Google Internet Stats

Google launched a microsite that collects Internet stats for the UK. "This Google resource brings together the latest industry facts and insights together in one place. These have been collected from a number of third party vendors covering a range of topics from macroscopic economic and media trends to how consumer behaviour and technology are changing over time."

Here are some interesting stats:

"In May 2009, Google had over 4.0 billion search page views in the UK." (Nielsen Netview, May 2009)

"20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute." (YouTube, May 2009)

"Users are 1.5x more attentive when browsing YouTube than when watching TV." (Motorola with Mindshare and GM, partnered with YouTube, December 2008)

"Worldwide mobile phone subscription penetration is 61%." (eMarketer, March 2009)

"There are 1.6 billion people online worldwide, representing nearly 24% of the world's population." (Internetworldstats.com, April 2009)

"60% of UK consumers would view ads to receive free content." (KPMG, April 2009)

{ via Steve Rubel }

Listen to Google Voice Messages in Gmail

Gmail Labs has a new feature, but it's only useful if you have a Google Voice account. When you receive a new voicemail, Google Voice sends an email notification that includes a transcription of the voicemail.


The problem is that you have to click on a link and open a new page to listen to the voicemail. If you enable "Google Voice player in mail" in Gmail Labs, you can play voicemails in Gmail.

"Best of all, your message status will stay synced: messages played from Gmail will appear as read in your Google Voice inbox and won't be played again when you check new messages via your phone," explains the Gmail blog.

A simple Google search lets you find some public voicemails and their transcriptions, but it's worth pointing out that sharing your voicemail is optional.

While this feature is useful, it's limited to Google Voice. Gmail should provide a scripting framework like Google Apps Scripts that lets you add features and handle repetitive tasks.

Google Emphasizes the Search Box

When your homepage is so simple that's almost invisible on a widescreen, you have to find a way to stand out. Google decided to supersize the search box:

"The new, larger Google search box features larger text when you type so you can see your query more clearly. It also uses a larger text size for the suggestions below the search box, making it easier to select one of the possible refinements. (...) Google has always been first and foremost about search, and we're committed to building and powering the best search on the web — now available through a supersized search box."

If you don't see the redesigned homepage, then the data center you hit hasn't updated it. For those that are curious, Google uses a 17-pixel font for the search box, up from 13 pixels.

Update: You can go back to the old interface using a Greasemonkey script.

Embeddable Google Document Viewer

Google Docs offers an undocumented feature that lets you embed PDF files and PowerPoint presentations in a web page. The files don't have to be uploaded to Google Docs, but they need to be available online.



Here's the code I used to embed the PDF file:

<iframe src="http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf&embedded=true" style="width:600px; height:500px;" frameborder="0"></iframe>

but you should replace the bold URL with your own address. As I mentioned, the document viewer works for PDF and PPT files.

Some other sites that offer similar features: Zoho Viewer, PdfMeNot.

Update (Sept. 25): The viewer is now available at https://docs.google.com/viewer. You can use it to embed PDF documents, PowerPoint presentations, and TIFF files.

Google Doodle's Mystery Revealed

Yesterday Google posted a mysterious doodle that linked to the search results for [unexplained phenomenon]. According to Google Korea's blog (English translation), this was the first from a series of 3 doodles that celebrate a famous person. The next doodle will be posted on September 15th and the hints are: mystery, invisible, novel.

As someone suggested in a comment, it's very likely that Google celebrates the birthday of H. G. Wells, a famous science fiction author born on September 21st. He wrote "The War of the Worlds", a novel that describes a Martian invasion, and "The Invisible Man", a book about a scientist that finds a way to become invisible.

Here's an extract from a 1938 radio broadcast of a play based on "The War of the Worlds". The play was directed by Orson Welles and it managed to terrify listeners, who thought it was a news broadcast of a real alien invasion.



Update (Sept. 15): There's a new doodle that points to a search for [crop circles] and this time there's a missing "l". Google posted on Twitter some coordinates: 51.327629, -0.5616088 that send you to this address: 1-7 Woodham Rd, Woking, Surrey GU21 4, UK. As you probably know, H. G. Wells was born in England. "H.G. Wells moved to Woking in 1895. This was the beginning of his writing career, and whilst living in the town he wrote several books including War of the Worlds," mentions wokingsurrey.com.


Update (Sept. 20): Indeed, Google's doodles were related to H. G. Wells' birthday. "Inspiration for innovation in technology and design can come from lots of places; we wanted to celebrate H.G. Wells as an author who encouraged fantastical thinking about what is possible, on this planet and beyond. And maybe have some fun while we were doing it," explains Google. Here's the third and final doodle:

Upload Multiple Files to Google Docs

If you want to upload a lot of documents to Google Docs, it's difficult to upload them one by one. You can send the documents by email, but this option is not very reliable and not all the formats are supported.

Google Docs has an API that lets you upload, download and edit documents, but there aren't many applications that use it. One of these applications is Google Docs Batch Upload, developed by Anton Beloglazov. It's a command-line Java application, so it should work in Windows, Mac, Linux, as long as you have JRE 1.6.

Google Docs Batch Upload lets you upload all the files supported by Google Docs from one of your folders. Use the following command to upload all the files from a folder and all its subfolders (unfortunately, the application doesn't recreate the folder structure in Google Docs):

java -jar google-docs-upload-1.0.jar <path> --recursive

(replace <path> with the path to the folder you want to upload)


In other news, documents will not be editable from 12:00 to 1:30 pm PST, according to the Google Apps Status Dashboard.

Today's Google Doodle, an Unexplained Phenomenon

I don't usually post about Google's doodles, but this one is special. Google's homepage has an interesting doodle that shows a UFO and links to the search results for [unexplained phenomenon].

The doodle is self-referential because many people will think that the doodle itself is an unexplained phenomenon.


To make things more interesting, Google posted an encrypted message on its Twitter account:

1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19

decrypted as "All your O are belong to us", a reference to the popular Internet meme "All your base are belong to us".

The doodle's URL is http://www.google.com/logos/go_gle.gif, which suggests that there's a missing "O".

Some people suggest that the doodle could be connected to the Exeter UFO Festival. "The Exeter incident was a highly-publicized UFO sighting that occurred in September 1965, approximately 5 miles from Exeter, New Hampshire, in the neighboring community of Kensington."

Update: From what I understand from this post published by Google Korea's blog, this is the first from a series of doodles that provide clues to solve the mystery: who's celebrated by Google? The next doodle will be posted on September 15th and the hints are: mystery, invisible and novel. As someone suggested in the comments, Google probably celebrates the birthday of H. G. Wells, the author of "The Invisible Man" and "The War of the Worlds".

Update 2 (Sept. 15): There's a new doodle that points to a search for [crop circles] and this time there's a missing "l". Google posted on Twitter some coordinates: 51.327629, -0.5616088 that send you to this address: 1-7 Woodham Rd, Woking, Surrey GU21 4, UK. As you probably know, H. G. Wells was born in England. "H. G. Wells moved to Woking in 1895. This was the beginning of his writing career, and whilst living in the town he wrote several books including War of the Worlds," mentions wokingsurrey.com.


Update (Sept. 20): Indeed, Google's doodles were related to H. G. Wells' birthday. "Inspiration for innovation in technology and design can come from lots of places; we wanted to celebrate H.G. Wells as an author who encouraged fantastical thinking about what is possible, on this planet and beyond. And maybe have some fun while we were doing it," explains Google. Here's the third and final doodle: