Google's Broken Lists

Google has newly redesigned the advanced search page and removed two options that weren't used very frequently: finding pages that are similar to a page and pages that link to a page. You can use the similar: and link: operators and "similar pages" and still obtainable in the Instant Preview pane, so the features haven't been detached.

What's disconcerting is that Google made drop-down lists a lot more difficult to use in the new border. Until now, you could use the tab key to select a list, but this no longer works. After clicking a list, you could use the up/down arrows or Page Up / Page Down to move among the options, but you can no longer do that. It was much faster to type the first letters from the name of the language or the country to rapidly find an item, but this is another feature that no longer works. Basically, the only way to use the new lists is to scroll up or down waiting you find the item you were looking for.

You can check the old superior search page at the Way back Machine or the advanced image search page, which still uses the old interface.

Another service that makes drop-downs more hard to use is Blogger. If you have a long list of labels, you can no longer find a label by typing the first letters.

Google Reader's new interface lets you use arrows to move among the items from a list, but you can no longer type some letters from a subscription's name in the "All items" drop-down. This was a non-standard featured extra back in 2007, when Google Reader added a search engine.

Hopefully, Google will address these issues and will no longer take away basic features that are taken for granted by many users.

Read Your Shared Items in Google Reader

The latest Google Reader update detached all the social features, including the section that allowed you to read the items you've joint. Fortunately, the shared items page is still obtainable at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/username (replace username with your Gmail username) and you can pledge to this page in Google Reader. Click "subscribe" and paste the URL of the shared items page. If you don't have a Gmail account, load the shared items feed in Reader, right-click "Your shared items" and copy the URL.

You can now use Google Reader's search box to find a post you've joint. Click the "All items" drop-down next to the search box, scroll down to the end of the list (or just press "End") and you'll discover the shared items feed.

To unsubscribe from this feed, you require to go to the settings page, click "Subscriptions", type "shared items" in the search box and click the "unsubscribe button".

Google Reader Will incorporate With Google+

A lot of people anticipate a redesigned Google Reader and the good news is that they won't be disappointed: a new interface will be obtainable next week. Google Reader is not dead, but the new interface couldn't be released faster because the sharing feature had to be included with Google+.

My favorite feature of Google Buzz was that it routinely imported all the shared items from Google Reader and permissible your followers to discuss them. Now that Google Buzz will be discontinued, this feature will be obtainable in Google+. Unfortunately, Google Reader will no longer have a standalone sharing feature, a divide list of followers and people you follow, a feed and a page for shared items. This is great if you are a Google+ user, since it simplifies sharing and makes Google Reader more reliable. If you don't want to use Google+, you'll still be capable to share posts by email or using the "send to" feature, but these workarounds aren't very helpful for sharing a large number of posts.

The takeaway is that Google+ is not a separate social service you can easily ignore, it's a service that will be used for sharing photo albums, documents, videos, for posting blog comments and it will be very hard to use Google without joining Google+ since, at some point, Google+ will be... Google itself.

"Many of Reader's social features will soon be obtainable via Google+, so in a week's time we'll be retiring things like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader. We think the end result is better than what's available today, and you can sign up for Google+ right now to start prepping Reader-specific circles. We differentiate, however, that some of you may feel like the product is no longer for you," mentions Google's Alan Green. That's the reason why you'll be able to export your shared items, your starred and liked items, your list of friends from Reader's settings page.

Google Reader's sharing feature has forever been difficult to use and the addition with Google+ will finally give Reader the opportunity to shine and show why it's still a useful service. I'm sure that a lot of users will complain that they can't use the old sharing feature, just like many YouTube users complained when Google migrated YouTube to Google Accounts. There's a group of value in having separate services with their own accounts, sharing features and friends lists, but switching to unified accounts, unified profiles, consistent sharing features makes Google's services more helpful because they work together, they unite their strengths and become easier to use.

A New Look for Google Translate

Google Translate is the newest Google service with a new plan based on Google+. Since Google Translate's interface is simple, there aren't many changes: a new grey header, updated buttons and drop-downs.

"We're working on a project to bring you a new and enhanced Google experience, and over the next few months, you'll carry on to see more updates to our look and feel. The way people use and experience the web is developing, and our goal is to give you a more seamless and reliable online experience—one that works no matter which Google product you're using or what device you're using it on," explained Google last month.

After launching a new border for Google Search, Google created two themes that preview Gmail's new design and ongoing to test Google Calendar's new UI and Blogger's new UI. Up next: Google Docs, Google Sites, Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader and almost certainly other services.

Google +1

Google +1 is yet another effort to make Google more social. It's Google's description of the Facebook "likes", a simple feature that's very powerful because it's part of a social network.

Google will show +1 buttons next to all look for results and ads, while encouraging other sites to include the buttons. All +1's are public and they're tied to Google Profiles. The goal is to use this data to personalize look for results and ads by recommending sites +1'd by your friends. Google Social Search already does this, but there's no hold up for Facebook likes, so Google had to come up with a substitute.

"+1 is the digital shorthand for 'this is pretty cool.' To advocate something, all you have to do is click +1 on a webpage or ad you find useful. These +1's will then start appearing in Google's search results," explains Google.

This feature is gradually rolled out to Google.com, but you can try it by enabling the +1 search experiment.

One thing is clear: Google won't have to translate "+1" when it will restrict the service, but it will have a hard time translating "+1's", "+1'd" and other cryptic constructs. Google +1's URLs previously look weird (here's the homepage: http://www.google.com/+1).

Your +1's are scheduled in a profile tab, where you can manage them. There's also a page that lets you disable personalizing Google ads using +1's and other in order from your Google profile.

Google now has the most significant pieces of a social network (profiles, activity stream, likes, apps), but there's still no social network, no magic "glue" that connects the existing pieces. As Danny Sullivan explains, the "+1 social network" is made up of your Google Talk friends, the people from Gmail's "My contacts" group and the people you go behind in Google Reader and Google Buzz, but you'll soon be able to attach other services like Twitter and Flickr. It's actually a meta social network, an artificial service that won't have too numerous enthusiastic users, just like Friend Connect.

Google Reader's Web Page Monitoring to Be Disabled

Google Reader's blog announced that the feed generator for pages that don't have feeds will no longer be available starting from September 30. Google says that not many people used this feature, which is not surprising, considering that it's quite difficult to find it.

Google Reader's page tracking feature was useful to monitor the web pages that don't have feeds. For example, you could use it to find when Google changes the privacy policy, when Google Chrome adds new extension APIs or when there are new products in the Google Store.

Unfortunately, Google Reader's feeds looked terrible. The title for each item was "generated feed for [URL]", the feature didn't detect new images and the feeds were updated when the new versions of the pages were added to Google's search index. Here's Google Reader's feed for google.com and here are the changes found by Page2RSS. Page2RSS found 8 changes in September, while Google only found one. Page2RSS has another important advantage: the service constantly monitors web pages and it's not tied to a search engine that indexes billions of web pages.