Download the Google Chrome OS Virtual Machine
Last week, Techcrunch reported rumors of the release of the Google Chrome OS. They stated that the info came from a reliable source, and indeed that source was reliable. Google had an event at their headquarters, and indeed provided new details and a demo of the Chrome OS. The Chromium Blog has some great videos that provide some additional information about Chrome OS as well.
Make Free Phone Calls with Google Voice, Gizmo, and Orgasmatron V: Google Voice Edition
Earlier this year, I had posted a hack for making free phone calls with Google Voice, Gizmo, and Asterisk. Since then, Google closed the door on inbound SIP calls and thus the hack no longer works. Fortunately a new possibility has emerged that makes it possible once again.
5 Reasons Google Wave Is Not Ready
I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation into Google Wave shortly after the initial 100,000 invititations went out last month. Initially, I was a bit overwhelmed and did not really know where to begin or what to do. Bwana was kind enough to engage in a real-time wave with me, and show me around a bit. Afterwards, I began to see the potential. However, I think there are many reasons why Google Wave still is not ready for prime-time.
There Is No Undo in Google Wave
My good friend Bwana was kind enough to nominate me for Google Wave, and I finally received the invitation yesterday. With all the hype surrounding Google Wave, you may be surprised to learn that it still lacks one very simple piece of functionality that one might take for granted until it’s gone: Undo. There is no undo in Google Wave! Can you believe it?!?
I’m not sure how Google could forget to include undo. I suppose it happened the same way that Apple forgot to include copy/paste on the iPhone. So what does the lack of undo functionality say about the product? It must really suck if there’s not even an undo button or keyboard shortcut, right?
10 Amusing Tweets about Google Wave Invitations
The web is abuzz about the 100,000 Google Wave invitations going out today. Be sure that the social networks are no exception. There are thousands of people on Twitter begging for Google Wave invitations, some of which are quite amusing. I’ve put together a list of my top 10 favorites Tweets. Some are requests to perform amusing acts to obtain an invite. Others are just witty commentary. Enjoy!
Download Flash Video from Any Website
Do you want to download a flash video? Are you having trouble finding a good program or plugin to rip flash videos? Do you want to know how to download flash video from any website? You’ve come to the right place.
Keep Track of New Television Show Episodes with RerunCheck
RerunCheck is a new website that lets you know whenever there are new episodes of television programs airing on tv. Although it was not actually my brain child per se, I did implement it myself. My good friend James at UltraViolet Development Studios did the web design for me, as I’m somewhat inept when it comes web design.
With Reruncheck, you can find out a few different ways whether or not your favorite TV show is airing a new episode. First of all, you can visit the website and search for your shows. You’ll be taken to a page that will let you know with a big green Yes if there is a new episode airing within the next 7 days.
If you are interested in receiving continuous notifications for new episodes, you can either subscribe to the feed for the show (in the upper right corner), or you can subscribe to receive notifications via email. If you decide to subscribe via email, please be sure to read the RerunCheck privacy policy. If you see anything in there you don’t like, then I suggest you use the RSS feed rather than email.
If you love to watch just about any show on TV, you can also subscribe to the main RerunCheck feed. It is updated every day with all the television shows that are airing new episodes. You can also see what programs are showing new episodes today by visiting the main RerunCheck page. There is also a page that will let you know the television programs that are airing new episodes this week.
You can also create a new RerunCheck account, to manage all of your favorite programs in one place. An account offers you the same email subscriptions you can receive without an account, but in addition to receiving email notifications you will also have your own custom feed.
Your custom feed will contain new episode notification for all of your favorite shows. You can share your custom feed with your friends, put it on your website, add it to FriendFeed or other social networks, or just subscribe to it yourself. The choice is yours!
Try RerunCheck and let me know what you think. Feel free to send me any suggestions you might have for the service to help me make it better.
Still Alive on Carillon
Yesterday my good Friend Bwana shared an article on Lifehacker about GrandCentral preparing for a new release. In his comment along with the shared item Bwana said,
Play the Portal Theme… Still Alive..
Of course, that prompted me to search YouTube for the song. I listened to it and I enjoyed it. I also checked out a few others including a live version of Still Alive performed by the writer, Johnathan Coulton.
After listening to the live version, I searched for Johnathan’s blog and started browsing around on it. I came across a post of Still Alive being played on the carillon. Check out the video. The carillon isn’t terribly impressive to watch, but it’s a cool video to listen to.
Make Money Online: Size of Market
This is the second post in a multi-part series I’m writing about making money online. The first step is to decide whether you want to create a blog or develop an online service. Next, you need to decide on a topic for your blog or determine the type of service you would like to provide.
