Tony Ruscoe’s Blog

Ancestry Family Search Chrome Extension

2010-12-21T08:31:00.000Z

Over the last few months, I’ve been getting into writing Chrome extensions for the team at work to help automate some of the tasks that we regularly need to perform in the browser. I was amazed how easy it was to write Chrome extensions and I’d encourage anyone with HTML and Javascript knowledge to read the Google Chrome Extensions documentation and give it a go too.

Until a few weeks ago, I’d still not written any publicly available extensions, but then I saw this tweet from EricaJoy:

Half asleep thought, must write down before passing out. Chrome extension for searching familysearch.org for Ancestry.com relatives. SLEEEP.

That sounded like a pretty good idea to me and something that would be easy to write too. A quick search of the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery suggested nothing like it already existed either. After a few hours of coding, I gave Erica a copy of the extension to install and test. Feedback was good, so I uploaded it to the gallery for other genealogy enthusiasts to enjoy:

Ancestry Family Search Extension (Chrome Web Store)

I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it’s already got 156 users, 93 weekly installs and an average of 4 stars from 8 ratings. If you install the extension and discover a bug or have an idea for a feature request, you can send me your comments using the feedback form.

Note: I had a couple of issues with the extension when FamilySearch.org moved their search from beta.familysearch.org to www.familysearch.org which meant I needed to update the permissions but those should be fixed now. I’m also aware that the search criteria is no longer displayed on the results page but I hope to fix that in the next version.

San Francisco, California

2010-07-18T22:00:00.004+01:00

I can’t believe it’s July already. Time literally seems to have flown by since I started at Google in January. They say that happens when you’re having fun. And fun I am having. In March I visited our Zürich office. If you’ve never seen photos, you need to take a look. The BBC has a story and video from when it opened in 2008 too. A couple of weeks ago, I visited our Amsterdam office for a day and back in May I had the pleasure of visiting our headquarters in Mountain View. No matter how many photos I’d seen and stories I’d heard, nothing really prepared me for the scale of the place. Cycling between buildings to attend meetings and having to choose between a dozen or so different places for lunch takes some getting used to. Not that I’m complaining, of course!

Since the trip was also my first time in the United States, I decided to make the most of it and spend another week in San Francisco with Suzy. We stayed at the Hotel Triton, a boutique hotel themed around pop culture, where we had a corner room on the fifth floor overlooking the Dragon Gate entrance to Chinatown.

As seems to be the tradition for these types of blog posts, here’s a run down of what we got up to, which is more for the benefit of my memory than anything else… so feel free to skip the words and just look at the pictures.

Saturday 15th May 2010

After meeting Suzy at the airport and checking in at the hotel, we wandered around the local area looking for a place to eat, going full circle and ending up at Mikaku across the road from where we were staying. Their bento boxes were excellent and their choice of saki looked equally impressive.

Sunday 16th May 2010

We got up early and grabbed a quick breakfast at Starbucks before heading down to Howard Street so that we could join the Bay to Breakers crowds. I only found out about this crazy phenomenon a couple of days prior when a colleague warned me about it, suggesting that it was the type of event that tourists generally want to either avoid or embrace. After reading that it basically involves a 12km run, followed by pretty much the entire city in fancy dress, with music, drinking, dancing and nudity, we decided to go and take a look. If you’re ever in San Francisco at this time of year, I’d definitely recommend checking it out. This was the 99th year it’s taken place, so I suspect 2011 is going to be absolutely huge.

We walked about 5 miles of the route and saw a bit of Golden Gate Park before turning back to get some lunch. Then we went to Jacks Cannery Bar to rest our legs. I sampled a couple of local ales and Suzy had the best Bloody Mary I’ve ever tasted.

For dinner, we decided to try one of the many restaurants in Chinatown. With so many to choose from, we read tons of online reviews before settling for Chef Jia’s Restaurant (925 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94133) as recommended by the SFGate Chinatown page:

Chef Jia’s: Every guidebook ever written on SF has probably mentioned the House of Nanking, but few seem to shower its neighbor, Chef Jia’s, with equal praise. We don’t see why. Huge lines form for Nanking, but Chef Jia’s food is just as good (if not better) and cheap – and the restaurant is less crowded. One warning: Order “hot” only if you really mean it.

They were right about the queues for the House of Nanking, that’s for sure. We’ve no idea what the food’s like in there, but Chef Jia cooks nice big portions of Chinese food that tastes great. Chef Jia’s place is a bit worn in places and was empty apart from one other couple when we got there, but its tables soon started to fill up with locals and people wanting to avoid the Queue of Nanking.

Monday 17th May 2010

We skipped breakfast and ventured out into the torrential rain to take a tour of Chinatown and its tacky tourist shops, elegant rooftop temples, and a back alley that was used in Karate Kid Part II.

We ended up in Little Italy and went to Caffe Delucchi for lunch and picked a couple of nice hearty dishes from their breakfast menu that were really tasty; Polenta with Pulled Pork for me, and Italian Frittata for Suzy, which she washed down with an Italian strawberry cream soda.

The weather didn’t improve much after lunch, so we got even more wet walking to Lombard Street, taking a trip hanging from the side of one of the famous cable cars up and down Russian Hill and Nob Hill, then strolling along The Tenderloin to the Civic Center before heading back to the hotel for a rest before dinner.

I’d been told that we had to try Lulu’s whilst we were in San Francisco, so I’d already booked a table via their website a couple of days earlier, and I’m pleased to say that the food lived up to the high expectations. They were mega busy, so the service was a little slower than you’d usually expect from a good restaurant, but we didn’t really mind as we were enjoying the atmosphere of the place and the food was delicious, so we were surprised when the waiter brought us two complimentary dessert wines after our main course as an apology for the poor service. They clearly have high standards and know how to treat their customers, which certainly makes a pleasant change!

Tuesday 18th May 2010

For breakfast, we made a quick stop at the Brioche Bakery (210 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94133) to pick up a croissant or two, walked up to see Coit Tower and then walked down to Pier 33 so that we could hop on the 09:30 ferry that we’d booked online with Alcatraz Cruises so that we could spend the morning on Alcatraz Island.

About.com says that Alcatraz is “only an abandoned prison, the weather can be unpleasant, it stinks during seagull nesting season, and it takes up almost half a day to go there and back.” To which I say, “So what!? It’s unique and has a fascinating story.”

Even though we got the first boat of the morning, there were still things we hadn’t seen on the island four hours later. The main reason we left was that there are no places to eat or drink on the island unless you take your own picnic, which we’d recommend doing so that there’s no need to rush back to the mainland.

After successfully breaking free from Alcatraz, we made our way to Pier 39 for some lunch. We’d been wondering what San Fransisco’s local speciality dish was before we arrived since there was nothing that really came to mind. Once you’re there, it’s quite obvious that clam chowder served in a bowl made out of sour-dough is a favourite though. Prices and quality seem to vary a bit but we opted to eat ours at Chowders which was fine.

Pier 39 appeared to be the most touristy part of San Francisco. For a city that must attract so much tourism, San Francisco has mostly managed to keep its identity, but Pier 39 makes up for this a bit.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon watching the seals at Pier 39 and exploring the rest of Fisherman’s Wharf, including a visit to the Musee Mecanique where they’ve got an impressive collection of antique arcade machines and video games, mostly for 25¢ per play, and quick potter around Ghirardelli Square.

Being down near the water, we figured we’d try to hunt down some good seafood for tea. Having read reviews online, it seemed SFGate had hit the nail on the head when it said, “Look in any San Francisco guidebook and you won’t see much on dining at Fisherman’s Wharf. No one takes the time to really check things out. Instead, writers dismiss it with a casual wave of the pen, saying there’s nothing good.” Regardless, we opted for Nick’s Lighthouse (5 Fisherman’s Wharf) since they seemed to have some decent crabs and other seafood available from the takeaway counter outside and SFGate didn’t say anything too bad about them. Despite being overpriced because of the location, the crab would probably have been the most sensible thing to order. Our seafood platter was disappointing, the wine was expensive and the service wasn’t great. It was the only place during our trip where we felt we didn’t want to leave the 18% tip that’s expected at most restaurants in San Francisco.

