Back in March, I posted about a page that lists the research topics that are displayed by Google Now, but the page stopped working after a few days. Now it works again, has more features and it's no longer limited to Android devices.
Just go to www.google.com/now/topics/ and you'll see a long list of topics related to your recent searches. They're based on your search history and should only show up if you performed multiple related searches about a topic.
Click one of the topics and you'll get a list of search results that are supposed to be helpful. You'll see reviews, forum threads, news articles, videos, web pages and other related topics.
It's interesting to notice that Google uses the Knowledge Graph to generate related people, music, movies, hotels and more. There are publicly available topics pages like this one.
The results aren't always great, as you can see here:
Do you remember the post about attaching photos using drag and drop in Gmail's new compose interface? At that time, this didn't work because Gmail embedded the images instead of attaching them.
Now you can attach photos even when you use drag and drop: just drag the photos to the small area at the bottom of the compose box that says "Attach files here". If you drag photos to the much bigger "Drop file here" area, Gmail will embed them.
It's already a tradition at Google: every year in June, search results pages for queries like [gay], [lgbt], [lesbian], [transgender] have some special multicolored decorations to celebrate the Gay & Lesbian Pride Month. Here's this year's decoration: a rainbow search box with a nice 3D effect.
"From Silicon Valley LGBTQ mixers to Hangouts with Google Executives, planning a successful Google Pride is about more than coordinating the colors of the rainbow. Gayglers from all departments of Google formed sub-committees to discuss budget, plan events, order schwag and advertise Pride while keeping an eye on the prize: ensuring the messages of diversity, inclusion and pride are central themes throughout it all," informs a Google+ post about Google's 8th annual Pride Parade: June 30th - San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Dublin. Here's a post about last year's parade.
You can also check the colorful interfaces from 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Google had an advanced search operator that allowed you get results for different variations of your query. "Normally, synonyms might replace some words in your original query. Add a tilde sign (~) immediately in front of a word to search for that word as well as even more synonyms. For example, [~food facts] includes results for 'nutrition facts'," explained Google.
Now the tilde operator is missing from Google's help center article and it no longer works. A search for [~food facts] returns the same results you can find when you search for [food facts]. One workaround is to search for [food OR nutrition facts].
A cool trick that used to work was to search for [~query -query] to find synonyms. "What you do is to first do a search on ~help -help which is the AWO [Approximate Word Operator] and the word help and then minus and the word help. You will then see another word appearing in the results which is a synonym for help. Use the Exclude Word Operator (-) in front the the word e.g. -guide and then what appears in the top listings now. Continue through each word until there are no more synonyms left."
I'm sure that very few people used this obscure operator, but it's just another power user feature that Google removes. Most likely, many others will follow.
Here's one of the many book pages that's now obsolete:
Update: Dan Russell, from Google, confirms the deprecation. "Yes, it's been deprecated. Why? Because too few people were using it to make it worth the time, money, and energy to maintain. In truth, although I sometimes disagree with the operator changes, I happen to agree with this one. Maintaining ALL of the synonyms takes real time and costs us real money. Supporting this operator also increases the complexity of the code base. By dropping support for it we can free up a bunch of resources that can be used for other, more globally powerful changes."
Just the other day, I was trying to find a synonym for [ubiquitous] and searched Google for [ubiquitous synonym]. Google returned a regular list of search results and I was surprised to see that Google doesn't offer an instant answer for a basic query like this.
Then I realized that the dictionary OneBox includes a list of synonyms, so a search for [ubiquitous definition], [define ubiquitous] or even just [ubiquitous] returns a great synonym: omnipresent.
Sometimes Google has a lot of information, but doesn't make it accessible.
Google used this many times last year: "the playground is open". That's one of the most important things about Android: it's open source and any company can use it. One of the definitions of "open" is "accessible to all, unrestricted as to participants".
The playground for feed readers is now open. Google Reader's demise levels the playing field in the feed reading world. Now there are more competitors, there's more innovation, there are new platforms for distributing feeds, new interfaces. Suddenly, feed readers are a hot topic. Until now, Google Reader was the dominant service and platform, but Google didn't know what to do with it. Google Reader stopped adding new features back in 2010 and it was in maintenance mode ever since then. Few dared to challenge its position and most new feed readers were only Google Reader clients.
Google Reader's disappearance is Google's best idea for saving RSS. From stagnant to vibrant in 3 months - Google Reader's demise helped RSS more than the last 3 years of silence. The playground is now open.
And for those who are sad that Reader will soon be gone - don't worry, there's a bit of Google Reader in any feed reader that has launched in the past 3-4 years or will launch in the near future. Maybe it's time to get a better Reader, even if not from Google...
YouTube had a feature that allowed you to stop buffering a video. You right-clicked a video, selected "stop download" and YouTube no longer downloaded the video. This was especially useful for paused videos and long videos.
The feature is no longer available. I've tried both the Flash player and the HTML5 player.
The truth is that this feature is no longer needed because buffering stops when you pause a video. Try this: open a random YouTube video, wait a few seconds and then pause the video. Even after 5 minutes, YouTube's seek bar will look the same.
YouTube has a smarter way to download videos that uses adaptive streaming and only downloads what's needed. That's only the case for the Flash player: the HTML5 player works just like before.
Here's what happens when you play a video right now: YouTube downloads a lot of different sized text files that are merged.
The HTML5 player and the old Flash player download a single video file. The new Flash player slices the video and requests each slice separately (the project was referred internally as "sliced bread"). What's the point?
"The new player is keeping close eyes on the speed and health of your internet connection, explained [YouTube's Andy] Berkheimer: 'It's continuously monitoring the bandwidth and the throughput it is seeing,' he said, adding that it also keeps tabs on the size of your player. Are you watching a video in full screen? Then you can expect YouTube to send you more bits, as long as your connection is fast enough. (...) YouTube tends to be more aggressive in sending out higher-quality video, and then scales down the video if necessary, Berkheimer explained. The site also makes use of the fact that you often watch more than one YouTube video in a row, and optimizes your bit rate across an entire session. The results of these efforts have been encouraging. YouTube has seen buffering reduced by 20 percent since it launched adaptive streaming for its desktop player," reported GigaOM.
Adaptive streaming will come to the HTML5 player, then to the mobile players and the TV players. At some point, the settings that allow you to change video quality may disappear because they're no longer needed. Instead of having to adjust the video quality, YouTube could automatically change it for you depending on your connection speed.
Here's a video from Google I/O that offers more technical information about adaptive streaming, a feature that was implemented in 4 years:
