Google refines Custom Search, delivers Wikipedia skin

To commemorate last week's third anniversary of the launch of Google's Custom Search tool, the search giant has announced a slate of updates to its customizable search service.

Design options
To kick things off, Google announced the release of six new themes for Google Custom Search. All six themes can be customized by changing "fonts, colors, backgrounds, promotion settings, as well as interactive features such as tabbing and mouseovers," the company said. Users can also decide where the search box and results should be placed (in a contiguous layout or in two columns). All the themes will work with Google's Mobile Custom Search, which the company launched last week. That service allows users to access a site's Custom Search from Android phones, the iPhone, and Palm Pre.

Google Custom now features 6 themes.

(Credit: Google)

Google's Custom Search will be displayed inline on a Web page. A Google spokesman told me Monday that when users search a site equipped with Custom Search, the results will be displayed above the page they're on. If they scroll down, they can view the page's contents. Those site owners who prefer a separate page to display results can still use that option, the company said.

Structured Search
Google has also launched a new Custom Search feature called Structured Search. The new option will allow users to search for information by specific attributes, rather than use general terms, the company said.

If a Web publisher has provided "author's name" as an attribute in the app's metadata, for example, users can search specifically for a particular author and view only the results matching that query, the company said. Google's intention is to make finding specific content easier, but only those "specific attributes that the page content has specified via metadata markup" can be used to tailor results, the company said.

The company also announced that Web publishers can now place thumbnail images or publisher-provided links into the search results. For example, if a story from CNET.com includes an image, the new feature gives users the option to add that attribute to results. When Google displays that particular story, it will include a thumbnail of that image next to it (see the image below).

Google's Structured Search in action.

(Credit: Google)

Wikipedia, anyone?
Finally, Google announced that it has built a Custom Search skin for Wikipedia. Instead of relying upon Wikipedia's search, Wikipedia users can now log in to their accounts and edit their skin to include Google's Custom Search feature. From then on, Wikipedia's search field will be replaced with Custom Search.

Google's Custom Search is on display in Wikipedia.

(Credit: Google)

Instead of just delivering Wikipedia pages matching queries, Custom Search will display three tabs when a user searches the site from a Wikipedia page. The first tab will display relevant Wikipedia results. The second page will display relevant wikis that are linked to the Wikipedia page the user is already on. The final tab displays related third-party sites that are linked to in a particular Wikipedia page. All results will be displayed inline on the same page the user is on.

Google's new Custom Search features are available now. If you want to learn more about the changes made to Custom Search, check out the site's blog here.

Google Voice now (kinda) works with your number

Google on Monday will begin giving users a new way to use their existing mobile phone number with parts of its Google Voice service.

No, it's not a full number port, which the company still says is coming and will eventually allow things like call screening, conference calling, or listening into a call before picking up--all with your existing number. Instead, Google is taking advantage of conditional call forwarding to let users send unanswered calls to Google's voice-mail service in place of the one provided by a user's carrier.

Once sent to Google, those voice messages are transcribed, then made available for playback and review online, or as an SMS message. Users can also take advantage of Google Voice's customized greeting service to give callers a different voice-mail greeting depending on what number they're calling from.

Google Voice users can now choose to use their own number, or take one of Google's.

(Credit: Google/CNET)

In order to use the new service, a one-time setup is required, which has both new and existing Google Voice users walk through a wizard that asks for their mobile number and what carrier they're on. It then offers up the special numeric code they have to dial to enable conditional forwarding from their handset to Google Voice.

For users who have a Google Voice number in the same account as their existing mobile phone number, it will be business as usual; Google Voice's voice-mail section will denote which number it was from. Google Voice's senior product manager, Vincent Paquet, explained to me that this system has been designed so users don't have to make any tough choices about which number they want to use. It will also allow users to sign up to Google Voice without having to register a new number.

Smartphone users with visual voice-mail services (such as the iPhone) may find that these extra features aren't enough to warrant making the switch. However, users with older handsets are likely to find Google's offer enticing since it enables them to manage voice-mails both from their phone and on the Web.

