your results.

If we’re looking for informationabout the history of weather fore-casting, the search phrase “weatherforecasting history” will turn up759,000 results. Many of the early re-sults are highly relevant. The very firstlink is a question from a USA Todayreader looking for links about weatherforecasting history. Nonetheless, wemight be able to narrow our searchconsiderably by using the “allintitle:”or “allinurl:” operators. The searchquery “allintitle:weather forecast his-tory” turns up no results, but the query“allinurl:weather forecast history” re-turns 11 results, all of which appearhighly relevant. Our USA Today articleis still the first link listed.

If we narrow our focus to concen-trate on the use of radar in weatherforecasting, things change dramatically.Adding radar to our “allinurl:” queryabove doesn’t yield any results.Running a general search for “weatherforecasting radar history” yields1,370,000 results, many of which arecurrent local forecasts. Viewing cachedversions of these pages, we see that theword “forecasting” is often found onlyin links to each page. To rectify thisproblem, we can either place a plussign next to “forecasting” or placequotes around “weather forecasting.”The first option reduces the number ofresults to 214,000. Adding quotes re-duces the results to just 35,500. Bothmethods, however, have several resultsin common, including the first result,an article written for Weather Bureaupersonnel in 1947 introducing them tothe (at the time) brief history of radar.

There are other things you can do tolimit your search. If you want somebasic background information about asubject, for instance, you can searchonline encyclopedias such as MSNEncarta or Wikipedia. To searchWikipedia, for instance, you can enterthe search string weather forecastingradar history site:en.wikipedia.org.This search string provided us with 80results including entries for meteo-rology and weather forecasting. Manyof the entries provided good generalbackground, but didn’t focus a lot onthe use of radar. Nonetheless, clickingthe Cached link to view a copy of eachpage with your search terms high-lighted lets you narrow in on relevantportions of each entry, letting yougleam information from several entries.

Find What You Need

As you can see, there are reasons forthe advanced search options Googleprovides. You may not need to pull outall the stops when looking for movietimes online, but it’s good to knowthey’re there when you need them.


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Image SearchElements

Google’s Not Just For Text Anymore

The World Wide Web doesn’twork on words alone, andGoogle’s developers knew it,which is why a few years ago

the site began integrating a powerfulimage search component. Now whenyou need an image in a hurry and youhave no idea where to start looking,you can turn to Google and find it injust seconds, no matter how obscurethe subject—because with ImageSearch, you can use keywords to siftthrough more than 1 billion Web-based images.

As with word searches, the GoogleImage Search engine offers a straight-forward process for finding onlineimages. And that, in a nutshell, is thebeauty of Google. You don’t need tobe a Web surfing aficionado or pure-blooded geek in order to use ImageSearch, and you certainly don’t needto be a computer expert to value itssimplicity, either.

Almost Effortless

Google’s Image Search uses a cleanand intuitive interface that helps noviceand advanced computer users alike

perform searches with ease. To find animage using this interface, all you haveto do is type the name of your searchsubjects, and then click Search Images.In a flash, you’ll see a page loaded withsmall thumbnail images that lead to theWeb sites or graphic libraries where theimages reside.

Immediately after you perform asearch, you’ll see a blue bar near thetop of the screen that displays thenumber of results Google locatedusing your keywords. You’ll also see anumber that tells you exactly howmuch time the search consumed. Justbelow these numbers, Google lists a Show option whereyou can click Large,Medium, or Small;click a size and Googlefilters your results tomatch certain imagesize dimensions.

Google displays 20 thumbnail im-ages after most image searches. Beloweach thumbnail you’ll see informationrelated to the image, including the im-age’s file name, the image size in pixels,and the original image’s file size.Google also lists the image’s URL soyou have an idea of where the pictureoriginates. Some of the best parts ofImage Search’s results are what youdon’t see, such as duplicate images,icons, advertisements, or buttons thatmight be on the same site as the image.

If you click a thumbnail, Googledisplays a new page with a splitscreen. The top frame shows theimage thumbnail, and if you click thissmall image, Google shows you thefull-size image. The top frame also in-cludes a URL that leads directly to theoriginal image; in contrast, the largerbottom frame displays the Web siteshowing the image in its original con-text. If you prefer, you can remove thetop frame by clicking Remove Frame,a command that lets the bottomframe fill your screen. If you’d rathergo back to your Image Search results,simply click Image Results.

The engine’s guts. As Google worksto find and display your results, youwon’t see all of the search engine’selectronic gears grinding. There’s a lotgoing on behind the scenes to makeImage Search happen.

Image searches aren’t easy to per-form because search engines are tradi-tionally constructed to work withtext. Because most images on the Webdon’t have text in them, Image Search

Google Image Search displays your results as

thumbnail images. You can click these

thumbnails to see larger versions of the images.


must try to deduce the image’s con-tents by using other factors. Most ofthose factors are related to text on theWeb site that stores the originalimage. Image Search uses the site’sURL, the image file name and foldername, page content, page title—noneof which, of course, necessarily de-scribe the image.

Google’s search also looks forimage ALT tags that a Web site de-signer might use during a site’s con-struction. These tags might provide adescription of the image for olderbrowser versions that can’t displayimages, or for browsers with theimage display option disabled.

How does Google find and siftthrough all of this data and then re-turn your results so quickly? The an-swer is that it doesn’t—not in realtime, anyway. Google uses automatedsoftware that continually downloadstext from Web sites all over the world,and then it stores that text in large-ca-pacity index computers. Those indexcomputers act just like the index inthe back of a nonfiction book.

When you use Image Search,you’re actually searching the indexeddata, which is why sometimes you seeeither outdated image information, oryou find that Google isn’t yet listingan image that you’re sure is online.Those problems aside, Google’sImage Search is so massive that it willpoint you to thousands, even millionsof images related to your keywords, afact that makes this tool very handyduring your online adventures.

Basic inquiries. Butwhat exactly makes abasic keyword search ef-fective? With Google,the answer is easy. Thegreater number of effec-tive keywords you pro-

vide in the search text box, the better. It takes practice to figure out what

makes for effective keywords, but ba-sically, the more precise and uniquethe words are, the more likely yourresults will be accurate. For example,using “cat” as a keyword will returnmillions of very varied images. Type“calico kitten,” however, and you’llsee a results list that’s much more fo-cused. Notice that we didn’t includewords such as “the” or “this” becauseGoogle throws out ultra-genericwords, anyway.

Sophisticated Searches

When basic keyword searches windup providing you with too many un-related results, you can use the ad-vanced search capabilities withinImage Search. These tools will helpyou refine and hone your searches sothat Google will know what you’relooking for.

Using the advanced Image Searchfeatures, you can spec-ify image size, file type,coloration, domain,and you can apply a

SafeSearch filter that will sort outadult material. With one or more ofthese tools, you’ll quickly be able tochange your search parameters andfind the images you really want.

For example, let’s say you want tofind a range of full-color images ofthe Hilton hotel located in Paris.Using a basic keyword search, such as“Paris Hilton,” you’ll get mostly mod-eling snapshots of the yellow-hairedsocialite, some of which might not beappropriate for younger viewers.

But using advanced options, wecleaned up this search in a hurry. Inthe Related To All Of The Words textbox, we typed “hilton,” and in theRelated To The Exact Phrase text boxwe entered “Paris France.” Becausewe wanted only color images, fromthe Coloration drop-down menu, weselected Full Color. And to preventthe possibility of any explicit mate-rial, we also clicked the Use StrictFiltering option.

This search was much more ac-curate, as Google returned dozens of images and maps of the Hiltonhotel in Paris. And thanks to the fil-tering option, no adult-oriented im-ages appeared.

You should keep in mind that theSafeSearch filter in Google ImageSearch is powerful but imperfect.There are three SafeSearch settings:No Filtering, Use Moderate Filtering,and Use Strict Filtering.

If you select No Filtering, Googlewon’t censor results at all. If youchoose Use Moderate Filtering,

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The Advanced ImageSearch options are easyto use and will help youquickly filter out many irrelevant results.

After you click athumbnail, Google

displays a screen withthe thumbnail on top

and the main imagebelow. You can tell

Google to remove thetop frame at any time.


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Google will omit most explicit imagesfrom your list of results. This is thedefault setting for Image Search. TheUse Strict Filtering option should re-move all explicit images from yourimage search results, and it will applySafeSearch filtering to your ordinaryGoogle Web searches, too.

Like all filtering services, SafeSearchmakes mistakes. That means poten-tially offensive images might appear inyour list of results even when you’reusing the Moderate or Strict settings.You should also know that SafeSearchfilters out explicit material only ifyou’re executing searches in English.So if, for example, you run a fewsearches in Spanish, SafeSearch won’tfilter your results at all.

Engaging other options. The otheradvanced search options are useful,too. For example, if you want to re-strict your results to images of a spe-cific size, you can use the Sizedrop-down menu and select Small,Medium, or Large, which means that,respectively, you’ll see results of 150 x150 pixels or smaller, images with di-mensions between 150 x 150 pixelsand 500 x 500 pixels, or images biggerthan 500 x 500 pixels.

The Size option is one of ImageSearch’s most valuable capabilities, be-cause without it, Google will list im-ages of all sizes in your results. Ifyou’re looking for a high-quality imageyou can print at home, you’ll want tosort out the smaller images, many ofwhich contain far too little data to letyou create a clear print. And if you just

want a small- or medium-sized image for email pur-poses, this filter helps youweed out large images you’dneed to resize.

In addition to the Size op-tion, you can use the File

Type drop-down menu to sort by JPEG(Joint Photographic Experts Group),GIF (graphics interchange format), andPNG (Portable Network Graphics) fileformats. This option is useful whenyou know the image you’re looking foris in a specific format, or when youwant to download an image and youonly want one file type.

The Domain filter lets you limitImage Search results to one Web site ordomain. For instance, you could searchonly domains such as .edu or .com, oryou could search only CNN.com for aspecific news image. This option is es-pecially useful when your searches turnup too many unrelated images from allover the Web, or when you know forsure that an image is located on a spe-cific Web site or domain.

Breakin’ the law. In addition to thepossibility that Google will lead youto explicit material no matter whatSafeSearch option you engage, ImageSearch might also point you to otherpotentially problematic graphics.Because Google’s robotic image in-dexing scheme is so effective, it oftenlinks to images protected bycopyright. That’s no crime on

Google’s part, because all Googledoes is let you view these images onthe Web.

But it means you should take pre-cautions if you plan to download anduse an image for your own purposes.If you see an image that you finduseful, you can follow the thumbnailback to the Web site that’s storing theimage to see if there are any indica-tions that the image is copyrighted.

If you don’t see any notice of copy-right, don’t assume that it’s OK foryou to download the image and in-corporate it into a product brochureyou’re designing. Not only is thiskind of behavior rude and insensitiveto the person who created the image,but you might also be using an imagethat doesn’t have a clearly markedcopyright notice.

The only way to be sure you’re notviolating copyright laws when youuse an image from the Web is to con-tact the site’s owner and ask for per-mission. Once you have a go-aheadfrom the image’s creator, you won’thave to worry about being on shakylegal ground.

At The End Of The Day

When the Web was in its infancy,finding multiple images on one subjectoften took a lot of investigative work.In the era of Google’s Image Search,finding a specific graphic or image is aseasy as typing a few keywords. Withjust a little practice you’ll be able tofind the exact images you’re lookingfor with minimal frustration.

BBYY NNAATTHHAANN CCHHAANNDDLLEERR

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Google offers three levels ofimage filtering to prevent explicit images from poppingup onto your screen. Thefilter works only for Englishlanguage searches.

Someone took the time to create the images you see on Image Search, and that

means those images could be protected by copyright. Don’t

reproduce the images you findwith Google until you obtain

the creator’s permission.


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Read All About ItGoogle Offers Personalized News

Gone are the days when wehad to wait for the eveningnews to learn what happenedin the world. Today, thou-

sands of news sites post new articles onthe Web throughout the day, providingus with the most current news. Manypeople have a series of sites they checkto get the latest news related to their ca-reers and personal interests. GoogleNews (news.google.com) gives users aunique glance into current events andoffers several ways to receive the news.Google News is still in beta release, sokeep in mind that some of the featureswe cover may change between presstime and the time you read this.

Newsworthy Notes

Google News scans approximately4,500 news sites for articles postedwithin the past 30 days. According toGoogle, it searches for new stories

every 15 minutes to provide the mostrecent headlines.

In theory, journalism should be ob-jective and communicate only thefacts without reflecting a viewpoint.However, authors make decisionsabout which facts to include or em-phasize, and news editors decidewhich stories to publish, as well aswhich receive the most prominentplacement in their publications. Thisoften results in articles presentingslightly different perspectives, even if the content itself is objective.Furthermore, our view of events is in-fluenced by where we live. For ex-ample, CNN.com (www.cnn.com)often places a different emphasis onevents in Iraq than England’s BBCNews (news.bbc.co.uk) does.

Google News can help you get amore balanced account of the day’sevents. There are two reasons for therelative objectivity of Google News.

The first is the use of computer-basedalgorithms to determine which storiesreceive headlines. The second is theinclusion of articles from varioussources for each news event.

As opposed to traditional onlinenews sources, which rely on editors todecide which stories deserve coverage,Google News does not have any newseditors. Instead, it takes advantage ofcomputer algorithms to calculatewhich news stories are most relevantand deserve top coverage. Because noactual person selects the stories thatGoogle News will list, the algorithmsremove much of the subjectivity ofnews selection.

Google News’ algorithms take sev-eral factors into account. First, itmakes use of clustering algorithmsthat try to determine which articlesare about the same topics. You cansee how this works on the GoogleNews page. Under Top Stories youwill see that each story has a mainheadline and brief excerpt. There arealso links to two other stories aboutthe same event, links to other publica-tions’ accounts of the event, and alink to a list of all related stories. Thetext in these articles is not identical,so Google had to use a clustering al-gorithm to analyze the articles’ wordsand determine which are related.

Google News also uses an algo-rithm to rank the newsworthiness oftopics. It does this by analyzing thenumber of news sites that cover thestory, the placement of that story onthose sites, the number of hits thestories receive, and the ranking ofthe sites which run the story. Storieswith the highest scores from the al-gorithm receive the highest place-ment in the l ist of headlines onGoogle News.

Because Google News groups re-lated stories together, you canchoose to read more than one ac-count of an event for a more bal-anced view of the news. You can alsouse Google News to see how newscoverage varies across the world orhow the nature of a story has


evolved over time. To read coverageof current events from around theworld, click the News link under theGoogle logo on Google’s home page(www.google.com). Then use theTop Stories drop-down menu underthe Google News banner to selectone of the 22 available internationaleditions (such as U.S. , U.K., orAustralia). Click the Go button. Thetop Google News headlines for thatcountry’s edition will appear.

You can also see how a story hasevolved over time. To do this click theAll (Number) Related link beneath anarticle’s headline and excerpt. Thenclick Sort By Date in the upper-rightcorner of the screen. For instance, wesorted stories about a tropical stormby date. We could see that early arti-cles merely mentioned the growingstorm in the Atlantic Ocean. As wefollowed the articles through time, wecould see how the coverage becamemore urgent as the storm gatheredforce and headed for land. We couldsee not only that the knowledge aboutthe tropical storm increased but alsothat the type of coverage it receivedchanged as the storm intensified.

Sort By Date is also useful if youwant to see how the news stories

about a politician or current eventhave evolved. You can often see howsentiment changes toward a givenperson or topic over time. Althoughsome Google News users will neversee a need to read multiple accountsof the same story or sort articles bydate, these Google News tools arevery useful for people who strive forthe most balanced account of cur-rent events.

News Clues

Just as Google’s Web Search has anAdvanced Web Search option, GoogleNews has an Advanced News Search.This tool lets you create a set of con-ditions, also known as operators, foryour search. For instance, you mightlimit the period of time in which anarticle was posted, or you mightchoose to include only articles frompublications based in a certaincountry. You can often find more re-liable information by performing anAdvanced News Search than by usinga basic Google Web Search becauseGoogle News only searches news sitesrather than all Web sites.

To access these advanced options,click the Advanced News Search link

in the upper-right corner of theGoogle News page. The Find Resultssection has a gray background andhas the same fields you will find inother advanced Google searches. Theavailable operators under FindResults include With All Of TheWords, With The Exact Phrase, WithAt Least One Of The Words, andWithout The Words.

For instance, if you want to findnews articles that contain informa-tion about both caffeine and dia-betes, you would type caffeinediabetes in the With All Of TheWords field. Google News wouldsearch for articles that contain bothwords, although they may not neces-sarily appear side by side in the text.If you want them to appear together,use the With The Exact Phrase fieldinstead of the With All Of TheWords field.

There are also search operatorsspecific to Google News. These in-clude News Source, Location, Occur-rences, and Date. You can use theNews Source operator to find an ar-ticle that appeared on a specific newssite. To do this type the name of anews site, such as USA Today, in theReturn Only Articles From The NewsSource Named field. Google Newswill then limit its search results tothose that appeared in that publica-tion. Similarly, you can perform aLocation search by typing the nameof a country or state in the ReturnOnly Articles From News SourcesLocated In field.

The Return Results Where MyTerms Occur drop-down menu letsyou select where in the article yoursearch terms appear. You can choosefrom Anywhere In The Article, InThe Headline Of The Article, In TheBody Of The Article, or In The URLOf The Article.

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The Advanced News Search lets younarrow your search according to criteria such as the news source and publication date.


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Finally, you can search by Date.First , select either the ReturnArticles Published or Return ArticlesPublished Between radio button. If you choose Return ArticlesPublished, you will select how re-cent the articles must have beenpublished (Anytime, Last Hour, LastDay, Past Week, or Past Month). If you choose Return ArticlesPublished Between, you will usedrop-down menus to select a rangeof dates from which the articles may have been published. BecauseGoogle News only covers recent sto-ries, you can only search for articlespublished within the past 60 days.

On Alert

Google News also offers a toolcalled Google Alerts, which can no-tify you by email when it finds newarticles about topics of interest toyou. To use this tool, click the NewsAlerts link on the left side of theGoogle News page. You can use theCreate A Google Alert box to set up anew Google Alert, or if you have aGoogle Account, you may wish toclick the Sign In To Manage YourAlerts link, which will let you main-tain and manage a set of alerts. If youchoose to sign in, you will need toclick a pair of links to read the TermsOf Service and Privacy Policy. Afteryou read these, click the I Have ReadAnd Agree To The Terms Of UseStart Using Google Alerts button.Then follow the instructions on-screen to log in.

If you choose not to sign into aGoogle Account, type the words forwhich you want to search in theSearch Terms field. By default, yourGoogle Alerts wil l include onlysearches of Google News. However,you can also choose Web, News &Web, or Groups from the Type

drop-down menu. Next, use theHow Often drop-down menu to in-dicate whether Google News shouldcheck for new articles Once A Day,As It Happens, or Once A Week.Finally, type your email address inthe Your Email field and click CreateAlert. Click the Google Alerts link toreturn to the Google Alerts page.

Before you receive any GoogleAlerts, you will need to follow theinstructions Google sent to you in aconfirmation message. When youreceive this message from GoogleAlerts ([email protected]), click the first link to confirmthat you want to receive GoogleAlerts. Click the second link if youwant to cancel the Google Alerts re-quest. When you click the confirma-tion link, the Google Alerts ManageYour Alerts page will load automati-cally. You can create additionalGoogle Alerts by typing words orphrases in the Search Terms field,selecting a search type from the Typedrop-down menu, choosing a searchfrequency from the How Oftendrop-down menu, and clicking theCreate Alert button.

You will also see a list of all theGoogle Alerts you’ve created. Click ahyperlinked item from the Search

Terms column to perform a quicksearch of all the articles publishedabout that topic in the past 30 days. Ifyou want to change any of the searchcriteria for one of your Google Alerts,click the corresponding Edit link.Type new words in the Search Termsfield or select new criteria from theType or How Often drop-downmenus. When you are finished, clickthe Save button. If you want to re-move one of your Google Alerts, clickthe Delete link. To eliminate theGoogle Alert, click the OK button inthe resulting dialog box. By default,Google Alerts sends HTML (Hyper-text Markup Language)-based mes-sages to your email address. If youwould like to receive basic, text-onlymessages, click the Switch To TextEmails link in the upper-right cornerof the page.

Be Your Own News Editor

One of the most useful toolsGoogle News offers is a customizednews page. You can automaticallyreceive the headlines most impor-tant to you. Imagine receiving anewspaper with not only sectionssuch as World, Sports, and Enter-tainment but also Biking, Italian

You can use Google Alerts if you wantemail notifications when Google finds

articles of interest to you.


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Greyhounds, and EnvironmentalEngineering. Perhaps you’d have anentire section of the paper devotedto your favorite musician. WithGoogle News you can create a newspage that delivers the stories thatmatter most to you.

If you haven’t used Google News’customization options before, youwill see the Standard News version ofthe page. Click the Customized Newslink in the upper-right corner of thepage to create your own personalnews page. Then click Edit ThisCustomized Page. In the Edit ThisCustomized Page box, you will seethe each of the news sections, such asWorld, U.S., and Sci/Tech, in theorder in which they will appear onyour personalized Google News page.To change the content of any of thesesections, click the linked title of thesection. To remove the section, selectthe Delete Section checkbox andclick Save Changes.

If you would rather make changesto the section, select an edition, suchas U.S., U.K., or Canada English,from the Edition drop-down menu.If you would like to change whichnews section appears in that portionof your personalized page, choose adifferent news category from theSection drop-down menu. Finally,use the Stories drop-down menu tochoose how many headlines GoogleNews should list for the category.When you are finished, click the SaveChanges button.

If you want to add one of Google’sstandard sections (World, U.S. ,Business, Sci/Tech, Sports, Enter-tainment, Health, or Top Stories),click Add A Standard Section. Onceagain, select an Edition, Section, andthe number of Stories that GoogleNews should display in the results.Then click Add Section.

What is potentially more usefulthan Google News’ standard sections,though, is its custom sections. Youcan actually create your own customsections of your news page that willsummarize the most recent news

about topics of your choosing. To getstarted click Add A Custom Section.Type any words for which GoogleNews should search in the Keywordsfield. For example, if you wanted yourpersonal page to have a section withnews stories about arthritis, youwould type arthritis in the Keywordsfield. Use the Stories drop-downmenu to choose how many headlinesGoogle News should list for this new,custom category. Click Add Sectionwhen you are done.

Finally, you can click and drag sec-tions to change the order in whichthey appear. When you are done cus-tomizing your news page, click theSave Layout button. Then click Closein the upper-right corner of the EditThis Customized Page box.

Get Your Feed Of The News

Finally, one of the latest changesto Google News is the addition ofNews Feeds. To use this feature, youwill need separate software called afeed reader, or you will need a Website that supports RSS (Really SimpleSyndication) or Atom feeds. RSS andAtom are both technologies that letyou choose the publications forwhich you would like to read head-lines on a regular basis. Your feedreader will automatically deliverthose headlines, short summaries,and links to the news articles.Instructions for using these feedreaders will vary, so you’ll need tofollow the documentation for theprogram or service you use. At somepoint you will need to enter the URLfor the feed. To do this, right-clickthe RSS or Atom link on the left sideof the Google News page. (Checkyour feed reader’s documentation tofind out which standards the readeraccepts.) Then click Copy Shortcut.

Then right-click the appropriate fieldin your feed reader and click Paste.

By using feeds you can receiveGoogle News headlines in the sameplace that you receive all your othernews headlines and feeds. In fact, youcould even receive Google News head-lines through another online news sitethat supports feeds. For example, youcould configure My Yahoo! (my.yahoo.com) to serve Google Newsheadlines on your My Yahoo! page.

There are a couple of downsides tousing feeds rather than visiting theGoogle News page. First, whereas theGoogle News page displays the topheadlines for each news event, theGoogle News feed will deliver onlyone top headline for each event.Second, feeds are not available fornon-English editions of Google News.This limits feeds to editions such asU.S., U.K., Australia, and otherEnglish-based editions.

The News That’s Best For You

The great benefits of many ofGoogle’s online tools are often thatthey give you a lot of control over thetype of information the search engineretrieves. Google News follows thistrend, letting you choose the newscategories that most interest you.With Google News you can create asingle news source that serves you ar-ticles from a variety of sources aboutthe topics you really care about.


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In the Edit This Customized Page box, you can rearrange the sections of your

Google News page and add unique news categories.


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It’s Not Cheap,It’s Froogle

Your One-Stop Online Shop For Finding The Best Deals

same. While it displays the typicalGoogle Search box, it also proudlyposts the definition of the term“Froogle” right beneath the search sec-tion, as well as listing 25 of the most re-cent items searched for on Froogle. Justto the right of the Search button, you’llnotice tiny links to Advanced FroogleSearch, Preferences, and Froogle Help.The seemingly obligatory links toFroogle’s sister sites (Google Web,Images, Groups, and News) line thetop of the search box.

Basic Search

Froogle not only looks muchlike the main Google Web site, it

also employs the familiar Googlesearch technology. Google’s spider-esque software crawls the Internet,making note of Web sites that sellproducts. When you run a search,Froogle checks these sites for theproduct you want. If a site has whatyou want, Froogle will include it,along with other pertinent productand distributor information, in yoursearch results. Much like Google’sWeb search, a Froogle search will dis-play your results based on relevanceto the search terms you’ve entered.

To perform a basic search fromFroogle’s home page, type the itemyou’re looking for in the search boxand click Search Froogle or simplypress ENTER. For example, say wewanted to search for a new keyboard:We’d simply type keyboard in thesearch box and click Search Froogle.Of course, if you happen see theproduct you wanted to search for inthe Recently Found Items section, justclick it, and you’ll be taken directly tothe search results for that item.

Advanced Search

If the basic Froogle search just isn’tdoing it for you, you can try the ad-vanced search. To get there, click theAdvanced Froogle Search link just tothe right of the Search Froogle button.

You’ll first notice that there arefour boxes in which you can entersearch terms instead of just the oneon the basic search option. If youenter your terms in the first box,Froogle will include products whosedescriptions contain those words in

Froogle’s home page proudly displays the definition of the

term “froogle” along with some recently found items. Anyone

need a pond pump?

Sure, your spouse may haveblushed when you tried to talkthat Girl Scout down a buck ortwo on those Thin Mints, and

the kids were a little embarrassed whenyou asked the cashier at McDonald’s ifthat was as low as he could go on thoseHappy Meals, but let’s face it, moneydoesn’t grow on trees.

If you believe frugal is an adjectivethat accurately describes you (thoughyour family might call you downrightcheap), Google’s beta price compar-ison program, Froogle, has your namewritten all over it. It uses Google’ssearch technology to locate numerousonline stores that sell the item youwant to buy. You can then comparethe stores’ prices to get the best deal.

First Impressions

You may notice that the Frooglehome page (www.froogle.com) is sim-ilar to its sister sites, but not exactly the


any part of the product description.The box below that is the ExactPhrase section. Use this if you wantyour results to include only productsthat have the exact phrase you’researching for in their product descrip-tions. The next option you have is toperform a search that includes allproducts that have at least one of thewords you’re searching for in theirdescriptions. You can use the finalbox to narrow your results by en-tering words that you don’t want tosee in your search. For instance, ifyou’re looking for a PCI Expressvideo card and don’t want to wasteyour time sifting through comparablypriced AGP (Accelerated GraphicsPort) video cards, you may want toenter PCI Express in the exact phrasebox and then enter AGP in theWithout These Words field.

Just to the right of the All Wordssearch box you’ll notice a couplemore search options in the form ofdrop-down menus. The first adjust-ment you can make is the number ofresults you want to view per page.Froogle will show as few as 10 or asmany as 100 results per page.

To the right of the results menu,you have another drop-down menuthat lets you choose how you want toview your results. You can sort by thebest match to your search query, fromthe lowest price to the highest price,or vice versa.

In theory, the next adjustment youcan control is the price range you’relooking for. However, we couldn’t getthis feature to work on our test

searches. We’d input valuesfor the lowest and highestprices, but when we clicked

Search Froogle, our search wouldn’tyield any results. While this featurewill no doubt be helpful when it isworking properly, don’t put toomuch stock in it right now.

The next thing you can adjust isthe Occurrences feature. This drop-down menu lets you choose whichproducts to include in your resultsbased on where your search queryappears in the product description.You can choose to view results thathave your query only in the title ofthe product, only in the descriptionof the product, or in either the titleor the description of the productyou’re looking for.

Another useful tool right belowthe Occurrences drop-down menu isthe Category drop-down. Frooglegroups the online businesses itsearches into various categories. Youcan use this menu to choose whichgroup of enterprises you want tosearch based on the type of productyou’re looking for. Say you want anew mouse for your computer, andnot some food for your pet boa con-strictor. You can select theComputers category fromthe list, and you will nowsearch only the computerand computer parts sellersfor the term “mouse,” andnot every seller in Froogle.

Finally, there is a group of threeoptions that each have a pair ofradio buttons you can use to cus-tomize the display of your resultspage. The first option lets youchoose whether you want your re-sults grouped by stores or if youwant to show all the products. Whenwe had the setting on Group ByStore, a search for “optical mouse”returned 58,500 matches from 32different stores. We switched the set-ting to Show All Products and ranthe same search. This yielded 59,700results, though it was only from 18stores. As you can see, this didn’t ap-pear to drastically change our searchresults, but it is one more thing youcan play around with when you’researching for the perfect widget.

The next setting is View. Use it tochoose whether you want to look at apage in List View, which will give youthe most information, or as a grid,which will shorten the page by givingthe bare-bones information, such asprice and the number of locations, andomit the less relevant information,such as product descriptions. (You canstill see the product description in GridView; just click the product you wantto learn more about.)

As you can see, there is a lot tosoak up in the List View. If youdon’t necessarily need all the infor-mation that displays in List View orif your scrolling finger is a bit out ofshape, you might find the Grid Viewa little easier to manage. The Frooglesearch remains the same; changingviews in no way affects the number

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The Advanced Froogle Searchoffers a number of optionsthat let you manipulate variables. You can, for example, control the numberof results shown on each pageand the format in whichFroogle displays your results.

The List View gives you tons of information and reviews on the product you’re seeking and the

online stores that sell it.


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or quality of the results you get; itjust displays the results a little differ-ently. Instead of giving each resultits own line in the middle of thepage, the grid view now fits threeproducts where one fit in the listview. This view doesn’t suggest anyonline stores to buy from like the listview, nor does it contain the part ofthe description that includes yoursearch terms, but you still get the av-erage product rank and access to thereviews written about the product,not to mention the link that will takeyou to the page containing the linksof all the online suppliers and theprices at which they have yourproduct listed.

The final option you can manipu-late is SafeSearch. If you’re searchingfor something in the presence of littleones, it’s a very good idea to enableSafeSearch. This screens Web sites thatFroogle searches for inappropriatecontent and deletes all references tosites that contain sexually explicit con-tent. If you go into your Google prefer-ences, you can choose how strictly youwant SafeSearch to filter. SafeSearch’sStrict Filtering setting automaticallyfilters out both explicit text and im-ages. Moderate Filtering is the defaultbehavior; it filters out only explicit im-ages. Naturally, No Filtering turnsSafeSearch off completely.

How To Interpret Your Results

After you run a search withFroogle, you’ll be greeted with many

products answering yourquery. Each of these itemscomes with quite a bit ofinformation. Let’s analyzethe data you receive from atypical result in List View.Proceeding from top tobottom, the first thing younotice is a link that displays

the make and model of a product.During our optical mouse search,the first product we saw was theLogitech MX510. If you click thelink, it takes you to the product’spage on the Web site of the store di-rectly below it. For instance, at thetime of print, the MX510 was sellingfor $49.87 at Office Depot. When weclicked the main link, we were takento the MX510 page on the OfficeDepot Web site.

Just under the link you’ll see theprice and the seller. Next to thename of the sel ler is a ranking.Froogle uses a 0 to 5 scale thatbuyers can use to rank the onlinestore from which they purchased theproduct. In this instance, OfficeDepot currently scored a 3.7 out of apossible 5 points. When you clickthe rating, you can view customerreviews of the store. These reviewsare written by customers who haveused the Office Depot online storethrough various Web sites, includingShopzilla.com, ResellerRatings.com,and NexTag.com. Whilethis page only lists a few ofthe customer reviews, itdoes offer links enablingyou to read all 425,000 re-views of Office Depot on

Shopzilla.com or the 97 reviewsfound on ResellerRatings.

Next to the store rating is an AddTo List link. If you have a Google ac-count and click this link, the productautomatically gets added to yourShopping List. Your Shopping List issimply a list you can set up to mon-itor products. If you don’t have thegreen to spend right now, this is agreat way to keep an eye on a poten-tial purchase. Other cool ShoppingList features include the ability tomake notes about products you’remonitoring and the ability to sort theproducts in your Shopping List by thehighest to lowest price, lowest tohighest price, the date the items weremoved to your Shopping List, or inalphabetical order by product title.

On your results page, there is acolumn on the left that offers a fewsimple tools to sort your search re-sults. Think of this as an advancedFroogle search that is slightly wa-tered down. Although you can’t se-lect the number of results you viewon a page or the level of filtering youwould like, there are a number ofoptions you can take advantage of.The first of these lets you switch be-tween the Grid View and List Viewwith a single click. The next adjust-ment lets you choose the criteria bywhich you can sort your results. Aswith the advanced search, you canchoose between sorting your resultsby price or by relevance to yoursearch query. While the advancedsearch had a section that wouldallow you to set a low and a high

SafeSearch is a handy way tofilter out inappropriate Websites from your search results.

Froogle lets you view thousands of ratings of

various online stores from other Internet shopping Web sites.


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price between which to search, wehad trouble getting it to return re-sults. In this section of the resultspage, there’s a similar price rangefilter, only this filter worked just finefor us. You can also choose whichcategory and subcategory you wantto search or the online store youwant to visit.

Shopping List & Wish List

If you’re into dropping not-so-subtle hints for birthday gifts, thenyou’ll love the My Wish List featureof Froogle’s Shopping List. Whenyou view a product in your ShoppingList, you’ll see an In Wish Listcheckbox in the lower-left corner.When you check that box, the itemnot only stays in your Shopping List,but also goes to your Wish List. TheWish List is similar to your ShoppingList, but has its own URL that youcan give to your friends or family, sothey have access to gift ideas for

upcoming holidays or spe-cial occasions.

Right below the line thatlists the price, seller, andthe link to add the productto your Shopping List is a

brief blurb from the seller’s Web sitethat contains your search term inbold. You can View theentire product descrip-tion by clicking the linkat the top of eachproduct listing. Beneaththis description you’llsee a link to other no-table sel lers and theprices they are chargingfor the product. If thesesuppliers have beenranked using Froogle’s 0to 5 scale, those rank-ings wil l also be dis-played. If there are othersuppliers that carry theproduct, those will be included in alink at the very bottom of theproduct description. This is ageneric-looking link that will saysomething such as, “Compare 18items priced from $19.95 to $29.95.”Of course, the number of items andthe prices will vary depending on

what you’re lookingfor, but the link tellsyou that Froogle hasfound suppliers inaddition to the few

listed that carry the product you’relooking for.

Beneath some of the product im-ages you’ll see product ranking andreview links. These are very similarto the scores and reviews for the online stores. For instance, thatLogitech MX510 optical mouse wewere looking at earlier has an av-erage rating of 4.4 out of 5. Thisscore is based on 86 reviews, all ofwhich you can read by clicking thelinks located in the reviews page towhich you are taken when you clickthe product rating.

A Shopper’s Paradise

We would definitely call Froogle abargain shopper’s paradise. It’s basi-cally like shopping hundreds, eventhousands, of stores from your owncomputer desk. Froogle’s advancedsearch options really allow you to getspecific with your query so that you’renot sifting through a bunch of irrele-vant results, and you can get a greatbalance of product and supplier in-formation by adapting the view to suityour needs. The bottom line is simple:Whether you call yourself cheap,thrifty, or economical, you’re sure tolove Froogle.


If you click the product ranking link,you can see what other people thoughtof the product you’re considering.

The guide on the left side of the results page lets you customize your search and your view to best suit your needs.

The Froogle ShoppingList is an easy way to monitor productsyou’re interested in,even if you’re not prepared to buy right away.

RS


In TheNeighborhood

Google Local Helps You Find Everything FromPizza Places To Pet Stores

Barber in the What box and that ad-dress in the Where box. If you planon searching from the same locationfor most of your searches, click theRemember This Location box. Thisshould save the location as a cookieon your computer. Every time you goto Google Local, your saved locationshould automatically appear in theWhere box. You can get as specific asyou want with your location. If youenter your street address along withyour city and state, not only will youget all the results you would if youwere searching your town, but youwill also have easy access to step-by-step directions from your doorstep tothe business you’re looking for.

Keep It Local

Right below the search bar of theGoogle Local search results pageyou’ll see an orangeish-yellow stripe.On the left side of the stripe, it saysLocal in bold, and on the right side, itsays Search Within and then givesyou a few different choices rangingfrom 1 mile to 45 miles. This is thesearch radius. Your current selectionwill be in bold. Our current selectionis 45 miles. If we didn’t want to drivemore than 15 miles one way, wecould click the 15 mile option just tothe left of our current 45 mile radius.Now the only results that will be dis-played are those within 15 miles ofthe search location.

Along with this, it is important to remember that Google Localsearches in much the same wayGoogle Web does. Google Web listssearch results in terms of relevance,and so does Google Local. With thatin mind, don’t be surprised if yourfirst search result is 13.4 miles away,while your second search result is1.7 miles away. Based on your searchcriteria and Google’s search formula,Google determined the business 13.4miles away from you was more rele-vant than the place 1.7 miles away,so be sure to check all of your resultscarefully if you’re looking for the

Google Local came about inMarch 2004. Sergey Brin,co-founder of Google, saidof the project, “Google’s

goal is to connect searchers with theinformation they need whether it’shalfway around the world or in theirneighborhood.” Google Local differsfrom Google’s normal Web search inthat while the usual search gives youthe most relevant search resultsworldwide, Google Local will giveyou the most relevant results from aspecified area. Though this innova-tion can help you now, it is still in thebeta stages of testing. After all, cross

referencing every business genreusing Google’s 8 billion-Web-pageindex will take a while.

Using Google Local

A wonderful aspect of Google Localis its simplicity. From the Googlehome page, click Local located justabove the search line. Enter whatyou’re looking for in the What boxand then enter your address in theWhere box. For instance, if we werelooking for a place to get a haircutnear our home base at 131 WestGrand Drive, Lincoln, NE, we’d type

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best combination of usefulnessand proximity.

Get Specific

Immediately below the SearchWithin stripe, you’ll notice a blueband that has various sponsoredlinks and a brief description ofwhat these links are. This is sim-ilar to the sponsored links youwould find on other Googlepages. Right below that you maynotice a line that says ShowOnly. If you search for a fairlygeneral topic, as we did withBarbers, oftentimes Google Localwill allow you to break down thecategory into more specific sub-categories using the Show Onlyfeature. For our search forBarbers, we have the option toshow only Barbers or show onlyBeauty Salons in our requestedarea. This will remove a lot of theirrelevant places and streamlineyour search results to better fityour needs.

Listings

Below the Show Only line wefinally get a peak at our first re-sult. The first 10 results are as-signed a letter and pinpointed on amap to the right of the listings. If youhave more than 10 results per page,you’ll notice that those after the 10thlisting will be represented on the mapwith a black dot on their respectivered markers.

Google Local’s listing gives thename of the establishment and thephone number below that. Below thephone number, you may notice a linethat says References. Google Localgathers information from numerousWeb sites and yellow page directoriesamong other sources. The Referencesection will give you a link to all theWeb sites that cross reference thecontact information for that business.For instance, the first listing in oursearch is The Walter Beauty Salon.

Google found the location of this es-tablishment from two references. Thefirst is www.hellolincoln.com, a Website that uses the Yellow Pages fromLincoln, NE, to list the address oflocal businesses.

Google also found the same addressfor The Walter Beauty Salon listed onwww.skincareus.com, so that site isalso listed under its references. It’s notuncommon to spot a business in yoursearch results that has no references.Don’t necessarily discount it just be-cause it doesn’t have a reference.Since this is still a work in progress,Google is still listing businesses.However, businesses are also allowedto enroll themselves in the GoogleLocal program. If you see a businesswith no references, it could be that

the owner listed the businesshimself, and Google hasn’t hadthe opportunity to cross refer-ence the contact information, inwhich case it would be wise foryou to double check with yourlocal yellow pages.

Local Maps

Arguably the coolest featureof Google Local is its implemen-tation of Google’s maps. Theseinteractive charts can let youzoom in until you’re practicallyon the rooftop of the businessyou’re looking for.

You can also easily find direc-tions using Google Local. If youconducted a search using yourwhole address rather than justyour city and state, you shouldautomatically get directions toany business that appears onyour results list. There are twoways you can view these direc-tions. One way is to click theDirections link that is locatedright under the address. Thisshould take you to a screen thathas just about everything you’llneed to find that business, suchas a map with the route high-lighted and step-by-step direc-

tions written out for you. Google alsogives you the travel distance and ap-proximate time it will take you to reachyour destination along with links toprint or email the page as needed.

To view directions another way,you can click the appropriate markeron the map to the right of the list-ings. A dialogue box will pop upwith the name, phone number, ad-dress, and directions to and from thebusiness. If you’re trying to figureout how to get there, click the ToHere link. Next, enter the addressyou’re starting from if it’s not al-ready in the text box and click GetDirections. This should take you tothe same page as the first processand give you the same printing andemailing options.

Click the marker to bring up a dialog box containing that business’ contact information.

Google Local’s results automatically show a business’contact information, as well as links to view directions and references of the establishment.

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Google vs. Google

You might be wondering just howdifferent Google Local is from anormal Google Web search. We de-cided to test both and compare ourresults. We filtered our Google Localsearch by showing only barberswithin 15 miles of our location. Thisonly gave us about 110 search re-sults, but practically all were barbershops and all were within 15 miles ofour location.

Our Google Web search was a littledifferent. We searched for “BarbersLincoln, NE.” This search yielded267,000 results. The first Web siteour search listed wasn’t even a barbershop, but instead was the Web pagefor the Board of Barber Examin-ers. While there are a few names

and locations of barberssprinkled throughout oursearch result, very few ofthem actually have theirown Web site. If they do,there usually isn’t a pro-blem finding their phonenumber or address. Ifthese shops don’t havetheir own Web site, of-tentimes it’s tough to findcontact information forthem from a Web search.You usually have to go toan online yellow page sitefor more help.

Although a GoogleWeb search can give youmore search results thanGoogle Local, it’s impor-tant to remember theadage that bigger isn’tbetter. While the sitesyou’re looking for willprobably be sprinkledsomewhere in your hun-dreds of thousands ofsearch results, GoogleLocal does a better job ofgiving you the most in-formation on the busi-nesses that fit your searchthe best.

Google Local vs. SuperPages.com

While the functionality of GoogleLocal might be morehelpful than the extra re-sults Google Web will turnup, it’s a little tougher topick a favorite when com-paring Google Local to anonline yellow pages Website such as Super Pages(www.superpages.com).This site allowed us tosearch locations anywherefrom 1/2 to 100 milesfrom our address. Wechose to search within 15miles, just as we did forGoogle Local. Super Pagesonly gave us 77 results,

though it did let us sort these resultsalphabetically or by distance.

The main downfall on Super Pagesis that its maps just aren’t as cool. Andthat’s not to say they won’t get the jobdone, because they should be morethan adequate. But the Google Localmaps that hybridize satellite imagingwith street labels are just plain cool.

It’s a little tougher to pick a favoritebetween these two. Google Local hasthe edge in maps, but Super Pages doesoffer a helpful outline of related prod-ucts. This is basically an enhanced ver-sion of Local’s Show Only filter. If youwant to view barbers, just click barbers;however, during your search, SuperPages also searches for businesses in re-lated categories such as Barber Schoolsand Barbers’ Equipment & SupplyStores. While you might not need thatinformation, Super Pages displays it in atactful way so that it doesn’t invade in-formation about your primary search.

Google Local is a wonderful betaprogram that makes finding placeseasy. It has helpful interactive mapsthat let you print or email with just acouple clicks. The satellite maps caneven let you zoom in far enough tofind the roof of the business you’relooking for. If you’ve been using aGoogle Web search or even an onlineyellow page database, you owe it toyourself to give Google Local a try.


The Search Within filter lets you filter out results that are too far away.

The Show Only adjustment lets you get rid of businesses that aren’t exactly what you’re looking for.

Google Local is a neat beta program designed tohelp you find locations for practically any businessor service you can dream up.

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Y ou remember Mr. Know-It-All. Maybe you called himMr. Smartypants, but we can

all remember the kid with all theanswers. With his right hand seem-ingly constantly in the air, Mr.Know-It-All dispatched questionsranging from “Where is Tim-buktu?” to “What is the SecondLaw of Thermodynamics?” withoutbreaking a sweat. While you strug-gled through your homework, Mr.Know-It-All, that walking, talkingfountain of knowledge, was work-ing ahead at a breakneck pace.

Thanks to Google Answers, youcan hire Mr. Know-it-all and puthim to work on your questions.Although the search engine itselfdoes an admirable job scouringthe World Wide Web for answersto your most perplexing questions,technology can only go so far; Googleis only as effective as the person usingit. That’s not exactly the most com-forting feeling when you need toknow if a particular tidbit of knowl-edge is accurate.

A crack team of “more than 500carefully screened Researchers” con-stitutes the heart and soul of GoogleAnswers. Even though Researchersare independent contractors (mean-ing they’re not on Google’s payroll),Google takes this service very seri-ously and has a number of safeguardsin place to ensure the answers you re-ceive are correct.

Before you rely on Google An-swers as your all-encompassing au-thority on the universe’s greatestmysteries, understand there arelimits to its power. Although a little

common sense should deter youfrom asking questions such as “Doesthat cute girl in the third row evenknow I exist?” there are certain typesof questions Google Answers frownsup and may even remove. Avoidasking any questions that:• May seek private information

about individuals• Request advice about engaging in

illegal activities• Sell or advertise products• Refer or relate to adult or lewd

content• Pertain to homework or exam

questions (earn that degree, son)

Also, Google requests you send anemail regarding any specific questionsabout Google or Google Answers [email protected]. Finally,don’t expect an answer to take the

place of certain types of professionaladvice, such as queries relating tomedical, financial, or legal matters.

Answer Hunters

Because Google Answers relies onflesh-and-blood human rsearchers,its fact-finding process is a littlemore involved than somethingsuch as Ask Jeeves (www.ask.com).The Q & A process is essentially asimple one. When you post a ques-tion, it’s fair game to everyResearcher. When a Researcher ac-cepts a question and begins totrack down the answer, the ques-tion is locked for a given amountof time, meaning no otherResearcher can provide an answer.

Other registered users (peoplewho use Google Answers just likeyou) are free to post their own an-swers as comments, and if you’resatisfied with one of these answers,you can cancel your question aslong as it hasn’t been locked or an-swered (you’ll still have to pay a50-cent listing fee).

Although some Researchershave expertise in a particular field,don’t assume a Researcher who

answers your question about theValley of the Kings is a scholar inEgyptian history. Google Answersthoroughly screens potential Re-searchers with test questions andguarantees Researchers are experts atlocating information from both on-line and offline resources. EachResearcher should also have top-notch communication skills, butGoogle Answers lets Researchers fieldquestions about subjects in whichthey possess little or no intimateknowledge. Either way, GoogleAnswers offers a refund process ifyou’re not satisfied with your answer.

To ensure its service remains first-rate, Google Answers regularly evalu-ates Researchers and their answers.Before they even answer a single ques-tion, Researchers undergo a thoroughscreening. Once a candidate becomes a

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Google AnswersCall On A Professional

For Your Toughest Questions


bona fide Researcher, Google editorscan spot-check the Researcher’s an-swers and return your question to thesystem if they discover a problem withthe particular answer. Finally, Re-searchers who receive enough negativefeedback or have a certain number ofquestions returned will no longer be al-lowed to answer questions as a part ofGoogle Answers.

Riddle Me This

You have your question in mindand decide it’s time to call in a pro-fessional. First, open aWeb browser with anactive Internet con-nection and go to an-s w e r s . g o o g l e . c o m .Click Login In OrCreate A Google Ac-count. If you’ve neverused Google Answers,click Sign Up Now! tocreate a Google ac-count (this also givesyou access to the fol-lowing Google ser-vices: Google Alerts,Gmail, Froogle Shop-ping List, GoogleGroups, PersonalizedSearch, Google InYour Language, andGoogle Web APIs).Enter your currentemail address andchoose a password. In the WordVerification section type the charac-ters you see in the field provided.Click Terms Of Service if you wish toread the TOS. Otherwise, click IHave Read And Agree To The TermsOf Use and then Create My Accountto proceed.

Google will send an email to theemail address you provide to activatethe account. Click the first link in thebody of the email to activate your ac-count (if you’re using a Web-basedemail account, we recommend open-ing a separate Web browser). Afteractivating your account, select Click

Here To Continue. Enter a nickname(at press time, your Google Answersnickname is unchangeable) and selectthe type of email notification youwant to receive regarding activity withyour questions. Click the checkboxnext to I Accept and Create MyGoogle Anwers Account.

Once you create your GoogleAnswers account, you’re ready to startasking questions. On your GoogleAnswers account page, click the Ask AQuestion link in the upper-right partof the page. Enter a subject for yourquestion; this can be very broad, such

as “Backpacking in Europe.” However,you’ll want to be more specific andprovide as many details as possible inthe Question field. For example, ifyou’re planning a backpacking vaca-tion across Europe and want to knowhow much money to bring for hostels,helpful details to include might be thecities you’ll likely stay in and thenumber of other people accompanyingyou on your trip.

Next, set a price for your question.This is what you will have to paywhen a Researcher answers yourquestion. The Researcher will receive75% of the price, and Google rakes in

25% plus a 50-cent nonrefundablelisting fee. You can set a price be-tween $2 and $200 for your question.Setting a higher price will make yourquestion more attractive to Re-searchers, and it’s almost essential ifyou have a very difficult question; aResearcher will probably not spendfive hours digging up informationabout Evel Knievel’s favorite motor-cycle tires for $3.50. Also, Researcherswill usually provide more thoroughanswers for more compensation.Click How Do I Price My Question?for more tips, but the adage “You get

what you pay for” is agood rule of thumb.

Select a category and,if applicable, subcate-gory for your question.Our backpacking ques-tion may include theSports And Recreationcategory and Travelsubcategory. Next, clickContinue To PaymentInformation.

