Bloggle

Google Earth holiday snaps picture Giant Squid!

Today I discovered the Google Sightseeing Blog whose description line is "Why bother seeing the earth for real?". Sounds good to me.

Anyway it looks like an excellent publication which informs us each day of weird and wonderful sightings in Google Earth.

Today, we see real life pictures of the elusive, if not mythical, Giant Squid as posted by the almost anonymous 'Rob'.

He writes,

"Swimming perilously close to the shore of Delray Beach, Florida, are almost definitely two of the mythical creatures that are the Giant squid!  The first does look slightly fat for a squid, but I’m willing to throw doubt aside in this case."

Those squid certainly aren't scared are they?

You can read more about them at the no doubt truthful Wikipedia entry. If Wikipedia says it, then it must be true.

Back up your Gmail in Linux in four "easy" steps

Photo by Shonk

Matt Cutt's posted a method today to back up your Gmail under Linux using an app called getmail.

I'd quite like to back up my Gmail although I'm using Apple Mail so I suppose I could use that. However, I really doubt Google will ever lose my mail.

Maybe one day, if I'm really security conscious, I might want to delete my Gmail account and back up all the messages? Although, this post from Google Operating System suggests it near impossible.

Back to Matt Cutt's...he suggests four easy steps to back up your Gmail. I'd like to suggest it looks like twenty incredibly complex steps but what do I know, I didn't read it. He even cheekily includes a 'Step 0' and a 'Bonus Reading' section which I think is pretty sneaky, effectively making it at least six steps. Still it's good of him to write it all down for us - he mentions a program that charges you $30 for the privilege of doing just what these twenty long winded steps will do.

Any suggestions for Windows users?

Congratulations you're on data center 66.102.9.104

Photo by EmilyWJones

Everyone knows that Google has lots of data centers containing all the pigeons they use to calculate each site's pigeonrank.

Now, with the help of this Firefox add-on you can find out which data center you are on, as reported by SEO Roundtable.

Just download the add-on, google something and note the IP address. Congratulations! You've found your data center.

Why is good to know? No reason, unless you love SEO. Sometimes Google roll out changes to the SERP (search engine results page) to one or more data centers rather than worldwide.

Try it out. Now you can waste away those hours checking out those IP addresses.

Be a meteorologist with Google Maps add-on

Big news here in the UK at the moment is the approaching storm - supposedly the worst of the winter, although where I live the winter has been pretty mild so there haven't been any other storms it could be worse than.

Anyway, I thought I'd take the opportunity to show tell you about the 'Clouds' add on for Google maps that I found earlier. As you can see it shows a huge blob of white heading my way. I'm not where the arrow is by the way, that's London.

So, if you're not in a storm this weekend, you can always find out who else is by using this tool. You can also find out where there have been 'recent' lightning strikes have occurred over the world with this add on. However whilst the makers claim their idea of recent is strikes that have happened in the last 30 minutes, in fact it shows strikes that have happened some months back. Useful if you are a lightning anorak.

Shock: Google not allowed in US secret bases

Photo by sheilaellen

I wrote a few days ago about the story that protesters claimed that they used Google Earth to plan their protest on the Houses of Parliament.

Today, it was announced that the Pentagon had banned Google teams from making street-level views of their bases. Not surprising. But this is...

"Michael Kucharek, spokesman for U.S. Northern Command, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the decision was made after crews were allowed access to at least one base."

Crazy. I wonder if Google will still use the photos!

Stay in sync with Google Calender update

Photo by Fran-cis-ca

Today Google announced that it was now possible to sync your Google Calender with Microsoft Outlook...not just one way, but two. Ace.

Shirin Oskooi, product manager at Google, was very pleased because of the problems not having this ability had caused:

"I've suffered major headaches trying to sync all my calendars."

Great news then...

"...now I can access my calendar at home or on my laptop, on Google Calendar or in Outlook. When I add an event to the Outlook calendar on my laptop, Google Calendar Sync syncs it to my Google Calendar -- and since I also have Google Calendar Sync running on my desktop, the event then syncs from Google Calendar to Outlook calendar on my desktop. All of my calendar views are always up to date, and I choose whichever one I want to use."

In other Google news, Google Reader Blog announced they had increased the reading area by a massive 17 pixels. Not entirely sure how much space that is but it's probably something like this:            .

The blog helpfully informed us:

"This may not seem like much, but every little bit matters when consuming hundreds of posts a day."