The deal is made even sweeter by the fact that all major U.S. carriers are on board, Paquet says. This may come as a surprise to some, considering that just last month, Google, Apple, and AT&T clashed quite publicly over therejection of Google's Voice application from Apple's App Store in July. But with this new service, Google is merely playing by each carrier's rules, using a feature that's long been available as a way for users to pass on calls they cannot take. There's also some serious potential for carriers to generate extra income in SMS fees for transcribed voice-mail messages that users would have otherwise spent just a minute or so listening to from their phones.

Google Voice remains in private beta, although earlier this month Google began putting invites into the in-boxes of its users, allowing them to invite their friends.

Gmail for iPhone gets 'never-ending' compose box

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Even with the most practiced digits, composing long e-mail on the iPhone's virtual keyboard is the slow, awkward pits compared with typing on a desktop keyboard. However, Google released a small new feature on Monday just for long-winded iPhone e-mail authors that makes typing lengthy Gmail messages easier on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Before, the composition box was fixed. Starting today, verbose e-mailers will see blank lines appear below the cursor as you reach the bottom of the window. If there's a limit to how many lines you can add in a Gmail message, we haven't found it yet. We went crazy with the carriage return and created an estimated extra 100 lines for text without trouble. To review your message, just swipe up and down to scroll.

At this point, Gmail's composition window won't contract when you delete lines; expansion alone is the name of the game.

The expanding Gmail composition box is part of Google's iterative Web project for slowly introducing new features to Gmail mobile one at a time. The composition feature is available to iPhone and iPod users who reach Gmail via Gmail.com from the Safari browser.

Google's Gmail-for-mobile project began in April 2009.

Vocalia for iPhone lets you speak your bookmarks

Got an older iPhone or iPod touch model and been jealous of the Voice Control feature your antiquated hardware is incapable of running? Check out Vocalia (link opens in iTunes), a voice-powered launcher that's quite fast, and accurate. Just like Voice Control, it can look up a contact by name then launch a phone call, or do the same for a song from your iPod's library. It also goes a step further to let you launch your Safari bookmarks simply by speaking their name.

Vocalia lets you speak your contacts, songs, and even Web bookmarks to launch them.

(Credit: CNET)

Vocalia doesn't run at a system level like Voice Control does, but it's up and ready to receive a voice command in under 10 seconds--the clear benefit here being for people who may be driving and who want to control their device without fumbling through menus. It's also a bit more customizable since you can go in and add nicknames for people you want to call, edit the phonetic spelling it's given them by default, and change the spoken language to one of the five other options including German, Spanish, and French.

As far as setup goes, Vocalia is able to slurp in your contacts and iPod library as soon as you launch it for the first time. The bookmarks on the other hand, are a little more complicated. The app can't grab them from your device due to a limitation in Apple's SDK, which means you have to download and launch a small executable file from Vocalia's site that can send your Bookmarks.html file to the iPhone/iPod. The two devices also have to be on the same Wi-Fi network.

Frankly, I don't think all that effort is worth it for syncing up your bookmarks; especially considering that you'll need to do that entire process over again if you've added new ones. In most cases it's also going to be faster just to launch Safari and find the bookmark yourself. Maybe a future version could make the whole thing a little simpler by tapping into an existing bookmark sharing service like Xmarks, or Delicious.

Vocalia is $3.99 in the App Store and works on both the iPhone and the 2G iPod Touch. As mentioned before, you'll have to have a Mac or PC on the same Wi-Fi network as your device to make use of its bookmarks feature.

Blinkx attempts to crash the music video party

Video might've killed the radio star, but the Web sure hasn't killed music videos. Less than a week after News Corp.-owned social site MySpace announced its MySpace Music Videos portal, video search engine Blinkx announced the debut Tuesday of "Blinkx Music," a search tool specifically designed to trawl through

"There are hundreds of thousands of music videos available on the Web today which makes it nearly impossible to navigate and find what you are looking for," Blinkx founder and CEO Suranga Chandratillake explained in a release. "Based on the success of blinkx Remote, our online TV guide, we recognized there was a need to help organize music videos and make them easily searchable on the Web. By leveraging our award-winning video search index, we built Blinkx Music to help our users find their favorite music videos quickly, easily and in one place."