Perhaps the three most important factors to consider in deciding what to put on your website are the size of your market, the competition you will face, and the quality of your content or service. In this article, I share some of my observations on size of market, including examples on how I’ve failed and succeeded in properly assessing it.
Make Money Online: Content or Service?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a burning desire to earn a living working with technology. I’ve sought out many different methods for making money online.
Much like Edison inventing the light bulb, I’ve found more ways how not to achieve the desired outcome. However, I’m glad to say that I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I recently decided to share my experience in my quest with a multi-part post on how to make money online.
Google Chrome 2.0
I was shocked last month when Google dropped the beta designation from Chrome. Chrome was in beta a mere three months, whereas some products such as Gmail are STILL in beta after more than four years! Sometimes I just don’t understand why they do weird things like this, but it’s really all just semantics.
Google Reader for Dummies
Ok, so the title is actually Google Reader for Beginners. I’m constantly telling my friends how great Google Reader is, but I have a hard time convincing them they need to use it. From now on, I’ll just show them the video the Google Reader Team put together.
Twitter Search Button for the Google Toolbar
I’ve been finding myself searching Twitter for information as of late. There was not a decent Twitter search button for the Google Toolbar (only a couple that use the Google Custom Search Engine), so I created one. It’s simple and easy to use, just like my Google Reader search button.
- Click the link below to install it
- When you want to search Twitter, type a search term into your Google Toolbar
- Click the Twitter button on the Google Toolbar
- You are taken to the Twitter search result page for your search term
Install the Twitter Search Button
Where Did Google Maps Saved Locations Link Go?
I had a very frustrating experience recently. I could not for the life of me find My Saved Locations on Google Maps. I knew they were still there, because when I started typing in the search box, Google started suggesting them. But I couldn’t find the link to edit/view all of them.
My Prediction for 2009
Here is my prediction for 2009: In December of 2009, there will be countless blog posts made about predictions for 2010. Technology changes so rapidly that it is very difficult to predict what will happen even within just a year. It may be possible at a very high level, but only those that are actually responsible for its evolution can predict it with any sort of precision.
New and exciting products and services will be introduced, and for me to try to provide any further level of detail would be a futile effort. The companies developing those products and services are capable of predicting the future. However, they will only share their predictions when the future becomes the present and their products come to market.
Nevertheless, it is sometimes fun and interesting to read what others are predicting will take place next year:
- Technosailor: Tech Predictions for 2009
- The Inquisitr: Blogging Predictions for 2009
- shawn farner [dot com]: 5 ballsy social media predictions for 2009
- The Altimeter by Charlene Li: Predictions for 2009
- The Marketing and Technology Blog: 2009 Prediction: Search and Mobile are the Future
- Louis Gray: 10 Predictions for 2009 In the World of Tech
- ReadWriteWeb: 2009 Web Predictions
- VentureBeat: Ten tech predictions for 2009
Happy new year!
Two Ways to Reclaim Your Feeds from FeedBurner
Do you use FeedBurner for your blog feed(s)? Are you annoyed that the article links are feeds.feedburner.com URLs rather than the URLs of the original articles? This bothered me for some time until I was finally able to figure out what was causing it and how to prevent it from happening.
4 Simple Ways to Make Friends Online
In creating a new blog, I’ve found myself in need of new friends. No there’s nothing wrong with my old friends, but most of them aren’t geeks like me. I’m not talking about getting as many people on Twitter following me as possible, just for the sake of doing so. I want to befriend the folks that write the stuff I’m interested in reading and learning about. So how does one go about making new friends, when they have few or none to begin with?
Read more…
Google Friend Connect Goes Live
A few days ago I got an email from Google telling me that I had been whitelisted to use Google Friend Connect. I took a glance at the Friend Connect pages, fooled around with it a little bit, but I didn’t yet put any widgets on my site. Then, yesterday the Official Google Blog announced that Friend Connect is now available (the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog announced it as well). Yesterday, Bwana made a nice write up on three ways to utilize Google Friend Connect, so I decided to go ahead and put it up on GeekLad.
How To: Find People Online The Social Media Way
The following is a guest post by Ann Smarty. She is an SEO consultant blogging on search engine optimization, search engine news and social media. She is also interested in all kinds of (free) Internet tools and apps and loves to discover new unique ideas.
With the wealth of social networking sites where people can register, specify their interests and find friends that share common hobbies, it is sad to admit that people search is still quite messy. Popular networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn) offer surprisingly limited search abilities: you can only search by name or by location or by company or school.
What if you need to find an expert in your area? In this case you will have to (at least) specify the key term (e.g. area of expertise) and city. Let’s see what tools can be used use to get connected with people based on different types of search options.