You’ll enter yourcredit card informationon the next page. Goo-gle charges your cardafter 30 days or forevery $25 you spend,whichever is sooner.After you enter yourcard information, youcan click Pay ListingFee And Post Question

to post your question (Google Answerswill then take you to a confirmationpage) or Go Back And Edit Question ifyou want to tweak your question. Youcan preview your question at thebottom of this page before you post it.Once your question posts, it will re-main active for one month.

Elementary, My Dear Watson

Google Answers will send you anemail when a Researcher answersyour question, requests clarification,or if a Google Answers user has left acomment. You can also check your

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Think of your account page as home base for all of your Google Answers needs.


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account profile for this information.When you log in, your account pageshould show “Needs Attention” nextto the question that has been an-swered or needs clarification. Clickthe link, and Google Answers shouldindicate if the Researcher has eitheranswered your question or requestedclarification. If the Researcher asksyou to clarify your question, click theClarify Question button, enter anynew information the Researcher re-quested, and click Post Clarification.

If a Researcher has answered yourquestion and you’re pleased with theresult, click Rate Answer and give theResearcher an appropriate rating.Click the drop-down box and choosea rating between one and five stars.Add a comment in the field below,and if you’re particularly pleased withyour answer, you can leave a tip

(between $1 and $100) for your Re-searcher. Researchers receive 75% ofyour original amount offered, butthey receive 100% of the tip you leave.

You may not be satisfied with youranswer initially, but instead of immedi-ately giving a poor rating or requestinga refund, click Request AnswerClarification, explain your concerns,and click Post Request. If this avenueleads to a dead end or you’re simplynot satisfied, you can leave a poorrating and request a refund.

To request a refund, you need yourQuestion ID number. On your accountpage, click the question for which youwant a refund and look at the header.The Question ID number is listedbelow the line that indicates when thequestion expires. Next, go to answers.google.com/answers/refundrequest.Click Repost My Question if you want

another Researcher to take a stab atyour question (you won’t be chargedanother 50 cents for a listing fee). ClickRequest A Refund if you simply wantyour money back. List the Question IDin the appropriate field and state whyyou want a refund. Click SubmitRequest to complete the request.

And That’s Their Final Answer

As you can see in the “Google An-swers Put To The Test” sidebar, GoogleAnswers generally provides what itpromises. And perhaps one of the bestparts of Google Answers is that manyResearchers will list the searches theyused to arrive at their answers. Studytheir methods, and you could be onyour way to finding answers yourself.

BBYY VVIINNCCEE CCOOGGLLEEYY

TThhee SSooffttbbaallll.. We wanted our first question to be relativelysimple yet require a little legwork from a Researcher. In thiscase, we were interested in discovering how fast someonecould answer our question.QQuueessttiioonn:: “When was baseball’s Triple Crown invented?”WWee ooffffeerreedd:: $5RReessuulltt:: A Researcher took a stab at this question as a com-ment, and we thought it was a reasonable response. Neverones to turn down a freebie, we cancelled the question andonly paid Google’s mandatory 50-cent listing fee.

TThhee FFaassttbbaallll.. Realizing many people often take facts gleanedfrom online sources as Gospel, we tried to devise a questionthat might take our researcher outside the imaginary bound-aries of the World Wide Web.QQuueessttiioonn:: “What high school did The Killers’ guitarist (notbassist) graduate from?” (One of our in-house illustrators at-tended Pella Community High School, the same school asthe big-haired rocker, Dave Keuning. We have the yearbookto prove it.)WWee ooffffeerreedd:: $15RReessuulltt:: Our $15 bounty for this question must have been asuitable offer, because it took our Researcher just under 90minutes to answer what we thought was a pretty good

stumper. Not only did the Researcher correctly answer ourquestion, our answer contained links for additional informa-tion about Keuning and the band itself.

TThhee SSccrreewwbbaallll.. Sometimes, it’s not a Researcher’s fault. In thisinstance we feigned confusion over a question we asked andhoped a Researcher would recognize the mistake and pro-vide the right answer.QQuueessttiioonn:: “Did Alan Shepard say any famous words orquotes when he became the first man in space?” (It seemslike a simple a question, and you can find plenty of AlanShepard quotes littered across the Web. But Shepard wasonly the first American in space. Russian cosmonaut YuriGagarin was the first man in space.)WWee ooffffeerreedd:: $$33RReessuulltt:: Zoinks! Within a mere five minutes, a Researchercaught on to our tricks, properly identifying ComradeGagarin as the first man in space (but we should add thatthe question did trip up a couple of Researchers). Feeling alittle guilty, we modified our question in search of a Gagarinquote, and we received a couple of Gagarin quotes in a com-ment. After a couple of days, a Researcher posted an officialanswer, and we had our Gagarin quotations in hand. ❙

Google Answers Put To The Test

JJ ust for fun, we thought we would see if this Google service could put its money where its mouth is. We registered forour own account and posted three questions for the Google Answers team. To test the Researchers’ mettle, we posed

three types of questions. Without further ado, we introduce:

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engines link to content without re-stricting the information that appears,but if you enter a search term intoGoogle Print, you won’t find manysearch results that display entire books.Google likens its service to a vast on-line card catalog: The search enginehelps users find books that have infor-mation about their search topics. Onceyou locate a book via Google Print,you’ll probably need to buy the bookor check it out of a library.

What makes Google Print so usefulis that you can search a database (thatdraws from a variety of institutionsand publishers) from a single searchengine instead of poking around atlocal libraries or visiting multiplebookstore Web sites. Another plus isthat Google Print helps you findbooks you might miss if you searchedthe old-fashioned way: Bookstorescarry a limited numbers of titles,which means you might never seebooks from small-time publishers.Because Google doesn’t charge book-sellers for adding their titles to theGoogle Print index, small presses arelining up to participate right along-side large publishers.

Where Google Gets Its Books

Until Google stopped adding booksto its index (see the “CopyrightTrouble” sidebar to read more aboutwhy the search engine’s ambitiousplans are temporarily on hold), itpulled titles from a select group ofpublishers and libraries. The GooglePrint Library Project and the GooglePublisher feed Google Print’s capabil-ities. The Print Library’s pool isn’t ex-panding at the moment; Google hasalready selected several libraries, including Harvard University andStanford University libraries and TheNew York Public Library.

The Google Publisher Program reg-ularly adds to its stable of publishers.Google accepts titles from both smalland large publishers and adds a BuyThis Book link to search results. As aresult, small publishers who can’t

The UltimateCard CatalogGoogle Print Is A Digital Bookshelf

Although doomsayers fore-casted the demise of bookswhen personal computersfirst flooded the consumer

market, the talk never turned into re-ality. Real-world bookstores and printpublishers continue to thrive even asother content providers, such as themusic industry, scramble to preventthe Internet and home PCs fromdragging down offline sales.

That’s not to say that book pub-lishers aren’t watching the music industry’s dilemma with concern. But books haven’t caught on in theInternet world as fast as other con-tent, in part because the digital bookformat changes the way a personreads. Whereas a home user can listento digital music on a portable musicplayer (which is fast replacing theportable CD player), a digital bookreader must leave the traditional book

behind and find a device that has ascreen—a far cry from a book’s easy-to-flip pages.

Although you won’t find a ton ofbooks floating around the Internetocean, you can search for many of-fline books from the comfort of yourhome office, thanks to Google. Thesearch engine behemoth, whose mis-sion is to “organize the word’s in-formation,” recently jumped from its online stronghold and landedsquarely in the offline world. Thanksto Google Print (print.google.com),you can search offline books via anearly identical search interface toGoogle’s Internet search engine.

Google Goes Offline

Google Print lets you search forbooks via the Internet, but it isn’t anonline library. Other Google search


afford to promote all of their titlescan finally do so without any real in-vestment. Google doesn’t charge pub-lishers for this service, as it drawsrevenue via advertising.

Publishers who have already scannedtheir own books to PDF (PortableDocument Format; Adobe’s digitaldocument image format, which dis-plays documents via the free Adobereader available at www.adobe.com)can simply send the PDFs to Google.But many publishers don’t have the fa-cilities to scan books, so Google also ac-cepts book shipments from publishers.(Google has its own scanning facili-ties.) Publishers can also send a list oftitles to Google, in which case Googlelocates the books at a library and thenscans them.

Protect Copyrights

Although some library books fallinto public domain (in which caseGoogle can scan them without in-fringing copyright), publishers ownthe copyrights to their books. GooglePrint can display all of a public

domain book to a Print searcher,which means you can find a book viayour search term, flip to the first page,and then read it from digital cover todigital cover. Of course, you’d prob-ably rather read the book while sittingin a comfortable chair—keep in mindthat Google targets the search engineat visitors who want to find booksrather than read them online. Thus,Google Print delivers only a tiny por-tion of the page in which your searchterm appears when it finds entries inlibrary books that still maintain copy-rights. Publishers, however, mustloosen up a little when they agree to let Google index their books: You’ll find that most let you view thesearch term’s page, as well as a fewnearby pages.

Google also prevents users fromabusing its index by blocking somepages of certain books. You can findsome viewable pages of most books,but if you run across a search resultthat blocks access to pages you wantto see, you may be able to unlock thepages by registering for a free GooglePrint account. (If you have a Google

Gmail email account, you can use itin lieu of a Google Print account.)Google tracks searches, which meansthat if you log into your Google Printaccount and then search, Google willbe able to associate your accountname with your searches.

Searching, Searching

You’ll find Google Print in Google’sMore, More, More section. (ClickMore on the main page to find thisarea.) If you’ve searched for Web sitesvia Google’s main page, you won’thave any trouble hunting down books;the interfaces are nearly identical.Type in your search term, click theSearch Print button (or press theENTER key on your keyboard), andyou’ll see a list of books. Each listingincludes a photo of the cover (if avail-able), the title, author, year the editionwas published, number of pages, and ashort clip containing your searchterm. Not surprisingly, the right sideof the search page includes Google’subiquitous Sponsored Links column.Instead of display adds for books, the

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Copyright Trouble

GGoogle Print draws itsbooks from two pro-

grams: the Google PrintPublisher Program andthe Google Print LibraryProject. The PrintPublisher Program hasn’trun into any copyrightproblems as it’s an opt-inprogram: Publishers whowant to add their texts toGoogle Print’s searchabledatabase simply sendGoogle the books (or PDFversions of the books) orgive Google permission toretrieve the books from alibrary. Once Googlescans the text and adds itto the database, thesearch engine giant blocks

certain pages so GooglePrint searchers can’t readthe entire book

But the Print LibraryProject (which scans bothpublic domain books andcopyrighted books buttightly restricts page viewsso that searchers can’tread much of the text) hita speed bump. Publisherscomplained that Google,which scanned booksfrom certain libraries, wasactually scanning somebooks without the pub-lishers’ permission. Googleresponded by letting pub-lishers (and any othercopyright holders whodon’t want their material

added to the database)opt out of the PrintLibrary Project. It alsostopped scanning copy-righted material from li-braries—putting much ofthe Print Library Projecton hold. (Public domainbooks remain fair game.)Google pointed out in itsblog (googleblog.blogspot.com) that its use of opt-out programs (as op-posed to opt-in pro-grams) isn’t new. For ex-ample, Web site adminis-trators can opt out ofGoogle’s index of Websites. Google plans to re-sume scanning all librarymaterials in November. ❙


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columns generally tout products thatrelate (in best-case scenarios) to yoursearch term.

You can learn more about one ofthese search results by clicking thebook’s title. Once you click the link,you’ll see whatever text Google Printis willing to make available, as wellas Book Pages and Buy This Bookareas. The links under Buy This

Book take you directly to the book’slistings at online retailers. The BookPages section links to copyright infoand may also link to chapter ex-cerpts or an index. The About ThisBook link takes you to a page thatincludes a synopsis, a Reviews sec-tion that generally includes one-linetestimonials, and a BibliographicInformation section that includes

the book’s ISBN (International Stan-dard Book Number).

If you can tell by the brief blurb onthe main search results page that youhave the right book and wrong page(for example, you see a book thatprobably covers the topic in whichyou’re interested, but the result’sblurb isn’t in the area of the book thatinterests you), click the faded MoreResults From This Book link under-neath the blurb. Google Print thenlists all instances of your search termand the corresponding page numbers.

Results

Thanks to Google Print’s interface,you can easily find books withoutknowing the title or author name(“What was the name of the book?Something Mockingbird?”) and dis-cover other books that you wouldn’thave found in your local bookstore.Google Print temporarily stoppedadding certain books to its vast collec-tion just before we went to press, dueto concerns about protecting copy-rights (see the “Copyright Trouble”sidebar), but Google Print’s searchfeature remains available.


Copyright Print Account

GG oogle tries to avoidcopyright infringement

in a number of ways, in-cluding restricting access tocertain books. When youbrowse your search results,you’ll find that some resultslet you view mul-tiple pages, whileothers will let youview only a smallportion of the text.And in some cases,the Google Printblocks access to thebook and demandsthat you sign into a

free Google Print account. (Ifyou have a Gmail email ac-count, you can use your user-name and password.)

If you encounter this re-striction and want to sign upfor an account, click the

Create A Google Accountlink at the bottom of the re-striction message and thenenter an email address andpassword. You’ll also need toenter a special one-timepassword that appears in the

window. Finally, readthe Terms Of Serviceand Google’s PrivacyPolicy and then clickI Have Read AndAgree To The TermsOf Use. Create MyAccount. Next,Google will send youan email that con-

tains a link. Click the link toverify your account.

Keep in mind that Googletracks your searches onceyou sign into a Google ac-count. If you don’t wantGoogle to associate yoursearches with your username,you’ll need to log out andsettle for the search resultsthat don’t require a Googleaccount. Also, you can clickthe View Unrestricted Pagelink to view other pageswithin the book, but thesepages probably won’t includeyour search term. ❙

SafeSearch

II f you have children inthe house or simply

don’t want to accidentallyview adult content whenyou search for informa-tion via Google, you cantake advantage ofSafeSearch, Google’s ex-plicit content-filteringtool. As Google’s HelpCenter points out, thetool might not catchevery bit of adult-orientedmaterial out there, butparents will probably beglad to have it available.

SafeSearch is enabled bydefault at the Moderate

setting, which doesn’t filtermost text but does filterimages. To adjust theSafeSearch set-tings, visitGoogle’shome pageand then clickPreferences. Ifyou wantSafeSearch tocheck for bothtext and im-ages, click UseStrict Filteringand then clickthe SavePreferences

button. SafeSearch appliesto Google Print, as well asother Google searches. ❙

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Are WeThere Yet?

Google Maps Revolutionizes Online Mapping

G oogle revolutionized Websearch technology, working asa trusty guidepost for bewil-

dered users trying to find their way around on the Web. The site’s massive success meant that it was onlya matter of time before Googlebranched out with tools to helppeople get around in real life, too.Thus, we have Google Maps (maps.google.com), a mapping site com-plete with many innovative and typically Google-esqe touches thatmake it more fun and easier to usethan many traditional Web-basedmapping tools.

Get Lost

If you’ve never heard of GoogleMaps before, don’t worry, you’re not the only one who’s unfamiliarwith the territory. You won’t find

any references to Google Maps onGoogle’s primary search page, partlybecause (like so many of Google’soffshoots) this one is still in beta, ortest, form. Click More, and you’ll seea long list of extra Google capabili-ties, including Google Maps.

Once you find the Google Mapslink, you’ll be privy to a new world—literally—of location information.Here, you’ll find maps aplenty in-cluding detailed information for theUnited States, Canada, Japan, andthe United Kingdom, as well as satel-lite imagery with fewer details forother areas of the globe. As withother online mapping sites, you canzoom out to get a stratosphere-levelview or zoom in for a plethora of de-tails. You can also use Google Mapsto find specific businesses, completewith contact information and ad-dresses, and driving directions to

get you across town or from coast to coast.

Getting started is easy. After youload the site in your Web browser,you’ll see a map of the United States,and at the top, three tabs: Maps,Local Search, and Directions. Al-though Google separates these tabsfor clarity, they’ll usually retrieve thesame results for given keywords; forexample, typing “pizza in Chicago”on the Maps tab shows the same results as a Local Search with thesame keywords.

Better control. After you run a fewbasic searches you might thinkGoogle Maps is just like other map-ping sites. But there are plenty of fea-tures here you’ll find only on Google,including maps that are much easierto manipulate than with other sites, agreater range of detailed search re-sults, and perhaps best of all, maps in-tegrated with satellite imagery.

For starters, Google makes mapsearches easy. Many mapping sites arecompletely exasperating because theyuse clunky interfaces—first, you findthe map you want, and then you zoomin to take a closer look. But then youwant to pan west, and that’s when theproblems begin: Every time you clickWest, the site loads the map all overagain, so slowly it feels as if you’re pan-ning in slow motion.

Google Maps bypassed this methodand instead introduced so-calleddraggable maps. You don’t have toclick an arrow to see portions of themap adjacent to the area you’reviewing. All you have to do is click themap and drag it, pulling it the wayyou’d slide a paper map across atabletop to see areas too far away foryour eyes. Double-click any area ofthe map to center it.

You don’t even need your mouse toscroll through the scene. Use the arrowkeys to scroll, or to pan even faster, usethe HOME, END, PAGE UP, andPAGE DOWN keys. The plus key (+)and minus key (-) come in handy, too,letting you zoom in and out faster thanwith the mouse pointer.


More information. Manymapping sites also make it difficult to access detailedinformation about area busi-nesses or attractions. GoogleMaps, on the other hand,simplifies this process by in-tegrating place names andphone numbers into a listthat appears on the right sideof your map.

For example, if you want to find golf courses in NewOrleans, you would type golfcourses in New Orleans andclick Search. The site displaysa map of the city with letteredballoons indicating every golfcourse. Those balloon iconsalso appear on the right sideof the screen next to the golfcourse names and phonenumbers. Click the coursename, and you’ll see an ad-dress, and if it has one, a Website URL.

You’ll also see links calledDirections To Here and FromHere. Click To Here and typea start address, and GoogleMaps will list driving direc-tions to get to the course.Click From Here and type adestination, and Google Mapswill tell you how to get fromthe course to a bar or restau-rant where you can relax afteryour round.

Google plots your route with thestarting point as a green balloon anddisplays a purple line that connects toyour red destination balloon icon.Click either icon and a smaller win-dow pops up, displaying a magnifiedportion of the area in the immediatearea around your destination orstarting point. This feature helps youmore effectively start and end tripswith tricky directions.

Myriad maps. In addition to all ofits helpful directional and businessinformation, one of Google Maps’most useful and compelling featuresis its variety of maps, which include

regular map graphics, satellite im-agery, or a combination of both. Allthree versions offer different pros andcons for your mapping sessions, andto switch between the different mapstyles, just click the buttons namedMap, Satellite, or Hybrid on the topright of your screen.

Google Maps’ regular color graphicmaps look different than those fromother mapping sites. Load a map for aspecific intersection in your town andyou’ll see what we mean. With mostsites, you’ll simply see a tiny sectionof a typical map with hard-to-readicons. In contrast, Google displays

a broad swath of the area andhighlights main thorough-fares in yellow, so you in-stantly know which streetscarry the highest volume of traffic. It also clearly de-notes one-way streets withlarge arrows.

If you want to refer to text-based directions, all you haveto do is look to the right sideof the page, where Googledisplays step-by-step instruc-tions for finding your desti-nation. Click the numbers tothe left of each step, andGoogle magnifies the step so you can see exactly how to navigate your turns. Justabove these directions you’llsee a Reverse Directions link,which flip-flops the start-ing and ending points, and at the top of the page you’llsee one-click links that letyou magnify the start and end addresses.

Snazzy satellite graphics.Most mapping sites alreadyoffer color maps and text di-rections. However, Googletakes the mapping conceptfurther. Click the Satellitebutton, and you’ll see a mapcomposed of satellite images.Instead of squiggly linesstanding in for city streets andhighways, you see the roads

themselves. As you can imagine,photos convey a lot of informationmissing from regular maps. Photosreveal the lay of the land in hills, trees,and other landmarks that you won’tsee with traditional mapping systems.Plus, it’s just way cool to be able tozoom in on your house knowing thatthese pictures were taken from highabove Earth.

Detail level varies depending on thearea you search. In general, you’ll findmore detail in areas with large popu-lations. Zoom in on cities, and youcan get close enough to see individualcars. Countryside photographs reveal

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You can click and drag any part of Google Maps to scroll through an area. A slider on the left side of the page lets you zoom in and out for better views.

Google Maps quickly finds businesses in your area. You’ll see iconsdenoting business locations, as well as phone numbers and drivingdirections on the right side of the map.


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plenty of detail for planning tripsor just to satisfy your curiosity.

Click Hybrid and Google su-perimposes many map elements,such as streets and street names,onto the photos you see. In somecases, this layout gives you thebest of both worlds, helping youbetter visualize the area you’reviewing, with road names thatguide your eyes when you havetrouble identifying certain areason a satellite image. If you’relooking for landmarks in an areathat’s undergone development inthe past couple of years, youmight notice that the photos areoutdated. That’s because Googlecurrently uses older photographsfor some locations; eventuallyGoogle will update these areas toreflect changes.

Endless Possibilities

Google Maps is so powerfuland so easy to use that it providesendless productivity and fun forWeb site developers and Web en-thusiasts. Many of these folkscombine Google Maps with othersoftware tools to create so-calledmashups, which are sometimesuseful, sometimes just-for-funprograms that exploit GoogleMaps’ power. Here are a few ofour favorite mashups.

Web Sightseeing—No time totake a vacation? Go sightseeingthrough your PC. This repository(googleglobetrotting.com) ofGoogle Maps points you to vir-tual destinations all over theworld. You can check out RodStewart’s mansion, Disney-Land,and the San Diego Zoo. Or cruiseover to Michael Jackson’sNeverland Ranch, Area 51, theWhite House, the World TradeCenter site, among thousands of others.

Hot Spots—Clever developerscombined the Hot Or Not (www.hotornot.com) personals site with

Google Maps to create Hot Maps(hotmaps.frozenbear.com) so you canfind, roughly, the location of people

who subscribe to Hot Or Not. Ifyou want to get an idea of howmany subscribers live in a specificzip code, you can find them in-stantly, complete with a photoand a link to help you meet yourpotential date.

House Hunting—Take an aerialtour of homes and apartments in acity where you’d like to relocateusing HousingMaps (www.housingmaps.com), which combinesGoogle Maps with real estate list-ings on Craigslist (www.craigslist.com). Using HousingMaps, youcan quickly find housing descrip-tions complete with pictures andcontact information.

Crime Alerts—Check out theChicago Crime (www.chicagocrime.org) site, which uses Goog-le Maps to help you see a crimemap of the city. You can sortcrime by type (try first-degreemurder) and then see which partof the city has the highest inci-dent rates. You can even clickeach crime to see the time anddate it was reported.

Cheaper Gas—Tired of wastinggas to find the cheapest fuel inyour city? Take a look at CheapGas (www.ahding.com/cheapgas), a site that combines Gas-buddy (www.gasbuddy.com) withGoogle Maps. Pick your city namefrom the drop-down menu, andyou’ll see map complete with cur-rent gas prices listed next to fuel station names and addresses.You can even sort by unleadedand diesel.

Virtual Pedometer—Ever won-der exactly how far you’re walkingor running during a workout, andhow many calories you burned?Another developer combinedGoogle Maps with some nifty pro-gramming to create the GmapsPedometer (www.sueandpaul.com/gmapPedometer) site. Click a few

waypoints, turn on the calorie counter,and feel like you’re getting exercise sit-ting at your PC.

Request driving directions and Google Maps connectsyour start and end points and also provides text-based instructions right next to the map.

So-called “mashups” combine Google Maps with othersoftware capabilities. This Cheap Gas mashup helps youfind the cheapest gas in your neighborhood.

There are many Google Maps mashups on the Web.Google Globetrotting lets you visit famous sites from around the globe.


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It’s A Blast—One of the more omi-nous mashups we found will let youmap potential nuclear bomb damage.Load the High-Yield DetonationEffects Simulator (meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html) andyou can see a blast radius superim-posed across any area you choose.You can also change the bomb yieldto see how big a bomb would have tobe to cause complete devastation in aspecific metropolitan area.

Cell Phone Detective—Your cellphone consistently loses its signal ata specific area in your city, and youcan never figure out exactly why.Now you can locate your provider’stowers to see if you’re simply too faraway to obtain a strong signal.Mobleidea built a cell phone towerlocator site (www.cellreception.com)that lets you find towers and fig-ure out which provider uses them.You can even click the tower to see its exact location and height abovethe ground.

Orange Barrel Finder—Combinetwo powerhouse tools—Yahoo TrafficMap and Google Map—with weath-er data, and you get a site (traffic.poly9.com) that lets you see weatherand traffic information in one snap-shot. Click the warning icons and youcan view detailed information ontraffic delays in your city.

Final Destination

Google Maps has a lot of Google-ish traits, such as simplicity, fun,and innovation, all of which makethis site very different from otheronline mapping tools. Even thoughthe beta version is a little rougharound the edges, it’s still powerfulenough to help you find business information, driving directions, andmore, in a matter of seconds, all of which will come in very handy the next time you’re plotting out an adventure.


II f you set out for Phoenix and wind up in Anchorage, you might want to reeval-uate the driving directions you found on that free online mapping site. Well,

let’s hope no mapping site ever sends you on a goose chase quite this wild, butyou should be aware that different mapping sites do offer varying opinions onthe best way to get from point A to point B, and one set of instructions may bemuch more efficient than others. We used three mapping sites—Google Maps,Yahoo! Maps, and Mapquest—to see how proposed routes differed. We entereda number of different start and end points and found that there’s no doubt thesesites offer very different, and often imperfect, driving advice with significantmileage and driving time variations. Thus, it’s best to double-check your resultswith a printed atlas.

EEssttiimmaatteedd DDiissttaannccee EEssttiimmaatteedd DDrriivvee TTiimmee

SSttaarrttiinngg ppooiinntt ##11Google Maps 7.7 miles 16 minutesYahoo! Maps 6.9 miles 15 minutesMapquest 6.49 miles 15 minutes

RRoouuttee ##22Google Maps 2,906 miles 48 hoursYahoo! Maps 2,951 miles 45 hours, 24 minutesMapquest 2,912 miles 43 hours

RRoouuttee ##33Google Maps 457 miles 9 hours 13 minutesYahoo! Maps 464 miles 7 hours 8 minutesMapquest 455 miles 7 hours 49 minutes

RRoouuttee ##44Google Maps 1,439 miles 28 hoursYahoo! Maps 1,447 miles 22 hours 15 minutesMapquest 1,448 miles 22 hours 14 minutes

RRoouuttee ##55Google Maps 310 miles 6 hours 12 minutesYahoo! Maps 310 miles 5 hours 39 minutesMapquest 311 miles 5 hours 33 minutes

RRoouuttee ##66Google Maps 413 miles 9 hours 1 minuteYahoo! Maps 414 miles 6 hours 21 minutesMapquest 417 miles 6 hours 48 minutes

RRoouuttee DDeettaaiillss#1 - South 70th and Pioneers to North 12th St. and Vine Street (Lincoln, NE)#2 - Times Square Hilton to Haight St. and Ashbury St. in San Francisco#3 - Oklahoma Sooners football stadium to Nebraska Cornhuskers stadium#4 - Crawford, TX to Washington, D.C.#5 - Philadelphia to Boston#6 - E 16th St & Pegram St in Charlotte, NC to Bruce St & W 2nd St in Lexington, KY

The Evils In All Routes

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As a scholarly research tool,Google’s Web Search canproduce unreliable and irrel-evant links. For instance, a

Web Search for prescription drugstudies will often produce links to on-line pharmacies rather than research.Google has a special tool called GoogleScholar (still in beta release) that canhelp users search for scholarly articles.

Uncover Lost Resources

Google Scholar includes onlyscholarly literature, such as abstracts,peer-reviewed papers, and theses.Most of the work is from academicpublishers, professional organiza-tions, and universities. Nonscholarlysites, such as blogs, online pharma-cies, company Web sites, and per-sonal Web pages, should not appearin Google Scholar’s search results.

You can access the Google Scholarpage at scholar.google.com. TheGoogle Scholar page looks very similarto the main Google page, with a searchfield, a Search button, and a few links.

Search results are listed in order ofrelevance, as determined by an algo-rithm. Similar to how the Google WebSearch algorithm considers a site’spopularity based in part on thenumber of Web pages that link to it,

Google Scholar’s algorithm deter-mines how well-accepted a scholarlywork is based on how many other arti-cles cite it. For this reason, a student’sthesis that is not cited elsewhere willrank lower than a journal article citedin 15 other scholarly papers.

The algorithm also factors in au-thors. It gives greater weight to arti-cles written by people who authoredmany other scholarly works. Finally,Google Scholar’s algorithm also de-termines search rankings based on ananalysis of an article’s text for key-words, as well as the number of hitsthe online article receives.

Although this algorithm often pro-duces the most influential articles, it isnot without its faults. Because olderarticles are likely to have been citedmore times than newer articles, wefound that older research oftenranked much higher than the newest,most groundbreaking research. Thereare ways, though, to improve yoursearch results, which we will coverlater in this article.

Beyond free content. Google Scholarnot only lists freely available onlinecontent, but also subscriber- and print-only articles. This can be irritatingwhen you don’t have instant access to what could be a promising article. But unnecessarily restricting results to

free online content canhinder research. Thinkof Google Scholar as anonline catalog ratherthan a portal to articles.

If an article is avail-able online, you canclick its title. However,if you see “[citation]”in front of an article’stitle, Google Scholarfound the title cited inanother article but hasnot found an onlinecopy of the work.

Google offers toolsto help you find copiesof articles not avail-able through GoogleScholar. First, if you

see a Library Search link next to atitle, you can click the link to searchfor libraries that hold a print copy ofthe article.

If you click the Web Search linkunder the listing, Google will auto-matically perform a Web Search forthe article. It performs this searchbased on the first listed author’s nameand the first word or words of the ar-ticle’s title. In some cases, it may alsoinclude keywords from your originalGoogle Scholar search. Sometimes,this Web Search provides a link to thearticle at a site not crawled by GoogleScholar. The Web Search may alsoproduce a link to a site where youmay buy a copy of the publication.

If you simply want more informa-tion about the title before buying orchecking out a print copy, click theCited By link under the article’s listing.Here, you can browse other papers thatcite the article. In many cases, these ar-ticles will summarize some of the re-search contained in the first article.

Google Scholar often provides linksto articles with restricted access forwhich you need a subscription to thepublication. Google Scholar requiresthat publishers provide an abstract ifthe full text is not freely available.However, we often found that pub-lishers did not follow this rule.

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Smart SearchesGoogle Scholar Pinpoints Scholarly Research


Your library may have a subscrip-tion to publications containing re-stricted-access articles. In addition,your library may make some of itsholdings searchable through GoogleScholar and available online to pa-trons. For the most complete access toarticles, you should indicate any insti-tution with which you are affiliated.Once you configure Google Scholarfor your institutional affiliation, if additional content is available throughyour library, you will see links to hold-ings at your library. You should alsogain access to restricted-access articlesif your library has a subscription tothe publication’s online content.

To gain access to your institution’sresources, click the Scholar Prefer-ences link on the main Google Scholarpage. Type the name of your univer-sity or other institution in theInstitutional Access field and click theFind Institution but-ton. If your library issigned up with GoogleScholar, you will see itin a list. Make sure itscheckbox is selected. Amessage on the pagealso indicates that youmay need to log inwith a library pass-word, use a campuscomputer, or configureyour browser to use alibrary proxy. Specificinstructions for gain-ing access to your in-stitution’s resourcesthrough Google Schol-ar vary from institu-tion to institution soyou will need to checkwith a librarian for de-tails. Make sure youhave cookies enabled (so GoogleScholar will save your preferences)and click the Save Preferences button.

Scholar Search Tips

Many of the basics of using Goo-gle’s Web Search also apply to using

Google Scholar. To brush up on per-forming a Google search, especiallyusing operators, see “One In A Bil-lion” on p. 31. There are also special-ized search tools available in GoogleScholar.

To access Google Scholar’s specialsearch options, click the AdvancedScholar Search link or go to scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search.Here you can add operators (searchcriteria) to searches. Each field on theAdvanced Scholar Search page is forone of the operators. Those under FindArticles, which appear in front of abluish-green background, are the sameoperators you’ll find in an AdvancedSearch in Google’s basic Web Search.In addition, you will also find theScholar-specific Author, Publication,and Date operators.

To search for an article by author,type the author’s name in the Return

Articles Written By field and clickSearch Scholar. Most authors’ namesare indexed with first initial, middle ini-tial, and last name. However, if youdon’t get the results you want, youshould experiment with other varia-tions, such as first initial and last nameor first name, middle initial, and last

name. Include quotes around the fullname for more accurate searches. Youcan also add an author operator to asearch. To do this, simply type author:and the author’s name (use quotationmarks around the name if it is morethan one word). Then type keywordsfor which you’d like to search, for ex-ample, author:“LJ Cooper” histamine.

On the Advanced Scholar Searchpage, the next operator listed isPublication. If you know the journal inwhich the article appeared, you cansearch only articles from that publica-tion. You may need to use some trialand error to find the journal you’relooking for because citations abbreviatejournal names in various ways. For in-stance, the Journal of Applied Mathe-matics may be abbreviated as J of AppMath or Jnl of Appl Math.

Finally, you can restrict searchesby date. This is especially useful

if you want only themost recent researchon a specific topic. Aswe mentioned earlier,Google Scholar tendsto favor older articles.To restrict a search bydate, type a start andend year in the ReturnArticles Published Be-tween fields.

Higher Education

Google Scholar canprovide search resultsthat are far more de-pendable than thoseachieved through aregular Google WebSearch. Because of itsfocus on academicsand scholarly work,

Google Scholar is mainly geared to-ward the academic world. GoogleScholar’s listings are still far fromcomplete, but they do provide auseful starting point for studentsand researchers.


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You can use the Advanced Scholar Search to narrow search results byAuthor, Publication, and Date, as well as other criteria.

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BoutiqueSearchesSpecialty Search Engines

Help You Narrow Your Search

Every member of the drivingpublic has experienced it atone time or another: the in-ability to find our keys when

we’re running late for an appoint-ment. Usually, we manage to findthem by focusing on the part of thehouse where we think our keys aremost likely to be. If we last came incame in through the kitchen door,there’s a good chance our keys aresomewhere in or near the kitchen. Ifwe’re smart we check there first,rather than start off by lookingthrough the entire house.

Sometimes trying to find informa-tion online feels like finding a lost set ofkeys. And just as when you’re searchingfor your keys, you can improve yourchances of finding what you’re lookingfor if you can search a subset of theInternet rather than trying to searchthe entire thing. Google makes thispossible by offering several specialtysearch engines that target particularsubsections of the Internet.

For instance, if you’re looking forinformation about running Firefox

on Windows XP, searching the entireWeb is going to yield some resultsabout running Firefox on Linux. Abetter approach is to use a specializedGoogle search engine to focus only onMicrosoft-related Web sites. Whenwe searched for Firefox on Google’shome page, we received 34,900,000results. Using Google’s specializedsearch engines to focus on Microsoft-related Web sites, however, producedjust 4,150,000 results. In other words,using the Microsoft search page elimi-nated some 30 million results. Still anawful lot to sort through, of course,but only about 11% of the sites wemight have had to check out.

That’s Our Specialty

Google offers six specialty Websearches, four of which deal exclu-sively with computing platforms:Microsoft Search (www.google.com/microsoft.html), Apple MacintoshSearch (www.google.com/mac.html),Linux Search (www.google.com/linux), and BSD Search (www.google

.com/bsd). Google also offers a U.S.Government Search (www.google.com/unclesam) that helps you findinformation from government agen-cies and a University Search (www.google.com/intl/en/options/universities.html) that lets you find informa-tion from educational institutions.

You can access specialty searches di-rectly by entering the proper URL, oryou can click the Advanced Search linknext to the search field on the Googlehome page (as well as on most otherGoogle search pages). The specialtysearches are listed near the bottom ofthe Advanced Search page (along withlinks to Google Print and Google

Scholar, which we cover on pages52 and 59, respectively).

Red, White & Blue

Sometimes it feels like governmentWeb sites are designed more to ap-peal to some sort of arcane set of

regulations than for ease of use.Google’s U.S. Government Search pro-vides an alternative to the endlessbrowsing of government Web sites.The U.S. Government Search can behelpful for finding mundane itemssuch as tax forms, but most of us al-ready know that we can find suchforms on the IRS’ site. The real useful-ness of Google’s U.S. GovernmentSearch is when you’re not even surewhere to begin looking.

Actually, even finding tax forms issimpler when using a specialized Googlesearch than when trolling the IRS’ siteunaided. A simple search for “1040”using Google’s specialty search enginereturns a link to the most recent versionof Form 1040 from the IRS Web siteatop the search results. Directly belowthe link to Form 1040 is a link to instruc-tions on how to properly fill out theform. In contrast, searching for “1040”from Google’s home page returns plentyof pages from tax preparation sites suchas eSmartTax and MSN Money, but theIRS link wasn’t even included in the first200 results. Adding “Form” and “IRS” tothe search string produced a few links to


sites with information about Form 1040(some of which may link to the officialform), but we still didn’t note a directlink to the IRS Web page in any of ourresults. Even restricting a search for“1040” to the IRS’ Web site (www.irs.gov) didn’t produce the kind of effi-cient results we got from Google’s U.S.Government Search.

Browsing through government Websites can be especially frustrating whenyou’re not even sure which govern-ment agency you need to deal with.For instance, if you’ve never had apassport and suddenly need one, youmay not know where to begin lookingfor information. Searching for“passport” on Google’s homepage results in a bunch of ir-relevant links, many related toMicrosoft’s Passport service.The same search on Google’sU.S. Government Search,however, returns a page fromthe U.S. Bureau Of ConsularAffairs (a part of the StateDepartment) with all kinds ofinformation about obtaininga passport, and no mention ofMicrosoft’s Passport service.

Note that the standard op-erators we’ve discussed else-where in this issue also applyin all the specialty searches.Placing a minus sign (-) infront of a term, for instance,prevents Google from dis-playing results that includethat term. Placing “OR” (in all caps)between words tells Google to searchfor one word or the other. Placing asearch string in quotes tells Google tosearch for a specific phrase ratherthan individual words. For a list ofother operators that may be relevant,see “One In A Billion” on page 31 ofthis issue.

OS Skills

Sometimes finding help with a par-ticular software problem can be diffi-cult, especially if the application runson more than one operating system.

Again, Google’s specialty searchesprovide a bit of extra help by lettingyou zero in on a specific operatingsystem. If you’re having problemswith an application in Windows, youcan search Windows-related Websites. If you can’t get KDE working onBSD, you can avoid those pages thatdiscuss making KDE run on Linux.

In some ways, Microsoft may bethe most useless of the specialtysearches. Given the widespread useof Microsoft’s products, it’s entirelylikely that results from searchingGoogle’s home page will closelymatch results from Google’s (sup-

posedly more specific) MicrosoftSearch. Searches for a specificWindows error message, for in-stance, will likely return results fromMicrosoft-related Web sites only.Therefore, using Microsoft Searchprobably won’t return better ormore focused results. As we men-tioned earlier, the Microsoft Searchmay be most useful when lookingfor help about a cross-platform ap-plication (such as the previouslymentioned Firefox) that’s runningon Windows.

Because other operating systemsare less popular, Google’s Apple,

Linux, and BSD searches sometimesprove more helpful than a Microsoft-specific search. For instance, if youwant to know whether you can accessa FAT32 external hard drive in OS X,Google’s Apple Macintosh Search is agood place to start. Searching for “OS X FAT32” on Google’s home page produces 132,000 results. Thesame search using Google’s AppleMacintosh Search yields only 27,300results, the very first one of which wasentitled “Are FAT32/NTFS FileSystems Handled By Mac OSX?”which sounds exactly like what we’relooking for. As it turns out, the link

points to a forum where thetopic is discussed and thor-oughly answered.

Linux is becoming popularwith some power users whohave the patience and desireto learn it. If you’re one ofthose determined to giveLinux a try, you’ll want tokeep Google’s Linux Searchin mind. You’ll find, for ex-ample, that configuring ahome network in Linux isvery different from config-uring a home network inWindows. Searching for“Configure Home Network”from Google’s home page isgoing to return a lot ofWindows-related informa-tion. In fact, our first resultwas “Home Network With

TCP/IP And Microsoft Windows.”Obviously, this isn’t helpful if you’retrying to get your home network upon Linux. You’ll need to weedthrough approximately 7,300,000 re-sults to find the ones that may be rele-vant to you. The same search fromGoogle’s Linux Search yields a stillvoluminous but much more manage-able 241,000 results.

BSD is similar to Linux. In fact,many of the applications that run onLinux also run on BSD. KDE is a pop-ular desktop environment used on bothLinux and BSD. Thus, searching forKDE from Google’s home page is likely

TH E SE A R C H

Can’t remember a specialty search page’s URL? Noproblem. You can access any of the specialty searchesfrom the Advanced Search page. Just scroll to the bottomof the page and click the proper link.


TH E SE A R C H

to result in plenty of information aboutrunning KDE on Linux, but relevantBSD information may be harder tocome by. Running the same searchfrom Google’s BSD Search eliminatesmore than 7 million results. The generalsearch returns KDE’s home page(www.kde.org) as the first result. Thefirst result from the BSD Search comesfrom the same domain, but itreturns pages relevant specifi-cally to BSD (more specifi-cally, a derivative of BSDknown as FreeBSD).

As we mentioned, you canuse special operators to re-fine your search, but weshould also note that thereare no Advanced Searchpages linked to specialtysearches. The AdvancedSearch links next to thesearch field on specialtysearch sites take you to thesame Advanced Search pageyou can access from Google’shome page. As a result, anysearches conducted from theAdvanced Search page willsearch Google’s general data-base and be equivalent to a searchconducted from Google’s home page.You’ll need to use special operatorson the specialty search page in orderto take advantage of Google’s ad-vanced search options.

Search Your Alma Mater

Have you ever had to have yourformer college mail out your acad-emic transcripts? If so, you know howdifficult finding the right informationon your college’s Web site can be.Once again, Google’s there to help.

Last time we checked, Google’sUniversity Search consisted of 788colleges and universities each with itsown unique search page. You can se-lect your school from a list of schoolslocated at www.google.com/universities.html. This ensures that if youwant to find out more about admis-sions at the State University Of New

York at Buffalo, you won’t get resultsfrom the State University Of NewYork at Stony Brook.

If you don’t see your college or uni-versity listed, you can nominate it forinclusion by clicking the Add YourCampus To This List link. Google willask you for some information in-cluding your name, email address, and

the name and location of your school.Google encourages you to have fellowclassmates or graduates suggest theschool as well. Inclusion in the list isstrictly at Google’s discretion, so don’tassume that just because you providedthe information your school will defi-nitely be listed.

If Google lists your school, click theproper link to go to the specializedsearch page for that school. In addi-tion to the search field, you’ll see acouple of links to Google Groups andGoogle Alerts. Google suggests usingGoogle Groups to create a discussiongroup for your school or using GoogleAlerts to receive email updates aboutyour school. (For more informationon Google Groups, see page 73 in thisissue. For more information aboutGoogle Alerts, see page 10.)

Obviously, if you need to have your transcripts from the Universi-ty Of Nebraska mailed to another

educational institution, searching for“Transcript” from Google’s homepage is a worthless exercise, muchmore frustrating than helpful. Such asearch returned 29,600,000 results andmost of the results on the first pagedidn’t even refer to academic tran-scripts. Adding “Academic” to thequery reduced the number of results

to 7,570,000, but finding theright page for your universityamong all those results is nextto impossible. Even adding“University Of Nebraska” tothe search string didn’t get usthe results we wanted. Thefirst link (from 53,900 results)took us to the University’sCollege Of Law. The correctlink didn’t appear on the firstpage of results at all.

Searching for “Transcripts”from the Google’s UniversitySearch page, however, reducedthe number of results to just17,800, and the first result pro-vided the information weneeded. We did note, however,that the University Search fea-ture effectively just searches a

college or university’s domain name.That means you can accomplish thesame search from the home page if youknow the school’s domain name byusing the site: operator. in other words,typing transcript site:unl.edu fromGoogle’s home page produces the same17,800 results.

Divide & Find

The idea of dividing the Internetinto subsections is appealing whenyou’re searching for information re-lated to a specific topic. After all, whowants to sift through informationabout Microsoft’s Passport servicewhen you’re trying to plan a trip toItaly? The specialty sites we exploredhere aren’t for everyday use, but it’sworth remembering that they’re anoften-helpful option.


RS

Google has a reputation for turning its logo into a work ofart. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that the Google logochanges to reflect the specialty search page.


STAY CO N N E C T E D

It’s Not Email,It’s Gmail

How To Master Google’s Web-based Email

You’ve mastered email, sonow are you ready forGmail? Most of the hypesurrounding Google’sWeb-based email service

is due to the scarcity of its accountswhen it was first rolled out (see the“I Want My Gmail” sidebar for moreon that), and most of its popularity isdue to the massive amount of storagespace Gmail offers. Google’s planwas to create a service where users

would never have to delete a singleemail, and for most users the 2.5GBof space that comes with each freeaccount is more than enough roomto meet that goal.

Better still, Google uses the searchtechnology it’s famous for to searchGmail accounts, letting users siftthrough thousands of messages in afraction of a second. The service alsoorganizes messages by “conversa-tion,” grouping messages on the same

subject so that it’s easy to follow theflow of the discussion.

Although Gmail is still in beta andaccounts are invitation-only, it ismuch easier to get a Gmail accountnow than it was in the past, and if youare lucky enough to get one, this ar-ticle will help you get the most out ofthe service.

Establish An Account

There is a possibility that Gmailwill be out of beta by the time youread this, in which case all you’ll needto do is visit mail.google.com to signup for an account. Otherwise have afriend with a Gmail account send youan invitation, click the link in the in-vitation email that you received andthe account creation page opens inyour Web browser. You can also signup for an account using your mobilephone. Click the Sign Up For GmailUsing Your Mobile Phone link in thelower right corner of the Gmail homepage and follow the instructions.

On the Account Creation page, theFirst Name and Last Name you enterwill appear in all outgoing emails, andthe six- to thirty-digit login name youchoose will be part of your Gmailemail address. Don’t be surprised ifthe login name you want is alreadytaken, and click the Check Availabilitybutton to see if the one you typed isstill open so you don’t have to retypeeverything on the page later.

Type in and confirm the passwordyou will use to access the account,pick a security question and answer,and fill in the Word Verification boxbefore clicking the button at thebottom of the page to create your ac-count. When the next page appears,click the I’m Ready – Show Me MyAccount link and you are automati-cally logged into your Gmail account.

Establish Basic Settings

Now that you have an account, it’stime to set things up according to yourpreferences. Click the Settings link in


the upper-right corner of the page. Ifyou want to use a different name onoutgoing messages than the one yousigned up with, click the Accounts tab,click Edit Info, choose the Use ABusiness Name Or Nickname radiobutton, and enter the new name.

To change your reply-to address(the address other people seewhen you send emails fromGmail) click Accounts and clickAdd Another Email Address. ClickSpecify A Different “Reply-To”Address and enter the address youwant to use instead of your Gmailaddress. For example, if you [email protected] in thetext box and select the radiobutton next to it, all messages sentfrom your Gmail account will looklike they come from [email protected]. This is useful ifyou don’t want to use Gmail asyour primary email account butneed to use it for sending messageswhen on the road.

Use the Maximum Page Size drop-down menu to choose how manyconversations you want to have dis-played on a single page in conversa-tion view. The default is 50, but if youhave a small monitor 25 conversa-tions may fit more comfortably, and ifyou have a large monitor selecting100 can save you some clicks.

We recommend selecting the Key-board Shortcuts On radio button toenable that handy feature, which isdiscussed in detail in the “GmailShortcuts” sidebar.

The Personal Level Indicators optionlets you mark messages with a double-carat (>>) if they were sent only toyour address, or with a single carat (>)if they were sent to a group of peopleor a mailing list. This is useful forweeding out spam, or unsolicited email(usually marketing messages sent tonumerous addresses) or for keepingyour personal messages visually sepa-rated from those generated by anymailing lists to which you subscribe.

Snippets are enabled by default,and we recommend you leave the

option that way unless you feel thefeature is annoying. It simply showsa small portion of the entire messagebeside each subject line.

The Signature text box lets youadd a block of text that appears atthe end of each email you send. Thisis great for business users who want

to append their name and contact in-formation to each outgoing message.

If you need to change any of the in-formation that you entered when yousigned up for the account, such asyour password or the security ques-tion, click the Accounts tab and usethe link in the Google AccountSettings section to make the necessaryedits. Be aware that you can neverchange your login name. To get a dif-ferent one you must open a com-pletely new Gmail account.

Working With Email

You’ll find all of the controls youneed to send and read email on theleft side of the interface, so let’s step

through them in order so you can getthe most out of Gmail.

Compose Mail

Only the person who invited youknows that you have a Gmail account,so let’s email other people to tell them

the good news. Click ComposeMail and enter the email addressof the person you want to write toin the To box. Eventually you’llbuild up a Contacts list, whichwe’ll discuss later, and in the fu-ture when you begin typing an ad-dress, a pop-up box appearscontaining all of your stored con-tacts that contain the letters youare typing. When this box appears,if you see the address you aretyping, press the Down arrow keyuntil the address is highlightedand then press Enter to automati-cally add it to the To box.

You can email up to 100 people atonce by entering several addresses inthe To box, each separated by acomma or semicolon. Or you canclick the Add Cc entry and add ad-dresses there if you want to create aCarbon Copy list of recipients. Whenemailing multiple people using thosetwo methods, everyone who gets themessage can see the email addresses ofeveryone else who got it, and that isnot always ideal. If you want to hideall your recipients’ email addresses,enter your email address in the Tobox, click Add Bcc, and enter every-one else’s email addresses in the Bccbox. Bcc stands for Blind CarbonCopy, and it’s an indispensable toolfor those using Gmail for business.

Type a subject in the Subject boxand type your email in the text boxbelow that. If you are writing a longemail or need to get offline quickly,click Save Draft and it is saved forlater editing. Be careful not to clickthe Discard button, which scraps thecurrent email and dumps you back tothe mail Gmail page without anywarning. You’ll also notice a row oficons at the top of the text box that

ST A Y CO N N E C T E D

Use the formatting tools to modify text just likeyou would with a word processor.

