Google unleashed a whole bunch of new features today, some experimental, some a work in process, and some ready for the world…The speed at which the company rolls out updates, upgrades and new features is quite staggering, and truly applaudable. Check the latest new features below:
Google Follow Finder:
Following today’s Chirp Conference, Google has released an experimental feature into Google Labs, called Google Follow Finder. What does it do? It helps Twitter users find more people to follow. Simply enter your Twitter account name into Google Follow Finder, and it will generate a list of people who you might be interested in following. And as you do not have to log in to get these results, you can find a whole bunch of other interesting people to follow if you simply enter other people’s Twitter user names. On an even lighter note, Google calls Twitter users Tweeps, perhaps referring to Twitter Peeps (Twitter People). In case you do see someone you want to follow, click “Follow on Twitter,” log in to your account, and they will be added to your following list. Google has designed this experimental functionality with Twitter’s @anywhere frameworks, that helps webmasters add various Twitter functionalities to their site. Here’s what Google Follow Finder looks like:
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Word Translator (for multilingual toolbar users)
While Google has been providing full page translations (and automatic page translations for Google Toolbar users) for a while now, Google has just introduced a new feature for its multilingual Google Toolbar users, called Word Translator. Google says this feature is more useful for multilingual users, as they unlike mono/bilingual users would not want an entire page translated by default, but instead just the words they would like translated. These users will simply have to set the Google Toolbar’s default language to one of the supported languages, and then simply hover the cursor over the word in question to get an “automatic instant” translation of it. The feature is available on Internet Explorer and Firefox, and is automatic on Google Chrome. Here is a link to the latest Toolbar version.
And “here is an example of the word “vitesse” (speed) translated from French to German:”
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Google Search across the Twitter archive
A new Google real-time search feature, you can now search tweets from the Twitter archive from whichever time period you want. For example, you want to search for what people were tweeting about just after the Haiti earthquake, you have to simply feed the search query “Haiti earthquake” in, click on “Show options” on the results page, then select “Updates”. You will see a new chart on top, a timeline with which you can get results from a certain time in the past till the present. Apart from just showing you when people tweeted about this topic on a broad timeline, it also shows you the volume of traffic on each individual day and hour. The feature will roll-out globally “in a couple of days”, but if you want to try it now, you can check it out here. Initially, you will only be able to search tweets as far back as Feb 11th, 2010, but soon, Google will allow you to search back till the day the first tweep tweeted, on March 21st, 2006.
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Search Stories Video Creator
The smallest of things sometimes are the most fun. Google thinks so as well. This is why it made the Search Stories Video Creator, a way to turn your search results into something fun. In Google’s words, the Search Stories Video Creator is a “tool that lets you turn Google searches into fun stories, moving stories, exciting stories, silly stories, happy stories.”
What does it do exactly? It lets you set up to 7 search queries (from all of Google’s seach categories, from web and images to maps, news, books, blogs to products) to music, and automatically generate a video in Search Stories style that will be uploaded to YouTube.com.
While Google has been making such stories since last year, it has only placed this power in the hands of the public recently, in an intuitive and easy to use interface. While being creative with searches in order to create an exciting search stories video might be at par with the creativity of an Oscar winning screenplay writer, here’s your chance to show the world your interesting search stories, or your wild imagination. Make your story here.
“Every search is a quest. Every quest is a story. These videos show that anyone can do anything when paired with the power of search.” Check out the latest search stories uploaded here. Below, check out the Search Stories Video that showed the world the first Google Search Story, entitled Parisian Love. Also check out the Search Stories Video Creator introduction video below.