Technically correct, but only if you display hundreds of posts a day...on the same screen.

Go go Google gadget

Today Google went gadget crazy with the final release of Google Desktop 5.5 (catchy) after being in beta since October and the release of Google Desktop for Mac in 9 different languages.

Google Desktop Blog writes...

"Today, Google Desktop 5.5 is out of beta and available in 31 languages (including 2 new ones, Thai and Indonesian). This is great news for lots of people around the world, even me (I use the Hindi version of Google Desktop), as we can now use our favourite desktop gadgets in the language of our choice in the iGoogle homepage."

Not sure why you'd use desktop gadgets on the iGoogle page but each to their own I suppose. Perhaps I've just missed the point - but then I'm not a huge fan of Google Desktop.

For Mac lovers you'll (possibly) be pleased to hear that you can now get Google Desktop in 9 languages - although it was already in English, this blog is in English and so if you've got a problem with English...you get it. Anyway, the Google Mac Blog announced today...

"In November we announced Google Gadgets for the Mac. Today we're thrilled to follow up with its release in nine more languages. For the linguistically curious, we're now shipping in English (US and UK), French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese."

But, having said all that...if you own a Mac, don't bother with Google Desktop. Just get Quicksilver and read about it over at LifeHacker. Spend 1 hour with it. It's incredible.

Hundreds of email address are right under your nose!

Photo by jaqian

Are you crying out for more email addresses? Are you scouring the internet looking for that next new free webmail address that will satisfy your requirements? Perhaps you are trying to artificially create an email address shortage. Well the good news is that Gmail ate all the email addresses all along. Now you can claim them back.

The Gmail Blog informs us that...

1. You can insert a '+' sign and any number of other words into your Gmail address

So for instance your email address might be '[email protected]' and you could receive email at '[email protected]'. One practical application would the poster in the picture above. Whoever created it could have used, '[email protected]' and then created a filter so that any emails with '+folder' in the 'To' line would be starred, labelled or archived.

2. You can insert any number of '.' signs into your email address

So you could receive email at '[email protected]' or '[email protected]' or...etc etc.

Now you can tell all those friends on facebook that you've added to increase your friend count (but you don't want to speak to really) that your email address is [email protected], set a filter to auto-delete these emails and you'll not be bothered ever again.

All this from the very helpful Gmail Blog.

Google Maps makes a mess of Sydney Harbour

Google Maps does great things. Fact. Not only does is it a free map and route planner, but it lets you plan your jogging route and find out where the latest virus outbreaks are. Now Maps has reached a new high. It shows events that have never taken place. Spooky? Actually no.

It's just an "image stitching error" according to Google.

The story was reported earlier by the Sydney Morning Herald. Look at the satellite image of Sydney Harbour appears to show a ferry collision right beside a cruise liner.

"The image appears to show a ferry travelling at full speed colliding with a smaller boat. Metres away, another boat appears submerged under water except for the tip of its nose."

An "image stitching error" is such a dull explanation. It would be more exciting (also bad) if the ferry collision had happened and a special government agency (US no doubt) from the future had gone back in time to correct it in the style of the film I recently watched, "Deja-Vu", starring Denzel Washington.

Main problem with my theory...it's crazy talk.

[Story and image from Sydney Morning Herald]

Microsoft launches Google Docs killer

Photo by AndrewVDill

Today Microsoft announced that the Microsoft Office Live Workspace had entered open beta meaning it is now publicly available for anyone to access. Could this be a Google Docs killer considering how popular and widely used Microsoft Office products are already?

Ok so this isn't strictly about Google but ReadWriteWeb has a very good article which takes you through the features of both Google Docs and Office Live Workspace. If you're new to Google Docs then this would be a great post to help you get an overview of what Docs is about and what it can and can't do.

The article is quite neutral and makes some good points about both products. It seems the biggest difference is Docs ability to provide real-time collaboration but where it lacks against the MS product is the fact that there is no offline program to accompany it. MS have clearly made their unique selling point the fact that there is good integration with the rest of the Office "family".

Will you use it? I guess if you're a die-hard Docs supporter and Google fanboy (or girl) you'll also be a MS hater so there ain't much chance you even letting your browser (Firefox obviously) touch the MS created page. But for those of you more neutral, let us know how it turns out will you?

Update: Here's a number of other good write ups about this story...

1. Matt Cutt's gives a good comparison here
   
2. TechCrunch give their verdict and compare a number of other similar products