Googleholic for March 11, 2008
Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!
This edition covers:
If you thought Mountain View was the town of Google, take a look at Nanaimo, British Columbia. The town has mapped almost everything about itself on Google, including lot sizes of properties, business information, zoning information, and stuff like the real-time position of fire trucks in the city. The place even has its own RSS feed that can alert people to accident sites. Considering that the town only has a population of 78,000, the cataloging of just about "everything" that can be captured electronically is naturally easier than it may be in a sprawling metropolis, but Nanaimo may very well set a precedent in how much information we may be able to access online about any town. Keeping our fingers crossed.
This edition covers:
- Welcome to Google Town, er, Nanaimo
- Google stock dips to 52-week low
- "How Google keeps your information secure"
- Slow loading sites will get penalized by Adwords
If you thought Mountain View was the town of Google, take a look at Nanaimo, British Columbia. The town has mapped almost everything about itself on Google, including lot sizes of properties, business information, zoning information, and stuff like the real-time position of fire trucks in the city. The place even has its own RSS feed that can alert people to accident sites. Considering that the town only has a population of 78,000, the cataloging of just about "everything" that can be captured electronically is naturally easier than it may be in a sprawling metropolis, but Nanaimo may very well set a precedent in how much information we may be able to access online about any town. Keeping our fingers crossed.
Google stock dips to 52-week low
As if Google stocks haven't been tanking enough as of late, Google hit their 52-week low yesterday, nudging ever closer to $400. But, for those who were worried, the news of the EU approving the DoubleClick deal gave the stock a little boost, and it's going up at the time of writing. Of course, Google may need more than an approved deal to get their momentum back and get the stock back on the rise.
"How Google keeps your information secure"
If you're anything like us at Download Squad, you use a fair share of Google products. And as such, we are at least passively concerned with security and how it pertains to those products. Nicely enough, VP of Engineering at Google, Douglas Merrill, decided to take some time out of his day making Google widgets and explain to us on the Official Google Blog how Google not only does what it does best, but how it integrates security into all of its creations. Good to know, but it won't protect you if you give up your login info to an untrusted site.
Slow loading sites will get penalized by Adwords
Google likes to keep things snappy and fast-loading. At the same time, it appears that Google does not like the realm of slow-loading sites, especially as places for serving up their ads, as they introduce a plan to penalize sites that load slowly. Basically, if you're site loads fast and gets a high quality score, it gets lower minimum bids for ads, whereas slow-loading sites which get a low quality score will have their minimum bids raised.
Other things Google related news from Download Squad:
- EU approves Google, DoubleClick deal - After a long wait, the EU approves Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, making Google the primary fixture in the online advertising field.
- Add page numbers and other information to Google Documents - If you don't mind digging into a little HTML, you can get more out of your Google Docs.
- Painful collection of Google-themed music videos - When there are brain cells that need killing, there is never a shortage of material to do the job for you, even if it is Google related.
- How to get "new" Gmail in your Google Apps account - Not all new Google features are rolled out Google Apps right away - learn how to get new application features before other Google Apps users.
- Google releases Contact API - You've probably signed up for a social network site and been asked for your e-mail and password so that the site may retrieve your contact list. With Google releasing an API to access Google contacts, that is likely to change.
