The Short Version
Cricket ground details and fixtures in a Google onebox, now available via my Google Coop subscription links.
The Long Version (Including the 'How' and 'Why')Google had a big day Wednesday, announcing the release of Google Trends, a new Google Desktop release, the upcoming release of Google Notebook, and most excitingly -- Google Coop.
Philipp has already provided a good Coop overview, so rather than rehash old ground I'm going to explain the reasoning and process behind creating the International Cricket subscription links.
Note: My Google Coop Profile provides live previews of these links along with the ability to subscribe to them.
What and Why
As frequent readers will know, I'm a cricket fan, enough so that I created The Cricketing Yak.
The site includes a Google Map of test cricket venues, and while building this I found it unusually hard to find fairly basic information about many of the grounds -- things like official web sites and precise stadium locations took far more than just searching for the ground's name or city.
Now Coop let's me provide a better solution, by putting these details where I expect them -- in the search results. Coop subscription links let you define a search query pattern, and then a onebox result. Anyone subscribed to your profile gets this onebox when a search they execute matches your pattern.
What to Show?
Each onebox can have three lines of text (with links), plus a title and 'more link'. This limits the information you can display, though as a user it ensures you're results are uncluttered.
As a guide I'd suggest:
- No spamming! (more on this later).
- Show only the information people are going to find useful for this specific query.
- Save users time by linking to related services (maps, calendar, email, etc.).
- Only link back to your site if it provides useful additional information.
My philosophy is to keep the result concise and relevant -- and I've done Google's job for them, by providing links to related Google services (map and calendar).
For the cricket venue box, I chose to display:
- The full ground name with a link to the official web site as the title and more link.
- The type of cricket venue it is, with the city/country location.
- An exact Google Maps view of the ground.
- A link to local weather observations from the venue's city .
Notice anything missing? No link to my site! Why? Because the other information is more relevant.
I don't have much more useful information at my site, so there's no value to the user in directing them there.
For the cricket match schedule box I'm showing:
- The next scheduled match at the ground (with the date and match description) as the title.
- A link to add the match directly to your Google Calendar (tricky!)
- And this time I'm including a link to watch the live scores at The Cricketing Yak.
Potential Downsides? Losing Traffic!I'm providing useful information, previously available at my web site, directly within the search results -- and in one case, I'm not even linking back to my site. Seems like an unusual way of gaining traffic 'eh?
True, but it goes a long way towards building trust and with only four lines/links, you might have more information to share -- if so, link to it -- but make sure the link makes worth their while. Don't just spam them!Potential Upsides? Gaining Trust and Authority!Losing traffic may seem like a Bad Thing, but what you're trading in is trust.
Google Coop lets trusted contributors affect the search rankings by using topics and labels. As a web site owner this is a Very Good Thing. But it only works for people subscribed to you, and to get (and keep) subscribers, you need to maintain their trust -- spam them and you'll lose them.
By providing relevant, useful information, you encourage users to trust you and stay subscribed -- meaning your site labeling will be affecting their search results. It's very white hat SEO, as your success at drawing visitors towards your site depends entirely on your ability to maintain their trust.
Break that trust and they can (and will) ignore you with a single click.
Update (28/05/06): See also my Upcoming Book Release subscription link.
The Cricketing Yak presents the worlds test cricket stadiums in one giant Google Maps mashup. 
Each venue has been positioned with precision accuracy, so you have a bird's eye view of all the venues that play host to the art and majesty that is Test match cricket. Every stadium -- from Lord's, to the MCG, and Eden Gardens -- is featured, with clarity limited only by the quality of Google's satellite imagery.Along with a breathtaking bird's eye view, we've included essential ground details, like seating plans and ground profiles. And because we like our cricket maps live and interactive, we've included live local weather and rain radar -- not to mention a link to the local webcam nearest the ground. It's as close to being there as you can be, without actually, well, being there.To top it all off, we scour the World Cricket Schedule daily to include a list of international matches coming soon to each ground.
As a bonus, we'll be compiling all the static information in a detailed KML file for use with Google Earth in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for details.
PLUS! If this map is well received we'll start putting together a mashup that includes all 1st class grounds in each country -- what do you think, where would you like us to start?
Upgrading my video card drivers yesterday meant that Google Earth no longer crashes my system inside of 30 seconds (yay!). As a consequence, I've spent the last two days exploring the globe. This morning while navigating back home, I discovered a 'Sponsored Link' under the search result cloud.
Now, I'd been flying around for a couple of days and not seen a sponsored link before, so (to me at least) this looks like a new addition.