Use the More Actions menu to perform a number of operations on selected emails.



provide access to a number of wordprocessing tools including bold,italics, underline, highlighting, andother features. If you don’t under-stand what a particular icon repre-sents, place the mouse cursor over itand a tooltip box appears under thecursor that displays the icon’s name.Also, if you apply formatting andwant to get rid of it, highlight the for-matted text and click the RemoveFormatting icon.

Most of the formatting tools areself-explanatory, but the Link featureis an exception. It lets you turn a se-lected block of text into a hyperlink soyou don’t have to paste the messy-looking link directly into the message.For example, if you want to include alink to www.youhavetocheckoutthiswebsite.com into your message,you could type the words click here,highlight them, click the Link icon,and type www.youhavetocheckoutthiswebsite.com in the text box beforeclicking OK. The text “click here”now turns blue with an underline toindicate that it is a hyperlink, andwhen the recipient clicks it, his Webbrowser will open www.youhavetocheckoutthiswebsite.com.

The formatting tools are only avail-able if you use Gmail’s default RichText mode. Click Plain Text to switchto that mode, which only lets you typeplain text. This is helpful if you aresending email to somebody who can’topen rich text emails, which is thecase at many businesses as well assome products such as some emailsoftware for PDAs.

Gmail has an integrated spell-checker that you can access by clickingthe Check Spelling link on the far rightside of the message box. Potentiallymisspelled words are highlighted inyellow, and you can click the word tomake a pop-up box appear that con-tains suggested alternatives. Just clickthe word on the list that you want touse and it automatically replaces themisspelled word.

One of the great things about emailis that it lets you send files to other

people in the form of attachments, andGmail users are free to append up to10MB of files to each email they send.To do this, click Attach A File and nav-igate to the file you want to attach, clickthe file’s name to highlight it, and clickOpen. You can add several files as longas you don’t exceed the 10MB overalllimit by clicking Attach Another Fileand repeating the process. If you acci-dentally attach the wrong file to anemail, click the Remove link next to thefile’s name to drop it from the list.

When you’re done composing theemail, click Send to transmit it. Thisprocess takes only a few seconds ifyou have no attachments, but if youincluded attachments you may haveto wait several minutes for the mes-sage to be sent depending on the sizeof the files and the speed of yourInternet connection. Don’t close thewindow until you see a messagetelling you the email was successfullysent, and don’t worry about saving acopy—it’s automatically added toyour Sent Mail folder, attachmentsand all.

Inbox

Before long, people will startsending messages to your Gmail ac-count, and you can view and managethese files by clicking Inbox. A list ofemails and conversations appears,with the most recently received at thetop, and they all follow the samebasic format.

On the far left of each entry is acheckbox that lets you select the emailfor further processing without actu-ally opening the message. You can se-lect multiple emails this way, andwe’ll talk about what to do with se-lected entries shortly.

Next to the checkbox is a whitestar, which turns into a yellow starwhen clicked. Starred emails are dis-played in the Starred folder, whichmakes them very easy to find, andwe’ll discuss that feature later, as well.

Next to the star is the name of theperson or company who sent the email,and if a number in parenthesis appearsnext to the name it means this email ispart of a conversation, or a series of

II n the spring of 2004, when the Gmail beta went public and accounts werenearly impossible to get, Sean Michaels founded the Gmail Swap Web site

(www.gmailswap.com). Although he already had an account, some of his friendsdidn’t, and he was dismayed when he started scouting around to see how peoplewere getting accounts. “The only thing I could find was eBay,” says Michaels,“where invitations were selling for as much as $115. This crass commercialism re-ally bothered me, so I created Gmail Swap with the idea that creative, kind, andnice people might be able to find other like-minded folk, and find an invitationthat way.”

The site is all but defunct now that accounts are easy to get but saw morethan 300,000 visitors a day at its peak. Here’s a list of some of the more memo-rable swaps that Michaels knows were completed:

Someone who offered to “call his mom and tell her he loved her” was very quickly

offered an account

A bodyguard in Chicago guarded someone for a day

A live tarantula

Home-baked cookies

A hot-air balloon ride in San Francisco

A couple of people wrote and recorded original songs for the recipient. One of them

is still available at: www.hatheadmusic.com/listenframe.htm

I Want My Gmail



emails to and from the same person re-garding the same subject. The numberin the parenthesis tells you how manymessages are in that conversation.

Next up are the carats that tell youif the message was sent only to you(two carats) or to a group of people(one carat), followed by the email’ssubject line in black, which is thenfollowed by a snippet of the messagein gray if that feature is enabled. Thisis followed by a paperclip icon if themessage or conversation contains anattachment, and then the date themessage was sent (or the time, if themessage was received that day).

You can click the email entry any-where to the right of the star to open it,but before we get into that let’s talkabout what you can do with selectedemails. These entries are highlighted inyellow, and if you click one of the en-tries in the More Actions drop-downmenu at the top of the Inbox, such asMark As Unread, Add Star, or Move ToTrash, the effects of those features applyto all of the selected emails. You canalso archive email or report it as spamby clicking one of the correspondingbuttons to the left of the More Actionsbox. There are several options next toSelect on this screen (just under theArchive and Report Spam buttons), in-cluding All, None, Read, Unread,Starred, and Unstarred. Note that whenyou select an email entry with a numberin parenthesis, you are selecting the en-tire conversation, and any actions youtake will apply to every email withinthat conversation.

Clicking Archive appears to delete theselected emails and conversations fromthe list, but don’t panic—they’re actu-ally dumped into the All Mail folder.

If you receive an unsolicited email,select it and click Report Spam tomove it to your Spam folder. This alsopasses it along to the folks at Googlefor analysis.

Read Messages & Conversations

When you click an entry, the mes-sage or conversation it contains will

appear. If the entry is part of a con-versation, the most recent message inthe exchange appears at the bottom,layered on top of previous messageswhich can be read by clicking theirentries. If you want to quickly displayall of the messages on-screen at once,click Expand All.

You can click Reply at the bottomof a displayed message to compose aresponse (which is then included inthe conversation), or click Forward topass the message along to someoneelse. Click the Print icon on theupper-right side of the message tocreate a printer-friendly version of theentire conversation, and click the staron any individual email to star it(found on the upper-right side of themessage, next to the sender’s name),which is handy if you don’t want tostar the entire conversation.

You can access most of the featureson this screen by clicking the MoreOptions link at the top of an open mes-sage. This displays a string of entriesthat let you Reply to, Forward, or Printthe message as normal, but you can alsoclick Reply All to respond to everyonethe email was sent to. Click Add SenderTo Contacts List to transfer an emailaddress to that list automatically, orclick Trash This Message if you want toget rid of an individual email withouttrashing the entire conversation.

Use the Report Phishing optionwhen you receive an unsolicited emailthat contains a phishing scam, wherea thief asks you to send him detailedpersonal information while posing asa legitimate company such as eBay oreven Google. If you have reason tobelieve an email is attempting to de-fraud you in this way, click ReportPhishing to pass the email to theGoogle team so they can flag similarmessages as potential phishing emailsfor other Gmail users.

Sometimes it is necessary to seethe raw data contained in the email ifyou are troubleshooting or workingwith your ISP (Internet serviceprovider) to solve a problem.Clicking Show Original displays the

email in its entirety, complete withall of the tags, headers, and other in-formation that is so helpful whendoing this type of work.

If the message you are reading has apaperclip icon, the message has oneor more attachments. You can readthe name of the attached file at thebottom of the screen and clickDownload to save the file to yourcomputer. Note the file size listednext to the download link; on slowdial-up connections a large, multi-megabyte attachment can take severalminutes to download, and youshouldn’t close the Gmail windowuntil the download is complete.

Starred

Clicking the Starred link on the leftside of the screen accesses a special

NN otice the Sponsored Linksthat pop up on nearly every

single Gmail page? The ads pay foryour “free” account, but they alsorepresent what some consider theservice’s dark side. Gmail scans allof the messages contained in thecurrently displayed conversationand uses keywords from the mes-sages to send targeted ads to yourcomputer. That means you getads that are relevant to what youare discussing, but it also meansthat Google is always reading overyour shoulder.

The technology driving all of thisis called AdSense, and its contro-versy goes beyond targeted ads. IfGoogle is using your emails aboutyour upcoming vacation to pitchski gear and reduced lodge rates toyou, some wonder what is stoppingthem from letting others—namelythe government—use the tech-nology to create a detailed per-sonal profile. Google claims it isdoing no such thing and refuses tocomment further. ❙

AdSense


folder that holds virtual copies of allthe email starred in your Inbox andAll Mail folders. You can manipulateand read the messages here just likeyou can in the Inbox, but this foldermakes it easy to keep track of impor-tant messages and conversations. Ifyou want to take an entry out of theStarred folder, select it and click theRemove Star button at the bottom leftof the screen.

Sent Mail

The Sent Mail link takes you to arepository of every email sent fromyour account. Once again, managingmessages here is identical to man-aging messages in the Inbox.

Drafts

If you click Save Draft in theCompose Mail window, Gmail savesthe message to the Drafts folder. Todelete a draft, select it and clickDiscard Drafts. Otherwise simplyclick the entry for any draft to editand send it just as we discussed in theCompose Mail section.

All Mail

All Mail works precisely as itsounds—you can access every mes-sage you receive, send, archive, orsave as a draft from this screen. Clickany drafts (labeled with red text) toedit and send them, and if you wantto reinstate a message or conversationto the Inbox, select it and click MoveTo Inbox.

Spam

Gmail has a decent built-in spamfilter, but you are free to flag any un-solicited messages and send them tothis Spam folder. If you make a mis-take, select the entry and click the NotSpam button at the bottom of thisscreen. To permanently delete spamto free up storage space, select it andclick Delete Forever.

Trash

Messages and conversations re-moved from any folder other than theSpam folder are sent to the Trashfolder. You can fix mistakes by se-lecting an entry and clicking Move ToInbox, or get rid of an entry perma-nently by selecting it and clicking theDelete Forever button at the bottomof this section.

Contacts

You can easily keep in touch withfriends, family members, and col-leagues thanks to Gmail’s Contactslist. The Frequently Mailed tab nar-rows down the list to the people youtalk to most often, while clicking AllContacts displays the entire list. Justselect the entries for the people youwant to email, click Compose, andtype away. Get rid of entries by se-lecting them and clicking the Deletebutton at the bottom. You can alsoadd contacts manually by clicking theAdd Contact link in the upper rightand typing their email addresses. Youcan also click a person’s name andclick Edit Contact Information to

change that person’s contact informa-tion or add some notes. Clicking AddMore Contact Info opens entries for acontact’s address and phone numbers.

If you already have an email pro-gram such as Outlook Express thathas a contact list, you can save a lot oftime by exporting the list from theemail software into Gmail. You needto create a CSV (Comma SeparatedValues) file to import this informa-tion, so refer to the documentationthat came with your email to followthe steps for creating such a file. InOutlook Express 6 click File, expandExport, click Address Book, clickText File (Comma Separated Values),and click Export. Choose a file name,click Next, select all of the fields youwant to include for each entry, andclick Finish.

To get the file into Gmail, clickContacts, click Import Contacts, clickBrowse, and navigate to the CSV fileyou just created. Click it, click Open,and click Import Contacts. Theyshould all show up the next time youaccess the Contacts list.

Labels

Labels provide a convenient way toorganize messages by category, ur-gency, or any other method youdream up. Click Edit Labels in theLabels menu below the links on theleft (you may have to click the arrowto the left of Labels to see this menu),enter a name for the label in theCreate A New Label box, and clickCreate. Do this as many times as youlike. If you want to delete a label, clickthe name of the label in the Labelsmenu, then click the Remove Label“label name” button, which appearsboth above and below the Labels se-tion. To change the label’s name, clickthe Edit Labels link in the Labelsmenu, click the Rename link, andmake the adjustment. You can alsoremove labels from here as well, byclicking the Remove link.

Any time you see the More Actionsdrop-down menu, you can use it to


If you accidentally flag a message asSpam select it and click Not Spam toretract the report.

Filters let you create rules that automatically sort incoming messages.


apply any label you’ve created to anymessage or conversation. By clickingthe label’s name in the Label menu onthe left, you can quickly access everymessage to which that label is as-signed, making labels work much likefolders do in Windows.

Invite A Friend

If you want to introduce a friend tothe joys of Gmail, enter his email ad-dress in the Invite A Friend box andclick Send Invite. Just remember thatyou have a limited number of invites(although the current 50 per accountis extremely generous). If you don’tsee the Invite A Friend box you’re outof luck until Google allocates someinvitations to your account, which isdone randomly.

Additional Features

We’ve just covered the basics so far,but Gmail offers a number of ad-vanced settings and options that canhelp you manage your email.

Filters

Filters let you apply rules to a mes-sage so it’s handled a certain way de-pending on the email address, subjectline, or other factors. To set up a filter,click Settings in the upper right of thescreen, click the Filters tab, and clickCreate A New Filter. Enter the infor-mation you want to filter in the appro-priate text box or boxes (which includeFrom, To, Subject, Has The Words,and Doesn’t Have) and click Next Step.Now use the check boxes (such as SkipThe Inbox and Star It, among others)to determine how you want Gmail tohandle each message that contains thefilter data you just entered. ClickCreate Filter when you are done, andremember that you can create as manyfilters as you like. To edit an existingfilter, open the Filters tab and click Editnext to the filter’s entry, or click Deleteto completely disable the filter.

Forwarding & POP Access

The main downside to Gmail—andto all other Web-basedemail services—is thatyou must be connectedto the Internet to reademails you’ve alreadyreceived. FortunatelyGoogle lets Gmail usersforward messages andaccess their accountsusing POP (Post OfficeProtocol), meaning it ispossible to use an emailclient such as OutlookExpress to compose andread messages when youare offline.

To forward messagesto a non-Gmail ac-count, click Settings andselect the ForwardingAnd POP tab. If youwant to forward in-coming messages to adifferent account, selectthe Forward A Copy OfIncoming Mail To radio

button and type the email addressyou want to forward the messages toin the text box. If you want to keepcopies of these messages in yourGmail account, select either KeepGmail’s Copy In The Inbox orArchive Gmail’s Copy on the drop-down menu. If you want to delete allemails after they are forwarded selectTrash Gmail’s Copy instead.

The POP Download section letsyou set up the account for direct ac-cess to your Gmail messages via soft-ware such as Outlook Express. Clickthe Email POP For All Email radiobutton if you want to download allmessages that are already in the ac-count in addition to all future mes-sages. Select the Enable POP Only ForMail That Arrives From Now On toprevent the software from accessingexisting messages. Use the WhenMessages Are Accessed With POPdrop-down menu to select what youwant to do with the messages onceyou receive them, as described in theprevious paragraph, and click SaveChanges when you are done.

You also must configure your emailsoftware to connect to the Gmail ac-count, and the procedure for thatvaries from program to program.Click Configuration Instructions inthe Forwarding And POP tab for de-tailed instructions if you use Outlook,Eudora, or Netscape Mail.

Don’t Forget The Add-Ons

Gmail apparently wasn’t enoughfor Google, and they’ve enhanced theservice with a helpful Gmail Notifieradd-on (www.google.com/down-loads) along with integration withGoogle’s Picasa 2 photo organizationand sharing software (www.picasa.com). Keep a close watch at theGoogle and Gmail sites for more en-hancements, as Gmail is alwaysevolving. There’s no telling what fea-tures it will support by the time it isrolled out publicly.

BBYY TTRRAACCYY BBAAKKEERR


WW ith Keyboard Shortcuts enabled, Gmail worksalmost as efficiently as a good standalone

email program. Here are a few essential shortcuts tokeep handy:

Enter or o Expand Conversation n Next Message p Previous Message/Select Search Boxk Move To Newer Conversation j Move To Older Conversation

u Return To Inbox x Select Conversation s Star Conversation r Reply a Reply All f Forward ! Report Spam

g followed by a Go To All Mail Folder g followed by s Go To Starred Folder g followed by c Go To Contacts Folder g followed by d Go To Drafts Folder g followed by i Go To Inbox

Gmail Shortcuts

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Faster Than ASpeeding Email

Keep In Touch With Google Talk

Remember the first time youused email? That strangefeeling of sending a letter in-stantaneously to anyone you

liked, all without having to paypostage? IM (Instant Messaging) soft-ware is designed to let you communi-cate with someone even faster thanthat, and all without having to spenda dime beyond the price of yourInternet connection and perhaps theprice of the IM client. As long as thepeople you want to chat with have thesame software installed, you can letthem know when you’re online, sendtext messages back and forth in-stantly, and even have a voice chat ifyou have the right software.

Google Talk (free; talk.google.com)is that software. It may not yet be asfull-featured or as popular as some of the established instant-messaging programs, such as ICQ 5 (free; www.icq.com), Yahoo Messenger (free;messenger.yahoo.com), or MSN Mes-senger (free; messenger.msn.com), butit’s definitely worth a look, and unlike

many competing products it is also advertising-free.

Basic Features

Google Talk provides anyone witha PC and an Internet connection withinstant IM and voice-chat capabilities.The service currently only lets youcommunicate with other people whouse Google Talk and not with peoplewho use other IM clients.

IM lets you participate in whatamounts to an email conversation.You type lines in a text box, pressENTER, and what you type instantlyappears in a chat window on yourscreen and on the screens of any otherGoogle Talk users you had selected be-fore sending the message. This windowkeeps a running log of the chat sessionso you can easily scroll through theconversation, and it’s easy to messageindividuals or groups of people.

The voice component of the serviceworks quite a bit like a phone call andhas terrific audio quality, but you need

a microphone and speakers or a headsetwith a microphone to take advantage ofthis feature. Headsets are ideal becausethey provide the privacy of a typicalphone call. Analog products, such asPlantronics’ .Audio 40 ($24.95; www.plantronics.com), are an inexpensiveoption if your computer has a soundcard with microphone and headphonejacks. But we recommend digital USBheadsets, such as the Logitech PremiumUSB Headset 350 ($49.99; www.logitech.com), because they provide supe-rior sound quality and work with anycomputer that has a USB port.

Sign Up

You need an invitation-only Gmailaccount to use Google Talk, but thoseare very easy to come by these daysand Google also recently establishedan automated system that lets anymobile phone user instantly receive aGmail invitation. Just go to www.google.com/talk and click the Get AnAccount link. Enter your mobilephone number in the first text box,enter the word that is displayed in the


You don’t haveto accept invitations frompeople whowant to addyou to theirFriends List.

Be sure to let Google Talk manage themicrophone sensitivity.


second text box, and click Send Code.Google sends a text message to yourcell phone that contains the code,which you can then enter on the nextWeb page that appears to activateyour Gmail account.

Once your Gmail account is up andrunning, go to www.google.com/talkagain, only this time click DownloadGoogle Talk. You can save the in-stallation file to your Desktop anddouble-click its icon to proceed, orclick Run when the Internet ExplorerFile Download dialog box appears toautomatically download and installthe software.

When installation is complete,launch the program and a Sign Inwindow appears. Enter your Gmailusername in the Username box andyour Gmail password in the Passwordbox and click Sign In. If you don’t wantto do this every time you launch GoogleTalk, be sure to select the RememberMe On This Computer checkbox, butkeep in mind this will let anyone usingthe computer access your account.

Once your account is set up you caninvite current Talk users to join yourFriends List or nonusers to get startedusing Google Talk. Click Add Friend atthe bottom of the Google Talk box,enter the email address of the personyou want to invite (you can enter mul-tiple addresses in the box as long aseach is separated using a semicolon),and click Next. You can also click theChoose From My Contacts button andeasily add invitees from your GmailContacts list before clicking Next.Click Finish to return to Google Talk.

Each invitation includes a Gmailaccount invitation so your friends canget connected right away. Note thatthe Gmail invitations are deductedfrom the number of invitations thatare assigned to your Gmail account,but inviting other Gmail membersdoesn’t count against this limit.

Configuration

To configure Google Talk, clickSettings and select the General entry. If

you want Google Talk to load eachtime Windows starts up, select the StartAutomatically When Starting Windowscheckbox, and if you want to use Gmailby default when you click email links,check the Open Gmail When I ClickEmail Links option. If you leave thelatter checkbox blank, Windows willopen your default email program, suchas Outlook Express, instead of Gmailwhen you click an email link.

In the Friends List section, click SortFriends By Name if you want themlisted that way instead of in the orderin which you added them. Also, checkthe Hide Offline Friends checkbox toonly display online users in the GoogleTalk interface. Another useful optionis the Hide Gmail Contacts Not OnMy Friends List box, which keeps yourGmail contacts list from cluttering upthe Google Talk interface. Clicking theAccount Settings button takes you tothe Google Accounts Web page, where

you can manage such information as your password, name, and otherGmail data.

Choose the Blocked entry to accessthe list of names that you’ve removedfrom your Friends List (more on thatlater). To restore a contact to yourFriends List, click the appropriate entryin the Name box and click Unblock.

Google Talk saves a text file con-taining your recent chat sessions. If youdon’t want to save this information,choose the Privacy entry on the left and remove the check mark from theSave Recent Chat History checkbox.The program also automatically addspeople that you email frequently viaGmail to your Friends List; to pre-vent this deselect the Add People ICommunicate With Often To MyFriends List checkbox.

The Notifications entry on the leftlets you tell Google Talk how to alertyou when a new message or call comesin. If you want silent notifications, re-move the check marks from the PlaySounds options. If you only want soundand don’t want pop-up text alerts, de-select the Show Notification options.

Few home users will need to accessthe Connection entry, as it is onlyused if your computer requires aproxy to access the Internet. If this isthe case at work, select the Use TheFollowing Proxy radio button and askyour IT department for the host, port,and authentication information youneed to enter in the appropriate fields.

The Audio entry lets you adjust voicechat settings. Use the drop-down menuin the Input section to select your microphone or headset and for best re-sults fill in the Automatically AdjustMicrophone Sensitivity checkbox. Alsoselect the appropriate device in the Callscheckbox. (Use Default Device or yoursound card if you want to listen usingcomputer speakers.)

Start Talking

Now it’s time to adjust availabilitysettings to let others know whetheryou are available for chatting, busy,


The General Settings let you tellGoogle Talk to start and log you ineach time Windows loads.

You can invite others to use GoogleTalk, but they need a Gmail account.



or anything in between, thanks to theability to add custom messages. Clickthe Down arrow under your name toaccess the list and click a selection toactivate it so that others see it ontheir computers. To create a customAvailable message, click the CustomMessage entry with the green circlenext to it. To create a custom Busymessage, click the Custom Messageentry with the red circle next to it.Type the message you’d like otherusers to see, press ENTER, and thenew message is activated and will beavailable in your message drop-downmenu in the future. There is no wayto edit or delete an individual custommessage (changing the text creates anew entry), but you can delete all ofyour custom messages by clickingClear Custom Messages in the drop-down menu.

There are a few other importantentries accessible via this menu. SignOut signs you completely out ofGoogle Talk, which makes you ap-pear Offline to other Google Talkusers and also lets you sign in under adifferent account, which is handy ifmultiple people use the same com-puter. The Show When I Am Chat-ting option is turned on when clicked(this is indicated by a check marknext to the entry) and displays a key-board icon in the other person’s chatwindow whenever you are typing,showing them that you’re in theprocess of responding.

You can right-click entries in yourFriends List to open a menu with afew additional options. Click Renameto change the contact’s name on yourlist or click Remove to add them tothe Blocked Contacts list.

Instant Messaging

To send instant messages, click thename of any contact in your FriendsList and a chat window appears. Typewhat you want to say in the text boxat the bottom of the window, pressENTER, and Talk sends the message.It also appears in your chat window

along with any replies you receive,and you can use the scroll bar toscroll backward and forward througha conversation if it extends beyondthe chat window.

It is possible to initiate multipleconversations at once; just clickmultiple contact names to open sep-arate chat windows for each person.Talk automatically stacks these win-dows and lets you rearrange or movethem to other parts of the screen bydragging and dropping them. Clickthe gray bar at the top of a chat win-dow to collapse it, making room formore windows. When you finishchatting, click the X button in theupper-right corner of the window toend the connection.

A contacts who is online and avail-able for chatting has a green icon nextto her name. A red icon indicates thatshe is busy, and a gray icon indicatesthat she is offline. A yellow icon ap-pears if she is online but her com-puter has been idle for more than 10minutes. To contact someone who isbusy, offline, or idle, click the Emailbutton in the chat window or the en-velope icon next to her name to sendher an email.

Voice Chat

If you and the person you want totalk to have headsets (or microphonesand computer speakers), you can ini-tiate a voice call by clicking the tele-phone handset icon next to her nameor by clicking the Call button in thechat window. Your computer and her computer will ring just like tele-phones until she answers the call byclicking the Answer button or deniesthe call by clicking the Ignore button.Click Mute to mute the call and clickEnd Call to hang up.

Integrating Google Talk

There are many popular IM pro-grams, and there are nearly as manypopular programs designed to consoli-date all of those IM accounts under asingle, unified interface so users canavoid opening scads of windows atonce to chat with their friends. It is easyto incorporate Google Talk into pro-grams such as Trillian Pro 3 ($25;www.ceruleanstudios.com), Gaim(free; gaim.sourceforge.net), and Psi(free; psi.affinix.com) as long as youknow what settings to use. Google hasdetailed integration instructions for avariety of popular consolidation pro-grams at www.google.com/support/talkin the Third Party Applications section.Click the More link in that section for acomplete list.

More To Come

Google Talk was still in beta at presstime, meaning it is in limited publicrelease but that Google is still workingout bugs and adding new features. Thecompany has already announced thatit is working on ways to let GoogleTalk users communicate with users ofother software, and that it would liketo add rich text features in the futureto let users spice up the look of theirmessages. As with Gmail, it looks asthough Google is just beginning to tapGoogle Talk’s potential.


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Click the phone icon to call someone,then click End Call when the call is over.

Custom statusmessages let yougive people specific reasonsfor being unavailable.


What do an Indonesian acoustic guitar player and aNASCAR fan have in common? No, there’s nopunch line. You have something in common withthem too, provided each of you has Internet access.

You’re all able to go to one online meeting hub to chat, tradeadvice, and gather information on hundreds of thousands of diverse topics.

Google Groups is a free Web- and email-based forum that letsyou communicate with your next-door neighbors and farawaystrangers through discussion groups. Groups are arranged bysubject matter, and they range from the practical to the esoteric.No matter what you’re interested in, Google Groups is certain tooffer a subject group that fascinates you.

Let’s Get Started

The best way to get a feel for Google groups is to dive right inand browse the site. Head to www.google.com and click the

Groups button to go to the GoogleGroups Beta site. The site is officially atest version, and the Google spokes-person we talked to did not give us anofficial release date. We ran into acouple minor glitches when trying itout, but overall Google Groups iswell-organized and easy to use.

Given the number of groups thatGoogle Groups contains, the homepage is deceptively simple. Navigationlinks to other Google sites are locatedjust below the banner, beneath whichsits a search engine for searchingGoogle Groups only. (If you want torun a Web search, you’ll need to returnto Google’s home page.) Below thesearch box you’ll find a login area, fol-lowed by a list of topics. Topics aregrouped into broad categories, andthey include Arts And Entertainment,Computers, Home, Recreation, ScienceAnd Technology, Business And Fi-nance, Health, News, Regions AndPlaces, and Societies And Humanities.

Pick any topic, and you’ll see thetopic’s Group Directory page, whichhas a consistent look and feel acrosseach topic. For a change of pace, weforego checking out the Computerscategory and select Recreation, wherewe see an index list of nearly twodozen topics ranging from Antiquesto Guns to Travel. The numbers in


Get TheMessage?

Google Groups Makes It Easy To ShareInterests Online

Google Groups lets you communicate with hundreds ofthousands of people around the world.


parentheses next to eachtopic indicate how manygroups are devoted tothat topic, and they canbe in the single digits or much, much larger.Groups are also indexedby Region, Language,Activity, and Members.

For instance, at thetime this article was writ-ten—and because groupsare so active, the numbersare certain to change bythe time you read this—the Recreation categoryincluded more than 400groups based in Europeand 56 in Canada. Andyou don’t have to be anEnglish-speaker to takepart, either; there areJapanese, Serbo-Croatian,and Portuguese groups,to name just a few. Theindex also shows how many groupsare active versus those that are a bitdormant, and how large the groupstend to be. Perhaps surprisingly, mostof the recreation groups have fewerthan 10 members, although a few arepractically virtual arenas with morethan a thousand members each.

Okay, enough with the numbers.It’s the groups themselves that makethe site so interesting. Below thebroad index list is the first page of thegroup listings. For example, in theRecreation category’s main page, wesee a woodworking group, a pokergroup, and a video arcade group,among others. We checked out thewoodworking group, where we founda plea for help with a warped tabletop,a recommendation for sandpaper,and tips on running air compressors.

The first 15 groups are on the firstpage, with other group listings on sub-sequent pages, and the groups appearto be in no particular order. You maysee that some of the groups havesomewhat confusing names, such asrec.games.frp.dnd, which is a hold-over from the earlier days of the

Internet. (See “The History Of Usenet”sidebar for more information.)

While it’s interesting to browse thegroups to see what’s there, certainlyyou aren’t going to be interested in allof them. That’s where the search en-gine comes in handy. Given Google’spopularity as a search engine, itshould come as no surprise thatGoogle includes a useful tool forsearching Google Groups, too. Headback to the Groups home page andclick the Search Groups button orfind it at the top of almost any GoogleGroups page. Type in a keyword andclick the Search button. In our ex-ample, we typed the keyword mort-gage, and we turned up 151 groups,including Mortgage Rates, Real EstateAnd Mortgage Service MarketingFocus Group, and Mortgage Loans.

You may also want to tailor yourresults by taking advantage of the ad-vanced search feature. Next to theSearch button is a small text link,Advanced Groups Search. Click it, andyou’ll have much more control overthe results Google returns to you. For instance, you can search messages

by exact phrase or by ex-cluding words, and youcan search by subject lineor message date.

Join & Subscribe

While you were brows-ing through the site, youmay have come across a message in a specificgroup that tells you onlymembers are allowed topost to that group. Yes,you can access any of thepublic content on Google,but some groups have re-strictions on how you caninteract with a group, andthere are other featuresthat you can use only ifyou have created a Googleaccount. To participatefully, you’ll need to bothjoin the service and sub-

scribe to various groups.To “join” Google Groups means

that you create an account withGoogle. (If you already have a GoogleAccount, such as when you signed upfor a Froogle Shopping List or GoogleAnswers, you can skip this step. AndGmail users can sign on to the GoogleGroups service by submitting theirusernames and passwords.) On thehome page, click the Join link next toNew Users. Enter your email address,choose a password, and retype it forverification. Create a nickname ifyou’d like and type the characters yousee on the screen into the WordVerification box; this helps protectagainst automated programs signingusers up for unwanted email. Then,click the Create My Account button.

Within seconds, you’ll receive anemail message asking you to verifyyour email address and activate youraccount. Click the link in the email,and you’ll be transported to a Webpage that thanks you for verifyingyour account. You’re now an officialGoogle Groups member. Head backto the home page, click the Members:


To participate fully in group discussions, you’ll need to create aGoogle account and log in.



Sign In link, enter your email addressand password, and click Sign In.

Joining Google Groups doesn’tmean that you can access all groups,however. Some groups are restricted,which means that you must be invitedto join them in order to participate,and that includes basic tasks such asreading messages. Other groups,while not completely private, ask youto become a member before you canperform tasks such as posting mes-sages to other members. To partici-pate in these types of groups, youneed to subscribe to them.

The first time you sign in to GoogleGroups, you’ll see a My Groups pagelisting all your groups—at this point,the list is empty—and a search enginefor locating groups. Once you’ve located a group that interests you,you’re ready to join it. Dependingupon the type of group, you’ll see ei-ther a Subscribe To This Group linkor a Join This Group link at the top ofthe group’s home page. Click this link.

On the left of the sign-up page,you’ll see a series of radio buttons thatgive you options for reading groupmessages. These options vary by group,but they can include No Email (youread the messages on the Web site),Abridged Email (you receive a sum-mary of the messages posted each day),Digest Email (up to 25 messages arebundled into one message and shippedto your email inbox), and Email (eachmessage is sent directly to your inbox).Select the desired radio button andtype the nickname you’d like to use.

In addition, you may find thatjoining some groups requires moder-ator approval. Some groups are mod-erated, meaning that a person readsand approves your messages beforethey are posted to the group. If agroup moderator requests that youexplain why you want to be in thegroup, you’ll find a place to type thatinformation. Click the Apply To ThisGroup button. Once your subscrip-tion has been accepted, the grouplisting appears on the page you seewhen you sign in to Google Groups.

Oops—we made a mistake. Wesigned up for a promising-lookinggroup related to jobs in our homestate, but it turned out to be packedwith hot, hot, hot money-making of-fers and thinly disguised ads forpyramid schemes. (Do you really be-lieve you can receive up to 105% rebates on all your purchases?)Fortunately, it’s easy to unsubscribefrom groups. At the top of the group’smain page, click the Unsubscribe OrChange Membership link, and on themembership page, click the Unsub-scribe button.

Read Messages

OK, we’re back in business. We’vefound a group we’re interested in, andit’s on to reading its content. If youchose to view message by email, you’llsee them in your email inbox. But ifyou chose No Email or if you want toview messages on the Web in additionto viewing them by email, you can doso on the Google Groups site.

The entire Google Groups databasecontains more than a billion mes-sages—that’s right, billion with a

“b”—so you might expect that thegroups may be a tad difficult to navi-gate. But for the most part they aren’t,once you understand what you’relooking at.

Message topics are organized bydate, with the most recent topiclisted first. In this case, topic refers tothe subject line of the message, notthe broad category the group fallsinto. For example, consider a groupdevoted to discussing a specific NHLhockey team. The group falls underthe Recreation category and Sportstopic (it appears as Recreation >Sports in the Google categorylisting), but when we’re talkingabout topics here, we’re talkingabout messages devoted to specificsubjects, such as the team’s signingof a new player or a discussion of thegeneral manager’s competency.

On a group’s home page, you’ll seetwo links near the top: Viewing TitlesOnly and View With Message Text.The first time you use the service, werecommend you click Viewing TitlesOnly because this lets you see many ofthe various topics at a glance. We alsorecommend you click Sorted By Date

EEvery society has customs and normsfor communicating, and the Internet

is no different. If you’re relatively new tocommunicating with online groups, oryou simply want to brush up on yourmanners, here are a few tips.

LLooookk bbeeffoorree yyoouu lleeaapp.. The best way tolearn how to communicate appropri-ately online is to watch what others aredoing. Read numerous posts to get a feelfor a group’s style and content beforeyou jump in with your own comments.And, be sure to do a thorough search ofa topic before you create a post. Thereare few things more annoying to long-time users than to see the exact samediscussion appear ad nauseam.

AAvvooiidd aaddvveerrttiissiinngg oovveerrttoonneess.. Sure, youhave the perfect doohickey for a widget-loving group, but folks aren’t online to

hear your sales pitch. People are increas-ingly sensitive to unsolicited commercialemail, and what’s perceived as spam mayget you banned from a group.

DDOONN’’TT TTYYPPEE IINN AALLLL CCAAPPIITTAALL LLEETT--TTEERRSS.. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RESHOUTING. Enough said.

RReemmeemmbbeerr yyoouu’’rree ccoommmmuunniiccaattiinnggwwiitthh rreeaall ppeeooppllee.. The old saying goesthat on the Internet, no one knowsyou’re a dog. It’s intended to mean thatalmost anyone can go online and sayanything, but it’s also a good reminderthat there are real people on the otherside of your computer screen. When youhave a difference in opinion on a topicyou feel passionately about, take a deepbreath and remember the other personhas feelings that go with those (in yourhumble opinion) misguided thoughts. ❙

Netiquette (Internet Etiquette)



Of First Message because this willmake it easier to read through athread, or topic, the first time.

Click the topic line of a messagethat interests you. In the tree on theleft, you’ll see a list of all the messagesrelated to that topic, including whocreated the post and when it wasposted. In the main body of the page,you’ll see the messages themselves. Ifthe thread is a relatively long one, themessages exist on more than onepage, and you can use the Start OfTopic, Older, Newer, and End OfTopic links at the top or the bottomof the page to move through all themessages. Each message has a replylink at its bottom, and you can usethis link to post a message to the en-tire group. To reply directly to the au-thor, to forward the message, or toperform other actions, click the ShowOptions link at the top of each mes-sage and click the desired task.

One of the neat features of GoogleGroups is the ability it gives you totrack topics. Click the star next to atopic, and it turns yellow; you’ve justadded the topic to your list of fa-vorites. When you next log on to thesite, new posts to that topic appearon your My Groups page. Tired of

that subject? Click the star again todeactivate it.

Another way to track messages ofinterest is to turn on a Group Alert.Google lets you input a keyword orkeywords, and when messages appearthat contain those words, Google will send you an email notice. Go towww.google.com/alerts?hl=en or clickthe Groups Alerts icon in the left nav-igation pane of almost any Groupspage and type the keyword in theSearch Terms box. In the Type drop-down menu, select Groups, and in theHow Often drop-down menu, selectthe frequency of the alert, such as AsIt Happens or Once A Week. Lastly,click the Create Alert button and justsit back and wait for messages to ap-pear in your email box.

When you’re ready to start a newtopic, return to the group’s homepage and click the Start A New Topiclink at the top. A prepopulated mes-sage screen appears with your name,the group’s name, and your languagefilled in. Type a subject line, type themessage, click the Preview button andedit your message, and click the PostMessage button. That’s all there is toit. (Some types of groups also let youcommunicate with the entire group

by sending email to one address,which we’ll discuss in the next sectionon creating groups.) You likely won’tbe able to do this if a group is aPublic-Usenet group. Usenet groups,

WWay back when in 1979, a groupof students at Duke University

found a way to communicate amongcomputers by posting messages to anetwork. That network was calledUsenet, and it blossomed into a placewhere users could discuss tens of thousands of topics. Topics fell intohigh-level domains, such as Sci (science-related) and Comp (computer-related);groups had names such as alt.artcrimeand comp.unix.programming; andusers had special software, called newsreaders, to access Usenet material.Usenet contains gems such as this onefrom Tim Berners-Lee, posted in 1991:

“ In article <[email protected]> Ipromised to post a short summary ofthe WorldWideWeb project. . . . TheWWW project merges the techniquesof information retrieval and hypertextto make an easy but powerful globalinformation system. . . . The projectstarted with the philosophy thatmuch academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aimsto allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, andthe dissemination of information by support groups.”

As the Internet became more acces-sible to the public, so did these post-ings. Deja News, which has since folded,began storing Usenet posts, and theDeja.com service allowed users tosearch, respond, and post newsgroupmessages through an easy-to-use Website. In early 2001 Google announced itwas acquiring Deja.com’s UsenetDiscussion Service, which at the time in-cluded about 500 million archived mes-sages dating back six years. Google hascontinued to add more Usenet contentto its Google Groups service, and it nowboasts more than a billion messages. ❙

The History Of Usenet

Start your own group and keep it as public or as private as you wish.


also called news-groups, resemblevirtual online bul-letin boards whereyou post messagesfor everyone else tosee. You used to dothis with softwarecalled a newsreader.Now that Googlehas acquired Usenetand its archives,you participate in discussions throughthe Google Groups service on theWeb and not with your own software.

Before you start a new topic,though, it’s a good idea to search themessages to see if someone has al-ready created a thread for this topic.On the group’s main page, type a key-word and click the Search This Groupbutton. You can sort returned mes-sages by date or by relevance and clicka message to see other messages in thesame topic.

And, in the “everyone makes mis-takes” department, there may comea time when you create a post andrealize you want to remove it. Whileyou won’t be able to yank it out of arecipient’s email box, you can re-move it from the archives on theWeb site. Log onto the site and lo-cate the post. Click its Show Optionslink. One of the options, availableonly to the poster, is Remove. Clickit, click any confirmation buttons,and your unwanted posting is on itsway to oblivion.

Create A Group

Google Groups is a great way tocarry on conversations with strangers,but it’s also useful for communicatingwith small groups of friends andfamily members. For instance, sup-pose you’re a member of a chess clubor other group that meets locally.When plans change or you need to geta message to the entire group, youcould try a phone tree or email list,but the process can be lengthy, and it puts the burden on the sender.

Instead, you could use a GoogleGroup. You might also want to createa group to find and communicatewith people on an obscure topic.

To create your own group, go tothe left navigation pane on almost anyGoogle Groups page and click theCreate A New Group link toward thebottom of the page. First, you’ll needto determine a name for the group.Type one in the Group Name box,and Google will automatically createan email address based on the groupname. This is the address that you canuse to communicate to the group bysending email, instead of or in addi-tion to creating public postings, de-pending on how the group is set upand how individuals elect to receivepostings. Enter a group description inthe text box.

One of the key decisions you needto make is how public you want thegroup to be. Do you want to approvepostings before they are sent? Do youwant everyone to be able to see thegroup messages or only members? Do you want to set this up as one-way communication from you to the group? Depending on your pref-erence, you will select the radiobutton for the appropriate grouptype. A Public group is one whereanyone can read the archives, andmembers can post messages. An Announcement-Only group is onewhere anyone can read messages, butonly the moderator posts. And a Re-stricted group is one where you invitepeople to join, and only they can postand read messages; your group is virtually invisible to the rest of the

Google Group com-munity. Choose thepreferred radio but-ton and click CreateMy Group.

The next step isto add members tothe group. You cando so yourself bytyping their emailaddresses in the AddMembers text box,

but to protect yourself from being ac-cused by friends and family membersof spamming, you may opt to choosethe Invite radio button instead. In thiscase, each potential member receivesan email invitation and must respondbefore becoming an official member.Select a Default Subscription Type—the default value of Email is justfine—and create a welcome message.Click Done.

Not surprisingly, once the groupis created, as the owner you’ll beable to manage it . On your MyGroups Page, click the Manage but-ton next to the group name. You canperform a variety of tasks here, in-cluding changing how others accessthe group, whether the group islisted in the Google archives or di-rectory, and whether messages aremoderated. You can also view themembership directory and, when thegroup has served its purpose, re-move it entirely.

Watch Your Privacy

It’s a big world out there, and itwill take some time for you to ex-plore it through Google Groups. Butknow that as you do, no one will beable to exploit your privacy. The sitelets you hide your email address sothat a spammer can’t collect it. So ifan email lands in your inbox from anIndonesian guitar player claimingyou’ve won free NASCAR tickets,you can rest assured that GoogleGroups isn’t the cause.

BBYY HHEEIIDDII AANNDDEERRSSOONN


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Star important topics, so they don’t escape your notice.


Google knows it’s popular. Itknows getting things donebecomes difficult whenyou’re without the luxury of

its search-engine services. And Googleknows that it can follow you whereveryou go, at least if you have a Web-ready mobile phone or PDA. If youhave such a device, you’re the targetaudience for Google Mobile, a small-screen version of Google’s Web site.With Google Mobile you can find allsorts of crucial information, whetherit’s the weather forecast, currentnews, the address for the nearby PapaJohn’s, a photo of the latest Chrysler,or an entire encyclopedia articleabout Abraham Lincoln; in otherwords, almost anything.

We’ll explain how Google Mobilefits into today’s world of mobile de-vices and competing services, whetheryour device is capable of using thesite, and how to use Google Mobile tofind what you need. We’ll also pro-vide a little background informationabout how the site works comparedto similar sites.

Booming Business

Success for the mobile Internetsearch business depends on twothings: more people buying Web-en-abled handhelds and more people be-coming interested in content that’soptimized for those devices. On thedevice side, research firm Gartner(www.gartner.com) announced inAugust 2005 that PDA sales are on therise. Gartner also predicted in July2005 that the global market for smart-phones (mobile phones that combinecell phone functionality with features

usually associated with PDAs) will see53.3 million units sold in 2005 andswell to sales of 278.7 million in 2009.

Anticipating success on the contentside of things is a bit trickier. Using theWeb on mobile phones and PDAs pro-vides neither the quickest nor the mostthorough results, at least not comparedto what you’re used to getting from theInternet using a full-fledged browseron your desktop computer. That chal-lenge is evident in an M:Metrics (www.mmetrics.com) survey from March2005, which found that only 12.7% ofmobile subscribers used their Web-en-abled phone or PDA to access newsand information through a browser.On the other hand, a Jupiter Research(www.jupiterresearch.com) reportfrom February 2005 projected that mo-bile content would generate $1 billionin revenues in 2005 and more thandouble that amount by 2009. So it’spossible that as content grows, usagewill grow along with it.

Late Bloomer

With increasing device sales, agrowing number of Web sites opti-mized their pages for viewing onthose devices’ tiny screens. As busi-nesses warmed to revenue-generatingpossibilities, such as advertising andcharging users for premium content,major Web portals such as Yahoo!(www.yahoo.com) and Microsoft’sMSN (www.msn.com) were quick toget involved. Although far from being


Google MobileGoogle Comes To The Small Screen

Google Mobileoffers a clean, tinyinterface that’sreally a portal tothe big, wideWeb; from hereyou can searchfor full Web sites,mobile Web sites,pictures, andlocal information.

If you want to show off yournew car butdon’t have aphoto of it or ifyou want to starelongingly at thecar you wish youcould buy,Google Mobile’sImage search option is the perfect portableway to go.


a comprehensive mobile Web portal,MSN Mobile (mobile.msn.com) ar-rived early, in June 1999. Less than ayear later, in May 2000, Yahoo!launched Yahoo! Everywhere, a ser-vice more akin to Google Mobile thanMicrosoft’s offering, and the pre-cursor to today’s popular Yahoo!Mobile (mobile.yahoo.com).

Google wasn’t ready to join thecrowd until March 2005, when GoogleMobile (mobile.google.com) made itsdebut. And it wasn’t until June 17,2005, that Google brought Web searchto the table. Google Mobile’s impressivecomprehensiveness, however—the factthat it attempts to serve the same 8 bil-lion-plus Web pages to your handheldthat it serves to your desktop PC, notjust select portions of the Web—wouldseem to make up for its late arrival.

What You Need

To use Google Mobile on your PDAor mobile phone, you must have a Web browser installed on the device.

Popular browsers include Microsoft’sPocket Internet Explorer (www.microsoft.com), Qualcomm’s Eudora-Web Browser (www.eudora.com), andOpera’s self-named browser for Win-dows Mobile or its newer Opera Mini(www.opera.com). Of course, the de-vice must also support the browser. Ifyou’re not sure what your PDA orphone is capable of when it comes toInternet access, check the device itselfor the accompanying manual.

Devices that support a Web brows-er typically come with a browser al-ready installed. The Treo 600 andTreo 650 smartphones from Palm(www.palm.com), for example, shipwith the Blazer Web Browser installedand ready to use. Similarly, Web-capable BlackBerry devices fromResearch In Motion (www.rim.com)come with the proprietary Black-Berry Browser. For this article we used a Treo 650 and the Blazer WebBrowser 2.0. For screen shots we usedPdaReach 1.52 from June Fabrics(www.junefabrics.com).

Call On Google

To get started with Google Mobile,simply open the Web browser on yourdevice and access the Web addresswww.google.com/xhtml. This launchesthe version of Google that usesXHTML (Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language), a form of the more fa-miliar HTML code that Web designersuse to create pages viewable on a va-riety of devices, such as a phone’s tinyscreen. You won’t see on your mobilephone the full version of Web pagesthat you’re used to seeing on a desktopcomputer because Google runs thepages through its own WML (WirelessMarkup Language) proxy server,which formats large-screen pages sothat small screens can handle themmore easily. The typical LCD (liquid-crystal display) on a handheld deviceoffers a 150 x 150-pixel resolution, andif you tried to view a full-size Webpage on a screen that small, you’d haveto do a lot of scrolling up, down, andsideways. You can also select theMobile Web radio button prior tosearching if you want to stick withWeb sites that are already optimizedfor handhelds.

If your browser doesn’t support themain www.google.com/xhtml page, tryaccessing www.google.com/wml. ThisWML version of the search page offersaccess to both the complete Websearches found on the XHTML searchpage, as well as mobile Web searches forphones that support WAP (WirelessApplication Protocol) 1.2 (a standardthat lets different types of wireless de-vices communicate across commonnetworks). Your phone might supportboth the XHTML and WML pages, sotry them to see what works best for you.The benefit of using the WML page isthat you can use the number pad on de-vices that lack keyboards to performsearches; see the “Search By Numbers”sidebar for more information.

Big Searches, Small Interface

Although there’s no getting aroundthe limitations of the tiny screen size,


AAword is often easier to remember than a cluster of numbers, which is why someorganizations use phone numbers that match their names. The fictional GET-

ACME is a good example, where on a numeric keypad you’d actually press 438-2263 tomake the call, but as long as you remember GET-ACME, you’re good to go. GoogleMobile wants you to have that concept in mind when performing certain searches onits WML (Wireless Markup Language) page, www.google.com/wml. For example, whenyou type 6688774422 Google translates the search as one for the keyword “music.”

To use this feature, access www.google.com/wml and select either Number EntireWeb or Number Mobile Web. With either selection you can use numeric search; thedifference is in the results. Number Entire Web does just what it says: It searches the en-tire Internet. Number Mobile Web, by contrast, serves up cell-phone friendly results,which are shorter for easier navigation. On-screen buttons also help you navigate. ❙

Search By Numbers

If you select NumberMobile Web on GoogleMobile’s main WML(Wireless MarkupLanguage) page, youcan do quick numerickeypad searches; in thisexample, we typed666688443377 for movies.



