Google Knowledge Graph Adds Movie Reviews

Last week, Google's movie cards added snippets from critic reviews. You can find quotes from sites like Variety, Rolling Stone, New York Times and click the links to read the full reviews.

This new Knowledge Graph feature uses schema.org structured markup from websites. "With the recent launch of critic reviews in the Knowledge Graph, we've leveraged this technology to once again provide publishers with an opportunity to increase the discoverability and consumption of their reviews using markup. This feature, available across mobile, tablet, and desktop, organizes publishers’ reviews into a prominent card at the top of the page," informs Google. Here's the help center article for webmasters.

You can search Google for [minions reviews], [reviews for ex machina] or ask Google: "did Fantastic Four get bad reviews?" and you'll see a list of reviews. Critic reviews are also displayed in the regular cards for movies and Google plans to expand this feature to books and TV shows.

Google Card for Software Downloads

Sometimes you're trying to download a desktop software and you're searching Google for things like [chrome download], [latest java], [install itunes], [get skype]. The top result is usually the official download page, but there are various other download sites. Some of them might offer outdated versions, others might install their own software and even download adware or malware.

Google now shows a special card for software downloads. There's a big logo, the name of the organization that develops the application, the download URL and a link: "go to download".

The new card might seem redundant, but some users will find it reassuring. It also works for operating systems.

Alphabet, Google's Umbrella Holding

Larry Page announced a Google reorganization: Alphabet Inc is born and Google becomes a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, just like Nest, Calico, Life Sciences and other Google companies. Larry Page is the CEO of the new company, Sergey Brin is Alphabet's President, while Sundar Pichai is Google's new CEO.

"Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead. (...) Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well," mentions Larry Page.

Alphabet's URL is https://abc.xyz and the site includes a hidden reference to http://www.hooli.xyz, a fictional site created for HBO's Silicon Valley TV series. Hooli [XYZ] is Hooli's experimental division that is "focused on using breakthrough technology to achieve radical solutions using breakthrough technology." It's "the dream kitchen, the moonshot factory, the laboratory of possibility, the midwife of magic, the womb of wonders."

Alphabet is about taking risks, long-term bets, investing at scale. "We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity's most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search! We also like that it means alpha‑bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for," explains Larry Page.

The most interesting consequence is that Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and Alphabet's earnings report will show separate data for each company owned by the umbrella holding.

Update: abc.wtf redirects to Bing.

{ Thanks, Lucas and Jonah. }

Use Quick Look on Mac to Preview Live Websites

Mac OS X has a handy preview feature known as Quick Look that helps you view the content of any file without having to launch the associated application. Select a file inside Finder (or on the desktop), press Space Bar and Quick Look would be activated. You can preview files of most common formats including images, videos, zip archives, Office documents, PDFs and more.

Place a web shortcut on your desktop

Quick Look however isn’t just an option for previewing local files, it can also display live websites without you having to open the web browser. All you have to do is create a shortcut for any website on your desktop from the browser and then preview that shortcut in Quick Preview.

This can be useful in several ways. For instance, if you routinely check your favorite news website for the top headlines, you can place a shortcut to that website on the desktop and use Quick Look to instantly check the site for any new content. Or you can create a shortcut to a YouTube playlist and watch the videos inside Quick Look outside the browser.

While you are inside Safari or Chrome or any other browser on the Mac, drag the website link to the desktop (see how-to). It will create a .webloc file. You can select the file and press the space bar to preview the source website inside Quick Look.

Quick Looks previews the webpage inside a fresh browser session and uses none of the existing cookies or cache so the website will treat you as a new visitor. Also, it disables scripts on the page but loads all the CSS and images.

What’s inside a .WEBLOC file

When you place a shortcut to a web pages on the desktop, it create a .webloc file which is actually a simple text (XML) file. You can replace the string value to make that shortcut to point to any other webpage. For instance, here’s the a sample .webloc file pointing to this website.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
   <key>URL</key>
   <string>http://ift.tt/1N3w0MU;
</dict>
</plist>

Also see: Essential Mac Apps & Utilities

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The story, Use Quick Look on Mac to Preview Live Websites, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 10/08/2015 under Apple Mac, Software.

Google Indexes Images From PDF Files

I'm not sure if this is a new feature, but I noticed that Google indexes images from PDF files. Google adds "[PDF]" next to the title of the page and offers a single option: "view PDF", since it can't link to an image from a PDF file.

Back in 2008, Google started to use OCR to index the full text of scanned PDF files. Now Google extracts images from PDF files and makes them searchable.

