The Settings page in Google Calendar now has a new tab with the name “Offline”. Although I have Google Gears installed, but it doesn’t seem to be working at this moment. I asked Pascal of GoogleWatchBlog and he said that it’s working on his computer either.
Well, at least it made to the Settings page so there must be some exciting (not really) coming soon!
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about YouTube having an undocumented option of playing higher-quality videos by adding an extra parameter at the end of the URL. Well, you don’t have to the extra work anymore because YouTube has added a new setting that enables you to configure what kind of video quality you want for the YouTube videos: higher-quality, standard YouTube poor-quality, or let YouTube decide for you based on your Internet connection speed.
(YouTube should probably define what they mean by fast connection, 3Mbits/s, 30Mbits/s, or 100Mbits/s?)
I personally don’t really care about this unless this setting also includes embedded videos on websites since I rarely get on YouTube. I don’t think it does though.
To configure your setting, follow this link to YouTube and choose your option.
[via CyberNet]
Today the European Commission approves Google’s acquisition of internet ad serving company DoubleClick, that 11 long months after Google originally announced it and 3 months after the Federal Trade Commission OK’ed the acquisition last December.
So Google today announced that they have “officially acquired DoubleClick” and is ready to cut some people on the DoubleClick’s side. “As with most mergers, there may be reductions in headcount. We expect these to take place in the U.S. and possibly in other regions as well.”
The unemployment rate in the U.S. is currently at 4.8%, according to the official figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Count me in.
Continuing with the months-long depression, GOOG today hit a new 52-week low, at $413.04, and keep plunging in after hours trade. This is also the lowest since October 2006. It wasn’t that long ago when GOOG set its record high at $747 last December.
My math tells me $100+ billion has been flush down the toilet. Not really true, but close enough.
Reader Stan Y. informed me today that Google’s free local directory assistance service - GOOG-411 is now available in Canada.
I just found something interesting out. It seems that GOOG-411 has now expanded into Canada. I called it with my cellphone (from Canada), and said my city (Windsor, Ontario). It worked! Last month it didn’t. I got results for local businesses in my city.
This news is confirmed by Googling Google’s Garett Rogers, who resides in Canada, and Peter Dawson on the Google Blogoscoped forum. Google has yet to update its support page for “Where does GOOG-411 work?” though.
[thanks Stan!]
A few weeks ago Google announced the U.S. edition of Doodle4Google, and now Google’s running another one in Turkey. I am not sure about the details about the contest, but I know that the prize includes a 24-inch Apple iMac.
UPDATE: Deli Profesör in the comment and Pascal from GoogleWatchBlog said that the top 30 winners receives a certificate, and that the top 10 also gets a lava lamp. The overall winner will get an iMac and have his/her winning logo displayed on Google Turkey’s homepage on April 23rd, Children’s Day in Turkey. Thanks. :)
The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted the “real” portrait of legendary Googlebot for the first time! Cute, but it looks like a robot zombie (with a fang) to me.
The Google Enterprise Blog announced today that they launched a “new” product,
We’re excited to announce a new product designed specifically for businesses who want to put Google Maps on their website: Google Maps API Premier.
However, the “new” product turns out to be the very same product that they launched one and a half years ago, with the name “Google Maps for Enterprise“.
110% not cool.
The Google Analytics Blog announced two new features to the service yesterday, benchmarking and data sharing. The benchmarking feature lets Analytics users to compare their sites’ data to other similar-size sites, either in the same category or in a different category (horizontal & vertical comparison).
However, in order to enable the benchmarking service, the users will need to opt-in to the data sharing program which you agree to share your site’s traffic data with other users, “in an anonymous form, … [with] all identifiable information about your website [removed].” The settings can be found under your account’s “Edit Account” page (”Analytics Settings” -> “Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings”).
I opted-in the program about 30 minutes ago but the benchmarking link isn’t showing up on the sidebar yet, so I guess it will take them a moment.
Google yesterday released Google Calendar Sync, a small Windows program that allows users to “Sync Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook calendar.” You can choose how to sync your calendars with the program, whether 2-way syncing, which will sync both Google Calendar and the Outlook calendar with each other, or 1-way syncing in which you can choose to sync from Google Calendar to Outlook calendar, and vice versa.
There’s an option that you can enter you preferred time interval between each syncing (with the minimum of 10 mins.), and the default is set to 120 minutes (2 hours).
Once you finished the initial setup process, the program will minimize to the system tray and display itself with the Google Calendar icon (
[via Googling Google]
Google today celebrates the birthday of Alexander Graham Bell (born 1847), the inventor of the telephone (though with many disputes).
Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor and innovator, most often associated with the invention of the telephone. [...] In reflection, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.Upon Bell’s death, all telephones throughout the United States “stilled their ringing for a silent minute in tribute to the man whose yearning to communicate made them possible.” [Wikipedia]
[thanks to Pascal]
Didn’t you get the memo? Email spam is out, and the latest trend (for spammers) is to spam/scam people through Google Calender.
[photo by Andrew Huff, used under a CC-license]
