Continuing to make their Google Book Search more useful, Google has added downloads of public domain books to the service.

While it is a noble goal to make these classic books available for free to readers across the world, I wonder why they didn’t just partner with the already existing, and very extensive, Project Gutenberg. And why, of all formats, did they choose PDF?! I admit, it’s nice that you get to see the covers of the scanned books, the illustrations, the original type, the coffee stains and all of that, but you can’t copy and edit the text. That reduces their public domain usefulness by quite a large amount.

The Project Gutenberg’s downloads are available in many formats, mainly text and HTML, which are both completely editable and searchable, but also in audio format via the mp3 codec. Some of the audio versions are done with primitive ear-jarring text-to-speech technology that would make even Stephen Hawking go mad, but others are done by actual people and are quite a pleasure to listen to.

Now I feel like reading, or possibly listening to, something from the Project Gutenberg Top 100.

I was playing around with the new Google Talk feature that lets you show your contacts what song you’re currently listening to, which led me to Google Music Trends. Now, I realize that this is still just an experimental project from Google Labs, but it seems a lot less useful than most of Google’s other endeavours.

In its current state it’s just a list of the top 20 songs that Google Talk users have been listening to recently. Some of the results are a little baffling, making me wonder just how many users have gone through the trouble of opting-in to the program (there is a setting in Google Talks’s preferences for this). The songs and artists also link to Google’s nifty music entries. As I write this, the top song is Dani California by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Well, actually, that’s a lie, the Peppers were second. The top song was You’re Beautiful by James Blunt, but come on, can you blame me for lying?

Anyway, all I’m saying is that Last.fm doesn’t have anything to worry about for a good while when it comes to the user-influenced music ranking business.

In order to make it easier to find actual paper and ink copies of books you might search for on Google Book Search, a “Find Libraries” link has been added to search results. When searching for an author or book you can then link directly to WorldCat and find a copy of the book you want at a local library (after supplying WorldCat with your postal code, state, province or country).

I had some problems with the Find Libraries link not appearing half the time, though. The post on GoogleBlog says, “Queries on Google Book Search will automatically include results from library catalogs when appropriate.” This apparetly means that the link won’t appear unless the book has been digitized as part of the Library Project. I’m not sure what the point of that is, really, but you can always just go directly to the source and cut out the middle man. WorldCat also integrates with your browser search bars.

After many years in production, Internet Explorer 7 seem to be nearing release. They’ve given the browser a new look, added real tabs support, an internal RSS reader, and to further achieve parity with Firefox and Opera, they’ve added a search bar to the main interface.

It’s nice to see them adapting to the browser market and adding many of the features people have become used to. I just hope that all the evil CSS bugs that have plagued IE6 have been fixed. I know quite a few rapidly balding web developers who would be very happy if this turns out to be so.

I wonder if Microsoft is timing the release of IE7 to coincide with the imminent release of Firefox 2 in an attempt to steal their thunder.

In response to the recent AOL privacy blunder Unspam Technologies, Inc., a Utah based anti-spam firm, launched a new service to keep search engines guessing as to the real preferences of their users.

The traditional advice given to maintain your privacy online is to regularly delete the “cookies” from your browser. Lost in the Crowd takes a different approach. The free service works with AOL, Ask.com, Google, MSN, and Yahoo and lets users register the tracking cookies from their favorite search engines. Lost in the Crowd then runs random searches at random times from its servers. Because the service has the users’ tracking cookies, the searches appear to come from the users using the actual search engine themselves.

I wonder how long it will take the search engines to filter out queries from UnSpam’s servers?

That search log data that AOL released is simply not going to go away. It’s out there, people have it, and they’re having way too much fun with it. AOL Search Logs is sort of a community site where users sift through the released logs and create profiles of the User IDs connected to the data. I won’t link to any in particular, but they have found stuff that ranges from highly embarrassing to utterly criminal.

I admit I did a vanity search to see if any of the searches had anything to do with me or my friends. Luckily, I didn’t find anything “bad”, but one of my friends claims she did find her own searches, which she refuses to link me to. Wonder what kind of freaky stuff she was searching for.

I recommend to everyone to at least do a quick search for any info that you might not be aware is now public knowledge.

AOL Search Logs isn’t the only site out there indexing this data, and there are bound to be many others. The data has also become the source for much entertainment elsewhere.

With good reason, people are complaining.

Google claims that their recent acquisition of Neven Vision’s image recognition software will make Picasa better at organizing your vacation images and so on. While rather nifty from a technological point of view, this doesn’t seem all that practical or useful.

What’s got me all hot is the idea of Google Image Search being able to employ similar techniques. I use Image Search frequently, but far too often the results are poor because of bad file naming practices or because sites hosting images are obviously not going to be able to textually describe everything that occurs or exists in a given image. Being able to search within the pixels of all the indexable images on the net would be an amazing achievement.

Of course, the privacy issues that such a service could raise are probably giving some privacy activists cold sweats, but what doesn’t these days?

No, not the kind of of Google stalking where you periodically search for an ex’s info to see how they’re getting along after leaving you a shell of what you once were. I mean stalking Google itself to find new services and sites before they’re officially, or even unofficially, released.

I must admit I’ve done this in the past, but this guy takes it to a whole new level. What’s the point? What’s the use of finding a new service before it’s most likely even working properly? To brag about it on your blog, of course!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find irrefutable proof that GoogleOS exists.

You fellow blog keepers out there might find “Ten ways to search with Technorati” over at Lifehacker useful. It details some of the powerful blog searching tools that Technorati offers its users.

I have never gotten into Technorati myself, but after reading this I think I’ll have to get an account and find yet more blogs to spend my not so precious time reading.

Edit: Seems like they really enjoy their Technorati over at Lifehacker. Here are “Ten (more) ways to search with Technorati.”

One of my favourite Google Maps hacks is definitely WikiMapia. It takes Google’s beautiful mapping interface and, in Wikipedia fashion, allows users to drag boundaries over any location and then add a name, a description and even links.

As if I didn’t already spend enough time dragging around in Google Maps, now I can actually figure out what some of the places I find are. Of course, not all areas have been marked very well, and in some popular areas there is quite a bit of humorous vandalism. Luckily there is a system for reporting false entries, though I don’t know how they can manage to verify these reports when they have the entire earth over which to administer.

The site is useful for more than just idle exploration, though. A lot of times when you search for an address with Google Maps, the resulting arrow ends up pointing in the middle of the street or a good half a block from the actual building you want to find. This can help you pinpoint your destination better, but as I said earlier, not all areas are going to be marked well enough to make it useful on a regular basis.

Would be nice if Google themselves added this type of functionality to their maps. Yes, I know that Google Earth has similar editing capabilities, but not everyone has it installed on their system. Everyone does has a browser, though.