Wednesday 19th May 2010

Following a quick breakfast from Boudin Bakery & Sidewalk Cafe, we hit Macy’s, Bloomingdales and the Westfield San Francisco Centre for a touch of window shopping to work up an appetite. Ever since arriving in San Francisco, I’d been determined to enjoy a stereotypical American meal, consisting of huge portions of buffalo chicken wings and ribs or a massive burger. Although San Francisco’s numerous and varied restaurants are fantastic, unless we were just looking in the wrong places, this is one cuisine that it seems to be lacking.

Thankfully, The Cheesecake Factory on the top floor of Macy’s seemed to have the menu I’d been looking for. Their starter of buffalo wings the size of chicken drumsticks was plenty for two to share and was really enough for a lunchtime meal, but I’d already ordered a portion of beef ribs for my main course and Suzy had chosen a burger. But for a moment, we thought we might never get to taste them.

Whilst waiting for our main courses, our waitress told us that there was a bomb scare in Union Square – right outside Macy’s – and that she was going to leave, along with about half of the staff. Although there was no official evacuation plan, she gave us the option to leave too. I had no idea whether this was a regular occurrence or something more serious but the waitress seemed pretty panicked and the rest of the staff clearly didn’t know what to do. Suzy joked that we should just stay put and enjoy our “last” meal together. Fortunately, one of the waiters announced they’d been given the all-clear about five minutes later, just as our main courses arrived. Perfect timing!

Despite the bomb scare, we both thoroughly enjoyed our meals. I’m not sure I’ve ever had beef ribs before but these were melt-in-the-mouth-good with so much meat on them that I had to leave two to take home for a snack later, along with a generous slice of Key Lime Cheesecake to share.

After wandering around Union Square and Downtown a bit more, we went back to the hotel and got the ribs and cheesecake chilling in the minibar fridge before nipping out for a quick drink with a mate who had just moved to San Francisco. It wasn’t until we got back to the hotel that we found out — thanks to Twitter users — that the whole of Union Square had been evacuated and they’d even sent in a bomb disposal robot while we were waiting for my ribs!

Thursday 20th May 2010

We grabbed another quick breakfast from Starbucks on our way to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market where we found several really good specialist food and cookware shops in The Ferry Building Marketplace.

We bought two massive wrap sandwiches from Golden Gate Meat Company (caution: terrible website jingle) to eat later and then hired two bikes from Blazing Saddles so that we could cycle across the Golden Gate Bridge and see it up close. Once we’d reached the other side, we enjoyed an ice-cream in the tiny Mediterranean-like city of Sausalito before catching the ferry back.

For our last evening in San Francisco, we grabbed a couple of huge and delicious slices of pizza from Escape from New York Pizza down the street from our hotel and then jumped on a streetcar to join a fellow Googler for drinks down The Castro.

Friday 21st May 2010

On our last day in San Francisco we’d planned to sample some burritos but decided not to bother dragging our suitcases around for a few hours and just had a lazy morning in the hotel, getting our money’s worth by staying right until check-out time, and then made our way to the airport thoroughly exhausted and ready for another holiday…

Not quite as stereotypically American as I was expecting it to be, I thoroughly enjoyed San Francisco and I can’t wait to visit again!

Migrating from Blogger FTP to Custom Domains

2010-03-05T10:10:00.001Z

When I started my first weblog back in 2002, I was using a homegrown blogging platform. It was powered by ASP and a Microsoft Access database, which I later rewrote to use the FileSystemObject to create static files after I learnt that Access didn't scale well even with just a handful of visitors.

Around three years later, I eventually decided to migrate to Blogger because it had some excellent features which I couldn't be bothered to implement myself. The killer feature for me was FTP publishing, which allowed Blogger to upload ASP files to my server so that I could continue to host the blog on my own domain whilst still being able to benefit from its other features, like archive pages, comments and an XML feed.

I was therefore disappointed – but not surprised – to see the announcement that Blogger would no longer support FTP publishing after 26 March 2010 (which was later extended to 1 May 2010). Although the team added a bunch of new features when they launched Blogger Beta in August 2006, FTP publishers couldn't migrate to Blogger Beta until a couple of months later, and even then they couldn't benefit from the full range of new features. It was pretty clear to me then that FTP support was going to be phased out one day, especially when custom domains were announced in January 2007. To be honest, I'm surprised it's not been switched off sooner!

Migrating to custom domains actually offered me the best of both worlds; the ability to host the blog on my own domain without needing to worry about hosting whilst benefiting from all the latest features. Regardless, I decided against it for no good reason other than the fact that it would require some effort on my part.

One advantage of working at Google is that I was able to reach out to the Blogger team and ask what they had planned for the FTP migration tool before it was launched. I was really impressed and relieved to hear that they'd been working hard to design and develop a tool to make the migration from an FTP blog to a custom domain as quick, easy, pain-free and seamless as possible for blog owners, site visitors and search engines alike.

The migration tool is now available on Blogger in Draft, the special version of Blogger where new features are tried out before being released to everyone, and it should be available on www.blogger.com soon. There's an excellent step-by-step screencast of the FTP Migration Tool, which I've embedded later in this post, so I won't go through what that process entails here. However, having now followed the migration process myself, I thought it would be good to mention a few extra things that I did to help make the move as smooth as possible.

Feeds

Before the announcement that FTP support was being deprecated, I had already moved my feed to FeedBurner and was redirecting any requests for the old feed using a custom ASP error page which I configured on my host. Furthermore, rather than provide FeedBurner with the location of the static XML feed on my server, I pointed it at the one hosted by Blogger since I figured that would be faster to update and more reliable.

Note: You don't need to do this, and not everyone with an FTP blog will be able to redirect requests for their old feed to their FeedBurner feed, which is why the Blogger FTP Migration Tool automatically posts to your blog explaining that the blog has moved, giving your readers the new feed address.

Tracking

Since I use Google Analytics to track visitors to my website, I wanted to make sure this would still work. Although my existing profile would have continued to track visits to the blog, the site structure would be different and could have potentially made my reports confusing, so I decided to create a new profile. All I needed to do then was update the tracking code in my blog template to include my new profile identifier.

Note: Updating the tracking code in the template before the migration process would result in the FTP blog being updated to use the new tracking code too, so I did it after the blog has been fully migrated. If you're thinking about doing the same, make sure you read my note about updating templates below.

Template

I had always used a custom template with my FTP blog, so I had to update any absolute references to my CSS, JavaScript and image files. Although Blogger's missing files host could have taken care of this, I prefer to have things like this explicitly defined so it's clear how things are working at a later date.

My blog had also been using Active Server Pages (ASP) for server-side scripting, so my blog template included things like server-side includes and ASP code blocks. Since those obviously wouldn't work on Blogger, I had to make a few changes to remove any server-side scripting. This basically involved moving the content of the includes to directly inside the template and rewriting any of my server-side logic to use jQuery on the client-side instead.

Note: One small gotcha about updating your template after your blog has been moved to a custom domains is that the "Off" option for the NavBar is no longer available. If you had this switched off previously, any changes you make to your template now will add the NavBar code back into your blog. If you're using your own custom template, you may find it doesn't play nicely with your CSS. It should be possible to fix this by updating your CSS though.

DNS

To make the migration process even quicker, I created my CNAME entry in my DNS records in advance, following the instructions in the Blogger Help article for using Custom Domains.

Migration

Once I'd completed the things above, I was ready to use the migration tool:

Links

Since I often link to my own blog posts from within my blog posts, I need to go back through my old posts and update these links to point to my new blog address. The same applies to any links pointing to my blog from other places, like profile pages on other services or social networks. Although the redirects would direct visitors to the right place, it's always best to remove any unnecessary redirects where you have control over the links.

Tip: If you're using Google Webmaster Tools, it's quite easy to get an idea of where is linking to your blog. Just go to the dashboard for your old FTP blog domain and click the More link under the Links to your site section to see all external links and then select Internal links in the menu to see where you're linking to your blog posts from inside your website. (This will probably return hundreds of URLs, but it should give you a good idea of what you need to update.)

Conclusion

Using the migration tool was really straightforward and I'm pleased it's encouraged me to finally make the switch. I'm going to have to spend some time checking out all the new features that are available to me now I'm finally using Custom Domains.

Since I like to keep my website directory clean, I'll probably give it a few months to see how things go before I delete my old blog posts from the server. I may then create server-side 301 redirects to make sure any visitors, proxies or search engines that have been slow to pick up the changes will still manage to find my posts. If you're planning on migrating and think you're comfortable setting up server-side redirects and getting your hands dirty with Blogger's advanced setup options, you could always just skip using the migration tool and follow the Advanced Setup Checklist.