If so, it makes a lot of sense. The free release of Sketchup will renew interest in Google Earth, and this provides an excellent new source of exposure for Adwords customers who already have location based exposure on Google Maps.
Like most Google advertising, the add itself is fairly innocuous and doesn't detract from my Google Earth experience -- it's certainly a far more contextual (and far less intrusive) than the old 'Opera' style software sponsorship.
For those who like the Google Personalized Homepage and Google Reader, Google presents the Google Reader Homepage Module.
This is a fairly dramatic improvement over the RSS feed support previously available in the personalized homepage, and is actually a pretty neat integration.
You can add multiple reader modules, each filtered to different tabs. Content is displayed in a neat pop-up bubble (though it's configurable to open in a browser window). All your feeds are there, along with labels, stars, and 'staring'.
The only thing I've spotted missing is support for labeling 'on the fly' within the module, but that's pretty minor. It definitely makes for a good addition to the personalized homepage.
As a mild cricket obsessive I put together the World Cricket calendar so I'd never miss a test match. Of course, there are others for whom cricket is not just a casual obsession. Will (of the Corridor of Uncertainty and CricInfo), soon got in touch -- why? County cricket. Will has to track the English domestic competition and hand copy-pasting 400 fixture entries is a Bad Thing.Enter the Calendar API. Now Will, and the rest of you English cricket fans, have calendars for the County Championship and Pro40.But it's Will's desire for these calendars that illustrates the real potential for Google Calendar.It's the social aspect that will make it the next killer business app. Why? The calendar has become a way of transferring information, rather than simply storing it -- Would you leave your email unchecked for a few days?? With sharing and copying events, Google has presented a tool perfect for professional scheduling.Let's take the County Cricket Championship. As well as fans, there are hundreds of people interested in this schedule professionally. The teams, and players, sports reporters and match commentators, venue management -- even bloggers. Each of them has a particular interest in all or some these matches. The web interface is powerful enough for individuals with special interest in some of the matches. Players, commentators, and bloggers can easily copy a match to their own calendar in order to set reminders and include more specific details. But what about bigger groups?The calendar API is a powerful option. A sports media outlet can read the County Cricket calendar using the API, and create an invitation-only copy for their organization -- using that copy to assign reporters to matches and discuss the pre-post game in the provided event forum. Plus, by using the API, they can update the entries programatically -- so if an event time or place changes in the public calendar, it can be reflected in their internal calendar without manually adjusting it.Or we can flip it around. I use invite-only calendars to schedule software projects for the members of my dev teams. I also maintain a calendar for clients and management that is limited to project milestones and release dates for all our products. Using the calendar API I only need to update the internal schedule and the management and client calendars can be updated automatically.The power of this calendar is a 'ripple effect'. I start by updating a private work schedule for my team, this automatically effects the release schedule we share with clients, who automatically change their deployment schedule. Meanwhile, my girlfriend sees the release slip and knows I'll be working next weekend, so she changes the date of our dinner party. Which means Paul can now watch the Test match live.Suddenly the calendar isn't just reminding me of something I should already now, it's providing new information that I need to know. You gotta love ripples.
What, you mean it didn't before?
Well, yesterday I learned a lesson. Always test with multiple browsers. I found out very late last night that some of the JavaScript on the World Cricket Map was not Internet Explorer friendly. Whoops!
An hour of frantic coding later I've found and fixed the incompatibility, so anyone who visited the site yesterday and was greeted by a map suggesting there was precious little cricket being played -- download FireFox! Or alternatively, you could just visit the site again with IE. Just make sure you refresh!
As many hope, and some predicted, Google has released a version of newly acquired SketchUp for free. SketchUp is a very easy to use 3D modeling software that has already been integrated with Google Earth to allow modelers to integrate their creations into their Google Earth. To assist in this process Google's providing a 3D Warehouse for modelers to share their finished creations with others. As a 3D modeler myself this is fantastic news. At Intervention Engineering we develop 3D models of clients oil fields and platforms. Using SketchUp we can now take this one level further and fly them through their facilities in Google Earth. Nice! Expect to see a lot more content inside of Google Earth as people start modelling their homes, businesses and favourite landmarks.
For those of you that love Cricket, I've created a new cricketing website -- The Cricketing Yak.
It's home to the World Cricket Calendar, that uses the Google calendar API to maintain a complete Google Calendar of international cricket that includes tests, ODIs, and Twenty20 matches. I'm also generating fixtures with Google Calendar links to let visitors create reminders for upcoming cricket matches on your Google calendar.
The Google homepage Cricket Map module is now full blown mashup -- using the v2 API and featuring live match scores.
I've got a couple more cricket related projects nearing release. When they're ready I'll post here and at The Cricketing Yak, so stay tuned for deets.
