OT: I watched a soccer game!
Ok, this is totally off topic here, but it's still of historic importance that I need to write it down somewhere :)
Yesterday, for the first time in my 32-year lasting life, I watched a soccer game with honest, serious interest. :) England vs France; I favor the Brits, of course ;) (although I like Paris more than London; on the other side, Beckham dresses better than Zidane, and the UK has Oasis, the Who, etc). But anyway, it was a shame that the French actually won the game by 2:1
in the last three minutes.
That's all. Thanks for reading :)
Link to MoreGoogle and increase your Amazon earnings (BETA)
Since MoreGoogle is now
able to display Amazon product details, I invite all Amazon Associates / Affiliates to link to MoreGoogle and start earning $$ :)
Here is how it works:
You link to MoreGoogle and include your Amazon Associate ID
MoreGoogle stores your Amazon Associate ID in a cookie
People download "your" MoreGoogle
When a user clicks on an Amazon link, MoreGoogle inserts your Amazon Associate ID. On every second click, MoreGoogle inserts its own ID, so we effectively share the click-through-rate 50:50.
Linking to MoreGoogle
Update: I've created a link building page that makes the whole process a lot easier
The link looks like this:
http://scripts.moregoogle.com/redirect/associates.php?amzncom=[your-Amazon-Associate-ID]
where [your-Amazon-Assiciate-Id] is your Amazon.com Associate ID.
If you are an Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.de associate, use the following parameters:
amznuk=[your-Amazon-UK-Associate-ID]
amznde=[your-Amazon-DE-Associate-ID]
If you have multiple Amazon Associate IDs, just add all parameters to your link. For example, if you have Associate accounts with Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de, your link could look like this:
http://scripts.moregoogle.com/redirect/associates.php?amzncom=myamazoncomid-20&amznuk=myamazonukid-21&amznde=myamazondeid-22
All you need to do is add the link to your web page :)
Testing it
Once you have your link in place, just click it and make sure you have MoreGoogle installed (It is also important that you are running IE when you click the link).
Go to www.google.com (or google.co.uk or google.de, whatever your preferred address is)
Find some Amazon products; a good start is to search for "Harry Potter DVD"
Now look at the Google results. Somewhere you'll find a link to an Amazon product.
Click the link
Look at the URL in the address bar - you'll see your Amazon ID :)
BETA!
This is the first attempt, and everything is still running in Beta-mode. If you have questions or feedback, please post them here!
Amazon.com Product info
MoreGoogle now inserts basic product info when a search result links to an Amazon.com product. It inserts a product image instead of the site thunbnail, the media type (such as CD, Paperback, DVD, CD-ROM, etc), Amazon's price, price of used & new 3rd party items, and the product rating. Feedback welcome :)
No more ads!
MoreGoogle no longer inserts ad banners. Interestingly, users don't care as much as the media (and probably site owners and advertisers); it seems that everyone gets very suspicious these days when it comes to free software...
EvenMoreGoogle: Results, remixed.
"Great artists steal", Pablo Picasso said, and I remember Steve Jobs quoting him. (I'm a big admirer of both of them; the only picture I found worth decorating my living room with is
Picasso's "A Dog", and I own a
Picasso portrait print from Apple's "Think Different" campaign).
Christina Wodtke, former Yahoo! Search design lead: "Good artists borrow, great artists steal: If the old saw is true,"
she writes, "then
MoreGoogle is great." Thanks :)
I had a short e-mail discussion with Philipp Lenssen, who runs FindForward and Google Blogoscoped.
He writes that MoreGoogle would "hijack" Google results.
Of course, I have a different opinion on this issue. Probably the last thing the world needs today is Yet Another Search Engine Based On Google.
FindForward, as many other Google based Search Engines, uses Google's results through the Google API, but has its own user interface. And it removes Google's advertising. Instead, it displays its own ads. Duh. Now... if the term "hijacking" is appropriate at all, one might wonder who's the real "hijacker" here :)
The most interesting view though comes from techdirt:
It appears that there are a lot of folks out there who are trying to "remix" Google's interface
. Remixing - this is it. Results, remixed!
I prefer to see MoreGoogle returning "annotated search results" - much like you ask someone to do research on something and get back a pile of paper with sticky notes on it. And, technically, this is what MoreGoogle does: you get 100% of Google and when the result pages is loaded, MoreGoogle adds more information.
The whole point of it is this: Google is
the search engine today, and all these Google-based ones just add a few new aspects or (worst case) modify the user interface. So why develop a "new" search engine if you basically just want to add one new aspect? Adobe and many other Mac companies recognized years ago that there is so much potential with Plug-Ins. There's a whole
Plug-In microeconomy for Photoshop, Illustrator and GoLive. You can find
hundreds of Plug-Ins for WinAmp. And it makes so much sense: focus on core competencies! Many small companies only exist because they develop add-ons for Adobe. Others just write WinAmp plug-ins for the fun of it. Let's "Just add value" :)
The possibility to enhance a product with new custom features basically transforms that product into a platform. Why not let people customize Google? How about custom Google skins? There are a couple of sites out there that compute a site's PageRank - why not make that a Google Add-On? And who says that this is limited to Google? Why not add stuff to Amazon, eBay or any other site? There are many online phone directories that don't have an "Add to my address book" button. And guess who added one to his favourite directory? Correct :)
Now, add a few buzzwords to all of this, like Web Services, XML, Semantic Web, etc... that's what MoreGoogle is all about. Results, Remixed.
MoreGoogle Performance Improvement
One neat thing about MoreGoogle is that it doesn't require software updates. The part that's installed on the PC (a DLL) is only 30k small, the rest are scripts. Those scripts are downloaded from the MoreGoogle server, so whenever there's an update, it's automatically available to everyone without installing new software.
There's a small disadvantage, though: Internet Explorer automatically checks for MoreGoogle script updates, which generates quite some traffic on the MoreGoogle web server and might slow down the browser.
To overcome that, I've now optimized MoreGoogle to take advantage of web caches. Internet Explorer and proxy servers will now cache the MoreGoogle scripts and only check for updates from time to time.
