News from Other

More info about synonyms at Google

Steve Baker, an engineer in the search quality group at Google, just did a nice post about synonyms on the Google blog. A lot of people seem to think that Google only does simple-minded matching of the users’ keywords with words that we indexed. The truth is that Google does a lot more sophisticated stuff [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-19 more

Is SVG support coming to Internet Explorer?

In a post to the IEBlog, Patrick Dengler, Senior Program Manager of the Internet Explorer Team, announced that Microsoft Joins W3C SVG Working Group. He goes on to say that We
Publication date: 2010-01-19 more

Follow @googlewmc on Twitter

Okay, we’re starting to release new webmaster videos. Normally you could follow me on Twitter to find out about each new video, but I’m on a Twitter diet until the end of January. So if you want to hear when new webmaster videos or webmaster blog posts come out, go follow @googlewmc on Twitter (that’s [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-18 more

Ways to help Haiti

Lots of people are thinking about ways to help Haiti after their horrible 7.0 earthquake. Google recently introduced a page with a large number of resources for the Haiti earthquake, including the ability to donate money. Also, a bunch of Googlers have worked to bring updated satellite imagery to Google Earth. You can also click to see [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-15 more

Telling organisations that their websites are inaccessible

When you encounter a website that has accessibility problems, it can be a good idea to contact the organisation behind the website to let them know about the problem and encourage them to fix it. To help make this a little easier, the W3C WAI has published a draft document called Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites. The document contains tips, discusses different approaches, and includes a few sample e-mails to show you what a message describing an accessibility problem can look like. Shawn Lawton Henry talks about the initiative a bit more in Take a few minutes to encourage web accessibility. You can make a difference. on the W3C Blog.Read full postPosted in Accessibility.
Publication date: 2010-01-13 more

W3C HTML Accessibility Task Force

As a number of people have stated, there are some accessibility issues in HTML 5. Hopefully the HTML Accessibility Task Force will help straighten those out: The objective of HTML Accessibility Task Force is to help ensure that HTML 5 provides features to enable Web content to be accessible to people with disabilities. This includes review of existing features for potential accessibility problems, and proposal of new features where needed. Read full postPosted in Accessibility, HTML 5.
Publication date: 2010-01-13 more

Important blog post on Google blog

This is an important blog post. Go read it from the source.
Publication date: 2010-01-13 more

Error messages for corrupt HTML

Vlad Alexander asks Should error messages be displayed for corrupt HTML5?. Sure, why not. Many people who do not like the idea of browsers displaying error messages for corrupt/invalid HTML tend to equate error messages with the
Publication date: 2010-01-12 more

Live-blogging the Nexus One phone

Added: - The official web page for the Nexus One is http://google.com/phone - There’s a YouTube channel for the Nexus One. - And here’s the official blog post about the Nexus One. I’m sitting in the Googleplex waiting to live-blog the Google Android event today. I’m on a seven day Twitter diet, but Chris DiBona is live-tweeting the event. [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-11 more

The Authentic Jobs Twenty Ten promotion

For anyone looking to start the new year by hiring new web talent, an option is to give the Authentic Jobs Twenty Ten promotion a go. Post a listing between now and January 22 and you
Publication date: 2010-01-09 more

Giving up Twitter for three more weeks

Quick summary: I’m giving up Twitter for 30 days. I normally tweet about the webmaster videos that we make. Please follow googlewmc on Twitter if you want to find out about new webmaster videos. For the last few months I’ve been doing 30 day challenges: - In May 2009, I walked 10,000 steps a day. - For June [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-09 more

A short note about real-time search

This is just a quick blog post to share some info about Google’s real-time search based on the earthquake that shook the Bay Area this morning. I didn’t feel the earthquake myself, but the real-time folks looked at how we did. Here’s what they found: Overall, realtime search triggered in under two minutes from the earthquake [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-08 more

