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Google Search for mobile has a new feature called "Quick View". Right now, it only shows up for Wikipedia results and it allows users to load search results almost instantly.


"Quick view is an experimental project and is currently enabled for pages from Wikipedia when you search in English on Google.com. We are working to expand this to additional websites," explains Google. There's a form for getting updates "about participating in the mobile quick view field trial". Apparently, Quick View loads pages in less than 100 milliseconds.

I've noticed a Quick View link next to Wikipedia results, but nothing happened when I clicked it. Even the search result link for the Wikipedia page was broken. I've checked the source code of the search results page and the code included an excerpt from the Wikipedia article. It's likely that Google hosts a simplified version of the Wikipedia article and that's the reason why it's supposed to load so fast. Here's Google's version of the Wikipedia page for "salmon" (check the source code).

Google also announced the "expandable sitelinks" feature I've mentioned a few days ago. "Now, there's a faster way to get to the Rotten Tomatoes page with just the info you need most -- just look for a new quick link for 'In Theaters' underneath the main Rotten Tomatoes link when you search on your mobile phone. You'll see these expandable sitelinks appear for many sites to help you get to a specific section quickly."

I've mentioned in the previous two posts that Inspection 12 sent a DMCA notice for one of my posts, Google took it offline and rejected my counter notice.

Now I realized that Google made a mistake: the DMCA complaint was related to web search, not Blogger. Inspection 12 actually requested to "to have this URL and others like it to be excluded from google search results for the name 'Alden Howell'".


My post didn't include that name and a search for 'Alden Howell' didn't return that blog post. The obvious reponse would be that there's nothing to remove from search results. Instead, Google decided to reset the post to "draft" status and tell me to "edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again."

As I've explained in the previous posts, there's no offending content to remove: my post had nothing to do with Inspection 12 and it didn't include their lyrics. The post only linked to a Greasemonkey script that displayed music lyrics next to the YouTube player. That script obtained lyrics from sites that now license content from Gracenote and some of those sites actually allow third-party software to use the lyrics. Ironically, the script no longer works.

Just in case anyone is wondering, the obsolete post from 2008 is not the main issue, I'm worried that it's too easy to remove web content. Google says that "if it is brought to our attention that you have republished the post without removing the content/link in question, then we will delete your post and count it as a violation on your account. Repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account including deleting your blog and/or terminating your account. DMCA notices concerning content on your blog may also result in action taken against any associated AdSense accounts."

Update: I found this information from the Google Transparency Report. "From time to time, the Search team may receive copyright removal requests for search results that link to other Google products like Blogger or YouTube. In these cases, we forward these requests to the appropriate teams to evaluate the allegedly infringing material."

I've contacted Inspection 12 and they say "that must have been submitted in error. not fully understanding the DMCA notice. our intent wasn't to post on a blog or complaints about a blog. it was to submit a complaint to google about websites that are posting lyrical content that is falsely described as Inspection 12 lyrics in order to sell ringtones." How to fix this?

Here are the other sites affected by a similar requests (all of them are lyrics sites). 18 of the 20 pages have been removed by Google from search results.


Update: happy end.

In a previous post I wrote about a strange DMCA complaint. Inspection 12 claimed that a post from this blog "is one of nearly 20 song lyrics sites who have attempted to post lyrics for the song titled 'Alden Howell' by the artist Inspection 12. The lyrics posted on this and other sites are not accurate and the artist has not given them permission to post lyrical content."

The post actually linked to a Greasemonkey script that displayed music lyrics next to the YouTube player. In fact, the script doesn't even work right now, probably because the author hasn't updated it since 2009.

I've sent a counter notice to Google and here's the answer I've received:

We have received and reviewed your DMCA counter notice. At this time, Google has decided not to take action based on our policies concerning content removal and reinstatement. We encourage you to review http://www.educause.edu/library/digital-millennium-copyright-act-dmca for more information about the DMCA.

I understand that it's now illegal to link to infringing content, but I don't see why that script infringed Inspection 12's copyright. The script obtained lyrics from sites like lyricwiki.org, songmeanings.net, metrolyrics.com, which license lyrics from Gracenote and LyricFind. Some of these sites have APIs, so Greasemonkey scripts could use their lyrics. Since 2008, when I wrote that post, many lyrics sites started to license content, just like Google's YouTube did.

