I’ve seen a couple places referring to some improvements in the way google maps handles zooming and so I decided to take a look in Firefox. The zoom handling of Google maps is the one thing that I’ve wished for an improvement in for some time. After noticing MSN’s virtual earth had the capability of scroll wheel zooming, I really wanted it in Google Maps.
Tag: Google
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Google has been verbed….
Looks as though Google (as in… “I’ve spent the afternoon googling for information on ski vacations.”) is now officially part of the English language according to the Oxford English dictionary. Of course, many people realize that google had another meaning. (Was this terminology from the game of cricket?)
intr. Of the ball: to have a ‘googly’ break and swerve. Of the bowler; to bowl a googly or googlies; also (trans.), to give a googly break to (a ball). Hence googler, a googly bowler
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Google Checkout
Gbuy, Gcheckout, Google Payments etc…. the news has been circulating for months – Google will compete with Paypal. Well, Google Checkout has finally launched and is being covered by most every outlet covering online news (including several of Google’s blogs are talking about this latest product launch from google. It seems to be US only at this point and there are a couple of interesting twists.
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Playing catchup..
Last week our Church held annual Vacation Bible School and I am just now catching up on some of the items I’ve been intending to post over that period, so…. today will likely be a fairly active posting day as I clear out some of these tabs I’ve opened over the last week. In many cases – I’m doing roundups – like the Google stories all in one article. Between the VBS and related preparations/trips to pick up last minute supplies, and the one or two issues that came up needing my firsthand presence…. there was simply no time for posting (unless I wanted to do away with those wasted “sleep” hours.)
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Another wolf among us… and more spyware news
Yes, it’s another wolf in sheeps clothing. This time around Sunbelt is reporting on “Trust cleaner”. Keep your eyes out for this one, among other things it plants an altered version of the Google page complete with links to dating, gambling, ringtones, pharmacy, home loans and spyware removers…….. (the fake site is at mswindowssearch.com – trustcleaner.com trustinbar.com are download sites for the pest….) If you’re in a position to block addresses…. read more for the list….
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A few Google improvements
I thought it might be worth mentioning a few little bits of Google news. Much like the Linux and Windows search areas at google (linux search and windows search)… They’ve launched a Portal (?) giving access to the comlete works of William Shakespeare and a way to search US Government web sites at usgov.google.com. This last one appears to be a customized home page (like one you might be able to customize yourself if you log into google and create a custom home page.) But it appears that the search specializes in .gov sites as well.
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Google Earth for Linux
One of the big linux news stories yesterday was the release of google earth for linux. Essentially the Google earth team has released “release 4” which is a beta version of the next release. It looks like there are greater “user contribution” capabilities with this release. I’ve tried the download for linux and can say that it installs well, the user interface looks fine (it’s not a wine-wrapper application – it’s a true linux port.) It’s not usable yet (for me…)
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Get ready for GBuy?
A while back there were rumors of Google Payments, a Paypal competitor on the way. Well, if this is right, it will be named GBuy and will be launched June 28th. Also, it sounds as though there may be no fee for merchants during the test. After that, there will be a percentage fee on each transaction – they’re saying 1.5-2% which is less than paypals rate currently.
Sounds like things could heat up quickly between Ebay/Paypal and Google this summer. Google Base, with an integrated GBuy….
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Firefox Sync plugin
Google has released a new plugin for firefox that synchronizes various settings from one pc to another making use of a google account. Essentially, it saves certain preferences from your browser to your Google account, then when the browser is launched again it retrieves any changes from the Google Account. This sounds like a great solution for people trying to keep bookmarks synced across multiple pcs. I wonder if it could track what extensions are installed and make sure you have the same set of extensions on all pcs?