Here's an example of query that returns many images from PDFs: [google pdf site:static.googleusercontent.com].

Convert Notes to Documents in Google Keep for Android

The latest version of the Google Keep app for Android lets you export your notes to Google Docs, just like the desktop site. Open a note, tap the menu button and pick "copy to Google Doc".

You can also select multiple notes and use the same feature to export your notes to a Google Docs document.

If you don't have the latest version of the Google Keep app yet (3.1.313), you can download the APK file from APK Mirror. According to Android Police, "the APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app".

Export All Your Google Keep Notes

How to export all your notes from Google Keep? One option is to use a feature that converts one or more notes to a Google Docs document.

1. Select all your notes: go to Google Keep and press Ctrl+A (or Cmd-A for Mac).

Important: This only selects the notes from the current view, so archived notes aren't included. You can repeat these steps for archived notes or select all your archived notes and unarchive them.

2. Click the 3-dot icon from the top of the page and pick "Copy to Google Doc".

3. Wait a few seconds and you should see a link at the bottom of the page that says: "Open doc". Click that link to open the document that includes all your notes.

A Lynx-like Text Browser that Runs on Google Servers

Text Browser is a Lynx-inspired browser that lets you read the web in text and strips all JavaScript, images, videos and other rich content that maybe embedded inside a web page. Unlike Lynx that require installation and run locally, Text Browser is a web app and runs in the Google cloud.

To get started, click here and authorize the web app with your Google Account. It requires authorization to sign-in and also for fetching web pages on your behalf. It will neither track your browsing activity nor will have access to any of your Google Account data.

Once a page loads inside the Text Browser, any of the internal links will also open inside the same browser automatically.

Text Browser as a Proxy Server

Why would anyone want a basic text browser? Well, you can also use the Text Browser as a proxy server to access news articles and other text-only content on the Internet that may otherwise be inaccessible at your workplace.

When you request a web page through the app, the underlying Google Apps Script will fetch the page on Google’s servers and then renders the content on your screen using Google Apps Script. Thus, even if a site is restricted, you should be able to view the page indirectly through the Google cloud.

And if a website is down for you, use the Google text browser to confirm if the page is really down for everyone or it is just your Internet connection.

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The story, A Lynx-like Text Browser that Runs on Google Servers, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 04/08/2015 under Proxy Server, Internet.

YouTube Only Updated The HTML5 Player

There's something interesting about the latest YouTube player update: it's the first time when YouTube only updates the HTML5 player.

Since it's no longer that easy to force YouTube to switch to the Flash player, I've used an old version of Firefox (22.0). YouTube defaulted to the Flash player, the same old player before the recent update.

I've switched to the HTML5 player using youtube.com/html5 and YouTube displayed the new player, just like it does in the latest versions of most desktop browsers.

It's obvious that the Flash player has been deprecated and it's still used for older browsers. If you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, the HTML5 player is used by default and you can't even switch to the Flash player.

YouTube's New Desktop Player, Available for Everyone

After a few months of testing, the new desktop player for YouTube replaces the old one. The new HTML5 video player uses a transparent control bar that hides when you're not using it and has new buttons and dropdown menus.

"Our new player design has a bit more polish, gets out of the way of your video playback, and scales to any screen or embed size," informs YouTube. The TestTube page no longer lets you switch back to the old player and it only shows this message: "This browser is using the new YouTube player".

Delete Recommendation History in Google Play Music

Google Play Music's desktop site has a new feature that lets you delete history. At the bottom of the settings page, there's a new section called "delete recommendation history". According to Google, this "removes the history used to give you recommendations and customize radio. This will not remove ratings and play counts on individual tracks."

Google shows a long list of recommended radios and albums and you can manually remove them by clicking "not interested" for each radio and album. After using the new "delete recommendation history" feature, I expected to see that all recommendations are removed and Google will start to show new suggested albums and radios based on the songs you play from now on. Unfortunately, that's not the case: Google still shows similar recommendations.

Speaking of historical data, it's surprising that Google Play Music still doesn't have a feature that shows all your recently played songs. It should be an auto playlist, just like "last added" and "thumbs up" and users should be able to export it.

{ Thanks, Camilo Moreira. }

Google Updates Ad Settings

Google has recently updated ad settings pages, which have a new design and more information about your options. You can still disable ads based on your interests from both Google sites and third-party sites. When you do that, you'll still see ads, but they "will not be based on data Google has associated with your Google Account, and so may be less relevant".

