FEATURES

Google Everything?

Not content with attempting to index every webpage there is on the Internet, Google have a plan to make all of Earth visible and searchable from the comfort of your computer. To that end, Google Earth, Google Maps, and now Google Ocean, will let you roam and sightsee nearly every part of the planet. Google Maps will even let you flip over to Street View – where you can virtually drive down your street and right up to your home. We here at web|magazine wonder what’s next? Google Living Room – where you can progress from Street View and go inside to observe yourself sprawled out on the sofa with a beer? Google Refrigerator – where you can explore the hidden depths (and forgotten food) at the rear of the fridge? Or how about Google Interior – where you can navigate through your internal organs, bookmarking places of interest?

earth.google.com/ocean

Xero. Easy.

Xero is a web-based package of accounting software designed for small businesses. Founded in 2006, and a New Zealand company, they describe themselves as “the world’s easiest accounting system.”

Currently, one of the Internet’s hottest trends is to move away from localised, in-house software to that of global, Internet-based software (e.g. Google Docs). The logic is: why buy an expensive application, and have the trouble of maintaining and upgrading it on your computer, when for a fraction of the cost and no effort, you can outsource to the Net?

For a monthly fee, you can use Xero’s fully-featured accounting software to do your bookkeeping. Features include, bank reconciliation, invoicing and payables, report creation, contacts lists, taxation, and more.

Xero is online – it runs on their computer servers, not yours – this means there’s nothing for you to install or configure. You log into Xero via a web browser from any computer, anywhere, at any time – no problems if your office computer is stolen or decides to take an early retirement.

Upgrades to Xero are free and require no downloading - they become available when you next log in. And naturally, Xero offer a high standard of security and maintain regular backups.

www.xero.com

Will Cuil get Hot?

Launched in July of last year, Cuil (pronounced COOL) is a search engine that claims to be the world’s biggest. According to their website, Cuil are 3 times bigger than Google and 10 times bigger than Microsoft. Bold declarations, but then Cuil has been developed by a group of seriously experienced boffins from the search engine field—former Google and IBM staffers among them.

Cuil has pointedly been developed with a fresh approach to searching (new architecture and algorithms) to tackle the rapid, exponential growth of the Internet. Their goal is to place “nearly the entire Web at the fingertips of every user.”

Cuil ranks pages based on content and context. When a searched-for keyword is located on a webpage, Cuil examines the whole site, putting that keyword into context to gauge its relevance. Depending on the search query, this can lead to a more intuitive list of results, and Cuil’s magazine-style presentation of these is distinctly different from the traditional blue-lines approach of most other search engines.

Cuil is the new searcher on the block. They have a tiny share of the world’s searching at this point, but they have solid funding and a reasonable point-of-difference that could see them emerge as a major player. File under one to watch.

www.cuil.com

Google Trends

Research is important in any web business venture, and Google Trends is a useful utensil to have in your research toolbox.

Type in something to search for, as you would for a regular Google search, and instead of getting back a list of links to websites featuring your search word or phrase, what you'll get back is a Trend History outlining where that word or phrase is being googled most frequently.

For example, type in "mobile phone" and you'll discover the term is most frequently googled in the United Kingdom, India, and Australia. Google Trends is in effect a reverse-term lookup, or personal Zeitgeist analyser.

A searched term's Trend History reports the volume of searching for the term over the last four years, the regions and cities from where it is most searched for, and the languages it is most searched for in. Click on a region and you'll drill down and get a regional breakdown - for example, "mobile phone" is googled more often in Hamilton than Auckland.

Another feature of Google Trends is its ability to compare. Type in up to five words or phrases (separated by commas) and the resulting Trend History will detail each term, as above, and will also compare them.

You can find out which of a series of terms is more popularly searched for and where - for example, typing in "war, peace" reveals war is, by far, the more searched for term ... and searched for the most by Australians.

www.google.com/trends