Looking back ten years

Ten years ago this month I paused working on my Ph.D., eloped to a courthouse to marry my lovely wife, and went for a hastily organized honeymoon cruise in the Caribbean. Then we packed up everything we owned and drove from North Carolina to California to join a small start-up called Google. That means this [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-06 more

Live-blogging the Google Android Event

I’m sitting in the Googleplex waiting to live-blog the Google Android event today. I’m on a seven day Twitter diet, but Chris DiBona is live-tweeting the event. Danny Sullivan is also live-blogging the event. I noticed that T-Mobile just announced that they have upgraded their 3G network to HSPA, which has a peak speed of 7.2Mbps. Mario [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-05 more

Book review: Freedom, by Daniel Suarez

I recently got to read Freedom, the new book by Daniel Suarez, and can highly recommend it. If you haven’t read Suarez’s earlier book Daemon then you should read that Daemon first. If you have read it, Suarez picks up where the first book ended. Daemon and Freedom are set in a future tantalizingly close to [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-04 more

Doing the

John Mayer had a good post about a “digital cleanse.” The idea is to step away from the busy, buzzy world for a week. John mentioned four ideas, but I’m going to try just one: “no use of Twitter or any other social networking site”. That’s right, I’m going Twitter-free for a week. I don’t really [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-02 more

If you must use a dropdown menu, make sure it

Dropdown menus (a.k.a. flyout or DHTML menus) are not on my personal list of favourite features to use on a website. Many others seem to like them though, and that
Publication date: 2009-12-22 more

JAWS has a weird way of recognising data tables

Screen readers have some quirks and odd behaviours, and one that is quite hard to understand is how JAWS determines whether a table is a layout or data table. From Jared Smith
Publication date: 2009-12-18 more

What charities do you donate to?

Every year I like to ask what charities people are leaning toward. So here we go: what organizations, charities, or good causes are you supporting this year? Lately I’ve been interested in transparency and reform in government, so organizations like the Sunlight Foundation, MAPLight (Money and Politics), and Change Congress are on my list. I’m also [...]
Publication date: 2009-12-18 more

Perfect Italian Hoagie?

When I was a kid and we visited family in New Jersey, I loved getting hoagie sandwiches. I’ve been looking for the best recipe of Italian hoagie for years. Here’s one that’s very good: 3 slices Provolone 4 slices Genoa salami 4 slices cooked salami 4 slices pepperoni 4 slices Capicola ham Lettuce, tomato, onion Salt, pepper, and oregano Oil and vinegar Sweet peppers [...]
Publication date: 2009-12-12 more

That's a useful feature, but when can I use it?

An understandable reaction many people have when they realise they can
Publication date: 2009-12-09 more

Safari, WebKit and alt text for missing images

One of the purposes of the alt attribute is to provide alternate text that can be shown when an image cannot be displayed, either because it is missing or broken, or because the user has disabled images in their (graphical) web browser. Most graphical web browsers do display alt text in place of missing images, but there is one notable exception: Safari and most other WebKit-based browsers (iCab, Shiira, Chrome). In those browsers, all you get when an image is missing is either a small blue icon with a question mark in it or a broken image icon.Read full postPosted in Browsers, Usability.
Publication date: 2009-12-08 more

Blogging the Google Search event, December 2009

I’m not going to do a full live-blog, because it’s going to be well-covered by: - Danny Sullivan - Jason Kinkaid - Kara Swisher among others. You can also register and watch the event as a webcast. Search by Voice Marissa Mayer did a brief intro, then brought up Vic Gundotra. Vic is going to show a series of mobile demos [...]
Publication date: 2009-12-07 more

Use a background image in your CSS? Remember to specify a backup colour.

