Get personal with GoogleWritten by Jakob Jelling
By Jakob Jelling http://www.sitetube.comAnyone who's been on net any time at all knows that Google has been search engine of choice for many for a while now. Whether that continues remains to be seen, but for now, with MSN still in development and Yahoo going through some growing pains, many still feel that Google is leader. As such, it's worth dropping in to Google Labs every now and then to see what's going on there. For example, Google's Personalized search offers a fun and useful way for searchers to interact with part of mysterious and closely-guarded Google search algorithm. You can set a search profile that's stored as a cookie on your computer. The easy-to-use Google profile interface allows you to pick specific topics that interest you. Once chosen and saved, you can then do a search from Personalized search page. At first, you'll see normal Google results. But at top of page is a slider bar, and by moving this to right, those same search results will be dynamically altered to narrow in to focus on your personalization settings.
| | To the next level with Google Groups 2Written by Jakob Jelling
By Jakob Jelling http://www.sitetube.comIf you haven't visited Google Labs lately, they have released a beta of Google Groups 2 that you may want to check out. This is Google's answer to Yahoo Groups, and they've added some new features to make their service more useful. For those who don't know, such groups allow anyone to easily and quickly start their own announcement lists and discussion forums. There is no need to install scripts or anything else on a web site, and no technical knowledge beyond email and posting to a discussion board is needed. If you want, you can use Google Groups to post to and read Usenet postings as well. Of course, nothing is truly free, and Google Groups is no different. In exchange for making technology available to host your group, Google displays relevant text ads on your group's home page on Google. "Relevant" is determined by content of your Google Group discussions. This is same type of technology used by Google to display AdSense advertising on web sites and relevant text advertising on their free Gmail email service.
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