I found a reference to Xooglers, self explained as “A gathering spot for ex-Googlers to reminisce and comment on the latest developments in search”. Some interesting reading here.
Tag Archives: google
Google Analytics wobbles due to increased demand – Computerworld
Aside
Google Analytics wobbles due to increased demand – Computerworld – as of this morning I’ve been unable to access the site. It shoots me back over to Googles home page once I log in.
How People Work At Google
Aside
Forbes.com has an interesting article describing the environment over at Google.
From the article: “Hundreds of projects go on at the same time. Most teams throw out new software in six weeks or less and look at how users respond hours later. With 82 million visitors and 2.3 billion searches in a month, Google can try a new user interface or some other wrinkle on just 0.1% of its users and get massive feedback, letting it decide a project’s fate in weeks”. Now thats agile!
Google Analytics
Photo by rbieber
A look at the first cut of data received by Google Analytics on the site. Cool set of tools, with lots of information.
This ones a keeper in my toolbox.
Since I fall WAY under the 5M page hits, I may use this from now in instead of BAStats. It will cut down on my database size and there is much more information in this package.
Gillmor Gang – User Driven Innovation
The latest Gillmor Gang podcast talks about a concept called “User Driven Innovation” using Google and other vendors who have opened up their API’s as an example of this concept. The main subject of the podcast is disruption, of which this is just a part.
User Driven Innovation is the opening of service API’s to allow users to create applications based on a conglomeration of different service providers. You might remember reading something about this in articles on this site, including the ones here and here.
I have to say, I like the term “User Driven Innovation” much better than “Application Level Reuse”. Whatever you call it, it was validating for me to hear this on the way home last night.
Microsoft ogles Google’s goodies
Aside
Microsoft ogles Google’s goodies – Financial Times
Google throws bodies at OpenOffice
Aside
Google throws bodies at OpenOffice – News.com.
Google Reader
I’ve been using the Google Reader for the last few days since I’ve been away from my home machine, where I usually use FeedDemon for all of my RSS aggregating needs. I have to say, I’m digging it. One nice thing about having Google software to manage this kind of stuff is that they are confident enough to give you the ability to export your feed data to external feed readers if you aren’t happy with it.
Joel Spolsky wrote an article back in 2000 about removing barriers to entry in order to get your product accepted in the market. One of these barriers is allowing the user the option to go back if they feel they have made a mistake. Google has removed this barrier to entry for us, allowing us to go back to what we are comfortable with if we want to.
I’m not sure I’m going to go back. I really like what Google has done with their aggregator. Check it out and see if you don’t feel the same way.
Check Out GeoBloggers.com
Aside
Check out GeoBloggers.com if you want to see a really cool application that was written around the Google Maps and Flickr API’s. I haven’t quite figured out how to use it, but it looks really interesting and is a good example of what is possible when systems are designed with service orientation in mind.
The Anatomy of a Search Engine
Aside
For nostalgia sake, here’s the first paper Sergey Brin and Larry Page wrote on the PageRank algorithm, called The Anatomy of a Search Engine
Bieber Labs 