Google Mobile marks the most signif-icant step yet toward putting the en-tire Web in the palm of your hand ina format that’s easy for small devicesto manage. You might be annoyed tofind that some Google sites and ser-vices are absent from Google Mobile.However, many of them are availablethrough Google SMS (Short MessageService); check out “Message Marvel”on page 81 for details. As of presstime, here’s a partial list of items thatGoogle Mobile does not support:• Calculator (Google Mobile doesn’t

include the same calculator as doesGoogle)

• Currency Conversion (if you searcha conversion string, such as 10 USDin GBP, Google Mobile searches theWeb but doesn’t do the conversion)

• Gmail Beta (mail.google.com;Google’s email service isn’t yetready for Google Mobile)

• Google Maps Beta (maps.google.com; however, search GoogleLocal Beta and, depending on whatyou’re looking for, Google Mobileoften provides a map to help youfind your way)

• Movies (if you search a movie name,Google Mobile doesn’t provide

nutshell information and a searchbox for finding local showtimes)

• Stock Quotes (we were surprised tofind that this feature didn’t make itto Google Mobile)

On the other hand, you might besurprised at just how much you cando on the small screen. We can’tbegin to tell you how to exploremore than 8 billion Web pages, so doyour own exploring and see whatGoogle Mobile can deliver. Here’s alist of shortcuts and services thatwork well on Google Mobile as ofpress time:• Definitions (to find definitions for a

word, in the search box type definefollowed by the word)

• Google Local Beta (this is especiallynifty for mobile users; select theLocal radio button, and in thesearch box type a business or per-son’s name followed by the city andtwo-letter state abbreviation)

• PhoneBook (you can type a last name,city, state; a business name, city,state; or a complete phone number,including the area code, and bringup the same listings on GoogleMobile as you’d get using Google)

You can also set your search-filteringpreferences in Google Mobile the sameway you can in Google. You can stickwith the default Moderate option,choose the Strict Filtering option, orturn filtering off altogether. Changingyour language preference, however,takes a little more effort. First you needto know the two-letter code that corre-sponds to the language you prefer; youcan find these codes at www.google.com/apis/adwords/developer/adwords_api_languages.html. Then, when you access Google Mobile, typewww.google.com/xhtml?hl=XX whereXX is the two-letter language code.

More! More! More!

Sometimes it seems that not a weekgoes by without Google launching a newservice, so if you like Google Mobile,you can be fairly sure that additionalfeatures will debut in the comingmonths. In the meantime, take a look atsome other mobile-related informationin this issue. For example, if you live toblog, look for mobile blogging informa-tion in “Meet Blogger” on page 97.

BBYY CCAALL CCLLIINNCCHHAARRDD

Although not nearlythe same as the full-fledged Froogle beta,the mobile version ofFroogle (wml.froogle.com) lets you searcheverything from accordions (shownhere) to Zappa andcompare prices.

IIf you haven’t tried Google’s full-sized Froogle Beta Web site

(froogle.google.com), try it out be-fore you make your next significantpurchase. The site helps you find thelowest prices for goods from allkinds of online retailers. If you likewhat you see, try out the mobile ver-sion of Froogle (wml.froogle.com)the next time you find yourself spon-taneously shopping.

The mobile version doesn’t providelive links to the online retailers it cites,but it does provide the same price list-ings you’ll find on the Froogle betasite. We tested a few searches rangingfrom accordions to Monet prints toFrank Zappa CDs, and the mobileFroogle worked as advertised. ❙

The Froogle Mobile Googler

If you’re looking up a business withmultiple locations, click the Local radiobutton and search for business name,city, and two-letter state abbreviation;you’ll receive information about eachlocation and an area map.

RS


Low-tech text messaging? Meetthe high-tech superpower,Google. In a marriage made inmobile technology heaven,

Google, with its immense Internet data-base, offers a simple text messaging ser-vice for cell phones called Google SMS.You may already use SMS (Short Mes-sage Service), a service that lets yousend short text messages via mobilephones. Often, the text message re-sponse comes back quickly, so youcould send the phrase “meet for lunch?”to a friend and receive the reply “surewhat time” a moment later. SMS hasbeen amazingly popular with cellphone, smartphone, and PDA users.According to Yankee Group wirelessand mobile director Adam Zawel,about 190 million people send SMS textmessages every day in the United States.

What Google SMS means for mo-bile phone users is you can type a shortquery into SMS and get the search re-sults back in about one minute. Youcan look up directions from one

address to another, convert weightmeasures and other calculations, or getmovie times for your local Cineplex.The reason this conjoining of Google’smultibillion-item Internet databaseand a relatively simple text-messagingservice works so well is that the queriesare simple, yet the results are useful formobile device users. This is especiallyhandy if you’re out on the road andcan’t get to an Internet-connected PC.

So, imagine this scenario. You’restuck in traffic, wondering if youshould visit your lake cabin for theweekend. Using Google SMS, you canget a weather forecast for the 55343 ZIPcode just by text messaging the phraseweather 56501. Or, if you just discov-ered that the movie theater showing“King Kong” is full, you can find ashowing just by text-messaging kingkong san francisco. The power behindthese search results all resides inGoogle’s servers, which help GoogleSMS turn your phone into a portablesearch agent. To perform a query, justtype the search term and send the textto 46645 (or “GOOGL”).

A second reason why Google SMSworks so well is convenience. Sure,most cell phone users know all aboutSMS and texting (sending a text mes-sage). New phones such as Motorola’sRAZR line have gone well beyond thatsimple communication method. Theyoffer a robust WAP (Wireless Appli-cation Protocol) client; WAP is a stan-dard that lets different types of wirelessdevices communicate across commonnetworks. In fact, on the trendiest andcoolest phones, the WAP browser isamazingly fast, running at the samespeed or faster than a dial-up modem.

The problem is that it still takes sev-eral seconds to start a WAP browser, a

few more seconds to type google.comand access the site, and then a fewmore seconds to type your query intothe search field. By then, the trafficmight be uncongested and the weatherchanged! Google SMS, in contrast,frees you to keep focusing on the roador engage in conversation while youbring up the SMS client quickly andtype the query. Most phones, such asthe Nokia 6682, put SMS messagingright on the main menu of the phonewhere it only takes one click.

“Search is a hot issue in mobiletechnology right now because there isonly so much screen real estate, andno one likes squinting at these smallscreens,” says Yankee Group’s Zawel.“All eyes are on Google and Yahoo! tofigure out the best way to search froma mobile [device], and Google SMS isone option. Google may have advanceservices for the high-end phones, butthis is the low-end answer for themasses. SMS is the lowest commondenominator for searching.”

Challenges, Competition& The Google SMS Outlook

Of course, even as the lowest com-mon denominator, Google SMS is nota perfect mobile search service. Whilethe syntax for most text searches (suchas “address 56501”) is easy to remem-ber, Google SMS also lets you performmore advanced searches, such asfinding the population for a foreigncountry (“population pakistan”) orlooking up the price for an item atFroogle.com, Google’s shopping inter-face for finding the lowest price on aproduct. To perform a Froogle search,you’ll need the exact name of the itemor, say, a book’s ISBN (InternationalStandard Book Number). Most peopledon’t keep that information handy, so the more advanced searches are notas useful.

Google SMS might also change someuser perceptions as loyal Google fanswonder why the company is offeringsuch a low-tech solution. Zawel notedthat large companies, such as Disney or


Message MarvelGoogle Meets Text Messaging


ESPN, always move slowly withinnovative technology becausethey want to make sure it’s aproven commodity before theyattach their brand to it. If usersunderstand that all the power isonline and the messaging inter-face is for convenience only, itwill succeed.

Google SMS has some com-petition, though. For example,Yahoo! offers the Yahoo! SMSservice, which works similarlyto Google SMS. To use it, youjust send the SMS query to92466 (or “YAHOO”) and waita minute or so for the results.The main difference betweenYahoo! SMS search and GoogleSMS is that Yahoo! offers awireless hotspot directory. For mobilephone users who happen to carry alaptop or handheld, the hotspot di-rectory is handy because you cansearch from hotels, airports, or fromany location where you really need toWeb surf. Also, the search query iseasy to remember: It’s just “wifi” plusthe ZIP code that you want to search.

Another competitor is 4Info.com,which offers a free SMS search. With4Info.com you simply send yourqueries to 44636. 4Info seems to do abetter job with phone book searchesand offers a wireless hotspot locator(“hotspot 56501”), jokes (using thestraightforward query “joke”), flighttimes (name of airline plus the flightnumber), and even sports stats foryour favorite players (“tiger” forTiger Woods).

Even though these advancedsearches are powerful, Google SMSdoes have an edge in terms of rawspeed because most searches takeabout one minute or less before youget the results sent back to your phone.Also, Google has done a better jobthan its competitors of explaining itsqueries at www.google.com/sms;Google also provides a printable tipsheet at www.google.com/sms/tips.pdf.

Google SMS is also more power-ful when it comes to experimental

searches. For example, you can type justabout any search term, such as inventortelegraph, to get results that are similarto what you’d see if you were usingGoogle on your desktop computer.These question-and-answer types ofsearches, which Google appropriatelyrefers to as Q&A queries, let you findthe populations for countries and cities,the birthday for a celebrity, a movie’srunning time, and more. The impor-tant thing to remember about Q&Aqueries is to put the search term first,followed by the proper name. So, forexample, enter birthday tom cruise andnot tom cruise birthday. Interestingly,the celebrity search is hit or miss.

Google SMS is still in an early stageof development, and it’s technically oneof Google’s famous beta (prerelease testversion) applications. It works fine, but there’s room for improvement.According to David Ferris from FerrisResearch, the jury is still out on whetherpeople really want to do searches frommobile phones with its small screen andawkward keyboard. In testing, he hasfound that Google SMS does not workconveniently on higher-end phonessuch as the Treo 650, most likely be-cause those devices have full keyboardsinstead of the truncated versions com-monly used for SMS text messag-ing. “Overall, the ability to perform a

complex search is much easierthrough a Web interface,” henotes. “It’s easy because the de-vice is always with you, but thesmall screen and keyboardmakes searching harder, eventhrough an SMS client.”

A future version of GoogleSMS may simplify searcheswith more abbreviated syntax(“pop” instead of “popula-tion”). The service could do abetter job of parsing data sothat, even if you misspell aname (by entering tom criuse,for example), you’d still getthe search results you’re look-ing for. And, Google couldeventually improve the GoogleSMS search categories, adding

hotspot queries, better airline look-ups, and the ability to convert cur-rency, which is currently on Google’s“to do” list. At some point, if Googlecan fix a few holes in the service, add more search features, and makesearches easier, cell phone users couldstart using the text-messaging client asoften as they use Google.com.

Walkthroughs

For guidance in performing searcheswith Google SMS, here are a few walk-throughs to help you find the coolestand most useful information. For eachwalkthrough, try experimenting withvariations on the search terms, usingdifferent locations, the full name forcities instead of the ZIP code, or dif-ferent celebrities from the ones we sug-gest. Remember that your phone mostlikely will save SMS messages in yourmessaging client’s outbox, so you can reuse them without having toptype the term or even the Google SMSaddress again.

Note that we used a MotorolaMPX220 for our tests; most phonesfollow a similar process. To send anSMS message, first select your phone’smessaging option. Look for the optionto create a new message. In the To:field, enter 46645. Then, in the body of


The Google SMS site contains a helpful advice section,as well as a printable tips sheet that’s in PDF formatand is designed to fold and fit into a wallet.



the message, enter the syntax we de-scribed below for each walkthrough,making any changes you see fit. Afteryou type the message, use your phone’ssend option. Your phone will send themessage. Depending on how your cel-lular carrier works (Verizon works dif-ferently than Nextel, for example), youwill usually receive an SMS reply inabout one minute. In some areas, how-ever, the reply may take as long as 10minutes. Also, on some phones thatalso use email messaging, you mayneed to use a send-and-receive optionto get the new SMS reply from Google.

Weather. To get a four-day weatherforecast, start your SMS client andcreate a new message. You can typeweather followed by your ZIP code orweather followed by your city andstate. Don’t bother with commas orother punctuation because GoogleSMS generally ignores any charactersother than letter and numbers. If youhappen to be traveling in a foreigncountry, you can convert Celsiustemps to Fahrenheit (or vice versa) byentering the temperature followed bythe phrase fahrenheit in celsius.

Froogle. Froogle is Google’s Website for looking up product prices onthe Internet. The idea behind Froogleis that you can find the lowest pricefor products. This search works amaz-ingly well as long as you type theproduct name correctly. So, for ex-ample, you can just search for a cellphone, but Froogle works better if yousearch for a specific phone, such as theMotorola RAZR, by typing price razr.You might know that the RAZR is al-ways in all caps; Google ignores capi-talization, so you can keep everythingin lower case. So, the shortcut forFroogle is just the letter “f” followedby the product name, and you can usea capital or lowercase.

The Froogle searchthrough Google SMS iswildly erratic. A search fora Nokia 6682 gives you a price on an antenna, not the new phone. Somegeneric searches work

(such as “f dvd player”), andothers don’t seem to producethe best results. For example, if you want to buy AdobePhotoShop CS2 and type pricephotoshop, you’ll get a book onmastering PhotoShop. It’s coolto experiment with differentterms, though, such as “f ball”(which sends back an exerciseball price) or “price condo”(which returns a kitty condostand of all things).

Location and directions.This is where the real power ofGoogle comes into play. Googlehas an extensive map database,so even if you type in an ob-scure address, there’s a highpercentage chance that Google SMSwill know where you want to go. Tosearch for a location, type the street ad-dress plus the city and state. There’s nosyntax for telling Google SMS that youwant the location, it just knows whatyou want based on the fact that you aretyping an address. For directions, enterto between the address, state, and cityand the second location. For example,if you sent the message 102 grove streetminneapolis mn to 1501 fifth streetduluth mn Google SMS would providestep-by-step instructions on how to getthere. (Our sample trip takes aboutfour hours, by the way.) A few otherhandy location look-ups include en-tering a ZIP code or area code to seethe city covered, and placing a “g” be-fore a city name (for example, gchicago), which returns the firstGoogle listing. For Chicago, you’ll seethe city newspapers listed along with aquick description of each.

Q&A queries. Experimenting withGoogle SMS can lead to some inter-esting results. For any Q&A query,you can just type any phrase, such

as tom cruise real name and get the results back as an SMS message from Google. A few phrases we tried included “birthplace tom hanks”(Concord, Calif.), “who wrote blink”(Malcolm Gladwell), and “who wonDaytona” (Richard Petty). There’s acertain satisfaction in getting answersout of this massive encyclopedia.

Other Searches

To perform any calculation, justtype the syntax you want to use, suchas 500 * 500 (to multiply the two num-bers) or sqrt 555 (to find the squareroot of 555). There’s no need to enteran equal sign. To find a movie time,use the name of the movie and yourZIP code or city. You can find hospi-tals, libraries, and post offices bytyping the search terms plus the cityand state (for example, library buffalomn). Keep trying, and you might besurprised what Google SMS serves up;the possibilities are almost endless!

BBYY JJOOHHNN BBRRAANNDDOONN

RS

On a Motorola MPX220,text messaging is availableright on the main screenjust by going to the TextMessages option.

Local searches for hospitals, post offices,and libraries help mobile phone users stay more mobile.

You can search for movietimes by typing the nameof the movie plus yourZIP code or city and state.

Or, you can check therun time for a moviesuch as “Crash” by typingruntime crash.

To get a four-day weatherreport, type the searchterm wweeaatthheerr followed byyour city and state.


According to a recent PewInternet and American LifeProject (www.pewinternet.org) survey, teenage

Internet users tend to keep in touchwith peers through IM (instant mes-saging) and view email as a way tocommunicate with parents or institu-tions. What does this mean for the

rest of us? As for businesses, today’s(and undoubtedly tomorrow’s)system administrators prefer IM, sothere could well be a shift in focus to-ward real-time communication overthe Internet. For consumers, there arealready many IM clients available,most of them free. Yahoo! andMicrosoft both offer popular options,

but as with many other aspects of lifeon the Web, Google is leading thecharge toward a better Internet expe-rience with its Hello software.

Say “Hello” To Hello

Hello is a free IM client that is sim-ilar in most ways to many of its com-petitors. Hello allows you to chat inreal time with other users across townor around the world. The differencebetween Hello and other IM clients,however, is that Hello also lets users ex-change print-quality digital photoswith any other Hello user and chatabout them as if separated only by acoffee table. Email is a more traditionalmethod of online photo-sharingamong individuals, but not only does ittake more time to receive feedback onthe photos, it can take a tremendousamount of time to send a high-qualityphoto, especially for those using a dial-up Internet connection. Large imagefiles also clog up inboxes, assuming therecipient’s email service provider per-mits receiving them at all. To top it off,sending photos via email requires thatrecipients have the appropriate soft-ware installed to view the file. Hellodoes away with all of those problems.

Hello is designed to share and viewphotos, so you can send dozens, evenhundreds of high-resolution photosquickly, regardless of your Internetconnection speed. The photos are ini-tially resized, if necessary, for optimalon-screen viewing, eliminating thehassle of waiting for every picture toload before deciding which one youwant; the downloaded copies, by con-trast, are restored to a higher resolu-tion suitable for excellent, vividprint-outs or saving to your harddrive, CD, or DVD. You can give thephoto-sender your feedback right awayvia Hello, and even see which photothe sender is currently looking at.

Hello offers 128-bit encryption, soyou can be sure that you and the usersyou select are the only ones viewingyour photos. After downloadingphotos, you can use Google’s Picasa


Hello, It’s MeGoogle’s Communications Tool

Lets You Share Pics, Too

While you’re chatting with a friend, you can see what pictures you’re sharing on theleft, what your friend just said on right, and what you’re typing in the bottom-rightcorner of the tab. You can also save, scroll through, or remove pictures you’ve sent.


(also free) to organizethem. If you have bothPicasa and Hello, the im-ages you download auto-matically go to your Picasafolders for you to edit themas you please.

If you’re into blogging,Hello has a free plug-incalled BloggerBot that au-tomatically resizes pictures,adds comments, and for-mats pictures for postingon your blog. If you’re al-ready a Blogger memberwhen you install Hello,BloggerBot will be addedto your friends list so youcan start posting picturesright away. For more infor-mation on Picasa orBloggerBot, see the respec-tive articles in this issue.

Hello is worth having forits picture-sharing capabili-ties alone, but it can domore. Some IM clients letyou choose an avatar, agraphical representation ofyourself that is visible toother users. With Hello, youcan use any photo in yourlibrary as your visual profilethat others see when you in-troduce yourself over theInternet. If you have a Web cam at-tached to your computer, you can useHello to send instant snapshots to otherusers without having to download themfrom your digital camera. Hello also letsyou surf the Web or shop online with afriend from the comfort of your ownhome. Finally, Hello has a history file as-sociated with it that remembers not onlywhat photos you’ve viewed, but the con-versations you’ve had in the past so youcan remember what files you’ve sentand what you said about each picture.

How To Get & Install Hello

In order to install Hello on yourcomputer, you’ll need Windows98/Me/2000/XP and, at minimum, a

300MHz processor, 64MB of RAM,50MB of free hard drive space, andInternet Explorer 5.0. If you’re unsureof what your system has, click Start,Control Panel and double-click theSystem icon. The General tab displaysinformation about your operatingsystem, processor speed, and memory.To find out how much hard drivespace you have, open My Computer,right-click the hard drive icon, and se-lect Properties; on the General tabunder Capacity you’ll see how muchspace is in use and how much is avail-able. Finally, to find out which versionof Internet Explorer you’re using, openIE and select About Internet Explorerfrom the Help menu. If your systemhas everything Hello requires, go to

www.hello.com and clickthe Download link in thetoolbar on the left.

The Hello Downloadpage asks you to create anaccount. Your username isthe name that people willsee when you’re online andwill be used as your identitywhile you’re on Hello.Select a unique username,password, and an email ad-dress. (Be sure to re-member each of these threepieces of information be-cause they give you accessto Hello’s services.) Re-produce the letters dis-played in the box towardthe bottom of the form andclick Submit. The softwarewill attempt to downloadimmediately. If you’reusing WinXP or have cer-tain security measures inplace, the download mightnot start right away; in thiscase, you might be asked tofirst install ActiveX. Followthe onscreen prompts toinstall ActiveX; the InternetExplorer version thatcomes with WinXP ServicePack 2 provides a bar at thetop of your browser that

you can click to allow the installation.When the Hello software downloadcompletes, click Install on the windowthat pops up to begin the installation.

Start the Hello setup process byreading and agreeing to the softwareagreement. By default the installer putsthe software in its own program folder.You can change the installation desti-nation if you wish, but the defaultworks fine. Click Install, and the pro-gram does the rest. At the end of thesetup process, a series of checkboxeslets you control how you want thesoftware to start. If you leave RunHello checked, the program will startautomatically when you click Finish. Ifyou leave Run Hello When WindowsStarts checked, the software will start


If you have a Blogger account, you can “chat” with that accountand send pictures that you can use in your blog.

Whenever you’re viewing a Web page that you want to sharewith a friend, use the Share In Hello tool in Internet Explorer tosend a link to a friend. Then you can use Hello’s Friend’s Viewtool to follow your friend around the Web.



automatically wheneveryou boot your computer.Checking Create ShortcutOn Desktop will place aHello shortcut link on yourDesktop that lets you startthe program more easily.Finally, checking AddShortcut To Quick Launchwill add a shortcut icon tothe Windows QuickLaunch menu on the leftside of your Taskbar, nextto the Start button. Afterselecting the options youwant, click Finish andyou’re all done.

Start Working With Hello

The first time you run Hello, awindow pops up telling you some fea-tures of the software. If you’re readingthis article, you’ll already know this in-formation, so close this window.When the Hello login screen appears,enter the username and password youcreated earlier. If you didn’t create anaccount, click the link to Hello’s Website and create one. Also, if you everlose your password, you can click theLost Your Password? link and it will besent to the email address you providedduring registration.

The two checkboxes in this windowlet you control how Hello behaves following your initial setup. TheRemember My Password checkboxwill keep your password handy so thatyou don’t have to input it every timeyou start the software. AutomaticallyLog In is only selectable if you elect tohave the software remember yourpassword and will allow the softwareto skip the login screen and take youonline automatically. If you want tochange these options later on, you cando so by clicking Tools and Options inHello. Once the software starts up, asmall blue sunflower-like icon will ap-pear in the System Tray, the small areaon the toolbar in the bottom right ofyour screen. You can access Hello any-time it’s running by double-clicking

this icon. If you’re logged in, the iconis blue; if you’re not logged in, theicon is gray. You can start Hello bydouble-clicking the grey icon.

At this point you should quit andrestart the software because there’s onemore step you’ll need to complete be-fore you can run Hello. Google wantsto be sure you’re who you say you are,so the software will ask you to verifyyour email address. A browser windowwill pop up displaying the email ad-dress you provided. Click the VerifyEmail button. A new page will let youknow that a confirmation email hasbeen sent. The process should be in-stantaneous. Log in to your email ac-count and open the message with thesubject line, “AutoReply- Picasa

Registration,” from [email protected]. Ifyou’re using anti-spam orjunk email filters, checkthese carefully; the messagemay be filtered as unwantedmail, but it’s perfectly safeto open. Click the link indi-cated (you may need totemporarily disable anypop-up blockers you haverunning) and allow thewindow to open. It will tellyou that you’ve successfullyactivated your account. Youcan save the email or deleteit and start using Hello.

Now that Hello is up andrunning, you’ll see the software’s mainwindow, which uses a tabbed menustructure. Every process or conversationyou have running is visible on the tabsalong the top of the window, just belowthe toolbar (we’ll come to that in a bit).At first, the only tab visible is the Friendstab. You’ll only have one or two namesin this portion at first, until, of course,you start to make more acquaintances.This Friends tab shows all of your activeconversations and indicates which ofyour Friends are on- and offline. To starta conversation, simply click a friend’susername and the Chat button. This willopen another tab that contains interfacesfor exchanging text messages andphotos. You can move through variousongoing conversations by simplyclicking the appropriate tab along thetop of the window, allowing you to carryon multiple conversations at once. If youhave a Blogger account, you can “chat”with that account and send pictures topost on your blog. See “Meet Blogger”on page 97 for more information.

If you’re working with anotherprogram and Hello is running in thebackground, new pictures or mes-sages will pop up in small alert win-dows along the bottom of your screenas Hello receives them. You won’thave to stop what you’re doing to ac-knowledge these alerts, but you willalways know exactly what’s going onin Hello without having to sit there

The main window of Hello that comes up when Hello startsshows you which of your friends are online, a bit about theirprofile, and some of the things you’ve sent them in the past.

To send an invitation to a friend tostart using Hello, click Invite. You’ll thenbe asked to enter the Hello name oremail address of your friends. Hello willsend invitations to those you list.



and stare at it. To return to Hello,simply click the alert window andyou’ll be up-to-date in seconds.

If someone sends you an invitation tochat, it will pop up as a new tab on themain window. Messages appear in thewindow on the top right; you typereplies in the window on the bottomright. Pictures you’ve selected to sendwill appear in the left half of the chatwindow. To send pictures while chat-ting, click the Send Pictures button inthe top-left corner of the chat window.Hello will then ask you where the pic-tures are. You can choose from eitherPicasa or Windows Explorer. (To learnmore about Picasa, see “It’s Not Picasso,But It’s Close” on page 108.) Find thepicture you want. Each image you selectappears in the Hello window along withoptions to remove, save to your harddrive, or scroll through the pictures.

Once you start sharing photos, you’llsee a small thumbnail-sized windowpop up in the main picture window.This is the Friend’s View window. Ifyou click the small green Play button inthe Friends View window, you’ll movethrough pictures as your friend seesthem, allowing you to share everythingabout viewing the photos.

After installing Hello, you might no-tice a new toolbar with a single icon inInternet Explorer. It’s called the ShareIn Hello function. With this tool, youcan take a snapshot of the Web pageyou’re currently viewing and send it toyour friends, similar to the way you’dsend a picture. The good part is thatthe image of the Web page you sendacts like a Web link, so that when therecipient clicks the image it brings up afully functional Web page.

So far, we’ve dealt mainly with toolsyou can see as icons in the mainwindow. You can perform each of theseoperations and more with the toolbaralong the top of the window. We don’thave enough space to go through themall, but there are a few worth men-tioning. The File menu contains optionsto save conversations, print conversa-tions or photos, log out, and exit theprogram. The Options item on the

Tools menu lets you make changes tomany of your preferences for how Hellobehaves. The User Interface Options letyou change how the software behaveswhen you receive or send messages,such as audio or visual alerts. Anothernotable option is Automatic Saving. Bydefault, Hello uses the MY PIC-TURES\HELLO folder as your primaryimage directory. If you want to changeit, you can use the Automatic Saving op-tion to specify a different folder for thispurpose. Finally, if you want to changethe picture of yourself that others see oryour personal profile, click Edit Profile.

After you’re all done chatting andsending pictures, you can quit activelyworking with Hello in one of threeways. Closing the main windowdoesn’t actually stop the program;rather, it leaves the program runningin the background and the active Helloicon in the System Tray. You’ll still beonline so others can see you and sendmessages to you. Alternatively, if youwant to turn off the software com-pletely, click File and Logout. The de-activated Hello icon will remain in theSystem Tray. Finally, if you want tocompletely turn off the software andremove the Hello icon from theSystem Tray, click File and Exit. Youwill be asked if you’re sure you want toproceed. If you always want to turnHello completely off by this methodrather than letting the program run inthe background, check the Exit HelloAlways checkbox.

Don’t Say Good-Bye To Hello

Hello can do much more thanwe’ve covered here, and hopefullyyou’re intrigued enough to startlooking at the software a little moreclosely for yourself. It’s a great pro-gram with a multitude of featuresthat can make your Web-browsingexperience more enjoyable now andin the years to come.

BBYY DDAAVVIIDD MMIILLLLEERR

When you start Hello, you will be asked foryour username and password. You can electto skip this by checking the RememberPassword and Login On Launch checkboxes.If you forgot your password, click Lost YourPassword? and it will be sent to the emailaccount you registered with.

If you want to make any changes to theway your Hello software performs whileits running, you’ll need to selectOptions from the Tools menu. Fromthere you can change everything fromalerts to startup options.

If you have Picasa, Hello can search yourPicasa folders for images to send. If you don’thave Picasa, you can learn more about it inthe article in this issue or you can simply findpictures using Windows Explorer.

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GO O G L E TO O L S

It checks your spelling. It’s multi-lingual. It can find locations onmaps faster than you can say“Vasco da Gama.” Google Tool-bar is an add-on for the Internet

Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Webbrowsers that may be small in stature(both in terms of file size and the spaceit occupies in a browser window) butdelivers amazing performance.

A handy, free support applicationthat adds a full bag of functionality toyour Web browser shouldn’t come as atremendous shock when you considerthe company that designed it hasbranched out from simply searching theWeb to assisting us in many of our on-line endeavors. In a lot of ways, you canthink of the Google Toolbar as a bite-sized version of the Google’s home pagewith a few extra bells and whistles. Be-cause it’s free software you can down-load and install quickly (even with dial-up Internet access), Google Toolbar, inthe beta stages of its third version, couldbe the best add-on you don’t have.

Powerful Package

To understand how helpful and un-obtrusive the Toolbar is, think of your

Web browser as a house and theToolbar as the perfect roommate. Thisis the roommate who only requires abroom closet for living space, can findvirtually anything, keeps annoyingdoor-to-door salespeople from both-ering you, and is fluent en español.And this wonder roommate doesn’tcharge you a dime for these services.

Google Search. Like the Web site,Google Search is the keystone thatholds Google Toolbar together. Notonly can you execute a standard

Google or I’m Feeling Lucky searchusing one or more keyword(s), but youcan also use the Google Search box tosearch the current Web site you are vis-iting, Google Images, Google Groups,News, and Froogle.

Popup Blocker. Now that Microsofthas added its own pop-up blocker toInternet Explorer, the Toolbar’sblocker isn’t quite as snazzy as when itdebuted, but we like to think of this ashaving too much of a good thing. Wecan’t say if pop-up ads will ever goaway, but whether you make nice withMicrosoft or go with Google, bothblockers should be up to the task.

AutoLink. How many times haveyou had to find the address of a newlocal bistro with an online map ser-vice? When you click the Toolbar’sAutoLink button, a recent addition tothis handy browser add-on, the Tool-bar automatically links you to an on-line map. You can also use AutoLink

to connect a package’s tracking num-ber with its delivery status, find a ve-hicle’s history according to its VINnumber, and convert publicationISBNs (International Standard BookNumbers) to Amazon.com listings. Atpress time, you could only use Auto-Link with U.S. addresses.

AutoFill. As if your spouse weren’tdangerous enough with that credit

Tool(bar) TimeMake Your Browser A Powerhouse

Google takes plenty of opportunitiesto notify you when you have to submitinformation from your computer overthe Internet or if a particular featuremay involve privacy issues.

Finding maps for U.S. street addressesisn’t the only trick up the multitalentedAutoLink feature’s sleeve.


card, AutoFill completes your addressand credit card information with asingle click, greatly reducing theamount of the time the professionalshopper in your family has to spendat the online checkout lane. Enteryour information once in the Tool-bar’s Options dialog box, and Auto-Fill takes care of the rest. According toGoogle, your credit card informationis password-protected.

WordTranslator. This new featureis great for anyone curious aboutother languages. WordTranslator isanother new Toolbar feature thatgives the heave-ho to language dic-tionaries. When you hover your Win-dows pointer over an English word,WordTranslator displays its transla-tion in any of the following languages:Chinese (Traditional and Simplified),French, German, Italian, Japanese,Korean, and Spanish.

SpellCheck. Email, online chatrooms, and forums are notorious forbeing rife with spelling mistakes.SpellCheck is a new feature that cor-rects spelling mistakes when you typeinto a Web form, such as an emailmessage or discussion forum post.SpellCheck has an AutoFix optionthat works like AutoFill. A single clickcan correct all of your text at once.

Address Bar Browse By Name. Bynow, most words have their ownWeb site, and this feature, which isonly available for theInternet Explorer versionof Google Toolbar, takesyou to the Web site of anyword you type in the ad-dress bar. For example,typing shoes in the ad-dress bar takes you towww.shoes.com. If youtype a word that doesn’thave a URL such as floc-cinaucinihilipilification,Browse By Name auto-matically displays theterm’s search results.

PageRank Display. Inshort, this is what Googlethinks of a particular Web

page. This feature is more for funthan anything, but it’s a quick, inter-esting, and illustrated look at howGoogle’s algorithms determine a Webpage’s importance. See the “If GoogleRan The Web” sidebar for an enter-taining look at Google’s approach tothe Internet.

Highlight/Word Find. These aretwo separate functions, but they es-sentially do the same things. TheHighlight button can be particularlyuseful when you’re trying to find asearch term amidst an ocean of irrele-vant text. For example, if you searchedfor “Cajun swordfish recipe” and goto a Web page containing severalrecipes, you can quickly sift throughthe unwanted recipes by looking forthe highlighted content. The WordFind button takes you to the first oc-currence of a word on a particularpage. You can continue to click theWord Find button, and the Toolbarwill find subsequent instances of the word.

Auto Update. Just as Google itselfstrives to improve, periodic updates tothe Toolbar bring new features and(usually) an improved browsing expe-rience. Google Toolbar even does all ofthe heavy lifting for you, automaticallyinstalling updates so you don’t have toworry about constantly checking fornew versions. Downloading the appli-cation once should do the trick.

Toolbar Unleashed

Even if you don’t planon using everything theToolbar offers, you candownload and install itquickly. (And if you reallydon’t like it, uninstalling itis even easier.) You candownload it at toolbar.google.com or start atGoogle’s home page (www.google.com) and click theMore link. Under GoogleTools, click Toolbar. Atthe Toolbar’s Web page,click Download Google

GO O G L E TO O L S

You can completely fill out theAutoFill settings, or you can limit theinformation to just those items thatyou’re comfortable sending out.

The Browse By Name feature can takeyou immediately to a Web site that corresponds to a word you type in yourWeb browser’s address bar.

SpellCheck flags words you’ve misspelled in Web forms.Ironically, it flags itself.


GO O G L E TO O L S

Toolbar and then click Run to begininstalling the Toolbar or click Save tosave the installer on your computer torun at a later time.

To use the Toolbar with InternetExplorer, your PC needs to runWindows 98/Me/2000/XP and atleast Internet Explorer version 5.5.For the SpellCheck and AutoLinkfeatures, you’ll need at least InternetExplorer 6.0.

If WinXP displays a Security Warn-ing dialog box before launching theinstaller, click Run. Next, you’ll needto select a Google site to use for yoursearches. For U.S. users, this is simplygoogle.com, which is selected by de-fault. International users should selectthe appropriate country from amongthe list. If you have any InternetExplorer windows open, make sureClose All Internet Explorer WindowsAutomatically is selected. Click Agree& Continue.

At the Choose Your Configura-tion step, carefully read about youroptions regarding the Toolbar’s ad-vanced features; it isn’t the typicalboilerplate you see in most end userlicense agreements. To use theToolbar’s advanced features, theToolbar has to relay informationabout the sites you visit to Google.Although Google does not providepersonally identifiable informationto third parties, you should readGoogle’s Privacy Policy (see “PrivacyPlease” on page 22 for more infor-mation) and the Toolbar PrivacyPolicy (there’s an embedded link atthe Choose Your Configurationstep) if you’re concerned aboutsending information from yourcomputer to Google. Select eitherEnable Advanced Features or Dis-able Advanced Features and clickFinish to complete the installation.

Once installation is complete,Internet Explorer should automati-cally restart with the Google Toolbarappearing just below the Addressbar. On the page that loads, you canclick the Take A Quick Tour link fora rundown of the Toolbar’s features.

To fire up the Toolbar for Firefox,go to toolbar.google.com. The systemrequirements for Firefox are slightlydifferent from Internet Explorer; al-though the Firefox Toolbar is com-patible with Mac OS X 10.2+ and RedHat Linux 8.0+, it isn’t as friendlywith Windows OSes (operating sys-tems). You’ll need either Win2000with at least SP3 (Service Pack 3) in-stalled or WinXP. You’ll also need tohave Firefox 1.0+.

Click Download Google Toolbarand Agree And Install. Before pro-ceeding, Firefox should alert you witha Software Installation dialog box in-structing you to only install softwarefrom trusted sources; click InstallNow. The installer will automaticallyrun, and the Extensions dialog boxthat opens will notify you when youcan restart Firefox.

When you restart Firefox, it auto-matically loads another dialog boxthat contains information nearlyidentical to the Choose Your Config-uration step if you were installing theToolbar for Internet Explorer. Selectyour search site (www.google.com fordomestic users), click either EnablePageRank Display or Disable Page-Rank Display, and click Finish.

Super Surfing

Whether you fancy Firefox or areinclined to use Internet Explorer,you’ll find that both versions of theToolbar are virtually identical. Clickthe Options button to customize andstart your Toolbar experience. Onthe Browsing tab of the ToolbarOptions dialog box, you can disableany of the following features byclearing the check mark in their re-spective checkboxes: Address BarBrowse By Name, Popup Blocker,PageRank Display, SpellCheck,WordTranslator (disabled by de-fault), AutoFill, and AutoLink.

With the exception of Address BarBrowse By Name and PageRankDisplay, you can adjust settings foreach feature by clicking its Settings

button. Although the settings for thePopup Blocker, SpellCheck, Word-Translator, and AutoLink are essen-tially preferences, you’ll need tocomplete the AutoFill Settings be-fore you can use the feature.

On the Browsing tab, click Auto-Fill Settings and complete the Nameand Primary Address sections. Next,choose whether you want AutoFill touse the address you just entered as a primary address or an alternate address when Web pages ask for a shipping address. If you select AnAlternate Address, click the Add/EditAlternate Address button, add the al-ternate shipping address, and clickOK. Including your credit card in-formation is an optional step, but ifyou trust Google with this, clickAdd/Edit Credit Card. In the CreditCard Information dialog box, com-plete the required information andclick OK. Click OK in the AutoFillSettings dialog box to wrap up yourAutoFill settings.

The other two tabs, Search andMore, offer you more preferences tocustomize your Toolbar. Select theoptions you want and click OK. Youcan return to the Toolbar Options di-alog box as frequently as you want.

The Google Search box may be themost pedestrian of the Toolbar’s fea-tures, but it could be what you usemost. The search box saves you thetime of returning to Google’s home

Your silent ally, the Popup Blockerstamps out pop-up ads in the background as you blissfully surf along.


GO O G L E TO O L S

page to perform a Google search. Typea search term in the box from anyWeb page you’re visiting and pressENTER. For Google searching tips, see“Gateway To The Web” on page 26.Think of the Google Search box as aportable version of Google you cantake with you to any Web page.

In addition to a general Googlesearch, you can add buttons that willsearch other Google sites. For ex-ample, when you click Options andthe Search tab, you can add Googlesearch buttons to your Toolbar bychecking their respective checkboxes.If you want to search Google Imagesfor Edgar Degas paintings, type EdgarDegas in the search box, but click theGoogle Images button instead ofpressing ENTER. Follow the sameprocedure to search Google Groups,Froogle, or the Web site currently dis-played in your browser (if applicable),or to run an I’m Feeling Lucky search.

Blocking pop-up ads can save you amountain of time, but there are someWeb sites that use pop-ups for addi-tional content, and Google’s PopupBlocker occasionally blocks these, too.If you’re visiting a Web page withuseful pop-ups, click the PopupBlocker button on the Toolbar. Itsmessage should change from “XXblocked,” where XX is the cumulativenumber of pop-ups it has blockedsince installation, to “Popups okay.”When you visit a different Web site,the Popup Blocker will resume block-ing pop-ups.

Using SpellCheck to correct anemail message is probably one of theeasiest ways to see this feature in ac-tion. When you finish typing, clickthe SpellCheck button. The Toolbarwill point out misspelled words byunderlining them, bolding them, andchanging their font color. When youclick these words, SpellCheck offersits suggestions and gives you optionsto ignore, edit, or add the flaggedword to your Dictionary. Click theSpellCheck button again to disable it.

AutoLink takes an address on a Web page and summons the power of

CC onsider briefly Google’s own assessment of the Toolbar’s

PageRank display: “Wonderingwhether a new Web site is worth yourtime? Use the Toolbar’s PageRank dis-play to tell you how Google’s algo-rithms assess the importance of thepage you’re viewing.” Although we’regrateful for Google’s wonderfully ef-fective algorithms, how does one re-ally assess a word as subjective as“important”? With that in mind, wevisited some of our favorite Web sites.And just in case our boss happens tobe reading this, all of that Friday after-noon Web surfing was for researchpurposes. Honest! Without furtherado, here are 10 noteworthy Websites and PageRank’s take on them:GGooooggllee ((wwwwww..ggooooggllee..ccoomm)).. It’s almost silly to cover the ins and outsof Google in this issue without listingit as a favorite site, and PageRankseemed to agree, rating Google a per-fect 10/10.CCNNNN ((wwwwww..ccnnnn..ccoomm)).. As journalistsourselves, we like to stay abreast ofthe latest happenings around theworld. We typically turn to CNN’sWeb site for a quick rundown of theday’s current events. PageRank alsothought the media giant was impor-tant, giving it a 9/10 rating. CNN rivalFOXNews.com? An 8/10.AAmmaazzoonn ((wwwwww..aammaazzoonn..ccoomm)).. Whatbetter way to relieve the stress of along day at work than to plop downin front of an online retailer for a littlecybershopping? PageRank must thinkotherwise because it gave poorAmazon.com a 0/10. TTiicckkeettmmaasstteerr ((wwwwww..ttiicckkeettmmaasstteerr..ccoomm))..Whether you approve or disapproveof the online ticketing colossus’sometimes hefty fees, Ticketmasterremains the Web’s primary domesticportal to live music, sports, and the-ater events. After the Amazon de-bacle, we thought PageRank wouldturn from Ticketmaster, but ithanded out an 8/10.

MMiiccrroossoofftt ((wwwwww..mmiiccrroossoofftt..ccoomm)).. Yourone-stop shop for nearly everythingunder Microsoft’s giant umbrella,Microsoft’s Web site is a staple in ourcomputing diet. With a 9/10 rating,PageRank agrees.eeBBaayy ((wwwwww..eebbaayy..ccoomm)).. Online auc-tioneer eBay is usually the first place wevisit for ancient relics, hard-to-findknickknacks, or grilled cheese sandwichartwork. We’re fairly certain thatPageRank is a closet eBayer because itgave the site a 9/10.TThhee IInntteerrnneett MMoovviiee DDaattaabbaassee((wwwwww..iimmddbb..ccoomm)).. This Web site is al-most as much fun as playing “SixDegrees of Kevin Bacon” and is perfectfor double-checking if that cameo rolein a particular flick was one of our fa-vorite actors. PageRank also liked it,scoring it an 8/10.SSnnaappffiisshh ((wwwwww..ssnnaappffiisshh..ccoomm)).. Thereare plenty of online photo storage sitesthat let you share and print your digitalphotos, and we chose Snapfish to see ifPageRank approved. According toPageRank, which scored Snapfish a7/10, finding a home for your digitalphotos is pretty important.SSmmaarrtt CCoommppuuttiinngg ((wwwwww..ssmmaarrtt ccoommppuuttiinngg..ccoomm)).. We admit thatsometimes we’re not above a littleshameless self-promotion, so we de-cided to see what PageRank thoughtof our hard work. We were mildly im-pressed to see PageRank hand Smart

Computing a 7/10.WWhhiittee HHoouussee ((wwwwww..wwhhiitteehhoouussee..ggoovv))..Truthfully, we rarely surf over to theleader of the free world’s Web site, soour visit to the online Oval Office wassparked more out of curiosity than any-thing else. Apparently, Google is moreimportant than our nation’s ExecutiveBranch, because PageRank rated theWhite House’s Web site a mere 9/10.And in case you were curious, Web sitesfor the House of Representatives andSenate both received 9/10 rankings,while the U.S. Supreme Court’s sitescored a 8/10. ❙

If Google Ran The Web


GO O G L E TO O L S

Google Maps and Google Earth (see“Are We There Yet?” on page 55 and“A View From Above” on page 104 formore information about these Googlefeatures) to play Sacagawea to yourMeriwether Lewis (or William Clark, ifyou prefer). Click the AutoLink button(the button’s text may change to LookFor Map) when you have an addressyou want to look up. The Toolbar willturn all U.S. addresses on the currentpage into links. Click the link you want,and Google Maps loads a map and flagsthe address whose link you clicked.

Once Maps pinsdown a selected ad-dress’ location, youhave a few more op-tions. In the upper-left corner of themap, there are fourdirectional buttonsthat shift your viewof the map in theappropriate direc-tion. A slider locatedjust below the fourdirectional buttonslets you zoom in for greater detail orzoom out to see abroader geograph-ical area. For drivingdirections, locate theTo Here and From

Here links and click the link that ap-plies to you. End by adding either astarting or ending address and clickingGet Directions.

To see a satellite image of the ad-dress, click Satellite in the upper-right corner of the map. You cannavigate to a different part of thesatellite image and zoom in/out justas you would in standard map view,but it may take the satellite image afew seconds to catch up. Finally,Google will graft street names ontomajor streets in the satellite image ifyou click Hybrid.

Using AutoFill after you’ve pro-vided the proper information (pri-mary address, shipping address, etc.)is virtually automatic. When you’re ata Web page that requires any infor-mation you included in the AutoFill

settings, the Toolbar highlights anyfields it can fill with AutoFill. Clickthe AutoFill button and OK whenAutoFill warns you about only usingit on sites you trust. If you clear theDon’t Show This Message Againcheckbox, AutoFill will warn you thenext time you use it. This featureworks well with sites that don’t storeyour information or sites you visit forthe first time.

WordTranslator, Highlight, andWord Find round out the Toolbarexperience. To use these features,enable them in the Toolbar Optionsdialog box. When you click thecheckbox to enable WordTranslator,Google prompts you that doing sohas privacy implications. To learnmore, click Help in the dialog box.Otherwise, click OK. Next, clickTranslator Settings, select the lan-guage you want from the drop-downmenu, and click OK. To enableHighlight and Word Find, click theMore tab and put a check mark ineach feature’s checkbox. Click OK.To see English words translated, justhover your pointer over them.Highlight and Word Find are fairlyself-explanatory.

Browser Power

At the end of the day, the GoogleToolbar is little more than an acces-sory kit for Internet Explorer orFirefox, but it’s still one heck of a kit.Considering how easy it to download,configure, and use, the Toolbar isavailable at a pretty competitive price.(You can’t beat free.)

You probably won’t use every fea-ture on the Toolbar. In fact, youmight not find it useful enough tokeep. (If so, click the Google buttonlocated to the left of the Toolbarsearch box, point to Help, and clickUninstall and Uninstall The GoogleToolbar.) Either way, the Toolbar isstuffed with goodies waiting for youto sample.


RS

The best part about the Highlight feature is that it neverruns out of ink.

We located America’sgreatest ballpark bytyping WWrriigglleeyy FFiieelldd aaddddrreessss in the search boxand clicking theAutoLink button whenGoogle finished itssearch. Then we clickedone of the links it createdto bring up a map.


Search Engine Jr.Google Brings Its Expertise To Your Desktop

For the organizationally chal-lenged among us, finding fileson our computers can be a har-rowing task. If the file system on

your computer resembles a clutteredgarage in which you’re as likely to gettetanus as you are to find what you’relooking for, then the Google Desktoppersonal search engine can clear theconfusion. (No shots required.)

From The Internet To Your Desktop

Google’s Internet search enginegained fame for its ability to quickly re-turn relevant search results for billionsof Web pages, but now Google is takinga whack at the comparatively minusculedesktop. But wait, doesn’t Windows al-ready come with a search utility?

Goodbye, Rover. If you’ve ever triedto search for a file using Windows’built-in Search or Find utility,then you know that Microsofthas some catching up to do inthis area. When you attempt tosearch for an item using thissearch tool, the results can takeseveral minutes to display, es-pecially if you have a large

hard drive packed with alot of files. Although thesearch tool does comewith an Indexing Serviceto help speed up yourlocal searches, it still re-quires that you have asaved copy of the item inquestion. Also, becausethis utility is focused onyour local hard drive, itignores your past Internetactivity. If you ended your chat sessionwithout saving it, or want to view aWeb page you looked at last week, thenWindows’ Search isn’t much help.

Hello, Google Desktop. The GoogleDesktop personal search engine repre-sents a more efficient way to find yourfiles among the jumbled heap that ismost of our computers.

Google Desktop does a better jobthan Microsoft’s built-in tool in largepart because it is faster, more com-prehensive, and best of all, automatic.Google’s personal search engine canquickly return results because it auto-matically creates a systematic guide tothe contents of your hard drive andcaches (saves) compressed versions ofthe other items you’ve viewed (suchas Web pages, emails, and chat ses-sions). Immediately after you installthe application, Google Desktop be-gins creating this guide.

This guide, or index, is a kind ofsummary composed of your PC’s file

names, as well as the textcontents of compatiblefile types and cached

copies of Web pages and chat sessions.Every time you enter a query, GoogleDesktop quickly checks the index andinstantly displays your results. Googlestores the index on your computer atC:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\USERNAME\LOCAL SETTINGS\AP-PLICATION DATA\GOOGLE\Goo-gle Desktop Search, Username.(Username refers to the administra-tor’s username and C: refers to yoursystem’s primary drive or partition.)

Google’s initial indexing of yourhard drive is not a quick process, how-ever, and can consume a fair amount ofsystem resources. For this reasonGoogle designed the desktop search ap-plication to perform its indexing whileyour computer is idle, or in a powered-on but not in-use state.

File types. Google’s personal searchengine also differs from Microsoft’sbuilt-in search tool in that it can searcha wider range of items. Google Desktopprovides a full text search of youremails, computer files, chats, and theWeb pages you’ve viewed. When theindexing process is complete, you’ll beable to search Microsoft Outlook andOutlook Express emails; Web pages;Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint,Netscape Mail, and Adobe PDF (Por-table Document Format) files; the

GO O G L E TO O L S

Hey Rover, can yousearch my desktopand several billionWeb pages seeminglyinstantaneously?Didn’t think so.

You can downloadGoogle’s personaldesktop search enginefrom desktop.google.com.

Google Desktop takesjust a few minutes todownload and install.


metadata (data describing the file, suchas artist, date, and size) of music,image, and video files; and AOL InstantMessenger chats.

You can also download separateplug-ins for indexing other file types.Third-party software developers can usethe Google Desktop SDK (SoftwareDevelopment Kit) for letting GoogleDesktop index images, proprietary textand spreadsheet file formats, audio files,chats, and files from other email clientsthat Google Desktop doesn’t alreadysupport. If you visit desktop.google.com/plugins, you can browse a list ofplug-ins for users and developers. Clickthe Indexing link beneath the For Usersheading at the left side of the page to see a list of plug-ins that let GoogleDesktop index items such as MP3 audiofile metadata, Microsoft help files,WordPerfect, and StarOffice files.

Privacy, please. For privacy reasons,Google Desktop doesn’t index net-worked drives, so you aren’t able tosearch beyond the computer on whichyou’ve installed the application. Ifyou’re the rare user who doesn’t needto share your computer with anyoneelse, local privacy probably isn’t yourtop concern. For the rest of us, how-ever, preventing unauthorized usersfrom accessing everything we’ve

written and viewed is a valid concern.To address this, Google created GoogleDesktop so that it can only be installedon a single user account and index thefiles created by that user. All other filescreated on different user accounts arenot indexed (unless they are purposelymade available to all users). If privacyis important, you should consider pro-tecting your Windows administratoraccount with a password.

