Browsing to see what are the new Google search experiments I saw something very disturbing... Looks like that the financial crises hits Google harder than we though, so hard that Sergey Brin himself had to take some more work responsibilities to help out the guys in these hard times :)

What I'm talking about? You can clearly see in the explanation of new Google experiment "SearchWiki with sound":

I love how Google keep a high spirit in every little thing :) Regarding the experiment itself, Sergey's special sound effects are not bad at all...

Read more about Google's Keyboards short cuts experiment and about the Accessible view experiment

I came across a game developed with and for Amnesty International, called "Pictures for truth".

About the project: "This game was developed to support Amnesty International's campaign on China. The story and characters represented are fictional. The aim of this project is to sensitize the player to human rights violations"

About the game: "You are a journalist and photographer. A few months before the Beijing Olympic Games, your best friend, Jun Shen, a human rights defender and journalist, calls for help. You will do everything you can to help him. This adventure will take you to China where you will be confronted to many human rights violations.  By investigating, taking pictures and publishing your articles, you will work to solve the problems you encounter and eventually save your friend!"

Anyway... I played with the game for about an hour until I finished the game (Its a short game) with a score of 4000 fame points (Hurray!) and I must say that I liked it, It brought me back to the good old days of playing simple quests. But this is obviously not a game for gamers, its a very creative way to spread the amnesty agenda. And a good work doing so in this way, it really brought it to my attention.

In terms of usability the game is pretty intuitive, and I have just one main remark - It was really hard to learn how to start playing... Why?

This is the first screen you encounter after you load the game

Good idea to show me the game instruction before i play, but i kept looking and looking for the Start playing button, and couldn't find him. I just didn't know how to start the game. After a lot of air-clicking I pressed the instructions button F1 and the instruction disappeared and I could play the game. From my subjective view, this was not so intuitive... so please add a Close/Start/Play button instead of making us try and understand that this is not a pre-game screen, and just a layer of the instructions already opened...

Other than that, and on an ethic level something really bothered me

During the game you need to take pictures of "events" in order to publish articles (each article gives you more fame points). If you manage to get a better picture that shows things in different angels, for examples a bigger focus on the big bad Chinese police and in the background its prisoner, you gain more fame points then just a simple picture of both of them.

What is my problem?

• First, the game objective is to gain "Fame" points by revealing the truth and exposing the real deal. Do Amnesty people do it for the sake of fame?
• Second, the game enforces the art of taking the right picture? Do Amnesty encourage people touch up the pictures so that they will be more effective?

These things make me think a lot about the objectivity in reports, The entire conception looks a bit rotten, But the game is pretty cool, and it does deliver an important message, so go play it.

I don't know about you, but when I was a kid there was a fun game we used to play. We took a sheet of paper, and wrote a story with the entire classroom, each kid, turn by turn without even knowing what the other kids wrote about. On the sheet of paper we wrote a beginning to a story, for example "Once upon a time". We passed the paper between the participants, and each one of them (in his turn) added the next sentence to the story. The next in turn would only be able to see the last word of the sentence the previous player wrote, and he had to write the next sentence based only on that, as the only hint to the real context. Eventually when there was no room left of the sheet of paper - we revealed what everyone wrote and that was the story.

The fun part of this game is that sometimes you get a really funny and surprising short stories.

So far with nostalgic thoughts...  I am trying to replicate this same game in the Twitter community, so in order to do that I opened another twitter account dedicated to that called Shtory (Shared short story) - There our story will evolve.

Game flow example:

• First sentence: 5000 years ago man kind faced a dilemma.
  • I the twitter page I will only publish the word "dilemma", this word will be the only clue for the next person to add a sentence to the story.
• Second Sentence (by a random user): dilemma. We didn't know what to do, so we decided to go to sleep.later that day
  • The twitter page will now only display the word "Sleep." (the word dilemma will no longer appear only, sleep).
• Third sentence (by another random user...): Day. Day or night it doesn't matter I'm so tired I must go to sleep, but my wife keep on nagging about the garbage.
  • and so one, you get the point (forgive me for not being too creative or imaginative here...)

