Last week Google rolled out their most radical redesign of their search page yet – which to  be fair, being Google it’s not a drastic overhaul. The new interface includes a navigation-like sidebar down the left hand side of your search results which provides functionality to filter or otherwise narrow down your search results. While the actual functionality is nothing new, it does bring it to the fore-front for users who were otherwise unaware of the features.

The change is significant to Google’s general style of keeping things plain and simple. If anything, it may be a sign that Google is fearing it’s users aren’t able to find their desired results as quickly as before – therefor necessitating the requirement of pushing the filter mechanisms right to the main page. This is simply my personal theory, and whether right or wrong, it’s irrelevant right now. The important part is I, like most, am very resistant to any type of change. The sidebar is arguably not very useful for me and tends to clash with the minimalist opinion I have of Google.

Here is how the redesign Google front page looks now. You’ll notice very little difference initial – perhaps larger fonts and buttons, and the drop-shadow is now gone from the logo. The removal of the trademark is interesting to me!

New

Old

The significant change is only unearthed on the search results page.

New

Old

Not a fan or otherwise despise change? There are a couple of options for you.

First, if you are a user of a browser that supports the user-generated Greasemonkey scripts, like Firefox or Chrome, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that a script exists that modifies the new layout to mimic the old style – at least as it relates to the search results page. Logically titled Old Google it’s a painless way to restore the previous experience.

If you are not a Firefox or Chrome user, or perhaps do not already use the Greasemonkey extension, you can visit a version of the old Google site using a custom URL. Rather than going directly to http://www.google.com change your link to http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all. It’s clear to me that this is a backdoor entrance that could disappear at any time, but for now it may be your best option to cling to the past; not that there is anything wrong with that!

On the surface, Google Street View is just an amazing accomplish and quite remarkably, free. If you are not familiar with the service, Google has assembled a fleet of specially outfitted vehicles with 360 degree cameras affixed to their roofs; at which point they drive up and down the streets of cities and towns across the world snapping millions of photos in the process. The photographs are then stitched together to form a digital visual representation of the world. The technology is then integrated into Google Earth and Google Maps. If you are looking for that obscure coffee shop on the corner of Oak and Main, now you can visually see the store front. I think it’s pretty mind blowing all and all.

Privacy conscious people will be quick  to point out the draw backs to such a system. There are countless stories of people photographed doing such unsavory things as urinating in a back alley, or perhaps being snapped while walking out of a strip club – something that could prove problematic for some individuals. Others just aren’t comfortable with having their photograph out on the Internet, no matter how ordinary and innocent the shot ends up being. Google quickly realized this and has no automatically applied a blurring algorithm to people’s faces – not unlike what you would see on a late-night episode of Cops.

But what are your options if you feel Google has not gone far enough with their privacy techniques? View realize it’s actually possible to report these types of things and it’s directly accessible through the Google Street View web site.

At the lower-left portion of every image is a link that can be used to Report a problem.

Google will require some information about the problem, specifically if it is a privacy concern or inappropriate. A privacy concern can be anything from your face, to your house, or car.

Unfortunately, Google provides no information related to the time it will take to service your request. Furthermore, it’s no guarantee your request for removal will even be approved. Nevertheless, this is your only simple option at this point.

Who knows more about the citizens in their own country, Kim Jong-Il or Google? That’s the question the site GoogleSharing asks it’s visitors. Whether we realize it, or even want to admit it, Google is prevalent all across the Internet and as such has the ability to track users whether we are logged into a Google Account or not. Every visit to a website that displays Google Adsense is a potential IP trail across the Internet from your computer. Cookies are also likely written to your system via your browser by Google. It may all be harmless, but it’s happening. The fact that Google is everywhere, you may feel it is hopeless to avoid it’s reach. That isn’t exactly the case and the solution isn’t as drastic as one may think.

GoogleSharing is an anonymous proxy service that sets out to do one thing – maintain your privacy as it relates to all things Google. The idea is simple – any use of Google services that do not contain a login, like a Google Search is forwarded to the GoogleSharing proxy service that replaces the uniquely identifying information with the information of GoogleSharing itself. Meaning, if you searched monkeys wearing kilts Google would see the search as if it came from GoogleSharing, not the IP address of your computer.

Now, anonymous proxies is nothing really new or exciting but GoogleSharing does offer a unique implementation – it only proxy’s requests destined to Google. This filter is possible by the installation of a Firefox add-on that handles all the heavy lifting for you. The add-on also provides a convenient method to enable and disable the proxy on a whim – should the situation arrive.

