Google Image redesigned to improve users’ browsing experience

                      Google Image has been indexing the Internet’s image since 2001, and by now there have been 10 billion images that have been indexed. The vast amount of images to show is too wide, and therefore Google has restructured the way images are shown to users.

                           Google has redesigned their new search engine’s display of images in Google Image. The new method incorporates HTML5 to show you images that you’ve searched, without the ugly text lying around. By moving over, the image targeted will zoom in, with the links and details written.

Besides the improved visual effects, there’s also a new feature called “Similar images” tool. For example, did you know there are nine subspecies of leopards, each with a distinct pattern of spots? Google Images can recognize the difference, returning just leopards of a particular subspecies. It can tell you the name of the subspecies in a particular image—even if that image isn’t labelled—because other similar leopard images on the web are labelled with that subspecies’ name.

                                   Besides that, there’s the “Similar colors” refinement filter, which filters the colors of the images. The “Similar colors” tool utilizes some heavy-duty algorithmic wizardry and processing power to filter colors. If not for the uberly strong processing power, “white colors” will return many unwanted results that is barely refined.

Here’s a simple list of the improvement for Google Images and its refreshed design:

Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for.

Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get lost in the images. You can now get up to 1,000 images, all in one scrolling page. And we’ll show small, unobtrusive page numbers so you don’t lose track of where you are.

Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.

A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”

Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you’re right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.

Optimized keyboard navigation for faster scrolling through many pages, taking advantage of standard web keyboard shortcuts such as Page Up / Page Down. It’s all about getting you to the info you need quickly, so you can get on with actually building that treehouse or buying those flowers.

 SOURCE: Google

China warns Google as Internet row deal seen soon

China warned Google, the world's largest search engine, against flouting the country's laws, as expectations grow for a resolution to a public battle over censorship and cyber-security.

The chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, said this week he hoped to announce soon a result to talks with Chinese authorities on offering an uncensored search engine in China.

"Google has made its case, both publicly and privately," China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Li Yizhong, said, but did not confirm directly that his ministry was in talks with Google.

Google in January threatened to pull out of China if it could not offer an unfiltered Chinese search engine, after cyber attacks originating from China on it and about 30 other firms.

"If you don't respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and the consequences will be on you," Li told reporters, in answer to a question on what China would do if Google.cn simply stopped filtering search results.

Li complimented Google on having reached about 30 percent market share in the Chinese market since it launched google.cn about three years ago, and said it was welcome to expand market share further if it abided by Chinese law.

It was up to Google whether to stay in China's market or not, he added.

Ministry officials have wavered between confirming and denying that talks are happening at all, in response to repeated media questions during China's annual legislative session.

"This is really a hot topic, it's easy and yet not easy to respond. A lot of these matters don't fall under my ministry, " Li said.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shares oversight of the Chinese Internet with a number of other bodies, while still more bureaucracies are involved in matters of foreign investment, complicating the Chinese government's response to Google's challenge.

Google Earth for Android Announced

Google team has finally released Google Earth application for Android mobile phones. Android users were waiting for it as Google had previously shedded light on the Android version of Google Earth in the last month.

Google Earth for Android comes with all the features that are included in normal Google Earth software for desktop computers. You can easily navigate through the globe with latest technology used in this application.

Features of Google Earth for Android
* Voice recognition capabilities
* New roads layer
* Browsing facility for photos and videos
* Easy customization of Google Earth according to user’s needs.
* Very fast navigation speed

Google Voice – What’s New?

The Google team is happy to announce a new Google Voice Lite version that gives its users the choice to get Google Voice with your already present mobile number OR with a Google number. According to Craig Walker, Vincent Paquet & Pierre Lebeau, who are the product managers in Google, if the users would sign up using the already present number, they will not get various Google voice’s features. So just go at this link to know more: (http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164652)

According to the Google Voice Blog, if the users are signing with the already existing numbers, then they would get various features like Online, searchable voicemail, automated voicemail transcription which is actually free of cost and the users don’t have to pay anything, you will notifications through messages and E-mails, and the international calls would cost low. On the other hand, if the users are planning to get the new number, you will be given extra features like call screening, listen in, call blocking and recording, including more.

Google always comes out with new and exciting features every single time. Just check out the new features offered by the Google team and try out the different options offered by the Search Engine Giant for all its users!

Users Hate Buzz; Google Gets Sued

So here's the buzz on Google Buzz: It's, uh, a little unpopular so far. "Within hours of the Buzz launch, users were complaining about a number of features (or flaws) in the service, including the fact that their Gmail and GTalk contacts were publicly revealed for everyone to see, and that the setting for making that public or private was enabled by default and/or difficult to find," GigaOM explains, going on to say that Buzz wasn't pre-tested with beta users before being released (for which Google has apologized). "F*** you, Google," wrote a blogger at Gizmodo. "My privacy concerns are not trite...You have destroyed over ten years of my goodwill and adoration." The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a complaint with the FCC "accusing Google of violating federal consumer protection law with the service. At the core of the complaint is Google's accused breach of a consumer's expectation of privacy" (via Geek.com). The lawsuit is justified, says ReadWriteWeb: "Could you imagine the uproar if something like our search habits were suddenly released to the public in a big 'Oops!' moment for Google? Would an apologetic blog post suffice then? Somehow, we don't think so and we're not sure it should now either."

