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A new way to browse books

Posted by Nathan Naze, Software Engineer As a kid, I was a bit of a fixture at my <a href="http://www.mcmillanlibrary.org/">hometown library</a>. My mom and I would visit frequently and the librarians knew me by name. It's only fitting that now, decades later, I work as an engineer for <a href="http://books.google.com/">Google Book Search</a>, Google's project to make the world's books searchable, just like the web. My latest assignment has been to help develop a better way to browse our digitized books on a computer screen. I've always had an interest in cutting-edge <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application">web applications</a> — existing Google products such as <a href="http://gmail.google.com/">Gmail</a>, <a href="http://maps.google.com/">Google Maps</a>, and <a href="http://docs.google.com/">Google Docs & Spreadsheets</a> make heavy use of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript">JavaScript</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_HTML">DHTML</a> to create full-featured applications in a web browser that you can use without having to download and install anything. In an effort to make online book reading easier, we've given our product the same treatment. I'm tremendously excited to announce the first fruits of these efforts. Here's a quick tour of some of the changes: <ul><li>Zoom in on text and images. Here's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=HARVARD:32044020180790&id=7X-I9105PAkC&pg=PA109#PRA2-PA109,M1">a cool full-page sketch of a ship</a> from an 1898 book on <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=HARVARD:32044020180790&id=7X-I9105PAkC">steam navigation</a>. Looking for something less dated? Perhaps this <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1564969584&id=F68COamQRH0C&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&sig=8k-utjCZ5wwUmWMPlMLIaDjJ4Ig#PPA25,M1">colorful page of a room</a> from <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1564969584&id=F68COamQRH0C">a book on interior design</a>. Want a better look? You can now zoom in and out — just click on the <img alt="zoom in" border="0" height="14" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2855/3883/1600/plus.gif" style="padding: 0px; border: 0px" width="14"/> and <img alt="zoom out" border="0" height="14" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2855/3883/1600/minus.gif" style="padding: 0px; border: 0px" width="14"/> buttons. Play with it until you find a size you like.</li> <li>One book, one web page. No more reloads! In one-page mode (just click the <img alt="one page" border="0" height="14" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2855/3883/1600/onepage.gif" style="padding: 0px; border: 0px" width="9"/> button), pages appear one below the other, like a scroll of paper. For <a href="http://books.google.com/googlebooks/screenshots.html#fullview">full-view</a> books, there's also a two-page mode (<img alt="two page button" border="0" height="14" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2855/3883/1600/twopage2.gif" style="padding: 0px; border: 0px" width="19"/>) in which pages appear side by side, just like in a physical book (perfect for <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9064503125&id=NkST-eA7uicC&pg=RA12-PA110&lpg=RA12-PA110&sig=oP4PLDRpPGpbo6jBg1qpzOoksjc#PPA51,M2">two-page images</a>). In both modes, you'll be able to use <img alt="previous page button" border="0" height="19" src="http://books.google.com/googlebooks/page_nav_previous.gif" style="padding: 0px; border: 0px" width="19"/> and <img alt="next page button" border="0" height="19" src="http://books.google.com/googlebooks/page_nav_next.gif" style="padding: 0px; border: 0px" width="19"/> to turn pages.</li> <li>Scroll, scroll, scroll your book… using the scrollbar or your mouse wheel, or by dragging (in most browsers, you'll see a <img alt="hand" border="0" height="16" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2855/3883/1600/hand2.gif" style="padding: 0px; border: 0px" width="17"/>). You can also use the keyboard (try the spacebar, page up, page down, and the arrow keys). Or you can click on a link in the table of contents or your search results to jump right to that page (like <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC01581436&id=EM6nHWWQ3TIC&pg=PP10">this photo</a> from the 1906 book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC01581436&id=EM6nHWWQ3TIC">Geronimo's Story of His Life</a>).</li> <li>This page was made for reading. We've tried to tidy up the clutter to leave as much room as possible for what's important — the book. We've put all the information about the book in a scrollable side menu. Still not enough room? You can put the screen in fullscreen mode with <img alt="fullscreen button" border="0" height="15" src="http://books.google.com/googlebooks/images/fullscreen.gif" style="padding: 0px; border: 0px" width="17"/>, so you can use the whole window for browsing. Try it with a nice illustrated book of <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=NYPL:33433068198005&id=MPDMpD2w_2gC&pg=PA65#PPP18,M2">Celtic fairy tales</a> or, for some lighter reading, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN3540212663&id=5FZBS0JH9lkC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=uNqKSoMhkt&&sig=MjS0J55JV4LYrKN7z_RvUf-sEx4#PPA49,M1">electromagnetic wave theory</a>.</li> <li>More on this (and other) books. Find other books that interest you. Just click on "About this book" to find more books related to the book you're reading. If the book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0823022455&id=tfCrMXWglc4C">How to Draw Comic Book Heroes and Villains</a> interests you, you'll probably like <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1893905039&id=H3Zv6DN7eRIC&printsec=frontcover">Comic Book Artist Collection, Vol. 1</a>. We also revised our "About this book" page to provide better information for in-copyright books, from which you can just see short snippets or a limited preview.</li> <li>Explore citations and references. You can also find other books that refer to your book of interest. If scholarly works from <a href="http://scholar.google.com/">Google Scholar</a> have references to the book, you'll see them too. As an example, see what other works have referred to <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=STANFORD36105005745802&id=GKHm6R_SBQwC">Aristotle's works</a> or the 1922 book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=HARVARD32044009968827">All About Coffee</a>.</li></ul> So check out the new <a href="http://books.google.com/">Google Book Search</a>. We hope it'll help you find new (and old) books that interest you. Try it out, and <a href="http://services.google.com/feedback/book_search">let us know what you think</a>.