Blinkx says that its search engine has thus far indexed more than 33,000 hours of music videos from about 10,000 artists. While it says that Blinkx Music will let users "post comments and interact with other fans, and also offers background information about bands and their work," the release doesn't say whether it will provide links to streaming or download partners, from which it could potentially rake in revenues shares.

But this is a tight space, and MySpace's music video portal won't be Blinkx Music's only competitor. Universal Music Group is still putting together Vevo, a Hulu-like portal for music videos that aims to bring artists and labels the revenues they might not be getting from YouTube (though the Google-owned video platform is providing Vevo's technology).

Also looming in the background is Google's forthcoming music offering, which the company plans to formally unveil in a press event on Wednesday in Los Angeles. This could instantly run away with a huge market share in music video (and music download) search.

Some background on Blinkx: we haven't heard a lot about it recently, but it's a publicly traded company based in the U.K. (the public status was achieved in '07 when it merged with another company called Autonomy), and when rumors started to swirl last year that Google and News Corp. (which, coincidentally, owns MySpace) were interested in acquiring it, shares of its stock soared.

Firefox gains 30m users in eight weeks

Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser has gained 30 million users over the past eight weeks, as it continues to gain on Internet Explorer.

Chief executive John Lilly revealed the increase in user adoption in a Twitter post on Monday, and Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, confirmed it to ZDNet UK on Tuesday.

"We've seen a significant increase in the number of users for Firefox," said Nitot. "Firefox checks for new versions every 24 hours, when it's running, and when it checks, it pings the Mozilla server. We count the number of pings."

Nitot explained that counting the requests gives Mozilla the number of active daily users. To calculate the number of monthly users, the organisation multiplies the number of active daily users by three, to adjust for days when people are not browsing.

Over the past eight weeks, Mozilla has seen an average increase of 10 million daily users, from approximately 103 million to 113 million. That translates to a total of approximately 330 million monthly users .

"It's amazing to have 330 million users," said Nitot. "That's the size of the population of the USA."

In terms of global rankings, Firefox has steadily gained market share since its launch, while the dominant browser, Internet Explorer, has gradually lost user numbers.

According to US-based web-analytics company Net Applications, Internet Explorer held 65 percent of browser market share worldwide at the end of September this year, a drop from 70 percent in November 2008. By contrast, Firefox gained almost three percent, rising from 21.21 percent share to 23.75 percent.

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Firefox usually sees a seasonal jump in user numbers in the autumn, according to Nitot, who added that people going back to work after northern hemisphere summer breaks could be contributing to the tally.

"Usually it's a mixture of back-to-school, and people getting new computers and installing the latest version," said Nitot. "This boosts our numbers every year."

In 17 countries in Europe, Firefox is now the dominant browser, he said, and the browser is particularly popular in Eastern Europe. Polish web-analytics company Gemius Ramking puts Firefox consistently at the top of its browser rankings chart for the region. For example, Firefox has over 48 percent of market share in Poland.

In addition, the mass adoption of information technology over the past four years in Eastern Europe has helped uptake of Firefox, Nitot said. "Internet adoption came while Firefox was becoming popular," said Nitot. "In Eastern Europe, they were not used to Internet Explorer 6. There was not the muscle memory of clicking on the blue E."

However, Nitot added that Firefox was also popular in Western Europe, particularly in Germany, as people there place an emphasis on privacy. In Europe in general, the ethos and enthusiasm of the local Firefox development communities tends to encourage new users, he said.

How to install any version (or SKU) of Windows 7 from any Windows 7 ISO

Did you happen to grab the Professional Edition of the latest build and want to install Ultimate? That?s no problem! Follow these simple steps and you will be able to install any version of Windows 7.



1) Extract all contents of the ISO to a folder on the deskop. I recommend using 7-Zip to open the ISO up.
2) Browse into the folder where you extracted all the files to and open up the /sources/ folder and locate ei.cfg.

3) At this point, you have two options:

1. Delete: If you delete this file, it will give you options on which version you want to install during installation.
2. Edit: If you edit this file, you can set which version of Windows you want it to install automatically.

If you chose to EDIT the file, just open the ei.cfg file in notepad and edit:
Change the word to Ultimate or any other version you would like to install.