Just in time for World Cup 2006, and almost immediately following a name reversion, Google Maps has incorporated road details and local search for most of Western Europe.
France and Germany include as much detail as we're used to in the UK and US, and while some of the finer detail is a little sketchy once you get navigate beyond their borders, there's highway data for most of Western Europe. Do all roads lead to a World Cup 2006 venue?
Google are now providing text links for Adsense / Adwords / Firefox referrals. Apparently added due to user feedback, it's a good feature -- sometimes a Big Shiny Button just doesn't suite your site design.
The text of the link is not configurable, but there are a number of options to choose from. The end result, looks like this.
I'm going to change some of my sites and see if this improves the click through rate. I rather imagine that it will.
Note: To see the text link adds in your Adsense setup, you must choose US English as your language (English UK will not work!).
Google have just announced the public release of their GData API model. Specifically, they've developed the Java and C# classes needed to develop Google Calendar applications. While this is great news for developers wishing to leverage the power of the Google Calendar with desktop and web based apps, it's even better news for those of us wondering if development on a 'Google OS' was going to be a closed system deal.The development by Google of GData is a clear indication of how development with Google will work. The protocol and APIs are fully extensible so expect to see GMail, RSS reader, news, bookmarks, blog, and search APIs roll out using the GData API.This really is a Good Thing, as Google have finally opened the door for some real outside development. As developers, we now have something to look at and point to when we're talking about writing applications in an world where services are more important than platforms.The potential benefit for Google here is huge. Between my search history, mail, RSS feeds and calendar, Google already has a ridiculous amount of my information. Now with an API that promises access to this information to use the way I want to, there's one less reason to think about storing it anywhere else.
Now, I'm off to play with this API -- expect to see some Calendar applications coming soon!
Google Calendar is finally live. It's another slick AJAX offering from Google, presenting a clean and uncluttered interface.
It's a pretty good package, which emphasizes the collaborative nature of most people's diaries. Perfect for social groups, families and businesses to schedule events, I predict Google Calendar will have an impact on businesses and event planning as people being to utilize it as an avenue for event promotion, as we can all be assured it won't be long before 'Events' start popping up in the SERP results.The app provides the standard features you'd expect from a Web 2.0 calendar app with drag and drop event creation and modification and multiple calendars with dynamic overlays. As it's a Google offering the 'Search My Calendars' feature is as fast and comprehensive as you'd expect, and the 'Quick Add' feature that interprets a sentence into a full event entry by decoding the 'when' and 'where' is impressive.
There's a healthy dose of the social web with this release. All your calendars are shareable, with each event as well as each calendar having the option of being a private or public event, so you can share calendars with friend's, family, or clients. In addition to that, you can invite specific guests to an event, and each event features a 'discussion forum' perfect for organizing the event and talking about it afterwards.
Each calendar is available as an iCal and XML feed for integration with existing desktop calendar apps, and I dare say it won't be long before people you see these feeds pop up on web sites.
Notably missing from the new release is a todo list and a day journal -- both of which I'd love to see in later releases. Also absent at this stage is an interactive API, though the iCal and XML feeds take us half the way there.It's not the killer web-app many may have been expecting, but it is a solid release that captures the essentially collaborative nature of calendaring very well. It's continued success will depend on reliability, uptake, and further development of the feature set.
At this early stage I give it the thumbs up, and hope the calendar team keep up the good work.
Many of us had been hoping for a Google release to mark GMail's third birthday. While it looks like we may have been disappointed on that front there are still a couple of April releases to check out.First off the rank, Google Related Links. It's a Google Labs project that puts a related content link box on your website based on context. It currently features up to three tabs -- related searches, news, and pages. One can only assume sponsored links won't be too far behind, but at this stage it's add free.
Also out is Google Maps API v2. According to the Google Maps Blog there's been a few changes including a smaller JavaScript download, two additional satellite zoom levels and an overview map that displays a collapsible overview map in the corner of the screen. Also worth noting is a relaxation in terms. There's now no page view limit, however they ask if you're getting more than 500k hits you let them know.An finally, the Personalised Homepage has had an update with an improved directory for adding modules.Not the killer upgrades we were hoping for (CL2 anyone?), more of a solid development release.
Philip Lessen at Google Blogoscoped points to a secret testing URL for a preview release of the latest GoogleTalk client. As well as allowing you to select a 96x96 avatar to represent you, Google has provided a number of new options for how you wish to view your conversations.
Personally I like the look of 'SerenePicture'. Overall a good improvement I think. Keeps the simplicity of GoogleTalk but adds a bit of color.
