Gmail: One View On How to Fix It
Philipp Lenssman asks: What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?
Looks about right.
Do You Love These Google Services Enough?
This fellow thinks there are at least 10 Google services that you do not love enough.
The good news: there are some excellent tools on the list. For instance, I’ve been using Google Alerts (#9 on the list) for a few years now with regular useful results.
The bad news: there is no mention of the criteria the list maker used. I suspect he wanted to make a list of 10 items.
Via The Presurfer.
Virtual Street Walking
No, I’m not talking about something you might do in Second Life.
Rather, check out Google Map’s new Street View capability for parts of San Francisco, Denver, New York, Las Vegas and Miami.
For instance, go to 76 Broadway, New York, click on the new Street View button in the upper right of the map and then click on the small human icon on the map: up pops a street view of that locaton. Drag the icon to a different location for another view or expand the Street View image for a more detailed look.
If Street View is not available for an area the Street View button will not appear on the map.
Definitely a nifty upgrade though some of the images are a bit fuzzy.
The map wars are heating up. This is a neat response to Microsoft’s 3D maps and does not require you to load extra software to use.
Via Primate Labs Blog.
Google Searches I’m Not Interested In Today
Any of the current1 top 100 searches on Google’s new Hot Trends page. These aren’t the most popular searches. Rather:
Google analyzes search queries and presents searches that are deviating the most in relationship to the past traffic. So, if a search term paddles along with a few hundred queries a day and suddenly jumps to a million queries a day, it’s deviated significantly from its past search pattern and might pop up on Google Hot Trends.
Sticklers amongst you might say that by default I’m interested in #93: google trends.
Apparently I am out of touch with important things.
15/22 7:34 PM GMT
Tegan Talks RSS & Reviews Google Reader
Hesitant to jump on the newsreader bandwagon? Huh, what’s a newsreader?
Tegan has some answers!
Here she provides a nice bit of RSS 101:
Ok, an RSS Feed is simply a file that takes all the entries in a blog and puts them into a standard format. When you publish your blog, an RSS feed is published. A group of programs called “readers” note the change in your RSS feed, and update with your new entry. Anyone using a reader to read your blog then sees your new entry. Nifty!
NB: Tegan emphasizes how easy it is to keep up with your blog reading using a newreader. You can, though, get feeds from more than blogs: many newspapers, magazines and other regularly updated sites offer feeds.
Now that you’ve been through RSS 101 read Tegan’s walkthrough of Google Reader:
Ah well, here goes. I poked around the site a bit, constantly being told that there was nothing to see because I wasn’t subscribed to any feeds. I finally figure out to click on “Manage subscriptions” in the hopes I can import my feeds from Bloglines. Under this page, there’s an “Import/Export” tab. Lovely. *click* Hmmm, must export from Bloglines first. Hey, it says I can “Learn more about exporting your subscriptions from another feed reader.” Ok, *click*. Bloglines export instructions. I follow the instructions. Go back to the “Import/Export” tab. Import the file I just exported from Bloglines. WHUMPF! I’ve got a bunch of feeds. Back to the main page!
I do have both a Bloglines and a Google Reader account but have been using FeedDemon for almost a year now. Yes, it has a couple downsides: 1) there is a one time cost and 2) it is currently Windows only. However, it solved some organization and archiving issues that I had with Bloglines and allows me to do quite a bit of reading offline. I do plan to continue experimenting with Google Reader and may use it more in the future.
Darkside Alert: Tegan noted how easy it is to keep up with the 300 or so blogs she currently tracks. Newsreaders also make it easy to subscribe to too many feeds! E.g., FeedDemon just told me that I currently subscribe to 1680 feeds….I often don’t get past my “Regulars” folder.