Google Tidbits 242
XeroCool writes "Alan Williamson got invited to BayCHI lecture at PARC by Marissa Mayer (Product Manager for Google) to talk about google and get the facts. They both were in a room and Alan got some good facts about Google. One fact was: The name 'Google' was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for 'Googol'."
"Behind the scenes" engineering presentation (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Origional Founders? (Score:3, Informative)
From WordNet (r) 2.0
founder
n 1: inflammation of the laminated tissue that attaches the hoof to the foot of a horse [syn: laminitis]
2: a person who founds or establishes some institution; "George Washington is the father of his country" [syn: beginner, founding father, father]
3: a worker who makes metal castings
v 1: fail utterly; collapse; "The project foundered" [syn: fall through, fall flat, flop]
2: sink below the surface
3: break down, literally or metaphorically; "The wall collapsed"; "The business collapsed"; "The dam broke"; "The roof collapsed"; "The wall gave in"; "The roof finally gave under the weight of the ice" [syn: collapse, fall in, cave in, give, give way, break]
4: stumble and nearly fall; "the horses foundered"
Re:Clearly big fans of Steve Martin (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gmail security breach.. (Score:2, Informative)
michael is obviously tired, and forgot to log into his account.
Dupes can and do happen, some are excusable, since they are really old ones with alternative titles, others just fall under the net of after leaving the front page, but before google has picked them up (slash search sux!).
The last kind (on the same front page) is just inexcusable
MOD -1 WRONG (Score:5, Informative)
Quote: The name literally came out of the blue. I wish I could say that it was something fantastic, but it was out of the blue.
Re:Apache (Score:3, Informative)
Re:6 types of email users (Score:2, Informative)
Julie Daniel
Keeping Your In-Box "Real"
Since I've been accredited to do the David Allen workflow coaching in the UK I've seen an awful lot of e-mail in-boxes. Different people manage their in-boxes in different ways but one of the things that I've noticed is that, before they do the coaching and implement the GTD approach, most people have some kind of "yuk" feeling associated with their in-box.
It seems that most people have at least SIX different types of e-mail sitting in their in-box. And people tell me that there are e-mails in their in-boxes that they have opened and looked at and then closed twice, three times... even a dozen or more times! David says that we are all too busy to think the same thought twice (unless of course it's a nice thought and we want to think it again!!) But for most e-mails in most people's in-boxes thinking and re-thinking what it's about isn't a whole lot of fun. And it means that every time they look at what's in their in-box they have to re-think what is going on and try to figure out all over again which of the six types of thing each e-mail is and what needs to happen about it. No wonder most people have some kind of "yuk" feeling associated with their in-box!
So what are the six most common types of e-mail I see?
First of all there is the e-mail that they've read and there's no action associated with it and they don't need to keep it for reference. It shouldn't really be in there any more because it's finished with and it should have been deleted. But... they haven't got round to deleting it yet. So, for now, it's just sitting there...
Second is the e-mail that they've read and there's no action associated with it but they think they may need to refer back to it at some later date. That one really shouldn't be in there any more either because it should be filed away somewhere. But...they haven't got around to filing it away yet. So, for now, just sitting there...
Third is the e-mail that they've read and they've decided there is an action on it but they haven't quite decided what that action is yet. The e-mail is parked there as a reminder that they need to do something about it... once they figure out just exactly what it is that they want to do. So, for now, it's just sitting there...
Fourth is the e-mail that they've read and they've decided that there is an action on it and they have actually decided what it is that they want to do but they just haven't quite got round to doing that action yet. The e-mail is parked there as a reminder that, when they get some time in between all those meetings that they have to go to, they really need to do that action that they've decided to do. So, for now, it's just sitting there...
Fifth is the e-mail that they've read and they've figured out what it was that they needed to do about it AND they've actually done that action. But now someone owes them a reply and so the e-mail is parked there as a reminder that they have done something but the game isn't over yet because somebody owes them something back and they might need to chase it. And if they lose sight of the e-mail they might forget that the thing isn't finished yet. So, for now, it's just sitting there...
Sixth - and this is the only type of e-mail that really belongs in an in-box - is the one they haven't read yet.
WOW! No wonder most people's brains hurt when they look at their in-box.