A new way to browse books

Posted by Nathan Naze, Software Engineer As a kid, I was a bit of a fixture at my hometown library . My mom and I would visit frequently and...

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And now, Google News sitemaps

Posted by Nathan Stoll, Product Manager, Google News As the product manager for Google News, I meet with news editors and managers around the world. Wherever I go, one thing publishers tell me consistently is that they want greater control and visibility into the process by which their content gets included in Google News. It's been a longtime goal of ours to offer flexibility to publishers as we help them grow their online publications, so I’m pleased to tell you that we're adding Google News support within <a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview">Google webmaster tools</a>. Now, English-language publishers who are currently included in Google News will be able to use their existing feeds -- or define a more advanced Sitemap of their current news articles -- to tell us exactly which articles they'd like us to crawl. While they've always been able to use technical solutions such as <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40360">robots.txt</a> to govern which portions of their sites Google crawls and indexes, this will give publishers more granular tools to tell our crawlers exactly what should be included. We also want to provide content owners more visibility into which articles are ultimately included in Google News, so we're now offering error reports specific to Google News. These error reports will explain any problems we experienced crawling or extracting news articles from a publisher's site. Although we try to make our crawl and analysis as comprehensive as possible, there are always a small number of sites and articles that we're not able to correctly analyze and include. We hope these new tools will help publishers resolve such issues. Webmaster tools also offer publishers detailed information on the <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/09/fresher-query-stats.html">types of queries</a> that lead visitors to various pages on a website, which can be helpful for understanding user information needs and access patterns. We plan to extend webmaster tools for Google News to additional languages soon. There's more information about the new tools on our <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/11/introducing-sitemaps-for-google-news.html">Webmaster Central blog</a>. We hope you find these new tools helpful, and look forward to your <a title="feedback" href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/request.py">feedback</a>.

And now, Google News sitemaps

Posted by Nathan Stoll, Product Manager, Google News As the product manager for Google News, I meet with news editors and managers around th...

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Simplicity and power

Posted by Justin Rosenstein, Product Manager When we launched <a href="http://pages.google.com/" title="Google Page Creator">Google Page Creator</a> on Labs earlier this year, we had one overriding goal: take making a website -- traditionally a complex process involving HTML, CSS, FTP, and $$$ -- and make it drop-dead easy. Since then, the feedback we're received has been loud and clear: thank you for making simple web publishing simple; now, go make more powerful things possible. So we've spent the last six months in our shiny white lab coats (er, T-shirts) working on adding power to Google Page Creator without adding much complexity -- and we've just added three new goodies today: Image editing (see image): <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7609/900/1600/GPC_cats.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7609/900/320/GPC_cats.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" /></a> Now you can make a picture look just right in the context of your web page. Once you add a picture, crop, rotate, lighten, darken, and add crazy special effects to it right from within your browser. Multiple sites: When you first sign in to Google Page Creator, we automatically give you a site with the same name as your Gmail address, so you don't have to worry about choosing a name when you're just trying to get started. But because not every site is a personal site, starting today, you can create up to five sites with different URLs. For example, you can have justinspizza.googlepages.com in addition to justin.rosenstein.googlepages.com. Pages for mobile: This feature has an awesome power-to-complexity ratio: Now, every Google Page Creator site automatically has a mobile edition. So when people visit your site from their mobile browser, they will see it optimized for their particular phone. Of course, we're only getting started. <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/GPC-Suggestions?tsc=1">Let us know</a> how we can make Google Page Creator powerful enough for your web site publishing needs.