If you can’t avoid prying eyes butstill don’t want others snoopingaround, go to the Google Desktophome page and click Preferences. Clickthe Add A File Or Folder To Excludefrom the Don’t Search These Items sec-tion of the Preferences page. Nextbrowse for the file or folder you don’twant indexed, or enter its path. Todelete specific items from the index,click the Remove Items link at the topof any Google Desktop page. Click thecheckboxes next to the items you’d liketo remove, and then click the RemoveChecked Results button.

Compatibility. Google requires atleast a 400MHz Pentium or equivalentprocessor, and at least Windows 2000Service Pack 3 or Windows XP. You’llalso need at least 128MB of RAM and1GB of available hard drive space. The cached files that compose yourindex don’t consume nearly the sameamount of space as their originalcounterparts, but Google suggests thatyou make sure you have about 4GB ofdrive space available.

Google Desktop is fully compatiblewith Mozilla Firefox and InternetExplorer versions 5.0 and above. Theapplication also features partial supportfor other browsers, including Operaand AOL’s browser. As of this writing,Mac and Linux users can’t run GoogleDesktop on their computers.

Google also offers a business versionof its computer indexing technology,called Google Desktop Search forEnterprise. (See “Google DesktopSearch For Enterprise” on page 136 formore information.)

Installation. Make sure you’relogged on as the administrator, then

direct your Web browser to the GoogleDesktop download page at desktop.google.com. At press time Google wasoffering the English Version 2 Beta andversion 1.0 in a variety of languages. Bydefault this page loads with the English(Version 2 Beta) highlighted.

Once you’ve viewed the Terms &Conditions and Privacy Policy docu-ments, click the Agree And Downloadbutton. Click Save in the File Down-load dialog box, select a location forthe file, and then click Save. Next clickRun and the Google Desktop Installershould launch. It may prompt you toclose some open applications, such asInternet Explorer or Outlook, beforecontinuing; click OK to comply.

Once installation is complete, you’llsee a Web page prompting you to con-figure Google Desktop. You can setGoogle Desktop’s search box to appearas the Sidebar, Deskbar, or FloatingDeskbar. The Sidebar is a configurablemenu that appears on your WindowsDesktop and displays email, news, ascratch pad, weather, photos, and theGoogle Desktop search box. If youwant something a little more incon-spicuous, click the radio button for theDeskbar (a search box anchored toyour Taskbar), or the Floating Deskbar

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Once installation is complete, you canset your preferences in the subsequentbrowser window.

You can view Google Desktop’ssearch box as the Deskbar,Floating Deskbar, or Sidebar.


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(an undocked search box).This page also lets you setGoogle as your default searchengine and configure GoogleDesktop to search and indexyour Gmail account if youhave one. When you’re fin-ished, click the Set Preferen-ces And Continue button.

Next you’ll see the EnableAdvanced Features screen.Google Desktop’s AdvancedFeatures involve sending non-personal usage data back toGoogle’s servers. This data letsGoogle know which types ofnews items you view in orderto better tailor your Sidebar. Ifenabled, Google also collects informa-tion about the errors you encounterwhile working with Google Desktop,similarly to WinXP’s error reportingfeature. Keep in mind that none ofGoogle Desktop’s options are depen-dent on enabling these features, so clickeither Enable or Disable to continue,depending on your preference.

The next page indicates that GoogleDesktop is indexing your PC. Click theGo To The Google Desktop Homepagebutton to see the progress of the one-time indexing update. This page alsoshows you how many files Google hasindexed so far, what types of files it hasindexed, and an estimate of how longthe full index will take to generate.

Because the indexing occurs whileyour computer is idle (for 30 secondsor more) the process can take a longtime if you use the computer fre-quently throughout the day. If you reg-ularly turn off your computer when itis not in use, try leaving it on overnightuntil the index is complete. You canpause the indexing process any time byright-clicking the Google Desktop iconin your Windows Desktop System Trayand clicking Pause Indexing. If youdon’t manually resume the process byclicking the Resume Indexing option inthe context menu, then Google Desk-top will resume automatically once 15minutes has elapsed.

In our test run of the indexingprocess, it took only about half an hourto index an 80GB hard drive con-taining 26,065 files.

Forget Filing & Start Googling

Using Google’s personal search en-gine is fairly intuitive, just click the textbox of your Sidebar, Deskbar, orFloating Deskbar, and then type yoursearch query. Press ENTER and yourdefault browser will launch and displaythe results. At the top of the page,you’ll find numbered results for itemson your hard drive, followed by Webresults. Click the links for the num-bered results to see them, with the mostrecent results listed at the top. You can

also sort your results by rele-vance; click the Sort ByRelevance link near theupper-right corner of yourGoogle Desktop results page.

Google Desktop also in-cludes the Quick Find fea-ture, which, when enabled,begins displaying results foryour query as you type. Forinstance, when you starttyping “wedding photos”into the Deskbar, Google’sQuick Find window first dis-plays everything relevantthat begins with a “w.” Thesearch results narrow witheach additional letter you

type, and your wedding photos mayappear in the Quick Find windowafter just typing “wed.” Google Desk-top uses a second index and a newsearch algorithm to display these re-sults so quickly.

Get specific. Google Desktop, likeGoogle’s Internet search engine, letsyou perform detailed searches usingadvanced search operators, or sym-bols and characters that enable specialfunctions. You can search for exactphrases using quotes, for instance, bytyping “computer virus” into theDeskbar and pressing ENTER. Thisoperator displays results that containthat exact phrase. You can also ex-clude specific words from your searchby typing the minus sign (-) beforethe word you want to exclude. For in-stance, typing holiday photos -2004will likely return holiday photos fromevery year on file except for 2004.

You can even narrow your emailsearch by typing subject:, to:, from:,cc:, or bcc:, followed (without a space)by the word(s) you want to find in theappropriate fields. For instance, if youtype subject:virus and press ENTER,Google Desktop will display all emailsthat include the word “virus” in thesubject line. To search for individualfile types, you’ll want to use the “file-type:” operator.

BBYY AANNDDRREEWW LLEEIIBBMMAANN

To view Google Desktop’s indexingstatus, right-click the System Tray iconand then click Index Status.

Google Desktop displays the results stored on you computerfirst, followed by the Web results.

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IIn their quest for superiority, Microsoftand Google have crossed paths (and

stepped on each other’s toes) on morethan one occasion. We took a look atWindows Desktop Search (part ofMicrosoft’s MSN Toolbar offering) andGoogle Desktop to compare the user in-terfaces, features, and search results.

Like Google’s personal search appli-cation, Windows Desktop Search cre-ates an index to quickly return searchresults for your queries. You can viewthe status of the indexing after installingthe MSN Toolbar Suite by right-clickingthe Desktop Search icon in the SystemTray and then clicking Indexing Status.You can also pause and restart the in-dexing process in the context menuthat appears when you right-click theDesktop Search icon in the System Tray.To configure your indexing preferences,click the MSN logo in the MSN SearchToolbar and then click MSN SearchToolbar Options.

Currently, the Windows DesktopSearch is a bit more limited in its supportfor searchable file types. Supported typesinclude a variety of text files, MicrosoftWord documents, Excel spreadsheets,Outlook and Outlook Express items,Web pages, and the metadata of music,image, and video files. You can also in-stall plug-ins for additional file types,such as Adobe PDF (Portable DocumentFormat) documents.

This Desktop’s Not Big Enough For Two

To see how the two applicationscompared, we installed both on a testcomputer and searched for files

without entering the specific names, orlocations of any one file. We started bytyping music into the search boxes ofboth Google Desktop and WindowsDesktop Search. Google returned 180files, and 12 cached Web pages. Thetop results were the most recent, andconsisted mostly ofcached Web pages.The next dozenitems were text filesthat mentioned theword “music” inthem. We had toscroll past more than 75 items beforewe actually encountered an audio file.The Windows Desktop Search re-turned just 126 results; however, thetop three were WMA (Windows MediaAudio) music files, followed by ahealthy mix of text files, file folders,and Windows Media Player playlists.The results didn’t include any cachedWeb pages. Windows Desktop Search’slist of supported file types states Webpages, but nothing about cached Webpages you’ve already viewed.

Next we tested Windows DesktopSearch and Google Desktop with datequeries. We typed 2004 into WindowsDesktop Search and pressed ENTER. Itreturned 1,426 results, the first hun-dred or so of which were folders thateither had 2004 in the file name orcontained files that had 2004, or 04 inthe file name. Google Desktop re-turned 1,011 hits, nine of which werecached Web pages. Google’s resultsseemed almost devoid of folders, butincluded a bevy or relevant documentsdated from 2004.

Finally we tested each personalsearch engine by looking for specific filetypes. We typed ..jjppgg into each searchbox to find JPEG (Joint PhotographicExperts Group) image files and thenpressed ENTER. Windows DesktopSearch returned 463 local results, while

Google Desktop displayed 773 results,seven of which were cached Web pages.Though both utilities showed thumb-nails of the image files they found,Google’s search utility seemed to per-form the deeper scan, finding someJPEG images that Windows DesktopSearch missed entirely.

In the end, though the results werevaried, the outcome wasn’t surprising.Google Desktop’s strengths seem to liein its wider range of searchable filetypes, recalling the Web pages you’veviewed, and finding individual files.Windows Desktop Search benefits frombeing able to integrate other Microsoftproducts, and seems to have a betterhandle on file folders, and file types (es-pecially proprietary Microsoft filetypes). At this point, neither applica-tion seems to be the ultimate desktopsearch utility, so to get the most com-plete search capabilities, you mightconsider using both Windows DesktopSearch and Google Desktop. ❙

Windows Desktop Search vs. Google Desktop

Is your Taskbar big enough for Windows Desktop Searchand Google Desktop?

Google Desktop’sQuick Find windowcan display resultsbefore you’ve evenfinished typing.

Windows DesktopSearch can displayyour results asquickly as GoogleDesktop.


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Meet BloggerJoin The Web Log Craze With This Google Tool

Maybe you’re the type ofperson who has an opin-ion on everything fromKeynesian economics to

non-Euclidian geometry and isn’tafraid to share it with anyone. Per-haps you like discovering strangenews stories on the Web and for-warding them on to your friends.Wouldn’t it be great if there was away you could cut out some of thelegwork and keep everyone informedor entertained at the same time?Google has a tool that can do justthat. It’s called Blogger.

Blogs (short for “Web logs”) are oneof the crazes sweeping the Internet.They come in all shapes and sizes, andanyone with a computer and a littlespare time at his disposal can have hisown, usually for free. Although it’s gen-erally accepted that blogging pioneerJorn Barger coined the term “Web log”in 1997, it’s difficult to pin down the genesis of the blog. Newsgroups,

bulletin boards, and online for-ums, all of which share character-

istics with blogs, cropped upyears before “blog” became

ingrained in the Inter-net’s lexicon.

You can use a blogfor a number of tasks.

For example, you canpost pictures and high-

lights of your next familyvacation while you’re still

on vacation (at the collec-tive swooning of the post-card industry). You canpontificate about currentevents or simply providelinks to articles about the

events to readers. Essentially,you can use your blog to dis-

seminate almost any kind of in-formation you want, and maybe that’swhy blogs are so appealing.

Using Blogger, Google’s spin onthe phenomenon, is almost as easy asrunning a simple Web search. It onlytakes a few minutes to establish a freeaccount, and you can use BloggerImages to change your blog frombland to extra spicy with lotsof images. We’ll guide youthrough the process of regis-tering for an account, bring-ing it to life with your ideas,and making it dance with pic-tures. We’ll even give you afirsthand look at our Bloggerblog—our own little cornerof cyberspace.

Humble Beginnings

It wasn’t all fun and games for thefolks behind the magic at Blogger. SanFrancisco-based Pyra Labs startedBlogger in 1999, one year after Googleitself burst on the scene. By its ownadmission, Blogger was successful, butthe company took its lumps alongwith countless other companiesduring the dot-com collapse thatbegan in 2000. The company ran outof money but managed to keep its ser-vice running virtually nonstop.

Then in 2002 Google wanted tobuy Blogger and take the serviceunder its wing. Already boastinghundreds of thousands of members,Blogger became a team within Goo-gle, and the rest is history.

Blog This Way

Although you can create a mar-velously intricate masterpiece withBlogger with enough time, the nutsand bolts of setting up your own blogare remarkably straightforward. First,open a Web browser with an activeInternet connection, head to Blog-ger’s home page (www.blogger.com),and click Create Your Blog Now.Enter the following information inthe respective fields: User Name (thisis the name you’ll use to log on toyour Blogger account), Password,Display Name (this is the name you’ll

You can create a Blogger account, give your blog a title,and select a template for it in

about as much time as it takesto check your email.


Preview Template below any of thetemplates to see a larger example of thetemplate. When you decide on a designthat strikes your fancy, click next to itstitle and click Continue. Blogger willdisplay the message “Your blog hasbeen created!” when your blog is readyto go. Click Start Posting to put somemeat on your blog’s bones.

Lesson 1: Classroom Procedure

Let’s face it. You can gussy up yourblog with endless photos(and truthfully, photo-blogs—blogs consisting ofprimarily images with verylittle text—have populatedthe Web alongside tradi-tional blogs), but at the endof the day, bloggers whowant their writing to shineshould first focus on the text

use to “sign” your blog entries), andEmail Address. Click the I Accept TheTerms Of Service checkbox (afterclicking the link to read the terms, ofcourse) and click Continue.

On the next screen, you’ll name yourblog and give it its own URL. This is alot like having your own Web site thatyour friends and family can visit whenthey’re surfing the Internet. As an alter-native, you can click Advanced BlogSetup if you want to host your blogsomewhere away from Blogger, but weonly recommend doing this if you havea good working knowledge of FTP (FileTransfer Protocol) servers and third-party hosting (providing space for andplacing a customer’s Web page or siteon a commercial server). When youenter a name and URL for your blogand fill in the Word Verification fieldwith the letters you see, click Con-tinue. Blogger will ask you to submit a different blog title and/or URL if an-other user has already claimed yourfirst choice(s).

Picking a predesigned template is thefinal step in creating your blog. Click

and let everything else be the icing onthe cake.

Your first order of business shouldbe to familiarize yourself with theBlogger Dashboard. Think of theDashboard as your base of operations;from the Dashboard, you can accessyour blog, create another blog, and/oredit your profile. Or, if you’re look-ing for inspiration, head to the Dash-board to read blogs from others in theBlogger community.

After you register for a Blogger ac-count and return to the home page,

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The blog address you choose will be the URL others will use to access your blog.

An empty canvas awaits your creative genius every time you create a new post.

Sing a song, recite a poem, or bellow a cheer with

Audioblogger; it’s free, too.


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sign in at the top of the page to accessyour Dashboard. Enter your usernameand password in their appropriatefields and click Sign In. You shouldsee the name of the blog you createdin the Blogs area at the top of yourDashboard page. Ambitious bloggerswho feel like spilling their thoughts ona variety of subjects can click Create ABlog, and Blogger will guide youthrough creating additional blogs.

Your profile. Before you dig in andget your hands dirty with a little blog-ging, you might want to edit yourprofile. Your profile can contain allthe essential information (and someunessential information) your in-quiring fans will doubtless want toknow. To change it, click Edit Profileon your Dashboard. If you select theShare My Profile checkbox, everyonewho visits your blog will be able toview the information you include. Forexample, you can change your displayname, add a photo or audio message,and include information about yourlocation, job, and interests. Whenyou’ve finished updating your profile,click Save Profile. You can edit yourprofile as often as you want.

AdSense. Not only is Blogger free,you can actually use it with Google’sAdSense program to make money,although you’l l need a healthyamount of traffic to generate aworthwhile amount of income.Briefly, Google AdSense is a rev-enue-generating program that postsan ad column on your blog similar

to what you see after you perform abasic Google search. These ads arerelevant to your blog’s content, soyou won’t see ads for coffee ma-chines if you blog about exotic traveldestinations. Inquisitive, entrepre-neurial bloggers can turn to “The Ins& Outs Of AdSense” on page 132 for

more information.Blogger Help. Using

Blogger is a lot like playingchess. It doesn’t take longto learn the basics, but be-coming a master takes a lotof practice. Fortunately,Blogger’s Help section isfairly robust and should

help you tackle a number of fairlyspecific questions. You’ll findBlogger’s help section located justbelow the Ad-Sense Invite.

The two links, Blogger Knowledge(which at press time redirected us toBlogger Buzz, or buzz.blogger.com)and Blogger Help (help.blogger.com)each contain different useful informa-tion. The two are aptly named: BloggerKnowledge (or Blogger Buzz, depend-ing on how you get to it) contains regular updates of blog-related hap-penings inside and outside of theBlogger world, and Blogger Helpcovers all of the basics and has ad-vanced tips for seasoned vets.

Lesson 2: Composition

In truth, you can start blogging im-mediately after you create your blog.You’ll have to edit your profile and

WWith Blogger Mobile, you don’t need a computer to keep blogging. If yourmobile device, such as a cellular phone, PDA (personal digital assistant),

or BlackBerry is capable of sending an email, you can update your blog with bothtext and photographs from pretty much anywhere within your wireless serviceprovider’s coverage area. (At press time, Verizon, AT&T, Cingular, Sprint, and T-Mobile were the only providers compatible with Blogger Mobile, but Bloggerclaims it will be expanding the list in the future.)

True to the Blogger spirit, making mobile blog entries might initially seem like adaunting task, but it’s not too difficult with a little practice. When you send an MMS(Multimedia Messaging Service; a service that lets you send images, sound, and videoin addition to text) message or email to [email protected], Blogger creates a mobileblog for you and sends you its URL and a code you can use to claim your mobilepost. Be aware that even though Mobile Blogger is free, you’re still bound to any feesyour wireless service provider charges you for sending MMS or email messages.

Your mobile blog can exist independently, or you can incorporate it into an ex-isting blog. If you want a separate mobile blog, continue sending emails MMS mes-sages to [email protected], and Blogger will continue to do all of the legwork andupdate your mobile blog. Just refer your readers to the URL Blogger sent you.

To add mobile posts to a blog you already have, open a Web browser with an ac-tive Internet connection and go to go.blogger.com. Enter the code Blogger emailedyou in the Claim Token field. In the Verify Your Registration field, type the randomlygenerated string of characters you see just above the field and click Continue. Onthe next screen, click Continue As This User. When Blogger asks you to claim yourmobile blog, click the Switch To “XXXX” radio button, where “XXXX” is your blog’stitle, and click Continue. Blogger will send the post to your existing blog. Repeatthese steps to add future mobile posts to your original blog. ❙

Blogger Mobile: Blogs To Go

When you sign up for anAudioblogger account, youhave to list a primary phonenumber and a PIN numberto claim your audio posts.


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probably read a number of Helptopics before you can construct a pol-ished blog, but there’s no reason youcan’t start putting your thoughtsdown right away.

After you have signed in, look at theBlogs area of your Dashboard page.To create a new post, click the plussign (+) that appears to the immediateright of your blog’s name. You canstart typing in the field provided.Making a blog post is very similar tocomposing an email to someone witha Web-based email service, such asYahoo!, Hotmail, or Gmail.

Start with a basic blog entry. Com-pose an entry as long as you like bytyping in the empty field. Whenyou’ve finished, click Save As Draftor Publish Post. If you click Save AsDraft, Blogger will save the entry andlet you access it later for any revi-sions you feel it might need. Whenyou sign on at a later time and clickthe name of your blog on yourDashboard page, you will see anyposts you have saved as drafts. Clickthe Edit button, make the necessarychanges, and click Publish Post. (Youcan also click Delete instead of Edit ifyou don’t want to keep a particularsaved post.)

When you click Publish Post,Blogger will publish it on the Web andnotify you with the message, “Yourblog published successfully.” At this

juncture you viewyour blog with thenew entry (clickView Blog). First,click either Repub-lish Index Only orRepublish EntireBlog. For bloggingnewbies just get-ting their blogs offthe ground, thereisn’t an appreciabledifference betweenthese options. Butas a blog growslarger and morecomplex, repub-lishing it in its en-tirety may takelonger than simply republishing its index.

There’s obviously a lot more toblogging than dumping a bunch oftext from your brain with furioustyping. By clicking on the Font andNormal Size (these appear by default)drop-down menus, you can changethe font style and size of your blogposts. Likewise, the other buttonsshould look familiar and apply var-ious formatting effects to the text ofan entry. Click the button with acheckmark below the letters “ABC”to spell check a post you’re workingon. If you’ve applied several types offormatting to a block of text (for ex-

ample, you have blue,bolded, italicized text)and want to remove theformatting, highlightthe text with yourcursor and click theeraser button to removeall of the formatting atonce.

If you click the Pre-view link, Blogger willshow you a sneak peek

of what your blog would look like ifyou published your post in its currentstate. This can be helpful if you wantto see what a post will look like with aparticular font or where a picture willshow up amidst your text.

Lesson 3: Graphic Design

Shutterbugs, Bob Ross wannabes,and anyone feeling visually inclined,take note: This is the juicy part foryou. Even though text is a crucial partto any blog, the old adage “a pictureis worth a thousand words” rings es-pecially true for blogs that makestrategic use of images.

Posting pictures to your blog usedto require a combination of twoother Google programs, Picasa andHello, or a third-party image-host-ing site, but the good people of Blog-ger have considerably simplified theprocess. To add an image to yourblog, click the Add Image button.(It’s the button sandwiched betweenthe Check Spell ing and RemoveFormatting From Selection buttons.)A new window will open that letsyou upload images to your entry. Ifyou have the image stored on yourPC, click the Browse button, find theright image, and double-click it. Toadd an image that already exists onthe Web, you need to cut and paste

Blogger offers more than 2 dozen predesigned templates inan effort to please your discriminating palate.

Welcome to theDashboard, your point of origin for all thingsblogging.


its URL into—drum roll, please—the URL field.

Next, decide on a text wrap optionfor your image in the Choose ALayout area of the Blogger: UploadImages window. Sample illustrationswill give you an idea of how theimage will appear with your text.Click Small, Medium, or Large forImage Size and make sure the UseThis Layout Every Time? checkbox isempty if you want to use a differentlayout for subsequent images. ClickUpload Image to finish adding a pic-ture. When Blogger displays the mes-sage “Your image has been added.”click Done.

When the image appears in yourblog entry’s text, Blogger should ini-tially place it at the beginning of thetext. You can click and drag the imageto where you would like it in yourtext. It can take a little practice, butthe process isn’t difficult to master.

Including pictures or other imageswith your blog’s text is a fantastic wayto make your blog pop, but you canmake other changes to your blog’sappearance, as well. On your Dash-board page, click the Change Settingsicon. The icon looks like a gear and islocated to the immediate right of

the plus icon for creating new posts.Clicking Change Settings takes you to your blog’s settings page. (At thetop of the page you should see theSettings tab selected.) On the firstpage, you can change your blog’s titleand give it a description 500 or fewercharacters in length.

There’s a veritable cornucopia ofother settings you can access and ad-just by clicking the following links inthe Settings tab: Publishing, For-matting, Comments, Archiving, SiteFeed, Email, and Members. For ex-ample, click Formatting, click Yes inthe Show Title Field drop-down menu,click Save Settings, and you can in-clude titles with your individual blogentries. To let all your visitors makecomments about your blog entries(not just other Blogger members),click Comments, click Anyone in theWho Can Comment? drop-downmenu, and click Save Settings.

You can also make structuralchanges to your blog, but this requiressome familiarity with HTML (Hyper-text Markup Language, a languagethat tells Web browsers how to dis-play Web pages) code. One easy mod-ification you can make to your blog ischanging its Links section. Initially,

the three links in the section areGoogle News and two Edit Me links.To change them start at yourDashboard and click the ChangeSettings icon. Click Template andscroll down through the code untilyou see the line <!— Begin #sidebar—>. Slightly further down you’ll seethe code for the Google News andEdit Me links. Using the Google Newsline of code as a guide, you canchange the Edit Me links, add morelinks, and change Google News to adifferent site.

For a visual idea of where to lookto make these changes, take a peek atthe illustration at the end of this ar-ticle. You can make plenty of otherchanges to craft a blog tailored toyour interests and talents, and Blog-ger Help will provide you with anample amount of guidance.

Lesson 3: Public Speaking

Blogger’s sister site, Audioblogger(www.audioblogger.com), gives youthe opportunity to post audio to yourblog from any phone. Posts can last as long as five minutes; if your wit-ticisms continue to flow, Audio-blogger gives you the option to record

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By setting up a Mail-to-Blogger address, you can submitposts to your blog via email.

Blogger Help (help.blogger.com) has tips for virtually every skill level of blogger.


another post at the end of a currentpost. You can submit an unlimitednumber of audio posts when you setup an account with Audioblogger.And if that doesn’t pique your cu-riosity, placing an audio post is sim-pler than a text post.

To establish an account withAudioblogger, open a Web browserwith an active Internet connectionand go to Audioblogger’s Web site.Click Start Audioblogging Now,enter your Blogger User Name andPassword in their respective fields onthe next page, and click Continue.Next, select the blog you want topost your audio to in the drop-downmenu (if you only have one blog,Audioblogger selects it by default)and click Continue. On the PhoneInfo screen, enter the primary phonenumber you’ll be using to makeaudio posts (but you can make audioposts from other phone numbers)and choose a 4-digit PIN number.When you’ve filled these fields in,click Finish Setup.

When you have a phone and PINnumber associated with your Blog-ger account, dial (415) 856-0205(Audioblogger’s dedicated phonenumber at press time) and do yourthing, following the voice promptsas needed.

Your Final Exam

Like any good teacher, we’ve givenyou the basic tools to build a blog asunique as you are, but the real chal-lenge is actually doing it. Althoughthis article will help you with theABCs of blogging, the rest of the al-phabet is waiting for you on Blog-ger’s Web site. Making text entriesand adding photos are probably themost crucial pieces of the puzzle, but

we’ve really only scratched the sur-face of the many options available toyou at Blogger.

Above everything else, have pa-tience with your blog. The bestblogs didn’t spring up overnight, sodon’t be discouraged if it takes awhile to perfect your blog’s formatand content. The most popularblogs have been around for years

and have taken a long time to de-velop a sizable fan following. Re-lease your own creative talents, andBlogger will do the rest.


RS


After Blogger places an image in the blog entry you’re workingon, you can click and drag it to where you want it in the text.

Your profile can tell your readers everything they want to know about you (and maybe some things theydon’t). Starting at the Dashboard, click Edit Profile,make your desired changes, and click Save Profile.

List your favorite Web sites in the Links section of your blog by changingyour template’s HTML. Use the highlighted text as an example.

From the Dashboard, click Change Settings and Formatting. ChooseYes for the Show Title Field drop-down box and click Save Settings.

To allow any reader, even someonewho doesn’t have a Blogger account,to make posts to your blog, start atthe Dashboard and click ChangeSettings And Comments. Change WhoCan Comment? to Anyone, and clickSave Settings.


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Google’sbid to take over the worldjust took a turn for the lit-eral. On June 28th, Google

launched Google Earth, which is asearchable collection of satellite andaerial images from various providersthat have been amalgamated to form avirtual 3D Earth, complete with real-istic elevations, 3D buildings for majorcities, and fly-to animations. Google isoffering free access to its beta versionof Google Earth, based on technologyfrom the recently acquired digitalmapping company Keyhole.

The Key To Google Earth

Like many of Google’s current offer-ings, Google Earth started out as a product from another company.

Keyhole had been develop-ing a 3D Earth model andcolor satellite image databasecalled EarthServer since 2001.Google acquired Keyhole’stechnology in October 2004with an eye toward broad-

ening its own suite ofmapping products.

You can downloadGoogle Earth from kh.google .com/download/earth/index.html,but you’ll need to beconnected to the In-ternet to properly runthe program once it

has been installed. Goo-gle Earth consists of a

user interface applicationthat lets you search for and

view virtually any place onEarth using a database of Keyhole’s

images, as well as public domain andchartered flight photographs. GoogleEarth uses 3D graphics and broadbandstreaming technology to power its ad-vanced navigation features. GoogleEarth also lets you view 3D buildings indozens of major cities, as well as 3Dmountains, valleys, and othergeographic features.

Google Earth is also in-tegrated with the GoogleLocal search feature that letsyou find hotels, restaurants,schools, parks, and other lo-cations. It’s designed to work

with Google Maps, as well, so you canget driving directions to and fromplaces all over the world.

I can see my house from here. Therealism and detail of these images isimpressive. But before you try zoomingin on Jennifer Aniston’s poolside deckchairs, keep in mind that these digitalimages are static, and in some instancesseveral years old. The satellite andaerial images that comprise GoogleEarth’s database were taken through-out the last three years.

Google Earth’s images come from avariety of sources, most of which arepublic domain and available for use byanyone. When you zoom in on a spe-cific image that is copyrighted, thecopyright information appears at thebottom to let you know where theimage came from. Aside from the dif-fering image sources, the dates andtimes when the images were taken canalso vary. An image of YellowstoneNational Forest taken during the springwill look drastically different from animage of the forest taken in the fall. Forthis reason you may see sections thatvary in color. In many cases, the imagesyou see on Google Earth are combinedlike a patchwork quilt.

As you might expect, Google Earthhas more images of the United Statesthan any other country. However,Google Earth provides medium resolu-tion images and 3D topographic datafor the entire planet. You can view de-tailed road maps for the United States,Western Europe, Canada, and theUnited Kingdom. Google Earth alsohosts high-resolution images of majorcities throughout the world, which lets

A View FromAbove

Explore Google Earth’s Satellite & Aerial Maps

Google Earth lets you labeland add your own

location-marking pushpins.


you zoom in to street level and distin-guish people and cars. In addition, theurban areas of 38 major U.S. cities fea-ture 3D buildings. If you live in any ofthe above (except Western Europe)you’ll also enjoy the integrated GoogleLocal search feature.

At press time, Google offered a com-prehensive visual map of the cities andregions covered at earth.google.com/data.html. Google Earth also coversmore than 150 cities in the UnitedStates with resolutions better than 3feet. We looked up Cambridge, Mass.,for which Google claims to have 6-inchresolution images, but we couldn’tzoom closer than 40 feet (eye altitude).Despite this we managed to fill our1,024 x 768 resolution display withthree cars parked side-by-side.

If you live in a rural or sparsely pop-ulated area, you may only be able toview blurry images from which youcan distinguish little more than groupsof buildings, trees, and roads. Withthese medium-resolution images, indi-vidual buildings, cars, and people aredifficult to see. Google has announcedthat it is adding updated images andterrain details on a rolling basis. So ifyou don’t see high-resolution images

for a specific area, it’s likely that up-dates are on the way. If you’re curiousabout a specific area, download the ap-plication and check it out for yourself.

Download & Installation

Google Earth has been tested towork with Windows 2000, a 500MHzIntel Pentium III CPU, 128MB ofsystem memory, 200MB of free harddrive space, and a 3D-capable videocard with 16MB of dedicated videoRAM. For the best results, Google rec-ommends Windows XP and a 2.4GHzPentium 4 CPU or AMD Athlon XP2400+, 512MB of RAM, 2GB of harddrive space, and a video card with32MB of dedicated RAM. Monitor res-olutions should be set to 32-bit truecolor with a 1,280 x 1,024 or higherresolution. You’ll also need a broad-band connection capable of 128Kbps(kilobits per second) bandwidth.

To install the free version of GoogleEarth, start by visiting earth.google.com. Click the Get Google Earth (FreeVersion) link in the upper-right cornerof this page, and then click the Down-load GoogleEarth.exe button from thenext page. Click Save, choose a location

where you’d like to save the EXE file,and then click Save and wait for the10.4MB file to download. When thedownload is complete, click Open ifprompted, or navigate to the file’s lo-cation and double-click it to launchGoogle Earth’s installation Wizard.

Take Over The World

Once you’ve installed Google Earthand launched the application, you’llimmediately see the Google Earth UI(user interface). The main viewingpane of the interface shows a realistic3D Earth model floating against asubtle blanket of stars. You can useyour mouse pointer to grab the 3D

You can view buildings for dozens of cities by enabling the 3D Buildings layer. Among other things, the Measure toolcan help you improve your golf game.

From this image you can see the borderbetween a medium-resolution imageand a high-resolution one.

Google Earth’s 3D topographic datalets you view realistic landscapes.


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planet and rotate it in any direction. Ifyour mouse has a scroll wheel, you canuse it to rapidly zoom in and out of theimage in the center of your viewingpane. Double-clicking any regionzooms-in by roughly a factor of four.

Google Earth’s realistic 3D terraindata adds a whole new element to theboring old mapping formula. WithGoogle Earth, you can zoom-in on ge-ographic locations, tilt the view andexplore the Grand Canyon, study thecrater at Mount Saint Helens, or justmarvel at the Earth’s varied terrain.Google Earth’s center console featuresseveral navigation controls to help youtake control of the 3D Earth model.

In the center you’ll find a four-waydirectional control. If you click andhold near the red dot in the middle ofthe control, you can move the Earthmodel by dragging your mouse in anydirection. You can rotate the map usingeither of the circular arrow buttons tothe left and right of the center console.The slider at the far right lets you tilt themap from a perpendicular overheadview to a nearly parallel view so you canview a profile of a given location’stopography or 3D Buildings (for selectcities). The slider to the right lets youzoom in and out. To the lower rightand left of the center console you’ll findthe correction buttons for returning themap to its native orientation.

Menu items. Toward the top of thewindow, you’ll find familiar menuitems such as File, Edit, View, Tools,and Help. The File menu lets you Save,

Open, Email, and Print the maps asthey appear in the main viewing paneof the Google Earth interface. From theEdit menu you can access Cut, Copy,Paste, and Rename commands. TheView menu lets you add and removeon-screen items, such as the Compass,Status Bar, Latitude/Longitude Grid,and Overview Map. You can alsoswitch between full-screen and win-dowed views of your chosen area usingthe View menu.

The menu bar also features an Addcommand for placing your own anno-tations, such as Placemarks, ImageOverlays, and Paths. The Help menuitem directs you to Google Earth’sHelp Center, Bulletin Boards, and theupgrade page. (Only Google Earth Plusand Pro subscribers have access to all ofthe features in the menu bar, but we’llget to that in a moment.)

Tools. The Tools menu contains alist of helpful items you can quickly addto Google Earth’s default layout, such asa Web browsing pane and the Measureutility. The GPS Device tool is unavail-able in the free version of Google Earth,but Google Earth Plus and Pro sub-scribers can use it to import geographicinformation from certain GPS devices.

The Measure tool is a handy featurethat lets you measure the distance be-tween two points, or along a path thatyou can draw directly onto the image. Adrop-down menu lets you choose units,such as Miles, Kilometers, Inches, Feet,

Nautical Miles, and Smoots (namedafter the Oliver R. Smoot, who was top-pled head over heels in 1958 to measurethe Harvard Bridge at MIT). Accordingto Google Earth, I drive 34,940 Smootsto and from work (give or take an ear).

Layers. As mentioned above, GoogleEarth has several features common totraditional mapping applications thatyou can add as layers. Click the appro-priate checkboxes in the Layers pane todisplay things such as 3D buildings,roads, parks, schools, hospitals, air-ports, and shopping sites, to name afew. You can also display statistics,such as crime rates, population, andmedian income data, for a given area.

Get What You Pay For

Google Earth’s free offering is avail-able to anyone for personal and homeuse, but individuals and businesses canalso upgrade to Google Earth Plus andPro. Larger corporations might con-sider one of Google Earth’s EnterpriseSolutions, such as Google Earth Fusion,Google Earth Server, or Google EarthEC (Enterprise Client).

Google Earth Plus. Google’s step-upfrom the free version adds Magellanand Garmin GPS device support,drawing tools, the ability to importspreadsheets, tracks, and waypoints,and lets you print images at better reso-lutions. Google Earth Plus users getemail customer support that’s not

MSN Virtual Earth’s image of the Statue of Liberty is on the left, while GoogleEarth’s image is on the right.

Google is constantly adding new images to its Google Earth database.


available to free version users. You canalso use the included drawing andsketch tools for annotating your maps.To upgrade, launch Google Earth, clickHelp and Upgrade To Plus, and followthe instructions. A yearly subscriptionto Google Earth Plus costs $20.

Google Earth Pro. For commercialusers, Google Earth Pro is the route to

go. This version features several toolsand options not available in theothers, such as high-resolution prints,phone support, and the ability to mea-sure area and import up to 2,500 datapoints. Pro also features several pre-mium modules that you can purchasefor $200 each. You can select from theMovie Making Module, Premium

Printing Module, GIS Data ImportingModule, and more. The base licensefor Google Earth Pro costs $400 ayear, but at press time Google was offering a free 7-day trial at earth.google.com/earth_pro.html.


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AAlthough Microsoft got a jump onthe geo-spatial Web site market

back in 1998 with its TerraServer data-base, Google Earth has certainly raisedthe stakes. On July 25th Microsoft re-leased an answer to Google Earth inthe form of MSN Virtual Earth (virtualearth.msn.com), which sharesTerraServer’s image database, but addsmany features found in Google Earth.Although both offerings are still inbeta form, we decided to explore theadvantages and disadvantages of thetwo application’s interfaces, image re-sults, and overall approach to this rev-olutionary new mapping technology.

World View

Google and Microsoft have takenmildly diverging approaches to map-ping with aerial and satellite photog-raphy. Both MSN Virtual Earth andGoogle Earth are offering access forfree and require connections to theInternet in order to tap into their re-spective databases. MSN’s service dif-fers in that it doesn’t require a separateapplication that you must install andlaunch from your computer. Simplyvisit virtualearth.msn.com to load theinterface directly into your browser.

Like Google Earth, MSN VirtualEarth’s aerial photography coverage islimited, but to a different extent. Aswe mention in this article, GoogleEarth features medium-resolutioncolor images and terrain data for thewhole planet. MSN’s service, on theother hand, currently only boasts

high-to-medium resolution imageryfor the United States.

The USGS (United StatesGeological Society) supplies MSNVirtual Earth’s aerial images, while theapplication uses Microsoft’s MapPointtechnology for displaying road mapsand plotting trips. If the locationyou’re looking for has USGS UrbanArea data available, then it will appearin color. This is the case for MSNVirtual Earth’s Featured Locations, orspecific areas of interest and dozens ofhighly populated areas. For all otherlocations, MSN Virtual Earth relies onDigital Ortho-Quadrangle data, whichis a monochrome medium- to high-resolution image.

MSN Virtual Earth lets you switchbetween aerial and road map views byclicking the appropriate links in theupper-left corner of the window. Ifyou want to see the road maps lay-ered onto the aerial images, clickAerial Photo, click the adjacent Downarrow, and then click Labels.

Apples & Oranges

Both Google Earth and MSNVirtual Earth have featured locationsand ready-plotted pushpins to de-note places of interest. These loca-tions show off what the application iscapable of, but they may not be rep-resentative of the application’s abilityto deliver relevant results and images.We tested the two mapping applica-tions by searching for the Statue ofLiberty and the Eiffel Tower.

MMSSNN VViirrttuuaall EEaarrtthh.. We started bytyping statue of liberty into theWhere box of MSN Virtual Earth’s in-terface and clicking the Local Searchbutton. Although the button’s de-scription was a bit misleading, MSNVirtual Earth loaded a monochromeimage of Liberty Island in less thanfive seconds. When we typed “eiffeltower,” we were greeted with a mes-sage saying that no results werefound. A subsequent search for Paristurned up a monochrome image ofParis, Illinois. The Statue of Libertyimage required a bit of zooming-in toget a good view, but overall MSNVirtual Earth is fast, but seeminglymore accurate when searching for lo-cations within the United States.

GGooooggllee EEaarrtthh.. Google’s application,however, needed a bit more coaxing toshow us the correct location. Wetyped “statue of liberty” into the textbox and clicked Search, but we got dif-ferent results depending on the centerposition of our view, none of whichwere near New York Harbor. When theview was centered over a random loca-tion, Google Earth told us that therewere no results for our search. We didmanage to view the monument bytyping “new york, ny” and then usingthe pointer to drag Liberty Island intoview. As we zoomed in, the data tookjust less than 30 seconds to load, butthe high-resolution result was sharpand impressive. The Eiffel Tower wasdifficult to find, as well, and we endedup typing “paris,” and dragging themap around until it came into view. ❙

Google Earth vs. MSN Virtual Earth

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If you’re looking for photo-editing software, you live in atime of plenty. After comparinga list of what you want your ed-

itor to do with what’s available andhow much you feel like spending,you should have no trouble decidingon the right software for your needs.

Adobe Photoshop CS2 ($599;www.adobe.com) is the industry

standard, the top choice of graphicsprofessionals and anyone else whomust have every conceivable feature.

Its little sibling, Photoshop Ele-ments 3 ($99.99) has one of the bestcost-to-value ratios around, pro-viding about 80% of Photoshop’sfunctionality for around 16% of theprice. It’s all most home users willever need.

Corel’s Paint Shop Pro ($129;www.corel.com) also has legions ofsatisfied users. Originally publishedby a company called Jasc, it’s beencalled “the poor man’s Photoshop,”with a similarly wide feature set anda user interface close enough to in-spire déjà vu.

Moving down the scale, the Mic-rosoft Digital Image Suite ($99.95,

It’s Not Picasso, But It’s Close

Meet Picasa, Google’s Photo Organizer/Editor


www.microsoft.com)covers a lot of basicand intermediate ter-ritory in a guidedwalk-through inter-face, although wesometimes wonder atoccasional, seeminglapses in design judg-ment. Roxio Photo-Suite (www.roxio.com) has similarlymoderate ambitions,and while it’s avail-able by itself ($49.95,but often heavily dis-counted), it’s a hard-to-beat bargain aspart of the jam-packed Easy MediaCreator suite ($99.95).

Notice we didn’t say an unbeat-able bargain. That’s a hard claim tomake for any photo software sincePicasa, Google’s editor, entered thepicture. Picasa covers a lot of basics,does it well, and does it for free.

Mi Picasa, Su Picasa

Picasa is aimed at casual userswho want a straightforward, all-in-one solution for organizing photos,performing quick fixes and minoredits, and sharing pictures withfamily and friends.

Although the program now comesfrom Google, it’s not entirely home-grown. Picasa (both as a softwarecompany and its eponymous digitalphoto organizer) was the brainchildof photography enthusiast LarsPerkins. At the time, Perkins was anexecutive at Idealab, a Pasadena,Calif., business incubator (supportsystem for entrepreneurs) that alsohelped launch such companies asNetZero and eToys.com.

In early 2004, Perkins met withGoogle to interest them in a utilityhis developers had designed fortransferring photos from Picasa’sHello, an instant messaging pro-gram, to Google’s Web log service

called Blogger. Goo-gle ended up likingPicasa’s organizer somuch that it boughtthe company in July2004 and retainedPerkins to run it.

Still in version 1,and selling at a priceof $29.99, Picasa hadabout 500,000 payingusers at the time, butGoogle immediatelymade it available as afree download. Ver-sion 2, released inJanuary 2005, addedmore editing capa-bil it ies, improvedsearch functions, a

collage maker, CD burning, and im-proved integration with Hello andBlogger. As we go to press, the onlyfurther update has been a bug fixGoogle released this summer.

Installation

Picasa runs on Windows 98 andbeyond, with humble system re-quirements, so you’ll likely have nocompatibil ity problems. Down-loading and instal lation is asstraightforward as it gets:

1. Visit www.picasa.com and clickthe Free Download button.

2. This opens a File DownloadWarning dialog box.Click the Run button.The installer is com-paratively t iny (just3.16MB) so the down-load shouldn’t take

more than a few minutes even on adial-up connection.

3. After the download is complete,you may have to click another Runbutton to agree to another securitywarning, and comply with the EndUser License Agreement.

4. As the installation wraps up,you’ll have a few final options: cre-ating shortcuts on the Desktop andin the Taskbar’s Quick Launch sec-tion, etc. Click the checkboxes to de-select options you don’t want, thenclick Finish.

5. Once installation is complete,your browser will open and, if you’reconnected to the Internet, take youto a Support page, where you canview a brief User Guide and searchthe Knowledge Base.

Organizational Skills

Picasa was originally designed tolocate photos wherever they are andprovide immediate access to themfrom a central interface. Version 2’sediting functions may overshadowthis a bit, but Picasa remains a ca-pable organizer.

The scan. The first t ime youlaunch Picasa, it announces that it’sgoing to scan your computer to lookfor photos. You can choose either tolet it scan your entire system, in-cluding all attached drives, or to

GO O G L E TO O L S

The first time youlaunch Picasa, you’ll see

this scan alert. You’llnever see it again, but

Picasa continues to scanyour system upon

each launch.

Use the Options dialog boxto include or exclude variousdocument formats from scanning.


GO O G L E TO O L S

scan only your My Documents andMy Pictures folders, plus yourDesktop. Picasa doesn’t move orcopy anything to a new location.

Unless you reinstall, you’ll neversee this alert again, but Picasa stillscans your system each time youopen the program. Fortunately,you’re not stuck with the broadlydefined scan parameters you see thefirst time. You can configure themwith much greater precision.

To specify where you want Picasato look, select Folder Manager fromthe Tools menu. This presents youwith Windows’ normal folder hier-archy, letting you designate howPicasa treats each folder: Select itand click the appropriate radiobutton so Picasa scans the folderonce, ignores it, or monitors it forany changes.

You may also want to redefine thefiles that Picasa scans for. By default,it looks for most graphics file typesand movies, as well, but omits GIF(Graphics Interchange Format) andPNG (Portable Network Graphics)

fi les. To change these defaults,choose Options from the Toolsmenu and click the File Types tab.

In addition to the system scan,you can also import new pictures di-rectly into Picasa. The programshould automatically detect when-ever you attach a device such as acamera or memory card to yourcomputer, or insert a photo CD. Ifthis fails, or if you want to use ascanner, click the Import button inthe upper-left corner, use the drop-down menu to select the appropriatedevice, and proceed. Unless youchange the location in the Op-tions dialog box, Picasa savesimported images in the MyPictures folder.

Library. When the launchscan is complete, Picasa opensinto Library View, which hasthree main sections.

Along the left side is the FolderList. Picasa arranges this list ac-cording to the creation date of thefolders containing your photos. Youcan change this by clicking the Viewmenu, selecting Sort Folder List By,and then choosing two other op-tions: Recent Changes or the desiredfolders’ Names.

To the right of the list is a largesection called the Lightbox. It dis-plays a thumbnail of every imagePicasa has found, with the contentsof each folder shown together. Youcan scroll through them using theon-screen arrows or your keyboard’sUp/Down arrow keys. To reduceclutter, click the green triangle be-side a folder’s name in the FolderList; it will turn red and remove thecontents from the Lightbox. Eachfolder is designated by a separatorbar that turns blue when selected; atthe right end of each bar is anActions drop-down menu full offolder-management tools.

Click a thumbnail and, just belowthe Lightbox, you’ll see a line dis-playing the photo’s name and suchproperties as size and last modifica-tion date.

Using the Lightbox, you can orga-nize pictures by dragging and drop-ping their thumbnails to new lo-cations in the Folder List. Thesechanges aren’t merely visual; you’llactually be moving these files onyour hard drive.

You can also group pictures intovirtual folders by tagging them with

LLiibbrraarryy VViieeww:: The Folder List is on the left, the Lightbox fills the right, and thePicture Tray and Output Options span the bottom. The green section is the expanded Search tool.

The Folder Manager lets youspecify scanning options for

individual folders.


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Labels. Let’s say you have severallandscape photos scattered amongvarious folders. By giving each photoa Landscape label, they’ll not onlyappear inside their original folders,but they’ll also appear grouped to-gether, with Landscape added to theFolder List.

There are different methods youcan use to create a label, but thequickest one is to right-click thephoto’s thumbnail and choose AddLabel, then New Label, from thecontext menu. This opens a dialogbox where you can type the label,plus other criteria. (After you’ve cre-ated a label, it appears in the AddLabel context menu, so you don’thave to type it each time.) A photocan have more than one label, too,so you can display it simultaneouslyin multiple categories. For instance,some of your landscapes may also bevacation shots. To remove a label,right-click the thumbnail and thenselect Remove From Label in thecontext menu.

Getting back to Picasa’s interface,at the bottom is the Picture Tray,along with a row of Output Optionbuttons and a few other tools. TheOutput Options determine the fateof your photos after you’ve edited

and sorted them: You can printthem, email them, etc. We’ll get backto these later.

Whenever you select a thumbnailin the Lightbox, it also appears inthe Picture Tray. Normally, you’llsee one at a time there, as clicking anew picture replaces the previousone in the tray, but sometimes youmay want to output several picturesat once. No problem, just click theHold button after each photo you’veadded to the tray before choosingthe next, and you can pile up asmany as you want. Use the Clearbutton to empty the tray one photoat a time (select the thumbnail in thetray first), or all at once (click Clearwithout selecting any).

Next to the Hold but-ton is a short row oftools: two buttons torotate pictures, and aStar button, which letsyou mark your favoritesfor future reference.

Track it down. Abovethe right end of theLightbox is Picasa’sSearch tool. As soon asyou type in a term suchas a photo’s name, theLightbox displays only

those photos that meet the criteria.The Search box expands automati-cally, something you can also accom-plish with the Show/Hide button.The expanded space provides buttonsto search for starred photos ormovies, and lets you narrow searchresults by date. Any of the fields inthe Label Properties dialog box(Caption, Date, Place Taken) will alsowork as search criteria.

Editing

Picasa poses little threat to Photo-shop and other full-featured editors(you can’t clear up skin blemishes orswap heads, for instance), but it of-

fers several basic toolsthat should be enoughfor anyone with modestediting needs.

To access these fea-tures, double-click athumbnail in the Light-box. This takes you outof Library View andopens a larger copy ofthe photo inside EditView. Here, Picasa con-solidates your tools in athree-tabbed pane thatprovides quick access

Picasa’s editing toolsare grouped in thistabbed pane.

The Straighten tool overlays your picture with a grid,making it easy to use any feature (like the back of acouch) as your reference point.

To fix red-eye, click and drag over the red area.


to most of the tweaks you’ll want to make.

Basic Fixes. Some of these aresimple, one-click adjustments;others are more interactive. Cropprovides three standard print sizesand a free-size manual option.Straighten overlays the photo with agrid, making it easy to use any linein the picture as a reference pointwhile dragging a slider to tilt theimage into alignment.