That script is no longer functional, so my blog post is obsolete, like many other posts from this site. A non-working script can't infringe Inspection 12's copyright (unless the band started to write JavaScript code).

Another issue is that all the claims from the DMCA notice are inaccurate and show that Inspection 12's representatives didn't even visit my blog.

Does this mean I now have to delete all the posts about lyrics sites and plug-ins? Am I allowed to link to lyrics sites? Is it OK to send bogus DMCA notices to Google and remove any page that links to lyrics sites and plug-ins?

Update: Part 3 and Part 4.

Google tests an interface that removes the black navigation bar and replaces it with a button similar to the Chrome app launcher. Click the button and you can visit popular services like Google+, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail and Google Drive. There's a redundant link for Gmail and an "Apps" label, but only on the Google homepage.


This experimental interface removes the Google+ share and notification buttons, but this could be a temporary issue. You'll only see the new UI if you visit Google's search properties, so the regular navigation bar will show up when you use Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps.


Please note that the experiment is only available at google.com and only for the English interface. A quick way to switch to the English/US interface is to visit google.com/ncr.

Here's how you can try this UI if you use Chrome, Firefox or Opera:

 * Chrome:
- install "Edit This Cookie" extension
- open www.google.com in a new tab
- click the "Edit This Cookie" button from the Chrome bar
- find the "NID" item and select it
- replace the "value" text with the NID cookie value (see below) and click "Submit cookie changes"
- refresh Google's homepage


 * Firefox:
- install Cookies Manager+ and restart the browser
- open www.google.com in a new tab
- click the Firefox menu, select Web Developer < Cookies Manager+ - find the "NID" value for google.com, select it and click "Edit" - replace the content with the NID cookie value (see below), then click "Save" and "Close"
- refresh Google's homepage

 * Opera:
- open www.google.com in a new tab
- right-click the page and select "Edit site preferences"
- go to the Cookies tab
- find the cookie value that starts with "NID", select it and click "Edit"
- replace the "value" text with the NID cookie value, then click "Save" and "OK"
- refresh Google's homepage

NID cookie value:

To go back to the regular Google interface, use the same instructions, but only delete the NID cookie value.

{ via Tecno-Net }

YouTube's player added a "tape mode" button for many videos to celebrate "the 57th birthday of the first commercially available video recorder". The tape mode uses some VHS-like effects that add noise, distortion, pixel blocks, video compression artifacts. If you press the "pause" button, you'll see a shaking effect that simulates what happened when a VHS tape was paused.



To try this feature, you can add "&vhs=1" to the URL of a YouTube video, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2XmymhCdHU&vhs=1.

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Google has recently added a feature that lets you decide what happens when you no longer use your account. It's called Inactive Account Manager and the goal was to offer a feature that tells Google "what you want done with your digital assets when you die or can no longer use your account".

You need to set a timeout period (3/6/9/12 months), add your phone number and contact details for up to 10 trusted friends or family members (email addresses and phone numbers), then decide if you want to share Google Takeout for services like Blogger, Picasa Web Albums, YouTube with those people and delete your account once it's inactive. Google will alert you one month before the timeout period expires.


It's a feature that seems to be useful if you want Google to automatically delete your account when you're no longer alive and share some data with the people you trust. Unfortunately, not all the Google Takeout data is easy to use. YouTube videos, Picasa photos, Drive files and Gmail's contact files are easy to open, but the data from Google+, Blogger, Reader is more difficult to read. When you set up this feature, you can pick the services you want.

You can also use the Inactive Account Manager just to notify friends and family members that you no longer use that account or to send an automated response to all incoming Gmail messages once your account becomes inactive.

Google's mobile search site experiments with a different interface for sitelinks. The updated version hides the snippets for sitelinks and lets you expand lists of sub-sitelinks. Instead of only listing the most important sections of a site, Google's new features also shows some popular subsections.

"The links shown below some of Google's search results, called sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site. Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for," explains Google.

Here's the new interface:


... and here's what happens when you expand a sitelink:


Another example:


This is the regular mobile UI:


Google mentioned a similar feature for the desktop site last year: "this improvement digs deeper into megasitelinks by showing sub-sitelinks instead of the normal snippet." I haven't noticed this feature and it doesn't seem to be available in the desktop interface.