It's interesting that Google replaced the section titled "Google ads across the Web" with a new section for signed-out ads, which has 2 separate settings for "ads based on your interests on websites beyond google.com" and "Google Search Ads based on your interests". Google uses your previous searches and browsing history to improve search ads, but you can disable this feature. AdSense ads also use your browsing history and anonymous demographic details to improve ads.

{ Thanks, Herin Maru. }

Get Fare Estimates for Uber Taxis on Twitter

How much will it cost if you are take an Uber taxi from point A to point B? Uber’s mobile app has a built-in fare estimator but you can now also Twitter to calculate the fare. Write your query in plain English (see example), send it to @WhatTheFare and the bot will let you know the approximate fare for your ride in less than a minute.

@WhatTheFare is a new Twitter bot that will help you estimate the cost of your Uber trip. You’ll get to know the fare as well the different types of Uber taxis that are available on that route. And you can use the bot to estimate fare for trips anywhere in the world where Uber service is available.

Tweet me a command like "taxi fare from <<pick-up location>> to <<drop-off location>>" and I'll respond with the Uber price in a minute.

— What the Fare (@WhatTheFare) August 2, 2015

The bot’s response will also include a deep-link (see example) to Uber’s mobile website and it will directly populate the pickup/drop-off co-ordinates should you decide to book a taxi with Uber.

You can use the bot from anywhere in the world but the Uber prices are always provided in the currency of the pickup/drop-off address. Here’re some sample tweets that used the @WhatTheFare bot to know Uber prices.

@WhatTheFare How much does a Uber taxi cost from JFK Terminal 4, NY to Jersey City, NJ August 2, 2015

@WhatTheFare taxi fare from civic center, san francisco to SFO August 2, 2015

@WhatTheFare taxifare from Kondapur to jubilee hills August 3, 2015

Internally, like DearAssistant, the Uber bot is also written with Google Scripts.

It uses the Google Maps API to geocode postal addresses found in your tweet request, fetches the list of Uber taxis available for that route via the official Uber API and then tweets the response using the Twitter API. The taxis icons in the tweet are standard Unicode emojis supported by Twitter.

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The story, Get Fare Estimates for Uber Taxis on Twitter, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 03/08/2015 under Twitter, Uber, Internet.

How to Create a Retweet and Favorite Bot for Twitter

This tutorial explains how you can easily make a Twitter bot that will automatically favorite and/or retweet tweets that contain particular keywords or #hashtags. You need absolutely no coding knowledge and your Twitter bot will be up and running in few minutes.

Before we get started, you may be wondering why would anyone write a twitter bot that mindlessly favorites or retweets tweets? Yes, bots are often used for spammy behavior but, if used right, they can also help grow your Twitter network. For instance, when people share a link from your website on Twitter, you can favorite that tweet and it will give an hint to the original poster that you are author of that page. A brand may like to retweet tweets that contain positive mentions of their product. The list goes on.

Also see: How to Write a Useful Twitter Bot

The first thing you need to do is define a search phrase and any matching tweets will be retweeted or favorited by the bot. Add as many search conditions as possible to keep spam tweets away from your list. Some examples:

1. Tweets containing links to your website, sans retweets
example.com min_retweets:5 OR min_faves:5 -RT

2. Mentions of particular hashtag, but no links
#WhatAnAwesomeHashtag -RT -filter:links

3. All tweets sent from a particular location
#hashtag near:”New York, NY” within:15mi

OK, next we need to build our Twitter bot app. I suggest creating a separate Twitter account to test your automated bots.

1. Go to apps.twitter.com and create a new application. Fill in the mandatory fields (name, description, URL) and click the Create button. Next go to Keys and Access Tokens and click the Create my Access Token button. Twitter will generate the Consumer Keys & Access tokens that we will need in the next step.
2. Click here to copy the Twitter bot script to your Google Drive. Replace the search phrase and Twitter keys that were generated in the previous step.
3. Go to the Run menu and choose StartBot to initialize your Twitter bot.

That’s it. The bot will run in the background, every 10 minutes, and favorite / retweet matching tweets. It will fave/RT a maximum of 1 tweet per minute. If you wish to stop the bot later, go to Run again and choose StopBot.

Also see: How to Save Conference Tweets to a Spreadsheet

Use with care and, as always, the full source of the Twitter retweet bot is available on ctrlq.org under the “do whatever you like” license.

