Google Press Day Wrap-up: Co-op, Trends, Desktop 4 and Notebook
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Written By Reprise Media | May 11, 2006 | Share This
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We didn’t attend Google’s 2nd annual Press Day fete yesterday, but we do like wearing this spiffy hat. And we also have plenty to cover, as Big G blitzed the 4th estate with a cavalcade of new and upcoming features.
Try not to hog the Google Granola First up, the somewhat confusing Google Co-op. Google VP Marissa Mayer describes it thusly: “It lets people and organizations label web pages and create specialized links related to their unique expertise.” Okay, so it’s a kind of social tagging application, driven by specialized knowledge. Through their Google Personalized Homepages, users can subscribe to “specialized links providers” (a few are currently available, including Digg, Fandango and People.com), and their info would show up at the top of the page for related searches - Fandango listings would pop up in a search for movie listings, for instance.
Danny Sullivan’s write-up points out that you almost have to be an expert in the field of Google Co-op to figure out how to contribute; here’s a link to Google’s arcane instructions for how to set yourself up as a provider of subscribed links. If you just want to help tag pages (”label” in Google’s parlance) under specified categories, like Health, Autos and Destination Guides, those directions are here. The whole shebang isn’t in tip top shape yet, but we suspect that’s because it’s barely a day old, and a little hard for the average bear to comprehend at first.
Compare, contrast, save! …Or at least the first two, with the Google Trends tool. This Google Labs offering allows you to compare up to five comma-separated topics, which are arranged on a color-coded graph that represents search volume over time for each word. We input “lawnmower, snowblower,” which shows predictable seasonal variations for each term. Google Trends also tracks spikes in Google News searches for the terms, and plots news stories on the graph accompanying each upsurge; our example produced no notable snowblower news, but did link to stories about lawnmower racing and (urp) lawnmower accidents.
Kind of like ‘widgets,’ with a ‘ga’ The 4th incarnation of Google Desktop is upon us, and its new draw? Gadgets, optional add-ons that “deliver an array of information - ranging from games and media players to weather updates and news - straight to your desktop” (Mac users are probably familiar with the concept). A few of the highlights include a weather reporting “globe,” Google Calendar, a live reporter for cricket scores (if you’re into that), and an “eBay watcher” to keep track of auctions.
What, no Google Ballpoint Pen? Finally, there’s Google Notebook, which won’t be launching ’til next week. It’s “a personal browser tool that lets you clip text, images, and links from the pages you’re searching, save clippings to an online notebook, and then share notebooks with others,” according to Mayer. We’ll have more as soon as we get a look at it ourselves.
Related: Philipp Lenssen’s full-day coverage at Google Blogoscoped.
Topics: Google |
Technology Review also has an article about the Google Press Day.
Check it out here: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=infotech&sc=&id=16828&pg=1
Google desktop is one of the coolest things Google has lunched. I use it 3 or 4 times a week, its very useful.
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