Google Launches "The Google Calendar (BETA)"

Google has released its long-rumored calendar service, offering an appealing set of features that makes it easy to keep track of your own schedule and share calendars with others.

It's an impressive new service, though not without rough edges. It should appeal to anyone who's been frustrated by the current generation of calendar applications that all seem to be lacking in one crucial aspect or another.

"We wanted to address the challenges that we found in other calendaring products," said Carl Sjogreen, product manager, Google calendar.

The new Google Calendar is available to anyone who has a free Google account. To access the calendar, visit http://www.google.com/calendar and sign in, or register for a free Google account if you don't have one. If you have a Gmail account, you'll now also see a link to your Calendar in the upper left corner of the screen.

Like most Google services, the Google Calendar sports a clean, uncluttered interface. A small "mini-calendar" on the left side of the screen shows the current month, and a larger view to the right shows either the current day, week or month view, the "next 4 days," or an "agenda," a linear list of all of your scheduled events.

There are a number of ways to add events to your calendar. You can simply click on an area of the calendar where you want to place an event and a pop-up window appears with a form that lets you enter the event (the date and time are automatically filled in). Click the "edit event details" link if you need to add additional information, such as location, description, a reminder and so on.

Alternately, you can use the "quick add" link that opens a form that lets you type natural language sentences like "dinner with Michael 7pm tomorrow," interprets them, and makes an appropriate entry on the calendar. This feature is a big time-saver, especially for people who hate filling in forms. If your entry is ambiguous (e.g. "call Mom on Mother's Day) an entry form is created allowing you to complete the entry with more precise information.

Gmail users will find a new feature that recognizes events in mail messages and gives you an opportunity to add the event to your Google Calendar. Google is also offering a "remind me with Google Calendar" button that lets you add events from web sites that display the button with just a couple of clicks.

One of the nice features of the programs is that you're not limited to a single calendar. It's easy to create multiple calendars for specific functions, to track things like family or work events, though figuring out how to create a new calendar takes some unnecessary work (click the "manage calendars" link, then the "calendars" tab on the Calendar setting page, and only then you'll finally see a "create new calendar" button).

You can also import calendars that use the common iCal or CSV formats—for example, an Outlook calendar. I wish Google had made this easier. Rather than simply locating common calendar files and importing them directly, Google Calendar makes you go through the process of exporting and then importing calendar data. You can learn more how to do this with common calendar formats at www.google.com/support/calendar.

Each individual calendar you create is listed in your list of calendars, and is color-coded so its events are clearly distinguished from events in other calendars. To see events in a specific calendar, simply tick the check box next to its name. You can view events from as many different calendars as you like. Being able to manage multiple calendars within this relatively simple, straightforward interface is one of the most powerful features of the program.

By default, your calendar is private, but Google has created a number of features that make sharing calendar information with others quite easy. "We realized that managing your own events is only one small part of what's going on," said Sjogreen.

You can share calendars with other Google Calendar users, or publish your calendar events so that anyone can view them, whether they are a Google Calendar user or not. More on this feature in a moment.

Options give you quite a bit of control over how your calendars are shared. You can make a calendar completely public (be careful with this—public calendars are easily searchable by anyone who has a Google Calendar), or share only your "busy/free" information, hiding the details of your calendar.

You can also share your calendar with specific people, and even give them permission to make changes and manage the sharing of the calendar, though they must also be Google Calendar users to do this.

Sharing events with others who aren't Google Calendar users is straightforward. In essence, every event on calendar has a web page associated with it—Sjogreen calls it a sort of "mini-blog associated with an event," where people can leave comments, respond to others and so on. To enable this interactivity, simply add "guests" to an event by including their email addresses in the event details section.

Google hasn't neglected search capabilities with Google Calendar. You can search across your own calendars, and if you click the "search options" link next to the search form, you'll see fields that allow you to limit your search to "what," "who" "where," "doesn't have," or a date range. There's also a drop-down menu that allows you to limit your search to all calendars, your calendars or other calendars.