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The story, How to Create a Retweet and Favorite Bot for Twitter, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 03/08/2015 under Twitter, Internet.

A Renewal Reminder

Google has recently sent notifications about some domains that are about to expire. "Your registration of domain.com is about to expire. This means that users will no longer be able to access your website at that time."

The domains were registered using Google Domains, but they were set to automatically renew, so Google's message was confusing. Google realized that it was a mistake and sent another message:

"An automated email was sent out to you earlier in error with the subject 'Your domain registration is expiring'. Please discard the erroneous message. Since your domain is set to auto-renew, your domain will be renewed on the expiration date as expected. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused."

Unfortunately for Google, the message was sent to 1664 people and all the email addresses were added to the "to" field, so everyone can see them. Whoops!

More Related Images in Google Image Search for Mobile

Google Image Search has a new mobile interface. When you tap a thumbnail, Google shows the image result, a link to the page and a long list of related images.

Below the search result, you can find a list of similar images. You can still swipe left or right to go to the previous or the next image result. Tap the image to hide everything else.

How to Save your Gmail to Google Drive Automatically

Introducing Save Emails, a new Google Docs add-on that will help you easily save email messages and file attachments from Gmail to your Google Drive automatically. The emails threads are converted and saved as PDF files in Drive while the attachments are saved in their native format.

You can use the Google add-on to save images, videos, Office documents, project backups and everything else from Gmail to your Google Drive. It also supports the Gmail size search operator so if your mailbox is running out of space, use the add-on to quickly move the large file attachmetns to Drive and delete the corresponding email from Gmail.

Download Gmail Attachments & Emails to Google Drive

The YouTube video will help you get started in 2 minutes.

All you have to do is visually create a rule, similar to how your create filters in Gmail, and then specify a folder in your Google drive. The add-on runs in the background and will automatically download the matching emails to the corresponding Drive folder. You can choose to save the email message only, the included attachments or both.

The add-on runs every hour but if you would like to speed up things a bit, you can manually start the downloads as well. While you are inside the Google Sheet, go to Addons, Save Emails and Attachments and then choose Manage Rules. Now pick any of available rules that you have previously created and tap the Run button to instantly download the matching emails to your Google Drive.

Once an email thread is added to Google Drive, a label “Saved” is applied to the message in Gmail to indicate that the thread has been processed by the add-on and it won’t be processed in the next iteration.

Download Save Emails

Internally, there’s a Google Script that is doing all the hard work. It connects to your Gmail, pulls the matching threads and saves them to Drive via the various Google Apps Script APIs.

The add-on is completely free but there’s a premium version as well that offers a few additional benefits. With premium, you can create unlimited number of mapping rules, the Gmails are saved to Drive at a much faster rate (within 10-15 minutes) and you get email support as well.

If you are wondering why use an add-on where you have services like Zapier or IFTTT that offer similar features, here’s a clue. The Save Emails add-on can process both new (incoming) email as well as old messages in your mailbox. It converts your email messages into high-quality, print-ready and searchable PDF files. And you can run the add-on manually to save emails on demand.

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The story, How to Save your Gmail to Google Drive Automatically, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 30/07/2015 under GMail, Google Drive, Internet.

Google's Visual Translation Supports 20 New Languages

Google bought Word Lens last year and brought a very useful feature to Google Translate: real-time visual translation. Use a phone or a tablet running Android or iOS, point the camera at a sign or text in a foreign language and Google will translate the text almost instantly, while preserving all the other details. It's like using a magic camera that translates text and lets you read street signs, restaurant menus, user manuals, newspaper articles even if they're written in foreign languages.

Visual translation now supports 20 additional languages. "You can now translate to and from English and Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. You can also do one-way translations from English to Hindi and Thai." Back in January, the feature was launched with only 7 supported languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

This feature requires to pick the right languages before tapping the camera button and one of the languages must be English. You'll probably be prompted to download a small language pack, since you can use Word Lens offline.

Google Research Blog has more information about Word Lens. After finding the text regions in the picture, Google recognizes the letters using a convolutional neural network. "Letters out in the real world are marred by reflections, dirt, smudges, and all kinds of weirdness. So we built our letter generator to create all kinds of fake 'dirt' to convincingly mimic the noisiness of the real world—fake reflections, fake smudges, fake weirdness all around." After recognizing the letters, Google translates the text taking into account that text recognition might include mistakes, then it "renders the translation on top of the original words in the same style as the original". Google actually erases the original text using the colors surrounding the text and draws the translation using the initial foreground color. It's quite clever.