Google Video Look = GooTube Look

A simple JavaScript in your browser window can make Google video look like YouTube. When you start to play a video, cut and paste the code below in the address bar and hit enter. Once the page reloads, in the top right corner of the page you will get an option to Try out the new layout. Choose that and you are all set to view the Goo-videos much like the YouTube video interface.

javascript:setCookie('np','old');window.location.reload();

Google + YouTube = GooTube

So Google finally stakes its hands into tring to buy YouTube. So what does this mean for us Video Bloggers? Good news? - yes, it is good news as both Google Video and YouTube have been popular video broadcasting sites and now that YT may be a part of GV, Google would get hold of a big chunk of a customer base and hopefully convert the unprofitable business into a profitable one with its ads! All in all Google's stocks rose to a close $430. News is that YouTube alongwith all its 67 employees would continue to retain its brand. So I guess it is going to be YouTube after all, just that Google can find innovative ways to monetize from it!

Check out the link and read the complete story:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/09/business/main2075298.shtml

Google launches Code Search

http://www.google.com/codesearch

Google has launched the Code Search engine - an amazing tool. I did some simple searching and it did return pretty good results! Here is a screenshot of the code search tool!

Orkut Spam Scrap: AdSense is dead!

Just today when I logged into orkut to check if my ever devoted friends have scrapped me - I did find some unfamiliar person posting a scrap to me as follows:


First glance at this, I knew this was some hoax and I checked out the guy's profile (http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=1081345186944013950) - turns out this guy is a networking guy trying to get people linked together. No wonder he would send such spam scraps. His name is Michael Thomas and he says his location is India - a highly unlikely name for a person residing in India - but then again there could be people with that name too in India - who knows and who cares!

Next I simply checked out the link he had posted and here it is:


After seeing this I almost fell off my chair - not out of fright, but out of laughter. Google's main cash machine is AdSense and how can it be dead.

What really is AdSense?
AdSense is an intelligent piece of software code written by Google that can think artificially and know exactly what kinds of Ads to be displayed on what pages you browse on the Internet. Yahoo and Microsoft too display Ads on their search results but they are mostly irrelevant Ads - they could very well be displaying an Ad for a Kid's store on a Football sports page. But Google's AdSense does not do that - Ads are displayed according to relevance. AdSense has sought its place in several of Google's products:

Gmail: Ads are displayed on the right based on your mail's keywords. Not to worry - all this is machine operated and there is no human intervention, hence privacy is out of the question
Blogger: Blogger users can enable displaying Ads on their blogs and make money out of it
Orkut: Recently Google has started to put in AdSense capability to Orkut profiles based on communties and many more...

Take a look at the detailed tour on the Google's AdSense website and you can understand the stuff much better

http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/index.html

So, by no means is AdSense dead and don't believe this guy and the website looks like a hoax into coaxing people off their money.

Friends Map on Orkut

This has been a long awaited feature in Orkut - A map of your friends on Google Maps. This is a nice feature as it helps you in locating friends by browsing the map rather than clicking on each one of your friend's profile and finding out where they live. But what happens if someone has not entered their place or if someone has entered a place that Google Maps API does not understand? Hmm, as expected it screws things up as this feature still needs to be made completely fool-proof and proper exception handling needs to be in place. For example, when it cannot find the place based on what people have entered. One way Orkut could do is to map places to the closest proximity of last login - get the IP address and get the geographical location of the IP and display it on the map. That way it does not need to depend on people entering that information in the profile. But then again it comes with a price of privacy - the stupid privacy stuff that people jump around so much for! Also currently the feature is supported only for US and Europe locations. So your Indian friends are not going to be mapped on the Friends Map! Here is a snapshot of the Orkut Friends Map:

Emoticons in Orkut

Thought this might be handy for someone new to Orkut - putting smileys and other emoticons. Just make sure you put your regular chat emoticon within '[ ]'

[:)] [;)] [:D] [:(] [:O] [:p] [/)] [8)] [:(] [:x]

Orkut appreciates Brazil's Independence

Much to the huckus ruckus going on in Brazil, Orkut does a smart thing like super-imposing Orkut stencil over Brazil's map appreciating Brazil's independence and also sending a message across that Orkut respects its Brazil users. Here is the picture and btw, Brazil's (Brasil's) Independence is today - Sep 7th!

Katie's Google Gadget

This is something interesting and innovating - Katie Couric, who started out on CBS as the anchor for the Evening News yesterday has her own Google Gadget and Picasa Web album! If you have a customizable Google homepage, then you should be able to add her Google gadget that has videos, highlights and a little something about herself. Whatever - its good publicity for Google and Picasa!

Mutual Friends in Orkut

I just checked and Orkut now officially has the "Mutual Friends" showing up for your friends. That's a nice little handy thing as it saves you the trouble of knowing your friend's friend is also your friend! Nice going! But one thing that I don't like of this right pane in Orkut is - the damn thing is not customizable to list the number I want - for instance the mutual friends list is always set to 4 - people almost forget to read that there could be more than 4 and that they have click on 'View All' to actually view the 30 mutual friends. Google has so much going on around with AJAX - wonder why Orkut cannot have AJAX controls in them - something similar to Google Reader scroll pane for list of friends, mutual friends, communties, etc.,