(Finally, apologies to anyone who briefly saw messages posted to my feed over the last couple of days saying this blog had moved; I was too eager to try out the migration tool and my unusual configuration caused a couple of bugs to surface in the process. These bugs have now been fixed and everything is working!)

New Year, New Website, New Job

2010-01-03T15:30:00.004Z

Firstly, apologies to anyone who saw this post earlier when the title was incomplete and it didn't have any content. I am currently on a train trying to use Blogger on my iPhone. Although I didn't have any signal to save the post as a draft, it seems I did have enough signal for it to publish when my fat thumbs pressed the wrong button. Then FeedBurner picked up the post and published it to Twitter. And I've just had a Google Alert email telling me it's now indexed by Google Blog Search. It's times like this when I have to question whether the real-time web is a good idea. Anyway...

The reason I'm on a train is because I'm heading down to London in preparation for the first day of my new job at Google. Even though it's been two weeks since I finished work, I still feel like I've been rushing around trying to get everything sorted. One thing I wanted to do before starting was update my website. It's about four or five years since I last made any significant changes to the design or underlying structure of the site, so it's long overdue. And given I'm joining the Webmaster Team at Google, I figured I might get a few more visitors.

Of course, I left it until the last minute and didn't really get chance to do everything I wanted to. So what you're seeing at the moment is definitely a work-in-progress version which I expect to change lots over the next few weeks, months or years. It could really do with an Under Construction animated GIF. If you get any errors or experience any issues with any area of the site, please get in touch.

And if you do find any problems with my site, please don't worry... I can assure you that the quality of my work at Google will be much, much better than this!

Tony Ruscoe: Going Google

2009-12-08T00:00:00.002Z

I’ve been using Google for about nine years. I made the switch from AltaVista because it was faster to load and had better results. Ever since then, I’ve been constantly amazed at the number of new services being released and acquisitions being made by Google.

When I stumbled across Google Blogoscoped in 2004, I immediately got hooked on the idea of trying to second-guess Google’s next move. Searching for secret services and subdomains, digging through source code, monitoring experimental sites for subtle changes, and looking out for security exploits are all things I’ve done and written articles about. It’s always fascinated me to see how quickly news about Google spreads across the Internet, newspapers, radio and television. And it shows that I’m not the only one interested in Google!

People have often suggested that I should work for Google, given my obvious enthusiasm and keen interest in everything they do. I’ve always dismissed that suggestion, partially because I’ve never seen a position advertised which I felt would suit my skills and experience, but also because of all the stories I’ve read about how difficult their interview process can be!

So when I heard Google was looking to hire Webmasters in the UK, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the job specification described my ideal job and I decided to apply. What happened next came as quite a shock...

I’m extremely excited to confirm that I will be taking on a role within Google’s Webmaster Team from January 2010, working from the London office. Although I don’t know exactly what I’ll be working on yet, I’ll be part of the team that looks after Google’s many websites, which doesn’t include products such as Gmail, Google Calendar or Google Reader, but might mean I get to work on Google’s home page from time to time!

Unfortunately, this obviously means I am no longer able to be co-editor of Google Blogoscoped. But that doesn’t mean I’m leaving for good and closing the door behind me. After five years of contributing to the forum, I don’t intend on stopping now. I’ve always been impressed by the discussions and observations made by the Blogoscoped community, so I hope it will continue to be a part of my daily routine for many years to come. I’ll probably avoid commenting on any speculation about what Google might be planning next though... ;-)

I’d like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank Philipp for giving me the chance to write for Google Blogoscoped, which has clearly played a large part in developing my interest in everything Google-related and has given me some great exposure and opportunities. Being able to attend Google Press Day 2007 in Paris was a particular highlight for me!

I’d also like the thank everyone else who reads the blog or contributes to the forum. It’s people like you who help to keep Google honest. It’s really important that you continue to question what Google is doing and raise any concerns that you may have about how Google operates as a company. After all, I want to work for an awesome company rather than an evil one!

[Enormous thanks also to Google Blogoscoped members, and Googlers, John Mueller and Reto Meier!]

I Googled My Dad (Pic)

2009-06-21T00:00:00.004+01:00

... and LEGEND came up a million times!

I got this Father’s Day card for my dad. He’s definitely one in a million!

How Facebook Uses Your "Skipped" Webmail Contacts

2009-06-12T00:00:00.003+01:00

Yesterday, Facebook suggested two people to me through its “Suggestions” feature which usually includes friends of friends, co-workers and people I used to go to school with. The odd thing about these two suggestions was that although I knew both of them – I had made contact with them years ago because they are my third or fourth cousins – we had no friends in common, we had never worked at the same place, we even lived in different parts of the world. So how did Facebook know that we knew each other?

I’m sure all you Facebook users are already aware that you can enter your Gmail (or other webmail) username and password to import a list of your contacts into Facebook to see if any of them are already registered based on their email address. This is something I have never done as I don’t like to enter my Google Account password on third-party websites. Even if I had done this, I knew for a fact that I had never used my Gmail account to email these two people.

But what if Facebook had used my friends’ imported contact lists to suggest their profile to me even though they didn’t add me as a friend? I am now pretty sure that’s what happened here. Here’s how I proved it:

My friend added my email address to his Contacts in Gmail.

My friend signed in to his Facebook account and imported his Contacts from his Gmail account using the “Find People You Email” feature.

My friend chose to skip the friend suggestion it was making based on my Gmail address.

I signed in to my Facebook account and saw that my friend’s Facebook account was being suggested to me.

In summary, it seems that even if you choose to skip the contacts you have imported, Facebook will still store your relationship with those contacts. Not only will it continue to include them in your suggestions, but it will also alert them to the fact that you previously imported their email address and that you are registered on Facebook. Facebook clearly states that it will not store your password, but it doesn’t tell you that it will store all your contacts even if you chose to skip them.

Admittedly, your account will only be suggested to others if your privacy settings allow your profile to be returned in search results, so anyone could search for your profile themselves, but is it right for Facebook to suggest you to the people that you have chosen to skip? Also, does this mean it’s possible to force yourself into someone else’s suggestions list by simply adding their email address to your contacts?

Update: Canna points out in the forum that you can now remove this information from Facebook using the Remove Contacts Imported using the Friend Finder page, usually accessible via: Friends > Find Friends > Learn More. (Perhaps this is a new page as I don’t remember seeing that link before...) [Thanks Canna!]

Google Translator Toolkit

2009-06-09T00:00:00.002+01:00

Google Translator Toolkit is a new tool being launched today to help translators organize their work and benefit from shared translations, glossaries and translation memories, the Google China Blog reports (English translation by Google).

Evidence that Google was working on a service like this originally surfaced in August 2008 when references to Google Translation Center appeared in Google’s robots.txt file. At the time, the service was only available to Trusted Testers and most of the pages and screenshots were quickly taken offline. Since those screenshots were produced, it’s clear that a lot of changes have been made to the tool.

The Translation Process

The Google Translator Toolkit Workbench, showing side-by-side editing of Wikipedia’s Google article.

For those not familiar with standard translation processes, a professional translator is likely to use a Computer-aided translation (CAT) tool to help identify and extract snippets of text for translation from various file types.

Google Translator Toolkit currently only allows users to upload HTML, Microsoft Word, OpenDocument Text, Rich Text and Plain Text documents up to 1MB for translation. Alternatively, it’s possible to enter the URL of a file on the web, select a Wikipedia article or a Knol for translation.

Once uploaded or selected, files can be translated using the Workbench interface which shows the source text and the target language translations either side-by-side or above and below each other.

Previously translated segments from the translation memory are suggested and can be rated by yourself and others.

One good reason to share translations with others is so that they can be reviewed for consistency and style. Google allows users to rate translated segments, presumably for style and accuracy. Comments can also be added to the target document, which is especially useful when collaborating with other users.

Translation Memories

In addition to the global translation memory, users can also create and share their own TMs.

Many CAT tools allow the translator to store their human translations in a database called a translation memory. The memory can then be used to help with future translation projects by checking to see whether a certain word, phrase, sentence or segment has been translated before. Even if it’s not exactly the same phrase, the translation memory can be used to suggest what’s called a fuzzy match, often indicated by a percentage to reflect how similar the text is.