Guidelines and Rules:

• In the twitter account of Shtory, you will only see one word each time. This word you see is the last word of the sentence the previous person added to the story, and based on that word you need to continue the story with your own sentence.
• Only the first sentence will be fully published from the beginning in the twitter page, the rest of the sentence will only be represented by the last word of the sentence.
• The sentence you send me, must begin with @shtory and the last word of the previous sentence (the word published on the twitter account) for example "@shtory Dilemma. we didn't know what to do..."
• Only the first sentence that I'll get as a twit reply will be added to the story, I assume that I'll get duplicate sentences per word, and there can only be one sentence to continue the story based on that word.
• Once a new sentence was written and added, a new "last word" will be published for the next sentence, so follow the account to know what is the relevant word.
• Only one twit can be sent to continue the sentence (meaning no more than 140 characters).
• Do not include links into the sentences you send.
• You can send as many twits as you want, but you can not continue a sentence you already added to the story.
• After 100 twits I will publish the full shared story.

Let the fun begin

Twitter Personalities

Twitter, twitter, twitter, is there something that wasn't said about twitter? Maybe... I don't know if someone categorized the type of people using twitter, so I'm giving it a try...

People:

The Conformist:

He likes to think of himself as an early adopter... But not really, he uses twitter just because he heard so much about it from so many people, and he decided to signup. He doesn't really care for it, so he follows a few people and writes down a twit every few days at most, after a month he forgets about his account.

 

The Smart Opportunistic:

Joined twitter because he has an agenda. He wants to promote his blog, business, political agenda or whatever. He keeps on spreading information about his agenda (in a subtle way), he tries not to get caught as a spammer, so he keeps following other people too - but never read a word they say.

The Stupid opportunistic:

He is very similar to the opportunistic, but in a stupid way. He also delivers his agenda in a subtle way, but other people don't pay much interest to him because he is not smart enough to care about his followers-following ratio.

The Egocentric:

His only goal is to have as many followers as possible, even if he has no interest to follow a person he will follow him to get him to follow him as well. He doesn't wait more than a day to remove a person from his list if that person didn't follow him, in order to keep the followers-following ratio stable.

The Chatter:

He is not interested in reading or spreading links to the coolest things, or the hottest news. He just wants to chat with his buddies on everyday things. He feels that twitter is his new replacement for emails or IM.

 

 

The Autobiographer:

What he does all day is tell the world approximately every 10 minutes what he is doing. He has no interest in other people, he has only the need to share his everyday accomplishments. (Such as riding a bus, eating pizza and etc...).

The spammer:

He doesn't care at all about what is going on, he just keep on following people like there is no tomorrow. He has the worst followers-following ratio. Since he opened his account he created approximately 1-3 twits and no more, to make the appearance of a real user... He gets you all excited for a new follower until you understand he is just another spammer.

The Early Adopters:

They have been here from the beginning, telling themselves this is the next big thing. They keep a happy count of how many times twitter is down, in the last few weeks they are unhappy because twitter is up most of the time.

The Stalker:

He is searching twitter to find real celebrities. He likes to collect them and tries (but fails) to bask in their reflected glory.

The one twit people:

Opened an account after reading an article in Techcrunch, really loved the concept of twitter and even filled a short bio and posted a twit. Never came back...

The Re-Twitter:

He is a person of ethics. When he finds something he likes in his feed (Submitted by a person he follows), he wont pass it on as his own as he is a person of high ethics, he will always give the honor to that person by mentioning him in the form of a Re-Twit.

The heavy blogger:

He thinks he is a king walking among his many loyal subjects. He greets them in his special way when he wakes up or go to sleep. He always chooses who to reply or who to ignore. He has 10-50 times more followers than people he is following. Beside spreading links to his new blog post he likes to share his occasional words of wisdom.

The Casual twitter:

For him twitter is just another platform, he doesn't really pay attention to twitter articles or to his followers-following ratio, but it is always a reasonable ratio. He has a few buddies here, a few Celebs and a few opinion leaders. He is probably the only twitter user who reads his entire feed.

Companies:

The "Opportunity to get Cheap advertisement" Company:

Probably a company that heard about the "New age" of viral advertisement and web2.0, and would like to exploit twitter to gain free advertisement, and to be able to say to its investors that they are into web2.0.

The web2.0 Company:

A web2.0 company is all about what is Now. so there is no way they didn't open a twitter account. Most of the times the twitter account looks like their chances for an exit...

