A couple of days ago I received the first couple of copies of Google Apps Hacks* from O’Reilly and today, the book is fully live on Amazon, too! It’s very exciting for me, as this book project was spanning around a year, with about half of that in preparation, and the other half in writing of the book (in Google Docs).
Google Apps Hacks features tips and tricks evolving around not search but the “Google office” consisting of such programs as Gmail, Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations, Google Maps, SketchUp, Picasa, Blogger, Google Calendar, iGoogle, and many more. There are different difficulty levels, ranging from quick tips easily applied, over to spreadsheet formulas or stylesheet hacking or downloading special plug-ins or creating gadgets or maps, towards programming tips. O’Reilly on their site offers a table of contents, a sample chapter and more – and they’re also giving away the book as a prize to one of you.
So, I really hope many of you will be able to put the tips to good use and find the book helpful, and am curious about feedback.
[Thanks to everyone who helped in writing the book (mentioned in more detail in the beginning of the book), and a special hat tip to my editor Brian Jepson, as well as those who provided tips for the book through pointers or through having great blogs about Google, like Ionut Alex. Chitu’s!]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Apps Hacks Is Out | Comments]
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We have recently detected another spam message that contains a malicious URL. This is nothing new, but what if you receive an email message coming from a reliable source, such as a security company?
This is what has happened with a spam message that uses our free online analysis tool Activescan as a bait to deceive users.
The following image is the fake message that the user would receive. Note that it contains the logo of our company, but as we can see the analysis tool points to a malicious URL and not Panda’s.
If the link is followed, a file called ScanActive.zip will be downloaded, as can be seen in the image below:
This file is not really our online analysis tool but a Banker Trojan belonging to the Banbra family, concretely Banbra.FRJ, which is designed to steal confidential information related to certain Brazilian banking entities.
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Google in the US is currently promoting a new “artist themes” section for iGoogle via a special logo and text below the search box. IGoogle is the name of Google’s personalized homepage, and as it allows skinning with special background graphics and so on, this directory offers works by artists like Jeff Koons, Coldplay, Robert Mankoff, Dolce & Gabbana, Akira Isogawa, Anne Geddes and more who Google says collaborated with them. (Other countries also have interesting iGoogle themes, like an Astroboy one for Japan.)
[Hat tip to Jérôme Flipo, Brinke Guthrie, Ionut Alex. Chitu and Colin Colehour!]
Update: As TomHTML and Colin point out in the comments, the special logo was showing in other countries too. Colin writes, “I have seen it available in the following countries USA, Finland, France, UK, Korea, Japan, Australia and probably many more locales that I haven’t tested yet.” [Thanks Colin and Tom!]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Artist Themes for iGoogle | Comments]
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Google is planning to map not only the sky and land masses (Google Mars, Moon, Earth, Google Maps and so on), but – according to a report by News.com – also aims to map the oceans:
<<The company has assembled an advisory group of oceanography experts, and in December invited researchers from institutions around the world to the Mountain View, Calif., Googleplex. There, they discussed plans for creating a 3D oceanographic map, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The tool – for now called Google Ocean, the sources say, though that name could change – is expected to be similar to other 3D online mapping applications. People will be able to see the underwater topography, called bathymetry; search for particular spots or attractions; and navigate through the digital environment by zooming and panning.>>
[Thanks WebSonic.nl!]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Ocean? | Comments]
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Google recently revived their domain information onebox. Enter e.g. whois google.com to find a special link referring you to domain info from domaintools.com. But, as Beussery.com found out, DomainTools is selling ads on their site which use a non-"nofollowed” anchor link wrapped around image ads, with the link pointing to e.g. a vpslink.com sub-page and the alt text reading e.g. “Cheap VPS Hosting”. And this may well be against Google’s own webmaster guidelines, which disallow such paid links unless they come with a “human readable disclosure” (like the “nofollow" value for links).
However, this may also just be a simple mishap and not necessarily bad intention on DomainTools’ side, or the advertiser’s side. For one thing, many text link ad schemes don’t use image content, and they also don’t often use target URLs like “http://vpslink.com/?utm_source=domaintools&utm_medi...”, as that may dillute the goal of gaining PageRank. Or reversely put, it looks like this kind of ad spot may be sold for a similar pricing – currently at $10,000/ month – even if DomainTools would add that nofollow value in their template. Especially now they’re in such close neighborhood to Google (though I might be wrong).
In any case, this still looks like something DomainTools may want to fix, and Google would have an interest too in them fixing it... as it would be quite weird if Google would need to ban a site in organic results and then pick it as preferred onebox target above the same organic results.
[Thanks Beussery!]
Update: DomainTools now fixed their collision with Google’s webmaster guidelines by adjusting the HTML; instead of direct links, ads are now channeled through a /go/ redirect on their server, and their robots.txt disallows Googlebot indexing that directory. [Thanks Matt Cutts!]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: DomainTools' Paid Links | Comments]
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