Good Bye To Google Wave

The big buzz over Google Wave is officially over. Google has announced that it has ended support for its Google Wave collaborative communication tool for lack of users. Google Wave, only a little over one year old, brought a new way of collaboration - collaboration and communication in real time. Even though Google Wave has gained some true loyal users and supporters, it is not enough for Google to continue to support it. See related stories.

One thing that bothers me about Google Scholar’s Legal Opinions and Journals

When using Google Scholar’s advanced search option for legal opinion and journals, the title of the law review article retrieved is more often than not linked to the version of the article in HeinOnline or another subscription database like JSTOR. Since our Library subscribes to Hein, access on campus is not an issue. However, if you try to access the article from home, you see the first page of the article, with an invitation to purchase it from Hein.

You’ll never know that an article is available for free unless you click the link at bottom of the citation that says "All # versions." Sometimes a link will appear in the column on the right—this represents a free version, but doesn’t consistently appear. Why can’t the free version of the article — from a law review website, an institutional repository, or SSRN — appear first, or appear in a column on the right that is clearly marked?

See the picture above for an illustration of where to click for the free version when you access a law review article via Google Scholar. Keep in mind that the article you want might not be available for free, but as more and more law schools establish repositories of faculty scholarship the likelihood that it is increases every day.

World Bank Data In Google Search

With a little bit of a delay, via The World Bank News and Broadcast press release,

Now, a special Google public data search feature will show numeric results for 17 World Development Indicators (WDI) reliably sourced to the World Bank. For example, a Google search for GDP features a box at the top of the page highlighting Bank data and linking to Google's Google's public data graphing tool. Google's graphing tool lets users see and compare country-by-country statistics and offers customized graphs with a ‘link’ or web address that can be easily embedded and shared in other websites.

Winter Olympics Google Doodle

Google changes its doodle to celebrate the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony. Check it out!

Google Translation Dictionary

Google Dictionary translates to and from 27 different languages (so far) including: Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese (traditional), Chinese (simplified), Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Marathi, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, Russian, Tamil, Telugu, and Thai. It also provides dictionary definitions of words in the following languages: Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. The response to a query includes the translation of the word and, where applicable, the web dictionary definition, derivative, audio pronunciation, related phrases, related languages, and synonyms. You can read more about the Google Dictionary.

Google Scholar Offers Case Law

It has been talked about, written about on listservs, blogged about, and twittered since the word got out. Google Scholar now offers full text search of legal opinions and journals. Users can perform Google Advanced Search allowing full text searching with optional limits by federal and state jurisdictions intending to provide access to the governing laws of the country. Most opinions display pagination, which is very nice. Google also included a tab "How Cited" that displays subsequent judicial decisions citing the original opinion. Not quite Shepard's, but it can be found very helpful. Judicial opinions are full of citations to other cases and Google hyperlinked all of those that are available at Google, just for our convenience. Happy Searching!

Google Translate

Via Official Google Blog, New Look for Google Translate presents some new features, such as translate instantly, read and write any language, or text to speech. Although automatic translations can be very useful in helping to understand the overall idea or at least to get a sign that a researcher might be on the right path, one should remember no to mindlessly rely on them.

Google Maps Navigation For Android 2.0

Via the Official Google blog, Google announced Google maps navigation for Android 2.0. Google Maps have guided millions of people since 2005. However, the printed directions have stopped cutting it; people demand access to directions even when behind the wheel.

Google has announced the next step for Google Maps for mobile: Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices.

This new feature comes with everything you'd expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone's Internet connection.

The following are some of the offered features:

• The most recent map and business data
• Search in plain English
• Search by voice
• Traffic view
• Search along route
• Satellite view
• Street view

Green Google

Via the Official Google Blog, A Green Tour of the Google Campus blog post features Google's efforts to be environmentally friendly. Read for yourself about environmental sustainable measures Google implemented regarding its employees coming to work, lighting and buildings issues, or employees need to run daily errands.

Bing vs. Google Search Engine

Bing vs. Google search engine searches both engines simultaneously and displays the results side by side on the screen. Check it out for yourself!

Can't choose default search engine? Want to compare Bing & Google results? This is the right place to be. Just put your query in the search box and press Enter. You'll see results from both engines side by side. Search provider for Internet Explorer 7/8 and Firefox is also available - search both engines from your browser!

