Just read this on Webmaster Central Blog - Google is testing the latest approach to content discovery by crawling HTML forms on a selected group of sites deemed to be particularly useful. Googlebot will, upon coming onto an HTMl form, determine whether form method is GET or POST. It will actually proceed only if it’s a GET form, since they want to avoid crawling forms that may require user information input (such as usernames and passwords), which all use POST. The bot will actually “fill in” text fields with words (found on the site), choose options on radio buttons and select menus, and try to crawl resulting content, and index it if it determines it’s useful and hasn’t previously been indexed.

Anyway, the experiment is an effort to try and crawl/index, what has been called “invisible content” or “the invisible internet” for years, which is a previously untapped rich source of information which over the years has stayed hidden behind processes requiring human interaction.

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This is a great example of how JavaScript can be used to render graphics and games in browsers, at only 14 Kb of code (compressed). The demo is playable, using arrow keys, although it features only one (incomplete) level. No external images or files are used. Sprites are made using canvas or div-making tactics (for IE), and sound is embedded as base64 encoded data (URIs). All sprites have only 4 colors, which helps keep things small (40-60 bytes per sprite).

As the guys at Nihilogic said, this was a proof-of-concept exercise, but it’s impressive how much was achieved with a single 14 Kb javascript file.

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Google Earth and The New York Times have collaborated to produce a new layer in Google Earth that enables users to actually see news location origin, as they happen. According to Google LatLong, all you have to do is get the latest version of Google Earth, and make sure the “Geographic Web” folder is turned on. You then click on the New York Times place mark to see the lates news and features about that region. The news are updated every 15 minutes.

Mapped news are not that new a concept. Here’s an example (dating back from 2005), which is basically a mash-up of Associated Press news feed, Yahoo Geocoding API, Google Maps and GxMarker.

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Opera has been a good student, studied a lot lately, and passed the Acid 3 test! The Acid 3 test proved to be a mouthfull for every major browser release until now.

This is a screenshot of WinGogi (Windows version of reference builds used for the internal testing of Opera’s platform independent Core) after having successfully rendered the Acid 3 test page. According to Opera Desktop team blog, the Opera development team have reached the 100% pass grade for the first time, after having worked hard on fixing bugs. There are still some things to fix, but they will be sorted out soon. A technical preview version will be released on labs.opera.com soon.

Now, if they could only get Opera Mini on my P1i to do the same, that would be great

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This is interesting. I came across this post by Cabel (Cabel.name), according to which advertising search seems to be the new direction in advertising, at least in Japan. But wait, not the search advertising you’re probably thinking of…

How about that? Cabel says it makes sense since all the good domain names are gone, and almost no one will go past the first slash after .com or .net anyway. So, why not advertise the search query that will lead the user towards the brand, product or service?

Most people turn to the search engines in order to find something anyway, even if they know the direct URL to a site (it’s still entered in the search engine query field). But there are a few problems with advertising your brand using a search query. Google owns almost two thirds of searches on a daily basis, so your advertising initiative will most likely have the user go to Google. In that case you better own the first result page, which is plausible for brand searches, or searches that are very specific to a product or service directly related to your business, but pretty unstable if you’re advertising generic or unbranded terms. If you rank 1st for a generic term and you are stable on that position, than the risk is worth it. If Google really does record click-through rate for organic search results, than an offline campaign like this could increase the number of searches for a particular term you rank well for and attract even more clicks, maybe thus cementing your number 1 spot even more. Hm, I only wish it was that simple…

Then again, the interface shown on the advertisements may be well known to belong to a local search property used by the local community, in which case it’s easier to make sure you really appear as the main result for the advertised search query. Definitely worth experimenting with. If integrated well with an online campaign, this could actually work well, for example in the UK market. Get a priority listing on a local search engine, make sure you appear on top for that particular query, and then advertise your search query locally. It shouldn’t cost too much, and the experiment result, whatever it may be, will be worth it.

