Websites Then and Now–Don’t Miss This!
Along with the evolution of Internet and Internet services, the way we make websites has dramatically changed! Where we used to have text, a few colors, and clipart, we now have dynamic graphics, multimedia features, interactive banners, and so much more!
Did you know you can see what websites used to look like? I just discovered this today. Check out the Wayback Machine! How cool is this?
The following pictures were from right around a decade ago. It’s fascinating to see how different they look today! From 1996, here’s MSN.com:
And… Yahoo.com! (or should I say Yahoo! .com…) 
Isn’t that precious?! And here’s Google.com circa 1998…
And, I know this is only four years ago… but just think about how much this site has changed!
Remember when Facebook.com was just for college students?
Check out more great memories at archive.org!
The Top Concerns of Internet Users According to Google
The Internet is a wonderful–and sometimes terrible thing. While subscribing to Internet services is like a virtual gateway to the world and all the things it offers, I sometimes wonder how it has changed our lives and our thinking.
About a month ago I decided to investigate the top Google searches. This was not as easy as I imagined. But I did find some interesting things that you might find entertaining.
Enter Google Zeitgeist. Zeit means “time”, and geist means “spirit”, so it’s pretty much a summary of the “intectual, moral, and cultural climate” over a period of time. I decided to share some of the things that can be found here (and my comments) today.
Fastest Rising Searches Globally of 2008:
Vice presidential candidate beats President for fastest rising search term globally… but not in the US.
…Apparently people in the US don’t know how to type an address in the address bar. And although Obama beat Palin in the US for general searches, “Sarah Palin” was number one for both Google News and Google Images–no Obama on either list.
Google Trends is another feature that shows popular searches–it’s for the current year and broken down to each day. Here’s the top searched query for the last week:
- Monday: boyles furniture (company was celebrating 60 anniversary, featured on the Today Show)
- Tuesday: notehall (website where college lecture notes and study guides can be bought and sold–appeared on ABC show “Shark Tank”)
- Wednesday: wanda sykes wife (lesbian comedian who spoke on HBO about her wife and politics)
- Thursday: brooke astor (American socialite whose son was found guilty of stealing from her)
- Friday: obama nobel peace prize (kinda self-explanatory)
- Saturday: stephen gately (Bandmember of Boyzone died that day)
- Sunday: army wives season 4 (Season 3 ended that night)
My verdict: We care about whatever’s on TV that night…
You might want to check out Google Trends. I have to forwarn you, they are completely different from one day to another and most of them have to do with celebrity gossip and deaths. And you will probably start searching the terms about just to see what the fuss was about!
And, last but not least, enter Google Suggest. This is great. I guess Google fills in the blank based on similar searches from other people–or at least what Google considers to be a pressing concern for most Internet searchers. Here are a few that I found entertaining (warning: this is addicting!):
*Start typing “should my” and the first suggestion is “should my poop float”! Other suggestions include “should my muscles be sore after a workout” and “should my girlfriend hang out with other guys”
*Start typing “what if my” and you find out there’s really only three things that people must worry about: their dogs, poop (again? really?), and periods.
*Start typing “can you g” and EVERY suggestion has to do with pregnancy (especially in concern with periods) except “can you get mono twice”.
*Start typing “why do” and apparently the number one question on people’s minds is “why do men have nipples”. Other pressing issues have to do with dogs, cats, and various bodily functions.
Last but not least… if you ever need to know why…
It kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
The World of Google Doodling
Ever wondered what or who is behind all the fun modifications of the Google logo? If you visit Google frequently (and you probably do, considering it’s the number one most popular website for Internet services consumers), you’ve probably noticed the occasional unique, artistic rendition of the Google logo on the otherwise very plain home page. Whether they’re celebrating a holiday or some famous invention/event/person, Google keeps things interesting as well as providing a unique outlet to learning something new in one click.
The official Google Doodler is Dennis Hwang, an ambitious Stanford graduate who began at Google as an intern. He has since become the head of all of Google’s webmasters, and designs Google Doodles as a part time project. His favorite doodles celebrate famous artist’s birthdays, like Picasso and Michelangelo, which reflects his education and love for art and art history. Some of his doodles include braille dots in place of the Google letters to celebrate the birthday of Louis Braille, and a row of voting booths with the 
letters inside the curtains on Election Day. The “l” held open one curtain as the “g” was exiting the booth displaying a “vote” sticker. You can find more doodles at http://www.google.com/holidaylogos.html.
Google Doodles, displayed on the Google homepage in place of the usual 
Google logo, are any manipulation of the original logo to celebrate innovation, creativity, education, and fun—the things that Google supports. Hwang said in an interview that the Google logos avoid religious inclinations and are “fun and about Google.” They want to avoid trivializing important beliefs, events, and causes.
When you see a Google Doodle, you can hover over it to see a brief description of what is being celebrated. When you click on the Google Doodle, you will be taken to a Google search results page on that topic.
Last year, Google opened a contest for school-aged children in the U.S. to create a Google doodle design. The 2008 theme was “What if?” and each entry depicted the student’s wildest imagination—from creatures to inventions to world peace. Carefully selected judges chose winners from each state in 4 grade brackets, K-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12. Regional winners were then chosen from each grade bracket within 10 sections of US states. Finally, the top four winners of each grade bracket were chosen, 1 of which was the official national winner.