Google's Drummond explains why search engine pulled out of China

David Drummond has had a major part to play in the latest stand-off between Google and China. And at the DLD conference in Munich Drummond, the company's vice-president and chief legal officer, explained what happened.

"We were always uncomfortable with China having censored our search results," he said. "We thought by being there we could be a force of openness. In fact, that has not happened. Things have gotten tighter."

Google China was launched in January 2006. For Google.cn the search engine agreed to deliver a Chinese version of Google.com complying with internet censorship laws in the country.

Critics often portrayed that as a capitulation to the "Golden Shield Project" or the "Great Firewall of China". At that time, the company believed that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open internet outweighed their unease at agreeing to censor some results.

That changed. On January 12, Google announced that it was "no longer willing to continue censoring" results on Google.cn after Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were hacked.

"There were direct attacks on human rights acitivists. Using phishing attacks they tried to access their accounts by third parties," said Drummond. "We discovered that the activist had been under surveillance. And this just became something that we were not willing to do any more."

According to Drummond, the China approach was always an issue at Google. The management team not only had an intense debate when they decided to pull out, but before they decided to go into China. Have they learnt their lesson?

Drummond said: "We want to stay in the Chinese market, we just don't want to filter our search results any more."

Today, the search giant takes internet censorship more seriously. "The thing that is important to recognise is that internet censorship is a real problem, and not just China. It is time for governments to get involved."

Are Bing and WolframAlpha catching up with Google in search engine battle?

The front of the pack isn't always the best place to be. In a panel of search engine representatives at the Munich DLD conference, Google's Ben Gomes was the most reluctant to give anything away. Alsio on the panel were Conrad Wolfram, of WolframAlpha, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the architect of Microsoft Visual Earth, and Ilya Segalovich, of Yandex – Russia's largest search engine.

Questions from the panel host, Jochen Wegner, the editor of Focus Online, kept on coming. Is it possible to compete with Google in non-English-speaking markets – as the successful Yandex does? "We have done very respectably in almost all markets we are in," was Gomes's answer. Is Google failing in giving the right answers, especially when a topic becomes very popular? "We have recently launched 500 changes. Overall, search gets better day after day after day." Are you reacting to Bing? "I don't believe we are reacting to Bing in any way. We are really focused on the user."

There is no doubting that Google is still top dog among search engines. However, the spontaneous applause of an impressed audience here at DLD wasn't for Google, but for WolframAlpha and Bing.

WolframAlpha's approach to making the world's knowledge computable clearly found fans, and showed that the search engine market is less and less about search, but more and more about giving answers and providing decisions, as Wegner put it.

WolframAlpha can tell you the weather on the day David Cameron was born. "Everything I show you with Wolfram Alpha is done in the cloud and sent back live," explained Wolfram. Yes, WolframAlpha is not a search engine anymore. It is a knowledge engine which provides you with possible answers.

If you type in "Microsoft v Google", you will get the latest trading information as well as the fundamental statistics and finances. If you type in "egg and bacon" you will be told how much running you have to do today to get rid of the calories you just ate.

"WolframAlpha is about high power computation and knowledge that meet at an exciting time when computation gets democratised," explains Wolfram.

Bing also has a new search approach, trying to organise the search results in a different way – and Bing continues to grow its market share. In fact, it is becoming an incredible user-oriented search engine – which made a deal with Wolfram Alpha last year to provide search results in select areas across nutrition, health and advanced mathematics.

Microsoft's search engines results rely more and more on structural data – a term that Aguera y Arcas is fond of using.

In addition, there is the new map project which Aguera y Arcas presented to a stunned audience. Its three-dimensional view of New York shows clearly that Bing Maps will provide stern competition for Google maps. It is built in Microsoft Silverlight, and provides an amazing real view of the streets.

"We envision space as a canvas;" says Aguera y Arcas. His team is building different features for the map. Recently for example, they came up with a geolocation of the front pages of all the world newspapers. The new beta mapping site was just launched.

The clash of the search engines has definitely started.

Google Voice Finally Comes to iPhone

Tired of waiting for approval from Apple, Google releases a new browser version of Google Voice for the iPhone.

Verizon and Google in an Android Collaboration

Till now, we have heard of so many news pieces about Google, Android and Verizon. Now here is a news piece that involves all three names. Till now, we have come across various Android devices that looked VZW-bound. But till now, we have not received any words from Verizon itself but a press release marks some important decisions in air.



Hot news is that Verizon and Google has involved in a crispy collaboration that will not only influence Verizon Wireless Network but will affect Android open platform in a major way. Now the story sounds really interesting as well as beneficial, especially from the point of view of delivering leading edge mobile services and App to all the end users.

There are plans going on that there would be a co-development of various Android based devices that would be decked with all kinds of innovative and exciting applications. These collaborations not only benefit the companies involved with the same, but also the target audience that are linked with them.

As far as the manufactures are concerned, there is no single manufacturer linked with the devices. The press release stated that there would be multiple manufacturers that mean different minds would be involved in a single project. It further implies that the final products would be nothing less than –excellent!

Speculations are that amongst the devices, Motorola Tao/Sholes would hit the market somewhere around December 1st. Next on the list would be HTC Desire and so on. So all you folks out there just sit back and relax and wait for the official words!