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If you’ve registered an .rs domain (Serbia’s new TLD), you may be having trouble getting Google Webmaster Tools to verify your domain. There is a thread on Google Groups about this, and it seems the last development is that the Google team is to look into this issue in more detail, and hopefully resolve it soon. Found this on Search Engine Roundtable, so kudos to rustybrick for picking this up.

The .rs domain has been announced last October, and the official activation of the new TLD was on March 10, 2008. The former .yu TLD has automatically been replaced by .rs for those already in ownership of .yu and .co.yu domains. The automatic transition has yielded a somewhat unexpected effect. This doesn’t mean .rs sites are not getting indexed, on the contrary, the issue involves only Google Webmaster Tools.

More information about the .rs domain can be found on the official RNIDS site (Registry of National Internet Domain of Serbia). In case you are interested in a .rs domain, foreign nationals are allowed to register an .rs domain, as long as the administrative contact is from Serbia. Here’s a list of accredited registrars for .rs .

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VideoEgg is discontinuing its service my.videoegg.com on May 31st, 2008. The reason they’ve given on their FAQ page says it has to do with limited resources available for a start-up company. They are aiming to concentrate their efforts on the core business. Everyone who has uploaded videos using my.videoegg.com will be able to reclaim their content until the end of May. After that all embedded video players everywhere will display a corresponding discontinuation message, instead of video content.

If you’ve got video content you’d like to keep, head on over to my.videoegg.com before the end of May and save all your content. Upload it to YouTube instead, and start playing with AdSense for video.

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This is a small plug-in for Firefox that enables users to easily check for domain name availability from within any content they’re viewing in the browser. Simply mark the text that contains the words that sound good enough to comprise an interesting domain name and press “Ctrl+Shift+D”, and the tool, Domain Lookup, will create the proper combinations, remove invalid characters and check domain availability on your favorite registrar. Alternatively, there’s always the option to right click and use Domain Lookup from the context menu.

Naturally, there is a limited number of supported registrars, and they are 1 & 1, 123reg, DirectNic, DomainDiscover, Dotster, eNom, Fabulous, GoDaddy, Melbourne IT, Moniker, Register.com, NameCheap, NameScout, Network Solutions, UKReg, UK2. TLDs that are checked for are .com, .org, .net, .info, .biz, .us, .co.uk, .org.uk, .fr, .jp, .de, .ca, .au, .ie, .ro . Both lists will be extended over time, and users are welcome to suggest additions at any time. Here’s an idea - add .rs and .me to the list. Both can produce interesting combinations.

Privacy statement says domain searches and lookups are not logged (at least not by the tool). A word of caution though. Once checked on registrars, your domain names are very easily visible to others (I don’t know exactly how, but it seems there are a number of ways this can be done). If you don’t snatch that name right away, someone will, and fast. Happened to me, lost a couple of very interesting domain names that way. Domain Lookup is available for download/install here.

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It’s been a while since I posted about something directly going on with Facebook. There were mostly plenty of new applications that ended up, well, nowhere, but this is different. This is Facebook’s own application for instant messaging. According to TechCrunch, it’s coming very soon, like in the next week, and it will be built on the Jabber platform most probably (just like GTalk).

There are third party instant chat applications on Facebook, like Social.IM or Instant Chat, but their days may be numbered once Facebook introduces its own instant chat service. According to AllFacebook, openness will be key, and I agree. Having the ability to import contacts from other chat clients like GTalk and Skype will be a great start. But why not an even more open platform which would add the ability to chat with a Facebook user (who’s logged in) from another site where the chat client can be embedded.

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I already posted about Windows 7, which was reportedly supposed to come in 2009. Well, it seems that some real info about the release date (year), has surfaced. According to a post on Softpedia, Windows 7 is coming in 2010. A Microsoft spokes person revealed to Softpedia that the new OS will be released three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA (general availability), which comes to 2010, but the actual release will happen when the new product meets Microsoft’s quality bar for release.

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