Google Video started in January 2005 as a way to search the closed captioning text of TV programs. It showed all the TV shows that talked about what you were looking for and if you selected a result, you could see all the matches of your query in the show's closed captioning. But unfortunately, you couldn't see the show.


Google moved from the TV shows to the user submitted videos, but never forgot the captions. Google Video lets you add captions for your videos, but the big news is that soon you'll be able to search inside a video that has captions. That's especially useful for long videos. Instead of losing an hour watching the entire video, you'll be able to find the relevant scenes.

Another new feature will be video alerts.

Related:
10 Google Video tips
What's next for Google Video?

elgooG is a site where you can find Google's homepage in the mirror. Everything is in reverse: "I'm feeling lucky" button has focus, you must enter your query in reverse, the search results are displayed backwards.

To balance the server load, the site uses multiple mirrors, so you'll notice a little delay before actually visiting elgooG.

If you go to Google Video, you can get a code that allows you to embed a video into your site. Although Google doesn't mention that, the Flash player used by Google Video (googleplayer.swf) lets you customize many parameters. In the code obtained from Google, you'll see in the src attribute: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=[number]&hl=en. You can add more parameters to the player, not just docId and hl. Here are some of the more interesting.

* playerMode lets you change the skin of the player.

playerMode=simple (a basic version of the player without progress bar and volume control, you can see it in the screenshot below)
playerMode=mini (even more basic)
playerMode=clickToPlay (the skin used for video ads)
playerMode=embedded (the standard skin)

* autoPlay lets you control if the video starts automatically.
autoPlay=true
autoPlay=false (by default)

* loop lets you repeat a video indefinitely.
loop=true
loop=false (by default)

* showShareButtons is useful if you want to add a button at the end of the video that says "Send link to a friend".
showShareButtons=true
showShareButtons=false (by default)

So here's one of example of customized player, that repeats a video and shows a simplified skin:
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=[number] &loop=true&playerMode=simple

You use Google to search every day, you improve their search results, you store your mails on Google's servers and a lot of other data. What if one day you discover other company that provides better services and you want to move all your data? Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, thinks that will be possible in the future: "We are working to ensure that as long as it is yours, we want to give you the equivalent of number portability. Data should never be held hostage. We might as well get ahead of it before a law gets passed forcing us to do that."

For the moment, there isn't an easy way to export your mails from Gmail to Yahoo Mail, for example or to export your posts and comments from Blogger to WordPress. Google usually promotes choices and making easy to switch to other competing services would be a logical step. If you think your services are the best and you respect your users, you shouldn't be afraid of the competition.

Here's a list of the things that could slow down Google's growth. The list is from Google's quarterly report and it's not complete:

* We face significant competition from Microsoft and Yahoo.

Microsoft has more employees and cash resources than we do. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have longer operating histories and more established relationships with customers and end users.

* We face competition from other Internet companies, including web search providers, Internet access providers, Internet advertising companies and destination web sites that may also bundle their services with Internet access.

* We face competition from traditional media companies, and we may not be included in the advertising budgets of large advertisers, which could harm our operating results.

* We expect our revenue growth rate to decline and anticipate downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.

* If we do not continue to innovate and provide products and services that are useful to users, we may not remain competitive, and our revenues and operating results could suffer.

* We generate our revenue almost entirely from advertising, and the reduction in spending by or loss of advertisers could seriously harm our business.

* Proprietary document formats may limit the effectiveness of our search technology by preventing our technology from accessing the content of documents in such formats which could limit the effectiveness of our products and services.

* Our corporate culture has contributed to our success, and if we cannot maintain this culture as we grow, we could lose the innovation, creativity and teamwork fostered by our culture, and our business may be harmed.

* We are, and may in the future be, subject to intellectual property rights claims, which are costly to defend, could require us to pay damages and could limit our ability to use certain technologies in the future.

Certain entities have also filed copyright claims against us, alleging that features of certain of our products and services, including Google Web Search, Google News, Google Video, Google Image Search, and Google Book Search, infringe their rights. In addition, our planned acquisition of YouTube may subject us to additional copyright claims upon the closing of the transaction.

* We compete internationally with local information providers and with U.S. competitors who are currently more successful than we are in various markets, and if we fail to compete effectively in international markets, our business will be harmed.

* If we fail to detect click fraud or other invalid clicks, we could face potential litigation as well as lose the confidence of our advertisers, which would cause our business to suffer.