When translating Wikipedia articles and Knols, the translations are stored in a global, shared translation memory that’s available to everyone by default. That means previously translated phrases from these articles are stored and available for use by other translators using the service, so if they ever find themselves translating the same piece of text, Google will automatically populate the interface with the previous translations to help save time.

Google’s support article explains the process:

Pretranslating your documents

When you upload a document into Google Translator Toolkit, we automatically ‘pretranslate’ your document as follows:

We divide your document into segments, usually sentences, headers, or bullets.

We search all available translation databases for previous human translations of each segment.

If any previous human translations of the segment exist, we pick the highest-ranked search result and ‘pretranslate’ the segment with that translation.

If no previous human translation of the segment exists, we use machine translation to produce an ‘automatic translation’ for the segment, without intervention from human translators.

We realize for some translators, pre-filling with machine translation may actually slow, not speed up, the translation process. In such cases, you can change your settings to pre-fill the segment with the source text, so you can type over the source text instead of making corrections to automatic translation.

Uploaded documents can benefit from using this global TM too, but if users don’t want to share their translations with everyone, they can create their own translation memories and control exactly which users can make additions and rate translations.

Translators already using CAT tools may have translation memories stored in the Translation Memory eXchange (.tmx) open standard XML format. Google allows translations contained in those TMs to be uploaded and added to existing Google Translator Toolkit TMs, providing they’re no larger than 50MB and confirm to TMX 1.0 or higher.

TMs other than the global TM can also be searched for previously translated segments which can then be rated without opening a translation document.

Glossaries

Glossaries are collections of words and phrases with definitions and notes associate with them. They are often used in the translation process to help choose which phrase is most appropriate and to maintain consistency between translations of technical or specialty subjects. Google Translator Toolkit requires CSV format glossaries to be uploaded (it’s not possible to create one from scratch) which will then be automatically searched for terminology in the segments that are currently being translated.

Learn More

For a really quick overview of some of these features in action, you can watch this YouTube video:

How could this be useful to Google?

A machine translation of the Google China Blog explains, “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Translation of information, in our view is the key to access to information.”

Google has been working on a statistical machine translation system for a few years now, which it started to use for Google Translate instead of Systran in October 2007. Since then it’s been slowly integrating translation into many of its services, including Google Toolbar, Google Talk, Google Reader, Gmail, and YouTube. There’s even an AJAX Language API which anyone can use to build upon.

In my opinion, this latest tool has clearly been designed to help improve Google’s translation offerings. One thing on which statistical machine translation relies is aligned translations. In very simple terms, to help train a statistical machine translation system, text in one language is fed into the system alongside the same text in another language. Will enough text, the system can start to learn how certain phrases should be translated. Without aligned translations, there’s no easy way to know exactly which sentence in the source document relates to the translated version. That’s where translation memories are very useful; they contain aligned translations.

There are literally thousands of Wikipedia articles being translated all the time, but the translations aren’t usually maintained in a translation memory. Through using Google Translator Toolkit, translators could benefit from seeing previously translated text from the global translation memory and, in return, Google could clearly benefit from translators using its interface to translate any content that’s then stored as aligned translations in their global TM, which it can ultimately use to enhance its statistical machine translation system and improve the translations that are provided to end-users of any service using Google Translate.

And as the global TM grows, it might even be possible for end-users to get near-to-human-quality for translations of their documents, websites, blog posts, emails and tweets instantly.

[Thanks TOMHTML!]

Disclaimer: I am an employee of SDL, a translation company that provides translation services and software.

Drawings Coming to Google Docs?

2009-02-27T00:00:00.002Z

I’ve not got much information on this but it looks like some kind of drawing capabilities could be coming to Google Docs soon.

Using the following URLs, I was able to view different versions of a Google Docs drawing by adjusting the rev parameter to see various revisions, and the w and h parameters to adjust the width and height of the image on the fly (I’m not entirely sure what the ac parameter is for yet – perhaps “auto-crop” as it seems to remove the white-space from around the drawing):

docs.google.com/drawings/image?id=5c605&w=267&h=267&rev=2&ac=1

docs.google.com/drawings/image?id=5c605&w=267&h=267&rev=3&ac=1

docs.google.com/drawings/image?id=5c605&w=150&h=150&rev=3&ac=1

docs.google.com/drawings/image?id=5c605&w=267&h=267

Whether this image was created from scratch or picked and re-colored from a list of different shapes, I don’t know, but presumably this new feature is still being tested and we may not see it for a while, if at all.

Google Web Drive and "Cosmo" Discussed in Deleted Document

2009-01-20T00:00:00.002Z

During my research for my last post about Google Web Drive, various search engine results kept returning a document that had been deleted from the online document publishing website, Scribd. The site displays the following message explaining its removal:

The document “GDrive on Cosmo Getting Started Guide” has been removed from Scribd

This content was removed at the request of M. Homsi/Google

For more information, please send questions to support@scribd.com. Note that we cannot provide you with a copy of the document, as it has been permanently deleted.

(Incidentally, the same person requested this document about “Platypus” to be removed even though it seems to have just been a cached copy of this page, according to cached descriptions.)

GDrive on Cosmo Getting Started Guide was added to Scribd around 2 months ago by a user called “Alexander” using the username “m_w_f” who has also uploaded a number of other Google documents. However, while the other documents were meant for the public, this one clearly wasn’t.

Most of the search engines had already indexed the ’removed’ version of the page, otherwise a cached copy of all the text from the document would have probably made a very interesting read! And although I was unable to find a cached version of the complete document, I was able to piece together most of the content using the snippets shown in Yahoo!’s search results. Some of the most interesting parts follow, with formatting added for clarity and particularly intriguing parts emphasized in bold. (Apart from that, all quotations have come straight from the document.)

The document describes installing and upgrading “to GDrive on Cosmo” for both “Existing Platypus PC Users” and “Existing Platypus Mac Users”, hinting that the client is available for both PC and Mac. The detailed installation instructions explain how to backup files locally and then uninstall “the current version of Platypus” -- making reference to names such as “Platypus or Drivetastic or Google Web Drive” for the Mac users. It then says to “Download the latest GDrive client build” from the internal address http://go/getgdrive, install it and double click the “Google Web Drive” desktop icon (for PC users) to log in, perform an initial sync and “Start using GDrive by dragging files in or creating new files.”

Just as a reminder, Platypus was the name of the internal GDrive client that was leaked in 2006 which was available internally at Google for Windows and Linux. Whether this new version is an upgrade to that client or a more recent one is unclear though.

Amongst the FAQ are questions about local disk space and external access using a Gmail account:

What if I’m out of space on my local hard disk?
Moving off of g: will free up space on your c: so this should work, but you can also try copying to filer instead and then moving it back to g: after you install the new build

Will the new GDrive client work if I’m not on the corp network?
Not yet, but soon. We really want to offer this for google.com users and GMail users, but we still have a bit more work to do to set this up.

From the installation instructions we can work out that there’s a client for PC and Mac, but how do you view your files online? The document explains:

Viewing your files on the web in Google Docs
You can view all your files online in a special version of Google Docs by visiting: w.svc-1.google.com OR http://w.svc-1.google.com/a/google.com for dasher login (e.g. your @google.com address)

Both of those URLs resolve but I was unable to login to the ’special version’ of Google Docs using either my Gmail or Google Apps domains. (Note: “dasher” is an internal name for Google Apps and can often be found referenced in their code.)

So, we now know that Googlers can access Google Web Drive online through a new version of Google Docs, but what other services are integrated?

PicasaWeb Integration
You can see the photos you drop into the “Photos” magic folder in PicasaWeb by going to http://lighthouse-cosmo-canary.corp.google.com

This should come as no surprise to Google-watchers, given the current Google Docs already has references to photo albums hidden away, as the Google Operating System blog reported last year.

Why hasn’t Google Web Drive been released yet? There are likely to be lots of reasons, but here are some of the known issues:

Performance: Our prod setup does not currently have production QoS Latency, our frontends are in bf and backends in yq GFE in hot

Public folder: The public folder functionality is not yet implemented in the Doclist.

10GB quota limit: Cosmo hasn’t integrated with Amethyst yet, so every user has a quota of 10GB, if you have had more space on GDrive in the past it will be available to you shortly.

