Google Clusters Results from Forums

 

 

 

Google Operating System: Google Clusters Results from Forums

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• Google Clusters Results from Forums
• Replace Google's Logo with a Doodle
• On Browsers and Operating Systems
• Google Docs Has an Equation Editor

Google Clusters Results from Forums Posted: 18 Sep 2009 01:08 AM PDT Google already knows if a page is part of a discussion group and it also extracts useful information like the number of posts or the date of the most recent post. Now Google started to cluster forum threads and to show related discussions below some results. Google uses a similar technology for Google News, where news articles from more than 25,000 sources are categorized based on their similarity. For now, this is just an experiment, so only a small percentage of Google's users will see the enhanced results.

Replace Google's Logo with a Doodle Posted: 17 Sep 2009 12:44 PM PDT If you like one of the many doodles used by Google to commemorate holidays and events, why not personalize Google's homepage and replace the standard logo with your favorite doodle? A Greasemonkey script created by the Google employee Tiffany Lane will help you pick a doodle from this page and make it sticky. "By default the script will override your favorite doodle on holidays or any days with a special doodle (personally, I never want to miss a new doodle on the Google homepage). After the holiday is over, your favorite doodle will be back. However, you can change this preference so that your favorite is always shown," mentions the author. Unfortunately, the script is quite complex and it only works in Firefox, assuming you've installed the Greasemonkey extension. For iGoogle users, there's a gadget that lets you pick "one of the past Google holiday logos to sit atop your page, or have it cycle through them randomly". { via Search Engine Land }

On Browsers and Operating Systems Posted: 17 Sep 2009 12:10 PM PDT An interesting excerpt from "The Microsoft case: antitrust, high technology, and consumer welfare" by William Hepburn Page and John E. Lopatka, especially if you read it in light of Google's announcement that it will release a browser-centric operating system: First, [Microsoft] included IE with Windows and required OEMs not to delete it. Second, it designed IE and Windows in such a way that it was difficult for anyone, OEMs or end users to delete it. The legality of Microsoft's contractual and technological linking of the browser and the operating system arose first in the interpretation of the 1995 consent decree and then in the 1998 case in the application of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. The issue in the consent decree case was whether the browser and the operating system were integrated, and therefore specifically exempt from the decree's anti-tying provisions. The Sherman Act section I issue was whether the browser was illegally tied to Windows, either contractually or by design. The Sherman Act section 2 issue was whether the technological and contractual linking of the browser and the operating system constituted illegal maintenance of a monopoly in operating systems. (...) In his findings of fact, Judge Jackson treated Microsoft's contractual and technological bundling of IE and Windows as a single strategy to constrict the OEM channel. He first found that browsers are separate from operating systems. Consumers think of the browser as simply software that allows them to gain access to information on the Web. Some consumers want the browser provided separately from the operating system, either because they want a browser other than IE or because they do not use a browser and do not want one taking up space on the hard drive. Other operating system producers bundle a browser with their operating systems but they allow OEMs and users to delete it. Microsoft prohibits deletion even though it offers different versions of its browser separately for non-Windows operating systems. Instead of integrating its own browser in Chrome OS, Google will build the operating system as an extension of the browser. In less than 10 years, browsers have evolved from being one of the many applications that can be installed on a computer to being an essential application that could even be used to replace a traditional operating system.

Google Docs Has an Equation Editor Posted: 17 Sep 2009 11:09 AM PDT Google Docs added the equation editor previously available in Knol. It's a basic LaTeX editor that's not very easy to use if you aren't familiar with LaTeX or programming. Open a Google Docs document, click on "Insert" and select "Equation" from the menu. You can type LaTeX code or use the drop-downs to select Greek letters, fractions, integrals, functions, summations and other operators. Google converts the code to an image using an undocumented feature of the Google Chart API. If you export the document as a Microsoft Word file or in a different format, Google Docs will only include the corresponding images. If you know a better online LaTeX editor, tell us about it in a comment. { Thanks, Bogdan. }