google archives

Google celebrates the PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary. Make sure to play, at least one, before making a search. Use your arrow keys as your joystick. Thanks Google!

posted by pepe on Friday, May 21, 2010

Google’s logo today for the first day of spring is also a tribute to one of my 2-year old’s favorite books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Love it! (Apparently, it’s also the book’s 40th birthday. It wears its age very well.)

posted by ted on Friday, Mar 20, 2009

“I won’t miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.”
Stop Design Stops Google

posted by john on Friday, Mar 20, 2009

Google further cements its overlord status by making millions of LIFE magazine photos available for search. How about those Mormons?

posted by foster on Tuesday, Nov 18, 2008

I love it when web technologies get used in unexpected ways. A great example of this can be found in this article about how the CDC is experimenting with using Google search trends to track the flu.

posted by cannona on Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008

New in Gmail Labs: Stop sending email you later regret. This isn’t a joke, and it’s genius. Enable “Mail Goggles,” and Gmail will ask you a few math problems before it sends your email to make sure you’re sober enough to really mean what you just wrote. The feature is only active late at night in your timezone, and only on weekends, when some people might be prone to doing things they regret.

Love this idea, of designing things to be harder to encourage a certain behavior. We did something similar in our new Mission Office application here internally, making certain financial actions harder by requiring extra clicks or making the controls slightly obscure to discourage using them. Speed bumps are another example of using “poor” design to lead your user to act a certain way.

posted by jason on Tuesday, Oct 07, 2008

I’ve always been a fan of Google’s changing-yet-always-the-same logo. Here is today’s celebrating the first successful test run of the now completed Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

What’s your favorite Google logo?

posted by ted on Wednesday, Sep 10, 2008

Well done Google.

posted by foster on Saturday, Sep 06, 2008

Yesterday Google Chrome was the 10th most used browser on lds.org, today (so far) it is 7th. Mind you that is only a few hundred visitors, but still fairly impressive for a < 24 hr old browser.

For no prize what-so-ever… name the other 6 browsers that are beating it… in order please =)

posted by aaron on Wednesday, Sep 03, 2008

I’m not a lawyer, but dang. The Google Chrome EULA looks highly suspect. Think I’ll stick with Safari.

posted by foster on Wednesday, Sep 03, 2008

Google announced they are making a new web browser called Chrome. Their intent is to simplify, speed up, stabilize and optimize our experience with web apps. And they introduce it with a comic book. I just felt my job get a little harder, did you?

posted by tadd on Monday, Sep 01, 2008

SEO the right way

There appear to be more scammers in the “business” of search engine optimization than in any other area of web production. I have no idea why that is, but as this fact has become better known, it seems to have discouraged people from paying as much attention to SEO as they used to. This, I feel, is quite unfortunate, as I’m convinced many sites could benefit from a little attention in this area.

I’m certainly no expert on the topic, but in my experience, if you want to help your search rankings, you’ve got to stop asking, “How can I drive more traffic to my site?” and instead ask, “How can I help interested people find my content?” This can be a difficult shift, especially when your site offers little unique information. Nevertheless, I believe that adding fresh and relevant content is unquestionably one of the best things you can do for your site. If you want to improve your search rankings, give the search engine something to find.

Other factors which can effect your ranking to a lesser extent seem to include how many sites link to you (quality is as important as quantity, so no free-for-all link pages), your page title, and of course how well the words in the text of your page match the words that were searched for.

However, like I said, I am no expert on the topic, and I would like to hear from others. What recommendations do you have for search engine optimization? I’m not interested in ways to game the system, just suggestions on how to bring our content to those who are looking for it.

posted by cannona on Thursday, Aug 21, 2008

Google Docs will never become a dominant word processor unless…

You guessed it, they make their interface accessible. If you are not able to use a mouse or see the screen, you are basically out of luck when it comes to Google Docs. The best you can do is read what others have wrote, and even that is a bit awkward.

Granted, it will not be easy for Google to substantially alter this situation with current popular techniques, but it should be made a lot simpler with the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) standard being worked on by the The World Wide Web Consortium.

For those who are not aware, ARIA is a proposed standard which, among other things, seeks to bridge the gap in communication between the screen reader and dynamic web applications. It allows you to tell a screenreader user, for example, that a particular element on the page is a drop-down menu, add enhanced keyboard functionality, and draw the users attention to elements that change. It is a very promising standard which is already seeing some support in the latest versions of screen readers, and a few of the very recently released browsers.

But getting back to Google, I believe that inaccessibility will very likely hold them back in the market. It is true that the vast majority of users don’t even know what accessibility is, and if they do, they probably don’t pay it much attention. So how could it substantially effect them in the market? There seems to be a growing trend within a few companies, but more within government, to discourage the usage of inaccessible products when accessible alternatives exist. I believe that at least some of the efforts being put forth by companies to make their products more accessible can be directly attributed to these regulations and policies. Of course, I don’t wish to imply that it’s entirely a business decision, as I am sure many companies do it because they care. However, having a little market pressure never hurts.

Right now, Microsoft Office works great with any screenreader worth speaking of, and if you’re the person responsible for deciding what software your organization will use and you have a mandate to consider accessibility in your decision, MS Office has a big advantage that might be difficult to overcome.

Nevertheless, because of the afore mentioned market pressure, and because of Google’s promising history of making virtually all of their other web applications accessible, I am quite optimistic that I too will soon have the opportunity to use Google Docs.

posted by cannona on Friday, May 30, 2008

Google Moms
Though it’s not very explicit, this apears to be a tribute to the mothers of some of the Google team, complete with 8-9 dozen portaits and such classic quotes as, “Don’t make those faces—your face will freeze like that” and “Don’t put that in your mouth; you don’t know where it’s been!”
Good idea, Google—wish we’d a thought of it… Maybe next year!

posted by ted on Sunday, May 11, 2008

What makes a design "Googley"? A small team gathered to discuss these questions and define the Googley Design Principles:

1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

A worthy set of goals. Check the article for links to more in-depth descriptions of each.

posted by aaron on Wednesday, Apr 23, 2008

Secrets of UX Design Productivity from Google Jake Knapp, a very well-spoken user interface designer, entertained a packed house with a speech on 17 tactics that he uses for creating strong UX work in “the flood” of projects that pour through his UX department from month to month.

posted by aaron on Thursday, Mar 06, 2008

Street View is now available in Salt Lake City. Time to go looking for fun local sites. Update: See other temples along the wasatch front.

posted by aaron on Wednesday, Feb 13, 2008

Christopher Philips sent me a link to a very interesting article on accessibility as it relates to large organizations.

posted by cannona on Wednesday, Dec 26, 2007

Creative Review showcases some art depicting Biblical events in a Google Earth/God’s eye view way. Above is the parting of the Red Sea. Pretty cool stuff.

posted by clifton on Monday, Dec 17, 2007

Can Google make a better Wikipedia? We might get to find out, acording to an article on Ars Technica. It looks like a good idea, but I don’t really think it will effect Wikipedia much, even if it does become popular. The reason is that the two sites don’t seem like they would be in direct competition as they provide two very different services, with each offering something the other does not. They might steal some traffic from one another, because if someone finds the information they are seeking on one site, they might not visit the other, but that can be said about just about every site on the web.

posted by cannona on Friday, Dec 14, 2007