I think the big fear is that people think unless you uncheck this “Allow Indexing” checkbox then absolutely everything you post on Facebook will now be available to search engines. From my understanding that’s just not the case.

If you read the text under the settings it says (emphasis added by me):

“Allow search engines to access your publicly available info and any information visible to Everyone“

The only thing Facebook is going to allow to be indexed is that information that’s publicly available from their site already, and anything you’ve set to be available to “Everyone” in your new privacy settings that you can configure for different things: i.e., photos, status updates, links, friends, About me, etc.

I’d recommend going into your Settings > Privacy > Profile Information and specifically decide what you want to share and with whom.

It’s also interesting everyone that narrows this down to Facebook is allowing “Google” to have all this information and they’re “indexing” everything. Folks, they’re opening it up to ALL search engines, not just Google and “indexing” isn’t EVIL, it’s what search engines do to collect the information on the web to populate all those search results you’re looking for online.

I’m not sure about the “Facebook Search Results” section, I’ll have to read up on that one.

Post from: EveryJoe

Facebook’s New Privacy Settings and Search

Just out today for $19.99, the Gboard makes for a great little stocking stuffer. The 19-button keyboard makes those time-saving keystrokes even faster. Common functions like search, reply, and trash are mapped to color-coded keys. It’s powered by a USB connector, and doesn’t need any software or drivers to make it work on Windows or Mac.

Image: Gboard.

Post from: EveryJoe

Gboard: the keyboard for Gmail

When you’re on the main Google page, look for the settings link in the top-right corner and select the option for "Google account settings" as shown in the image below:

Once you’ve opened the that page you should see a link towards the top of the next page that’s labeled "Personal" section and then "Dashboard" the link will say "View data stored with this account".

Once you get that you’ll have access to all the information that’s stored with and tied to your Google account. Information is available in one location for all of these items:

• Google Alerts
• Google Analytics
• Blogger
• Google Calendar
• Google Checkout
• Google Contacts
• Google Docs
• Google Friend Connect
• Gmail
• Google Video
• iGoogle
• Picasa Web Albums
• Google Product Search
• Google Profile
• Google Reader
• Google Talk
• Google Voice
• Google Web History
• YouTube

Although not directly available within the Google Dashboard itself, there are also links provided to 17 other services I use like:

FeedBurner, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google Base, Google Book Search, Google Bookmarks, Google Groups, Google News, Google Notebook, Google Page Creator, Google Sites, Google Subscribed Links, Google Toolbar Sync, Google Wave, Google Webmaster Tools, Local Business Center, Merchant Center.

I’d think some of those services listed that are not included in the dashboard are pretty mainstream and I’m surprised they’re not listed in the main dashboard display.

If you haven’t been aware of this little tool and wonder how you’ve got everything setup on those services, the Google Dashboard can come in quite handy for you.

Have you noticed the new Google fade feature on the main Google search page?

Post from: EveryJoe

Using the Google Dashboard

The broadest usage I’ve enjoyed has been as a friend and I have been collaborating on a website we’re both working on together. It’s really helped us as we’ve shared information and ideas with each other. Sure that could be done via other methods, but having everything there with history of what we’ve said to each other in a conversational string is nice.

I’ve now finally been given the ability to invite other people to begin using Google Wave for themselves.

I just used some of those invites to send to a group of friends of mine that work together with each other in a church ministry setting. With everything that goes on in a church related to communication, planning, organization and sharing of resources; I thought the use of Google Wave would be a definite plus for the team.

As I continue to use it more and more myself I still can’t believe I can’t share files in the system already. Am I missing something? It seems there should be many more plug-ins and functionality available already.

What’s been your experience using Google Wave so far? Let me know.

Post from: EveryJoe

Floating on the Google Wave

Those travelers that have the opportunity to take advantage of a free wi-fi connection will also be able to donate money to the Climate Savers Computing efforts to move toward a clean, sustainable economy through energy-efficient computing.

“We encourage all air travelers to use the free Wi-Fi access to learn more about Climate Savers Computing, and to download one of our free PC Power Management tools,” said Lorie Wigle, president of Climate Savers Computing, an international nonprofit committed to reducing IT-related energy consumption. “You’ll immediately reduce the carbon footprint of your computer, and if you make a donation, you will help us bring power management to more people, reducing their carbon footprint too.”

You can get more information about the free Wi-Fi for the holidays and what airports are participating by visiting www.freeholidaywifi.com

If you’re out on the road from now through January 15, 2010, look for the gift of free wi-fi from Google and make a donation to Climate Savers Computing.

Post from: EveryJoe

Free Wi-Fi from Google This Holiday Season

With Microsoft releasing Bing and Google working on their newest search algorithm called Google Caffeine, there’s a lot of effort around incorporating the idea of social search with your organic results.

One of my biggest complaints about search is that my results are impacted by just about everything that’s available on the web. If I’m searching for a question about a certain topic, I don’t want to get results from sites that are completely irrelevant to the goal of my search.

For example, if I’m interested in a question about coffee, I don’t want to get results about people who have talked about sitting around the coffee shop and chatting all day. I may be more interested in the growth regions, bean roasting methods and brewing tasks.

