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I have heard of Google Custom Search Engine since a few months ago, but not until recently I gave a good attention and decided to set one up for this blog. Setting up is really simple and it can be done just in a matter of seconds. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up a Google Custom Search Engine for your website:

1. Login to your Google account
2. Go to Google Custom Search Engine homepage
3. Click on “Create a custom search engine button” and it will take you to a form
4. Fill in all the relevant details into the form and click “Next”
5. Provided that there was no error, you will be presented with a “Preview and Congratulations” page. Click “Finish”.
6. Now, to personalise the look and feel of the search engine you just created, go to Manage your existing search engines page.
7. You will see the search engine you just created listed under “My Search Engines”. Click on “Control Panel”.
8. When you are in “Control Panel” page, click on “Look and Feel” link from the top navigation. It allows you to customise the style of your search results pages to match your site.
9. When you are happy fiddling around with the style and have saved the changes, click on “Code” link from the top navigation to get the source code to put into your site
10. Choose “Host results on a non-Google site using an: iframe – requires two pages: one for the search box and another for the results” option
11. Create a new page in your website, name it “Search” and upload it to your web server (If you are using WordPress, login to WordPress Admin, click on Write -> New Page and publish it).
13. Put the URL of the page you just created into URL field provided under “Specify search results details” section
14. You will notice that source code for “Search box code” and “Search results code” are updated on the fly with the URL you put into the URL field
15. Although Google says you need two pages for the iframe option, you can actually get away with just one page. Copy and paste both “Search box code” and “Search results code” into the search page you created earlier in Step 11.
16. Make necessary changes such as the width of the textbox in “Search box code” [input type="text" name="q" size="25"] or the width of the search result iframe in “Search results code” [var googleSearchFrameWidth = 600].
17. Once you are happy with everything, upload the page back to your web server (or republish the page if you are using WordPress).
18. And that’s it - you now have a Google Custom Search Engine perfectly integrated into your website!

The thing I love about Google Custom Search Engine is that it can be integrated with other google products such as iGoogle, Adsense and Analytics, which means you could add the search engine to your google homepage, make money from it, or keep track of what people are looking for on your site.

Google Custom Search Engine rocks! Have a look at the google custom search engine I created for this blog.

Screenshots

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Google launched OpenSocial on Novemeber 1, 2007 and I was made aware of it by a colleague at work. OpenSocial is a social networking platform which will allows application developers to work with social data from the participating social networks. OpenSocial, unlike any other social networking site is, not another social networking site. Rather, it provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites, thereby minimising development and maintenance work. There are basically two type of OpenSocial APIs: JavaScript APIs and Google Data APIs.

According to google, there are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

Oh, that sounds exciting, how do I get started, I hear you say. Well, fear not, there are quite a few example applications that you can check out. There is even a tutorial on how to build your first OpenSocial application.

I will definitely be checking the documentation out on the weekend and report my findings in due course.

So what do you think? Is google going to pull this off and take control of the social networking phenomenon?

Related News & Blogs

• Google Aims to Break Open the Closed World of Social Networking
• OpenSocial: Developers speak out
• Google Squares Off Against Facebook With OpenSocial

Technorati Tags: opensocial, social, networking, networks, google, news, web, developers

It seems like every man and his dog is writing about google maps street view and thus, I feel the need to jump on the wagon. I personally think google maps street view is great; it is more useful than my street directory, and it gives me a chance to explore the world from the convenience of my desk.

But with these great advanced technologies, there are often some drawbacks which come with them. And google street view is of no exception. Many people are saying it is an invasion of privacy for having photographs of themselves, their homes, and their belongings available on the Internet for anyone and everyone to see.

A boing-boing reader is freaking out, Larry Dignan from zdnet is wary of the whole thing, Daniel Terdiman from Webware is doing a story or a photo gallery of spying with google street view and I am sure there are many more concerned users out there.

Whether it raises a serious privacy issue or not, most of us would be happy to agree that this google new feature is amazing and is definitely impressive.

Technorati Tags: google, street view, google map, web 2.0, privacy, street map

Ever wondered how google will be like in the future, say 20 years from now? the.voyager (Flickr) has uploaded a screenshot of the future google.

View this on flickr

That would be very cool!

Technorati Tags: google, search engine, humor

I received an email from Google Analytics Support Team this morning about the release of a new version of the Google Analytics reporting interface. The new version is so much cleaner, faster and easier to use and I am loving it.

Product tour

The following is an excerpt from the email I received:

In the new version, your reports have been redesigned for clarity, greater visibility of important metrics, and ease of use. Here are just a few of the features you’ll notice:

- Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.

- Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.

- Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.

- Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.

The new interface has everything the previous interface had and more. In addition, links within reports make it easier to navigate related information and explore your data.

Technorati Tags: google, statistics, tracking software, google analytics, release, software