The Hip CEO:

Probably a company that its CEO still didn't pass the age of 35 (sometimes even 25), and uses twitter in a good way to be in touch with its customers. Their account is more similar to a chatter account than to the opportunistic account, they sometime have the tendency to forget to talk about their own company.

The Company's "Cover" account:

They don't use the company name, instead they pretend like it is a real user spreading links from their web site (and never other links) and they use the account as any of the opportunistic characters. Most of the time they are so obvious it hurts...

News and Feed Bots:

Rarely helpful, and commonly suffocate your feed with an overdose of very not interesting links.

I hope you can find yourself there, but I guess all of us are a mixture of some of these types. If you have any additions, corrections , suggestions, or a twitter account that fits one of these types feel free to leave a comment.

Oh yes almost forget..., follow me on twitter :)

I would like to share with you an interesting game I read about in an interesting blog of an interesting person Dan Ariely.

A virtual reality game called "Snow world" was created to reduce the pain of burn victims, by giving the patients a snowy virtual world to wonder in. This psychological experience reduced their pains and the need for pain relief medication. You can read more about it in the Sciencentral article.

This is an amazing idea. Finally a good use for VR... The fact that the virtual world the burn victims play in is a snowy one is not really what matters that much (I presume) but the fact that the patients get the chance to place their mind in another place, far away from the pain. This is a really good use to games, which have the tendency to make you forget about the real life... (ask my wife)

Is the global economy situation really got you depressed? We all joke about it, but for some people it might be a real concern.

Now you can test yourself (Maybe just to reduce some tension that not all is bad or maybe to wake up and and go talk to somebody before things get worse)

Keep in mind one important thing - This test is based on the predominant symptoms of major depressive disorder as listed in the DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; Fourth Edition. This is the generally accepted manual for diagnosing psychiatric disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association). 

Please use the results of this test as a guide and not a diagnosis, only a licensed mental health practitioner can diagnose depression. 

Have "Fun"... Take the test.

Came across some games of an Israeli flash game developer (among other things) Eyal Shahar, and one of his games really amazed me - Blind Shooter, the idea behind it is so creative and so "out of the box".

The purpose of the game is to shoot birds of some sort (why birds...) by aiming with the left and right arrows, while you can't see a thing ("see" on the screen shot on your left...).

So how do I know where to shoot? By listening of course... you heard me!

When the target (the poor bird) is to the right of me, I'll hear her voice in the right earphone, if the target on the left I'll hear the voice on the left earphone. In addition the volume of the bird voice changes to give me another indication of how far on the right (or left) the bird is (High volume - closer, Low volume - not so close). when I start hearing the bird on both left and right earphones I can assume that the bird is pretty much on my target. If I aim correctly at the bird, and "kill" it, I'll just stop hearing that bird. (I presume that no real birds died in making of this game :).

It really made me feel blind and helpless, that it made me wish that the indications that were given during the game, were much stronger, but I guess the life of a blind is not that easy, and I feel it is important for us to appreciate and understand it. So go and experience it.

More over the idea behind Blind Shooter is so creative and so "out of the box" and I just love it!

Can't wait to see what will be next, meanwhile I'm going to play again with some of the other games he developed, like this other really innovative one called PAH! - A Voice controlled game.

It's about time, YouTube announced that they are now supporting the ability to use deep links, to go directly to a specific second of a video. It's a bit surprising that it took Google so long to implement it, and more surprising that they needed their community to make them understand the need for that. Better late than never, and more importantly I always respect a company that listens to its users.

How to use deep link? well here is the YouTube team explanation: "To create a deep link, append the following to the end of a YouTube video URL: #t=1m15s. This says to link to the time 1:15 - you can replace the numbers before the 'm' and the 's' with anything you like.
As an additional bonus, if you mention a specific time in a video comment, e.g. "haha 1:14 is funny", this will become a hyperlink. Viewers can simply click on the time and the video will automatically jump to the point you are referencing. Pretty cool huh?"

In part 1- Google search shortcuts I gave you most of the shortcuts Google has to offer on its search box (the ones I know of). In part 2, I'm going to do the same for the Gmail Email Service.