Google Docs Integration: Some folders from your Google Docs account may show up, please ignore these for now. We’re in the process of migrating all Google Doc accounts to cosmo so you may see some [...]

We’ve heard all about GDrive before but what’s Cosmo? And what’s Amethyst? Sadly, I was unable to retrieve any more of the text to finish that last sentence, but everything seems to suggest Cosmo is some kind of update to Google Docs which integrates with this new version of GDrive, perhaps a shared storage solution or user interface for all your online files.

We need to remember that this document has been taken completely out of context, so we don’t really know how old it was when it was uploaded 2 months ago, whether this new version is still being actively worked on, or whether it’s ever going to be released the public, but Google certainly keeps us guessing about GDrive...

Will "Google Web Drive" Launch in 2009?

2009-01-18T00:00:00.002Z

When asked to make a wish list for Google in 2009, many of you said you wanted the legendary “GDrive” product to be released. Being the most eagerly anticipated Google product ever, with rumors literally going back years, could new evidence suggest that we may finally get to see it launched this year?

Some users of the recently released Picasa for Mac beta software were surprised to see a “Google Web Drive” option. “RickyB” posted to the Picasa help forums asking:

Not sure if this was left in by accident, but could you elaborate on exactly what the “Google Web Drive” option is? This appears when I right-click a folder and select “Move to Collection...” I’m hoping this is the beta of Google cloud storage solution. I’d love to beta test!

In the MacRumors forums, a user called “majorp” posted this screenshot:

I don’t own a Mac but stumbled across the above references after trying to access the old www10.google.com address, which used to redirect to the login page for the “www10” service which had previously been identified as GDrive in Google Apps. The address now returns a 404 error but its DNS entry has been updated to be a CNAME for the webdrive-client.l.google.com subdomain, suggesting that a Google “webdrive” client, other than Google’s internal-only Platypus client leaked in 2006, may now have been released into the wild.

Incidentally, a quick WHOIS check confirms that Google also owns the GoogleWebDrive.com domain, although it was transferred from a domain squatter in October 2007.

To further add to the speculation, on the Google Operating System blog yesterday, Ionut pointed to a CNET interview with Gmail’s Product Manager Todd Jackson, who said (albeit in:

We know people’s file sizes are getting bigger. They want to share their files, keep them in the cloud, and not worry about which computer they’re on. Google wants to be solving these problems

And if Google wants to be solving those problems, that sounds like they want to be releasing Google Web Drive to me! Of course, it’s not possible to know for sure based on the above indications, but we’re curious how this will develop.

JavaScript: The Missing Manual (featuring jQuery)

2008-07-24T21:11:00.002+01:00

I know what you’re thinking. “Three posts in one week Ruscoe? You neglect your blog for all this time, managing to squeeze out a maximum of one post per month and now all of a sudden you’ve got blogorrhea? What gives!?!”

Well – to answer your question – “what gives” is that I’m not as busy as I have been so far this year. I’ve pretty much finished going to the gigs (actually, there are a couple more coming up this year), I’ve partied like it’s 1985, I’ve moved house, and I’ve reviewed two books for O’Reilly’s Missing Manual series, which is what this post is about...

Google Apps: The Missing Manual was finally released on 27th May 2008. It’s a book aimed at people who want to get the most out of Google’s online applications, such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar, iGoogle, Page Creator, Google Apps and Google Sites.

Reviewing a book like this, which covers Google’s ever-changing online services, meant that I had to keep right up-to-speed with all the features as they were being released. Even after finishing each chapter, I kept emailing the editor with updates when Google changed the Google Docs toolbar and Google Speadsheets kept adding new features! Of course, as soon as the book was released it was inevitable that some parts of it would already be out-dated. That obviously doesn’t mean the book was immediately worthless though. Only a few parts now contain minor errors, and it’s mainly omissions as new features have been added rather than outright inaccuracies. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing this book and am pleased that all my (what many people probably see as being useless) knowledge about Google could finally be put to good use!

You can read a bit more about it on Google Blogoscoped. And while you’re there, check out Philipp’s book, Google Apps Hacks.

JavaScript: The Missing Manual was released yesterday and I just got my copy today. After reviewing the Google Apps book, I was approached to do this one. I figured that I would probably know everything the book had to offer but how wrong I was! Not only does it cover standard old-fashioned JavaScript techniques, it also covers the jQuery JavaScript library in quite a lot of detail.

For anyone who’s only ever used raw JavaScript, jQuery is like a programming language from the web of the future. It’s everything that JavaScript should have been. It really does make pretty much everything so much easier to implement. Whether you want to create a simple image rollover (which is one of the first pieces of JavaScript I wrote or, more accurately, copied and pasted!) or a highly dynamic AJAX website, this book helps to explain how you can go about achieving it quickly and easily using JavaScript and jQuery.

So if you think you’re a JavaScript guru but you’ve never bothered looking into jQuery, this book is a great place to start and will help to completely change how you think about developing dynamic websites!

Google Account Phishing Attempt Using Orkut

2008-07-24T00:00:00.003+01:00

Earlier this week, I received a greetings card from someone called Shelia who was using “Orkut Greetings” (supposedly a service offered by Orkut, Google’s social network). Or at least that’s what the sender of this email wanted me to believe:

Those extra details are usually hidden by default, but I expanded them to verify that the email genuinely came from Google. It appears to have been sent from an Orkut email address and was even signed by the google.com domain. Seems genuine so far? Take a look at the domain in the link:

http://orkult.greetingslogin.googlepages.com

As you can see, the email isn’t sending me to Orkut at all. It’s actually sending me to a page hosted on Google Pages, a place where Google allows users to create and upload their own web pages. And here’s what the page looked like, which was asking me to sign in using my Google Account:

Everybody should already know not to enter their Google Account username and password on any website that isn’t being hosted on a google.com domain, so most people would hopefully spot this before handing their details over to the phisher. But what makes this email more convincing for the unsuspecting recipient is that the email was genuinely sent by Google. So how did the phisher do that?

If we take a look at the very bottom of the email – after 137 carriage returns, which are used to try and make sure you don’t see it – we can see this:

By creating an Orkut group – called Orkut Greetings – they were able to send messages from an Orkut email address which automatically gets signed by google.com since it’s being sent my Google’s systems and, therefore, make it appear to be genuine at first glance. By hosting their phishing doorway page on another Google property, they were able to make their sign in page appear to be almost genuine too.

After contacting Google shortly after receiving the email, I can confirm that the website on Google Pages was disabled some hours later due to violations of their Program Policies.

iPhone 3G: One Week Later

2008-07-21T23:09:00.002+01:00

When the iPhone 3G was announced on 9th June, I was immediately convinced that I was going to get one. Then I realised it still had a crap camera, no MMS and would probably cost me an arm and a leg. And then I changed my mind again just last week and ended up queuing outside an O2 store in Sheffield on Friday, eagerly awaiting their 08:02 opening and the launch of the iPhone 3G in the UK. (Queuing was actually pointless as the store quickly ran out of its stock of just ten iPhones, but I was luckily given a tip-off at lunch time and managed to get one from another store.)

Anyway, I’ve now been using the phone for just over a week, so I thought I’d post some of my early and honest observations. I’m likely to go on a bit, so don’t read this on your iPhone because your battery will be dead by the time you’ve finished... ;-)

First impressions

It’s slick, easy to use, has a really smooth user interface, has some great features and, perhaps most importantly, it’s shiny! However, it does lack some features that many other phones have. And I’m not talking about a one billion megapixel camera (because the camera produces really good, sharp pictures), voice calling (who uses that?) or MMS (because I can live with using email instead); I’m talking about different profiles (e.g. silent, sleeping, work, meeting), the ability to delete individual text messages, display how many characters are remaining when sending an SMS to someone and other little things like that – but the innovative features definitely outweigh all these minor annoyances and these are all things that may still (hopefully) be added in future software upgrades.

App problems after first sync

Putting aside all the initial problems of getting my phone line activated with O2 and then activating the handset through iTunes, I was pretty happy with my new phone’s capabilities after playing with the App Store and downloading a few free applications. (If you’re interested: iPint, Alarm Free, Banner Free, BubbleWrap, TapTap Revenge, Facebook, Shazam and Midomi.) The problems came when I synced my iPhone with iTunes for the first time.