Read more…
Google SearchWiki
The Official Google Blog has made the announcement of a new Google product called SearchWiki. SearchWiki will allow users logged into their Google account to change the order of search results, remove search results, add search results, and add comments to search results. The modifications made will only appear in your own searches by default, but you can also view notes made by other SearchWiki users.
Gmail Themes Go Live
The Official Gmail Blog announced the release of themes for Gmail yesterday. It seemed they were not immediately available after they made the announcement, as it took several hours before I saw it appear in my settings. Perhaps because they did not want other blogs to steal their thunder.
I found it a little odd when the theme settings did not appear on my laptop computer after using Gmail from Chrome on my desktop PC where they did appear. However, this morning when I used Gmail on my laptop, the themes settings did appear. Google has been known to roll out new features with a phased approach in the past. It would seem that they do it at a browser level, rather than a user level, since I was able to see the changes on one computer but not on another.
Google Mobile App on iPhone Adds Voice Recognition
Google announced yesterday that they’ve added voice recognition for the Google Mobile App on the iPhone. It’s certainly another logical step in Google’s strategy for bringing analog and digital information together. Google is helping to pave the two way street where we speak to computers and they speak back to us. I look forward to seeing more Google products that provide voice recognition, text-to-speech, and image recognition.
Fast and Simple SEO to Increase from PageRank 0
I was very surprised when I learned that I had quickly increased to a PageRank of 3 within less than 30 days of having created this blog. A few weeks later, I reflected upon some of the things that may have contributed to improving my PageRank. More recently, I came across some additional information that may actually provide the real reason I rose so quickly.
Read more…
Jerry Yang no Longer Yahoo! CEO
I’m certain that Jerry Yang had long ago realized that he really fucked up the acquisition by Microsoft. Just a couple of weeks ago at the Web 2.0 summit, Yang said that it would still be in Microsoft’s best interest to acquire Yahoo! That sounds like an admission of failure if I’ve ever heard one.
Read more…
Google Webmaster Tools External Links Detail Error
This morning I was trying to do some analysis with my Greasemonkey script for displaying nofollow information in Google Webmaster tools. Unfortunately, it seems that the external links detail pages are dead. I’m getting an error that says Our system is currently busy. Please try again in a few minutes. It has been much longer than just a few minutes that I’ve been seeing this error. Hopefully they resolve the issue soon.
Gmail Adds Video Chat
Earlier this week, the Gmail Blog announced the addition of video to Gmail chat. Just download the voice and video plugin, and you’re good to go. The next time you launch chat from within Gmail, you’ll have the option for voice and video. Check out the video to see it in action:
Greasemonkey Script for Submitting Pages to Ping.fm
Today I put together yet another Greasemonkey script. This script will allow you to quickly submit URLs to Ping.fm. You’ll first need to supply your Ping.fm application key to the script. Just right click on the little monkey 
and go to User Script Commands, and select Set Ping.fm App Key. When prompted, provide your key. Please note that the app key is stored in your Firefox browser settings. Do not use this on a public computer, because it would be easy for someone to obtain your app key from the browser.
Read more…
Update to Google Webmaster Tools Greasemonkey Script
I recently made a minor update to my Google Webmaster Tools Greasemonkey script for displaying nofollow information. The script allows you to learn which incoming links to your website are nofollow links when viewing the detail for a site within Google Webmaster Tools. I have added functionality that will also display the PageRank for the incoming links.
Read more…
View External Nofollow Links in Google Webmaster Tools
A few days ago I posted a feature request for Google Webmaster Tools to provide some nofollow information on external links. More or less right after I posted the request, I started putting together my own Greasemonkey script to provide the functionality I was seeking. When I was nearly complete with my Greasemonkey script, I revisited my post in Google Groups and saw that someone mentioned a Firefox addon that provides PageRank and nofollow status for external links in Google Webmaster Tools. The Firefox addon does exactly what I was looking for plus it also provides PageRank information.
Read more…
iGoogle Canvas View Goes Live
Google has is officially rolling out the canvas view to all iGoogle users. I’ve been anticipating the official release, as I’ve already updated a few of my iGoogle gadgets to implement the new view. The new view allows a single gadget to take up the majority of the space on the iGoogle page.
Read more…
Google Webmaster Tools Finally Reporting Sources of Invalid Links
For a long time Google Webmaster Tools has provided webmasters with a list of URLs that generate 404 pages. As Googlebot scours the web, it may encounter invalid links on your website. You can see what invalid links the Googlebot has encountered within the webmaster tool.