Whenever you specify a background image in your CSS, consider what happens if the image is missing. If there is text on top of the image, is it still readable? If not, specify a colour for the browser to use instead of the image so the text becomes readable again. Why would an image be missing? A few possibilities are broken images, network problems, and user settings.Read full postPosted in Accessibility, CSS, Usability.
Publication date: 2009-12-03 more

Submit video questions for December 2009

It’s that time again! Tomorrow afternoon I
Publication date: 2009-12-03 more

HTML 5 syntax

One advantage XHTML has over HTML is that it has simpler syntax rules. If you want your documents to validate you can
Publication date: 2009-12-03 more

XHTML 1.0 helped improve the Web

Jeffrey Zeldman on how the stricter and clearer rules of XHTML 1.0 made many web professionals improve their markup: A Zing Too Far.Read full postPosted in (X)HTML, HTML 5, Web Standards.
Publication date: 2009-11-30 more

CSSquirrel makes comics out of hot topics

If you haven't added CSSquirrel to your list of regular reads, you should. Among other things, the Squirrel (Kyle Weems) turns topics like the sometimes hotly debated HTML 5 into enjoyable comics. Anyone who follows or takes the slightest interest in the development of HTML 5 or the web in general should find his comics and their associated blog posts worthwhile. Some of them may also make you laugh
Publication date: 2009-11-25 more

Microsoft talks about Internet Explorer 9

In An Early Look At IE9 for Developers, Dean Hachamovitch (General Manager, Internet Explorer) reveals some of the news in the next version of Internet Explorer. Better JavaScript performance, improved standards support (border-radius and CSS 3 selectors are mentioned), and better text rendering are all good. I would really like to see CSS 3 support on par with that of other browsers, as well as support for
Publication date: 2009-11-21 more

Live-blogging the Google Chrome OS event

I’m sitting in a room at Google waiting to hear more about Google Chrome OS. You can watch the webcast along with me if you like. For starters, here’s what Google announced about Chrome OS back in July. At that time, Google called out “speed, simplicity and security” as the key ideas behind Chrome OS. Google [...]
Publication date: 2009-11-20 more

State of the Index, November 2009

Last week I was in Las Vegas for PubCon, a conference for publishers, and I wanted to share the slides from my main presentation: When I get a chance, I’ll also re-create the talk on video and share the video with you, but in the mean time Lisa Barone did a nice live write-up and coverage [...]
Publication date: 2009-11-18 more

Do you find table summaries helpful?

Looking for input from screen reader users with regards to the usefulness of the summary attribute for data tables and the information provided in it.Read full postPosted in Accessibility, HTML 5.
Publication date: 2009-11-17 more

Vendor-specific extensions are invalid CSS

Vendor-specific extensions, even if written according to the CSS 2.1 grammar, use property names and values that are not defined in the CSS specification and are invalid.Read full postPosted in CSS, Web Standards.
Publication date: 2009-11-17 more

WebKit Web Inspector improvements

The web developer tool for Safari and other WebKit-based browsers has just received a number of improved and new features worth checking out.Read full postPosted in Browsers, Coding.
Publication date: 2009-11-12 more

Headings and document structure conclusions

There appears to be no single solution to heading structure in HTML that fits all situations, but as I see it there are two choices.Read full postPosted in (X)HTML, Accessibility.
Publication date: 2009-11-11 more

Expect Caffeine after the holidays

Back in August we mentioned a developer preview of Caffeine, which is new technology that improves our indexing infrastructure. The feedback on Caffeine has been very positive, so we’re ready to move from the developer preview to the next stage of the roll out: going live with Caffeine at one data center. This means that [...]
Publication date: 2009-11-10 more

Happy 5th birthday, Firefox!

Thank you, and other modern browsers like Safari and Opera, for changing the Web.Read full postPosted in Browsers.
Publication date: 2009-11-10 more

Authentic Jobs refreshed

Job listing site Authentic Jobs has been redesigned, realigned, retooled and relaunched.Read full postPosted in Job openings.
Publication date: 2009-11-04 more

New accessibility overview on the W3C website

The new W3C website has a new and very good summary of the why, what, and how of Web accessibility.Read full postPosted in Accessibility, Web Standards.
Publication date: 2009-11-04 more

Results from WebAIM

The results from WebAIM's October 2009 screen reader user survey have been posted. Some results are expected while others can be a bit surprising.Read full postPosted in Accessibility.
Publication date: 2009-11-02 more

