Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Weird Notepad Behavior
Try this. Create a new text file on your desktop, open it with Notepad, enter the following line (no return character)...
Bush hid the facts
... and save it. Close the file and open it again. You might now see some strange Chinese characters that don’t translate into anything meaningful, or boxes if you don’t have the Chinese font installed...
[Thanks Manoj Nahar via Wired.]
Google Desktop Gadget Designer
Google is now offering you a development environment for creating Google Gadgets. Unfortunately there’s no word on the tutorial page on how compatible this is with the Google Personalized Homepage modules, which Google recently also renamed to Gadgets... I think focusing on the web rather than the desktop is the right choice for developers today in most cases. [Via Google System.]
Google Video Rating System Coming?
TomHTML found a rating system part of Google Video. It has since then disappeared, but Tom was able to dig up traces of the system, like 
stars icons.
Spider-Man 3 Trailer
The next Spider-man movie [Quicktime] will have the black costume (alien material that later created Spidey’s arch-enemy Venom), the Sandman, and the Green Goblin 2 (the son of the green goblin). The actual costume used in the comics looks even cooler than the movie’s design, I think. [Via Pixelisten.]
Google AdSense Mixing Images With Text Ads?
Is Google playing around with images near text AdSense ads? As you might know, having an image next to a text ad is one of the “optimization” tips to increase click-rates... but so far, you had to do it on your own. But if we look at the Digital Inspiration screenshot, the image was delivered straight from Google this time.
Chinese Version of 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google, And More
Nice – the first couple of chapters of “55 Ways to Have Fun With Google” are now available in Chinese. As there are now several Chinese translation efforts underway, please email me if you want to collaborate.
On a related note, Grimm has started an HTML version of the book. I think it’s still in progress (there are some encoding and formatting issues to work out).
The 55 Ways contest has ended...
On another note, someone saw the Easter egg I’ve been hiding in the HTML comments of this blog for a week or two now – I briefly mentioned a “contest” in the forum recently to increase the chances one of you would find this, though of course I never officially announced the contest (it would’ve been too easy):
<!-- If you see this first, you just won a free copy of 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google. Yeah, I’m serious. -->
I’ll check who was first (looks like Carlos was, but I haven’t yet gone through all comments), and then contact you.
Update: Here’s another Chinese translation in progress.
Update 2: And here’s another HTML version, created by Haochi.
Google Desktop Gadget Contest
Google tries to promote its Google Desktop tool with a new “gadget contest”. You can submit your code widgets until July 31st, and besides a while-supply-lasts t-shirt you get the chance to win up to 5,000 bucks. [Thanks Gary, Ramibotros and Manoj Nahar.]
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