I don’t know whether the problem occurred because I had originally activated my iPhone on a different computer, but after syncing with my main desktop PC none of the apps I’d downloaded to my iPhone would work. Each time I clicked one of the icons, it opened the app for a second or two and then immediately closed it down again. After removing them from the iPhone and re-syncing, everything worked fine though.

Contact syncing issues

Given that my old Nokia N73 made a complete mess of my Outlook contacts when I tried to synchroise them, I decided to enter all my contacts into my iPhone manually with the intention of syncing them with either Outlook or my Google Contacts later. Last night, I decided to sync them back to a folder in Outlook (since my Google Contacts are a real mess due to all the times Gmail added people to my contacts just because I’d emailed them a couple of times). Oddly, not all of my contacts were transferred to Outlook. They were literally nowhere to be seen. I deselected the folder in iTunes, removed all my contacts and tried again. This time, iTunes managed to copy all my original contacts from Outlook to my iPhone – despite still not being able to see them all in Outlook!

After much confusion and experimentation with various configurations, I somehow managed to wipe all my contacts from my iPhone apart from the few that I could see in Outlook. So I then tried to sync with Google Contacts just to see what that would do. This was a complete waste of time because it synced all my Google Contacts, including the new “Suggested Contacts” groups which seems to include everyone I’ve ever emailed!

In the end, I decided to export a spreadsheet from Outlook based on my old N73 contacts, clean them up a bit and import them back into Outlook before syncing again. So far, everything looks good but this should have been so much easier! Things weren’t helped by the fact that iTunes has no contacts manager of its own which allows me to select which contacts to import (like it does for tunes and podcasts).

Something else I’ve noticed is that my contacts list can be pretty slow loading at times, although it does seem quicker when accessed through the Phone icon rather than the Contacts icon.

Visual Voicemail setup problems

Since I was porting my old mobile number across to O2, I waited until this had been done before I tried to setup my visual voicemail. After following the on-screen instructions, entering my chosen password and failing to save my greeting several times (the last step in the process would just keep reloading the page) I decided to phone O2 Customer Services. They suggested dialing 1750 to switch on Visual Voicemail (which I’d already done), switching it off and on again by dialing 1760 and then 1750 (which I’d already done) and even suggested a full software restore (which I had done before trying to setup it up for the first time). After being passed through two iPhone specialists, they decided I had a faulty handset and would need to return it. However, before I managed to hang up they suggested that I could dial 901 just to prove to myself that my voicemail was up and running. And guess what. Dialing 901 asked me to choose a password and record a greeting, after which my Visual Voicemail worked fine!

Actually, one further problem was that when I accessed my voicemail and selected a message, my screen was going black. After a few quick tests, it seemed this was due to my screen protector interfering with the proximity sensor. As a quick solution, I got my hole-punch and made three holes in the protector to line up with the light and proximity sensors which means everything now works fine! (And it doesn’t look as bad as it sounds either because you can’t see the holes for the case.)

3G and battery life

When the original iPhone was announced, many UK and European users were puzzled why the handset didn’t have 3G. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year, Steve Jobs basically said that they didn’t include 3G because the chipsets were too big and would drain the iPhone’s battery too quickly. I seem to remember people all over the world complaining about this, demanding that Apple should let its users make that decision for themselves. This time around, Apple added 3G and many users are choosing to switch it off to gain more battery life.

My last phone had 3G, and moving from a 3G device to a non-3G device would obviously be a step backwards for me, so I had no intention of buying the original iPhone whatsoever. Of course, the irony is that now I’ve got an iPhone 3G, I’m using it with 3G switched off most of the time in order to save battery life! Generally speaking, I don’t even notice the speed difference though. The websites I use a lot while I’m on the move – like Google Reader, Facebook and FF To Go – have all been optimized to make them fast to download on mobile devices (including the many first generation iPhones without 3G).

The main problem with the iPhone is that it’s such a great mobile device that you want to play with it all the time, and that obviously means the battery isn’t going to last very long!

If I discover anything else about the iPhone which I fancy sharing, I’ll be sure to make a short post about it straight away, instead of making one massive post like this each month, which is what I seem to have been doing recently...

[Image courtesy of Apple.]

Google Rooms, the Early Lively

2008-07-21T00:00:00.002+01:00

Before Google’s 3D chat world Lively was released, the product was called Google Rooms. Here are some left-over screenshots that we discovered on Google’s servers shortly after Lively was launched:

The Google Rooms logo used in the rooms directory, showing a palm tree from the island room

Selecting an avatar from the directory, which included URL references to Google’s 3D Warehouse

The login dialog for the Goth Room; this looks more like traditional minimalist Google style than the current Lively login dialog

The FAQ part of the long help page that Google had for this service

The avatar dialog, taken from the "Create" section of the Getting Started Guide

The list of character animations, taken from the "Communicate" section of the Getting Started Guide

Also see the Lively FAQ.

Google Apps: The Missing Manual, and More

2008-06-02T00:00:00.002+01:00

Following Philipp’s announcement last month about the release of Google Apps Hacks, written by him and published by O’Reilly, I’m pleased to say that another O’Reilly book recently hit the shelves. Over the last couple of months, I’ve been the technical reviewer for Google Apps: The Missing Manual, a book aimed at users who are either new to Google’s online applications, such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar, iGoogle, Page Creator, Google Apps and Google Sites, or who simply want to learn more about all the available features which can sometimes be difficult to find. Content previews are available for each section of the book on the O’Reilly website so that you can see the type of things being discussed.

As we all know, Google’s applications often have features added (and removed) on a daily basis, so being the technical reviewer for a book written about these applications was a difficult task. Even with excellent resources like Google Blogoscoped forum, it was impossible to ensure the book would be up-to-date and 100% accurate when it was published. For example, Google Sites was opened to standard Google Accounts users two weeks after the book had gone to print, so this section already has slightly incorrect information in places. However, I’d like to think that my knowledge and input helped to improve the overall accuracy of the book.

And we’re not the only Google Blogoscoped regulars that have been involved in books about Google recently either. Reto Meier – an excellent contributor to the forum who has also written guest posts for this blog in the past – is currently involved in a book titled Professional Android Application Development which is due to be released in later this year, published by Wiley. Android is the Google-initiated mobile operating system, and the publisher writes that this book “takes readers through a series of projects, each introducing a new Android platform feature and highlighting the techniques and best practices to get the most out of Android.”

More books about Google are available at Amazon, including the For Dummies series, The AdSense Code and others.

Google Spreadsheets Macros and List Mode Editing

2008-05-28T00:00:00.002+01:00

It seems a bunch of new functionality might be coming to the Google Docs spreadsheets application. By accessing one of Google’s experimental sites (like the one where I found offline access would be coming to Google Docs) I was able to get a sneaky look at some of this functionality, including the ability to record, edit and run macros, edit a shared spreadsheet in something called “List mode” and a few new functions for use in spreadsheet formulas.

Macros

For those unfamiliar with advanced features offered by desktop office applications, a macro is a set of instructions that can be used to automate a series of actions in a program. You can usually record the actions as you carry them out in real-time or edit the macro code directly. Here’s a screenshot showing what macro recording in Google Spreadsheets currently looks like:

Since I’ve opted to display the macro code being created, anyone who knows a bit of JavaScript should be able to work out that I’ve basically highlighted a column, made the contents bold and set the background color to green. For more advanced users, there’s the option to edit the code for all the macros directly, giving each one a different function name:

Once again, it’s quite obvious that this functionality is still in the very early stages of development. During my tests, I was unable to actually get any of my saved macros to run! (Each time I selected “Run Macro...” from the menu, I got a “macroNameNotFound” error popping up.)

List mode editing

A new option found under the Share tab currently offers Googlers the ability to allow other Googlers to edit a spreadsheet in List mode, which also allows for filtering and sorting. Since many people only use spreadsheets for storing simple lists, I guess this makes a lot of sense.

Although this feature hasn’t officially been made available in the live version of Google Spreadsheets, it seems the experimental functionality is already there. Try editing this spreadsheet in list mode for an advanced preview of the feature. (This feature does seem a bit temperamental at the moment, so if the spreadsheet doesn’t load, try again in a new browser window.)