• Ultimate
• Professional
• HomePremium
• HomeBasic
• Starter

It will show as following on opening the file for Windows 7 Ultimate:

Code:

[EditionID]
Ultimate
[Channel]
Retail
[VL]
0

Enjoy friends!!!!!!!

Amazon's in-cloud database gets MySQL option

Expanding its cloud-computing storage services to a higher level, Amazon.com unveiled a new option called Amazon RDS for companies that want to store information in a database on the other side of the Internet.

The suite of Amazon Web Services (AWS) already included a database option called SimpleDB, a basic database with its own interface standard for storing data and retrieving it. The Amazon Relational Database Service, in contrast, uses a more standard database interface, embodied in this case in an online implementation of the open-source MySQL software, the company said Monday.

"With Amazon RDS, you get full native access to a MySQL database," specifically, version 5.1 of the Sun Microsystems technology, the company said on its Amazon RDS site. "This means Amazon RDS works with your existing tools, applications, and drivers. You can port an existing database to Amazon RDS without changing a line of code--just point your tools or applications at your Amazon RDS DB instance, and you are ready to go."

Amazon raised minimized hassle and increased flexibility as reasons to use the service, which is currently in beta testing.

"Every hour that you don't spend fiddling with hardware, tracing cables, installing operating systems, or managing databases is an hour that you can spend on the unique and value-added aspects of your application," Jeff Barr, the company's Web services evangelist, said in a blog post. "I should point out that RDS enables a lot of really enticing development and test scenarios. You can set up a separate database instance for each developer on a project without making a big investment in hardware."

With its years-long effort, the Net retailer has built Amazon Web Services into a formidable presence in the information technology world. Competitors include Google App Engine, a computing foundation that can run Java or Python programs on Google's own BigTable database technology, and Microsoft's Azure, which is set to offer access to Windows servers in the cloud when it formally launches in November.

One potentially interesting rival is Oracle, already a giant in the database market and, if it can overcome European regulatory concerns, the future owner of MySQL assets. Because MySQL is open-source software, though, anyone may use and modify it, even without its copyright holders' permission.

The biggest competitor to this model is doing things the old way, with companies running their own computing infrastructure. Cloud computing poses security and trust issues for many companies considering whether to put their data and business applications on somebody else's computer systems. But researchers such as Gartner, an influential but not radical analyst firm, now recommend that companies look seriously at cloud computing.

Amazon is working on greater robustness for Amazon RDS. It offers automated backup, and it later plans to offer a "high-availability" option at no extra charge, with which customers can create a separate instance of a database in a different geographic region.

As with all services on AWS, Amazon RDS is priced on an as-used basis--with per-hour charges according to the server memory requirements of the database: 11 cents per hour for a small database of 1.7GB of RAM; 44 cents for large, or 7.5GB; 88 cents for extra-large, or 15GB; $1.55 for double extra-large, or 34GB; and $3.10 for quadruple extra-large, or 68GB. There also are charges for the size of data stored, the number of input-output requests, the amount of data written to the database, and the amount of data read from the database.

Facebook: Give peace a poke

One of the charts from Facebook showing friend connections across conflict zones.

(Credit: Facebook)

Facebook's executives have been saying for a long time that they believe they've built something that can make the world a better place. And now they've launched a hub for that, called "Peace on Facebook."

"Facebook is proud to play a part in promoting peace by building technology that helps people better understand each other," the site explains. "By enabling people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share their ideas, we can decrease world conflict in the short and long term."

It appears to be part of something launching from a group affiliated with Stanford University on Tuesday night, called "Peace Dot," and other Web companies will be announced as partners soon.

Right now, it consists primarily of some links to anti-violence activist groups, charts showing Facebook friend connections made between people across ethnic and religious groups with a history of conflict, polls about the viability of world peace, and a "Share Your Thoughts" widget--basically, one of the status update widgets that Facebook rolled out a few months ago.

There's also a link back to Facebook for Good, the nonprofit initiative that the social network launched when it hit 200 million active users around the world this spring.

Facebook's promotes its role in global affairs regularly: it launched a variety of media and voter-registration partnerships during the 2008 presidential elections, for example, and rushed out a translated version of its site in the Farsi language amid reports that it had become an organizing point for activists in the Iranian political crisis this summer.