Gaping hole costume for Halloween 2009

This year for Halloween I tried to do a see-through hole in your body costume: It worked okay, but not great. The biggest problem was that I didn’t have a gadget lying around the house that could output live composite video. Both my normal video camera and my digital camera had exhausted batteries that wouldn’t recharge, [...]
Publication date: 2009-11-01 more

Use the th element to specify row and column headers in data tables

When using HTML tables to mark up tabular data, remember to use th elements for cells that provide header information for rows or columns. In addition to using th elements for header cells, you should also use the scope or headers attributes to tell user agents, primarily screen readers and other assistive technology, which header cells provide header information for any given data cell. Explicitly associating header cells with data cells isn
Publication date: 2009-10-28 more

Design patterns and examples for colour blindness

In my experience it can be hard to make people understand that colour blindness can actually cause real problems for real people on the web. Sometimes when I point out that the colour combinations used in a design can make it hard or even impossible for some people to use a website properly, the response I get is
Publication date: 2009-10-26 more

Export your Google Docs data

One of my favorite personal blog posts is about not trapping users’ data. In late 2006, Eric Schmidt declared “We would never trap user data.” Many of the major Google properties (search, Gmail, Calendar) make it trivial to export or download your data. In the past, Google Docs would let you export a single doc at [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-26 more

One million video views!

This year we’ve been making and posting videos on an official webmaster video channel, and earlier today we hit our one millionth video view. Making these little movies has been a ton of fun and we’ve covered dozens of topics for site owners. We decided to celebrate in a couple ways. First, we added captions to [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-22 more

Lightboxes and keyboard accessibility

The Lightbox effect is showing up pretty much everywhere on the web these days. There are approximately one million different implementations that basically do the same thing: when the user clicks on an image, the screen is dimmed and a larger version of the image is displayed until the user closes it by clicking a
Publication date: 2009-10-20 more

New W3C website launched

In March 2009 the W3C launched a beta version of their main website, looking for feedback and contributions. On October 13, the new World Wide Web Consortium website was launched. I like it so far. Visually it
Publication date: 2009-10-19 more

Happy Diwali for 2009!

Hey everybody, I just wanted to wish you a Happy Diwali! I hope that everyone has a wonderful festival of lights. It’s a good time today for introspection and reflection on the past year, and for hope for the year to come. Whether you celebrate with firecrackers, sweets, or appreciation for what you [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-17 more

Remove the outline from links on :active only

A few months ago I emphasised the importance of not making things difficult for people who do not use a mouse by removing the outline from links and form controls. If leaving the outline property at its default is not an option for you, perhaps the technique Patrick Lauke describes in Better CSS outline suppression could work. It
Publication date: 2009-10-14 more

Improve your keyboard accessibility

One of my pet peeves is websites that aren
Publication date: 2009-10-13 more

Learn more about robots.txt

We made a video about how Google handles the robots.txt file. You can watch it if you want: This answers a couple questions such as: - Why is my url showing up in Google when I blocked it in robots.txt? Did you fetch that url? - How do I make that url disappear from Google? I hope the video [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-07 more

Disclosure

I was glad to see that the FTC unanimously approved new guidelines regarding endorsements and testimonials. The updated guidelines affirm the principle that material connections behind endorsements should be disclosed. This seems like a great time to offer my own disclosure information. I am currently an employee of Google. I receive a salary from them and [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-07 more

Where have you been in the USA or world?