Read more…
New Google Ads on YouTube, Maps, and Even Games
Google recently announced that additional contextual advertisements will be displayed on YouTube. Google will be providing links to relevant iTunes and Amazon.com products that are related to the videos. For instance, if you hear a catchy soundtrack on the video, you might see a link to purchase it on iTunes. Google has also added text link ads to Google Maps.
Read more…
Google Continues Bringing Together Analog and Digital
Google recently made audio playback available for some Knol articles. For example, if you check out the article on how to treat and prevent skin allergies, you’ll notice a link that says Listen. If you click the link, a small embedded media player appears and you begin to hear the article read out loud.
Read more…
Google Blog Search Takes on Techmeme
Google Blog Search has changed its look. The new layout features stories grouped together, much like Google News does. Some other blogs have dubbed it a Techmeme killer. I don’t think I’d go as far as to call it a Techmeme killer, but the new layout definitely makes sense. The Official Google Blog says:
Adapting some of the technology pioneered by Google News, we’re now showing categories on the left side of the website and organizing the blog posts within those categories into clusters, which are groupings of posts about the same story or event. Grouping them in clusters lets you see the best posts on a story or get a variety of perspectives.
New Google Blog Search Layout
Microsoft Following Google into the Clouds
As part of Google’s 10th anniversary, last month there was a post on the Official Google Blog about the future of cloud computing. Just a couple of weeks later, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer made remarks about a new operating system Microsoft is developing that he called Windows Cloud. Ballmer states that the official announcement of the product will be coming within a month.
Read more…
Google AdSense Coming to Analytics
Back in August, Digital Inspiration reported on AdSense click tracking data coming to Google Analytics. This is great for webmasters with high traffic web sites that make a significant portion of their revenue by displaying AdSense advertisements. Analytics will provide pertinent information such as the number of times AdSense ads were clicked, the revenue per page, the CTR and CPM for individual referrers, and top AdSense referrers.
Read more…
New Google Video Feature
Google Video has added a new feature that allows you to restrict results to only those that are playable in TV view. TV view allows you to navigate through search results while playing a video at the same time. As of late, Google Video search has done a really nice job of integrating better with other video streaming websites. Initially the majority of search results would come from either Google Video directly or YouTube, but searches I’ve performed more recently have provided results from other video sites as well.
Stormpulse Earning Thousands on Tips Alone
The other day I came across a really nice hurricane tracking site called Stormpulse. I used it to track Hurricane Hanna as she skimmed past the coast of Florida, and have been using it to keep an eye on Ike as well.
Happy Birthday Google!
Wow, can you believe Google is 10 years old today? Google has grown into much more than just a search engine over the past ten years. Through acquisitions and their own development, they’ve also brought us photos, a blogging platform, free email, discussion groups, a social network, an online rss feed reader, a geographical mapping website and application, a web browser, an online calendar, online documents (spreadsheets, and presentations), and so much more! It’s hard to imagine a web without Google. Granted Yahoo! and Microsoft Search have improved over the years as well, but if it hadn’t been for Google they wouldn’t have been forced to do so.
New Social Network for Gamers
Bwana put together a nice video about Raptr, the new social network for gamers. As Bwana will tell you, Raptr is similar to other clients that will track what you’re currently playing on different gaming platforms. Raptr supports XBox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, and Mac. Any of your friends that have the client installed will see what you’re playing. In addition to having a client, it will also tie into other social networks such as Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook. It also outputs an RSS feed for integrating with blogs and news readers. I signed up and started checking it out, and so far I like what I see. If you join and you want to be my friend, my nickname is GeekLad.
Busy Day for Google
Yesterday was a very busy day for Google, with the announcement of two new products and a new version of an existing product:
Perhaps the biggest announcement yesterday was that the famed “gbrowser” does in fact exist. There had been much speculation for a long time that Google was developing its own browser, and yesterday they presented Google Chrome. I downloaded it and used it a bit and I am very impressed. It is lightning fast and you can really tell how fast it is when you visit JavaScript intensive sites such as Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Docs. Unfortunately, it does seem to be lacking full support for proxies. I couldn’t install it at work due to the firewall/proxy and had to install it at home. When I tried running it from work today, it didn’t like the proxy settings. I’m certain it shouldn’t take too long before such issues are resolved.
Google Video for Businesses is a new addition to Google Apps Premier Edition that allows organizations to share videos for training and informational purposes. I believe that this sort of service would probably work better for large organizations than it would small ones.
A new version of Picasa is out with some nice new features. Picasa Web has also gotten a face lift with a few new features as well. I wish that Google would come out with Picasa for Mac. iPhoto is nice and all, but does lack some things that are handled better by Picasa.
