Google Pages is basically Geocities 2.0. You get a wysiwyg editing interface, a bunch of templates to pick from, and the ability to make as many pages as you need. Time will tell if this revolutionizes the web the way Geocities did (aside from all the obvious crappy pages from Geocities, it did give thousands of new writers and designers a place to start), but it's certainly a cool set of tools to do something mundane like start a website. [via
waxy]
posted by mathowie
on Feb 23, 2006 -
88 comments
For the last six months or so, it's been a war between Yahoo and Google to see who can outdo each other. They're often releasing competing products at nearly the same time, but
Google Maps has held the lead on coolest map for a while now. Yahoo finally countered today,
releasing their beta maps, which work much like Google's, though it uses flash instead of javascript. I kind of like the little video game-style radar map in the upper right to show where you are in the bigger picture and the directions feature closeups on the left pane when expanded. Apparently all the cool API stuff works in it already, and
they've released an events browser to show that off as well.
posted by mathowie
on Nov 3, 2005 -
60 comments
Yahoo gets social. Yahoo's new search is designed around your contact list. Save a few bookmarks with some notes and the next time anyone within two degrees of you searches on that topic, they'll see your bookmarks above random search results. Oh, and
it's got tags too. Will this kill search engine gaming? What's Google going to do to compete, buy
delicious and incorporate that?
posted by mathowie
on Jun 28, 2005 -
28 comments
Gmail: Google's newest service. They're claiming 1Gb of free email, killer spam filters, and a great new webmail interface. They'll likely have Google ads attached to your messages, but I can't wait to see it tomorrow (hopefully it's not just an April Fools prank).
posted by mathowie
on Mar 31, 2004 -
108 comments
Google's News has
launched as a new tab on their other search interfaces with a heavy redesign, though it still carries a "beta" label. The front page changes every few minutes based on some hidden popularity algorithm, as do the sub-pages. Featuring a stark ad-free design that looks quite a bit more attractive than CNN.com or any other major news site, perhaps robot-collected news is the wave of the future.
posted by mathowie
on Sep 23, 2002 -
40 comments
The Google Quiz tests your knowledge of art, film, and music, general trivia, or (ugh) their stuff for sale. It's
only open to US residents, but it otherwise an interesting testament to their product. Armed with just a google search window, you are given five questions that test your research limits. Someone here with l33t search skillz has got to win something.
posted by mathowie
on Aug 23, 2002 -
24 comments
Amazon Light is project powered by
amazon's SOAP API, with a design and interaction reminiscent of Google's clean no-frills approach. Pretty cool and clean way to use the site (without annoying popups or gold box offers).
posted by mathowie
on Jul 17, 2002 -
38 comments
Whoa!
Google adds graphics to their interface, and not only that, but they're a tabbed interface. I hope they've done extensive testing before choosing such a limiting method of navigation.
posted by mathowie
on Oct 1, 2001 -
78 comments
Everyone's favorite search engine
Google has opened their
GoogleStore. They've got shirts, mugs, and bags, some with the "I'm feeling lucky" slogan, but the strangest thing for sale? That'd have to be the
Exercise Ball, which I suspect secretly carries
Happy Fun Ball-style disclaimers.
When not in use, Google Exercise Ball should be returned to its special container
and kept under refrigeration. Do not taunt Google Exercise Ball. [thanks
RasterWeb]
posted by mathowie
on Mar 18, 2000 -
4 comments
Google reminds me of elementary school in a way. Every time there was a holiday, Ms. Capp would put up colorful decorations on the walls, windows, and doors of our classroom. Perhaps my 3rd grade teacher took a job as a designer at Google, because they're continuing the tradition just as she would have.
posted by mathowie
on Mar 16, 2000 -
9 comments
The new
google bookmarklets are amazingly simple and useful. I've been wanting to do
something like this for a while, and after seeing them, I decided to rework the code to make the web-based spellchecker I always wanted. If you bookmark this:
Dictionary.com bookmarklet, highlight a word on a web page, and hit the bookmark for it, it will load that word into dictionary.com's site. It's IE-only, but I'll redo the Netscape one too.
posted by mathowie
on Mar 2, 2000 -
7 comments