There may be five or ten sites on the Internet that are really great at providing this content and I’d like to just search those sites for my answer. Google provides the ability to do this kind of targeted search tuning by using Google Subscribed Links.

Google has already put together some groupings of sites in categories like Tools, Fun and Games, Lifestyle, and Technology. When you search for certain keywords that have been programmed into these Google Subscribed Links you’ll get special results based on the search links that have been put together for you.

The problem is that Google doesn’t make it easy for people to setup their own search metrics. Developers can create their own, but it’s not as user-friendly I would hope.

Post from: EveryJoe

Using Google Subscribed Links

There are a variety of settings you can set to tell Google search to act the way you want it to act. If you want to access all of these options, just look for the “Settings” link in the top, right-hand corner of the screen on the main Google search page.

• Interface Language – what language do you want Google to use for you
• Search Language – I’m really only interested in seeing pages in English, no need to clutter my view with search results in other languages
• SafeSearch Filtering – If I’m not interested in accidentally getting some search results that my not be appropriate for my personal preferences or safe-for-work
• Number of Results – with faster Internet speeds you may save some time by showing more results per page. The minimum is 10, maximum is 100.
• Results Window – my personal favorite, when I click on a search result I want it to open in a new window so I don’t lose my search results listing on Google
• Query Suggestions – let Google help you fine-tune your search results to get better results for what you’re looking for online
• Search Wiki – a fairly new option, but this allows you to modify and see modified search results by the Google community of users
• Subscribed Links – a very powerful feature, this lets you build collections of pages that you want to search for on specific terms or phrases

When you’re done, just make sure you click on the “Save Preferences” options.

As you can see, there’s plenty of ways for you to customize your user-experience. Now you can really show your friends that you know how to manipulate the Google machine.

Post from: EveryJoe

Setting Your Google Search Preferences

The digital collaboration space is growing and the enterprise keeps on implementing and improving their collaboration capability across the whole organization. Google knows this as such they have released Google Wave technology to be able to complete in a vertical market. I have signed up for their user invitation weeks back but still wasn’t able to get an invite since I was too late on doing so.

Even if Google Wave is not yet open for everyone, the technology is progressing rapidly and Google has announced during the London meeting that the Google Wave would be opening an app store similar to what Apple has done.  This move shows the long term commitment of the search giant on this technology which they seem to roll-out to the consumer market first before pushing it to the enterprise. I think the move of Google Wave to the consumer market is aimed to help the technology grow and mature before they go full speed ahead on competing with enterprise collaboration tools like Microsoft SharePoint.

Google Wave is an interesting technology because aside from the usual collaborative functions it has, Google promises a real-time collaboration that gets updated as the user makes a keystroke instead of the usual submission of items, going through a workflow and approval process until the time the other user from the other end sees your thoughts.

The search giant also plans to create an extension gallery for Google Wave which includes hooks that invoke actions like opening new wave or launching shortcuts, merging waves, deployment on networks, etc.

As of the latest updates, third party developers have already developed applications in teleconferencing, videoconferencing, and multiplayer games.

I think the Google wave has a lot of potential and in time it would be a cheap alternative application for implementing productive digital collaboration across organizations.

Have you been given an invite for Google wave? What are your initial thoughts?

Image from Google Wave.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Wave App Store and its potential

It appears that Google will be adding some social search functionality to their toolbox. Currently in development in the Google Labs, we’re told it should be coming publicly available soon.

The idea is that when you search, there will be results offered from those in your social networks as well. So, if you’re searching for images, you can bet that your friends images on flickr will come up in the results if they fit your search terms.

Looking for something on a hot topic floating around the web? If your friends are talking about it on twitter, then those tweets will show-up in the results as well.

The hooks into your social networks will come from those networks you’ve tied to your own Google Profile. I guess the downside of that, or upside depending on your viewpoint, is that you’ll now have to setup a Google Profile for yourself as well.

All in all a pretty powerful feature to have at your finger tips if you’ve built up a strong and connected social network of friends. I truly believe that taking advantage of the networks we’ve built with each other, trusted friendships and tight integration between our various online presences will become the key to the future of search.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Releasing Social Search Functionality

The tech companies who are on the rebound includes Intel, Asus, HP, Dell. Chuck Malloy from Intel who said in an interview with MaximumPC that they cannot save their way out of recession but rather spend their way out. Intel has increased demands as manufacturers like Asus, HP, Dell have made increases in their hardware manufacturing demands going into October and towards the holiday season. Microsoft is releasing their Windows 7 and we are also expecting increased in sales that would trickle down to various vendors. These companies are expected to grow and the requirements for human resources are also expected to increase.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was in a New York city press conference last week where he said they are increasing their hiring since they have seen recovery in the United States and Europe. Eric says they didn’t expect Europe to recover together with U.S. but with Europe recovering right now, things look bright for the search giant.

This is the time I would suggest that you start updating your resumes because most probably companies are prepping their organization for growth, hiring leaders for their growth organizations, hiring quality employees, giving out signing bonuses, etc. This is the time to revisit your monster.com or dice.com account.

I am surely one of those people who would be checking out the waters right now and see what the offer is out there. I encourage you to join the boat.

Image from Monster.

Post from: EveryJoe

A Good Time to Check out the Job Boards