Street Views on Google Maps

One word: WOW!

Street View YouTube video courtesy of Google.



For more info, see Google Maps.

Checked

I was admiring the newly selected theme for my Google personalized home page when I noticed a link at the bottom for Google Checkout, Google's Paypal-like service.

I remember trying to sign up last month but couldn't actually do so because the Philippines was not listed. Well, I'm now happy to report that folks like me with Philippine billing addresses can now register! Thanks, Google.

Side note: If you sign up before March 31, you'll receive a $10 credit to your account, which you can use anytime before April 30.

Google Custom Search

It never ceases to amaze me just how much stuff Google has going on behind the scenes.

My latest find is something called Google Custom Search (CSE) which, as the name implies, lets you build your own little customized search engine. The service launched in October 2006 and it took five months before I even realized it existed.

Customization is achieved by limiting the search to certain domains or by blocking others, which makes it ideal for, say, adding a blog search widget to your sidebar.

As always, monetization helps, so you can link your custom search engine to your Adsense account and make some extra moolah in the process.

I tried adding this to one of my blogs (not this one) last night, and the whole process took around five minutes or so (would have been faster if my 'net connection was up to snuff). The only part of the process that confused me was when I had to 'grant permission' to my custom search engine from within my Adsense account. The error message in CSE wasn't explicit enough for this sleepy head. hehe.

Anyway, do check it out. For more information, there's always the official Google Custom Search Blog.

Worrying about the Fragile Web

I have to admire Jason Goldman for the passion that he feels towards his work.

In a recent blogpost, he asked the question, Does working on the web truly matter? and immediately answered with a resounding Yes!

And you know what? That got me thinking.

Deep down inside, I believe that working on the web does matter. Perhaps that's why I'm always surfing the 'net, forever adding new blogs to my RSS subscriptions, and endlessly creating one more account on yet another new website so I can explore the features for no real purpose other than the intellectual stimulation of having my curiosity satisfied.

At the same time, however, I can't help but worry about the fragility of the web. Perhaps living in a newly industrialized country such as the Philippines has made me more sensitive to how easily bits and bytes can be destroyed or rendered inaccessible. Heck, in the past few months alone, I've experienced losing all the basic utilities (electricity, water, and Internet access), sometimes for extended periods. When you have no 'up time' guarantees for the basic stuff, well, the web by necessity takes a back seat.

Perhaps that's why so few of my friends here have even heard of 'Web 2.0' or 'User Generated Content.' Frankly, most of them will have to work to stifle their yawns if I try to explain the idea. They're more concerned about balancing their budgets, raising their kids, managing their businesses, and doing other things out in the real world.

Add to all this the fact that anyone with a web browser can easily find the location of Google's mega-data center in Oregon, and well, you have to wonder how susceptible this blog is to getting blown up in some freak terrorist attack.

I know, I know... I'm sounding delusionally paranoid now. But that's the direction that my mind naturally takes when I realize just how many of my eggs have (over time) been moved into this single basket called Google.

Having said all this, I return to the original question: does working on the web matter? My answer is still Yes... but (and there's a but) the work is simply too high up on Maslow's pyramid to benefit the Filipino everyman, and frighteningly far too susceptible to damage and sabotage in our increasingly unsafe world.

Unable to Checkout

Stumbled across the Google Checkout blog today and was immediately interested in this Google service, since I'd not heard of it before.

From what I can see, it's being positioned as an alternative to Paypal.

It's just too bad that the Philippines isn't listed as one of the countries which can use this service. It's a truly sad state of affairs when users from Zimbabwe are welcome, but Filipinos aren't.

Google Browser Sync for Firefox

What happens when my top two favorite brands collaborate? The result is one really incredible product (and a very happy user)!

I'm talking, of course, about the Google Browser Sync for Firefox which is...

... an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers.

It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

I found out about this utility a few days ago and for the first time in literally years of web surfing, I found it worthwhile to actually invest some time in organizing my bookmarks.

I'd long ago given up on browser-based bookmarks and had already been using my Google homepage instead, because I needed the same bookmarks on my home PC and my work laptop. But the Google homepage interface is somewhat cumbersome and not at all conducive to organizing tons of bookmark entries.

Google Browser Sync is therefore a godsend. The best part for me is the fact that I can end a session of web browsing on one machine and literally resume it on another. There's no awkward mental shift when you face an empty browser window at the start of a new session.

With the Browser Sync I can easily pick up from the train of thought that I had when I ended the previous session. For this avid web surfer, that's like manna from heaven! Haha!

It also helps that I didn't need to create a new Google account to use this. My current account works just fine and literally took less than a minute to get everything installed, configured, and working.

All software should be so painless and so useful.