I can hear you asking however, if we don’t trust Google with our privacy why would we trust a random third party service? Here is what GoogleSharing says to that:

The only thing that we have is our reputations, which we feel are fairly strong in this area. However, we have also made the GoogleSharing proxy code available, and you can easily change the GoogleSharing proxy settings in the Firefox Addon. So if you don’t trust us, hopefully you can find someone that you do trust, or run a GoogleSharing proxy yourself.

GoogleSharing is a free option that’s available for users that have some concerns with Google knowing just about everything about them. If that sounds like you, it’s worth a look in my opinion.

Google unveiled yet another free service today, Google Public DNS, which they hope translates into a faster browsing experience for it’s users. If you aren’t familiar with DNS you may think of it like an Internet phone book. If you know a person’s name, using a phone book you can find out how to contact them by finding their phone number. Likewise, if you know a website’s name you may use the DNS infrastructure to determine how to reach them. Here is Google’s explanation:

Most of us aren’t familiar with DNS because it’s often handled automatically by our Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it provides an essential function for the web. You could think of it as the switchboard of the Internet, converting easy-to-remember domain names – e.g., www.google.com – into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers – e.g., 74.125.45.100 – that computers use to communicate with one another.

DNS is therefor a critical component on today’s Internet. Unfortunately, many ISPs and networks alike provide DNS services on severely under-powered hardware that, while doing it’s job, tends to buckle and become unreliable under load. Google hopes that by using their DNS servers over your ISPs that they’ll be faster, more reliable, and safer. Additionally, DNS servers have the ability to cache their name look-ups which loosely means the more people using a server, the more likely the server has already performed a name look-up previously and therefor already has the results for subsequent queries.

Using Google Public DNS is pretty simple, just use the following IP addresses as your primary and secondary DNS:

• 8.8.8.8
• 8.8.4.4

In Windows Vista & 7 the DNS servers can be changed through the Network and Sharing Center through the Control Panel.

Locate your Local Area Connection adapter and click Properties.

In the Properties dialog select Internet Protocol Version 4 and click Properties.

In the box titled Use the following DNS server addresses input the IP addresses from above.

OK out of all the dialog windows and you will now be pointing to Google for all your DNS look-ups. Should you wish to go back to your ISPs DNS you can repeat the process above but instead of inputting the IP addresses just choose Obtain DNS server address automatically.

Most users view Google as a simple and easy to use search engine, type in a few keywords in on the sparse search page and click search. Results are returned for your query and ideally you’ve found what you are looking for on the first page. Searching with Google is truly easy but it doesn’t have to be so simple – a vast array of options are uncovered if you click the Show Options link just above your returned results. Here you can return results from just forums and blogs or only content within the last few days.

In an effort to keep the Google interface clean, the designers at Google have hidden all the additional functionality from the main interface and as a result, I’m convinced the majority of users don’t take advantage of it. Now that I’ve perhaps uncovered new metrics to help you hone in on your search let me ask you if you were aware you could retrieve real-time search results in Google? Likely not, as it’s not even a clickable option under Show Options!

Keen Internet users may notice the &tbs=qdr: near the end of your Google search results URL when using the time-filter search. The characters immediately proceeding the colon are your date filter, such as d for day, s for seconds, or w for weeks. While Google doesn’t promote the real-time search functionality – mainly because it still is a work in progress – the feature can be unlocked by manipulating the search string URL.  A n10 would return all results scraped within the last 10 minutes.

Unfortunately this can be cumbersome to achieve. That’s why Steve Rubel has come up with a javascript bookmarklet to accomplish the same thing quite easily.

Bing, Microsoft’s latest shot across Google’s search supremacy bow, has continued to steadily gain market share since it’s launch in June 2009. Last week Microsoft completed a 10-year deal with Yahoo which would replace Yahoo’s search technology with Bing which promptly gave Bing around 20% of the search traffic. Bing is officially a player in the lucrative search marketplace and regardless of your feelings surrounding Microsoft or Google, competition is a great thing.

Human nature causes us to resist change. Typically, for a change to occur in society, the new result must be substantially better then the current situation. Is Bing that much better than Google, if it is better at all? Probably not, at least not yet, but it’s clear that Microsoft has finally gotten their latest offering headed in the correct direction after many failed attempts such as MSN and Live Search. As a technology enthusiast, as you likely are, it is your responsibility to give Bing a fair shake and use it as your exclusive search engine for a week or so. I truly believe that.