Nov 9 Deadline For Google Books Deal

Via Telegraph.co.uk, a judge has set November 9 of this year to be the deadline for Google books deal.

Google is having to renegotiate a previous deal it struck with publishing companies last October, because the US government ruled that it violated antitrust laws.

The original agreement, between Google and the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers, was a response to a class-action lawsuit in which Google was accused of copyright infringement after it started scanning books from university libraries.

Lawyers representing US authors and publishing groups said they fully expected to have a new deal in place with Google by the Nov 9 deadline set by Judge Denny Chin. Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said that he expected the core agreement "to stay the same".

Google MP3 Search

Google offers custom designed search engine that searches for MP3 download sites. Search sites include: http://www.kvaz.com/, http://funkysouls.com/, http://www.welove-music.net/, http://music.cooltoad.com/music/, http://kpnemo.ru/.

Any comments?

Google Book Downloader

Via Download Squad,

Google Book Downloader is a free utility that lets out download any book that's available in "full view" from Google Books. Of course, most of these books also feature download links right on the web page, but Google Books Downloader lets you queue up multiple jobs and convert all of the downloaded books to PDF files.

The application is available for Windows and requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. You can either install Google Book Downloader or download a portable version which you can simply unzip and run from your hard drive or a removable disk.

You can find more instructions in the tutorial.

Google Translate Now Speaks 51 Languages

Google Translate is a beta service provided by Google Inc. to translate a section of text, or a webpage, into another language [Wikipedia]. Google has recently added the following 9 languages ( Afrikaans, Belorussian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh, and Yiddish) totaling at 51 offered languages for translation.

What are you thoughts on automatic Internet translating services? Can they truly translate a meaning of a sentence? Share you thoughts, we would like to read them.

Google Accounts On Twitter

For those of you out there who twitter, here is a list of Google accounts on twitter. Via Google blog post. Some of them are: Google, Blogger, Calendar, News, Reader, YouTube, ScetchUp, GoogleMaps, GoogleCode, GoogleData, googletalk, googlejobs, etc.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets. (via Wikipedia.org)

Google Charts Public Data in Search Results

TechCrunch reports that Google is now presenting public data from searches as a chart. For instance, if you search unemployment rates in New York, the first result will be formatted as a chart, with options to chart umemployment rates in other states.

Belated Happy Birthday to G-mail!

With a little bit of a delay, HAPPY BIRTHDAY G-MAIL!

It has been five years since G-mail has been in our lives. On April 1, 2004 Google launched G-mail. Read the official Google Blog post.

Using Google to Search? Enjoy the Result Page Improvements!

With a little bit of a delay, via Google Blog, Google has improved its result page. Google rolled out out two new improvements to Google search. The first offers an expanded list of useful related searches and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions -- both of which help guide users more effectively to the information they need.

More and better search refinements
We're deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).

Longer snippets
When you do a search on Google, each result we give you starts with a dark blue title and is followed by a few lines of text (what we call a "snippet"), which together give you an idea of what each page is about. When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In these situations, we now increase the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page.

Climate Savers Computing Initiative

Via Be Specific Blog, Google co-founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI).

Do you leave your fridge door open after grabbing what you need? Do you leave your vacuum cleaner running when you aren't cleaning? Of course not. The idea of doing either of these things sounds silly, yet many people don't think to turn off their computers after using them. By using power management tools on your computer and buying more efficient computers, you can save nearly half a ton of CO2 and more than $60 a year in personal energy costs. Google co-founded the CSCI to promote a smarter, greener computing future. The simple changes above can have a HUGE collective impact; our goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 54 million tons per year by 2010 — the equivalent of taking 11 million cars off the road."

Any comments?

Google Earth Has Ocean Now

Via official Google Blog, the Google Earth has expanded their world to include the ocean. Read the full text of the post right here. Enjoy and let us know what you think!

... [S]tarting today we have a much more detailed bathymetric map (the ocean floor), so you can actually drop below the surface and explore the nooks and crannies of the seafloor in 3D. While you're there you can explore thousands of data points including videos and images of ocean life, details on the best surf spots, logs of real ocean expeditions, and much more.