August 18th, 2009 | 3,357 views | No Comments » |
I remember checking the search engine rank for my first website FreeTheFlash.com in a whole bunch of now-dead search engines like Altavista, Excite, Gigablast, Hotbot, Lycos, and a whole bunch of others I’ve probably forgotten. Today, of course, I only bother to check my sites’ rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Live Search/Bing (I wonder what Microsoft will call their search engine next?).
Now that Yahoo Search is officially dead, replaced by Bing, I thought it would be nice to post a couple of videos about the good ‘ol days of The Big Three: MSN, Yahoo, and Google.
MSN vs. Yahoo
Google vs. Yahoo
MSN vs. Google
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August 16th, 2009 | 11,457 views | 13 Comments » |
As I cave in to using yet another Google service, Google gets one step closer to becoming a hive mind.
I recently decided to ditch NetNewsWire and use Google Reader as my main RSS reader. Google Reader helps me keep up on the latest tech news and important internet trends. I’ve been really happy with it so far, except for one thing.
Google allows you to post articles that you’re reading to various social networking sites, like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg. But, Google’s built in “Post to Twitter” feature opens up a new window (or tab in Firefox’s case) at Twitter.com just to post a new tweet. Lame!
I already use an amazing Twitter client for Mac, called Tweetie. I’ve gotten used to it’s slick interface that opens a tiny little tweet window when you want to write a new tweet. It’s so much better than opening a whole new tab!
I wanted this functionality to be available to me in Google Reader. What was I to do?
Well, the company behind Tweetie, AteBits, offers up a handy bookmarklet to help users easily tweet stuff while surfing the web. You just create a new bookmark and set the URL to be:
javascript:window.location='tweetie:'+window.location
But, we can improve this by adding the title of the website to the Javscript code, which looks like this:
javascript:window.location='tweetie:'+document.title+'%20'+window.location
Then when you click on this bookmark, a new tweet pops up that looks likes this:
Awesome, right? Now, I just need to add this custom Javscript URL to Google Reader’s “Send To…” section, right?
This is the Google Reader interface for adding custom "Send To..." buttons
But, it’s not that easy! Google blocks Javascript URLs (probably for security reasons or else it’s just an oversight on their part) and you get presented with this sad error mesage:
No Javascript URLs!
But, I want Tweetie in Google Reader, darn it! So, I whipped up a little PHP/Javascript workaround. I’ll post it here, because I imagine that others have had this same problem.
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
window.location='tweetie:'+'<?php echo $_GET["title"]; ?>'+'%20'+'<?php echo $_GET["url"]; ?>';
window.close();
//-->
</script>
</body>
</html>
This is the final result!
This trivial script just looks for a title and URL passed in via GET parameters, redirects the browser there, and then closes itself to get out of the way. All that remains is your new tweet window in Tweetie and Google Reader in the background.
This is what it looks like in action!
Then, I just uploaded this file to my server (It’s located here: http://feross.org/tweetie.php in case you want to use it).
Then, I just filled out the Google Reader settings window like this:
Set up your settings like this! Remember, in Google Reader, ${title} and ${short-url} stand for the article title and URL.
Feel free to copy these settings if you’d like to set up the same functionality for yourself!
Now, I can tweet any/all the interesting stories I read from Google Reader super easily. If you follow me on Twitter, then get ready for a firestorm of tweets!
Hopefully someone finds this useful! 
13 Comments | Leave a comment » More posts about: Computer Science, Google, Hacks
August 15th, 2009 | 3,794 views | 2 Comments » |
Total US searches increased 5% from June 2009 to July 2009, though Google’s (GOOG) share of the total search market decreased from 66.1% to 64.8%, according to search-share rankings from The Nielsen Company – compiled using a new methodology.
via Searches Climb 5% in July; Google Loses Share — Seeking Alpha.
About time we start to see some serious competition and a challenge to Google! Don’t get me wrong… I think Google is awesome, but more competition is better for consumers and will force Google to do even better.
These are exciting times!
2 Comments | Leave a comment » More posts about: Computer Science, Google
April 1st, 2009 | 10,787 views | 6 Comments » |
I am glad I just discovered this website today.
Today while perusing the Internet, I discovered this really cool website. It’s called a “search engine,” which Wikipedia defines as:
-
“A Web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web.”
It lets you search for all sorts of cool information on the Internet, like news articles, videos, blog posts, and more. One thing, though — it has a funny name, Google — but don’t let that turn you off, it’s a great website and I highly recommend it.
Check it out! Just type http://www.google.com into your Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator browser and see for yourself!
UPDATE: This was a post I did for April Fools Day 2009.
6 Comments | Leave a comment » More posts about: Best of the Web, Computer Science, Google
March 27th, 2009 | 13,273 views | 1 Comment » |
Take a closer look at the new Twitter homepage layout (Click to enlarge)
Twitter has a new layout. I just noticed it when creating a new account for my ACT study notes website. To my best knowledge, I was the first Twtter user to tweet about it, too!
Details about Twitter’s New Layout
For now, it looks like Twitter’s new design is only visible to new accounts, or it being rolled out slowly, since my personal @FreeTheFeross account still gets the old layout.
The new design is an incremental improvement for sure, but there are some notable changes which hint at what Twitter’s focus might be in the coming months and years. Here’s a quick summary of the obvious changes:
Read the rest of this entry »
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