New functions

Other new additions include a set of Engineering functions – some of which are already available in Microsoft Excel – to allow for conversions between different numeral systems (i.e. binary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal) and a new GoogleGeocode function (which was actually spotted about 8 months ago in the live version) that will presumably allow you to do a geo-code lookup on a location, for example:

=GoogleGeocode("Sheffield", "Lat") =GoogleGeocode("Stuttgart", "Long")

Unfortunately, I keep receiving a “Data temporarily unavailable” error when trying to test this function though.

Tip: How to Reorder iGoogle Tabs

2008-04-10T00:00:00.002+01:00

One thing that iGoogle doesn’t currently allow you to do is move your tabs around to change the order of them. A quick Google search returns hundreds of pages where iGoogle users are asking how to do this. Until this feature is officially added, here’s how you can do it yourself...

Yesterday, Google added a feature to iGoogle which allows you to export and import your settings.

Exporting your settings to your computer downloads an XML file which contains information about all of your tabs, gadgets and theme settings. (You can see what yours looks like here.)

If you’re familiar with XML, it should be quite obvious what you need to do. If not, simply follow these steps:

Go to your iGoogle settings page, scroll down to the Export / Import section and click the “Export” button. (You’re going to edit this downloaded XML file, so I recommend making a copy just in case things go wrong!)
Open the XML file in a text editor, such as Notepad, and look for the sections which start with <Tab title=. There should be a section like this for each of your iGoogle tabs. (If there are any you don’t recognize, they could be used by iGoogle for Mobile.)
Find the section which corresponds to the tab you want to move and cut everything between <Tab title= and the next occurrence of </Tab> (including the tags themselves). Paste it either before or after the <Tab> section that you want it to appear next to.
Now go back to your iGoogle settings page, browse for the file you’ve just edited and click the “Upload” button. Do not click “Save” button!
Once you see the “Import completed.” message below the upload field, go back to your iGoogle home page and you should see your tabs have changed order!

(If things didn’t go to plan, find the copy of your XML file and upload that, which should restore everything to the same as it was before.)

[Hat tip to Colin Colehour!]

Insecure Facebook Photos, and Sometimes, Insecure Networks

2008-03-25T00:00:00.002Z

By Tony Ruscoe & Philipp Lenssen

Private Facebook photos were exposed to the public through a simple URL edit, Associated Press and ReadWriteWeb report. The hole is now apparently closed. Similar cases have appeared before on other sites with photo hosting and sharing, like MySpace and SmugMug.

Furthermore, as we found out, with a little workaround anyone can see what we understand is intended to be an employee-only Google network. Once in that network, you can then also view e.g. photos and profiles which the Google employees have flagged to be seen only by members of that network, or read along the network’s discussions. (There are currently 8,529 members in the Google network.)

We alerted Facebook and Google security of this today (it’s somewhat hard to define which of the two companies is responsible for this security issue) and can reveal details once they had some time to fix it. Note the workaround may or may not be applicable to other networks; it depends on the network. The safest option until it’s fixed may be to temporarily leave private networks, or perhaps choose some other option to make a profile more private.

A Very Special Google Docs Feature (Potential Spoiler)

2008-03-14T00:00:00.003Z

By Tony Ruscoe & Philipp Lenssen

Unless something is going really, really wrong with Google, we have a suspicion this is just an upcoming April Fool’s joke for Google. If that’s the case, then note that spoilers follow below.

OK. Remember Microsoft’s Clippy, that annoying “living” and talking paper clip, popping up with useless tips whenever you wanted to get some work done in Word? It looks like Google Docs is preparing integrating a similar feature called Cliply. Instead of a paper clip, this time it’s a living Google logo (cached image). And it probably will be just as annoying as Clippy was. The following code showed up live in the source of a Google Docs document...

if (writely.Vars.getSiteVar('enable_cliply')) { // Beta
document.getElementById('newlogo').src = '/images/cliply.gif';
writely.Cliply.init({
'strength': 0.4,
'dexterity': 0.9,
'constitution': 0.7,
'intelligence': 0.1,
'wisdom': 0.3,
'charisma': 0.8});
}

But again, before you sign in to Google to delete your account forever, remember (even when Google’s apps are moving in the direction of Microsoft Office) this is very likely just an April Fool’s prank or general easter egg by Google engineers. If not, then be scared, very, very scared... as Clippy is about to return!

Update: We now got confirmation it’s not an April Fool’s hoax preparation... it’s indeed an easter egg.

Google Docs Offline Access

2008-01-28T00:00:00.002Z

In a post Philipp made last week about writing a book in Google Docs, he said:

Working with Google Docs requires an internet connection. In my case, I need this internet connection anyway [...] your mileage may vary (and who knows, Google may also release Gears-support for Google Docs in the future).

After playing around with one of Google’s not-so-private experimental sites, I can confirm that offline access is currently being tested. When I visited the site recently, I saw this message:

Of course, I clicked the link and this popped up:

Google Gears is a browser extension for Firefox 1.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+ that enables web applications to provide offline functionality through JavaScript APIs. (It also has its own blog.) Other companies – like Remember The Milk and Zoho – are already making use of Google Gears, but the only official Google integration is for Google Reader (although evidence that offline functionality is coming to Google Calendar has also been spotted).

After enabling offline access and confirming the security warning for Google Gears, my documents started to synchronize, just the same as feed items synchronize in Google Reader. (In case you encounter any error messages, Google allows you to reset and disable offline access through the offline access settings dialog box.)

Disappointingly, I wasn’t able to actually view or edit any of my documents after going offline; I could only view them in the document list and received a Firefox “Offline mode” message when I tried. However, I was able to perform simple operations like renaming and starring them while being offline, which were successfully synchronized once I reconnected.

As you can see from the screenshot above, it looks like offline access might be initially introduced just for documents, rather than spreadsheets and presentations which are grayed out like other options in the menu, such as creating a new document, uploading and sharing.

From what I’ve seen, I think it’s clear that offline access is obviously still in its early stages, but it’s reassuring to see that Google is actively improving its online office applications to make them also work offline like the desktop applications we’re all used to.

Google Health Login Page

2008-01-23T00:00:00.003Z

By Tony Ruscoe & Philipp Lenssen

Want to get a first live glimpse of Google Health, which Google’s Marissa Mayer announced will be rolled out in early 2008? Point your browser to:

www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=health

However, I didn’t get past the login screen, so all we see at the moment is the intro page. It reads:

With Google Health, you can:
* Build online health profiles that belong to you
* Download medical records from doctors and pharmacies
* Get personalized health guidance and relevant news
* Find qualified doctors and connect to time-saving services
* Share selected information with family or caregivers

Also see the previously surfaced Google Health screenshots.

Update: Tony says, “And now the template has been pulled so it looks the same as the usual login pages”.

Update 2 (May 2008): Google Health is live now; it was presented at the Google Factory Tour.

Google Sites Closer to Launch?

2008-01-18T00:00:00.004Z

Since October 2006 when Google announced they had acquired Jotspot – the wiki hosting service which allows you to create “rich web-based spreadsheets, calendars, documents and photo galleries” by using their wiki applications – people have been waiting for Google to do something with it.

Just over four months ago, in September 2007, I reported that JotSpot was coming to Google Apps after clues were found for a service called “Google Wiki” in the Google Apps login pages. Soon after that post, all traces of the service disappeared.

Almost two months later, a new subdomain was spotted – pages-beta.google.com, similar to the previously referenced beta.pages.google.com subdomain which never worked – adding to the speculation that Jotspot would replace Google Page Creator. By this time, the login pages had resurfaced on Google Apps and the Jotspot login page for google.com had started working; any requests made to pages-beta.google.com/a/google.com were redirecting there too. But for all other domains running on Google Apps, the login page simply displayed “Error” as the service name. *

Shortly after those discoveries, TechCrunch reported on Google’s plans for Google Apps in 2008. In the post, they quoted notes taken by blogger Andrew Miller at a presentation by Googler Scott Johnston, who was the VP of Product Development at Jotspot before it was acquired by Google:

Google Sites: Scheduled to be launched sometime next year (2008), Google Sites will expand upon the Google Page Creator already offered within Apps. Based on JotSpot collaboration tools, Sites will allow business to set up intranets, project management tracking, customer extranets, and any number of custom sites based on multi-user collaboration.

Around the same time, requests to pages-beta.google.com started redirecting to a new URL which included the sites.google.com subdomain instead.

What’s new?

The Google Apps control panel stylesheet now includes styles and an icon () for sites in preparation for displaying the service in Google Apps accounts and the title on the login page has changed from “Error” to “Pages“ – and then finally, in the last 10 days, it’s changed to “Sites”.

We all know how long it can take Google to roll-out new services, but could these final touches mean that Jotspot’s successor Google Sites is slowly getting closer to launch?

* Calls to this page for non-activated services would usually display the service name, whereas a real error would return a “Bad request” error message instead.

Secret iGoogle Themes

2007-12-12T00:00:00.002Z

Since some new iGoogle themes were released last month and the Holiday Village theme for iGoogle was spotted more recently, I wondered how many other themes Google might be hiding from us... and found these two:

TC (tc.xml)

Similar to the default Classic theme, this skin keeps things simple but adds a soft blue gradient background, removes link underlining and adds a bit more space around links in the navigation.

Skateboard (skateboard.xml)

If you want your iGoogle page to show graffiti and a drawing of a “sk8r chick” then you might prefer this theme instead.

To enable either of these themes, follow these instructions:

Visit www.google.com/ig.
Enter the following in your browser’s address bar:

javascript:_dlsetp('preview_skin=skins/tc.xml');

Where tc.xml is the XML filename of the theme shown above.
Click the Save button.

Neither of these themes include any information about their author, title or description in their XML files. Nor do they change based on time, weather or day of the week. I guess this could mean they’re not finished, so don’t be surprised if they change or get deleted!

Can anyone find any more?

What the Google Intranet Looks Like

2007-11-28T00:00:00.003Z

By Philipp Lenssen & Tony Ruscoe

What do around 16,000 Google employees stare at in the morning when they’ve arrived at the office? They might be looking at Moma, the name for the Google intranet. The meaning of the name of “Moma” is a mystery even to some of the employees working on it, we heard, but Moma’s mission is prominently displayed on its footer: “Organize Google’s information and make it accessible and useful to Googlers.” A “Googler,” as you may know, is what Google employees call themselves (they have other nicknames for specific roles; a noogler is a new Google employee, a gaygler is a gay one, a xoogler is an ex-one, and so on).

A Google employee in Hamburg (photo taken in mid-2007).

In the beginning, as ex-Google employee Doug Edwards told in a blog post in 2005, Moma “was designed by and for engineers and for the first couple of years, its home page was devoid of any aesthetic enhancements that didn’t serve to provide information essential to the operation of Google. It was dense and messy and full of numbers that were hard to parse for the uninitiated, but high in nutritional value for the data hungry.”

Here’s a picture of the Moma homepage that we got hold of – please note that large areas have been grayed out or whitened out:

On the top of the Google intranet homepage, you’ll find the logo reading “Moma - Inside Google.” Next to it is a search box allowing you to find information from Moma in general, information on specific Google employees, information on availability of meeting rooms, building maps and more. You can choose to include secure content or not via a checkbox. Another checkbox offers you to use “Moma NEXT” for a more experimental variant of search results.

To the top right, there’s an option to switch to iMoma, an iGoogle-style tool prepared by the company which allows further customization of the intranet start page. This way, employees may be able to select their own news and service widgets of interest to be displayed when they log-in.

The actual content of the homepage in the picture is split up into 4 columns. To the left, there’s a “My Office” section, with information for employees and a way to choose your own office for more relevant links. It’s followed by the sections “Survival Kit” and “My shortcuts.” In the middle columns, news gadgets are headlined “Welcome to Google!,” “Communications,” “HR” (human resources), “Company Info” and “Internal Google news,” all in common soft shades of Google base colors. The right column is listing Google teams.

Searching Moma

When you perform a search on Moma, you will see a result similar to the following; this screenshot, which was edited by Google to include comments, has been published by the Google Enterprise Blog in a post of theirs in July to show-case the kind of functionality available:

On the image, you will see a “universal search” style result including employee information, bookmark results, documents hosted on Google’s intranet, and a list of related queries. Users get to choose between ordering by date or by relevance. One can also limit the results to different segments like “Tech,” “Official,” or “Community.” Google in their blog said the use the Google Search Appliance to power this service.

Ex-employee Doug Edwards mentioned how he came to take for granted everything was available on the intranet, “from the status of products in development to the number of employees at any point in the company’s history.” He adds that the transparency was also a motivator, as “Your failures are also visible to everyone in the company, which provides an even greater motivator to continuously improve performance in the areas for which you are responsible.” These days however, as Doug writes, Google “clamped down on who had access the complete state of the business.”

The following photo shows a result for what seems to be an employee search. The photo is used with permission from Zach at HannaCabana.com, though Zach tells me it had been anonymously submitted to him (note we added blurring to the phone numbers of the zoom version):

On the employee results page, everyone is listed with their name, a photo, their job title, telephone number and more. Clicking through to an employee lands you on their full profile page. Ex-Googler Doug Edwards remembers how many Google employees used “alternative images and titles” for their Moma listing. “I recall photos of samurai warriors and masked figures with titles like ’Shadow Ops’ and ’Black Ops.’ These were later weeded out as part of an upgrade”.

Employee data may also be rendered in different forms. Below is a screenshot we first posted on in February of an internal application called Google Percent:

This service simply shows how many employees are newer than a particular other employee (some areas in the image have been blackened out).

How employees access the intranet

Photo courtesy of Zach, again. The dialog reads, “Many internal apps. One login page.” The input boxes ask for the user’s LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) credentials.

A Google employee can log-in to the intranet from within the office, or with a so-called Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection. This connection comes pre-installed on laptops Google hands out, and can be reached via a desktop icon. A Google employee is required to authenticate their sign-in with account credentials.

From within a Google building, an employee may likely reach the intranet via the address corp.google.com. We previously found out Google additionally uses many sub-domains in their intranet, like album.corp.google.com, agency.corp.google.com, alien.corp.google.com, karma.corp.google.com, periscope.corp.google.com, pineapple.corp.google.com. You may also likely just enter e.g. “m” (which maps to “http://m” which is “http://m.corp.google.com”) to be taken to a service like your Gmail-powered email account.

Externally, like from a laptop at a conference – or if you’re one of the employees mainly working from home, as there are some – employees can access the VPN servers located on sites like Mountain View or Dublin, Ireland, with different hostnames each like man....ext.google.com or de....ext.google.com (we depleted part of the hostname).

Google “eating their own dog food”

Google employees use many of the tools Google produces. They even have launched an internal “dogfood” campaign in 2006. But what they see may be newer versions of the services than those released to the outside.

Photo by Andrew Hitchcock from July, Creative Commons-licensed (edited for brightness/ contrast).

If you work in a team for a product, you may also get a prototypical version of the service. Below for instance is a screenshot from a nightly build of Google Spreadsheets – codename “Trix” – which we were able to take a look at (note several areas in this image have been grayed out):

In above image you can see the disclaimer “Warning: This is NOT production. Data can be lost.” Special links to debug windows are offered to developers as well, one of them being opened in the screenshot. Google employees also get to see previews of completely unreleased tools, such as wiki service JotSpot (which is being integrated into Google Apps), or Platypus, the internal Gdrive client for file-sharing.

For code reviews, Google created Mondrian, a “Perforce backend with some custom Google wrappers on top,” as Nial Kennedy, who shot the following photo (Creative Commons-licensed), notes:

And the following image shows Google in-house tool Trax (this is part of a larger photo by Google employee Andrew from Flickr, but it is not available anymore; we’re not quite sure how this tool works or what it achieves):

But, Google doesn’t just use their own tools. For instance, we came across information indicating that many Google employees prefer social network Facebook.com to their own production, Orkut (e.g. some Google employees considered Orkut too spammy, or too buggy in the past).

If a Google employee encounters trouble with any Google tool, they can call their internal support hotline named “Tech Stop.” The hotline promises 24-hour availability. Numbers like +1 877... (last part depleted) are partly toll-free and partly with toll, and accessible from all over the world. Internally, a Google employee may also simply press 3-HELP (3-4357). Tech Stop centers aren’t just located in the US, but also in places like Hyderabad, India.

Tech Stop support wasn’t always that luxurious though, as Doug Edwards noted in another article. When he left the company in 2005, a supportive Tech Stop was available in every building – but in the beginning when he joined, he notes that for instance not all operating systems were supported. When you were facing an issue with corrupted Windows DLL files, a common response was, “Why aren’t you running Linux?”