There's also a search form beneath your list of calendars that searches all public Google Calendars, helpful if you're searching for public events that others have included on their calendars. This ability to search for other events, combined with adding your own events, makes it easy to create very comprehensive calendars. "We tried really hard to make it easy to get calendaring information from any source so you have a complete picture of events in your life," said Sjogreen.

What about privacy? As with all online services, there's a tradeoff between utility and the security of your personal information. By default, your calendar entries are private—you must explicitly share them to make them public. But as we've seen recently, government agencies have requested what's considered private information from Google and other online services, so it's prudent to think carefully before using Google Calendar. Be sure to read the Google Calendar Privacy Policy for more information.

Bottom Line:

Google Calendar is a very strong initial release, with a good balance between powerful features and ease of use. The ability to easily work with multiple calendars and the sharing features are particularly appealing, especially for people who are dissatisfied with their current calendar application.

Trying the Google Calendar is low-risk—if you don't like it, you can simply export your information and import it back into your current calendar app.

The most significant downside of Google Calendar is that it requires you to be online and logged in to your Google account to use it. For someone who spends a lot of time on airplanes and in countries with limited net access, that's a significant pain factor for me. Sure, you can make printed copies of your calendar, but you lose most of the functionality in doing that.

It'd be great if Google would offer an option to work with your calendar while working offline. If they do, I won't look back at Outlook again.

Google buys search algorithm invented by Israeli student

Search engine giant Google recently acquired an advanced text search algorithm invented by Ori Alon, an Israeli student. Sources believe Yahoo and Microsoft were also negotiating with the University of New South Wales in Australia, where Alon is a doctoral student in computer science.

Google, Alon and the university all refused to comment, though Google confirmed that "Ori Alon works at Google's Mountain View, California offices."

The University acknowledged that Yahoo and Microsoft had conducted negotiations with its business development company.

Alon told TheMarker in an interview six months ago that the university had registered a patent on the invention.

Orion, as it is called, which Alon developed with faculty, relates only to the most relevant textual results. In addition the software, which currently operates only in English, offers a list of topics directly related to the original source.

"For example, if you search information on the War of Independence, you'll receive a list of related words, like Etzel, Palmach, Ben-Gurion," he explained. The text will only appear on the results page if enough words relevant to the search and the link between them is reasonable. Orion also rates the texts by quality of the site in which they appear.

Source: haaretzdaily.com

Google aims to track users with wi-fi

Google aims to be able to track its users to within 100-200 feet of their location through new wireless networks in order to serve them with relevant advertising from local businesses.

The leading internet search company, which depends on advertising for 99 per cent of its revenues, was selected on Wednesday by San Francisco as its preferred bidder to provide a basic free wi-fi internet service covering the entire city.

It had partnered in its bid with the internet service provider Earthlink, which intends to charge a fee for a faster internet connection.

Google and Earthlink will now enter final contract negotiations with the city. There were five other bidders including a non-profit group backed by Cisco Systems and IBM.

The company hopes to defray the costs of offering a free service through contextual advertising. Analysts have speculated that the San Francisco bid could be a prelude to Google seeking to extend its reach into localities nationwide.

It is already planning a free wi-fi network by the summer covering the city of Mountain View, where its headquarters is based, and the San Francisco service may be up and running by the end of the year.

Google says users linking up with wi-fi transmitters placed around cities can be located to within a couple of blocks. This would open up a new level of advertising opportunities for the company, allowing it to serve tightly focused ads on its web pages from small businesses in the immediate area.

The bid to blanket-cover San Francisco with cheap internet access is part of a broader move towards municipal wireless networks by big US cities.

Philadelphia became the first major US city to begin construction of a citywide wireless network when it signed a deal with Earthlink earlier this year.

Other big cities such as Chicago, Boston and Austin have announced their own wireless network plans.

Experts have warned, however, that the free wireless model remains unproven and may not offer the best solution for smaller cities and towns addressing the "digital divide" to promote economic development.