There’s also a fix available for red-eye, the demonic look that re-sults when a f lash reflects fromsomeone’s retinas. Just click anddrag over the pupil , release themouse button, and Picasa will turnthe red to neutral gray.

Unfortunately, Picasa suffers froma gaffe in logic here. While in EditView, you’ll notice a Zoom sliderbelow the photo. Because red eyesmight be small in the photo, it’s

logical that you might want to workon them at a higher zoom level …but you can’t. As soon as you clickthe Redeye tool, the photo shrinks tofit the viewing area.

Rounding out the Basic Fixes areone-click adjustments for Contrastand Color, and I’m Feeling Lucky(sound familiar, Googlers?), whichsimultaneously tweaks color andlighting. The Fill Light slider con-trols brightness.

Tuning. These provide finer con-trol over lighting and color. By ad-justing the Highlights and Shadowssliders singly or together, you cantweak a photo’s contrast with greaterfinesse. The Fill Light slider appearshere, too.

Regrettably, there’s another sig-nificant oversight here: the lack of abutton to toggle the effect off and onto judge your progress. Yes, you canuse the Undo and Redo buttons, butRedo doesn’t return the sliders totheir original position so you canfine-tune your work from the pointyou left off.

Color Temperature determines animage’s overall tone. Drag the sliderleft for cooler blue tones, to the rightfor warmer yellows and oranges.

The Neutral Color Picker turnsyour cursor into a dropper tool.Click an item or area that you wantto use as a reference for white orgray, and Picasa will balance colorsrelative to your choice.

Effects. This brings up 12 filters.Some, such as Sharpen and FilmGrain, are more textural in nature.Others, such as Warmify and Tint,echo some of the previous controls,and then there are the obligatoryB&W and Sepia options. You’ll seethumbnail previews in the Effectspane, which, although small, mighthelp you judge what’s worth tryingand what you can do without.

The first five effects are simpleone-click changes, but the rest areinteractive: Tint lets you select theshade, and choose how much colorfrom the original remains. With Soft

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The Tuning Tab provides five controls for adjusting lighting and the picture’soverall warmth.

Picasa’s Effects section previews its 12 filters in thumbnails.


Focus, Glow, and Focal B&W, youcan set the effect’s coverage area andits degree of strength. GraduatedTint is an adjustable top-down colorwash that will let you, for instance,make the sky bluer, although thegradation travels in one directiononly, so you can’t make the grassgreener. Only Filtered B&W is trickyto work with, because color filtersaffect black-and-white film in lesspredictable ways.

Hiding in plain sight. Edit Viewalso has a few tricks that aren’t asobvious, such as the caption line be-neath the photo; simply click andstart typing.

Above the photo is a thin stripthat lets you select other photosfrom the same folder without re-turning to Library View. You canalso speed up your work by using theHold button to load multiple pic-tures into the Tray, then choosingBatch Edit from the Picture menu tofix them all with one command.

Final Destinations

As we mentioned earlier, the Out-put Options take everything in the Picture Tray and send it wher-ever you want it to go, and most of the options areself-explanatory.

If you want hard-copies, the Print com-mand not only getsthe job done, but alsohelps you managephoto paper withoutwaste. By using thePrint Layout optionsand setting the CopiesPer Picture, you canprint multiple copiesof the same shot, oruse one sheet of paperfor different pictures.Fortunately, Picasadisplays a preview be-fore you print, so youcan avoid commonsetup mistakes.

For sharing electronically, theEmail button will send pictures to asupported mail program as attach-ments. You can also send photos viaHello, Picasa’s instant messagingprogram (for free software and sign-up, go to www.hello.com), or post

them directly toyour Web log atGoogle’s Bloggerservice, which youcan find at www.blogger.com.

The Order but-ton will send yourpictures in forprofessional printsfrom one of Pi-casa’s affi l iatedproviders.

Finally, there’sthe Export but-ton. Picasa is, to a certain extent, a closed environ-ment. It doesn’t letyou save editingand effects changes

directly to the photo files; your pic-tures only look that way in Picasa. Tryit; add a sepia tone to something, thencheck the preview in the originalfolder. It’s still the same.

To save changes to the photosthemselves, you’ll have to exportcopies to your hard drive, whichbrings us to another unfortunatelimitation. Picasa can only exportphotos using the JPEG (Joint Photo-graphic Experts Group files) format,which means that you lose the ad-vantages of saving your uncom-pressed image data in the form ofTIFF (Tagged Image File Format)and RAW files.

Picasa certainly isn’t a do-all pro-gram, but users who don’t needmore complex features will probablyfind that it delivers just about every-thing they need … at a price that’simpossible to argue with.

BBYY BBRRIIAANN HHOODDGGEE

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The Print interface lets you print multiple copies or different photos, so you canuse your photo paper efficiently.

The E-mail command createsfile attachments in some, butnot all, email programs. For example, Picasa 2 dropped thesupport for Yahoo! Mail thatwas built into version 1.

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Google has made itssearch interface availablein a dizzying number oflanguages and gone a

step further by offering free trans-lation services between severalmajor tongues of the world. Thissounds slick, but how compellingis it in practice? Grab your toweland a Rick Steves travel guide, andlet’s find out.

Search Specific Languages Or Countries

This overlong but Googlishlyspartan Language Tools Page is essen-tially comprised of three sections. Thefirst is titled Search Specific LanguagesOr Countries. Let’s say you’re re-searching Antoni Gaudí’s famousbasilica in Barcelona, La Sagrada Fam-ilia, and because you know Spanish,you only want to see pages about thechurch written in Spanish and based inSpain. No problem. In the first pull-down menu, there are 35 languages tochoose from. Select Spanish.

On the next line, another pull-downmenu offers to filter results accordingto pages based in 71 countries. This isdetermined according to the host site’sdomain extension. For example, thecountry extension for Spain is .es.Naturally, you would select Spain fromthis list.

The third line is your search bar.This is where you enter your query, inthis case “Antoni Gaudí.” Click theGoogle Search button or the ENTERkey on your keyboard and watch theresults roll in.

Translate

The Translate section quite simplyoffers two functions: translate a blockof text from one language to anotheror translate a Web page from onelanguage to another. Those of us whogrew up on Star Trek and Dunemight waltz into these offerings withover bloated optimism about the lin-guistic powers of computing. Ratherthan spoil the fun, perhaps skip overto our sidebar on how Google trans-lations actually turn out when doinglong text passages. Students, you’vebeen warned.

At best, the text translator is bestfor short, nonidiomatic phrases. Forinstance, the tool correctly translatedthe universally employed phrase “twomore beers, please” into the Spanish“dos más cervezas, por favor.”However, make it just a bit morecomplex—“two more Corona beers,please”—and Google comes backwith “dos más cervezas de la corona,por favor,” literally “two more beersof the crown, please.” Ay carumba!

Interestingly, we had somewhatbetter results with the Web page trans-lator. To use this you simply copy andpaste the URL of a Web page into theTranslate A Web Page field, use thepull-down menu to select the sourceand target languages, and click theTranslate button. No, you’re not goingto get a decent translation. Not evenclose. But we’ve found several caseswhere we could decipher enough of theEnglish to tell if the page had informa-tion in it that we needed. If so, then wewent in search of an actual speaker ofthe source page’s language and askedfor a better translation.

At present, Google attempts totranslate among the six major Euro-pean languages: English, Spanish,French, German, Portuguese, andItalian. Translations between Englishand Japanese, Chinese, and Korean arecurrently in beta testing, but we wereunable to view these because the char-acter sets were incompatible with ourtest systems.

Speaking In Tongues

Reach Globally With Google’s Language Tools

As a research tool, these lan-guage/country filters can be usefulfor obtaining regional perspectiveson a subject. For example, Gaudíwas Catalonian, and you mightcome across different facts or inter-pretations of his life and works bycombing through pages written inCatalan rather than Spanish or siteshosted in Spain as opposed toAmerica. In cases where some mightallege there is media bias involved,as in the present Iraq war, one couldget a wholly different outlook onevents and conditions by searchingfor Shi’ite on Arabic pages ratherthan English.

Note, too, that search term spellingcan be critical to results. In Spanish,Antoni Gaudí’s name is actuallyspelled Antonio. For the best results,you need to be aware of such discrep-ancies and how local pages are likelyto spell things differently. Also beaware that if you spend most of yourtime using one set of language searchcriteria, you can click the Preferenceslink in this section to make those op-tions your Google default.


Google In Your Language & Domain

In the years of the Search Engine Wars,Google was famous for having great hit resultsbut also an extremely bare home page, some-thing the company has preserved more or lessto this day. Not counting the Google logoimage or two buttons, www.google.com con-tains exactly 37 words as of this writing, 15 ofwhich were for new feature and copyright no-tices. With so little to translate, it was easy forGoogle to customize this page into 116 dif-ferent “languages.”

Now, some of these languages are more forlaughs than work. We doubt that many peoplewill be doing research in the mellifluous nu-ances of Klingon, Pig Latin, or Elmer Fudd—still, we felt compelled to click the I’m FeewingWucky button repeatedly—but interfaces fromAfrikaans to Malay to Zulu may make somefeel more at home. While resulting hits are allin their native tongues, the standard text on thehits page (“See 4,050 images for X,” “Results 1- 10 of about 117,000 for Y,” etc.) remain inthe selected language.

Below this is a different way to access thesame regional search pages. You can select thelocal domain by browsing through the flag/do-main name/country name for each region. Insome cases this requires an extra step or two.For example, there’s obviously a difference be-tween searching in French and searching fromthe Canadian site. By default, the Canadianpage (www.google.ca) is in English, and youneed to click a link for the French version(www.google.ca/fr). By and large, though,there’s a lot of overlap between the two lan-guage and local domain pages. You just needto decide whether your emphasis is linguisticor geographic.

Gracias. Sayonara.

As you can see, Google Language Tools areless than perfect, but they’re better thannothing. Don’t make the mistake of relying ontranslations to help you survive while abroad.Just use Google Language Tools as a more con-venient starting place for your international datamining, and maybe have a little fun in Klingonalong the way.

BBYY WWIILLLLIIAAMM VVAANN WWIINNKKLLEE

GO O G L E TO O L S

Years ago, AltaVista was the first search company to offer free trans-lation services with BabelFish. Users were underwhelmed by the

service then, and we wondered if Google had improved matters withits own translator. To test, we grabbed a paragraph from the About Uspage at sister magazine Computer Power User and wrote a little limerickin a fit of silliness. We then found a native German speaker who wasvery fluent in English and asked him to translate Google’s output.Here’s what we found. Note that Google’s tool removed the line breaksin our poem and, in cases such as “twang,” where a translation was notknown, kept the English word.

Original English:

Computer Power User is a monthly print publication aimed at peoplewho know that technology rocks. The kind of person who gets hiskicks upgrading graphics cards and smashing benchmarks. The type ofperson who reinstalls Windows at 2 a.m. on a Saturday because hissystem keeps crashing while he's ripping MP3s. Or the person whorepartitions his drive to create a dual-boot system and install Linux sohe can learn more about how the OS works.

There once was a girl from ChibaWith a talking cow whose name was RebaTogether they sangAsian rap with a twangAnd karaoked while pounding Zima

German-To-English Retranslation:

Computer performance user is month long struggler/striver peoplethe pressure of publication, who know that technology is shaky. Thetype of person who gets his kicks improving the graphic maps andsmashing fixed points. The type of person who reinstalls Windows at 2a.m. on a Saturday because holds/stops to break up while he MP3s. Orthe person rips/tears the division/sharing out his drive to cause adouble-loading of the system and the putting up of Linux, so he canlearn more about he way the OS works.There once was a girl from Chiba with an entertainment cow whosename was Reba, together, that sang karaoke Asian Polkas with a twangwhile pounding Zima.

Note from German speaker: “Unfortunately, my students use these

translators, and they are incapable of recognizing parts of speech. For ex-

ample, ‘gets his kicks,’ ‘die seine

Stösse erhält,’ would be nonsense

to most Germans, and I can only

translate it because I know

English. Your translator mixes up

nouns and verbs, omits verbs,

and fails to translate words like

‘pounding’ from the original

English.”

Translation: You Get What You Pay For

RS


GO O G L E TO O L S

Power To ThePeople

Google Code: A Little Something For Open-Source Fans

Earlier thisyear, Googlereleased sev-eral portions

of in-house code asopen-source pro-jects, under con-tinued development.Coming from a com-pany that owns theworld’s biggest, mostscalable platform forWeb-based applications de-velopment, that’s significant—not only for what it presently provides,but more so as evidence of ongoingcommitment to open-source on theInternet. In this feature, we’re going totake a look at Google’s moves in thisdirection, its current projects, and thework and opinions of a couple of de-velopers who are glad Google isn’t justtalking the talk, but also walking theopen-source walk.

Google’s Perspective

“We like to take part in the open-source community, and we want peopleto have the code we’re proud of atGoogle,” says Chris DiBona, the com-pany’s open-source program manager.“We try to make it as easy as possiblefor developers to access that code. Mostof it we’ve released to date can run onany operating system, though themMaim library requires Python. And itsays in each new project how much

experience a program-mer needs to have theproblem set to take ad-vantage of it.”

Though DiBona ispleased with the re-sults, he takes pains topoint out that Goo-

gle’s open-source pro-jects aren’t necessarily

better than the best of-fered elsewhere. That isn’t

their primary purpose. “WhileI think we offer solid code, I'd

imagine that most developers wouldconsider this stuff an interesting look athow we've attacked the problem ofhaving programs perform well inheavily loaded multithreaded SMP[symmetric multiprocessing] machines.Many libraries and software develop-ment techniques break down under se-rious load, and the tools we've releasedhelp to debug these kinds of problemswith a certain amount of agility that Ithink developers will find useful.

“This is not to say that alternativesdo not exist,” DiBona says, “but I thinkour offerings represent an importantaddition to the discourse around cre-ating such programs.”

The Open-Source Google Projects

There are currently nine open-source projects available, and eachhas its own associated downloadsand forums.

AdWords API Client Libraries. PerGoogle’s Web site, “These librariesmake it easier to write clients to pro-grammatically access AdWords ac-counts.” There are two libraries at themoment. Again, from Google: “TheJava client library for the AdWords APImakes it easier to write Java clients toprogrammatically access AdWords ac-counts. The PHP library allows you todo the same in that language.” Thisproject can be found at sourceforge.net/projects/goog-ad-api-cli.

AjaXSLT. XSLT stands for Exten-sible Stylesheet Language Transforma-tions. It’s a tree-oriented programminglanguage used to transform XML(Extensible Markup Language) docu-ments. AjaXSLT is XSLT implementa-tion in JavaScript for use in fat Webpages, which are now referred to asAJAX (or Asynchronous JavaScript +XML) applications. The 0.2 beta releaseappeared at the end of June; you canfind out more about this project atsourceforge.net/projects/goog-ajaxslt.

Coredumper. This is described atthe Google Code site as “a neat tool forcreating GDB readable core dumpsfrom multithreaded applications. Thecoredumper library can be compiledinto applications to create core dumpsof the running program, without ter-mination. It supports both single- andmultithreaded core dumps, even if thekernel doesn’t natively support multi-threaded core files.” Project informa-tion may be found at sourceforge.net/projects/goog-coredumper.

Google mMaim. Written in Python,mMaim is for analyzing and moni-toring MySQL (open-source database)servers—not as a front-end, but by of-fering the tools to design an appro-priate interface between that server andthe programmer. mMaim can createcommand-line tools, provide Master/Slave sync statistics, and more. You canfind out more about it at sourceforge.net/projects/goog-mmaim.

Goopy/Functional. Simply func-tions in a Python library. The projectpage is at sourceforge.net/projects/goog-goopy.


Könguló. It’s Icelandic for “spider.”Könguló is a Web spider plug-in thatmakes Web sites you specify searchableby GDS (Google Desktop Search). Itfollows HTML (Hypertext MarkupLanguage) links and image, frame, andanchor tags. At the current time, it doesnot possess a graphical user interface,but can be run from the command linecontinuously to check previouslycrawled pages for updates. It uses avery simple form of programmed arti-ficial intelligence (with loops, depth,passwords, etc.) to start at a specifiedURL (uniform resource locator) andproceeds to index all resources it findsthere within GDS. The code is offeredby Google to provide an example ofhow you can code a GDS plug-in usingPython. The project page is sourceforge.net/projects/goog-kongulo.

Perftools. Google stated upon thisproject’s initial release that, “Thesetools are for use by developers so thatthey can create more robust applica-tions. Especially of use to those devel-oping multithreaded applications inC++ with temples. Includes TCMalloc,heap-checker, heap-profiler, and cpu-profiler.” The project Web site atsourceforge .net/projects /goog-perftools is less modest and more per-sonal, at least in part: “The fastestmalloc that we’ve seen, works particu-larly well with threads and STL.”Version 0.3 is currently available.

Sparse Hashtable. This project, in its0.2 beta release as of May 20, is de-scribed as containing “several hash-map implementations in use at Google,similar in API to SGI’s hash_map class,but with different performance charac-teristics, including an implementationthat optimizes for space and one thatoptimizes for speed.” The project pageat sourceforge.net/projects/goog-sparsehash goes further: “An extremelymemory-efficient hash_map imple-mentation. 2 bits/entry overhead!”

Sitemap Generator. Per Google,“Sitemap Generator is a simple scriptthat can be configured to automaticallycreate Sitemaps and submit them toGoogle. Sitemap Generator can create

these Sitemaps from a URL list, accesslogs, or a directory path hosting staticfiles corresponding to URLs. . . . Thesitemap_gen.py script analyzes yourWeb server and generates one or moreSitemap files. These files are XML list-ings of content you make available onyour Web server. The files can then bedirectly submitted to Google.” The pro-ject page is at sourceforge.net/projects/goog-sitemapgen. Unlike othercurrent Google projects, this one alsohas a page devoted to third-party pro-grams that support the Sitemaps API(code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html)and another explaining in detail the re-quirements, installation, and trou-bleshooting of the Sitemap Generator.

Google Code Projects At Work

Tobias Kluge, who runs a GermanISP (Internet service provider), is verytaken with both open source and

Google’s Sitemap Generator. He hasreleased phpSitemapNG, a free php (aserver-side HTML embedded scriptinglanguage that provides Web developerswith the necessary tools to build dy-namic Web pages) based on the Googleproject. According to Kluge, “The lackof functionality in Google's SitemapsGenerator is because it is written inPython, which only a few Web hostssupport, and it cannot handle dynamicpages. Google's site maps generator canonly find physically existing files.”

Paraphrasing Kluge’s information onhis Web site at enarion.net, “phpSite-mapNG’s plug-in architecture makes itpossible to create and integrate customplug-ins in minutes. At the moment,there is one main class that handles theuser input and control flow, and an-other that deals with output and somelogic functions. Settings are handled bya third class that behaves like a registry.Only a session-based storage class isavailable at the moment: no ability tostore in a file system or database. Theseare under development.” You can finda demo crawler at Kluge’s site, as well,both to show off the quality of hiscrawling engine and to create a sitemap. The process is simple, and thecrawler takes roughly 30 seconds to doits work. (Note that your IP is logged atthat time, but Kluge has no plans to usethat data for commercial purposes.)

Kluge also provides a small XSLTcode download that makes Google’sSitemaps files (which are machine-readable XML text) much simpler formere humans to understand. Writtenby Baccou Bonneville and updated byboth Johannes Müller and Kluge, theGoogle Sitemaps Stylesheet displays acomplete list of site map files, alongwith priority, change frequency, andlast modification date. It can do a pri-mary sort on any field.

The Developers’ Perspective

Another programmer making use ofGoogle’s open-source projects is PaulHachmann. Though a software devel-oper by profession, his experience with

GO O G L E TO O L S

Paul Hachmann’s blog has tripled itsmonthly hits since he started using Sitemaps.

Tobias Kluge’s online crawler will generateyour own Google Sitemap.


GO O G L E TO O L S

Sitemaps is strictly informal; he uses itfor his hobby blog (www.satoshiscorner.com). “I suppose this can makea case for how diverse an audienceGoogle Sitemaps is suited for,” he says.“It’s a bit of a niche site and garnersabout 1,000 unique viewers on a goodday. Outside of my regular viewers,Google is my top referrer, with about3,000 or so refers a month, all told—including traffic from google.co.jp,and, interestingly, Google's Mexicanversion. MSN and Yahoo! each garner a couple hundred refers a month by comparison.”

This wasn’t always the case. “Beforeutilizing Sitemaps, my main site's cachelagged a week or so behind reality,which meant that content on my mainpage dropped off by the time it showedup in SERPs (Search Engine RankPositioning). Now the cache is about acouple days behind or even less, andolder entries quickly show up in thearchives where they belong. I'm afraid Idon't have any prior Sitemaps searchstatistics, but I'd say roughly that I'mgetting about two to three times thetraffic from Google that I was, before.”

Hachmann joined the GoogleSitemaps Generator forum within aday or two of its launch. “They're con-stantly listening to their end users,” he

says, “and are visibly taking what theylearn and putting it into practice.While we may complain the odd timethat the Sitemap folks don't havemuch of a presence on the forum, theydo read every message and step inwhere necessary. The fact that theycan still cultivate a sense of familiarity,when the company is so big, is a bigpoint in their favor.”

Kluge also got involved right duringthe early days of the Google SitemapsGenerator forum. “First, I did it just tofight against boredom,” he admits,“but later I became more committed,since the people there liked my efforts.I have only worked with the SitemapGenerator, but I am reading about theother open-source projects. I thinkGoogle does a great service adding andsupporting free information, knowl-edge, and software to the community.This forces other companies to do thesame, or at least to think about strate-gies to compete with Google. It’s reallynice to see that the big-three search en-gine companies (Google, Yahoo!,MSN) having more or less the samefeatures, with no cost to the user.”

Hachmann agrees, with a caveat. “Idon’t think many will argue againstGoogle’s quality. They make greatproducts, and they’re innovative.

However, they have been spreading outas of late, which might reflect a changein their vision.” As an example,Hachmann points to Google’s philos-ophy page (www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html), where thesecond of Google’s 10 Things philo-sophical ideals list used read, in part:“It's best to do one thing really, reallywell. Google does search. Google doesnot do horoscopes, financial advice, orchat.” Since the advent of GoogleTalk—a chat program—the secondpoint reads, “When we first wrote these‘10 things’ four years ago, we includedthe phrase ‘Google does not do horo-scopes, financial advice, or chat. Overtime we've expanded our view of therange of services we can offer . . .’”

But Hachmann shrugs and notes,“It's hard to argue against that. Afterall, Google does make all sorts of coolstuff. And it’s a well-known diseaseamong tech folks that we like to playwith cool stuff.”

Arguably, Google’s open-sourceprojects were intended for other pur-poses, but the indescribable joy thatcomes to developers from openingtoys year round shouldn’t be underes-timated, either.

BBYY BBAARRRRYY BBRREENNEESSAALL

Google’s open-source project forums are a great resourcefor developers.

Google Sitemaps Generator has a very detailed project page,complete with FAQ (frequently asked questions) and troubleshooting links.

RS


TH E BU S I N E S S EN D

Let’s Do Business Google As Cash Cow

Most of us think ofGoogle as a search en-gine that locates infor-mation on the Web.Undoubtedly, Google’s

search engine helps millions of peoplefind the information they need forwork and play. However, for businessowners with a Web presence, Googleoffers other services and opportunitiesthat are equally as important.

As a Web site owner or adminis-trator, it’s essential to understandthree components of Google’s servicesfor businesses: placing your site inGoogle’s search results, promotingyour site with AdWords ads, andearning income from publishing adswith the AdSense program.

Adwords. Only the AdWords pro-gram is fee-based, and it is big businessfor Google. In fact, Google obtains

virtually all of its revenues from the adsthat it displays with search results andon the Web sites of AdSense partici-pants. But, before we discuss adver-tising further, let’s first delve into thescience of Google search placement.

Get Into Google’s Search Results

Perhaps the most important servicefor business owners to understand,Google’s basic search engine is freeand can make a big difference to thebottom line of an online business. Thetrick, if you’re trying to sell productsor services on the Web, is getting yoursite at the top of Google’s search re-sults so that potential customers findyou before they find your competitors.

How it works. Google’s search en-gine uses a robot (also known as acrawler, spider, or bot) that continually

examines billions of Web pages. Thebot indexes and maintains a databaseof Web pages for the search engine touse to locate information. To ensurethat the Google robot (or Googlebot)finds your Web site, it’s best to registeronline with Google at www.google.com/addurl.

To provide the best results for asearch query, Google employs a trade-marked PageRank technology. Page-Rank determines the importance of aWeb page based on millions of vari-ables. Of these, the pages that link toyour site play a large role in deter-mining rankings. Some linked pageshave greater value, thus giving your sitea greater overall value. Important sitesreceive a higher PageRank and appearat the top of the search results.

In addition to the PageRank system,Google’s search mechanism analyzesthe content of a page to determine itsrelevance to a search query. Theanalysis goes beyond simply findingkeywords. Instead, this hypertext-matching analysis looks at keywords inthe context of the Web page’s content,organization, fonts, and more.

What you can do. Google does notshare all of the specifics about how itssearch algorithm (rules for rankingand indexing Web pages) works, butthe company does give you guidelinesfor designing the structure, content,and code for your site to improve itschances of being found by a relatedsearch query. For example, your siteshould have a clear hierarchy; it shouldinclude a site map with links that pointto the important parts of your site, andit should use text instead of images or


graphics to display importantlinks, content, or names.

Obviously, using the right key-words in your site is also impor-tant. The words you use in yourpages should reflect your compa-ny’s products and services. Goo-gle warns Webmasters to becareful to design pages for users,not search engines. If you fill yoursite’s pages with irrelevant words,duplicate content, or other decep-tive material, it can result inGoogle dropping your site com-pletely from the search results.

If you need help. Not surpris-ingly, creating high-ranking pageshas become an industry of itsown. Books and online servicesdesigned to help you optimize your sitefor search engines are plentiful. Someof the more reputable online resourcesinclude Submit It! (www.submitit.com) from Microsoft and SearchEngine Watch (www.searchenginewatch.com). Google’s information onSEOs (search engine optimizers) alsoprovides tips to help you choose acompany or service to help you withyour site’s search ranking. Seewww.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/for a list of information, including de-tails about SEOs, the Googlebot, anddesign guidelines.

Try Advertising With AdWords

Another way to get exposure foryour site’s products and services isthrough ads. Known at Google asAdWords, these are the small, text-onlyads that display in the top and rightmargins of Google’s search results.Google displays ads that relate to Webcontent or to a search query entered bya Google user. For example, if yousearch for running shoes, Google dis-plays related ads for running shoes inthe margins of the search results.

Big bucks. AdWords is a fee-basedservice, and as noted previously, it’sGoogle’s primary source of Google’srevenue. In fact, according to the com-pany’s financial reports, advertising

comprised 99% of Google’s revenuesin the first and second quarters of2005. AdWords debuted in the fourthquarter of 2000. It originally chargedsubscribers each time their ad dis-played on a search results page. In2002, Google changed the fee structureto a cost-per-click model. This meansthat subscribers to the service pay onlywhen someone clicks through the ad.

In addition to displaying ads insearch results, AdWords also appear onthe Web sites of participants in theGoogle Network. Known as theAdSense program, the ads are distrib-uted in two ways. One method, calledAdSense For Search, distributes adsthrough search results on Web sitesthat include Google’s search box.AdSense For Content, the secondmethod, displays Google-generated adsrelated to the content on a participant’sWeb page. Google started the AdSenseFor Search program in the first quarterof 2002 and the AdSense For Contentprogram in the first quarter of 2003.

For the second quarter of 2005,Google’s total ad revenues topped$1.38 billion. This was a record forGoogle, with revenues 10% higher thanthe first quarter of 2005, which was alsoa record-setting quarter. Sites ownedby Google generated $737 million, or53% of total revenues. Revenues gener-ated from Google’s partner sites

(through the AdSense program)contributed $630 million, or 46%of total revenues.

Create a campaign. Obviously,ad revenues reap big bucks forGoogle. One reason is thatGoogle has made it fairly simpleto create an ad campaign. An on-line tool, located at adwords.google.com, walks you through afour-step process to create yourad. The process starts by definingthe language and geographic lo-cation of your target audience.This improves your chances ofreaching potential customers, be-cause you can target specificcities, states, and regions as ap-propriate for your business.

The second step involves creating anAd Group, which is the ad and the key-words you want to associate with it.The ad consists of four lines: a headline(maximum 25 characters), two lines oftext (maximum 35 characters each),and your Web site’s address. Googleoffers a variety of tools and suggestionsto refine your ad and keywords.

Of course, budgeting is an importantaspect of a Google ad campaign. It’s thethird step of the process, and Googlelets you define a limit so that you don’texceed your budget. You can also limitthe CPC (cost-per-click, the amountyou pay if someone clicks your ad), andyou can set a total daily budget. Googlerecommends a minimum investmentof $30 per day and requires a min-imum CPC of 5 cents.

As you set your budget, Google’s on-line tool provides recommendedamounts for your campaign’s CPCbased on the ad you’ve defined. Googleemploys a unique bidding system todetermine which ads display moreoften than others and in what order.Your keywords, target market, andbudget need to work together to im-prove your ad’s chances of displayingbefore and more often than your com-petitors’ ads. The Google sign-upprocess includes tools to help you fore-cast your ad campaign’s results andtweak it, if needed, to give you the best


Google’s AdWords advertisements display in theright margin and above the search results. The adsrelate to the search query and keywords entered inthe Google search box.



results within your budget. It also pro-vides a campaign management toolthat lets you track performance. Thefourth and final step in the process is toreview the previous steps and createyour account and login information.

Generate income with AdSense.Google’s AdSense program displaysads from participants in the GoogleAdWords service. The program findsand displays ads that are relevant toyour site based on Web page contentor search terms that a visitor enters inthe Google search box on your Website. Depending on the programand types of ads targeted to yourWeb site, your company receivesincome for publishing the ads.

With AdSense For Content, youagree to publish AdWords ads thatare targeted to the content withinyour Web site. Google’s tech-nology analyzes your site’s contentand selects the ads that are mostrelevant. AdWords advertisers canalso target ads specifically to yourWeb site. By contrast, AdSense ForSearch displays AdWords ads tar-geted to the search query enteredby a visitor to your Web site. Thisis similar to adding the Google freesearch box to your site, but your com-pany gets the added benefit of receivingrevenue from the AdWords campaignsof others. The AdSense For Search fea-ture is also more customizable than thefree search tool.

To generate income with AdSenseFor Content, your company receivespayment in most cases based on visi-tors who click through an ad dis-played on your site. If an AdWords adis targeted to your site specifically byits owner, you can also receive incomebased on the number of times the addisplays, which is known as CPM(cost-per-thousand impressions).Google does not share specifics abouthow it calculates the income you re-ceive from AdSense programs, but itcosts nothing to become a publisher.

The process for applying to becomea Google publisher is online atwww.google.com/adsense. If Google

approves your application, within a fewdays you receive information via emailabout how to set up the program. Theprogram includes an online reportingsystem that details the revenue thatAdSense generates from your Web site.

Google has built in numerous op-tions that let you customize AdSensefor your Web site. For example, youcan pick the layout of the ad from a se-lection of formats designed by Google.Most formats are text-based; however,Google has begun to offer image adswith AdSense for content. You can

place up to three ad groupings on apage, including image ads. WhenGoogle is unable to locate a targeted ad,you can fill the ad space with alternateads, custom messages, or a solid color.You can also block ads from competi-tors. When displayed on your Web site,AdSense ads are branded by text thatstates Ads By Google.

Google’s AdSense partners includecompanies large and small. Some of themore recognizable partners includeThe Weather Channel, EarthLink,Disney Online, BizRate.com, AskJeeves, AOL, and Amazon.com. DanHogan, the owner of a science newsWeb site www.sciencedaily.com, statesthat “The ads really match our articles.For visitors, the AdSense ads are auseful extension of our content.”According to a case study of Science-Daily, 66% of the online magazine’s in-come comes from AdSense.

If you need help. Similar to searchengine optimization services, Google’sAdWords program has resulted in aside industry of companies willing todesign an ad campaign for you. If youneed assistance, however, considerGoogle’s Jumpstart service for first-time advertisers. With Jumpstart,Google’s staff designs an ad campaignfor your company at no charge; thecatch is that your initial campaignbudget must be a minimum of $299.For more information, see adwords.google.com/select/jumpstartwelcome.

Add Google To Your Site

Google offers many services toenhance your Web site with itssearch technology. If you want togive your site’s visitors easy accessto Google, you can display theGoogle Free Web search or GoogleFree Site search boxes on your site.By simply pasting some HTML(Hypertext Markup Language)code into your Web pages, you canprovide a Google search box forvisitors to your site. There arethree options: Google Web search(searches the entire Web), Google

SafeSearch (searches the entire Webwhile filtering adult content), andGoogle Web search with SiteSearch(searches users’ choice of the entireWeb or only your site). See “Give YourWeb Site Google Power”on free Googlesearch tools for your site on page 128.

Take Advantage Of Google

With numerous services available tobusinesses and its positioning as one ofthe top destinations on the Web,Google has a lot to offer Web siteowners and administrators. If you havea product or service to sell, it’s impera-tive that your site is included inGoogle’s search index. And the AdSenseprogram can help you generate addi-tional revenue through targeted ads.

BBYY CCAARRMMEENN CCAARRMMAACCKK

The Google search box is a free service that youcan add to your Web site and can help your visitors search the Web or your site only.

RS



Get The Word OutAdvertise Your Web Site On Google

They’re out there: thousands ofpotential customers wantinginformation about your com-pany and its products or ser-

vices. So you’ve created a Web sitethat displays your business to its bestadvantage, and you’ve made the siteeasy to navigate and understand. Butthere’s one problem. Those con-sumers have never heard of you, yourcompany, or your products. How inthe world do you get them to walkthrough your virtual doors?

By getting yourself noticed onGoogle, of course. Google has be-come synonymous with finding in-formation on the Web; the word haseven evolved from a brand name to averb, as in “I Googled my new bossto see what I could find out about

her.” When your would-be cus-tomers want to know who offerswhat they need, Google is one of thefirst places they’ll look.

Therefore, it’s crucial that you giveyour company presence on Google.We say “give” because, despite whatmay appear to be a mysterious processto the outside observer, site listingsdon’t randomly appear on Google.Instead, there are specific proceduresand techniques that you can take ad-vantage of in order to increase yourvisibility online. To some extent, youcan determine whether your businessis listed on Google, and you can enhance your Web page so that yoursite appears higher in search resultsand place advertising on relevantsearch pages.

Google Listings

Let’s suppose you’re in the businessof making widgets, and you want po-tential customers who visit Google tolearn about and find your widget re-tail company. One way consumersshop online is to go to a site directory,where they search under companiesthat make widgets and find yourlisting there—kind of like an onlineYellow Pages.

But Google is not a typical site di-rectory, where you are listed in sometype of organized structure, such asunder, say, United States > Shopping> Gadgets> Widgets > Retailers.Rather, you submit a listing manuallythat lets Google know you exist, andthe automated processes on Google’sback end check out your site and,provided your site meets Google’scriteria, add it to the Google index.Then, when visitors run a search on Google, the site may appear in theresults page.

Before we walk through the sub-mission process for listings, it’s worthnoting that it isn’t necessary to submityour site’s URL to Google in order tobe included in the index. Googlestates flat out that most of the indexadditions are done automaticallythrough Google’s spiders, which areprograms that visit Web sites, readpages, and supply indexing informa-tion to a search engine database.These programs are also called crawl-ers or bots.

Another item worth noting is thatjust because you submit your URL,there’s no guarantee that Google willadd it to the index. Numerous sitessubmit URLs to be listed, and it takessome time for the Google folks to in-spect those URLs and determine how,or even whether, they should beadded. Google advises Webmastersthat the spiders will likely find the sitebefore the staff gets to your URL sub-mission. Plus, given that Google in-dexes more than 8 billion pages, it’seasy to understand why the companyrelies on its well-written automated


programs rather than manual labor toindex sites. Still, it can’t hurt to try,and it may even help, so let’s submit asite URL to the listing.

Your first step is to head to theURL submission page at www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl. It’sa simple page, with a bit of informa-tion at the top and three boxeswhere you can type text. The firstbox, URL, is the most important.Here’s where you can manuallyinput your Web site address, such as

ht tp : / /www.widgetsarewe.com.When you input the address, keep inmind that you don’t need to includeall of the subpages on your site, suchas http://www .widgetsarewe.com/contact or http://www.widgetsarewe.com/storelocations. The only itemyou should submit is the top-levelpage, because Google’s bots will startat the top and automatically crawlthrough the rest of the site.

The second box, Comments, iswhere you can add keywords or com-ments for the Google staff. This sec-tion does not influence how Googleindexes your page, but it can help

ensure the Google staff pays better at-tention to your “application.” Andthe third box is where you confirm astring of letters or characters, a stringthat changes each time the page loads.Google places this string on the sub-mission page to let its staff know thata real person is submitting the listinginstead of an automated program. Werecommend you fill out this box, be-cause if you take the time to manuallysubmit a listing, it’s natural thatGoogle will be more inclined to pay

attention to the work you did than if a“robot” did so.

And that’s it. You’ve done prettymuch all you can do to manually get Google’s attention. You can gothrough this process more than once,but it’s likely a waste of time, be-cause, in Google’s words, “multiplesubmissions won’t improve the likeli-hood of your site being added or ac-celerate the process.” Google also saysyou won’t be penalized if you submitmultiple times, but in our opinionyou’re better off submitting a URLonce and then putting your energyinto other projects.

In addition, there is a related pro-gram you may want to investigate.Google Sitemaps is a beta (trial) pro-gram that attempts to help its spidersbetter crawl the Web and gather in-formation. Sometimes when siteshave content that changes routinely,called dynamic content, or subpagesthat are somewhat hidden, the Googlecrawlers may have a harder timefinding those pages. Filling out a sitemap will help the spiders know moreabout harder-to-index sites and sub-pages. If you have a relatively com-plicated site, participating in thisprogram will help Google better crawlsites in general and perhaps your sitein particular.

To sign up, head to www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/overview.html for an overview ofcreating sitemaps. If you or your web-master has already created a site mapusing a third-party program or onlineservice, you can submit that site mapthrough a link on this page. The sitemap must be in a format Google sup-ports, and you’ll need to create aGoogle account (which you may havedone already if you use other Googleservices, such as Gmail or GoogleGroups). Then, just click the Add ASitemap button, type the URL of yoursite map, and click Submit URL.

You can also use this program tocreate a site map before you submit itto Google. The procedure for thistakes some time, so we won’t walkthrough it here, but if you’re inter-ested, visit www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html and follow the instructionsfor downloading the proper files, cre-ating a configuration file, uploadingthe files, running the program thatwill generate a site map, and submit-ting the final product to Google.

Google Searches

We’re all familiar with spam, and ifyou’re a business professional, amongthe unsolicited ads that have endedup in your email box probably is one


Use a simple online form to submit your URL for inclusion in the Google index.



that reads something like this: “We’venoticed that your Web site isn’t listedin the major search engines. We guar-antee you top placement or yourmoney back.” If only it were so easy.Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix forgetting your site ranked high on asearch engine page. But, the goodnews is that some of thisis in your control.

First, it helps to under-stand what Google spi-ders look for when they’reindexing and rankingsites. Google’s mission,according to the com-pany, is to develop “theperfect search engine,”which one of the co-founders, Larry Page, describes as somethingthat “understands exactlywhat you mean and givesyou back exactly what youwant.” Google doesn’tdisclose exactly what goesinto the technology be-hind a search, but it does publish some gen-eral information.

One bit of technology is PageRank,Google’s proprietary ranking pro-gram. PageRank looks at more than500 million variables and 2 billionterms, feeds them into an equation,and comes up with a ranking. Part ofthe ranking is based on how manypages “vote” for your site by linkingto your main page and your site sub-pages. Another factor that determinesrank is your site’s contents. Thesearch engine looks closely at yourpage and considers what it says anddisplays, along with where words arelocated and other factors.

What does all this mean for you?Well, it’s easier to start with what itdoesn’t mean. It doesn’t meanloading your page up with links orhidden words (words in metatags, theHTML codes placed in the top sectionof the coding for a Web page that de-scribe the page to search engines andare invisible to viewers visiting a page)

will guarantee higher placement. Infact, we highly recommend you don’tdo this, or you risk attracting thewrath of the Google monitors.

Google publishes clear guidelinesabout what it finds acceptable (www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html), and loading pages with

hidden text, creating multiple pageswith nearly identical content, andusing cloaking (showing search en-gines content that you don’t showyour human visitors) are absolutelynot on the list. If you violate theseguidelines, Google reserves the right toremove your site from its index. Andonce that happens, there’s little chanceof going back. Your site won’t showup when users run the Google searchengine, and it won’t show up on the sites run by any of Google’s nu-merous partners.

As for what you can or should do,much of that is common sense. Agood general principle to follow is tocreate the site as you want users to seeit, and the spiders will react accord-ingly and appropriately. Don’t puttoo many links on a page (Google rec-ommends fewer than 100), make surethe information is clear, and includewords on your site that users arelikely to type into search engines

when trying to find you. And, ofcourse, you want the site to be usable.Broken links not only annoy your vis-itors, they stymie the crawlers.

There are some technical details tocover, as well. For example, Googlespiders don’t pick up on text insideimages. While this may be a great

technique for avoidingspam—you may want to“hide” your email ad-dress by creating it as animage, rather than as aclickable “mailto:” link,thereby preventing aspammer from automat-ically culling your ad-dress—it isn’t so greatfor getting noticed by acrawler. And, if youtrack a human visitor’ssite usage, make sure you(or your Webmaster)don’t require a crawlerto be tracked throughthe site, such as with asession ID. For more de-tails on recommendedsteps to take, visit the

Google Webmaster Guideline page atwww.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html.

Lastly, we mentioned earlier thatone of the factors placing you highon a Google site is the number ofsites that link to you. It’s unwise tojoin a program that does nothing butcreate multiple links among unre-lated sites with the purpose of regis-tering higher in a Google search,because that goes against the Googleguidelines. It does make sense, how-ever, to encourage relevant sites tolink to you. One neat feature Googleoffers is a Google Link Search. Whenyou use this feature, Google will tellyou what sites link to yours.

Visit www.google.com/help/features.html#link and scroll to thebottom of the page and the last entry,Who Links To You? In the text box,type link: followed by your site name,such as link:www.widgetsarewe.com,and click the Google Search button.

Potential customers find you by submitting online queries; here isGoogle’s illustrated depiction of the querying process.



You may be surprised at wholinks to you, or doesn’t, and itcan spark ideas of other rele-vant sites you may want tocontact about creating a linkto your site.

Where’s My Site?

OK, you’ve submitted yourURL and optimized your con-tent so that your site appearshigh up in a Google search forwidgets, and for a while all isgood. But one day, when you runyour regular Google search, the sitedoesn’t appear at all, or it’s much far-ther down the list. This doesn’t neces-sarily mean something is wrong,although it might be an indication.Google conducts regular index up-dates, and when it does, new sites maybe added that outrank yours.

Another factor may be that manysites that used to link to you nolonger do, so use the handy tool wejust covered to see if that’s the case.Or, maybe your server was downwhen the spiders went crawling by,and they couldn’t “see” your site. Ifyou suspect this may be the case,check with your hosting company tosee if they’ve experienced any prob-lems recently.

Your site ranking may also changebecause your site itself changed, andthat brings up another issue to keepan eye on. If you’ve changed your siteand Google is still displaying the out-dated information, that’s likely be-cause Google’s crawlers have not yetvisited your new pages. Just wait aday or two, and the next time thesearch bots visit your page, they’llsubmit the correct information intothe Google database.

Finally, you may want to remove asite from the Google index. Googlepolicy clearly states that the companywants to provide a “thorough and un-biased” search and that the companydoes not believe in censorship. If asite is on the Web, the odds are goodthat it will appear in a Google index

and stay there, with the exception ofthe sites where the Webmaster isclearly trying to fool the crawlers intogiving it an artificially high ranking.

But there is another exception. Ifthe Webmaster responsible for thepages makes a formal request for re-moval (or if legal requirements neces-sitate it), Google will remove all orpart of a Web site. In short, you placea file on your site, called robots.txt,that tells search bots they are not wel-come and to ignore your content.Google provides complete instruc-tions on removing your site from itsindex at www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/remove.html.

The Google AdWords Program

Most businesses, however, willwant just the opposite of being removed from the Google index;they want as high a ranking as pos-sible. And sometimes, the best wayto get noticed on Google is to payfor it outright.

You’ve probably noticed that whenyou run a search on Google, yousometimes see sponsored links at thetop of or on the right side of the re-sults page. These results don’t landthere simply because the site Web-master submitted the URL to Googleor optimized the site for search en-gine indexing. They’re there becausethe site was willing to pay for the ex-posure. AdWords is a program thatlets you create ads and place them onrelevant pages.

Here’s how it works. Whenyou create your ad, you choosekeywords that describe yourproducts or services or otherkeywords that your target au-dience might be likely to use ina search. Then, when a con-sumer runs a Google search, ifshe uses your keywords in hersearch, your ad appears in ahigh-profile spot on the resultspage. This occurs on theGoogle page and also on thesearch pages of Google’s part-

ners. These partners include NetscapeNetcenter, EarthLink, Ask Jeeves, The Weather Channel, The New York Times, InfoSpace and Home &Garden Television, to name a few.

If a user clicks your ad to go toyour Web site, you are charged asmall amount. This is known as pay-per-click advertising. You can deter-mine how much you are charged perclick, and you can set limits on howmuch you pay on a daily basis. Youcan examine a personal online reportthat details your AdWords programstatistics, and one of the items youcan track via your reports is howmany of those clicks lead to sales, alsoknown as conversions.

One of the most important deci-sions you need to make is to figureout where you’re going to advertise,both in which regions (where areyour customers located?) and onwhich search result pages. Unliketraditional advertising, which usu-ally lets you base your advertisingplacement in part on whatever de-tailed demographic information the publisher or broadcaster canprovide you with, the pages whereyour Goggle AdWords ad appearsare more fluid. Therefore, beforeyou sign up for the program, it’scrucial that you figure out what key-words your potential customers willbe using in their searches.

For instance, suppose your com-pany sells bathing suits. Someonewho runs a search on “swimmingpools” might be interested in your

Google automatically creates the snippets that appearwhen your site is returned in a user’s search.


product, but they’re more likely tobe looking for information on pur-chasing a pool or pool maintenanceand related information. Someonewho runs a search on “tankini,”however, is more likely to be lookingfor what you have to offer.

Ready? Let’s go through signing upfor the AdWords program. Head towww.google.com/ads/index.html,click the Google AdWords link at thetop of the left panel, and click theClick To Begin button under the SignUp Now section in the middle of thesubsequent page. The sign-up processwill open in a separate window.

In the Language drop-down menu,choose the language in which youwant your ad to appear. Then, selectthe appropriate radio button, de-pending upon whether you’d like thead to appear in an entire country, in aparticular region, or in a custom-ized area of your choosing. ClickContinue. The next page will vary according to the region button you just selected, so once you’veadded countries, selected regions, orotherwise determined the location,click Continue.

Now it’s time to write your ad.AdWords ads are relatively small,similar to classified advertising in anewspaper. Come up with a catchy,25-character or fewer headline, twodescriptive lines (each with less than35 characters), the URL the consumerwill see, and a URL of the page towhich your ad will link. For instance,you may want your visitors to see“www.widgetsarewe.com,” but youmay want them to link to a back-endpage with lots of funky characters inthe address, such as www.widgetsarewe.com/sales/item.asp?item=item%2archive%... (you get the picture.)Google checks the page functionalitybefore presenting the next page in thesign-up process, Choose Keywords.

You’ve already figured out yourbest keywords, so go ahead and enterthem here. Click Continue. Now,you’ve entered the most confusingpart of the sign-up process, at least

until you have some ad campaign re-sults to work with. Based on yourkeywords, Google calculates trafficand pricing estimates. The first timeyou run a campaign, it may be diffi-cult to figure out how much youshould be paying per click to gain anew customer. Therefore, we recom-mend you follow Google’s guidelines.Google will suggest a maximum costper click, which is the highest priceyou’re willing to pay for a customerto click on your ad. The higher themaximum cost per click, the higherup on the search results page your adwill appear.

On the Set Pricing page, select thecurrency with which you’d like topay Google, and then enter the max-imum amount you’d like to spendper day, on average, for this adver-tising campaign. This ensures thatyou don’t go over your budget, be-cause once you’ve reached yourspending limit, your ad will not

appear again that day. Then, it’s onto the cost per click. The Enter YourMaximum CPC box may already befilled in with Google’s suggestion,but you can also click the ViewTraffic Estimator link toward thebottom of the page to view estimatesfor keywords based on how manyclicks current advertisers—likelyyour competitors—are getting ontheir ads. Typically, you will want thecost-per-click amount to be some-where in the 5 to 10 cent range, al-though you may desire a higher orlower amount. Click Continue.

Lastly, review your AdWords ap-plication and click Edit next to anyof the items to change your data.When you’re satisfied with your ad,click Continue To Sign Up, and fillin the information necessary tocreate your AdWords account: youremail address and a password.Google sends you a confirmationemail, and you can activate your ac-count by clicking the link in theemail and entering billing informa-tion. Google charges advertiserspaying in U.S. currency a $5 fee toget started, and from then on yourcosts are determined by your chosenbudget and cost per click.

Beyond Google

With potential customers per-forming millions of Google search-es each day, the opportunities forreaching your target audience are nu-merous. Keep in mind, though, that

getting your site noticed is just thefirst step. Before you place anAdWords ad, submit your URL toGoogle or attempt to increase yoursearch ranking, make sure your site isin tip-top condition and that it staysthat way. Because once you’ve cap-tured a customer’s attention online,you want to make sure he walksthrough your virtual doors—andcomes back for a second visit.

BBYY HHEEIIDDII VV.. AANNDDEERRSSOONN


Customize your AdWords ad placement by choosing relevant, specific keywords.

RS



Give Your Web Site

Google PowerAdding Site Search & More To Your Web Site

When it comes to theInternet, “Google” ispractically synonymouswith “search.” Wouldn’t

it be nice if you could use the sameaccurate and blazing-fast search tech-nology that Google uses to catalog theInternet to search your personal orsmall business Web site? Thanks toGoogle’s free Site Search service, youcan, and if you have a larger site orrun a corporate Web site, check outour “Big Business” sidebar, whichcontains information about Google’smore powerful hardware-basedsearch products.