Simplicity and power

Posted by Justin Rosenstein, Product Manager When we launched Google Page Creator on Labs earlier this year, we had one overriding goal: ta...

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Viewing the web through a mobile lens

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed. Designed for cell phone users, I find the Google web transcoder has become an indispensable tool for me when I'm confronted with complex web pages. In fact when one searches the web using mobile phones, Google search hits often get redirected to go through the transcoder in order to provide the mobile user with a web page that works on small displays. It turns out that much of the visual complexity that creates stumbling blocks for mobile users also become show-stoppers when it comes to listening to a web page using screenreaders. So the transcoder has become a useful part of my web access arsenal. You can reach it at <a href="http://www.google.com/m">google.com/m</a>. From there, search for your favorite site. Think of it as the equivalent of your browser's address bar. Once you access a website through the this interface, any links you follow from that page will be automatically transcoded.

Viewing the web through a mobile lens

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as...

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Google Base turns 1

Google Base turns 1

Posted by Bindu Reddy, Product Manager, Google Base On its first anniversary, we're recapping what Google Base has accomplished on the B...

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It's the little things in Gmail

Posted by Mike Sego, Gmail Engineer When people write articles about <a href="http://gmail.google.com">Gmail</a>, they usually focus on the big stuff, like how we offer <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6558&query=storage&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;topic=&type=f&ctx=search">2.7+ gigs of free storage</a>. But I've actually found that some of the smallest features we've launched have made just as big of a difference, at least to me and the way I use email. For starters, Gmail has helped eliminate a bunch of duplicate replies that I used to get in mailing lists. You know how a lot of times someone will email a list and get a bunch of responses from different people that all say roughly the same thing? Last week, we <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_whatsnew.html">added a feature</a> where if I'm a reading an email conversation, or replying to one, and someone else replies to the same email, a notification pops up telling me there's a new message. Then I just click a link and Gmail adds the message to the conversation. This is also great because it means I don’t end up being embarrassed by responding to a list just as someone else is sending a response that’s way better. There are a few other gems that have made email just work better for me: <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=30719&query=attachments+html&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;topic=&type=f&ctx=search">viewing attachments in HTML</a> instead of downloading all of them; <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=34539&query=reply+by+chat&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;topic=&type=f&ctx=search">replying by chat</a> rather than email when I need a quick answer; and the ability to chat with someone even when they're offline, and have those chats show up in their inbox when they sign in again. These smaller features never get as much attention as the big ones, but I think they deserve it. They've changed the way I email, and made me grateful to the people who spend the time to get the little things right.

It's the little things in Gmail

Posted by Mike Sego, Gmail Engineer When people write articles about Gmail , they usually focus on the big stuff, like how we offer 2.7+ gig...

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Enterprise search superstars

Posted by Kevin Gough, Enterprise Team <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7609/900/1600/search_superstar_robot_image.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7609/900/320/search_superstar_robot_image.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> Want your very own custom-made robot crafted out of Legos? These robots are part of the awards package that we're giving our new <a href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/superstar">Google Enterprise Search Superstars</a>. This awards program recognizes companies, and the individuals involved, with innovative enterprise search implementations and a relentless focus on users that yields business results. Our initial winners used the Google Mini and Google Search Appliance, our website and corporate network search appliances, to create self-service support sites that reduced customer support costs, quickly identify domain experts in their organization, and improve service for international users. Read their stories and find out how to become the next Superstar.

Enterprise search superstars

Posted by Kevin Gough, Enterprise Team Want your very own custom-made robot crafted out of Legos? These robots are part of the awards packag...

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