This year the contest ran again, this time asking the students to draw their Google as “My wish for the world” The National Winner, 6th grader Christin Engelberth, doodled “A New Beginning”, depicting a colorful, prosperous
Earth. The top three semifinalists included “Friendship Around the World”, “Stop and Smell the Flowers”, and “From the Ashes”. The winner was announced on May 20, 2009 and her doodle displayed on Google’s homepage the following day.
The 2009 contest included an online voting on the regional winners, open to the public for one week. The regional winners were given a t-shirt with their doodles printed on them and a trip to Google’s headquarters. The winners were announced, the top 4 receiving a laptop and the national winner also receiving a 15,000 college scholarship. Pictures of the winning Google doodles, contest dates and details, and history of Google doodling can be found at www.doodle4google.com.
Google Doodles… now isn’t that fascinating?
Chrome: Surfing the Internet Google-Style
The idea behind Google creating their own web browser was to start from scratch on a program that was made for today’s Internet services. They wanted to make a browser that’s simple and neat, but complicated in it’s security, speed, and functionality.
Google openly used features that have already been implemented on other browsers, they credit Mozilla (who created the Firefox browser) and Apple (who created the Webkit program they used) for ideas on how to create Chrome. An example of some borrowed features you’ll see is bookmarks. You can automatically transfer your bookmarks and favorites from your old browser and save new bookmarks instantly by clicking the star next to your address bar, features identical to Firefox.
Google uses the “tab” feature that most browsers have now adopted. Chrome reflects Google’s way of making products personalized and convenient, using the features they have on their search page and Google toolbar. For example, every time a new tab is opened, instead of white space under the address bar, you will see a layout of thumbnails of previous and often visited websites to choose from, based on your previous surfing. Once you begin typing in the address bar, Google suggests previously visited sites and popular sites, and prompts to run a Google search on the keyword(s) you are typing. It’s like a mini Google search feature in your address bar.
If you want to surf discreetly, for Christmas shopping for example, you can use the incognito window to surf undetected by your computer. It delivers the pages as read-only, and no history or files from these sites are saved on your computer. Simply open the incognito window in a new tab and continue your normal surfing on the other tabs.
Another unique feature of Google Chrome is the task manager. Just like the task manager for Windows, Chrome allows you to track the usage and functionality of each process running on your browser. Not only can you detect with add-on, tab, or other process that is using the most bandwidth, you can end processes individually without disrupting the other processes. The “Crash Control” feature, letting each tab run separately so an individual tab crashing won’t shut down the whole browser, is very handy to avoid losing all of your tabs when one web page is causing problems.
Like any other browser, Google Chrome claims to be the safest and the fastest, implementing their own ideas to how to tackle these areas. Since page loading speed is dependent on so many factors, from the applications and features on each individual webpages, to the connection speed and applications of the individual computers veiwing the Internet, it would be difficult to actually measure one browser speed to another. For example, Google Chrome uses Javascript to run web applications, but a website that is not created for Javascript may not load nearly as quickly as on Internet Explorer using ActiveX.
You may be surprised at the speed at which you can load webpages on Google chrome. Speeds will vary based on your computer, Internet connection, and surfing habits, so try it out if you want to know how it will work for you. You can also check out the website, google.com/chrome to download the product, read about more features in detail, and learn about what security measures have been taken in the creation of this browser.
Optimizing Your Search Engine Experience With Google
Google has become a widely popular and prominent authority in the search engine world. Finding the right website for many topics is relatively easy on Google, but sometimes a simple keyword search doesn’t bring the answer right away. Obscure topics, past events, and genre-specific searches sometimes take a little more effort. Google has additional features that you may find helpful for your extensive research.
Google shows the most popular ways to refine your search at the top of the page, such as Images, Maps, and Shopping. If you click on “more”, you’ll see some additional queries that may interest you, such as Finance or Blogs. The “even more>>” link will display all of the search options and special features Google offers. Each item has a short description if you are not familiar with these features.
Suppose you want to research a certain topic with which you are unfamiliar and which has many subtopics and fields you want to explore. At the top of the results listed for your search query, you will see the “Show options…” link. This displays a sidebar to the left with additional search tools.
In the first section you can view videos, forums or reviews of your topic. You can specify when the page was added/updated in the next section for results with recent articles. The third section changes how the view of the search results to show pictures or more text to determine if you want to peruse that website further.
The fourth section shows four more research tools: “Related searches” show common topics related to your search. The “Wonder wheel” shows related topics on spokes with your topic in the center. For example, if you’re searching for “apples”, the wonder wheel shows “apples nutrition” and “apple types”. If you click on a sub category, it becomes the main category and shows more subheadings. Clicking on “apple types” brings up “apple varieties baking” and “sweet apple varieties”. When you find the topic you’re looking for, switch back to standard view to see websites from this topic.
Lastly, Timeline shows the popularity of your topic over time and shows select search results in chronological order. You can also click on parts of the time line to get month to month results from a certain year, etc. The earliest results show excerpts from books written in the first millennium.
With all of these handy features, there’s little question why Google has become a name brand for search engines. Try it out and experience the world of Google search at its finest.
