Librarian of Fortune

CustomizeGoogle

While I'm thinking of Google, I want to share CustomizeGoogle, a delightful little Firefox plug-in that does just what I want it to do with Google. It removes the ads and sponsored links from the search results page. It also adds links at the top of the search results page that let you repeat your search in Yahoo, Ask, Technorati, and a number of other web search tools; number the search results; remove click tracking, and several other cool things. It's reasonably easy to customize, and I now find searching "native" Google really annoying. This is yet another reason why I've switched to the Firefox browser and why I'll never switch back to IE.

New Google Developments

Google announced that it will start providing "universal search", which isn't quite what I'd call "universal" but it's an improvement. What it means is that the search results page now includes more than just content from its web crawl. Depending on the search, you will now see links along the top to news, patents, blogs, products, maps, books, scholar, or other Google indexes. It still feels a bit beta to me; why do I see news on some searches and not others, for example. But it's an interesting development, and a great way to remind searchers that there's more out there than "merely" web pages.

Another tweak to the interface is a listing of the various search tools  along the top of the search results page (and, for that matter, the main Google page). Again, a nice way to remind users that they might want to look in blogs, or images, or Google Scholar.

SearchMash

I just wrote an e-newsletter column on SearchMash, Google's new-ish user interface test bed. What sets it apart is the search results page. For starters, SearchMash sorts the results into web pages, images, blogs, videos, and Wikipedia entries, all on one screen....

To read more, follow this Link.

people@Google

Google has rolled out a series of video interviews with and presentations by various authors, filmmakers, policy wonks and others; they finally got noticed by the media when they interviewed John McCain on May 4th. He was one of the Authors@Google series, but I suspect that Google will soon add a Politicians@Google series, since they also interviewed author Hillary Clinton.

Google has the videocasts available on YouTube (where else?). You can find them all here, or search for user name: AtGoogleTalks.

Whack-job web site of the day

Already, we learn the truth that the truck accident in the San Francisco Bay Area on April 29 was in fact a conspiracy.

Just two pearls from this site:

“G-A-Y” is spelled “429″ on a standard American telephone. The attacks occurred only 8.5 miles from the notorious Castro Street homosexual district. COINCIDENCE?

The crash occurred in one of the most liberal locations in America — at the highway connecting Berkeley to San Francisco.

Thanks to BoingBoing for its vigilance in surfacing this valuable information.