The Getting Things Done methodology makes it safe for you have a real in-box - that is one where the only items in it are the ones you've not read yet. It does this by having a leak-proof system outside of your in-box to track those different kinds of things that you need to remind yourself about. Once you know how to answer those two vital questions; "What's the successful outcome?" and "What's the next action?" and
another interview with her (Score:5, Informative)
Among other things, it talks about how many links they have on the main Google page. There's also a funny bit about some guy who sometimes sends them e-mail containing only a 2-digit number. They finally figured out the guy was e-mailing them the number of words on the main Google page, presumably to let them know he is getting annoyed when there are too many (e.g. when it got up to 52 words).
Oh, and there's a much bigger version of the picture of her from the previous interview, here [mediajunk.com].
Google's "small-and-often" changes. (Score:2, Informative)
I noticed one of these trials. I sat at a desktop--I forget exactly when--and that time Google looked something like this. [archive.org] When I saw what would be Google's new look [archive.org] on another PC, I was wondering what happened (and a bit jealous--it was my big brother's).
I like the new Google.
Re:Servers (Score:5, Informative)
Don't Mod -1 wrong (Score:5, Informative)
However, the name was adopted because it fitted well since the server was indeed "a patchy server" at the time. Had it not sounded like a pun on the status of the software it may not have been adopted as the name.
Hence, you are _both_ correct.
More interesting links about this conference (Score:2, Informative)
http://notebook.geekdom.net/pages/baychi-google_u
The second one even has something about the 6 types of mail users:
- File and delete (don't leave anything in the inbox)
- Hunt-and-peck, comfortable with lots of unread mail in their inbox
Gogol = Russian Author (Score:2, Informative)
Blog Inaccuracies (Score:5, Informative)
Going through Williamson's blog points one at a time, I will state the inaccuracies in those which need revising:
1. Mayer never said the Google founders "didn't know HTML." What she actually said was that Brin came up with the original look, but decided not to add complexity because "he said he didn't do HTML" (emphasis theirs), as in he considered it pedestrian and didn't want to bother with it.
3. It wasn't search usage that doubled when they fixed the spell-checker's back-end, nor is it correct that they found the bottom to be best. Here's what Mayer actually said: the original spell-checker ("Did You Mean" feature) was very bad and would make suggestions like "Turbotax" -> "Turbot ax" and to keep it less conspicuous, they kept the spelling revision suggestions in light grey text at the top of the page. Then, they improved the spell checker from the back end, and saw that the click-throughs of the "Did you mean" feature doubled. As the feature got better, they made the text larger and red, and this caused click-throughs of Did You Mean to double again. However they noticed many users were still complaining using the feedback link at the bottom that the search results weren't useful, and when they checked what the search was of those users, they found misspellings (i.e. users had overlooked the Did You Mean at the top). So, they added an additional Did You Mean at the bottom of the page, to catch those people, and the click-throughs doubled once again.
5. It's not so much that Orkut didn't have go through the normal Google UI procedures, it's that because it's his 20%-time personal project that he's still toying with (most of which he did in 4 days, according to Mayer), it's not really part of Google's official feature set. It's really just that guy's personal project that they may use at some point down the road. Mayer never said anything about the "loads it places on the system," so it's unclear if it's hosted on Google servers at all, or if high volume is even an issue.
6. Mayer didn't say Excite@Home users often get to see new features. What she said was that a long time ago, they did one experiment where they wanted to see if having thumbnails of the search results was a good idea, but they knew they would need to find high-bandwidth users to test it on. So, they decided to use Excite@Home's IP range to test it on them, and they got so many complaints from those users (mostly due to having many fewer results above the page fold as a result of the thumbnails), that they scrapped the idea. There was no indication they did any more experiments with Excite@Home or other broadband users exclusively.
7. When she said they have the largest network of translators, the context is that Google has a site where you can sign up to help translate Google's help pages and interface into your language: https://services.google.com/tc/Welcome.html [google.com]
11. The 6 types of email users were discovered over the course of qualitative observations of users brought into the lab to test Gmail (and often observed from a distance, to give the user email privacy). Two specific types of emailers she mentioned are: "file & deleters" and "hunt & peck folks, who are comfortable leaving some emails unread".
Re:WOW! (Score:3, Informative)
Now I've heard (sic) [sic] everything!
And, as you see above, [sic] requires square brackets, not parentheses.