Google Faq

Yesterday, Google released a new feature to Gmail called Google Goggles.

Imagine if you will a situation where you sent an email to your ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend ranting on why you two should get back together. But later the next day, when your more sober, sane or both - you realize you’ve just made a huge mistake and there’s no Reset button. Well Google Goggles is the thing for you.

When you enable Google Goggles, it will check to make sure you really want to send that late night email. If you are hell-bent on forging a new alliance with your ex-partner, then your going to have to answer a few math questions first.

Google Mail Goggles confirmation

By default, Google Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekends. If you find that you have the willpower of a kid in a candy store, you can adjust the settings to your liking.

Google Mail Goggles Settings

Hopefully, this new feature will save some of you a lot of money on therapy bills down the road.

Today, Google launched a newly redesigned Blog Search homepage.

Google has taken features and technology found on Google News and ported it over to Blog Search.

Enhancements include categories on the left hand side of the page and grouping blog results in clusters. In English, that means the most revelant blog posts on a certain topic are all listed or grouped together.

If you need to dig a little deeper, try the Advanced Blog Search screen. Besides searching by phrases and keywords, the advanced search screen also allows you to search by blog post author, url, date range and language. For the Puritan’s out there, there’s also a naughty word filter option.

For blog owners who want to try and have their blog included in Googles Blog search results, head over to the Google Blog Search Ping Service homepage and submit your blog’s feed today.

Redesigned Google Blog Search homepage

Seems like Google Android 3rd party development is picking up steam. Last Thursday Visa announced that they will develop mobile payment services based on the Android platform.

According to Visa, services developed for the Android platform will include:

Alerts: Consumers will receive near real-time notification of purchase activity based on customized cardholder preferences. The consumer will be able to personalize the types of alerts delivered to their mobile device according to pre-selected parameters, such as the size of the transaction, or whether the transaction is in foreign currency. Because these alerts are triggered by the transaction as it passes through the Visa network, consumers will receive notifications almost immediately, typically before they even leave the store. This adds a new layer of peace of mind when using Visa, and a new way to combat fraud.

Offers: Consumers will receive targeted offers from merchants directly to their phone. These offers - ranging from discounts to loyalty offers - could be based on a consumer’s previous purchase activity. For consumers and merchants alike, this service will ensure the most relevant offers are sent in a timely manner, helping increase merchant traffic, loyalty and customer satisfaction.

Locator: The Locator service is expected to integrate with technology developed by Google, such as Google Maps and Google location-based services, to show consumers nearby locations of merchants sending them offers, or of an ATM that accepts Visa. The location would be called out on a map displayed on the mobile device screen.

During it’s rollout period, Visa will initially offer these services only to Chase Visa cardholders. Following the Chase Visa trial period, Visa will work with other card issuers to make available it’s mobile services for Android to their Visa account holders.

Also, Namco announced the release of PAC-MAN for free when the T-Mobile Android based G1 phone is released later this month. The game normally retails for around $9.99.

Glu, a leading publisher of mobile games, is also getting aboard the Android bandwagon. They’ve just announced a new game called Bonsai Blast that will be available exclusively on the Android platform.

PacketVideo is releasing a portion of it’s CORE™ software to the Android platform. PacketVideo created an open-sourced version called OpenCORE(TM) which provides the power to run sophisticated audio, video and imaging applications, including several applications chosen as top award-winners in the recent Android Developer Challenge.

It’s also a good time to be an Android developer. In not so secret news, Motorola has been contacting recruiters looking for Android developers, 300 of them to be exact. Rumor has it that Nokia and Verizon feel left out of the party and are showing more interest.

Meanwhile, my iPhone 3G is still dropping calls. And to think I left T-Mobile after being a loyal customer for years. I was with them when they were still called VoiceStream. Another two years and I can switch back. Yea me.

I just recently stumbled upon a new service from Google called Google Moderator. Google Moderator seems to be Google’s version of Yahoo! Answers.

Google Moderator was developed by Taliver Heath as a side project and runs on Google App Engine. Heath goes on to describe Google Moderator on the Google App Engine Blog:

I designed a tool in my 20% time that would allow anyone attending a tech talk to submit a question, and then give other participants a way to vote on whether or not that question should be asked. This way, the most popular and relevant questions would rise to the top so that the presenter or the moderator of an event could run the discussion more efficiently and in a transparent manner.

With Google Moderator, anyone can submit a question to the group, the group will get a chance to vote on your question. In a way, it’s part Digg, part Yahoo! Answers.

For example: Unamed is asking the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, why the NHS is giving him the shaft for his cancer drug Zevalin.

Google Moderator Series Question Example

Currently the question is ranked in sixth place in the Gordon Brown topic.

It’s quite easy to create your own series of questions. You will need a Google Account to get started. First, after signing into Google Moderator, you’ll need to create a signature and set your location. This information will be publicly available.

Creating Google Moderator Signature

After you’ve saved your signature, go ahead and click the Create Series button.

Google Moderator Create Series Button

After you click on the button, you will be presented with the New Series screen.

Google Moderator Create Series Detail

A title is the only required field, but if you want to get a better response to your series it’s best to fill in all the fields. If you want people to submit their own questions anonymously to your series, then check the “Let people submit questions anonymously” checkbox. Obvious, I know.

You can also assign someone other than yourself to own this series. I would check with them first before you start spamming people with Google Moderator owner emails.

To save this series information and move on to creating questions in our series, click the “Create Series” button to make it so.

Google Moderator New Series

Now that you have a new series, you can start adding questions to your series. Type your question in the textarea below the “Topic of question” dropdown selection.

Google Moderator New Question Setup

Click the Submit button to save your question.

Google Moderator New Question

Congratulations! Your done. Do you have a question you want to pose in my Windows 7 topic?

Google’s latest Do No Evil™ project is Project 10¹⁰⁰ (pronounced “Project 10 to the 100th”).

The goals of the project are simple. Collect ideas from the public on how to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Google has set very few guidelines for the project in hoping to get a wide array of response. They do limit you to several categories:

• Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?

• Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?

• Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?

• Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?

• Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?

• Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?

• Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?

There’s also the ever popular Other category if your feeling a little boxed in. They also ask you to address the following criteria in your submission.

• Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
• Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
• Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
• Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
• Longevity: How long will the idea’s impact last?

The project has already kicked off and submissions are due on October 20th. So why don’t you go and submit your ideas now! Voting on ideas will begin on January 27th. Google will also be give $10 million dollars to jumpstart implementation of these ideas.

So what do you think would be a lofty, yet manageable and noble goal that could help thousands or millions of people?

Google and TMobile Android Phone

In Google’s own words Android is, and I quote:

…a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications.

In English, that translates into new software that Google has developed that will run on mobile phones. The first Android based phone is being released by T-Mobile. The phone itself is being manufactured by longtime T-Mobile partner HTC.

Some quick features of the phone include:

Touchscreen functionality

Full QWERTY keyboard

3 MP Camera

3G and Wi-Fi capable

Google applications include Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk
IM, Text and email

Video Playback

Mobile applications such as games, social networking and shopping via the Android Market

Right now, T-Mobile is the only mobile carrier that has actually announced a shipping product based on Google’s Android platform. No other mobile carrier has made any public statments about an Android based phone.

The Open Handset Alliance, which was formed by Google around Android development, includes such notable mobile companies like Sprint, Motorola, Samsung, LG Electronics, Do Co Mo, and Intel to name a few. Anyone of those companies could possibly announce an Android based phone at a later date.

The T-Mobile G1 Android phone will be available on October 22nd for as little as $179.99.