Please turn off real time search Google!

by Jonathan on 9th Dec 2009 in Google

Anyone else finding that thing bloody annoying? Could they at least make it opt-in?

I type in a query and expect to see a nice list of relevant results, but now instead I see not only a couple of adverts (which I’ve gotten used to ignoring, unless a company is stupid enough to bid on their own name, in which case I click it) but now 2 massive twitter quotes too, which pushed the search results to almost below the pagefold on my 15″ laptop screen!

Get the centre of a Google Map as Latitude and Longitude

by Jonathan on 28th Nov 2009 in Google Maps

Here’s a nice little javascript function to get the Lat / Long coordinates of the centre of Google Maps – I found it prticularly useful once when creating a flash map which showed the locations of a national chain of golf fitting centres.

javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

To use it simply go to Google Maps, centre the map on the place you want the coordinates of, enter the code above into the address bar and hit enter. A nice text field alert will pop up allowing you to copy the Lat / Long values.

If you’re going to be doing this regularly you may find it useful to create a Firefox bookmark with the code set as the location. That way you can simply hit the bookmark and have the coordinates appear (as long as you’re on Google Maps that is).

Google Gets a Caffeine Boost

by Jonathan on 12th Aug 2009 in Google

Google has launched a beta of an upgraded search which it claims will make your search a whole lot faster.

It’s available to try now at http://www2.sandbox.google.com.