Tag: Search

Impact Lab > Search
App, Business, Google, Internet, Science & Technology News

Google Search will now tell you when a restaurant or store is too busy

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Google’s new search feature shows users when local restaurants are booked up and what stores have the most foot traffic. The Google Search tweak is rolling out today on mobile for some users, and shows graphs—presumably based on geolocation from smartphones—indicating when a given venue is busiest during the day.

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Analysis, Education, Internet, Science & Technology News

SlideRule searches for the best online courses

sliderule

SlideRule is a fantastic new tool that will save you some serious time as you search around for the best online course that suits your needs. The service is free to use. SlideRule lets you search for courses based on your specified criteria but also narrows down your search based on your needs. Best of all, you can actually leave a review for courses to better inform other users.

 

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Internet, Science & Technology News

Google’s Futurist Ray Kurzweil is working on a search system that can understand your emotions

Futurist Ray Kurzweil

Futurist Ray Kurzweil has some ambitious plans for search at Google. Kurzweil joined Google at the end of last year as director of engineering and he became famous for creating the first text-to-speech software. He’s also been called “the ultimate thinking machine.”

 

 

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Analysis, Internet, New Discoveries

10 Wicked Cool Google Search Tricks

I’m always amazed that more people don’t know the little tricks you can use to get more out of a simple Google search. Here are 10 of my favorites.
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Use the “site:” operator to limit searches to a particular site. I use this one all the time, and it’s particularly handy because many site’s built-in search tools don’t return the results you’re looking for (and some sites don’t even have a search feature). If I’m looking for WWD posts about GTD, for example, I could try this search: GTD site:webworkerdaily.com.
Use Google as a spelling aid. As Rob Hacker — the WWD reader I profiled last week — pointed out, entering a word into Google is a quick way to see if you have the right spelling. If it’s incorrect, Google will suggest the correct spelling instead. Additionally, if you want to get a definition of a word, you can use the “define:” operator to return definitions from various dictionaries (for example, define: parasympathetic).
Use Google as a calculator. Google has a built-in calculator — try entering a calculation like 110 * (654/8 + 3). Yes, your computer also has a calculator, but if you spend most of your day inside a browser, typing your calculation into the browser’s search box is quicker than firing up your calculator app.
Find out what time it is anywhere in the world. This one’s really handy if you want to make sure that you’re not phoning someone in the middle of the night. Just search for “time” and then the name of the city. For example, try: time San Francisco
Get quick currency conversions. Google can also do currency conversion, for example: 100 pounds in dollars. It only has the more mainstream currencies, though — if you’re trying to see how many Peruvian nuevos soles your dollars might buy, you’ll be out of luck.
Use the OR operator. This can be useful if you’re looking at researching a topic but you’re not sure which keywords will return the information you need. It can be particularly handy in conjunction with the “site:” operator. For example, you could try this search: GTD or “getting things done” site:webworkerdaily.com
Exclude specific terms with the – operator. You can narrow your searches using this operator. For example, if you’re looking for information about American Idol but don’t want anything about Simon Cowell, you could try: “american idol” -cowell
Search for specific document types. Google can search the web for specific types of files using the “filetype:” operator. If you’re looking for PowerPoint files about GTD, for example, you could try: GTD filetype:ppt
Search within numerical ranges using the .. operator. Say, for example, you want to look for information about Olympic events that took place in the 1950’s, you could use this search: Olympics 1950..1960
Area code lookup. Need to know where a phone number is located? Google will let you know where it is, and show you a map of the area, too. For example: 415

8 google search 672

I’m always amazed that more people don’t know the little tricks you can use to get more out of a simple Google search. Here are 10 of my favorites.

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Science & Technology News

Google Leaving China … sort of

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Google’s long awaited decision

In a long-awaited announcement, Google said Monday that it will stop censoring search services on google.cn, its Chinese search site.
Google said it is now redirecting its Chinese users to Hong Kong site google.com.hk, which offers uncensored search results, according to its company blog.
“We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement,” the company said in its blog post.
The company said it “very much hopes” that the government of China respects its decision, though it is “well aware” that the Chinese authorities could block access to its services for users within the country’s borders.
Google will continue its wider business operations in China, including its ad sales business, though the search company conceded that the size of its sales workforce will be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access google.com.hk.
In addition to search, Google generates revenue from an ad sales business in China, its Android mobile phone operating system and its Chrome browser business. It also runs a host of Web services in China, including e-mail service Gmail.
Analysts widely agree with Google’s assessment that discontinuing its  search operations in China would have an “immaterial” effect on its revenue.
Google.cn had tens of millions of users in China, but was unable to control  more than about a third of China’s search market as it struggled to beat the  tough competition of entrenched search rivals such as Baidu.

In a long-awaited announcement, Google said Monday that it will stop censoring search services on google.cn, its Chinese search site. Google said it is now redirecting its Chinese users to Hong Kong site google.com.hk, which offers uncensored search results, according to its company blog.

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Breakthrough Thinking, Great New Product, Great Videos, Internet, Science & Technology News

Google Goggles – Search The Web With Smartphone Pictures

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Google Goggles is a visual search that works best on objects like books and DVDs as well as landmarks

Google has launched an experimental product dubbed Goggles that allows smart-phone users to search for subjects simply by snapping a picture of them.  The free application is only available on mobiles using Google’s Android operating system, leaving iPhone and Blackberry fans empty-handed. (Video)

 

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Analysis, Business, Latest News, Latest Trend

Google’s New Tool for Forecasting the Future

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Talk to the hand

Now Google is throwing the element of predictability into the mix. Looking at a particular trend’s historical search popularity, Google forecasts the trend’s future performance. For example, Twitter. Google looks at Twitter’s search trend from a point in time (normally one year ago), and forecasts its future searches based on historical data available leading up to that point. It then compares that forecast with the actual data from the past year. If the error between the predicted trends and actual trends are small enough, Google calls the trend predictable.
Google has found, not surprisingly, seasonal activities such as skiing and surfing, to be much more predictable than, say, entertainment searches. This means that Google can produce a forecast for about half of its popular searches. The other half? Out of luck.
Search for skiing, and you can see the following, complete with 2010’s forecast:
Search for something less stable, like the Jonas Brothers, and you see this:
No forecast included. Sorry boys. You might be too of-the-moment to have a future.
As Google Trends and Insights for Search are helpful concepts for advertisers and marketers, the forecast feature adds an extra punch of useful to the package, but 50% of searches deemed unpredictable leaves a lot to be desired. I think it’s safe to say that almost anyone could predict when in the calendar year the search term “skiing” would see a spike.
Via FastCompany

Last year, Google updated Google Trends and launched Google Insights for Search, allowing advertisers and marketers to track search behavior based on frequency of searches, time frame, or geographic location. Now Google is throwing the element of predictability into the mix.

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Breakthrough Thinking, Internet, Photo Perspectives, Science & Technology News

Future of the Internet on a Mobile Device

future_search1_petitinvention

This is what I wish the internet search will be able to do with a mobile device in the NEAR future. Touch screen, built in camera, scanner, WiFi, google map (hopefully google earth), google search, image search… all in one device. Like this way, when you can see a building through it, it gives you the image search result right on the spot.

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Big Problems, Globalism, Internet, Science & Technology News

Google Crash Affects Millions of Internet Users Worldwide

Google Crash Affects Millions of Internet Users Worldwide

The Google search engine was down for up to an hour  

Google suffered a temporary fault yesterday which left tens of thousands of internet users without access to the web search engine.  The technical problem brought down the company’s homepage and had a knock effect on Google-owned sites such as YouTube and some websites using Google ad servers.
 

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