Site Search: Benefits & Drawbacks

Site Search is a subset of theInternet search service for whichGoogle is well-known. Normallywhen users enter a search term in aGoogle Search box, they get resultsfrom the entire Internet. This isgreat unless you run a business thatsells wind chimes, and visitors seelinks to your competitors every timethey run a search for that product atyour Web site. Site Search eliminatesthat problem by giving users the op-tion to only search pages at yourWeb site.

Of course, there are several catches.Firstly, your pages must be inGoogle’s database to show up in thesearch, so if you update informationoften, it may be outdated in Google’sdatabase or not even show up at all.The search results page is also aGoogle page, using its layout and notthat of your site, although some basicmodifications can be made, so itbetter fits in with your Web site.

The interface is potentially con-fusing to customers because two radiobuttons appear under the Googlesearch box that appears on your site.The first radio button is labeledWWW, and if your visitor selects it,the search is carried out as a normalGoogle search that returns resultsfrom the entire Internet. The secondradio button is labeled with your Website’s domain name (for example,www.mysite.com), and if it is selected,the search is only carried out on pagesstored in Google’s database that be-long to that domain. If visitors getconfused and select the WWW radiobutton, they may see results fromcompetitors or links that take themaway from your site.

Site Search isn’t perfect, but it isfree, incredibly easy to implement,and gives your customers a basicsearch engine for your site if youdon’t have the tools or ability tocustom-design a search tool. You caneasily add Google to your site so longas you know how to let Google findyour site and how to make some basicmodifications to the HTML (Hyper-text Markup Language) code used tocreate Web pages.

Let Google Know You’re There

Site Search only returns search re-sults for your Web site if Google’ssearch engine, called Googlebot, has“crawled” the site. Crawling is aprocess in which Googlebot makes acopy of your entire Web site andstores the data on Google’s serverswhere it is indexed and added to themain Google search database. If


Google doesn’t know your site isthere, it won’t crawl through it,so the first order of business isto let Google know where thesite is located.

You can find out more aboutregistering your site with Googlein “Get The Word Out” on page123, but here’s the short version.Launch your Web browser andgo to www.google.com/addurl.Enter the entire address for yourWeb site in the URL box. (For ex-ample, type http://www.smart-computing.com instead of justtyping www.smartcomputing.com.) Next, type a short descrip-tion of your site or a few keywordsthat pertain to your site in theComments box to help establish thesite’s legitimacy, so it has a betterchance of being indexed. Type the let-ters you see pictured in the text boxnear the bottom of the page and clickAdd URL.

How To Implement Site Search

Now that Google likely has yoursite copied into its search database,it’s time to add Site Search to the site.This is as simple as copying andpasting a few lines of automaticallygenerated HTML code into the Webeditor of your choice, but there areseveral customization options to con-sider. We’ll cover most of these in de-tail using Microsoft FrontPage 2003as our HTML editor.

First, go to the Google BusinessSolutions page at www.google.com/services and click the Add Web-Search To Your Site link at thebottom-left corner of the page.WebSearch is Google’s main searchservice, which searches the entireGoogle database, and you have to in-stall it in order to use Site Search.

Click Google Free WebSearch, clickthe Terms Of Service link, read thedocument, and if you agree, check theI Have Read And Agree To TheTerms Of Service box and click GetThe Free Search Code.

The next page that appears con-tains three boxes filled with HTMLcode, and the one you are interestedin is the Google Free Web SearchWith Site Search box at the bottom.Beneath the box you see a preview ofwhat the search box will look like onyour Web page, but this is customiz-able, and we’ll talk about that ingreater detail later.

To add the most basic form of SiteSearch to your site, click inside theGoogle Free Web Search With SiteSearch box, open the Web browser’sEdit menu, and click Select All. Thishighlights all of the HTML code inthe box. Open the Edit menu again,click Copy, and open your HTML ed-itor. Open the page where you wantto insert the Site Search box and pressCtrl-V to insert the code into yourWeb page just like you would addany other lines of HTML. Note thatthe Google search box will appear onthe area of your Web page where youpaste the HTML code, such as the topor bottom of the page. In FrontPage2003, open your Web site, open thepage where you want to inset thesearch box, and click the Code tabnear the bottom of the window toview the raw HTML code. If youwant to place the box at the top of thepage, click next to the <html> tag atthe top of the code window, pressENTER to create a new empty line,and press CTRL-V to paste the code

into your page. Click the Previewtab to see what it will look like tovisitors and remember that youcan move the entire block ofcode (which is designated by<!— Search Google —> at boththe top and the bottom) withinyour page if you need to reposi-tion the search box.

You aren’t finished yet. Theauto-generated code containsplaceholder text that must bechanged before it will work prop-erly. Placeholder text is text in atemplate that is only there toshow you where to put pieces ofcode or alternate text and is

meant to be changed. Scan throughthe code, and you’ll see three placeswhere the text Your Domain Nameappears. You may need to scroll to theright to see all of the HTML text.Your job is to replace each of thoseblocks of text with the address of yourWeb site. Don’t remove any format-ting such as quotation marks that arearound the text, and you don’t needto put http:// in front of the address.

At this point, you’ve implementedthe most basic version of Google SiteSearch. You can copy and paste theblock of code into all of your otherpages to add it to them as well, or youcan customize the service so it inte-grates more smoothly with the lookand feel of your Web site.

Search Customization

If you don’t like the look of theGoogle search box, there are manyways to modify it. Have you noticedthat the radio button under the searchbox says the address of your Web siteinstead of the name of your business?You can change the radio button textto anything you like by editing the lastWeb address entry you entered. Lookfor the line where you changed YourDomain Name to your Web addressand ignore the entries that are inquotes—they need to stay like they arefor the search engine to work. You canchange the entry that is sandwiched


With a little editing, it is possible to completelychange the look of the search box.

The default search box must be modified to include your site’s address.



between the checked> and <br> tags,however. If your company’s name isWind Chimes Inc., you could changethe entry from Your Domain Name toSearch Wind Chimes or Search OurStore to give visitors a better idea ofwhat radio button to select.

You also can modify the other radiobutton, which by default is labeledWWW. Look for the WWW text be-tween value=””> and <input andchange it to something more intuitivesuch as Internet Search or Search TheWeb to make the choice easier for vis-itors. Be sure to preview any changesyou make to be sure they don’t breakthe formatting or otherwise make thesearch feature unusable.

By default, the button people click tosearch is labeled Google Search, but youcan change that as well. Look for theline that says <INPUT type=submitn a m e = b t n G V A L U E = “ G o o g l eSearch”> and change Google Search tosomething else, such as simply Search.

Google’s logo appears on everypage that includes Site Search, butyou can remove or change the logo sothat your company’s logo appears in-stead. To remove the logo, delete theline (or lines) of HTML code thatread <IMG SRC=“http://www.google. c o m / l o g o s / L o g o _ 4 0 w h t . g i f ”border=“0” ALT=“Google”></A>.Poof, there goes the logo. Alterna-tively, you can modify this code, so apicture of your choosing appears nextto the search box. Replace http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gifwith the address on your Web sitewhere your logo is stored, such aswww.windchimes.com/images/logo.gif.For this to work, you must includethe file name of the actual image, in-cluding its three-character file exten-sion, for example .GIF or .JPG.

Results Customization

Although you have to customize thesearch box by hand, there are severalchanges you can make to the SearchResults page via a Web-based interfacethat will make the Search Results page

look better in your site. Go back to theGoogle page that generates the SiteSearch code and click the CustomizableGoogle Free Web And Site SearchServices link at the bottom of the page.Read and agree to the terms of serviceand click the Customize Google ForYour Site box. Select the CustomizableGoogle Free WebSearch Plus Site-Search radio button and enter the do-main names that you want to include.(You can add multiple domain namesso long as you separate each domainname using semicolons.)

Click Continue, and several cus-tomization options appear. You canedit the domains you entered at the topof the page, but the most interestingoptions are in the Optional Customiza-tion Of Results Page section. Althoughit is impossible to remove the Google

logo from the search page, it is easy toadd your company logo to the top ofthe page. Just enter the Web addresswhere your company logo is stored (in-cluding the file name and three-char-acter extension) as described earlier.Don’t forget to include http:// at thebeginning of the address.

By default, the Results Page displaysa thumbnail of your logo. If you wantto display it at a larger size, enter the lo-go’s dimensions in pixels in the Widthand Height boxes. If you use WinXP,you can find out your logo’s size by

right-clicking the icon for the logo fol-lowed by Properties. Next, select theSummary tab, which lists the exactwidth and height. Otherwise use a pro-gram such as IrfanView (free; www.irfanview.com) to easily find out the lo-go’s dimensions. If you want to placeyour logo on the left side of the top ofthe Results Page, choose Left in theAlignment Of Your Logo box or selectCenter if you want the logo to appearin the middle at the top of the page.

The remaining boxes let you modifythe colors of the Results Page, so theybetter match those of your Web site. Ifyour site uses a gray or black back-ground color, select the appropriatesetting in the Google Logo BackgroundColor drop-down menu. Otherwiseleave it at its default White setting.

All of the other entries exceptBackground URL let you modify thecolors of text, links, and the page’sbackground. You can enter values suchas red, blue, white, orange, green, etc. ifyou want to use the pure forms of var-ious colors, or you can enter hexadec-imal values for colors to perfectlymatch them to those used by your Website. Hexadecimal (also called hex) is amathematical number system wherevalues are represented by the numbers0 to 9 and the letters A to F. At theirmost basic level, PCs use strings of onesand zeros called binary code to operate,and hexadecimal provides a convenientsort of shorthand for representing longstrings of binary digits using only a fewnumbers or letters. It is the standardsystem used for representing specificcolor values in HTML. For example,FFFFFF is the hexadecimal code forpure white, 000000 is the code for pureblack, and 336633 is the code for a par-ticular shade of green.

You can obtain the color valuesyour site uses by looking at the site’sHTML code. BGCOLOR indicatesthe background color, TEXT indi-cates the color for standard text,LINK indicates the color used by active hyperlinks on a page, andVLINK is the color used by links avisitor has already clicked. There are

Google automatically generates searchbox code that you can copy and pasteinto your Web pages.



Shakedown

Don’t forget to upload your modi-fied Web page to your Web site andtest everything out to see if customerswill run into any problems. If youfind that Google isn’t crawling yourWeb site to your satisfaction or thatcustomers are having trouble findingthings at your site, the only recourseis to upgrade to a full-fledged searchengine that is customizable and scal-able. Check out the “Big Business”sidebar for more on how Google canhelp you with that.


SS ite Search is great for adding a free,basic search engine to a small Web

site, but larger and corporate sites needto offer visitors a more powerful andcustomizable way to search content.Google’s search engine hardware, theGoogle Search Appliance and GoogleMini, makes this task as easy as forkingover some cash, plugging in a few ca-bles, and letting some hardware domost of the hard work. You’ll need totweak several things manually, but theseconfiguration hassles are nothing com-pared to creating a reliable search en-gine from scratch, and with Google’stools it is possible to implement aworld-class search engine for your Website in less than an hour.

Size Up The CostsOf course, all of this costs money,

but Google’s prices are reasonablewhen one considers how much itcosts to create a search engine fromscratch. “A midsized organization isgoing to spend between $50,000 to$300,000 to license, customize,manage, build out infrastructure, andupdate a search system in its first yearof operation,” says search technologyguru Stephen Arnold, President of AIT

(Arnold Information Technology;www.arnoldit.com) and author of sev-eral books, including “The GoogleLegacy” ($180; www.infonortics.com).

The Google Mini, which indexes upto 100,000 files, is designed to servesmall and medium-sized businesses andcosts $2,995 for the hardware, software,replacement coverage, and one year ofsupport. After that you are free to keepand use the hardware, but maintainingthe support, hardware coverage, andsoftware updates costs an additional$995 each year.

Google’s Search Appliance, which isdesigned for medium-sized and largebusinesses, indexes up to 500,000 doc-uments in its basic $30,000 GB-1001version, whereas a fully upgraded$450,000 GB-8008 model indexes up to15 million documents.

Feature-Rich On A BudgetDespite its ease of installation and

configuration, the Google SearchAppliance has some very powerful fea-tures. It uses the same PageRank tech-nology Google does to organize searchresults by relevance with terrific accu-racy, and it also incorporates the sameautomatic spellcheck technology that’s

familiar to Google users. It can indexmore than 220 types of files, includingdatabases, and it lets administrators di-vide up content so that only autho-rized users can search sensitivedocuments. RAID support helps keepdata safe by constantly mirroring datato separate hard drives, and the com-pany using the Search Appliance cancompletely customize search boxesand search results pages.

The Google Mini is much less capablethan its big brother, but still offers greatvalue to small business owners. Itdoesn’t have the ability to scan data-bases and lacks RAID support, but ituses the same search technology as theGoogle Search Appliance and also has alimited ability to divide Web contentinto separately searchable collections.

Perhaps most importantly, none ofthe Google hardware products requiresmuch maintenance. After the initialconfiguration, they automatically andconstantly scan your Web site and net-work for new content and index it in-stantly, letting you add new contentwithout having to do any extra work af-terwards. You can’t put a price on thatfor harried business owners who maynot have an IT staff on which to rely. ❙

Big Business? Consider A Google Hardware Solution

Google’s Search Appliance is muchmore expensive, expandable, and powerful than the Mini, and it is easy to install and maintain.

entries for these values in theOptional Customization Of ResultsPage section. The Faint Text Colorentry controls the look of Cachedand Similar Pages links on the SearchResults page, and Alternate TextColor controls the look of the Website links included at the bottom of

each search result entry. Skip theImportant Text Color setting be-cause it doesn’t affect anything onthe Search Results page.

Finally, you can use a backgroundimage instead of a background colorto further modify the page. Just enterthe address for the image in theBackground URL box just as you didfor the logo earlier. Small images arerepeatedly tiled on the background,making it easy to create a pattern.

Click Continue and enter the re-quired registration information ifnecessary before clicking Continueagain. A block of HTML code ap-pears, which you can copy and pasteinto your Web pages and modify it asdescribed earlier in the article.

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design ads, and host them on yourWeb site. With AdSense, Google cando that for you, drawing on a base ofthousands of advertisers and sendingyou a check based on how many adsyou show and how many of those adsare clicked. You can set yourself upin a matter of minutes, choose howads are displayed (or even choosewhich ads are displayed), and getreal-time reports on your site’s profitpotential, all for free.

But how much sense does AdSensemake? Does it really work, and if itdoes, what kind of sites does it workfor? If you’re a lone Webmaster build-ing a site with no staff or supportteam, do you have enough time todabble in AdSense, and does it pay?

Let’s find out.

The Nuts & Bolts

As long as there’s been a WorldWide Web, there’s been a problemwith ads. Most often it’s a problem ofquantity: There are just too many adsfor too little content on a given Webpage, and users who want nothing butinformation are hit with dozens of adsthat blink, shimmer, or pop up in an-noying windows. What’s more, theads are rarely relevant. A visit to aWeb site on puppies can give you adsabout cat food, French cuisine, or alow-rate mortgage.

Not so with AdSense. Google’s pro-gram lets you put relevant ads onyour Web site; ads that are aimed atyour viewers and the content theywant. And it lets you get paid forthem, too.

How? First is the AdSense ForContent program. Just sign up yourWeb site with Google, which spiders(or reads) the site and makes judg-ments about its content. Google thengives you a snippet of code that youdrop into a Web page on your site.That code will display ads tailored toyour site’s content, and you can putthose ads on as many or as few pagesas you like, in nearly any positionyou like. You can even choose the

The Ins & OutsOf AdSenseDepending On Your Web Site,

Google’s Ad Program Could Earn You Money

I f you’re reading this, you likelyhave a Web site.

And if you’re like millions of othercompanies (or just a single person)with a well-designed Web site, you mayhave spent weeks or even months inproduction, haggling with design-ers over the difference between aqua and teal, or dealing with coder-curmudgeons whose job is to makeyour site’s back-end sing. And after thelate nights and early mornings, the de-sign sessions and project managementmeetings, you’re left with a single, all-too-important question: How do Imake the Web site make money?

Enter Google, the rising star thathas everyone from Wall Street tomain street watching. Google’s Ad-Sense program, once the province ofbig companies with more than 20million page views per month, nowlets even the smallest of Web sitesmonetize their content by showingrelevant ads from the Google net-work. Google’s PR team even claimsthat AdSense could be the fastest (andsimplest) way to make your Web siteresemble a cash register.

And it may be right. After all, ittakes a phalanx of salesmen, book-keepers, designers, and programmersto find advertisers, sign them up,


shape, color, and size of the ads thatwill display to match your existingdesign. Google offers you 200 colorsand 24 preset palettes, but you canalso build your own palettes to en-sure that ads are displayed exactly asyou want them. As for size, visitwww.google.com/adsense/adformatsfor a sample of the format thatGoogle ads can take.

With AdSense For Search, thesecond AdSense program, you canadd a Google searchbox to your Web site.When users search on a keyword, theyview a results pagewith targeted ads thatmatch your site, thesearch term, or both,and you’re paid forthose ads.

You can use Ad-Sense For Contentand AdSense ForSearch on the sameWeb site. In fact,Google recommendsyou do so to bolsteryour earnings, sinceGoogle pays you forboth the number ofads displayed on yoursite (an impression)and the number oftimes they’re clicked(a click-through).

AdWords: TheBuilding Blocks

AdWords are theads that Google dis-plays on your Website, and no doubt

you’ve seen them before. In fact,anyone who’s done a Google searchhas seen AdWords: They’re dis-played in a vertical column on theright side of the results page. But un-like the ads on other Web sites,they’re modest and fairly unobtru-sive, and they tend to match thecontent of your search query.

How does Google make thatmatch? And how do you know theAdWords you show on your site will

be relevant? That, be-lieve it or not, is oneof the best-kept se-crets on the Internet.Google has a phalanxof linguists, mathe-maticians, statisti-cians, and high-endprogrammers whobuild the technologythat reads your Website and determines itscontent, but Googlekeeps mum on itsmagic formula. Itdoes, however, statethat keywords, place-ment, repetition, andeven your domainname are all part ofthe mix. For instance,a Web page that putsthe word “artichoke”six times at the top ofthe page will scorebetter for artichokecontent than one thatmentions the wordonly once at the bot-tom of the page.

If you’d like to seethe kind of ads thatGoogle will put on

your site, just use the free AdSenseWeb tool at www.about-adsense.com/adsense-web-tool.html. In theyellow The AdSense Web Tool box,enter your Web site in the searchfield, click the Show Me button, andyou’ll see a sample of ads that couldbe shown on your site. Google itselfoffers the AdSense Preview Tool toAdSense members. It lets you right-click your mouse on any Web pageand get a list of relevant keywords andads that might be shown with theAdSense program.

If you’re not satisfied with the adsthat AdSense puts on your page, takeheart: You can tweak the system togive you only the ads you want. Youcan even block competitive ads orchoose your own default ads, using anumber of little-known AdSense fea-tures such as the Competitive Filter(which lets you remove ads of yourcompetitors) and the ContextualFilter (which lets you fine-tuneGoogle’s sense of your site’s content,to keep the wrong ads from showingup in the first place). You can evenchoose a default ad that displays onyour Web site if Google can’t find oneto match your criteria.

How Long & How Much?

Once they know the basics, mostAdSense users ask the same two ques-tions: How long does it take to set up,and how much will I make?

Let’s tackle the first question. Ittakes about five minutes to sign upfor AdSense. Just point your browserto www.google.com/adsense andclick the button marked Click HereTo Apply. You’ll be asked to fill out a brief form with your name or


If you’d like to see the kind of ads that Google will put on your site,

just use the free AdSense Web tool at

www.about-adsense.com/adsense-web-tool.html.

Google has a special name foran advertisement: AdWord.Pictured above are AdWordsdisplayed on the results page ofa search for “iPod.” AdSensecounts the number of AdWordsshown on your Web site, as wellas the number of times a userclicks them, to determine howmuch to pay you each month.



company name, address, and otherbasics. Then you’ll enter your Website’s URL and choose a usernameand password for your account.Once you’re done, Google will re-view your application and approveor deny it within two days. (Googledenies sites that have illicit con-tent, such as pornographic material,drugs, or gambling.)

Once you’re approved, you’ll needto drop some Google code into yourWeb site. Simply log on to yourAdSense account and choose thesize, shape, and color of the adsyou’d like to show. Google will spitout a block of code that you cut andpaste into the HTML (HypertextMarkup Language) on your ownWeb site. If you’re not sure how todo this, you’ll need the help of agood Web designer to work the codeand make sure it’s done well.But don’t worry: It’s a simpletask that most designers can doin minutes.

With the code in place, Googlewill put AdWords on your Website at once, tracking the numberof times they’ve been viewed andclicked, which adds money toyour account.

How much money? That de-pends on a number of factors.First, sites with more traffic willbe paid more, since Google paysAdSense users for the number of impressions as well as thenumber of click-throughs.

And some ads pay more thanothers. Ads for iPods, for in-stance, may pay more than adsfor artichokes. (When was thelast time you ate one?) OnlyGoogle and the advertisersthemselves know the exact priceof an ad, which is always in fluxas Google auctions off searchterms and ad placements all day,every day through its Web site.And bear in mind that youwon’t get the full amount thatan advertiser pays for the displayof an ad on your site; it will be

split between you and Google in aratio that Google has yet to releaseto the public.

But there’s one thing that’s cer-tain with AdSense, and that’s whenyou’l l get paid. Like clockwork,Google will send you a check or anelectronic funds transfer within 30days of the end of the month inwhich your account balance is $100or greater.

The best way to know how big thatcheck will be—and in truth, the onlycertain way to do so—is to sign up forAdSense and start putting ads on yoursite. AdSense users can view theirearnings at any time by logging on to their account and choosing theReports tab. You’ll see a display of thenumber of impressions and clicks, theclick-through rate, and of course yourearnings to date.

AA dSense is by far the kingpin ofonline ad programs for small

and midsized Web sites (and somewould argue for large sites, as well).But it’s not the only game in town.There are dozens of other ad net-works that will trade you a fee for abit of on-screen real estate. Some ofthem include:

Tribal Fusion

TribalFusion serves 9 billionmonthly impressions on all kinds ofWeb sites, including marqueenames such as Apartments.com andThe Chicago Sun-Times. But toqualify for its program you musthave at least 2,000 unique users perday. (Google, by contrast, has nominimum user count.)

www.tribalfusion.com

MaxOnline

A division of rival search engineAskJeeves.com, MaxOnline workswith site publishers and email mar-keters. Members of their networkmust have 500,000 page impressionsper month.

www.maxonline.com

FastClick

FastClick pays up to a whopping65% of ad revenues directly to Website owners, and it asks for only 3,000page impressions per month. LikeGoogle’s AdSense, the FastClicksystem has tools that let you filterand exclude ads based on the rele-vance of their content.

www.fastclick.com

Google’s Not TheOnly Game In Town

You can format AdWords in a number of shapes,sizes, and colors to make them less obtrusive onyour Web page. Three common formats are shownabove. At the top is a banner that’s 468 x 60 pixels.On the bottom left is a button that’s 125 x 125pixels. And on the bottom right is perhaps the mostpopular format, known as a skyscraper. This versionof the skyscraper is 160 x 600 pixels.



Making The Most Of It

Once you know how to get moving,how can you make the most of Ad-Sense? To some, AdSense can seemless of a science and more of an art,and there are plenty of tricks to usingit well.

First, you should know that Ad-Sense won’t perform equally well forevery Web site. It works best on siteswith heavy traffic. (The more traffic,the more money you make.) Ofcourse, sites with heavy traffic aremost often sites with useful, freshcontent, so don’t expect a stale elec-tronic brochure that’s been onlinesince last quarter to bring in majordollars through AdSense.

Niche sites, on the other hand,tend to do well. Sites that talk aboutspecialized fields with an eager audi-ence are likely to have many viewers,be they neurologists or TibetanBuddhists. And of course, if yourniche site draws ads with high-payingkeywords, all the better.

Personal Web sites rarely do wellwith AdSense, unless they have a

stock of fresh content that draws largenumbers of users. And Google pro-hibits the use of AdSense on sites with“excessive” profanity or violence (adistinction that’s up to Google, notyou, to make) or the presence of anyform of bigotry. Content about illicitor even prescription drugs, hacking,and tobacco are verboten, as arepornography, gambling, or simply ex-cessive advertising and pop-ups thatexceed five windows per user session.

All this aside, you’ll benefit fromchoosing the right format for yourAdWords. Google claims that wideformats tend to work better than tallformats, since they let viewers read ablock of words or a whole ad withouthaving to scan down a page. The largerectangle format (336 x 280 pixels),the medium rectangle (300 x 250pixels), and the wide skyscraper (160x 600) are known to work best.

The Fine Print

As always, there are restrictions todeal with. You should know the basicsbefore you sign up for AdSense.

First, you can put up to three adunits on any page of your Web site.(For most site owners, of course,three is more than enough.) Andyou can put no more than twoAdSense For Search boxes on anyone page.

You can’t put a Google ad on anypage of your site that doesn’t displayuseful content, such as a contactscreen or a page that describes yourWeb site’s legal policy. Those may be useful to you, but Google wantsnothing to do with them. And you can’t put ads on pages that show nothing but ads. It’s a trickthat Google has long been wise to,and it can get you thrown out of AdSense.

Yes, you can sell other ads on yoursite—AdSense does not make an ex-clusive claim to your on-screen realestate—but you must let an AdWordlaunch a new window from your Website. In other words, people who clickan AdWord on your Web site willleave your Web site.

There are other restrictions, ofcourse. Among these is the ruleagainst using incentives that ask usersto click ads, including a “Visit OurSponsors” line that’s all too commonon the Web. Google insists on avoid-ing these techniques because it lowerstheir advertisers’ costs. And you can only label your ads with thewords “Advertisements” or “Spon-sored Links,” nothing else.

But apart from such restrictions,AdWords can be a useful and evenlucrative tool for your Web site. Itnot only pays you for ads you dis-play, but it also tends to display onlythose ads that users want to see,based on the nature of your content.In the end, that means you’re doingmore than making some money;you’re using Google to give users abetter Web site, and that’s a usefulpursuit indeed.

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ScienceDaily relies on Google’s AdSense for two-thirds of its revenue. Here, The Google AdWordsare shown with a red border for emphasis. The owners of ScienceDaily saw their revenue jump 10%when they moved the AdWords toward the top of the page.

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A productive company can nolonger be identified by scur-rying employees and the con-

tinual jangle of telephones. Today’swired workforces display their pro-ductivity by the steady click-clack ofkeyboards and, more tellingly, by thecreation of hundreds, if not thou-sands, of new documents every day.

But creating so many new docu-ments is only half of productivity.Without the ability to find relevantinformation and reference past workquickly, employees will be leftspending far too much time searchingfor what they need, rather than using

it to continue in their tasks. That’swhy Google introduced its DesktopSearch For Enterprise, a free tool thathelps employees find what they needon their own computers in a waythat’s similar to doing a search onGoogle (www.google.com).

The application grew out of GoogleDesktop, a Windows-based PC toolfor consumers that gives them easyaccess to information on their com-puters and from the Web. It can lookthrough email, computer documents,music, photos, instant messaging chatsessions, and Web pages that havebeen visited.

The search page looks like theGoogle page, with a single entry fieldwhere a user inputs keywords andthen gets relevant results that providelinks to the information. WithDesktop, a result might link to anemail, for example, and provide basicinformation about the sender, when itwas sent, and the subject line.

Google Desktop Search For Enter-prise has the same capability as theconsumer-oriented version, but withseveral features specifically geared forcompany use, such as enhanced secu-rity, centralized configuration, andeasy companywide installation.

How It Works

Find Google Desktop Search ForEnterprise at desktop.google.com/enterprise. After filling out a registrationform, you can download the applica-tion for free. The download includes aPDF file for administrators that’s de-signed to make installation easy on acomputer network.

Following its fairly quick installa-tion process, the application begins toindex files, so it can have them handyfor later searches. This is akin to goingthrough a company file room andlooking at every document in the cab-inets to know where each file folder is,what’s in it, and what content is in-cluded in those papers.

The time it takes for the indexingprocess depends on how much infor-mation is on a company network andhow much hard drive space is takenup by searchable files, so usersshouldn’t plan to download the soft-ware and begin using it immediately.For an indication of indexing time,users have reported that the processtends to take between three to fivehours for a 10-computer network.

Network admins can set the softwareto index only certain file types, if acompany is reluctant to peer into emailand Web history information. Oncethe selected files are indexed, Google isable to quickly tap in to that infor-mation and provide small snippets of

Google DesktopSearch ForEnterprise

Simplify Your Search For Documents, Emails & Web Sites


descriptions in its search results. To goback to the file room analogy, it’s likeasking someone that’s just evaluatedevery document what they know abouta certain letter, for example, and havingthem tell you who it’s from, when itwas sent, and which line in the letter isrelevant to your question.

Benefits For Users

Google has made sure to include alarge number of popular business filetypes and applications in the searchcapability, including Outlook, IBMLotus Notes, Outlook Express, Net-scape Mail, Mozilla Mail, and Thun-derbird. Business file types that can besearched include Word, Excel,PowerPoint, PDF, MP3, image, audio,and video files. The tool can lookthrough some sections of a company

intranet, but with much less capa-bility than using one of Google’s ap-pliances (see sidebar).

For recently viewed Web pages, thetool can look through Internet Explor-er, Netscape, Mozilla, and Firefox. Itdoesn’t cover the Safari browser fromApple or the Opera browser.

One limitation for the searches is inthe chat sessions. Because the enter-prise search tool can only look throughAIM (AOL Instant Messenger), com-panies that use Yahoo! or Microsoft’sMSN Messenger may find they havelimited search capability using the

desktop search tool. But it’s likely thatGoogle will be tweaking this part of thesoftware in the future because in lateAugust the company came out with itsown instant messaging and voice appli-cation called Google Talk.

Desktop Search For Enterprisesorts results in several ways. At thetop the page tells the user how manyemails, files, Web histories, and chatsa term appears in and then gives moredescription in subsequent listings. Forexample, a search for “sales presenta-tion” could bring up an AIM chatwith another employee, a page fromthe company intranet about confer-ence room booking schedules, or anemail announcement about an up-coming presentation. You can sort theresults either by date or relevance.

When combined with one ofGoogle’s search appliances, the Desk-

top Search For Enterpriseapplication can also tap into the Internet for search results or dig deeper in a company network andprovide a single page of re-sults that pull together in-formation from across harddrives, the intranet, and on-line resources.

Administrator Features

Where Desktop SearchFor Enterprise distinguishesitself as a corporate tool is inits administrative features,

which are designed to keep companyinformation secure and streamline im-plementation and maintenance.

Unlike the consumer-based DesktopSearch, which is installed by a singleuser for a single machine, the enter-prise version is meant to be distributedand updated from a central locationand configured by a Windows admin-istrator. It can be updated with patchesand new versions on the administra-tor’s computer and then pushed to em-ployee desktops through the network.

The application comes with aMicrosoft Windows Installer package,

which includes Microsoft GroupPolicy settings. These settings let asystems administrator—or anyone ata company that’s installing the soft-ware—put security controls in placeduring the indexing process. This isvital for protecting sensitive company


FF or companies that need moreadvanced search capabilities and

are willing to spend some money toachieve it, Google has stronger stuffwith the Google Mini appliance forsmall and medium-sized businessesand the Google Search Appliance forlarge companies.

Both appliances function in a waythat’s similar to Google DesktopSearch For Enterprise but with muchmore power and search functions thatare specifically geared for company in-tranets and internal documents.

One immediately noticeable waythat the appliances differ fromDesktop is that they are appliances,rather than software. This meansthey are both pieces of hardware,each looking similar to a small pizzabox, that are hooked up directly to acompany’s network hardware.

Because everything that’s neededfor searching is in this appliance, itgives a company greater capabilitythan software, which has to be down-loaded and installed on every com-puter or accessed from a central pointon the network. With the appliance,Google searches become integratedwith the network and can thereforelook more deeply into its nooks andcrannies to find information.

The appliances differ from eachother in how much they search, andtheir cost. The Google Mini cansearch up to 100,000 documentsand costs $2,995, while the GoogleSearch Appliance starts at $30,000for searching 500,000 documentsand can be scaled up in cost and ca-pability to the point of searching 15million documents. ❙

Advanced Search

After indexing the hard drive, Google Desktop Search ForEnterprise can locate files and identify if they’re emails,viewed Web pages, or other kinds of documents.



information that’s at differentlevels. After all, making salary in-formation that’s in the networkavailable to anyone who does asearch isn’t quite what manycompanies have in mind whenthey want to boost employee pro-ductivity through file searching.

User preferences can be cen-trally managed by Group Policyso that certain intranet pages areblocked from indexing or only se-cure Web pages can be accessedduring a history search.

Even if there are multiple userson the same computer, which hap-pens often with interns, part-timeemployees, or centrally locatedworkstations, the settings can betweaked according to user, not tothe machine. So even if Billy theintern and Greta the accountingassistant use the same computer,she would be able to search on fi-nancial documents, but he wouldbe blocked from seeing them aspart of his search results.

Administrators are also able tocreate search tabs for their DesktopSearch For Enterprise applications.These tabs appear at the top of asearch page and include locationsto search, such as Web, Images,Groups, Local, and Desktop. If an ad-ministrator notices a large number ofsearches that lead users to the intranet,for instance, she may want to add asearch tab that relates specifically tothat area of the network, so users canchoose to search only the intranet, andnot hard drives and chat transcripts, byfirst clicking that tab and then enteringtheir search term.

The search application can also beintegrated with one of Google’s searchappliances (see sidebar) and providethe same level of security, but with abroader swath of search results thatcan access more of the network.

Support Service

Although Desktop For Enterprise isfree to download, there is a premium

support package available for $20,000per year for an unlimited number ofusers. Google notes that many com-panies sign up for the support serviceso employees can get immediate help,without having to put in a request forassistance from the IT department orstruggle through Google adminis-trator documentation on their own.

With premium support, companiesare guaranteed quick response fromGoogle Desktop Search experts, aswell as access to a support site specifi-cally geared toward the enterprise edi-tion. The support site can be usefulfor IT managers as well as users, sinceit provides in-depth technical detailthat helps users tweak the softwareand make the most of their searches.

The premium support fee alsogrants membership to a robust userforum, where employees can interact

with their counterparts at othercompanies who are also usingGoogle’s desktop search tools.

For IT the support package ishandy as well because you’re no-tified about new Desktop Searchreleases, which lets the IT depart-ment test versions before de-ploying them companywide.

Looking Ahead

In terms of where Google isgoing with its Desktop Search ForEnterprise, the company pointsto a major update to its privateuser software, now called GoogleDesktop 2, which was revampedin August.

The update is geared towardmaking Desktop easier to use andto make it possible for users to getinformation without searching.The company compares it to apersonal Web assistant that learnsabout your habits and interestsand then presents Web pages,news stories, and photos it thinksyou’ll be interested in.

The results come up in a smallbox called the Sidebar on theuser’s Desktop, arranged by cate-

gory. For example, email alerts frompersonal contacts are in one section,while news headlines have their ownsection, and Web video clips can beaccessed from another section.

The Desktop 2 refreshed featuresaren’t yet available in the enterpriseedition, but Google notes that glancingthrough the tweaks in Desktop 2 willgive users a good idea of where the en-terprise edition is headed.

As employees create more docu-ments, their hard drives filling up withpresentations, spreadsheets, emails,and company news, the ability tosearch through all the data will be-come increasingly important, makingGoogle Desktop Search For Enterprisea valuable way to pick relevant needlesout of very large haystacks.

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The Desktop Search For Enterprise tool comes with an extensive administrator’s guide that goes into great detail on security, access, and setting information.

Google lets you know how much of the hard drive has beenindexed and how many files are included in the process.

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Google’s use of tar-geted advertisinghelped turn themillions of daily

Google visitors into bil-lions of dollars. If Google’somnipresence isn’t proofenough of its success, con-sider that Microsoft’s CEO,Steve Ballmer, recentlysaid his company onlyneeded $29 billion in ad-vertising and possibly “afew years” to beat Googlein the search engine mar-ket. With the acquisition ofthe Urchin Software Cor-poration, Google is out to helpbusinesses target their advertisingand optimize their Web content.Whether your Web site’s goal is to at-tract customers or provide informa-tion, Urchin can take the anonymityout of your Web site’s traffic.

Before Google

Google agreed to acquire UrchinSoftware Corporation in March ofthis year, but dozens of high-profilecompanies were already using Ur-chin’s Web site reporting technology,such as British Telecom, Paramount,Symantec, and NBC. Even the U.S.House of Representatives was usingUrchin to gauge traffic on www.house.gov and other associated governmentpages. Not much has changed sinceGoogle’s acquisition. Urchin still of-fers its Web site analysis tools as botha service that companies can sub-scribe to and as a downloadable soft-ware package.

Build A Better Web Site

If you’ve spent any time scouringthe Web for specific information or aproduct you’re not sure exists, thenyou’ve no doubt seen your share ofpoorly-designed Web pages that werefrustrating to navigate. Web sitesdon’t have a built-in mechanism forreporting how easy it is for users tofind the information they’re lookingfor. Rather than relying on the intu-ition of a Web designer or marketingprofessional, companies like Urchinoffer Web site analytics software andservices that can help a company de-termine the effectiveness of a Web siteor advertising campaign.

Analytics software and services offeradvertisers and Web site owners a detailed record and interpretation of every visitor’s experience whilebrowsing a company’s Web page. The

company can use this information toimprove the customer’s Web browsingexperience. For instance, if the Webanalysis software reports that 90% of agiven Web page’s visitors are leavingbefore ever seeing a single product,then the company might consider in-troducing a few of the more popularproducts on the home page. This isjust one of the many ways in whichcompanies can make sure they get the

most for their advertising dollars.

Urchin 6 On Demand

The primary goal of anycompany that has a retailpresence on the Internet isto attract visitors to the siteand convert those visitorsinto customers. Urchin’sOn Demand service, thelatest version of Urchin’sWeb analytics offering,provides more than 80 re-ports encompassing ecom-

merce development, visitortracking, marketing campaign

results, search engine mar-keting, and navigational analysis.

Companies can use Urchin 6 OnDemand’s reports to track their cus-tomers and visitors from the momentthey are directed to the site (via searchengines, links, banner ads, keywords,and emails) to the moment they leave.

Who’s who. Urchin 6 On Demandfeatures more than 13 visitor trackingreports that can help you learn moreabout your customers. The servicecompiles data about the behaviors ofyour site’s visitors and then ratesthose visitors. The best visitors arethe ones that become recurring cus-tomers. By revealing the habits ofthese visitors, you can tailor your siteto attract more of them and ulti-mately increase revenue.

Urchin records and reports the visi-tors’ click paths so that you can deter-mine which links are the most effectiveand which ones don’t generate a lot oftraffic. You can also use Urchin’s ser-vice to segment your visitors. If your

Delve Deep With Urchin

Analyze Your Web Traffic For Fun & Profit


Web site asks visitors to supply datasuch as job title, age, or any other per-sonal information, the software cancalculate which types of visitors be-come your best customers. Urchin cantrack your visitors’ activities based ontheir language, browser, and connec-tion speed. These visitor tracking fea-tures can also help a company developa marketing strategy that aims to targeta specific type of Web user.

Progress report. Urchin 6 OnDemand includes reports that keeptrack of your paid, organic (unpaid),and keyword search results. Based onyour advertising budget, this featurecan report on several items, such asROI (return on investment), cost perclick, and revenue per click. SinceGoogle’s acquisition, Urchin hasadded the ability to import pay-per-click costs directly from Google’sAdWords accounts. You can also com-pare your results within customizabledate ranges to learn how a new mar-keting or design strategy is working.

For many online businesses, Websites serve as the only way that cus-tomers can access their products or ser-vices. Urchin 6 On Demand features ahost of reports that can rate various el-ements of your site. For instance, youcan determine how well your landingpage (or home page) directs visitors toyour products. Urchin also details thenumber of times a visitor reaches yourlanding page and then leaves withoutviewing any other pages. This “bouncerate” can help you find the weak linksin your Web presence, so you can ad-dress the problem.

Take a spin. When you sign up forUrchin 6 On Demand, all you need todo is register a new account from the Web site and then follow the in-structions to insert the UTM (UrchinTracking Module) at the top of everyHTML (Hypertext Markup Lan-guage, a kind of computer languagethat tells a Web browser how to dis-play Web pages) page on your site.You simply copy the __Utm.js file tothe main directory of your Web siteand then insert a line of HTML code


You can access your Urchin account from any computer connected to the Internet.

near the head of each of your site’spages. Once you’ve finished updatingyour pages, you’re ready to viewUrchin 6 On Demand’s reports.

As we went to press, Urchin was of-fering a free 30-day trial of Urchin 6On Demand. In May Google an-nounced that it was slashing the OnDemand pricing from $495 per monthto $199 per month for up to 100,000page views (viewable report screens).You can also purchase additional pageviews at $99 per million.

Urchin 5 Profit Suite

Urchin offers several of its re-porting tools for download as sepa-rate modules; however, the Urchin 5Profit Suite combines three of themost popular modules and offersthem for a one-time fee of $4,995.The Urchin 5 Profit Suite consists ofthe Urchin Base Module, the E-Commerce Module, and the Cam-paign Tracking Module.

The Urchin 5 Profit Suite providescustomers with more than simple“counters” that log each new IP(Internet Protocol) address (a uniquecomputer address for a PC connectedto the Internet) as it accesses your site.Urchin’s Base Module reports visitor,session, and page view counts, as well

as each unique visitor, the visitor’s clickpaths, first-time visitors, returning visi-tors, and frequently returning visitors,similarly to Urchin 6 On Demand.

Urchin developed the E-CommerceModule with online businesses inmind. This module analyzes yourecommerce site’s revenues both byproduct and by quantity. You can alsosee what percentage of your total rev-enue is coming from customers re-ferred to your site by specific searchterms and domains. The E-CommerceModule lets you tailor your site to allthe right markets by revealing whereyour customers are coming from, bycountry, state, and city. A few of the E-Commerce Module’s reports includerevenue by region, ecommerce sum-mary, and revenue by search engines.

Any successful business knows thatthe best customers come from adver-tising that is tailored to attract specificbuyers. The Campaign TrackingModule is Urchin’s tool for deter-mining the effectiveness of your mar-keting plan. If you use keywords,banner ads, and email campaigns toget the word out about your prod-uct or service, Urchin’s CampaignTracking Module can reveal thestrategies that work, so you can elimi-nate those that don’t. Use the soft-ware to set traffic goals and then



check to see how often your goals arebeing met. Urchin’s CampaignTracking Module can also help youidentify and prevent click fraud—scams that artificially inflate the clickrates of pay-per-click advertisements.

Both Urchin 6 On Demand and theUrchin 5 Profit Suite are compatiblewith multiple operating systems, in-cluding Windows 2000/2003/NT/XP,Mac OS X, UNIX/Linux, and Cobalt.You can also export Urchin’s charts,graphs, and spreadsheets into Word,Excel, and XML documents.

A Second Opinion

Urchin isn’t the only Web analyticsvendor out there. Google has its fingersin a lot of pies, but for a taste of some-thing decidedly not Google, check outthese companies and their offerings.

ClickTracks. ClickTracks (www.clicktracks.com) offers its analyticssoftware in three tiers: ClickTracksAnalyzer, ClickTracks Optimizer, andClickTracks Pro. ClickTracks mainlyfocuses on selling software for a one-time fee; however, you can pay $49 amonth to get ClickTracks AnalyzerHosted. Unlike Urchin, you’ll need todownload the ClickTracks Viewer tothe computer’s Desktop in order toview the hosted reports.

Similar to Urchin’s offerings, Click-Tracks Analyzer categorizes visitors toyour site based on various factors, suchas the keyword they used to find yoursite, the amount of time they spent onyour site, and from which page theyexit. Urchin’s reports can show youyour visitors’ click paths. However, theClickTracks Analyzer features Naviga-tion Report movies, which let you seeexactly how the visitors navigated yoursite. The ClickTracks Optimizer takesthe features included in the Analyzerapplication and adds Robot Reports,integrated email tracking, extra user li-censes, and the ability to track customadvertising campaigns. ClickTracksPro includes the features of theAnalyzer and Optimizer applications,but adds the Custom ROI (return on

investment) Analysis, aCampaign Managertool, Revenue Focus re-ports, and also searchengine reports.

You can purchase aClickTracks Analyzersingle user license for$495, while a three-userlicense for ClickTracksOptimizer costs $1,195.The ClickTracks Prosingle server license startsat $2,995.

Metasun. Metasun(www.metasun.com) isa Web analysis softwarepackage that lets you ac-cess your statistics andreports from any com-puter connected to the Internet. Theapplication can track the same typesof content that Urchin tracks, in-cluding Web pages, file downloads,and multimedia files. Like Urchin,Metasun’s reports can help you deter-mine which advertising campaigns,specific links, or site revisions are de-livering sales, subscriptions, registra-tions, and return visits. Metasun alsolets you categorize your visitors intouser-definable demographics, whichcan help you get the most out of youradvertising budget.

Metasun’s Web site lets you down-load MetaTraffic Lite 2.11, which is a30-day trial version that features sup-port for tracking Web pages, down-loads, and multimedia files, as well asMS Access, SQL Server, and MySQLdatabase support. MetaTraffic Lite alsoincludes secure multiple-user access to the report generator, CSV format export, print preview of reports,graphing, and full Web-based configu-ration. You’ll need to upgrade toMetaTraffic Pro in order to get ad cam-paign tracking, Web site action track-ing, drill down reporting, and freeemail support. According to the licenseagreement, any commercial site thatchooses to use MetaTraffic Lite mustregister it after the 30-day trial has ex-pired. A MetaTraffic Pro 2.1 license for

one Web site costs $50,and a five Web site li-cense costs $125.

OneStat.com. Ur-chin’s software takes amodular approach, sobusinesses can purchasethe features they need.OneStat offers softwarebased specifically on thesize of the business.From www.onestat.com,you can access free trialsand demos of each ofOneStat’s offerings.

OneStat Enterpriseand Platinum are designed for me-dium-sized to large organizations andcost $3,400 per year and $1,870 peryear, respectively. OneStat eBusiness,Premium, and Pro are all aimed atsmall to medium-sized businesses andstart at $560, $275, $125, respectively.OneStat AdWorks, like Urchin’s prod-ucts, lets you track your online adver-tising campaigns, sales, and visitoractivity for your Web site. Both Urchinand OneStat’s products deliver reportson other traffic sources, includingsearch engines, banner advertisements,text links, email campaigns, and affil-iate campaigns. OneStat offers a four-week trial of AdWorks, after whichyou’ll have to pay $467 per year.

OneStat differs from Urchin in thatit offers some services for free. OneStatBasic is a free Web site counter that re-ports who and how many people visityour site, where the visitors came from,which pages they looked at, and whattype of information they seem inter-ested in. OneStat Basic also reports thetimes of the day, days of the week, andmonths of the year when your site’svisitors are the most active. You candownload OneStat Basic by visitingwww.onestat.com/aspx/signup.aspxand clicking Sign Up Immediately.


Urchin provides dozensof MarketingOptimization reports.

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BeyondClassified Ads

Google Ad Professionals

AdWords are highly targeted ads thatappear based upon the keywords andphrases users search for. They’re text-only, reflecting Google’s ongoing com-mitment not to invade their users’workspace with obtrusive advertising.Appearing on the top and/or right sideof the search results page, the sectionsthat display AdWords advertisementsare always clearly identified as“Sponsored Links.”

As noted, these advertisements aredesigned to reach searchers who aremore likely to have an interest in theproduct being advertised. A user whosearches for hair brush, for example,will see AdWords advertisements thatare relevant. Such narrow targeting re-sults in marketing campaigns that are

far more effective than the “shotgun”approach of blanketing theInternet with ads without re-

gard to demographics, and theadvertiser only pays when someone

actually clicks the ad. That’s the goodnews. The bad news is that creating anAdWords campaign that works in acost effective manner isn’t always assimple as plugging in a list of keywordsand hoping for the best. Sometimeshelp is needed, help from professionalswho understand the complexities ofreaching and motivating today’s more-savvy-than-ever online audience.

Pros To The Rescue

In November 2004 Google an-nounced the inception of its GoogleAdvertising Professionals program(www.adwords.google.com/select/ProfessionalWelcome), opening up a newworld of assistance to advertisers whoaren’t comfortable managing theirown campaigns.

Not every advertiser needs a GoogleAd Pro; many advertisers handle theirown AdWords accounts. To under-stand the challenge, we’ll look at theprocess of setting up a Google Ad-Words campaign.

The first screen in setting up anAdWords campaign requires choos-ing a geographic target, which can be

By the time Google (www.google.com) arrived on theInternet search landscape,major players such as Ya-

hoo! and AltaVista had already builtstrong positions in the Internet searcharena. More than a few people cast aho-hum glance toward “just anothersearch engine.” That didn’t last long,of course, as Google roared quickly toa dominant position that has thus farbeautifully endured. The robust andrelevant results produced in Googlesearches were (and are) a key factor inits success, but there is anotherGoogle element that has alwaysplayed an important role.

While other search engines pep-pered users with advertising, ranging

from subtle to intrusive, Google re-fused to join the pack. From DayOne, the Google interface has been athing of simple beauty: clean and airyscreens decorated only by the colorfulcompany logo. No banners. No pop-ups. No multimedia presentationsthat fly in and dominate the field ofview. Just a straightforward search in-terface that generates arguably thebest results on the Internet.

Google is, however, a business thatmust sell something in order to sur-vive. Enter AdWords, an advertisingprogram that advertisers can managethemselves or have managed for them.The latter is available through theGoogle Advertising Professionals program, the focus of this article.


anything from a certain city to mul-tiple countries.

Moving forward, AdWords usersmust choose appropriate keywords.The ad will display when these key-words or phrases are a part of a user’ssearch. This looks simple enough on its face. However, choosing thebest keywords for marketing efforts involving more complex productsand multiple products can be muchmore difficult.

