Less Talk, More Do » Google http://www.chrisfinke.com Christopher Finke is a software engineer. He is available for birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:23:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Google should know better http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/09/14/google-should-know-better/ http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/09/14/google-should-know-better/#comments Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:25:24 +0000 Christopher Finke http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/09/14/google-should-know-better/ I was checking out some stats for my website with Google's Webmaster Tools, and what did I see?

404 error on Google that could have been avoided

Google moved https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/diagnostic to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/diagnostics (notice the trailing "s") without setting up any sort of redirect. Google: how are search engines going to find you if you don't set up proper redirects??

]]> http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/09/14/google-should-know-better/feed/ 1 How to get hei... http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/08/07/how-to-get-hei/ http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/08/07/how-to-get-hei/#comments Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:54:18 +0000 Christopher Finke http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/08/07/how-to-get-hei/ I was just about to search for how to get height of browser window, when Google suggested something much more worthy of my time:

How to get Heidi Klum’s body

]]> http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/08/07/how-to-get-hei/feed/ 1 Paging Johnny... http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/07/19/paging-johnny/ http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/07/19/paging-johnny/#comments Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:38:19 +0000 Christopher Finke http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/07/19/paging-johnny/ I just saw this ad next to a GMail message about ScribeFire:

Are you Johnny Depp?

There must be a better method for finding an amnesic Johnny Depp than poorly targeted Google ads.

]]> http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/07/19/paging-johnny/feed/ 0 Google redefines the folder http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/06/27/google-redefines-the-folder/ http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/06/27/google-redefines-the-folder/#comments Wed, 27 Jun 2007 13:30:27 +0000 Christopher Finke http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/06/27/google-redefines-the-folder/ Google Documents logoInside the official announcement of some upgrades to Google Documents is this section about the new "folders" feature:

"Almost from the day we launched people have been clamoring for folders. They're here! [...] documents can live in more than one folder at a time."

I don't know about you, but where I come from, that's not a folder; it's a tag. A folder is meant to be a real-world representation of a manila file folder, and I don't know of many real-world documents that can bend the fabric of space to be in two different file folders at once.

In order to avoid watering down the definitions of both tags and folders, Google should call a spade a spade and a tag a tag.

]]> http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/06/27/google-redefines-the-folder/feed/ 1 Dear Google... http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/06/26/dear-google/ http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/06/26/dear-google/#comments Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:53:32 +0000 Christopher Finke http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/06/26/dear-google/ Why do people only write formal letters to corporations when they have a problem? It's like the college-aged child who only writes home when he needs money. I'd like to see more of this:

Dear Google,

How are things with you? I'm doing well, if you were wondering. Congratulations on your DoubleClick acquisition; it sounds like you really burned Microsoft's biscuits on that one! LOL What else are you up to these days? Just thought I'd drop you a line.

Have a good one,

Chris

P.S. What are you doing on Friday - want to grab some beers? I'll send you an invite on Facebook.

Come on, let's show our favorite mega-companies how much they mean to us with some no-strings-attached correspondence.

]]> http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/06/26/dear-google/feed/ 2 Decommissioning GoogleTabs http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/05/19/decommissioning-googletabs/ http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/05/19/decommissioning-googletabs/#comments Sat, 19 May 2007 20:21:30 +0000 Christopher Finke http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/05/19/decommissioning-googletabs/ I've decided to retire GoogleTabs, one of the very first extensions I ever wrote. GoogleTabs adds a context-menu option to open all of the Google search results on the current page in tabs.

I made this decision for several reasons:

  • I don't have time to keep up with Google. Every time they change the HTML for any of their search result pages, I have to update the extension and release a new version.
  • I don't use the extension. All of my other extensions came about to fill one of my browsing needs, and in a few cases, other people found the extension useful as well. Since I never really used GoogleTabs, I don't feel the same need to keep it current.
  • There are better solutions. There are other extensions like Snap Links and Linky that do the same thing, but on a wider scale. It doesn't make sense to have a Google-specific version when you can have one extension that mass-opens links on all webpages.

According to Mozilla Addons, GoogleTabs was downloaded a total of 95,322 times (plus the downloads directly from my site), so it had a pretty good run. Rest in peace, GoogleTabs.

]]> http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/05/19/decommissioning-googletabs/feed/ 2 Traffic added to Google Maps http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/02/28/traffic-added-to-google-maps/ http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/02/28/traffic-added-to-google-maps/#comments Wed, 28 Feb 2007 19:01:44 +0000 Christopher Finke http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/02/28/traffic-added-to-google-maps/ Google has added a traffic overlay to its map service, and they've miraculously included the Twin Cities metro area.

I never go anywhere, but my wife is going to love this.

]]> http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/02/28/traffic-added-to-google-maps/feed/ 1 Feed subscribers http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/02/16/feed-subscribers/ http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/02/16/feed-subscribers/#comments Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:59:29 +0000 Christopher Finke http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/02/16/feed-subscribers/ Now that Google Reader is reporting the number of users subscribed to a feed, I can finally tell that there are 35 people using Google Reader to read my feed. I wouldn't have thought that 35 people *total* subscribed to my feed, but judging by what the other user-agents are reporting, about 50 people use a Web-based feed aggregator to subscribe to my blog. Neat!

]]> http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/02/16/feed-subscribers/feed/ 0