Deeper Web

"Deeper Web", a beta test of a new service to help search Google. It's also available as a Firefox add-on. Very nice. It puts search results in tag or phrase clouds. Very useful.

Google Chrome OS on the Way

This blog posting on Extreme Tech talks about the release to developers of the Chrome OS.

"Of course, there's still another year to go until Chrome OS is actually released. Google has made the code open source, which is a signal to both developers and enthusiasts to start kicking the tires, but there's not even the hint of a public beta yet. So there's still time for things to change. We're currently working on downloading and compiling the source code to see what it's really all about?we'll report back as soon as we can."

Google Fast Flip

Google Fast Flip (Beta) is provided to by Google Labs for preview.
Thumbnails of news stories provided through Google News give a quick glance at news site pages in all media.
Lots of different ways are provided to narrow your search/browse experience.

Google -- Show Options...

AL Direct, the online journal of the American Library Association, recently (Mar. 25) had a link to a Google Blogoscoped posting about an experiment Google is running which gives more search options using regular Google search "Tony Ruscoe and Philipp Lenssen write: “Google is running an experiment in their search results, apparently shown to a portion of their users. On search results, say for the query comic books, a link in the top blue bar will read ‘Show options.’ Click it, and a side bar full of options expands to the left. One of the most interesting experiments is the ‘wonder wheel’. This will show a Flash-based interactive mini app which starts with your keyword in the center, and related terms around it.”..."

The technology involves downloading a cookie to the specific computer so the blog posting gives the code that needs to be sent to Google to put the "Show options..." into effect.

For a long time I've been waiting for Google to become more graphical and this is an admittedly baby step in that direction.

Some of the other options allow the searcher to limit the search by media type and date range. There is also a tool which give a time line of the search terms.

How useful all this is waits to be seen but it's always good to see what Google engineers are working on.

BTW, there doesn't seem to be anything at Google Labs on this topic/tool yet.