In a separate development, Google has launched a local listings service for real estate.

Typing "real estate" or "homes for sale" in its search box prompts users to enter their postal codes and see a map showing properties and their details in their area. The "mash-up" combines Google Maps with its Google Base classifieds service.

By The Financial Times Ltd

AOL Enhances Mobile Search

AOL has added several new features to its mobile search service, and has also released the findings of a recent mobile lifestyle survey.

AOL launched mobile search services in July 2005, offering web, local and shopping search services that were similar to those available at search.aol.com. Today, AOL has added a new "Surf the Web" option to its mobile search that makes it easy to both locate and view just about any web page without the aggravating scrolling that's often necessary using many web-enabled mobile devices.

The new AOL "Surf the Web" search allows you to type in keywords and automatically navigates to a web page that you're interested in. Better still, rather than simply rendering the page as found on your mobile device's tiny screen, the page is automatically and intelligently reformatted for your device.

"One size doesn't fit all for the mobile internet—we have to resize for the phone that's in your hand," said Raine Bergstrom, director of Emerging Technologies for AOL's wireless group.

Intelligent reformatting means that the most important content is identified and displayed first, regardless of its location on the web page. Graphics are resized to fit your screen. Most importantly, the main navigation for a site is identified and incorporated in a single "Quick Nav" link, rather than taking up important real-estate on your mobile device.

This means you see the most important content but also have access to all navigation on a site with a single, additional click. This is all done automatically for any site that you visit. It's a slick, intelligent way to view web content on a mobile device.

AOL has also enhanced its local search and mapping services for GIS enabled devices. Simply use the "locate me" function and from that point on all of your searches for AOL's mobile Cityguide, Moviefone and Mapquest Maps will automatically offer results based on your current location without any additional input.

A history of the phone's location and previous searches is also kept, and is accessible both via the mobile device and the web. This makes it easy to revisit favorite places—and also keep tabs on where a phone has been (of interest to some parents wanting to know where their teens have been, for example).

The new services are available to any web enabled phone at mobile.aolsearch.com/ (you can also view this on a computer to see what gets displayed on a mobile device).

Mobile Lifestyle Survey Results

AOL, in conjunction with the Associated Press and the Pew Research Center, has released results of a survey showing that Americans are becoming increasingly dependent on their mobile phones, and that the use of online mobile services is increasing. Some highlights:

52 percent of adults keep their cell phone turned on all day, everyday
40 percent of those aged 18-29 are likely to drop their landline
30 percent of adults want to browse the Web from their cell phone
47 percent say that mobile maps and driving directions are a "must have" on the next phone they buy.

Source: searchenginewatch.com

Google Romance launches, Gates buys OpenOffice--not

A couple April Fool's Day jokes got us smiling this morning.

Seems Google is coming out with new features all the time, so the search giant got us--for a very quick moment anyway--with its Google Romance beta and pitch, "When you think about it, love is just another search problem."

Some of the spoof features include a Soulmate Search and Contextual Date "which we'll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you're looking for."

Slashdot then pointed us to OpenOffice.org's announcement that it was bought by Microsoft's Bill Gates, who "was sick and tired of open-source eating away at his profits." In case you didn't immediately get the joke, a press release link brings you to the April Fool's Day message.

Neither prank, however, beats Slashdot's revamped pink site, an attempt to reach beyond its predominantly male readership.

Happy April Fool's Day, everyone!!!!

Posted by Michelle Meyers
For more information: http://news.com.com

Google Has Multimedia on Its Mind...

Internet search provider Google appears more serious than ever about preparing features for home electronics.

In the past few weeks, the Mountain View, Calif.-based firm has begun looking for employees to make Google TV and radio products compatible with televisions, stereos, radios and cell phones.

As for TV, Google appears to be preparing an on-demand service that would serve up videos and games. The company is asking for software engineers with experience in Internet-based, interactive TV, personal video recorders, video-on-demand and some unspecified features offered by cable operators.

