Google Testing a Permanent Search Sidebar

According to Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search product and user experience, Google is looking to streamline its search experience. Using a jazz metaphor, Mayer explains that customers aren’t happy with the fact that Google’s search interface is too unpredictable (much like jazz, especially if you aren’t into it) at times.

To rectify this, Google is testing an overhauled interface for its main product, Google Search. The new interface, that’ll soon become available to a small portion of users, will contain a sidebar on the left side, somewhat similar to the one you get when you clicked on “Show options” after conducting a search, but far more polished.

The sidebar, pictured below (courtesy of Search Engine Land), lets you narrow your search to various types of content (images, books, news, maps etc.), includes various options (such as time frame for the results) and gives you suggestions for related searches.

It’s a big change for Google, a company that’s notoriously shy when it comes to changing its tried and true less-is-more approach, so don’t expect this to roll out for everyone very soon. However, as the number of Google’s various services grows and its search results start to vary more and more based on factors such as your geolocation, we like Google’s idea of adding some order and discipline into its search experience.

Google machine-generated automatic captions for Youtube

Remember Google’s captions for Google Video and YouTube? Yes those that considerably aided the deaf and hearing impaired. These were later incorporated with multiple caption tracks, improved search functionality and even automatic translation. Stepping it up with yet another milestone, the official Google blog makes public machine-generated automatic captions.

Ever since captions were originally launched in Google products, the company claims to have witnessed a surge in the number of videos that have been captioned. The company alludes that a growing number of users are now becoming aware of the usefulness of captions. Now with machine translation, the company hopes that besides the deaf and hearing impaired even people around can benefit from this service.

The machine translation permits users to gain access to video content in any of 51 languages. Besides, captions could also help to enhance search along with allowing users to jump to precise parts of the videos that they could be looking for. Automatic captions address the issue of scaling faced by YouTube users. Google’s automatic speech recognition (ARS) technology has been combined with the YouTube caption system for this very purpose.

Taking maximum advantage of both Google and YouTube functions, automatic captions or auto-caps for short use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to render automatic captions for video. Though the captions may not always be perfect the company hopes that they are as helpful when they’re off.

Besides, automatic captions, Google is also releasing automatic caption timing, or auto-timing that should make it significantly effortless for users to generate captions manually. With this novel feature, users no longer require a special expertise to create their own captions in YouTube. To go about it, users simply have to create a text file with all the words in the video. Google will then utilize its ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for the video. This attribute should also prove beneficial to video owners who may be short of time or resources when creating professional caption tracks.

Both features will be available in English by the end of the week. As part of the initial launch, auto-caps are only visible on a handful of partner channels including UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia, PBS, National Geographic, Demand Media, UNSW and most Google & YouTube channels. Auto-timing is however rolling out globally for all English-language videos on YouTube.

Google Chrome OS: Everything You Need to Know

Unless you live in a cave, don't care at all about technology or have been distracted by Sarah Palin's publicity tour, you've probably heard that Google showed its Linux-based Chrome operating system to the world yesterday.

Google, a company born and bred on the Web, has a mighty challenge ahead of it getting into the PC business. Aware of this, Google does not have grand ambitions to take over PCs with Chrome. It's a browser and cloud-based OS for netbooks designed to be fast, simple and secure. Chrome will not support hard drives, only solid-state storage, and it will only run Web-based applications. There will be no desktop-type software programs allowed.

As for security, if any application is in danger of being corrupted by malware, Chrome has been designed to reboot itself, after which a clean version of the OS is downloaded. Nearly all user data will be stored in the Google's cloud computing service and will be encrypted and sychronized constantly between the netbook and the cloud.

Creating a cloud OS for netbooks that will run only Web apps through a speedy Google browser makes sense for a company that has been at the forefront of Web-based computing since its inception.

But with Chrome OS's availability pushed until the end of 2010 and Google conceding that Chrome OS netbooks are secondary devices to conventional PCs, is Google's focus too narrow and its development too slow?

CIO.com and its sister publications covered the Chrome OS unveiling from every angle, with some news analysis and opinion articles calling Chrome revolutionary and others declaring it a disaster, and everything in between.

Here's a round up of this week's Chrome OS stories.

Google released its Chrome operating system to the open-source community on Thursday and said it has designed the netbook OS to be faster, simpler and more secure than existing ones.

Google's Chrome OS doesn't signal the apocalypse for Apple and Microsoft, but that doesn't mean the operating system won't succeed. Just like the Chrome Web browser, Google's carving out a small slice of the market for people who want the company's buzzwords of speed, security and simplicity.

The excitement around the Chrome operating system has led to rampant rumors and speculation, but PCWorld's Tony Bradley questions whether the Chrome OS is really worth any of this hype.

With Google working on its upcoming browser-based Chrome operating system, the company is intensifying its grudge match with rival Microsoft.

Microsoft was, predictably, not all that impressed by Google's demonstration of its upcoming Chrome OS today, while other potential rivals were split.

Chrome OS is lauded by Google as a completely new method of personal computing and it does have a number of features that are intriguing. On the other hand, a Chrome OS device is really another incarnation of a thin client mobile Internet device.

Watching Google's Chrome OS event made PCWorld's David Coursey realize that there is a lot in Google's OS that can benefit Microsoft — like giving it a completely new platform and one it needs. If Google is really true to its open source promises, Microsoft should join the fun.

Google has unveiled Chrome OS, an exciting new platform for Web computing that is aimed squarely at consumer netbooks, and has little relevance to businesses today other than as a companion PC.