Yesterday I talked about Google's fabulous gadget maker which helps you personalize your iGoogle page. I don't know about you, but I've become dependent on way too many Google products... all of which make me feel like I have a virtual assistant! Practically all of Google's nifty tools and services are free, and with such a wide variety, I wonder how some people aren't obsessed like me. What's your favorite Google application? Leave all your comments below!
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Google has just introduced a new search trend spotting tool: Google Insights for Search. Google Insights provides web analytics, advertisers and marketers new means to understand search behavior –
now free of charge.
Similar to Google Trends, users can insert a search term to see search volume patterns over time, as well as the top related and rising searches. Users will get the ability to compare search volume trends across multiple search terms, categories, geographic regions, or specific time ranges.
What can you gain from Google Insights for Search?
Offering a smart search analysis, one can compare
Coca Cola to Pepsi within the Food and Drink category, to find out exciting facts on the US search queries during 2008:
Note that you can click on each search term to find its specific popularity, and can download a csv file for your convenience.
Google search insights: Coca Cola 2008, USA, Drink and Food category
Google search insights: Pepsi 2008, USA, Drink and Food category
Google competes with leading web analytics providers:
Only recently, Google introduced Google Trends For Websites , a new tool that lets users observe the traffic data from sites around the web. As suggested by TechCrunch, “the new feature pits Google against a number of well-established players in the traffic data space, including Compete , Comscore , and Alexa ”.
Today, Google opens another competitive frontier against search analytics providers as Hitwise, Compete and ComScore. Google offers a free playground, but not one customized to companies specific tracking needs. Moreover, as in other Google trend tools, it displays only relative results.
The T-Mobile G1 (Google Phone) went on sale this morning, although without quite as much fanfare as an Apple launch. The phone is now available on a £40 per month contract with 800 minutes of voice calls, unlimited texts and unlimited internet access, with most, but not all, of the Google products available through the device.
One thing we will say; congratulations to T-Mobile; we’ve studied the small print attached to the unlimited texts, and it appears there’s no “Fair Use Policy”; it would appear to be truely unlimited. We can’t comment on the unlimited internet portion yet, as the T-Mobile website was not fully updated to reflect this at the time of writing.
If you want to save a little on the line rental, and don’t need to be the first with the phone, buying it online may result in a small saving in the monthly cost (we believe it will be down to £35 per month).
Google just rolled out a new feature in Gmail — Themes. This has been talked about for quite some time, and you can tell they have been working hard on it. The themes available to be installed on your account are truly beautiful, and I’m positive this have a significant impact on both user retention and even new users.
There are tons of themes to choose from — they range from a theme that looks like you are using a terminal application to ones that change throughout the day like some available for iGoogle.
There is currently no way to create your own themes (without using something like Greasemonkey), but since they are allowing people to create iGoogle themes now, I don’t see any reason why they can’t do the same with Gmail.
To add themes to your Gmail, click on “settings” in the top right corner, then select the “Themes” tab. From there, you can simply click the themes you want to try out, and you’re done.
What do you think of the new themes?
Blackberry Gmail users, rejoice!
I’ve been visiting T-Mobile stores for the past weeks trying to convince myself to upgrade to Google’s G1. The main reason? A growing independent lists of contacts in Gmail (my primary email) and Blackberry Contacts (my primary mobile phone.) Now, thank you Google, I don’t need to make that decision, especially when users like myself are tightening their belts.
Click here to get Google Sync for Blackberry.
Not a Blackberry user? Check out this page for a list of mobile phones with free Google products. Snapshot below.
Google Jobs board has some interesting opportunities for students wishing to become a Google Ambassador. Ambassadors plan and host a few events during the school year, introduce students to new Google products and features, and act as a campus contact for Google teams. This opportunity is open to students from any major: from CS and Engineering to Anthropology, Business and Zoology! Benefits include Adding Google CAP experience to your resume and loads of Google swag! Check it out at Google
