Google is running an experiment in their search results and has “Two new improvements to Google results pages“, apparently shown to a portion of their users. What happens is that on the search results, say for the query comic books, a link in the top blue bar will read “Show options…”. Click it, and a side bar full of options expands to the left.

The options include some known experiments, plus things I didn’t see so far. There are restriction options to show only recent results, only videos, only forum entries, or only reviews. You can sort by relevance, or by date, and you can only show results from time ranges like the past 24 hours or the past week. You can opt to receive longer snippet text, and images. There’s also a timeline feature and search suggestions.

Here are some screenshots of the process (I’ve added a circle in the first screen showing the link that gets you started):

One of the interesting experiment features is the “wonder wheel.” This will show a Flash-based interactive mini app which starts with your keyword in the center, and related terms around it. Clicking on a related term creates a new, connected circle with more related terms. And whenever you click on a term, to the very right, the web results change to reflect your current topic of focus. The wonder wheel worked quite smoothly, except when I tried using the back button after going to a page from the results.

Take a look at the video below:

]]> http://googlewatchblog.in/2009/03/google-is-experimenting-with-a-new-results-page-wonder-wheel-timeline-and-more/feed/ 0 http://googlewatchblog.in/2009/03/google-chrome-launches-its-first-extension-and-new-chrome-experiments-released/ http://googlewatchblog.in/2009/03/google-chrome-launches-its-first-extension-and-new-chrome-experiments-released/#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:24:57 +0000 GoogleWatchBlog Team http://igooglewatch.com/?p=66

For some weeks there are some documents about addons for Google Chrome and today they launched their first extension. This only works with the Chrome 2.0 beta or the last two versions of Dev.

In order to activate the addons you have on the Google Chrome shortcut command – enable-extensions – load-extension = “c: myextension” and insert this file in C: myextension store. It should be noted that the three when you open files directly from C: myextension appear.

Now is not the google.com or the Google logo, but you can make a cat to appears also . This can be done by changing foo.js and adjusting it.

Chrome experiments are here:

When Google Chrome launched last September, it included a powerful JavaScript engine, V8, which was built to make the next generation of web applications perform faster in the browser. In the past few months, we’ve reached out to more than a dozen developers and designers to experiment with V8 and to find new and fun uses for JavaScript. We worked with REAS, Mr. Doob, Ryan Alexander, Josh Nimoy, Mark Mahoney, and Toxi, among others.

The results of their experimentation have been great, with each project turning the browser window into an interactive application, a game, or even a piece of art. Whether you’re a casual web surfer or an advanced JavaScript developer, we think you’ll appreciate what they’ve achieved.

Here’s a preview of what they have built:

Take a look for yourself at Chrome Experiments. Although you don’t need Google Chrome to view the site, some of the experiments may run slower, or incorrectly, in older browsers. To download Google Chrome, click here. ]]> http://googlewatchblog.in/2009/03/google-chrome-launches-its-first-extension-and-new-chrome-experiments-released/feed/ 0