The deeper we move into theprocess of designing a cam-paign, the more complex theoptions. AdWords is a PPCprogram (pay-per-click: an ad-vertising model in which adver-tisers only pay when a userclicks the ad’s link to their site).PPC advertising is a dynamic,rapidly changing marketplace,and the settings entered herecan literally make or break acampaign. For example, twoimportant parameters in theAdWords program are CPC andCTR. CPC stands for cost-per-click; an advertiser can specifythe amount he is willing to payfor each click-through to the site,although he must pay at least 5 cents.CTR, or click-through rate, is the per-centage of ad views that generate aclick-through. In the AdWords model,advertisers who are willing to pay morefor each click-through will receivemore views and better placement onthe Google search results page. So, aCPC that is set too low may not gen-erate a sufficient CTR to be a viablecampaign. Conversely, an excessivemaximum CPC setting may generate ahigh CTR, but the higher costs mayrender the campaign ineffective. If auser doesn’t understand this process orif a user already has a campaign up andrunning that isn’t generating the ex-pected results, it may be time to bringin reinforcements.

Google has done a nice job of settingup an interface that’s easy to under-stand and easy to use, but the sim-plicity is, in some cases, only skin-deep,

concealing an underlying complexity.Setting the maximum CPC too high ortoo low can result in such a poor ROI(return on investment) that the adver-siting campaign isn’t viable. By con-trast, hitting that perfect combinationof figures can dramatically increase anadvertisement’s response rate and thesubsequent profitability of the cam-paign. How is this perfect combinationdefined? Short answer: There is noshort answer. Different products re-quire different approaches, and these

approaches may be best understood bysomeone who understands the intrica-cies of online marketing.

Google Ad Pros fills essentially the same role as conventional adver-tising agents and consultants whohelp their clients craft effective mar-keting campaigns across a variety ofnon-Internet media. In fact, manyGoogle Ad Pros do indeed offer com-plete campaign management for their clients, encompassing both online and offline media. Some areseasoned consultants, with years ofexperiencing directing marketing ef-forts. Others are relative newcomerslooking to make a name as a mar-keting professional.

Straight From The Source

To get a better feel for the programand what these consultants have to

offer, we spoke with Andreas Ramosof Creative Consultants Group, amarketing consulting firm based inPalo Alto, Calif. When Google an-nounced the Ad Pros program inNovember 2004, Ramos was one ofthe first hundred people to earnGoogle’s designation of QualifiedAdvertising Professional, a quasi-cer-tification. This designation requiresthe consultant, among other things,to pass a test that demonstrates acommanding understanding of the

Google AdWords process.According to Ramos, even

though the Ad Pros program isfairly new, it’s already a majorpart of the service package hisfirm offers to clients. He at-tributes a great part of his suc-cess as a Google Ad Pro to thefact that he has earned the“Qualified” designation.

“It’s a great credential,”Ramos said. “We’ve gottenquite a few clients because of

that. On the Web anyone canclaim whatever they want, andit’s nearly impossible to know ifsomeone really understandsGoogle AdWords. With Google’s

certification clients know that I under-stand the tools.”

When we asked him to tell us why aclient should use a service like his asopposed to going it alone, he said,“Because PPC is extremely complex. .. . We’ve worked with so many com-panies, from one-person shops all theway to billion-dollar corps, in manymarkets. . . . We learned what doesn’twork and what works.”

Ramos also talked about the ac-cess he enjoys as a successful Ad Proand how that access enables him tobetter serve his clients. For example,if an individual client running asingle AdWords account encounterssome difficulty with his campaign, itcan take days or perhaps even weeksto resolve the situation. This is not anegative comment on Google. In aperfect world, a company’s smallestcustomer would enjoy the same level


This is the interface that Google has ridden to success thus far. Its search technology is crucial, butthe sparse design of this home page has also createdmany a loyal fan for the company.



of service as its largest, but we don’tlive in a perfect world, and we surelydon’t operate in a perfect businessworld. Companies are usually forcedby practicality to deal with largercustomers first.

“We have high-level account repsthat service only large accounts, so wecan get things fixed right away,” saidRamos. “We hear about tools, so wecan suggest appropriate technologiesto clients, and we know that the toolswill work, thus preventing expensiveand time-consuming experimenting.”

Meritocracy In Action

In many ways the Internet hasplayed the role of equalizer, and thisprogram could certainly be consid-ered an example. Advertising con-sultants who may not have the experience of Ramos can enter theprogram, work hard, and earn the“Qualified” label. The steps to the“Qualified” level are:

• Manage at least one AdWords ac-count for 90 days.

• Spend at least $1,000 total across allmanaged accounts.

• Pass the Google AdvertisingProfessional Examination.

Achieving this status wil l notguarantee success as an advertisingconsultant, of course, but it lets a

consultant demonstrate a level ofcompetency to potential clients.

The Process

The actual ad campaign manage-ment process is handled in Google’stypically straightforward fashion. Oncean advertiser and an Ad Pro reachagreement on how the account(s) willbe managed, the advertiser furnishesthe Ad Pro with the login credentialsnecessary to access the advertiser’s ac-count, if an AdWords account alreadyexists for that advertiser. If an adver-tiser is brand new to the AdWordsprogram, he or she may want the AdPro to handle everything, includinginitial setup of the account.

The Ad Pro can link all his advertiserclients under a single master username,which lets the Ad Pro log in once andhave access to the accounts for all hisclients. Each client also retains access tohis individual accounts through hisown original login credentials.

Using this linked set ofcl ient accounts, the AdPro can move easily be-tween clients, configuringevery aspect of the vari-ous AdWords campaigns,from defining keywords,to setting up the ideal CPCparameters, to reports thatgauge the performance ofeach campaign across abroad array of metrics.

Money Matters

Ad Pros offer different ratesand different ways of calcu-lating those rates. Some work

by the hour. Some, like Ramos, workon a percentage of the amount of ad-vertising bought. The key thing to re-member is that Google has no positionin this element. All such agreementsare negotiated completely between anAd Pro and his clients. Google makesno recommendations and offers nostandards as to what the Ad Prosshould charge. The advertiser should

always do his homework before en-tering into a contract with an Ad Pro,and certainly before paying an Ad Pro.For example, can the Ad Pro providepast clients as references? If the Ad Prois new, are they offering something elsethat increases the value of her services,such as introductory rates? In anyevent, the advertiser needs to clearlyunderstand what he’s paying for.

Google sells its own AdWordsproduct, and payment for the ads takesplace directly between the advertiserand Google. But Google does not servein a collection capacity at all for AdPros. It will be incumbent upon eachAd Pro to set up a mechanism to re-ceive payment from their clients.

Bottom Line

Marketing, whether through Ad-Words or any other media, is an essen-tial component of any business. Anexciting aspect of PPC advertisingthrough providers such as Google is thefact that it is so flexible, pliant enoughthat almost any size business can par-take. Google, Yahoo!, and other 21st-century media outlets offer a way forthe tiniest business to target their idealcustomers, and to do so on a national,or even global, level. The Ad Pros pro-gram extends this access by letting ad-vertisers enlist help in crafting moreeffective online marketing campaigns.

“For nearly every client,” Ramossays, “Google AdWords producesbetter results than other PPC services.But we’ve found that for a few clients,Yahoo! PPC works better. The onlyway to know is to test both servicesand go with the one that works better.”

For many businesses, the Google AdProfessionals program can enhancetheir online opportunities. And as isoften the case, those opportunities runin both directions. Advertising consul-tants may find that the program offersa perfect opportunity for them to ex-pand an existing business or to create anew one from scratch.

BBYY JJEERRRRYY HHAATTCCHHEETTTT

AdWords advertisements appear at the top and/orright side of the Google search results page. TheSponsored Links tags distinguish the ads from standard nonpaid search results.

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• intitle—searches for Web pages thatcontain a particular word in its title

• index.of—searches for the directorylisting of a Web site, which oftenhas the title “Index of” near the topof the page

• (Software name)—searches for aparticular Web server programname, such as Microsoft IIS 6.0 orApache 2.2

Search Specific Web Sites

Another powerful Google searchingtool is the site operator, which nar-rows your search to a specific Website domain (the name of a Web site,such as www.smartcomputing.com)such as:

site:Domain name (Search term)

• site—searches for Web pages storedon specific domain sites

• Domain name—searches Web sitesthat belong to a specific domainsuch as .edu or army.mil

• (Search term)—searches a domainfor a specific word or phrase

While this can be useful to find in-formation on specific types of Websites, such as looking for informationabout “terrorism” on all .gov Web sitedomains, the real power of the site op-erator appears when combined withthe intitle operator. The combinationof the intitle and site operators cansearch certain Web site domains run-ning specific Web server programs.

So, if you know how to break intoan Apache Web server and you wantto know which U.S. Army Web sitesmight be running the Apache Webserver, you could use the followingquery, which would display a listingas shown in Figure 1:

site:army.mil intitle:index.of apache

Once you know which of your tar-geted Web sites run specific versionsof a Web server program (such asApache 1.3), use Google once more tosearch for Apache vulnerabilities or asimilar string to view information


Google HackingHow Hackers Use Google

To Invade Web Sites

Everyone knows that Googlecan find practically anythingon the Internet. Google canhelp you find the best Carib-

bean restaurants in your neighbor-hood or Web sites that sell antique caraccessories, but in the skilled hands ofa hacker, Google can also find Websites that contain easily exploitableflaws, sensitive files that system ad-ministrators may not want revealed tothe public, and even password and ac-count information to all users on aparticular system. Google can notonly search the Internet, but it canalso pry it apart.

Casing A Web Site

The key to breaking into any com-puter is to learn what type of softwarea target computer runs. It’s possibleto obtain this information by con-necting directly to a target computerand running one of many hackerprograms that probe a computer’sperimeter, much like a burglar

peeking through the windows of ahouse that he plans to break into. Itmay work, but connecting directly toa computer risks alerting a targetcomputer that it’s being cased andalso leaves a potential trail that couldlead back to the hacker.

So rather than take this risk, hackerssimply let Google find this informationfor them. Not only does this keep thehacker’s identity hidden, but it alsoprevents the target from knowing it’sbeing probed by a hacker.

The key to finding out the type ofsoftware running on a Web site is toexamine its directory listing, whichreveals both the way the Web site or-ganizes its files and the name of theWeb server software running thatparticular Web site.

To search for Web sites that runspecific Web server programs, searchfor the name of the software you wantto find, such as Microsoft IIS 5.0 orRed Hat Server 3.0 using the fol-lowing query:

intitle:index.of (Software name)


about known flaws in that particularWeb server program. Rather than useGoogle to search for software flaws,you can also browse through com-puter security sites, such as Packetstormsecurity.org and CERT.org, thatlist the latest software vulnerabilitiesfound in Web servers.

Such security bulletins are meant toalert system administrators to flawsthat they should patch immediately.However, many system administra-tors either never see these bulletins ordon’t implement them right away. Asa result, many hackers use securitybulletins to find vulnerable Web sites.

For example, suppose you find asecurity bulletin that identifies a flawin Apache and recommends that usersupgrade to Apache version 1.3.27.Armed with this information, you justhave to search for any Web site run-ning an earlier version of Apache.Once you find a Web site running apre-1.3.27 version of Apache, you’llknow that this Web site is likely vul-nerable to the specific security flawdescribed in the security bulletin. Inmany cases, security bulletins can bejust as helpful to hackers as they are tosystem administrators.

Probing A Web Site’s Defenses

Naturally, security is a major con-cern for Web masters, so it’s likelythat a particular Web site will defenditself against hackers in some way.


FFiigguurree 22:: By searching for a security scanner report, you can learn what holes mightstill be open on a particular Web server.

At the simplest level, system ad-ministrators may run a securityscanner on their own sites to probefor holes. When a security scannerprobes a system, it often creates a re-port for the system administrators tostudy. Naturally, many system ad-ministrators never delete these secu-rity scanner reports, so you can useGoogle to look for these files usingthe intitle operator. Once you knowthe heading that a security scanneralways stores on its reports, you canuse Google to search for those par-ticular files.

For example, one popular securityscanner is Nessus (www.nessus.org),which you can search for using the fol-lowing query:

intitle:“Scanner header” To look for Nessus security scan-

ner reports, the Scanner header is“Nessus Scan Report” such as shownin Figure 2:

intitle:”Nessus Scan Report” “Thisfile was generated by Nessus”

FFiigguurree 11:: By using the iinnttiittllee and ssiittee keywords, you can determine if a certain Website runs a particular Web server program.

Even if any vulnerabilities reportedby a security scanner report have beenclosed, a security scanner report canhelp hackers understand the defensesof a target computer better. Becausesecurity scanners can’t detect everypossible exploit, they can even givelazy system administrators a falsesense of security. If a knowledgeablehacker knows of a security flaw that ascanner didn’t detect, the system ad-ministrator probably didn’t detect thatflaw either, so there’s a good chancethat the flaw can be exploited.

Besides security scanners, manysystem administrators rely on intru-sion detection systems, such as thepopular Snort (www.snort.org). Tocreate reports, Snort users often canrun a program called SnortSnarf.

Once again, if system administratorsdon’t delete the SnortSnarf files fromtheir systems, Google can help hackersfind them by simply searching for“SnortSnarf alert page.” Not only canthis alert hackers that a particular Website is running an intrusion detectionsystem, but the SnortSnarf report canalso show the types of attacks that otherhackers have tried (and presumablyfailed) as shown in Figure 3.

Combine the “SnortSnarf alertpage” query with the site operator,and you can search for which types ofWeb domains are running the Snortintrusion detection program, such as:

site:edu snortsnarf alert page

The above query tells Google tosearch for all educational Web sites(.edu) that have used the SnortSnarfprogram to create a report.



Finding & Copying Files

Sometimes hackers don’teven need to break into acomputer to find what theywant. Many system adminis-trators store user account in-formation (such as namesand passwords) in specialdatabase files. Naturally, thesedatabase files aren’t accessiblethrough normal Web pages,but such a file isn’t invisibleto Google’s prying eyes.

Lazy system administrat-ors often use the default set-tings when setting up theirWeb server’s software. Hackersknow these default settings, aswell, which can tell a hackerthe specific name of a file that con-tains user account information andwhere it’s usually stored.

To find a specific file, you need toknow the filename and then useGoogle’s allinurl search operator tofind it. Once hackers download theseaccount or password files to their owncomputers, they can happily try tocrack them open, all within the safetyand comfort of their own PCs. Oncehackers find the user accounts andpasswords they need, they can returnto a target computer, armed with thisinformation, and slip right in as a “le-gitimate” user.

Sometimes hackers may not knowthe exact filename they want to find,but they do know the extension of thefile they’re looking for, such as aWord document (.DOC file exten-sion) or an Excel spreadsheet (.XLSfile extension). To search for specificfile types, hackers can use the filetypeGoogle search operator. So if youwanted to find all Microsoft Worddocuments that contain the phrase“for internal use only,” you could usethis query:

filetype:doc “for internal use only”

Combine the filetype operator withthe site operator, and you can searchfor all Microsoft Word documents

that contain “for internal use only”on military Web sites running ApacheWeb servers, with known flaws in ver-sions 1.3, and . . . can you see howdangerous Google hacking can be inthe wrong hands?

Guarding Against Google Hackers

If you’re a system administratorwho wants to defend against Googlehackers, keep any sensitive files offyour Web server. Just because a filecan’t be accessed through your site’sWeb pages doesn’t mean that ahacker can’t find that file anyway.Don’t think you’ll be safe even if youjust store a sensitive file on a Website temporarily.

Search engines, such as Google,constantly troll Web sites and storethe files they find in temporarystorage called the cache. Once yourWeb site’s files are stored in Google’scache, anyone can view those files byusing the cache operator. For ex-ample, if you want to view Web pagespreviously displayed on a Web site,just use the cache operator followedby the Web site address, such as:

cache:cnn.com

The above Google query will showyou the previously seen Web pages

stored on the CNN.com site.These pages will remain inGoogle’s cache until the nexttime Google refreshes itscache by visiting CNN.com.

Google, like most searchengines that regularly “crawl”the Internet to find Web sitesto index, follows certain ruleswhen visiting Web sites. Oneof those rules is that Web siteadministrators can create aspecial robots.txt file, whichdefines which parts of yourWeb site you don’t want thesearch engine to explore andstore in its cache. So if there

are sensitive files that you don’twant others to see, you cancreate a robots.txt file to tell

Google not to search for them. (Ofcourse, it’s much safer not to put sen-sitive files on the Web server com-puter in the first place.) To learnmore about how the robots.txt fileworks, visit www.robotstxt.org.

For another alternative, you can re-quest that Google ignore your Website altogether. While this can elimi-nate hackers from scanning your site,it also keeps legitimate users fromfinding it, too. To request that Googleremove your site from its index,follow the steps listed at www.google.com/remove.html, which providesinstructions for removing some or allof your Web site from Google’sprying eyes.

Finally, use Google to hack yourown Web site and see what potentialhackers might find. By visiting theGHDB (Google Hacking Database;johnny.ihackstuff.com), you can seehow Google has exposed other Websites, so you can (hopefully) learn notto fall victim to the same tricks.

Every tool on the Internet can beused for good and bad, and Google isno exception. If you run a Web site, youmust learn about Google hacking tolock down your system’s defenses.

BBYY WWAALLLLAACCEE WWAANNGG

FFiigguurree 33:: Viewing the report files of a Web site can tell youin advance what types of attacks a Web site is alreadyprotected against.

RS


JU S T FO R FU N

It’s a dark and stormynight in Denver, Colo.,and Johnny Uhlenbrockis hunched over a key-

board in a dusky room. Acandle sputters and dies on thetable beside him, but J. doesn’tsee it. He’s staring at a com-puter screen with bloodshoteyes. His cracked lips mouthbizarre incantations: “wejackgoggles . . . antediluvian her-petology . . . Longfellowradish.” The wind outside andthe soft whisper of fingers onkeys are the only sounds in theroom, until suddenly: “Dysa-cusis Cabbage! Got it!” Johnnyleans back in his chair with asatisfied smirk.

A Satanic spelling bee? Notexactly. Johnny’s just Goo-glewhacking again. Google-whacking—a clever term fora mostly innocent pastime—is the art of finding two words which,entered into Google’s search engineabsent any quotation marks, returnexactly one result. Why wouldanyone want to spend time this way?If you have to ask, you’ll never know.Says Johnny, “I used to spend allsummer at the country club layingout at the pool, polishing my tan,and beating off babes with a stick.Now that I’m inside all day, my skinis safe from the sun’s damaging UVrays, and I’m improving my vocabu-lary to boot.” The sport, he acknowl-edges, is a tad addictive. “Some daysI’m so intent on Googlewhacking Idon’t leave my chair at all. Nothing

gets me up—well, I still walk the dog,of course.”

Let Johnny’s passion for the sportbe a warning to you. At one time,Johnny believed he’d be immune tothe siren’s call of Googlewhacking’sbrand of sheer, unmitigated lexico-graphical tomfoolery (41 hits). Afterall, he’d never really done any etymo-logical skylarking (78) and never beeninterested in logographic shenanigans(11 hits). But Johnny and othersquickly found their feeble defensesovercome by this powerful procrasti-nation innovation (42,000 hits—whoops). Take our advice: Don’t try itat work (unless you’re a journalist

Agog AboutGooglewhacking

A New Google Lexicon

doing research for a piece, of course).It will certainly cost you the rest of theafternoon and quite possibly your job.

The History

Historians agree that all pointlesshuman endeavor, from the SpaceShuttle to tribal warfare, was first con-ceived by a guy either 1) trying to getout of some kind of writing assignmentor 2) dateless and alone on a Fridayevening. Most scholars attributeGooglewhacking to category one,though history has lost track of the veryfirst person to throw two oddballwords into a search engine and look fora single result. We can reasonably datethe phenomenon to sometime in theneighborhood of Tue, 08 Jan 200222:37:34 GMT, when an ex-cryptog-raphy expert from the NationalSecurity Agency named Gary Stock(now of Nexcerpt) first coined the fa-mous phrase after hearing about thechallenge from an Internet buddy. Thename was inspired, says Gary, by thenotion of “bushwhacking” around asearch engine, or perhaps “whackingaway” at results until a single one is left.

Such a deadly combination of in-sipid amusement and catchy monikerwas bound to spread like wildfire. Inthe years since that fateful day, Garyhas been honored by Google with a sig-nature on a huge banner adorning thewall at the Googleplex, lionized in newsstories across the nation, blessed withtremendous personal whacking success(“I can always find a whack in less thana minute,” he claims), and besieged byhordes of aspiring whackers eager todrink from his fount of wisdom. All thewhile, Gary has faithfully collected andcertified true whacks in his onlineWhack Stack at www.googlewhack.com, which in July 2005 celebrated its500,000th official whack to great fan-fare. Gary acknowledges his role asteacher and guide in the early stages ofthe movement but refuses to hog all thecredit, noting that “Many people—my-self included—have done such searchesfor years. It’s a natural thing for


curious people to do.” We shouldpoint out that Gary is also creditedwith a little game he calls “unblinking”(see www.unblinking.com), in whichthe object is to click through a convo-luted chain of hyperlinks until youreach a page with no links on it at all—the edge of the Internet. Between un-blinking and googlewhacking, it seemsclear that Gary’s ideas are responsiblefor billions of dollars of lost Americanproductivity and that he should prob-ably be prosecuted by the SEC, or atleast required to teach Googlewhackingto the Chinese so that we can catch up.

Google’s official reaction to Goo-glewhacking has mostly consisted ofinviting Gary to lunch. In fact,Google recognizes that the relation-ship is symbiotic: The whackers getthe have their fun, and Google findsout sooner about bugs in its searchengine software. It was whackerswho called attention, for instance, tothe famous “girl cleaner” glitch ofOctober 2003—where for a fewtense hours the phrase “girl cleaner”was a googlewhack, and the other499,999 or so Web pages that actu-ally contain both words were myste-riously absent from the l ist ofresults. Whackers also played a cru-cial role in pointing out the “Essless”crisis of February to March 2005,when for a solid week Google re-fused to link to Answers.com anyword ending in the letter “s.”

If the venerable Gary Stock isGooglewhacking’s King Arthur, thenBritish comedian Dave “BamboozledPanfish” Gorman is its Lancelot.Gorman, already of some renown forhis comic book recounting a globetrot-ting pursuit of 54 guys named DaveGorman, married his wanderlust with apassing Google-whacking interest bytracking down large numbers ofwhacks (a Googlewhack, noun, refersto both a successful word pair and theproprietor of a Web site returned by asuccessful word pair) across three con-tinents. His odyssey is now packaged asboth a charming book (“DaveGorman’s Google-whack Adventure”)

and an award-winning one-manstage show in the United States andEurope. Between the book and thestage act, Gorman has done morethan any other man to publicizethe googlewhacking phenomenon,and as such belongs right up therewith Gary Stock on the SEC’s MostWanted list. Talk to Gorman, andhe’ll probably protest that he’s nei-ther hero nor villain, that he stum-bled into a Googlewhack adventurequite by accident, that in fact he“doesn’t love Googlewhacking andnever did.” But volition aside,Gorman is clearly Googlewhack-ing’s greatest prophet. The pointlessmeandering that Goo-glewhackinginspires, says Gorman, “. . . is whatthe Internet is really for. I lovequirky home pages. I love boringhome pages. I love the Internet, and thesmaller it makes the world seem, themore I love it.”

These are two of Googlewhacking’sgreats, but the real force behindGooglewhacking is a cast of thou-sands of uncelebrated, unwashedsmall-time Googlewhackers all acrossAmerica. You can find them in shan-tytowns or skyscrapers, in bus stations or bungalows—anywheremodems ring, Googlewhackers arethere. You say you want to join theirteeming horde? Read on . . .

The Rules

Many folks have different spins onthe game, but the standard set of rulesis Gary’s at www.googlewhack.com.

Rule 1: No quote marks allowed.(Quote marks around your query willreturn an exact phrase and thusshrink your results list dramatically.)

Rule 2: The two words must ap-pear in the Answers.com dictionary.If they are, they’ll be underlined inblue (hyperlinked) on the right sideof the search bar when you performyour search. (These underlines usedto link to dictionary.com, so the ruleshave been modified to accommodatethis change.)

JU S T FO R FU N

“Bamboozled panfish,” an alleged historicalwhack, has been corrupted by excessivepublicity. More importantly, the absence of“panfish” from Answers.com (no blue underline) disqualifies this whack.

Rule 3: Google must return “Re-sults 1-1 of about X”, where X can beas large as you want. (This phenom-enon occurs when multiple subpageson the same site duplicate the sameinformation.) There is some debateon this point, as you might expect,with the ultra-orthodox camp es-chewing any whack but the mostpure—that is, a “Results 1-1 of 1”hit—but for beginners, at least, mul-tiple subpages are okay.

Rule 4: A Googlewhack that returnsa wordlist doesn’t count. In bygonetimes Google only indexed the top101KB of data for any given Webpage, cutting off most of any wordliststhat were floating around. When thatcap was removed, rants against“wordlist contamination” became astaple of both Googlewhacking fo-rums and Gary’s inbox. Says Gary,“regular whackers come to know (andhate) specific wordlists, giving them nicknames and frequent curses.”Hopefully, as wordlists are considereda nuisance by the wider search enginecommunity, Google may take steps toaddress the problem.

Rule 5: No corking the bat bywriting computer programs or scriptsto come up with wacky word pairs.You may, however, haul out your


JU S T FO R FU N

dictionary and run your fingers down the page. David Harris—physicist,Googlewhack, Googlewhacker, andbest supporting actor in “DaveGorman’s Googlewhack Adventure”—endorses the use of such props, espe-cially for the novice. “Given the wayyour brain makes connections, it’s veryhard to come up with two words thataren’t related in some way,” he says.“You’ll have a lot more success withtruly random word pairs.”

Rule 6: Respect the googlewhacks ofothers by not listing them on your Web site, which will almost im-mediately render them obsolete.Fortunately, there is a way around thispublicity paradox: Because the WhackStack at www.google whacking.com isnot spidered by Google, you can postyour success there safely.

Rule 7: No cursing. Because theWhack Stack is frequently visited bypreteens, and even appears in somemiddle-school curriculums, Garykeeps it clean.

Rule 8: Keep score if you feel youreally must. The easiest and most ac-cepted scoring system is this one:Type each of your winning words intoGoogle separately and record thenumber of hits, then multiply themtogether. The highest number wins.Critics rightly contend that thisscoring system fails to take into ac-count a number of important subjec-tive factors such as elegance, syntacticand semantic sensibility, poetic merit,etc. Nevertheless, it will give you somerough estimate as to the intrinsicvalue of your whack.

Advanced Play

If you’re ready to graduate to ad-vanced whacking school, tickle yourvocabulary bone with some real brain-teasers. (Remem-ber, we’re not re-sponsible for any lost wages.) Try forinstance, the Batman Whack (soundslike something Robin would have saidon the original Batman televisionshow) or the Whack Whack (aGooglewhack in which one half of theword pair is “Googlewhack”—techni-cally against the rules, as “Google-whack” is not a dictionary word—butfun nevertheless). The AlliterativeWhack is also tough; because twowords beginning with the same letterare likely to be found together in aone-letter-per-page wordlist, your al-literative ambitions will be frequentlystymied. Or try the Themed Whack:word pairs in keeping with a particulartheme of your choice. Gary Stock hasan exceptional collection of Enron-themed whacks. For example, considerthe now-defunct “SquirrelingDervishes” and ask yourself the ques-tion, “How did an SEC spokesmanprivately describe Enron executiveswho had busily packed away their ill-gotten gains?”

The Rhyming Whack is a rare gembut well worth the effort. Bask in“whangdoodle strudel” and “inter-galactic osteoblastic.” If you have awhole week-end to kill, try the ChainWhack: a chain of googlewhacks, a laA+B, B+C, C+D, etc. (Gary claims to have seen a 13-link chain.) Perhapsyou’d like the Nonsense Whack: a

Googlewhack composedof gibberish—again,technically disallowed,but fun. Whacker JamesMacDougall, who sug-gests this challenge, re-calls being befuddledwhen many of his non-sense words (includinghanatsim, gloost, gharg,blimter, and spanunk)turned out to be verysensible words in other

languages. Finally, for the inspiredmasochist, we offer: the PalindromicWhack, which reads the same back-wards as forwards. Yikes.

The Future

There’s never been a better timethan now to take up the sport. Infact, it’s possible that the ’Net is run-ning out of Googlewhacks, as Googleindexes billions more pages everyyear. David Harris reasons that thereare still plenty left, but he confessesthat he’s somewhat stymied as tohow to prove it analytically. (Thebest way, he says, would be to writesome software to measure the successrates of sets of randomly generatedword pairs over time.) “Most of thenew Web sites going up are blogs,and many blogs tend to copy lots oftext from other sites; this would havethe effect of eliminating Google-whacks. On the other hand, manyblogs are quite eclectic and mightadd more Googlewhacks.” Hepauses. “Clearly I need to thinkabout this some more.”

No Matter

The mathematics mean little to afi-cionados such as Johnny Uhlenbrock.He’s haunted, he whispers, by the fearthat somewhere in the cyber-ether theworld’s greatest whack is waiting—the mother of all whacks, a whack sopure and powerful that the merewhisper of its name will bring downGoogle itself—and that some-one elsemight find it first. Those elusivemagic words are what Gary Stock calls“The One True Whack,” and many ofthe true believers search for it longinto the night, even if they won’tadmit what they’re doing. UntilJohnny finds his whack, his neighborswill just have to put up with hisshrieks and moans. “Sweet phytoe-strogen candelabras!”

BBYY RRYYAANN TTUURRNNEERR“Miasmic quatrefoils”—a bona fide Googlewhack.(Proudly contributed by the author.)

RS


Beware TheJabberwock,

My SonGoogle Talk Is The New “Mad Libs”

After Google searches for thephrase, the Google Talk code willchoose the most common word thatfollows that phrase on the Web pagesin the list of results. Next, GoogleTalk adds that word to the end of thephrase. In this case, the word is “the”:

Rounding third base in the

Next, the code will submit a newphrase to Google, dropping off thefirst word you typed but including themost recent word:

third base in the

From the results of this new search,Google Talk grabs yet another word. Itadds it to the end of the growing sen-tence, and then submits a new phraseto Google minus the first two words:

base in the Middle

On our test PC, the process con-tinued to build a nonsense sentenceuntil it reached a time or word limit—we couldn’t really tell which—where-upon Google Talk cleared the sentencefrom the field. Experimentationtaught us that clicking Back and thenForward in our browser sometimeshelped us find our sentences again,but not always.

Rounding third base in the MiddleEast and North Africa. Region hasbeen a while since I ve been to theMountaintop Martin Luther King Jr.was born on July in the Big bang . . .

You can also click Stop to end thecurrent sentence construction. How-ever, Stop makes your sentence dis-appear. Again, the Back and Forwardbuttons might help.

On occasion, Google Talk stoppeda sentence on its own without erasingit. Perhaps it couldn’t find any pagesthat had all of the final three words asa phrase. Here’s an example, based on“Just wanna hear”:

Just wanna hear you say! that youLove Me I ma liberal. I m Male,

Google Talk’s code seems to besophisticated enough to choose the

JU S T FO R FU N

S mart Computing makes fre-quent use of the Internet andWorld Wide Web Conference

Committee IW3 C. Say again?Smart Computing helps users of all

ages by R/ E. OK, then. You’ve already seen

Google’s useful side and have an ink-ling of its vast, vast potential. But nowit’s time to play.

Google Talk (douweosinga.com/projects/googletalk/googletalkframe)is a silly random sentence generator in-vented by Nederlander Douwe Osinga(not to be confused with Google’s newinstant messaging program, also called

Google Talk). It taps Google’s awe-some power not for good, not for evil,but just for fun.

AAuuttoommaatteedd GGoobbbblleeddyyggooookk

Google Talk, the non-Google-af-filiated Web site, is basically a newtwist on old games such as Mad Libsand Telephone. But Google Talk isin a new class of word game, pow-ered by the Internet itself.

To Google Talk at the Web pagelisted above, you type a short phraseof three or four words into the EnterYour Words field, such as:

Rounding third base in


JU S T FO R FU N

TThirty-seven-year-oldDouwe Osinga is a

friendly, affable sort of chap.He works in Google’sEuropean Engineering officein Zurich, Switzerland, andhas a fascination with artifi-cial intelligence simulations.

He’s also the inventor ofone of the simplest, mostsurprising time-wasters everto cut into an office’s pro-ductivity: Google Talk.

“I had decided to work fourdays a week and spend thelast day on random projects—see the other stuff on my Website (douweosinga.com),” hesays. “This was one of them.”

“I had been playing withthings like this for a longtime, but mostly on a per-letter basis,” Osinga says.“Having a large enoughcorpus to autogenerate ac-tual sentences seemed al-ways impossible, but then ithit me that you can just useGoogle to do the trick.”

Osinga programmedGoogle Talk in Python usingthe Google API. The script’suncanny ability to constructa sentence makes users thinkOsinga spent weeks teachingGoogle Talk to chooseproper parts of speech, suchas nouns or verbs.

“It doesn’t,” Osinga con-fesses. “It just looks at the lastfour words of the sentencebeing generated and usesGoogle to guess what themost common next word is.I.e., it just does a Googlesearch on those last words indouble quotes and skimsthrough the snippets lookingfor the four words and noteswhat follows those.”

There’s no real point toGoogle Talk, unless it’s thejoy of whiling away an after-noon emailing friends withthe gibberish of the Web. ButOsinga is sanguine. “I hope tothink that some of the more

weird results of Google Talkcan be inspiring and fire upcreativity,” he says. ❙

In The Beginning Was The Random Word

Looking for popcorn machine on

the Internet www. and e- mail Directories

for each of the states present the

Seventeenth Day of the Dead,

in the water industry is a major turn- on?

right type of word, such as an articleor noun, most of the time. This is anillusion, Osinga says, but GoogleTalk is nevertheless better at con-structing sentences that make a littlesense than a truly random word gen-erator would be.

Sometimes Google Talk gets stuckrepeating the same phrase or word inan endless loop, such as:

Smart Computing offers help diddid did did did . . .

At other times, it may veer off intoanother language:

But i won’t call you over to thejudge, and the Assassin The Jing ke ciqin wang . . .

At this writing, it’s difficult toCopy a Google Talk sentence toPaste elsewhere. The script con-tinues to add new words to the sen-tence until it resets, so it tends todeselect the text you’ve highlightedwith your mouse pointer every timea new word appears. If you’re quick,however, you can press CTRL-A toselect all the text in the Google Talkbox and CTRL-C to copy it. Pastethe text into a word processor ortext editor with CTRL-V, and thentrim off everything but your GoogleTalk sentence.

A funny thing about Google Talk isthat its results change over time.Because Google, the search engine, is

continuously revising its page rank-ings and revisiting sites around theglobe, you can often get different sen-tences by typing in the same phrase.

BBlluuee--ggllee TTaallkk

Osinga provides HTML code atdouweosinga.com/projects/googletalkthat lets Web developers add GoogleTalk fields to their own sites. Watchout, though, as there may be offensivelanguage further down the page in thevisitor submissions section.

On a similar note, because Google’ssearch database spans a good chunk ofthe Internet, Google Talk can some-times return inappropriate words orphrases. Occasionally, an innocuousphrase you type in to start a GoogleTalk might unearth some nasty lan-guage before the sentence is done. Ifyou’re easily offended, Google Talkingmay not be for you.

So, until next time, remember:Smart Computing helps users of

the Internet s Future. is In Your handfor a hand held computer and amodem to a telephone line?

BBYY MMAARRTTYY SSEEMMSS

RS


and you’ll see two stick figures punch-ing and kicking each other in a flurry ofpale stick limbs.

When the dust settles a momentlater, you’ll see a bar graph with tworising bars, one for each keywordstring you typed, along with a numberthat indicates how many instances ofyour string Google found on the Web.The more common keyword combo,obviously, wins. The Beatles returned3.8 million results; The Rolling Stonescame back with only 1.6 million.

Googlefight has minimal systemrequirements. All you need is an In-ternet connection and a free copy ofMacromedia Flash (www.macromedia.com), which lets you see theanimated fighting in all its stick-figure glory. You also need yourimagination. Cheeseburgers vs. ham-burgers. Teddy bears vs. Godzilla.

If you need help conjuring a fewideas to make Googlefight more fun,look no farther than the left side of thescreen. Here, you’ll find links to TheClassics, Funny Fights, Fight Of TheMonth, and The Last 20 Fights. TheClassics includes fights such as LukeSkywalker vs. Darth Vader and BillGates vs. Linus Torvalds. In FunnyFights, you’ll see Me vs. Myself andheadache vs. aspirin. You get the idea.

Googlefight fun. Googlefight isendless fun because every fight idealeads to new ones. In other words,don’t start a Googlefight session atwork unless you’re prepared to losehours of productivity.

But because you likely are at work,why not start with some obviousfights? Pit your name against yourboss’, co-worker vs. co-worker. Startan office civil war.

Googlefight does have useful pur-poses, too. For example, if you want touse a figure of speech but you’re notexactly sure about it, you can useGooglefight to double check the ex-pression. So, if you’re not sure if it’s“feed a fever and starve a cold,” or“feed a cold and starve a fever,” youcan use Googlefight to find out whichone appears most often on the Web.

JU S T FO R FU N

G oogle is much more than asearch engine. It’s a social phe-nomenon, and as such, Google

has millions of devotees, some ofwhom pour their affection for this siteinto sites of their own.

Some of these knockoff Web siteseven use Google to power their capa-bilities. Googlefight (www.googlefight.com) and Guess-The-Google(grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google) are two fun Google off-shoots as habit-forming as the searchengine that spawned them.

Ring The Bell

Our world has been a stage for epicbattles in every era and in every facet

of human life. David vs. Goliath. TheAxis against the Allies. The Jets’Broadway Joe vs. the Colts’ JohnnyUnitas in Super Bowl III. A mob ofangry, rabid squirrels facing offagainst Tiger Woods. Mike Tyson vs.a fern—and the fern wins!

OK, some of these battles haven’tactually happened. Not yet, anyway.But online, these kinds of matchupsrage continuously thanks to theGooglefight, where cyber-fighting is away of life.

Googlefight is a simple brawl ofwords. Load this Web site and you’llsee two text boxes, one that readsKeyword #1 and the other, Keyword#2. Enter any keywords you’d like intothese text boxes, click Make A Fight,

Search EngineSilliness

Googlefight & Guess-The-Google Kill Hours Dead


JU S T FO R FU N

Keep in mind that there are a coupleof ways to conduct a Googlefight, andonly one of them makes the fight fair.You should put quotation marksaround your keywords so that Googlereturns only exact matches instead ofthose that have various incarnations ofyour keyword combi-nations. So “Hunter S.Thompson” will kickback only those resultsthat have this exactcombination of words,instead of those withthe individual wordshunter or Thompsonthat have nothing todo with the journalist.

Guess-The-Google

Googlefight is allabout word fights, butanother programmerfound Google’s imagesearch capabilities moreintriguing. That’s where Guess-The-Google comes in. This game site is thebrainchild of Grant Robinson, a Webdeveloper from New Zealand.

Unlike Googlefight, Guess-The-Google doesn’t let you call the shotswith your own keywords. Instead, itshows you results, and your job is toguess the keyword that conjured thoseresults. The results you see aren’twords. Instead, Guess-The-Googleshows you a grid of 20 images. Youmight see, for instance, many imagesof colorful winged insects. You mightguess that the keyword “butterfly”generated these results.

If you’re right, you score points.You get bonus points for guessingthe correct answer quickly, too. Butbeware, because you have only 20seconds to find the right word. Thegood news is that you can guess asmany times as you want during thattime period.

Like Googlefight, Guess-The-Google requires Macromedia Flashto run its glossy graphical elements.When you’re ready, load the game

and you’ll see three sections, in-cluding buttons that let you start thegame and view instructions, as wellas a list of the day’s top scores.

Fire it up. When the game startsyou’ll frantically begin typing yourguesses. On the bottom-right portion

of the screen, you’ll see a list of thewords you’ve used so you don’t acci-dentally type them again.

An information bar graces thebottom of the game. Here, you cansee your overall score, and you can seehow far you’ve progressed throughyour round of 10 grids. If you can’tfigure out what the keyword is for agrid—and odds are you’ll hit atoughie—Guess-The-Google won’tgive you the answer. Rather it teasesyou by offering just the first letter ofthe keyword. Once you finish the lastgrid, the game ends.

After you play each round, the siteupdates your score and lets you clickPause if you need a breather (or if youneed to make it seem as if you’re actu-ally working for a few minutes). At theend of your round, the game showsthe total time you needed to completeeach grid, the average time to com-plete each grid, total guesses made, theaverage number of guesses you typed,and of course, your final score.

You can also type your name andsubmit your score to the site. If you

did exceptionally well, your namewill appear on the list of high scoresfor the day.

Robinson said he was inspired tocreate the game partly because he lovesGoogle’s Image Search, which he usesa lot in his job as a Web designer. Two

of Robinson’s friends sug-gested the idea for thegame, and he said he’sglad he followed throughon the concept.

A lot of people playGuess-The-Google everyday. “It varies, but it canbe up to 10,000 people aday. It’s leveled off a bit,which is just as well,” saidRobinson. “I no longerget angry emails from myhosting company.”

You can count Robin-son as one of the game’s

devotees. “I can get thetop score easily, as I knowall the answers,” he said.

“But the fun thing is that it is alwayschanging as Google updates, so if Idon’t play for a week or two it getsharder for me again.”

Robinson might not have muchtime to play, though, because he’splanning a two-player version of thegame that he hopes to release by theend of 2005. He wants to call thegame Guess-The-Google Challenge,and players will create their own listof keywords to send to a friend.

Endless Silliness

It’s a credit to Google’s popularitythat so many people create and use funsites such as Googlefight and Guess-The-Google. If Google continues todominate the search engine scene,you’ll see more and more fun Google-powered sites appear, all the better forwhiling away those long hours.


Enter two keywords and start a Googlefight. You’ll see stick figures battling it outon your computer screen for keyword supremacy.

RS


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RS

Logos Make The ManWhen You’re Desperate To Demonstrate

How Hip You Are

Fun Stuff

I f you’re in the market for Google-branded merchandise, your searchis over; visit the Google Store

(www.googlestore.com) and select ei-ther the North/South America buttonor the Africa, Antarctica, Asia/Pacific,Australia, Europe button. There’s nosales tax unless you live in Missouri,and, at press time, Google offered freeshipping on anything going UPSGround in the continental UnitedStates. You’ll probably want to readthe Warranty/Returns area on the sitebefore you buy anything, and ac-cording to Megan Quinn of Google,“Everything on the store is subject tochange without notice, including of-ferings, prices, availability, etc.” So,caveat emptor.

BBYY KKAATTHHRRYYNN DDOOLLAANN

Goo • Item #GO0096 • $14.50

This blue Google goo is similar to the once-popular green Gak (remember thatstuff?), and it comes in a handy little tin for easy storage. You’re supposed to ball it upand squeeze it for a bit of stress relief, but lobbing it into the back of an annoying co-worker’s head won’t hurt a thing: It’s nontoxic and doesn’t stain.

Light-Up Pen • Item #GO0063 • $5.95

Clicking this button-cell-battery-operated pen lights up your life—or at least thepen’s barrel, so you can see what you’re writing on a dark and stormy night. Shed lighton your prose or poetry with one of seven colored lights: red, blue, green, orange,purple, aqua, and pink. Click your pen an eighth time to cycle through all of the colors.


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Travel Chair • Item #GO0069 • $32.25This compact, collapsible canvas chair comes with its own travel bag, so you can es-

cape your four walls and pretend to work at your campsite. Ambidextrously placed cupholders accommodate the beverage (or beverages for you two-fisted folk) of your choice.

Bean Bag • Item #GO0143 • $150

This Google-blue (red, green, or yellow) bean bag chair is a bit pricy, but as it’swater resistant, you can take it out next to the pool and relax with your laptop. Infact, that’s probably where you’ll want it anyway: It’s likely the blindingly brightcolors will clash with everything else in your house.

Bib Bike Shorts • Item #GO0118 • $76.25Hincapie (yes, the cyclist George Hincapie and family)

Performa Bib Shorts provide comfort and wick moisture fromyour body as you bike. Although they’re adorned with theGoogle doodle of the Tour de France, the bib shorts still remindus of wrestling singlets, which is a bad look for most people.

Arm Warmer • Item #GO0127 • $34.95

Nalgene Water Bottle • Item #GO0094 • $16.50This is what we call a two-fer: For the price of one water bottle, you get

the Nalgene cool factor, which says you’re clearly part of the crowd, as wellas a sturdy bottle that doesn’t harbor odors or flavors from whatever youtoted around in it the previous day.

Whether you’re trying to keep your arms warm as youcycle, buff up, or type really, really fast, these Hincapiegel-gripping arm warmers should do the trick. And theyprobably even glow in the dark.

Get Fit

Sit Anywhere


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Wireless Hotspot Finder • Item #GO0116 • $35.75If your nondescript white van is arousing suspicion as you war drive the neighborhood

attempting to pirate wireless access points, you can probably find some legitimate usesfor this device. You can definitely use this hotspot finder in a city such as Philadelphia,which hopes to have its 135-square-mile network upand running in 2006. And many cities currently havepublic parks, Internet cafes, and coffee houses that en-courage you to hop online.

Icon Vase Speaker • Item #GO0130 • $30.75

We initially thought this was a pepper mill. Doesn’t it look like a pepper mill?There’s just nothing like the flavor of fresh ground pepper; it tastes markedly betterthan its canned, pulverized counterpart, doesn’t it? Anyway, it’s not a pepper mill. It’sa USB-powered computer speaker, so it would be utterly useless on your kitchen table.

Office Supplies

Grommet Tote • Item #GO0147 • $16.75This tote, available in black, baby blue, and pink, seems pretty service-

able. It’s made of a poly material, so it’s probably sturdy enough to carry“Crime And Punishment”, “The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich”, and“Ulysses”, all at the same time. (We have to admit, one reason we likethis bag so much is because it has the word “grommet” in the title.)

Infoglobe • Item #GO0120 • $64.95

Beach Towel • Item #GO0044 • $27.95This is the brightest, shiniest white beach towel we’ve ever seen! It’s also

huge (36 x 70 inches) and expensive, and it’ll probably keep you toastyafter a chilly dip in the ocean, but if west-coast beaches are anything liketheir eastern counterparts, the ashes from bonfires and residue from fire-works will turn it dingy and dull in no time.

Now you and your friends can have your own snow-globe-looking message center foryour phones. It features a clock, a 100-year calendar, and an LED with a ticker tape towhich you can add customized messages. If you have voicemail and caller ID, you can use both with this center, too. You’ll have to resist the urge to pick it up and shake it;there’s no snow-like confetti in the blue-glass dome.

Gifts & Accessories


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What’s Next? Google Takes On The Future


M illions of Internet users loveGoogle for its powerful Web-search capabilities, but the

more savvy among them also knowthat Google offers many other tools,such as Google Alerts (an email alertservice), Maps, and Picasa (a photo-editing tool). Not surprisingly, Googleincorporates search features into manyof these tools. Picasa, for example, hasfeatures that help users find pictureson their computers.

Although many Google features letusers search the digital realm, someGoogle tools help users find real-world objects and locations. Froogle,for example, searches for products,whereas Google Maps finds specificgeographic locations and providesboth driving directions to them andsatellite images of them.

This got us wondering: What otherreal-world tasks will Google tacklenext? We kicked back, took off ourshoes, and cooked up some possibili-ties for future generations.

Google recently (andfamously) stoppedall communicationwith a tech newsservice after an

intrepid journalistposted some per-

sonal informationabout Google’s CEO—in-formation she found byGoogling him (searching

for his name on Google).This incident showed thatGoogle’s reach extendsdeep into many people’spersonal information. Thatsaid, it’s not a bad thing,especially if you search for family members via the Web. We’d love to see Google offer a specialsearch engine that draws

on the company’s manyresources to create detailedfamily trees for amateurgenealogists. We imagineentering the family name,clicking the Search button,and then seconds laterseeing a family tree, com-plete with photos.

Instant Genealogy


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Sure, you’ve seen onlinegrocers such as Webvanand Peapod before, butgrocery shopping Google-style is a completely dif-ferent ball game. Ratherthan deliver your gro-ceries, Google compiles its

many features to makeyour shopping experiencean exercise in search en-gine efficiency:

Search. Your shoppingexperience begins at (youguessed it) Google’s newgrocery shopping feature,Frooglelicious. If this isyour first time using thefeature, the big G willsearch your computer fordocuments that containshopping lists (ala GoogleDesktop Search). If noneare present, you’ll chooseproducts in the site’s massive online grocerystore, read user opinions

of your choices (culledfrom Google Groups), andthen kick back while Goo-gle Local tracks downnearby stores.

Shop. Google assemblesyour shopping list, com-plete with pictures and a list of local stores thatcarry the items you want tobuy, and then delivers it to your cell phone via GoogleMobile. Just in case youhaven’t heard of some ofthese grocery stores (Froo-glelicious prides it-self onits comprehensive listings,which even include healthfood co-ops and tech-savvy

farmers’ markets), Googledelivers driving directionsand sat-ellite images ofyour destinations to yourcell phone.

Once you arrive, you’lluse your phone to accessanother new Google phe-nomenon, Googaisle, to locate products on storeshelves. And don’t despairif you find product labels in other languages: onceyou snap a pic of the labelwith your phone’s camera,Google Translate saves theday and your meal.

Google Groceries

Online dating Web sitesnot only match singles: theyalso create digital datinghistories. Although you cancheck up on your potential

soul mate by Googling him,you probably won’t findout who he has dated. AGoogle Dating History fea-ture could crawl through

those online dating sites,collecting tons of datinginfo: who he’s seen, who hehit it off with, and who he didn’t.

Google Dating History

As you video chat withyour friend online, do youfind yourself checking out

her house in thebackground? If youfrequently scrunchyour eyes to makeout the blurry ob-ject sitting on theshelf behind her,you’ll love Home

Google. Users who haveWeb cams sign up for freeaccounts and then leave

their Web cams poweredon so other Google Homeusers can scope out theirhome offices, dens, orliving rooms. Althoughthis tool doesn’t reallybenefit most users (otherthan satisfying their cu-riosity), we bet adver-tisers would love a Googlesearch engine that could

scope out your book-shelves, electronics stash,and choice in posters.Thanks to this search en-gine, advertisers couldtarget ads at you based onitems you already have.Now that we think aboutit, we hope Home Googledoesn’t get off the ground.

Home Google


Guide To Using Google Discover Google's Buried Treasure

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