Trying Out Google Web History

I took Google's new Web History for a brief test drive this weekend, using it to save and browse my Google searches. Web History allows me to search my past Google searches chronologically; by topic; and view trends (nice!). Although I'm kind of weirded out that they can track back my past search behavior, both at home and at work.


The features can be expanded to track and display my entire web browsing history, but that gets really creepy.

Thinking ahead to the possibilities (insert evil laugh here), this new capability could allow Google users to opt-in to share their browsing history. In return, users might expect a cut of the revenue (ala Google AdSense), free hosting, free ISP services -- you name it -- giving marketers unheard of visibility into consumer search and browsing behaviors.

Feedly Beautifully Delivers Content

I've tried Netvibes, iGoogle, Google Reader and numerous other RSS aggregators. For one reason or another, each failed to become part of my daily consumption of news and information.

Enter Feedly. The dashboard of all dashboards! Feedly is an extension for Firefox, incorporating my various email accounts, social networks, RSS feeds and bookmarks. Besides pulling everything into one place, one of the most attractive assets is Feedly's design and layout. All of my content can be formatted into customizable layouts, in which I can filter and search. I'm able to clip and send full articles or parts of articles, sharing them via my integrated email and social network accounts.

And personalization! An intelligent engine learns my reading habits, offering me relevant news based on my reading patterns and preferences. And articles that I've read within Feedly are refelected as 'read' in my Google Reader.

Flickr User Posts from Around the World

flickrvision (beta) is an incredible new time waster, that integrates Google Maps with Flickr user data. Thumbnails of recent posts from Flickr users pop-up on a view of the world map, identifying where the posting originated from.

While this has no practical use, it's fascinating to occasionally log on to see what's visually going on around the world at a given time. Props goes to Get Trio for the link.