Google AppEngine

Today I got my Google AppEngine application approved by Google. Great stuff - now I've got to start brushing up on Python.

On the downside ,I'm out of work because of the credit crunch - they've announced massive layoffs where I work.

Google Appengine

Introducing Google Appengine

Gmail 2.0

Google roll out Gmail 2.0 (with screenshots).

Google's response to Facebook - "Maka Maka"

Via TechCrunch

"Google may have lost the bidding war to invest in Facebook, but it is preparing its own major assault on the social networking scene. It goes by the codename “Maka-Maka” inside the Googleplex (or, perhaps, “Makamaka”).Maka-Maka encompasses Google’s grand plan to build a social layer across all of its applications."

Google Reader adds Search

Google Reader now has a search facility.
Via Matt Cutts

Google is buying Panoramio

Just received an email from the folks at Panoramio, telling me that they are going to be bought out by Google.

From the email:

Panoramio is going to be acquired by Google!

The deal is set to close in about two weeks. We're excited and we hope you are too! The acquisition will be an overwhelmingly good thing for Panoramio uploaders and viewers alike. Uploaders will get to leverage Google's reach, increasing the exposure of their photographs to photophiles around the world. Viewers will get to choose from a larger universe of photographs as Panoramio becomes more widely known.

This is excellent news, as it means that Panoramio will now be able to start using the immense Google infrastructure for the delivery of user submitted photos.

Update: There's more here on the Panoramio blog. I've reposted the blog entry below in case panoramio gets overwhelmed with Digg traffic:

We are very (and we mean very) happy to announce that Panoramio will be acquired by Google.

The integration of photos from Panoramio in Google Earth has been so successful since John Hanke suggested it that we see the acquisition of Panoramio as a natural consequence. We have tightened our relationship with Google Earth more and more in recent months, and at the end we decided to walk one step further. After so much work together, honestly, we couldn’t imagine a better scenario than selling Panoramio to Google. Most people upload their photos to Panoramio to share them through Google Earth, and it’s way cool to see Panoramio’s photos in Google Earth, so the upcoming acquisition reaffirms the current win-win situation.

For now, our user interface will not change; accounts, urls, features… We will keep working for Panoramio as a team, but this time using Google infrastructure as Panoramio further integrates into Google’s mapping technologies. We will also keep answering e-mails directly as much as possible.

The upcoming acquisition will bring many advantages to Panoramio users, starting with a better infrastructure to improve the reliability of Panoramio, more frequent updates of Panoramio’s Google Earth layer, and more resources for some invisible tasks that take time out from working on new features.

To watch our little project grow since its conception one and a half years ago has been an amazing experience, and we hope to make it even bigger with this step and with your continued support. We have worked hard to arrive to this point, but we know we could not do it without all of you, the wonderful community of people that upload their best photos to Panoramio. You deserve all the credit. There are no words to say how honoured we feel when someone decides to choose Panoramio for sharing their photos.

We have lots of ideas in the pipeline. Our baby is still growing, so stay tuned!

Regards,

José, Joaquín and Eduardo

Well done guys! One and a half years of darn good work has paid off.

Supplemental hell

After reading John Chow's post about getting out of the Google supplemental index, and then reading that Shoemoney has managed to increase his traffic by a staggering 1400%, again by getting out of Google Supplemental, I had a look at the supplemental index for the site I work on for my day job. It doesnt look nice, with around 265,000 pages in supplemental.

Why is this important?
In the words of one commenter on Shoemoney:
"Removing duplicate content and pages with little to no written content bring a lot of pages out of supplemental. The more pages your site has in supplemental the less ranking power your domain has. If you decrease your supplemental pages your domain’s pagerank and ranking power increase."

I'd better get working on this one so. Thankfully, Google has made it easier to tackle this, as Googlebot recognises wildcards in your robots.txt file

e.g.

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*sort=

will stop Googlebot indexing ANY url with the string "sort=" in it.

