Google Blogoscoped

Thursday, June 30, 2005

AOL Video Search

AOL launches their video search. The search returns finds from both news reports, like CNN, and videos found on the web.
I could not get their player to successfully launch on Windows Firefox even after installing an extension and restarting the browser; the videos did work on Internet Explorer though after installing Flash 7.
In any case, you only get to see the video content if you’re logged in to AOL. [Thanks Gary!]

A9 Maps Gone?

Amazon’s A9 multi-purpose search engine apparently had a Google-like Maps feature, but then they pulled it (the maps.a9.com URL that seemed to work for Waxy and O’Reilly Radar now redirects to just A9.com).

Update: You need to be logged in to view the Maps feature (I’m not sure if the previous release was public for all temporarily). Here’s a screenshot. [Thanks Gary!]

Google’s Full Videos?

Over at MetaFilter, some say they can watch whole movies and shows via Google Video. I can’t reproduce any of this (Google disables its Video Viewer in some countries, including Germany, and I can’t get this to work even with a US proxy).

Update: It does work for Nathan Weinberg, who calls this “the worst copyright violation ever” and presents a bunch of screenshots from shows he could see.
Searching for “dvdrip” brings up more results, by the way.

Update 2: The play buttons are now showing in Germany (and in France, as I’ve heard). They don’t work here in either Firefox or Internet Explorer though.

MapPhotos

Here’s my try at the Google Maps API: MapPhotos, mixing Google Maps with Flickr data provided by Geobloggers. Which means you can drag the map location anywhere to find photos of that location displayed right on the map (just give it a second to load the image after you stopped dragging). Clicking on the thumbnails will take you to a larger version of the photo from Flickr.
I’ve found the connection to the API images works flaky at the moment (often, you’ll only see gray blocks), but hopefully this will get better with time.

It may be interesting to note that I’m doing the Ajax (XMLHTTP) part of the script using the Ajax-wrapper provided by the Google Maps API.

Yahoo Maps Web Services

Yahoo releases a Yahoo Maps API and redesigns their developer front-page (search is now one of many). I can’t see any example on the Yahoo page illustrating what this does; apparently, you are supposed to pass an XML file containing addresses, which are then overlayed onto a Yahoo map. Yahoo says, “Maps Open Publishing API allows you to create your own co-branded interactive maps. Use this API to specify your own content, or plug in any existing GeoRSS feed.” [Via Waxy.]

Advertisement

 
Blog  |  Forum     more >> Archive | Feed | Google's blogs | About
Advertisement

 

This site unofficially covers Google™ and more with some rights reserved. Join our forum!