google

  • Getting the Google IDs of liking users is interesting, but I didn't know about "Reader's view of a feed", also interesting. [via kottke]
  • "To help you understand how Web Caches will treat a Web page, the Cacheability Engine will look at a URL (and optionally any images or objects associated with it), giving both specific cache-related data about it, and a general commentary on how cacheable the object is."
  • "The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work." Derek on SEO. In summary, hire a good designer not a self-proclaimed Search Engine Optimizer and design for humans not algorithms. Couldn't agree more.

These are links I added recently to my shared items at Google Reader. Just catching up.

Remove Google Reader 'Likes'

Google Reader is adding some new social features, and one of them is Likes. You can mark that you like a particular post that flows through Google Reader and see other users who have done the same. The Like notification appears in a prominent position directly under the headline:

Google Reader Likes

There's no way to opt out of the feature and I found it distracting. To disable it, I used Stylish for Firefox. I chose "Write new style", then "for www.google.com", and I added the following lines (after some CSS investigation):
.entry-likers-n {display:none;}
.like-inactive {display:none;}
That removes both the Likes count and the button for marking something as liked. It's a lot like the MetaFilter favorites feature but it feels odd because there's little to no community interaction at Google Reader. I guess it might be neat to spot someone you happen to know in a liked-list, but what are the chances? (Showing just my contacts who liked something would be great.) Aggregate data might be fun to see, but I don't need the feature active unless I want to start Liking-posts-up to give them more attention on a list of popular posts somewhere. So until Google Reader liked-lists are more than just a list of random users who liked something, I'm going to mute it.
  • Nice summary of Fuelly with a list of things to do once you sign up. I bet interest increases directly with gas prices.
  • Google's take on YSlow--Yahoo's excellent website performance analyzer. Not as polished as YSlow, but looks promising and includes some analysis that YSlow doesn't cover such as CSS efficiency and image compression.
  • "Wolfram|Alpha can pop out an answer to pretty much any kind of factual question that you might pose to a scientist, economist, banker, or other kind of expert." A quick description of the new "search engine" by Stephen Wolfram.
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