There are now at least three TV-related job openings at Google: a product manager, and two television technology engineers, one based in Mountain View, Calif., the other in Kirkland, Wash.

Google's radio efforts are getting at least two more employees, both based in Newport Beach, Calif. The job descriptions suggest Google is now more seriously meshing its Internet search and ad features with the systems of dMarc Broadcasting.

In January, Google announced that it purchased dMarc of Newport, Calif., which places advertisements on more than 4,500 radio broadcasts, including 40 percent of the top 50 radio groups.

Google benefits from such an expansion of its features because, to a large degree, its Internet search, messaging and mapping are restricted to personal computers.

In a way, Google has merely scratched the surface when taking into account how the number of TVs, stereos, radios and cell phones now in circulation vastly outnumber personal computers.

By extending features to televisions and radios, Google would also have a much more competitive advertising package to offer companies, which it needs.

When it comes to getting off the PC, Google lags behind chief rival, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, the Time Warner Inc. company.

The moves may also be in response to the pressure from Google investors worried the firm isn't preparing for the inevitable time when annual Internet ad sales level out.

"There are a million ways in which Google could fail," writes Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr. "But the upside, both in inherent potential and in the potential to outflank their competitors, is enormous.

A Google spokeswoman shed very little insight into what's going on when asked for comment for this story.

The representative wrote, in an e-mail, that, "Google is always looking for talented individuals worldwide to join the company. Unfortunately, there's nothing more beyond the job description that we can share at this time.

Microsoft Unveils its New Search Engine

After months of speculation and two "preview" releases, Microsoft has taken the wraps off of its new MSN search engine, the first major competitor to join the big leagues of web search in nearly a year.

The new engine, available at beta.search.msn.com is an algorithmic search engine built from scratch by Microsoft engineers. "This is our new engine that we've built from the ground up," said Justin Osmer, product manager for MSN Search. Released in beta form, it's expected to replace Yahoo search results still in place at MSN sometime later this year or early next year.

Supported by an index of 5 billion pages, the new engine is comparable to Google and Yahoo! in scope, and for most of my initial tests, in relevancy as well. Microsoft has acknowledged that being "as good as" its competitors is merely the price of entry to the web search game these days.

The interface is clean and sparse, as are search result pages. MSN Search is now offering cached links to the copies of pages that its crawler fetched. Notably, for some pages, a date is also displayed next to the "cache" link. Microsoft says that this date is an estimate of when the page last changed. In many cases, this is also the date the page was crawled. You can see the crawl date for all pages by clicking through to the cached version of the page.

Osmer says that a comprehensive crawling effort is central to the success of MSN Search. MSN's crawling some pages daily, some weekly and some monthly, "which we believe is more frequently than some of our competitors out there," says Osmer.

New and Different Features

To set itself apart from the pack, the new MSN Search includes some features that differ from those found on Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. The most prominent difference is the "Near Me" button appearing next to the "Search" button. Clicking the Near Me button effectively runs a local search for your query. In this release, the Near Me feature works only for searchers located in the U.S.

By default, your browser's IP address is used to determine your location. You can override this by explicitly entering your current location using the Settings command. The "Near Me" function works quite well, primarily because Microsoft has tagged every web page in its index that has geographic information, using what the company calls an "overlapping tiles model," starting with zip code, then including neighborhood, region, city, state and country information if available.

MSN Search also now incorporates additional non-web sources of information in results on a query-specific basis. For example, queries for factual information get "direct answers" from Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia. For music-related queries, inline results from MSN Music are included, with a link to further information, downloads and so on.

Microsoft is also offering an interesting hybrid approach to customization and advanced search. Clicking the Search Builder link opens up a window beneath the search form that provides explicit controls over many of your query variables. Most of these controls are similar to those hidden away on the advanced search page of other search engines. Having them available from any search form is a nice touch that should encourage more use of these refinement tools.

"The point is trying to allow the average person to be able to build relatively complex queries relatively easily," said Osmer.

