fatvegan

What is happening to the world? Google has put a gradient in their search results. What crazy design feature will they come up with next? A four colour theme?

I feel like Google is getting way more crap. Half the time when I search these days I get random PDFs and Powerpoint presentations. Often you have to pay for the PDFs, even though Google has indexed the content. I don't mind having to pay for things, but I wish Google wouldn't show that stuff by default. I feel like in their enthusiasm to get search and present all content, we end up getting less useful information. Although I suppose that is the classical search dichotomy isn't it.

It is possible that my tastes are just getting stranger. I spend a lot more time searching for things like "r cran heckman model" and "stata loglinear" than I used to. I miss the days when most of my searches were for "funny dog" or "small gerbil". I got much better search results.

Google Maps tells you how to get from New York to Dublin via a vigorous swim across the Atlantic ocean. It even tells you which US wharf is the best to leave from. It estimates the whole journey should take about 29 days. I wonder if they've factored in time to take short rests during the swim. I get puffed swimming the whole length of an olympic pool, so I for one wouldn't be making the whole trip without a few breaks.

Hurray. Google Maps finally has driving directions.

Google have just released their online word processing app with their spreadsheet app. It also looks like they're attempting to compete with Flickr, although on first impressions I don't think they'll make a dent. But the new word processing is very sweet. It's simple and practical. And if they provide a good API, and allow developers to use the technology in applications it could be huge. None of the browser-based rich text editors are that good I don't think. And Google's one does revisions, which are enormously valuable for things like CMSes. If Google let's us use their interface for administration, and then allows read-only access to that data for other purposes, then I think it could really take off. It's also tops because I can finally lose Writeboard which is almost as annoying as it is nifty.

I'm going to use it to write the essay due on Friday. Testing beta software is so much more exciting when you're using real data.

Update: The revisions are beautiful. Revisions are recorded automatically and they're really simple to browse through.

If hiring someone called Dr. Brilliant to run your "philanthropic" arm doesn't prove that Google wants to take over the world, nothing will. More power to them I say. If this guy is really as brilliant as he claims then hopefully it will be OK.

Sketchup is the most blissfully intuitive piece of software you'll ever use.

Australia is in Google Maps. Weeee. Driving directions don't seem to work yet, but it's only a matter of time. You can look at the the major an minor roads in Australia. So snifty.

I am fully in love with Google Calendar. It all works so happily and nicely. They think about things those Google folk.