Google Earth imagery update

Via Google Earth community



New high resolution:
Canada: Downtown Vancouver, BC
England: Northamptonshire, Nottingshire, Berkeshire, Peakdistrict,
Birmingham, Greater Manchester, Avon Gloucestershire, Linconshire
France: Rennes, Poitiers
US: Omaha, NE; Missoula, MT; Amherst, MA; Keowee, SC;
Catawba Wateree, NC/SC; Rolla, MO; Nashville ("Burbia"), TN; US Gaston
County, NC; Anne Arundel County, Metro Water District of Southern
California; State of Arkansas

Updated Imagery:
Spain: Gran Canaria, Fuertaventura, El Hierro, La Gomera, Tenerife, and Las
Palmas (Canary Islands) Spain
US: Austin, TX; San Bernardino, CA; State of Connecticut

Fixes:
Danish plane replicants removed
Andes, Maccu Picchu terrain repaired

Found on Google Books

A Journey through Ireland in 1834
Handbook for travellers in Ireland, 1854
History of Cork , 1861
Annals of the Famine in Ireland - first hand account of the Irish famine, published in 1850.
Letters on the condition of the people of Ireland

Google building an AI system?

Via Google blogoscoped

Larry Page talked about AI (video) at a conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he said

My prediction is that when AI happens, it’s going to be a lot of computation, and not so much clever blackboard/ whiteboard kind of stuff, clever algorithms. But just a lot of computation.

My theory is that, if you look in your own programming, your DNA, it’s about 600 Megabytes compressed... so it’s smaller than any modern operating system. Smaller than Linux, or Windows, or anything like that, your whole operating system. That includes booting up your brain, right, by definition. And so, your program algorithms probably aren’t that complicated, it’s probably more about the overall computation. That’s my guess.

We have some people at Google who really try to build artificial intelligence, and to do it in a large scale. (...) You know, to do a perfect job of search, you can ask any query, and we’d give you the perfect answer, and that would be artificial intelligence, right. Based on everything being on the web, which is a pretty close approximation. (...)

Google Research favourite videos

Google Research video picks

Performance tunning best practices for MySQL

Google introduces "Testing on the Toilet"

Via here

I guess that gives a whole new meaning to the word Googlebomb.

Google Zeitgeist 2006

Google have released the 2006 zeitgeist

Google Earth Update

Christmas has come early - there's been a Google Earth update. OgleEarth has the details.

Google Goals

Documents on Google's internal company goals have been leaked to Google Blogoscoped

Google Code search

Jason Kottke has a list of interesting Google code search finds.

Google Buys YouTube

More here over at Google blogoscoped

"Google announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community."

Google Maps - Australian lake of custard

Here on google maps

Google Maps - North Korean prison camp?

Located here in the north east corner of North Korea.

Further information:
NBC on the N.Korean gulags
Reactions to Camp 22 reports

Update:
This satellite photo of a N.Korean prison camp is from U.S. Committee on Human Rights in North Korea.
Here it is on on Google Maps

Google Earth & Maps updates

Via: Google Sightseeing

On October 3rd, we updated Google Maps and Google Earth with the following new imagery:

- Cross Plains, Texas
- the whole state of Minnesota, South Carolina, North Dakota, Missouri (updated to 2005), Idaho, Maryland, and now full coverage for the entire state of Texas
- Updates to Florida (most of the state covered now)
- 15 high-resolution cities in Germany
- update for London, 2006 data at 10cm
- South Georgia Island (courtesy of the British Antarctic Survey)
- Albany, OR; Lubbock, TX; Port Townsend, WA; Portage County, OH; Trumball County, OH
- 32 Digital Globe high-resolution cities (updates and new coverage)

In addition there was a significant update to the regular Digital Globe imagery all over the world.

Enjoy!

Updates I've found (so far):
Cork city ,Ireland
Limerick, Ireland
Wodonga, Australia - half the town is lucious green, the other half in drought.
Villach , Austria is now hi-res.
Pyongyang, North Korea - new imagery, brighter colours.
Hoeryong, North Korea - home of the infamous Camp 22