Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The Curfew Tolls The "Knol" Of Parting Day

Google announced that it is paring back on some of its free offerings such as bookmarks, and friend connect, and knol. 

Perhaps, Google is reverting to its founding tenet: Do one thing and do it really well.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Google Advanced News Search: Large Bug

The bug is that, as far as I can tell, users can no longer access the Google News advanced search page from a keyboard.

Previously, you could display the advanced news search page using a link that was
accessible from a keyboard or by using a mouse.

Now, to display the advanced search page you must use a mouse to click an arrow within the search field. 


This raises an issue of accessibility for people who cannot use a mouse.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Google's Recipes Feature More Large Bug Examples

Previously, I posted examples of Google recipe feature bugs.

See: http://googcomments.blogspot.com/2011/09/googles-recipes-feature-some-trivial.html

 

Here are a few more bug examples:

Example #1:


Using the recipes feature
[fruit salad with pineapples apples oranges and bananas]
About 7 results

Regular Google search
[recipes fruit salad with pineapples apples oranges and bananas]
About 826,000 results

Example #2:

Using the recipes feature
[grilled sandwich with eggplant tomato cucumber and mozzarella]
About 9 results

Regular Google search
[recipes grilled sandwich with eggplant tomato cucumber and mozzarella]
About 190,000 results

Example #3:

Using the recipes feature
[iced tea with lemon mint and passionfruit]
About 7 results

Regular Google search
[recipes iced tea with lemon mint and passionfruit]
About 123,000 results

Google's recipes feature is described here: 
http://www.google.com/landing/recipes

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Chrome Browser: Another Trivial Bug

Here's the trivial bug: Chrome Browser -> Options -> Personal Stuff -> Passwords and Autofill features should not be available per browser. 

Those personal stuff features put users at risk in multiuser computer situations such as public cafes, classrooms, and libraries.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Google's Advanced Search: Trivial Bug

When you run a Google Web search, Google's algorithms try to look for your search keywords in several places including Web page titles, text, and URLs.

If you want, you can use Google's Advanced Search filters to narrow down your search to specific areas.


This trivial to small-sized bug occurs when you try to search only in Web page body text: Advanced Search Page -> Where your keywords show up -> In the text of the page.


The problem is the Web body text searches incorrectly use the search operator as a literal search keyword instead of as an operator. You can easily see the bug if you try any of these searches:


[allinbody: house]

[allinbody: car]

[allinbody: tea]

[allinbody: football]
 
[allinbody: algorithm]
[allinbody: science]