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Archive for the ‘Google’ Category

Google search result in XML format

March 17th, 2007 3 comments

Many people would love to have feeds on Google search results, like they do on Google news or Google blog search. You can do many thing with this, for example you can build Google search like in your website or blog.

But Google doesn’t show any interest on giving away this feature. Instead they gave us Ajax search API which of course has limitation in number of queries.

It’s just a matter of time until somebody finally hacked this out. All you need is three additional parameters in your query:

here is the example. And you can see the demo how to use this feeds on you website here. You can also grab the source code here.

This hack is basically derived from previous hack on Google Toolbar which is an extension in Firefox. Someone has figured out the algorithm to generate checksum by looking at the source, and all you have to do is to add output=xml to get the results in xml format.

I have to warn you though, this hack may conflict with Google Term of Services, but it’s still interesting enough to know it.

Categories: Google, PHP Tags:

Google 1997

February 10th, 2007 No comments

google97

Someone from Google Fan made a website that imitates Google back in 1997.

If i’m not mistaken, at that time Google was still a project of Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Stanford University. You can tell from the interface, everything was so technical. :-)

Categories: Google Tags:

2007 as the Year of the Widget

February 8th, 2007 No comments

Honestly, i’m not really comfortable with the term “widget”. Since the term is somehow confusing to me. Some people say it is derived from the combination of “window” and “gadget”. Then there is web widget and desktop widget. Huh?

But whatever the term, people know it, use it and some of them even dedicate their life to develop it. And it grows everyday to such a point that Newsweek is proclaming that 2007 as the Year of the Widget.

And things are getting more interesting. Today, Google Code team announced that Google Gadgets now can be converted to run in Windows Vista Sidebar and Mac OS X Dashboard. Using third party utility application, Mesa Dynamics. You can check out the converter for Windows here, and for Mac OS X here.

061220 widget hsmall

Not long ago, Yahoo! also proclaimed that Yahoo! Widget Engine 3.1 runs very well on Windows Vista, which makes Yahoo! Widget as totally cross-OS widgets platform that can run on Mac OS X, Win 2000, Win XP and Windows Vista.

You can easily imagine when two giants, Google and Yahoo!, run on the same field. It will make widget or gadget or whatever more interesting. I must agree with Newsweek if this year will become the Year of the Widget.

Categories: Google, Yahoo! Tags:

Gmail is now finally public

February 7th, 2007 2 comments

Uyeaaah, now you can signup to Google account without the invitation. Check this out:

Can I sign up without the invitation code? Or without a mobile phone?

Anyone in the world is now welcome to create a Gmail account at http://mail.google.com/mail/signup. Enjoy!

gmail4everyone

As written in Googlesystem blog,

After almost three years of invitation-only access, Gmail gradually opened in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Egypt and now everywhere.

Categories: Google Tags:

This and That

January 23rd, 2007 No comments

I know, i know, it’s been like forever since i wrote my last post here. These last two months has been a very busy days for me.

Fortunately, i didn’t miss anything much. Thanks to Google Reader i could still follow what’s going on on the net, as you can see at my Google Reader Trends here,

greader

Ok, i’m a light weight reader, but that’s enough for me to follow what i’m interested on.

By the way, i have received the prize from O’reilly Bookstore, thanks to PHPClasses for this interesting book. Well, actually i choosed it myself, and you can see how Rhazes really enjoyed the book,

DSCI0112

:)

Categories: Google, Uncategorized Tags:

GData Calls JSON Hacker

November 22nd, 2006 2 comments
Categories: Google Tags:

Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! Unite to Support Sitemaps

November 17th, 2006 No comments

Finally, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! announced today that they will all begin using the same Sitemaps protocol to index sites around the web. Now based at Sitemaps.org, the system instructs web masters on how to install an XML file on their servers that all three engines can use to track updates to pages.

What and why?

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.

The protocol is offered under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License, so it can be used by any search engine, derivative variations using the same license can be created and it can be used for commercial purposes.

People who use Google Sitemaps don’t need to change anything, because it has already use the protocol described in sitemaps.org, only now those maps will now be indexed by Yahoo and Microsoft.

If you're using WordPress, you might like to use the sitemap generator plug ins here. I've been using it for couple months, and Google has indexed these pages beautifully.

Categories: Google, SEO, Yahoo! Tags:

Gdata and The Future of Database

November 15th, 2006 No comments

I've been playing around with GData for the last couple months. And i must agree with Jeremy when he said that GData is the realization of the future that Adam Bosworth talked about.

Adam gave us a different view of how to deal with huge amount of data. Until now, we can't talk about data without talking about conventional database management system with complex architecture. Apperently, it's not always about finding a simple solution to a complex problem, sometimes all you have to do is to simplify the problem.

Web was something that sounds almost impossible to build. But Tim Barners Lee simplified it, and by using HTML (and HTTP) almost everyone now can build the web. Why not do the same way with managing data. That's when he talked about ATOM Publishing Protocol (APP), a simple way to manage data on the web. As you might know, GData is the improvement of this publishing protocol.

Adam should know this very well because he works for the company that has managed to deal with huge amount of data. Adam is VP, Engineering at Google, and was one of the top Engineers at Microsoft.

Just listen to his talk and you'll find so many GData things in it.

Play now:
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So it was only a matter of time until many applications adopt GData or protocol like GData. Today it's announced that Windows Mobile has also used GData.

Categories: Google Tags: