Google had their Search Event for 2010 this morning and the big announcement centered around fast, immediate search capabilities on the interweb. With that, they launched Google Instant.

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.

The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Benefits
Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Google Instant will be available today in the following browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE 8.

Today the United States rolls out and within the coming week the following countries will have Google Instant: UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia.

I’m using Chrome, and Google Instant is ON by default. Within your search settings you can turn the feature off or edit your privacy settings.

It was also announced that Google Instant would be available for mobile devices later this fall.

Check out this commercial that Google unveiled during the morning’s announcement showing the speed of Google Instant while inputting Bob Dylan song lyrics.

Impressed ?

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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Google has rolled out their Realtime Search capability and they’re promoting up-to-the-second social updates, news articles and blog posts about hot topics from around the world.

Check out the following video explaining in a bit more detail the information overload Google is providing.

• Search faster
• Get results directly on the new Realtime homepage
• Refine results
• Pinpoint results by location, time, and more
• See entire conversations
• Read full threads of conversations to get context about any topic

The feature I’m most attracted to is the ability to have Google Alerts configured for Realtime access.

Check out Google Realtime here.

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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She has voiced her opinions on Google Buzz. Sarah talks a bit about the implementation, the usability and some possible improvements to what we all know will eventually sweep the internet world just like Gmail did.

I, for one, am still on the fence about Google Buzz; yeah I follow some key webpreneurs that I keep tabs of in Twitter, but like most people I live in Twitter Land, so that’s where I get all my real-time and up-to-the minute news and web conversation.

What about you? Are you into Buzz yet?

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• 5 ‘Google Buzz’ Tips from Google (tipsblogger.com)
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James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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I’ve not had any problems with Google created products/services so I, personally, look at the forward momentum as quite positive and good for the end consumer.

Today’s latest entrant into the the Google provided offerings is that they are working towards bringing fiber internet connectivity to the home.

For now, Google plans to first roll out these connections to around 50,000 people, with the potential to reach over 500,000 people at a later stage.

According to Google, this will be an experiment. The company hasn’t decided on where to build this network yet, but you can nominate your own neighborhood here. The nomination process will end on March 26 and Google plans to announce where it will deploy this network by the end of the year.

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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With that in mind, Google has released Browser Size which visualizes what percentage of web viewers can see a certain part of your page. This is related not only to screen resolution, but also to what size people keep their browser windows.

To view your own web site with this visualization overlaid on it, simply type its URL into the “Enter URL here” textbox at the top of the window and click Go. The site will load your webpage in the background. It will then overlay a semi-transparent graphic depicting how much of the web’s population can view each section of your page without scrolling. FYI: the further down or to the side you go, the fewer people can see it.

Try it out on your site – click here for the link.

Fantastic resource for us developers. Check below for the overlay for THE Tech Scoop.

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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With that being said, many web technology consultants have either written books, given speeches or charged an incredible amount of money to assist site owners with the right SEO makeup.

One “web guy” that I follow now and then is Andy Beal. He’s created a concise slidedeck speaking about some of the fundamentals of SEO for WordPress blogs.

Let us know your feedback.

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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I found something really interesting tonight when I was doing a search in Google.

Typically when I’m looking for a Twitter name of someone, I go to Google Search and enter the parameter [name] Twitter. Simple enough right?

Well tonight when I did it there was a frame that popped up in the search results that actually showed a real-time scrolling of that user’s Twitter timeline. That’s very cool stuff.

For example, here is a screen shot of the result from my search entering my Twitter username:

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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