* Index spammers could harm the integrity of our web search results, which could damage our reputation and cause our users to be dissatisfied with our products and services.

* Privacy concerns relating to our technology could damage our reputation and deter current and potential users from using our products and services.

* If we were to lose the services of Eric, Larry, Sergey or our senior management team, we may not be able to execute our business strategy.

* Our CEO and our two founders run the business and affairs of the company collectively, which may harm their ability to manage effectively.

* We may have difficulty scaling and adapting our existing architecture to accommodate increased traffic and technology advances or changing business requirements, which could lead to the loss of users, advertisers and Google Network members, and cause us to incur expenses to make architectural changes.

* Our business depends on continued and unimpeded access to the Internet by us and our users. Internet access providers may be able to block, degrade, or charge for access to certain of our products and services, which could lead to additional expenses and the loss of users and advertisers.

* More individuals are using non-PC devices to access the Internet, and versions of our web search technology developed for these devices may not be widely adopted by users of these devices.

On a completely unrelated note, this is the post number 1111. And today is 11/11.

Photosynth is a very interesting software from Microsoft that takes a large number of photos from a place and tries to combine them into a 3D model of that place. Photosynth lets you understand the relation between your photos. Using similar photos from the Internet, the program can improve the rendering of the model.

"Each photo is processed by computer vision algorithms to extract hundreds of distinctive features, like the corner of a window frame or a door handle. Photos that share features are then linked together in a web."

Photosynth has the ability to process large collections of pictures fast and also uses Seadragon technology to ensure a smooth zooming.

Microsoft thinks this technology will be available for mass consumption next year and photo sharing websites will be the first to use it.


You can see a live demo here, but it requires Internet Explorer and Windows XP SP2 (or Vista), as it uses an ActiveX control.

Update: This trick doesn't work anymore.

If you couldn't get a satisfying mail account at Yahoo Mail, Hotmail or Gmail, you can now get it at live.com. Although it's not yet official, it's quite easy to get a mail address like your.name@live.com.

You have to create a new account, press "sign up", then copy the location of this link and paste it in the address bar of the window where you loaded the page from live.com. Now you'll have live.com and a list of other localized domains for you to choose from.


{ Solution found by mess.be, no permalink available. }

Google Video shows even more statistical information about videos. Here's what you can find about a video, by clicking on the arrows next to "all time views":

* the number of views
* the overall rank
* the number of views from yesterday
* yesterday's rank
* how many from the yesterday's views were from emailed videos and from embedded videos
* the rank in the top of emailed videos and embedded videos (for yesterday)
* a chart that shows the number of views from the last week

This is a great exercise in transparency and Google could continue it with a top of emailed videos, embedded videos, a list of external sites that embed and discuss the videos.

Google's Adam Lasnik writes about another new feature in Gmail. If you subscribe to a mailing list and you receive each new message in Gmail, you may run into boring threads that just continue to be boring. Gmail lets you mute these threads, so you still receive new messages but they're automatically archived.

To mute a thread, just type m while reading it. Each muted thread gets the label mute (and also muted), so you can find all your muted threads by searching for label:mute.

Note that this works only for mails that are not sent directly to you, which is the case for mailing lists.

Related:
Hidden labels in Gmail
Create an email blacklist in Gmail

{ Via Googlified. }

Google Search History records the queries and the search results you've clicked on. How would you use this service?

1. Search History Trends shows you statistical information about your Google searches. For example, you can monitor your daily search activity or see how often you've used Google in July.

2. Google Recommendations is a gadget for your personalized homepage that lists searches, web pages, gadgets, and videos recommended for you, based on your previous searches.

3. Browse the Search History and bookmark interesting sites. Just click on the small star next to the search result.

4. Find how often you search for something.

5. If you know you found a site using a Google search, you can use the Search History to find it again. It's easier because the scope is limited.

6. Use the calendar from Google Search History to see what searches you performed on a certain day. It's like going back in time.

7. How many times did you visit a site from Google search and when was the last time? Enter the address in the search box and you'll see the answers next to the title.


8. Grab a feed that contains your latest Google queries: https://www.google.com/searchhistory/?output=rss. Note that your feed reader needs to support SSL.

9. If you search for sensitive information or you don't want to include certain queries in Search History, either pause Search History, or remove the sensitive queries and search results.

10. Google Desktop extends the concept of search history to all the websites you visited using your browser. You are able to search it only from your computer by default or from other computers if you enable Search Across Computers.