But what if you are not ready to leave the comfort of the big G? Bing-vs-Google.com might be a site of interest for you. The site runs a comparative search on your parameters and returns the results in two panes in the browser – Bing on the left and Google on the right. It presents a method that is pretty simple to see which engine returned the best information on your query.

I’ve ate up everything Google for a few years now but even I have to admit at being impressed with Bing.

Have you ever heard of a Google Maps mashup? A mashup, at least in this context, is a melding of two technologies to form a third technology, usually in a creative manner. A Google Maps mashup, as one would surmise, is constructed by leveraging the massive amounts of data available from the Google Maps project.  Solar Roof is one such mashup that utilizes Google Maps to calculate the solar energy potential of your roof, should you choose to layer it with solar panels. This free service is not exact but it is a rather efficient first wave of analysis before you venture down the costly path of bringing in a professional assessor.

Solar Roof is straightforward and easy to use. One the website, begin by keying in your address in question. Google Maps will load the location in the window. With an aerial overview of your domain you can then begin connecting the dots to trace the outline of your roof. The service will automatically begin to shade in the area once enough points are gathered. Continuing clicking to define more points until your roof is fully outlined. All the while the service calculates such things as: potential, power per square foot, area, and total peak power. If your roof is not fully flat you have the option to adjust the pitch or angle of the roof as well.

After providing your monthly electric bill or usage, Solar Roof can give you a rough estimate of your new electrical bill once the solar panels capacity is added. At this address you can see that in the summer months I would actually be putting electricity back into the grid – meaning the electric company would be paying me!

This directly correlates with the outputted kilowatt hours – which have been adjusted to your regions weather patterns and cloud cover automatically. This is a rather clever use of all this freely available information; all mashed together for your digestion.

I’m not a huge user of Craigslist but even I can become annoyed by a silly limitation of the service. The online classified site does not allow one to search across the entire site, instead you are constrained to your local locale. If I was looking for a great job opportunity I would have to visit, and subsequently search, every city available in Craigslist – as we are in a recession I would not want to limit my job search to just my current city of residence, beggars can’t be choosers after all. This is an extremely tedious process and for what reason? Well, supposedly a site-wide search is against Craigslist’s culture; they are trying to strengthen a close knit community. Furthermore, the service was never meant to be a replacement to Ebay – so these two reasonings go part and parcel. For me, this excuse is not valid and thankfully Google provides a mechanism around the limitations instilled by Craigslist.

1. Google’s Advanced Search provides a few metrics that helps one reign in their search net. From the Google homepage click Advanced Search.



2. Provide the item you are searching for under the section Find web pages that have … all these words.



3. Optionally, in the section titled But don’t show pages that have … any of these unwanted words type the word directory. This can help dial in your item search a bit further as directories typically contain just names and numbers that aren’t useful or even relevant to what you are looking for. Admittedly, I tend to skip this step, if only to save time in typing. Hey, that’s 3 seconds I can use elsewhere!



4. Lastly, at the bottom of the Advanced Search page you will want to provide the site you wish to constrain your search to. In the box labeled Search within a site or domain put craigslist.org.



5. You can see now your search string has been constructed from each step above in the Google Search box. Click Advanced Search to return the results.



6. Looks like there are tons of great jobs out there! What recession?

I’m a keyboarder at heart, those that read the site already know that. For me, it’s just a more efficient manner to interact with the computer. If I’m typing away at something but then have to lift my hands off the keyboard to use the mouse, it just breaks the flow. I’ve written in the past about Windows keyboard shortcuts that I use daily and today I bring you another super handy keyboard shortcut for Firefox.

If you weren’t aware, CTRL+K will move your cursor to the Search box in the upper right of your Firefox window. Logically, this search box is likely your main access point into whichever search engine you use – Google for me. A quick CTRL+T (new tab) then CTRL+K I’ve ran a search in a few seconds, all without lifting my hands off the keyboard. However, my mastery ends with the Google search results return. There just isn’t an efficient way to navigate and click the results links. That is, until now.

Some might think this is cheating as what I’m about to show you requires a Firefox extension and is not in the native build of the browser. Nevertheless, this keyboard shortcut is another notch in my mouse aversion check list. The Firefox add on Search Keys identifies every search result by numbering in sequence. To load the particular search result link, just hit ALT and the number next to the result, such as ALT+3 to load the 3rd search result. Additionally, the comma and period provides navigation between the search result pages.

Search Keys hasn’t been updated in quite awhile – since 2006 actually – but I’m pleased to say that it still works great with Firefox 3.