January 20th, 2011 — 2:32pm
What do you do in an emergency? Ask a passer by for help? Phone 999? Apparently some of us open up Google and search for help… which explains why they’ve just started displaying a combination of special search results for ‘emergency’ searches.
The project started off last year by adding results for poison control.
Example of the poison control result in Spain
Following that is the US the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was added to make it easier for suicidal Googlers to find help.
Example of the suicide prevention result in the U.K.
This proved a real boost for calls to the hotline to Google decided to widen the net. Now 13 countries will see one or more of these results; hotlines that are available nationally 24/7 have been added. The countries are:
Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
Google have also added a special search result for more common emergencies.
Example of the emergency number result in France
What do you think of the idea? Have you looked for critical help in times of need? Leave us a comment below.
January 18th, 2011 — 2:55pm
Do you have trouble finding images for your website? Are you able to find a good matching image for your carefully crafted text?
If you’re anything like me, it’s a real challenge and part of the challenge is in the choice.
You can choose an image that you have taken, but the chances are that it lacks the right lighting and setting of a professional shot. You could also resort to searching on Google images, but of course run the risk of infringing someone else’s copyright. And then there’s buying images – I like fotolia.com – but you may not want to shell out each time.
Wordle is a fun way to create a relevant image without actually resorting to an image. This online service creates a word-based masterpiece from a paragraph of text on your (or any) web page.
You can choose from a basic cloud image popular on WordPress blogs, or something a little more artistic. Just go to Wordle.net/create and paste your text into the box.
Here’s a something made from the text of this post
Take a look and share with us what your image looks like!
January 18th, 2011 — 11:50am
Yesterday we attempted to deploy a new version of our software to the live servers but found serious performances issues that had not shown up in our testing. We have therefore reverted to the previous release and the system is once again stable. We will now investigate the cause of the problems before attempting to deploy the code again. Apologies for the impact this will have had on your site. Many thanks for your patience and understanding.
January 13th, 2011 — 3:58pm
So, let me see, a list. Search engine. Operating system. Browser. Navigation. Instant Messenger. Voice calls. Email. Advertising. Mobile phones.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to products made by Google. Lots of products, but there’s a theme: the web, information, communication.
So where do ‘driverless cars’, Google’s newest project, fit into all that?! Eric Schmidt, Google CEO confirmed the plans at a recent TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco, adding more colour to the previous announcement by Google’s director of the Standford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Sebastian Thrun.
The idea – apparently – is to free drivers up to do more with the time they would have spent driving. Like searching for products on Google, no doubt.
And this is no pipedream either. Google cars have already covered over 140,000 miles with almost no human control.
“They’ve crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe”, said Thrun.
The cars are kitted up with video cameras, radar sensors and laser range finders – helping them ‘see’ the road and detect other vehicles. And of course they use the maps created by Google’s own Streetview project.
Pipe-dream, pointless, or a great idea by Google? Leave us a comment below.
January 10th, 2011 — 2:15pm
Do you ever get sent email attachments that you can’t open? This is usually because the original file was made with a program you don’t have on your PC.
Sometimes you can ask the sender to resent in a different format, or as a last resort you can download the program in which the file was made. But what if neither of those are an option?
Thanks to some format wizardry, new website fileminx.com can solve your problems. It’s a web based too that open documents in all sorts of formats and let you have a look at the content.
For normal office files it handles DOC, DOCX, Word 6, Word ’97, PDF and WPS.
When it comes to music you can unscramble iPhone, iPod, MP2, MP3, WMA and WAV.
And as for video it can reveal what DIVX, iPod, MOV, Flash, MP4, WMV, XVID and MPEG files inside.
Take a look at Fileminx and let us know what you think.
January 5th, 2011 — 2:03pm
Last month we brought you a video of Google Zeitgeist 2010, a round up of the top searches on Google in the UK.
It turns out that one of the biggest winners is Tesco, which is the most searched for food and drink term, matching the dominance that brand has on the high street.
Tesco even ranks second for all high street searches, topped by only Argos – but soundly beating Next.
In the food and drink list recipes takes second place, followed at some distance by Asda.
When it comes to bargain hunting, it’s all about cheap travel for us Brits, with “cheap flights”, “cheap holidays”, “cheap train tickets” and “cheap travel insurance” blocking up the top of the list.
Under the ‘fastest rising searches of 2010′ category ‘Chatroulette’ came out top dog. If you haven’t tried Chatroulette, don a flak jack and a divers helmet and jump in…
Bizarrely enough there’s even a ‘top divorces’ categry, topped by “Cheryl Cole divorce”. Take that topped the search for tickets.
Here’s a more detailed list:
2010 overall
1. Facebook
2. BBC
3. YouTube
4. Hotmail
5. EBay
6. Google
7. Games
8. Mail
9. News
Top food and drink
1. Tesco
2. Recipes
3. Asda
4. Pizza
5. Wine
6. Sainsbury’s
7. Jamie Oliver
8. Morrisons
9. Cakes
10. Curry
Top high street
1. Argos
2. Tesco
3. Next
4. Asda
5. John Lewis
6. New Look
7. Asos
8. River Island
9. Debenhams
10. Marks & Spencer
Are they amongst your top 10? Leave us a comment below.