Googler Douwe Osinga has a great personal project that demonstrates the Google Chart API. Just by clicking a few boxes, you can make an image to show the countries (or states in the USA) that you’ve been to. Here’s where I’ve been in the United States: Clearly I need to do a trip across the northern [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-07 more

Gesture-based VoiceOver on the iPhone and iPod touch

When Apple announced the iPhone almost three years ago, I posted some thoughts about the lack of a real physical keypad and how that would make it difficult to make the iPhone accessible to people who are visually impaired. One of the ideas I had was to somehow give the user audio feedback. Well, Apple fortunately did a lot better than that
Publication date: 2009-10-07 more

Use the optgroup element to group select options

Sometimes it is useful to group the options of an HTML select element. Many developers use extra option elements and non-breaking spaces to create the visual appearance of hierarchical options, but there is a better way: the often forgotten optgroup element. To create a group of options, wrap them in an optgroup element. To give the group a label, use the label attribute. Here is a simple example: <label for="cars">Choose a car brand:</label> <select name="cars" id="cars"> <option value="none">None</option> <optgroup label="Swedish"> <option value="saab">Saab</option> <option value="volvo">Volvo</option> </optgroup> <optgroup label="French"> <option value="citroen">Citroën</option> <option value="peugeot">Peugeot</option> <option value="renault">Renault</option> </optgroup> </select> And here is how the browser you are currently using will render the above example: Choose a car brand: None Saab Volvo Citroën Peugeot Renault This post is a Quick Tip. Background info is available in Quick Tips for web developers and web designers.Posted in (X)HTML, Accessibility, Quick Tips.
Publication date: 2009-10-05 more

BusinessWeek articles on Google

A few weeks ago we had a visitor at the Googleplex: Rob Hof, the Silicon Valley bureau chief at BusinessWeek. Rob talked to a bunch of Googlers and sat in on one of our weekly quality-leads meetings. The resulting story is out now. The first part of the story covers some of the challenges facing [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-05 more

30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

In September I didn’t do a 30 day challenge because, frankly, I had a lot of work that I really needed to crunch through at the Googleplex and I didn’t have much spare time. But October is a new month, and so it’s time for a new 30 day challenge. For October, I’m not going to [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-05 more

Search Quality > Politics

[I wrote this in January 2008 but never posted it. I think people might still want to read this, so I'm posting it now.] In an election year, everybody gets a little more sensitive about politics, so I wanted a write a pre-emptive post in case anyone accuses Google of political bias in our search results [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-04 more

Studying a study

[A couple things to note: 1. This is a purely personal blog post--like other blogs posts I do, I haven't run it by anyone else at Google. 2. I'm writing it quickly because I have a lot of work to do. If I get something wrong, please let me know and I'll correct it.] This morning [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-01 more

WebAIM screen reader user follow-up survey

From December 2008 to January 2009, WebAIM conducted an online survey to find out about the preferences of screen reader users. The results of the survey provide useful information to web designers and developers, helping us better understand how screen reader users use the Web. Until the end of October 2009, WebAIM are running a follow-up screen reader user survey with new and updated questions. Hopefully this survey will produce another set of useful data that can help us make informed decisions when developing accessible websites. If you ever use a screen reader, even if it is only for testing or evaluation, you are welcome to participate in the Screen Reader User Survey.Posted in Accessibility.
Publication date: 2009-09-30 more

Skip links need to be at least temporarily visible

Many sites use skip links as a way of helping people who do not use a mouse to quickly jump to the main content. It can be very useful, which I notice myself as I often use my keyboard to navigate instead of the mouse. One problem that I run into on some sites is that the skip links are hidden. It
Publication date: 2009-09-29 more

Readable

A month ago I posted a tip about the Readability bookmarklet which can be used to make websites easier to read. After that I was made aware of another option: Readable. The Readable setup page offers more customisation options than Readability does, which is useful. One of the options is to use Better Web Readability, a CSS framework intended to make web content easier to scan and read. Just like Readability, Readable doesn
Publication date: 2009-09-25 more

Java is not JavaScript

Completely obvious to most (but not all) web developers, but understandably confusing for many non-coders out there: Java is not JavaScript. Wikipedia has the following definitions: Java a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode (class file) that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of computer architecture. JavaScript a scripting language used to enable programmatic access to objects within both the client application and other applications. It is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as an integrated component of the web browser, allowing the development of enhanced user interfaces and dynamic websites. Java and JavaScript, despite the similarity in naming, are not related.Posted in JavaScript.
Publication date: 2009-09-23 more