The first allows you to easily modify your query by adding terms or an exact phrase, or excluding terms from the search. You can also limit your search by domain, country or region or language, or to pages that link to a particular URL. Search Builder automatically formats your query with the appropriate syntax, even nesting queries in parenthesis when appropriate.

The final refinement tool is the coolest feature of the new MSN Search, allowing you to control result ranking using sliders. There are three sliders available. One lets you select the degree of match between your search terms and result pages, from an exact match to an approximate match. The second lets you specify page popularity, from very popular to less popular. The final slider controls freshness of results, from updated recently to static pages.

Using all three sliders in combination produces a remarkably wide range of results for the same query, and for some types of searches can be extremely useful. In other cases, results become, well, just bizarre. I love the idea of giving searchers more control over results, and I like the idea of using sliders, but this particular feature will need refinement before it catches on in a big way.

Image search is also new, but not unique. MSN Search has partnered with Picsearch to provide access to over 400 million images. Osmer says that MSN Search starts with the Picsearch database and adds its own tweaks, but at this point results from MSN Search and Picsearch are almost identical for the test queries I ran.

The quality of image search results is reasonably high, especially when compared to an image search in Google, which seems to have faltered lately. Among the majors, Yahoo's recently enhanced Image search database seems to be the clear leader in this area, at least for now.

Customization Options

Through the "Settings" link, you can set several preferences for search results. In addition to English, the MSN Search interface is available in ten other, mostly European languages. You can also specify which languages are to be included in results.

Other settings allow you to change the number of search results from the default of 10 to 15, 30, 50 or 100 per page.

Safe search is new. Moderate filtering is the default setting, screening out sexually explicit images only. Strict will eliminate both explicit images and text. You can also turn the safe search filter off.

You also have the ability to influence the number of results displayed from a particular site. Search results from the same site are grouped together, with a maximum of two displayed by default. You can change this to display one, two or three results.

Desktop Search: Missing, but Coming Soon

Contrary to what's been widely reported in the press, Microsoft will be releasing a desktop search application before the end of the year. It won't be the application that's part of the Longhorn upgrade to Windows, but rather a separate application that will integrate with MSN Search. I've seen a demo of the desktop search application and am impressed with its capabilities, but a non-disclosure agreement prohibits me from writing anything more about it until it's actually released.

Microsoft has a number of other planned enhancements that will be released before the end of the year, covering a wide range of both web and desktop content, including a blog search feature—something no major search engine has yet done, despite Google's purchase of Blogger and Yahoo's major push toward indexing RSS feeds and making them easily available via My Yahoo.

These enhancements will almost certainly strengthen the appeal of the initial MSN Search application.

A Google Killer? Not

Over the past few days as rumors of the launch of MSN search have been widely reported, speculation has focused on whether this entry by Microsoft signals the end of Google's web search domination. Not likely, and not because MSN's search engine doesn't have the technical chops to compete with Google. It does, and Microsoft seems to truly have "got religion" when it comes to web search.

But Google isn't going to stand still, as we saw with last night's stealth increase in Google's index to a reported 8 billion plus pages, which means Google is likely working with a full index of more than 10 billion items—roughly twice the size of Microsoft's web index.

Google also has a seeming lock on searchers' mental shelf space—at least for now. Rightly or wrongly, many people automatically turn to Google for search, and Microsoft will have to do much more than simply launch this initial highly laudable foray to change the searching behavior of the masses.

I think they will, both by improving this initial beta version of MSN search and gradually folding some of the seriously cool research projects cooking in Microsoft Research labs into the search engine over the next couple of years. But let's not forget Yahoo and Ask Jeeves, who are also diligently laboring away on improving their own search engines.

The bottom line for searchers is that we've now got four world class "voices," as Danny Sullivan likes to call them, who are working to outdo not only their competitors but themselves. We've also got dozens of smaller players who are developing innovative new tools and approaches that will likely be absorbed or copied by the big guys.

Far from being a Google killer, MSN Search is instead a welcome new alternative for searchers, and a catalyst for sparking further improvements and innovations at other services. It's going to be a fun couple of years.