Google's new background feature

In the meantime we have made our own classic page quickly this morning, so as to avoid seeing a slow loading and blurry picture of a wooden structure any more. Feel free to use it at: www.realisingdesigns.com/tools/classicgoogle/

A quick and temporary 'Classic Google' page

The Google Labs Browser Size tool overlays a visual guide to fundamentally help you assess whether your audience can see the important bits without the need to scroll (http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/).  The core problem is that while offering some degree of use vertically, if you have a centred column (as this website does) then it shows at your browser width and does not update the visuals.  The other item to bear in mind, is that with the wealth of add-ons and widgets, some people may have a crowded tool and in effect see less vertically than it suggests.  Its certainly a good point to revisit and can be useful to think again on what you want people to get from your site and whether they can see that when they first land at your site.

Google hails the 2 month entrance of Google Sidewiki a huge success.  It can be a great way to portray important information or a welcome to users of a page, or to alert them that a particular item on that page may be incorrect or in need of amending.

With public views pinned to the web page it will be interesting to see how web masters can protect themselves from unjust comments, though each wiki is given vote as to whether it was useful or not and each falls under their terms and conditions, which are likely to be quite stringent.  Google’s blog post shows some great examples of how it might be of use to your website, particularly in the conveying of accurate and timely information.

Google users can leave Sidewiki notes on others sites and an author note  on sites that are owned, which are then special and remain at the top.  Below is an example screenshot of the Realising Designs blog and our Sidewiki welcome message:

Example: An author written Google Sidewiki entry

If you haven’t installed Google Sidewiki yet, it is available at part of the Google toolbar for IE and Firefox users and as a booklet for Safari, Chrome and other browsers.  For more information and examples, please visit the Google blog at googleblog.blogspot.com.

www.yoono.com

Which currently supports the following social sites:

The next interesting tool is another Firefox Add-on called Shareaholic, which enables you an easy way to share sites without cluttering your browser window to your various social pages, such as Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and many many more.  Interesting features too with their BuzzMonitor:

You can now find the freshest news, videos and blogs as they emerge on the realtime web within Shareaholic and easily share that on any of your social networks.

www.shareaholic.com

* PS. Just a little note to the curious that the plural of status in English is status… and in American English it’s statuses.

Here are a couple of nice StreetViews from London:

The London Eye from Westminster Bridge

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Piccadilly Circus

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Westminster Abbey

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You can do your own exploring of Mars with the help of Google Labs or watch a video made with Terragen 2 (landscape creating software) and terrain data from Nasa:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSTEo5QK9vk