Google doesn

We went ahead and did this post on the official Google webmaster blog to make it super official, but I wanted to echo the point here as well: Google does not use the keywords meta tag in our web search. To this day, you still see courts mistakenly believe that meta tags occupy a pivotal role [...]
Publication date: 2009-09-22 more

Write HTML and CSS quicker with with Zen Coding

A pretty neat plugin for TextMate (and a few other text editors) that I have started using is Zen Coding. I
Publication date: 2009-09-22 more

How to Unlock the Amazing Secret of Unlimited Productivity

All of us could use some help increasing our productivity. So I’m going to share one of my best productivity secrets. This secret can literally CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!! Are you ready? Step 1. Buy a productivity book. Any productivity book will do. I use a book called “The Now Habit.” It doesn’t matter what book you order [...]
Publication date: 2009-09-17 more

Användbarhetsboken

If you can read Swedish and are interested in usability there is now a free online book on the subject. Tommy Sundström, author of Användbarhetsboken (
Publication date: 2009-09-17 more

Looking for good Yahoo search engineers

I was talking to an excellent new Googler that joined from Yahoo this week, and that reminded me that I meant to do this post a little while ago. So I’ll keep this post short and sweet: if you’re an excellent Yahoo engineer with solid experience in search, Google is hiring. If you want to [...]
Publication date: 2009-09-16 more

Opera adds support for the longdesc attribute

A rarely used accessibility feature in HTML is the longdesc attribute on the img element. It allows you to enter a URL for a page that contains a longer description of the image than is suitable for the alt attribute. One of the reasons that longdesc is not used a lot is likely lack of support in visual browsers. iCab has supported it for years, but that used to be the only one as far as I am aware. However, now there is at least one more browser that supports longdesc: Opera. Henny Swan talks more about how it works in Adding Londesc support to Opera 10.10. If this will make more people use the longdesc attribute (and use it right) remains to be seen, of course.Posted in Accessibility, Browsers.
Publication date: 2009-09-14 more

Bad Experience with U.S. Airways Dividend Miles

I’ve been having an ongoing bad experience with U.S. Airways over their Dividend Miles. I’d accumulated about 15,000 miles with them and the miles were about to expire. I didn’t have any trips coming up, so I looked for a way to redeem those frequent flyer miles before they expired. U.S. Airways provided a way [...]
Publication date: 2009-09-14 more

Hidden Google Gem: Google Mobile App

We recently recorded a video of one of my favorite “hidden gems” at Google: the Google Mobile App, which does voice recognition to make searches easier on a mobile phone. It’s available for the iPhone, Android phones, BlackBerry, Nokia S60, and Windows Mobile. In the video below, I ran the Google Mobile App through its [...]
Publication date: 2009-09-12 more

Accessible colour combinations

Different people have different needs when it comes to the colour combinations that they can read comfortably (or at all) on screen. But what colour combinations are actually preferred by people with dyslexia or vision impairment? If you had to pick, say, five combinations of text and background colour that you could let people choose from by means of a style switcher, what would they be, and why? Keep in mind that these are colour combinations intended to improve accessibility. It would also be great with some links to research or data on this. Thanks for any input
Publication date: 2009-09-10 more

30 Day checkin: book challenge

So how did I do on the “15 books in 30 days” challenge? Not too badly–I made it through 12 books. I could probably have squeezed in three more books, but I’d rather take my time and enjoy books than artificially force things for a deadline. I’ll make up those last three books later. [...]
Publication date: 2009-09-10 more

HTML 5 and the summary attribute

As I wrote in Help screen reader users by giving data tables a summary, the summary attribute on the table element can be used to provide information that helps non-sighted users understand data tables. The current draft of HTML 5 requires that validators display a warning if they encounter a summary attribute, since it is now an
Publication date: 2009-09-07 more