Hands-on: Google Voice's new voice mail service

Setting up Google Voice voice mail online.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

On Tuesday, Google took another step toward bringing Google Voice to the masses, fulfilling the wishes of those who are curious enough to try Google's brand of visual voice mail, but either too jealous of their mobile number to give it up for a Google Voice number, or too weary to go through the hassle of training family and friends on a new number.

Google now lets you access some key features in the Google Voice service using the number you've always had, and no longer forces you to sign up for a new Google Voice phone number. How? Google Voice can now take advantage of what's called conditional call forwarding. I tried out the new feature today with success, and have some tips to share.

With Google Voice in charge of your missed calls, callers are directed to your Google Voice in-box instead of to the voice mail box that your carrier operates. There, friends can leave a message after hearing the greeting you recorded online. You, for your part, can listen to messages online or from your phone--in any order you'd like.

As promised, set-up was easy for this existing Google Voice user. In the Settings menu, under the Phone tab, click "Activate Google voice mail for this phone" next to any phone that you've associated with your account. Then, select your carrier (US-only for now) and dial the string of numbers and symbols you see into your phone. Then dial the number. This sets up call forwarding. While many high-end feature phones and smartphones do have separate menu settings for call forwarding, Google's method of entering the forwarding code is faster and removes the guesswork.

New users have slightly more set-up involved. You'll first choose if you want to use your own number or sign up for a new Google Voice account. Then you'll need to enter your Google Account credentials or register an account before setting up your phone.

Using the conditional forwarding service is brainless--whomever calls you hears your Google Voice recording, which you can set up online. You may want to tinker in the settings to forward calls straight to voice mail, or else you could annoy callers with a full ring-through to your mobile voice mail and another ring through to the recorded number. However, leave the setting in its default mode and friends may be able to track you down on other numbers associated with your Google Voice number--if you use Google's number and not your own mobile number.

Forwarding options can cut the time it takes for a caller to get to voice mail, or maybe track you down.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

To send a call straight to voice mail, go to the Phone tab in the Settings menu of your online Google Voice account. Click Edit, then click to see advanced settings. At the bottom is a call forwarding option that you can switch to send straight to your recording.

Using Google's call forwarding is an obvious draw for new users, but existing Google Voice users can also benefit. Turning on voice mail for associated phone joins voice messages left on your cell phone to the Google Voice messages in your in-box online if a friend slips up and calls the old number instead of the new Google Voice number.

New users opting to keep their number should know that they'll lose access to some key Google Voice features--including call forwarding to multiple cell phones and landlines, call screening, call recording, call blocking, and conference calling. Google doesn't allowing upgrading from an account that uses your own phone to a Google voice number yet, but being able to make the switch is in Google's plans. So is the ability to one day port over your own mobile number to Google Voice's full-fledged service.

There are two other points new users should know. First, Google isn't the only service offering free visual voice mail with custom recordings and online management. You Mail has been doing this for some time, and it also has native in-box applications for smartphones like BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone (Google Voice has a native app for Android, plus third-party developer apps for some mobile platforms, like Palm WebOS). In addition, YouMail is already generally available, whereas Google Voice is invite-only. Google will undoubtedly get native management apps for mobile phones in the future, and will scale its service for the giddy multitudes, but if you're not ready to take the plunge with a Google Voice number now, you can still shop around.

Google makes Similar Images part of image search

Google on Tuesday announced that its similar-images feature is now a standard part of the company's image search technology.

The feature was originally launched in late April, alongside the visual-news timeline, as a way for users to find images that share certain visual similarities with those in Google Images search results. This means that you could do a search for "ice cube" and very quickly fork out Google's results between images of the frozen chunks of water and the popular West Coast rapper, all without having to change your original search term.

Which 'ice cube' did you mean? Google's image search can now offer suggestions for images that may be similar.

(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Google continues to host a dedicated Similar Images search page that provides identical results to what's now found in the standard version of Google Images search. This is likely to remain, as has been the case for sites of other Google Labs graduates, such as Google Transit (now a part of Maps) and Google Suggest.

Google has also created a standalone Google Product Ideas page to grab user feedback for other features or changes to the image search service. This operates the same way as other product idea pages by letting users suggest new ideas to Google's engineers, as well as giving others the chance to vote ideas up or down.