The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Google’ Category

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Fix to force Google Chrome to use google.com as default search (via: I cannot get Chrome to use www.google.com as the default search engine rather than www.google.com.hk. – Google Chrome Help)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/22

Every couple of Google Chrome versions it starts using the local Google search domain (the one that Google things that geographically matches you, probably in a language you do not understand).

I have the “Use Google.com in English” cookies set, the right Chrome language settings, the right Google language settings, etc.

This is not the “right” solution, but it works, thanks Dwight Stegall:

  1. Right click the address bar and click on Edit search engines. When the box opens click the Google option in the list. Then click the X to the right to delete it.
  2. At the bottom look for a box with “Add new search engine”. Type in Google and in the next box type in a keyword. I use “g” for Google.
  3. Where it asks for URL paste this in.
    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%s

You can use a similar solution for instance to force Google.co.uk as your default search domain.

–jeroen

via I cannot get Chrome to use www.google.com as the default search engine rather than www.google.com.hk. – Google Chrome Help.

Posted in Chrome, Google, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Administrative and Personal offline installers for Chrome (via: Alternate offline Google Chrome installer Windows – Google Help)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/04

Because I tend to forget where Google keeps the information on dowloading the offline administrative and personal installers I have quoted their full help page below.

According to Google Employee Blair (Googler) (at 20100614 in topic Google Chrome Offline Installer – Google Chrome Help):

Be aware that the version of Google Chrome available from the link may not auto-update to future browser releases, meaning you could miss important security fixes and feature improvements. Make sure to check back often to download newer releases.

The standalone offline installers from the quote at the bottom of this post did all keep themselves up to date.

There is a bunch of version specific Google Chrome installers THAT WILL NOT AUTOUPDATE (they usually keep less than 2 months) with URLs formed like this: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Chrome, Google, Power User | 2 Comments »

Finally Google allows searching for “C#” via: Search quality highlights: 50 changes for March – Inside Search

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/04/05

Finally, Google allows searching for C# and returns meaningful results (previously they returned the same results as searching for C).

They improved a bunch of other special characters as well.
–jeroen

via:

Search quality highlights: 50 changes for March – Inside Search.

Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Google, GoogleSearch, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Many people missed the 8-bit street view at Google Maps Quest on April 1st #1april #april1st

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/04/01

Many people mentioned the April 1st prank by Google: 8-bit maps, and a NES Google Maps cartridge (quote at 0:55: blow on the cartridge to fix bugs ROFL!)

Today Google Maps has a quest mode, rendering the maps in Nintendo NES “quality”.

Few people really used it, and missed the glorious 8-bit streetview, and the really nice landmarks that you see when you zoom in to a scale of 500 meter or better.

You can even link to the 8-bit maps and to the 8-bit street view!.

Click on the images for larger versions (:

--jeroen

    

Posted in About, Apri1st, Fun, Google, GoogleMaps, Personal, Power User, Prank | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Refined: Alternate (offline) Google Chrome installer (Windows) – Google Help « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of Wiert stuff

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/03/30

Just updated my earlier post on Google Chrome offline installers with this info:

Google Chrome has two offline installers: one single user install, and one for all users on the same Windows machine.

It ends up at one of these download pages, each with a download link for the current version (which changes for every new version):

–jeroen

via: Alternate (offline) Google Chrome installer (Windows) – Google Help « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of Wiert stuff.

Posted in Chrome, Google, Power User | Leave a Comment »

intelligent answer to “whats my ip” on Google Search

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/03/23

It looks like Google decreased traffic to many “Whats My IP” sites by automatically answering the whats my ip – Google Search query.

I’m not sure when they introduced this, but it is good and bad at the same time.

–jeroen

Via: whats my ip – Google Search.

Posted in Google, LifeHacker, Opinions, Power User | 2 Comments »

Funny how Google Search tries to interpret version numbers as dates and totally misses the actual date (via: directx runtime – Google Search)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/20

Funny how Google Search tries to interpret number sequences as dates:

Download: DirectX Redist (June 2010) – Microsoft Download Center …

www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8109

29 Sep 1974 – The DirectX redist installation includes all the latest and previous released DirectX runtime. This includes D3DX, XInput, and Managed DirectX …

I almost skipped that search result, as the date was from 1974, but since back then DirectX didn’t even exist, I became curious.

This is the original text from the page that Google tried to interpret: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Google, GoogleSearch, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Chrome Google search URLs changed into a webhp redirect; no rootkit; Avast! and eggheadcafe seem involved; reproducible on one machine. What happened?

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/16

Somewhere the last couple of days, Google or Google Chrome has changed the default search URL.

I thought I had a webhp rootkit issue, possibly related to Avast, but it wasn’t (I posted at the Avast forums, and later replied the issue had solved itself, but I still wonder about the real cause).

What happened was that some page I had open in Google Chrome (all other web browsers were fine) forced the redirect.

I can only reproduce this on one system (that has both Avast! Antivirus installed, and Chrome open with the page http://www.eggheadcafe.com/searchform.aspx?search=Cross+Join+Excel) but not on other machines.

So far, it took me about a day of work (quarantining the machine, investigating if it was a virus, rootkit or otherwise, trying to verify this is a one off), and I still feel I don’t have the complete answer yet.

I still wonder if others have seen similar issues.

This is how it redirected

The defaults have a truckload of junk around them, but come down to the URLs below (lmgtfy is the search phrase)

It used to be of this form (which now again works, after I closed all Google Chrome pages)

The redirect made it into a longer webhp form:

The fun thing is, that if you enter the form

then you will end at the Google Search home page with the search phrase pre-filled in.
Now that is a pretty nifty “let me Google that for you” :)

–jeroen

via: Google.

Posted in Google, GoogleSearch, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Google Calendar: Quick Add to specific calendar? – Calendar Help – @google

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/27

It would be so cool if Google re-added this feature:

  1. Deselect all calendars but one
  2. Quick Add an event
  3. The event gets added to this one selected calendar

Now all events always get added to your default calendar. I remember this worked somewhere in 2010. But now it fails when adding about 200 events by hand on a secondary calendar :(

See this discussion thread:

tiburon200; 3/21/09

When using quick add, is it possible to place the new event on a specific calendar (ie, home, work) or is that only an option through the regular “Create Event” method?

Thanks for any insight… seems like it should be pretty easy, but I can’t find the right syntax.

rmorales2005; 8/17/11

This used to be possible by just hiding all other calendars, but this got broken some time ago…

–jeroen

via Quick Add to specific calendar? – Calendar Help.

Posted in Google, GoogleCalendar, Opinions, Power User | Leave a Comment »

About Gmail’s new look: a few comments

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/11/07

Not sure I really like the “all new” black and white look where all of the screen looks the same, so no emphasis on the things that really matter.

Over time, you won’t be able so switch back, so you have to adapt to the new look & feel, and try the options to make it work for you the best.

So far, I switched to the “Compacrt” view, and chose the “Blue” theme to make emphasis on the mail list/content.

–jeroen

About Gmail’s new look.

Posted in GMail, Google, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

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