Digg adds nofollow to some links

Digg recently added nofollow to some links on their site: We
Publication date: 2009-09-03 more

(Almost) never add a reset button to a form

There was a time when many, many, forms on the web had a reset button. Thankfully, reset buttons are not quite as common these days, but there are enough of them out there to cause users lots of frustration. I can
Publication date: 2009-09-01 more

Chrome Market Share: One Year Later

Google released the Chrome browser on September 2, 2008. Now that Chrome has been out for about a year and it’s been almost six months since I last looked at Chrome’s market share, let’s take another peek. For the last 30 days, here are my Google Analytics stats for mattcutts.com: For me, 8.97% of my readers run [...]
Publication date: 2009-09-01 more

Introduction to W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices, a second chance

A few months ago I posted a little info about an online course by the W3C called Introduction to W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. It
Publication date: 2009-08-31 more

Hidden Google Gem: My Tracks

I’ve really enjoyed making videos for webmasters. In the most recent recording session, we decided that it would be fun to talk about some of the “hidden gems” of Google: features, products, or tips that you might not know about, but you might like. One of my favorite hidden Google gems is a program for Android [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-28 more

Make more web content readable with Readability

Ever find yourself reluctant to read stuff you really would like to read if it wasn
Publication date: 2009-08-25 more

WordCamp 2007 talk: Whitehat SEO tips for bloggers

By the way, if you enjoyed my Straight from Google: What You Need to Know talk from WordCamp 2009, you might also enjoy my WordCamp 2007 talk: Whitehat SEO tips for bloggers. For convenience, I’ll include the video below: And here are the slides from the 2007 WordCamp talk: Not everyone has seen this talk, so I hope [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-24 more

New Knol developments

Google launched Knol about a year ago. The big worry back then was that Google might favor Knol in our search rankings. I stopped around various places on the net to debunk that idea back then, but I think it’s safe to call this idea fully debunked now. As I said six months ago: Google Knol [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-21 more

More about generic TLDs in (say) UK results

Some folks that I respect were giving me a bit of a hard time because they felt like I punted on this webmaster video: So let me take another stab at the question, and tell me what you think. There’s a couple effects going on: - first, we’ve been making changes that make it much more likely [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-21 more

30 day reports

For the month of May, I didn’t watch any TV. I learned that I don’t miss summer TV that much. For the month of June, I tried to walk 10,000 steps a day. I learned that a walk in the evening is a nice way to wind down and relax. For the month of July, I biked [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-19 more

IE 8 does not display alt text in a tooltip

One of the good things about IE 8 is that
Publication date: 2009-08-18 more

Send To trick for Google Reader: Autotranslate

You can use Google Reader’s “Send To” feature for lots of fun things. Suppose you subscribe to a blog in another language, such as this French blog. You can add an “Autotranslate” custom link: I used the values Name: Autotranslate URL: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=${url} Icon URL: http://translate.google.com/favicon.ico Then when you’re reading the blog, just click Send To -> Autotranslate: And you’ll open the [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-14 more

Google Reader adds

I’ve wanted this forever. Google Reader just added a feature where you can send items directly to Twitter, Reddit, and a bunch of other places: To enable it, click on “Settings” in Google Reader and then click on the “Send To” tab to choose which services to add. Note: make sure you disable pop-up blocking so [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-13 more

Booting up

After a pretty long, at least by some measures, vacation it
Publication date: 2009-08-13 more

More info on the Caffeine Update

Google recently opened up a preview of our new Caffeine update, and I wanted to give a little more background on this change. At the Real-Time CrunchUp a few weeks ago, I joked that the half-life of code at Google is about six months. That means that you can write some code and when you [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-11 more

Good books to read for Summer 2009?

I’ve decided what I want to do for August: read 15 books in 30 days. I read three books this weekend: - The Accidental Billionaires, by Ben Mezrich. - Gang Leader for a Day, by Sudhir Venkatesh. - World War Z, by Max Brooks. I enjoyed all three. Now I need your help. What books would you recommend that [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-03 more