Gmail Shortcuts Guide (Most of the help is taken from Google's Gmail help):

Searching Gmail:

• from:
  (Used to specify the sender)
  Example - from:amy
  Meaning - Messages from Amy
• to:
  (Used to specify a recipient)
  Example - to:david
  Meaning - All messages that were sent to David (by you or someone else)
• subject:
  (Search for words in the subject line)
  Example - subject:dinner
  Meaning - Messages that have the word "dinner" in the subject
• OR

(Search for messages matching term A or term B*)
*OR must be in all caps

Example - from:amy OR from:david
Meaning - Messages from Amy or from David

• - (hyphen)
  (Used to exclude messages from your search)
  Example - dinner -movie
  Meaning - Messages that contain the word "dinner" but do not contain the word "movie"
• label:
  (Search for messages by label*)
  *There isn't a search operator for unlabeled messages
  

Example - from:amy label:friends
Meaning - Messages from Amy that have the label "friends"

Example - from:david label:my-family
Meaning - Messages from David that have the label "My Family"

• i
  (Replaces the term Label)
  For Example: i:friends
• Gmail Label Shortcuts:

^b chats
^f sent mail
^i inbox
^k trash
^r draft
^s spam
^t starred messages
^u unread mail

• has:attachment
  (Search for messages with an attachment)
  Example - from:david has:attachment
  Meaning - Messages from David that have an attachment
• list:
  (Search for messages on mailing lists)

Example - list:info@example.com
(Meaning - Messages with the words info@example.com in the headers, sent to or from this list)

• filename:
  (Search for an attachment by name or type)

Example - filename:physicshomework.txt
Meaning - Messages with an attachment named "physicshomework.txt"

Example - label:work filename:pdf
Meaning - Messages labeled "work" that also have a PDF file as an attachment

• " " (quotes)

(Used to search for an exact phrase*)
*Capitalization isn't taken into consideration

Example - "i'm feeling lucky"
Meaning - Messages containing the phrase "i'm feeling lucky" or "I'm feeling lucky"

Example - subject:"dinner and a movie"
Meaning - Messages containing the phrase "dinner and a movie" in the subject

• ( )
  (Used to group words)
  Used to specify terms that shouldn't be excluded

Example - from:amy(dinner OR movie)
Meaning - Messages from Amy that contain either the word "dinner" or the word "movie"

Example - subject:(dinner movie)
Meaning - Messages in which the subject contains both the word "dinner" and the word "movie"

• in:anywhere
  (Search for messages anywhere in Gmail*)
  *Messages in Spam and Trash are excluded from searches by default
  Example - in:anywhere movie
  Meaning - Messages in All Mail, Spam, and Trash that contain the word "movie"
• in:inbox
  in:trash
  in:spam
  (Search for messages in Inbox, Trash, or Spam)
  Example - in:trash from:amy
  Meaning - Messages from Amy that are in Trash
• is:starred
  is:unread
  is:read
  (Search for messages that are starred, unread or read)
  Example - is:read is:starred from:David
  Meaning - Messages from David that have been read and are marked with a star
• cc:
  bcc:
  (Used to specify recipients in the cc: or bcc: fields*)
  *Search on bcc: cannot retrieve messages on which you were blind carbon copied
  Example - cc:david
  Meaning - Messages that were cc-ed to David
• after:
  before:
  (Search for messages sent during a certain period of time*)
  *Dates must be in yyyy/mm/dd format.
  Example - after:2004/04/16 before:2004/04/18
  Meaning - Messages sent between April 16, 2004 and April 18, 2004.*
  *More precisely: Messages sent after 12:00 AM (or 00:00) April 16, 2004 and before April 18, 2004.
• is:chat
  (Search for chat messages)
  Example - is:chat monkey
  Meaning - Any chat message including the word "monkey".

Google explanation video:

Keyboard shortcuts

To turn these case-sensitive shortcuts on or off, click Settings, and then pick an option next to Keyboard shortcuts.

• c
  (Compose)
  Allows you to compose a new message. + c allows you to compose a message in a new window.
• /
  (Search)
  Puts your cursor in the search box.
• k
  (Move to newer conversation)
  Opens or moves your cursor to a more recent conversation. You can hit to expand a conversation
• j
  (Move to older conversation)
  Opens or moves your cursor to the next oldest conversation. You can hit to expand a conversation.
• n
  (Next message)
  Moves your cursor to the next message. You can hit to expand or collapse a message. (Only applicable in 'Conversation View.')
• p
  (Previous message)
  Moves your cursor to the previous message. You can hit to expand or collapse a message. (Only applicable in 'Conversation View.')
• o or
  (Open)
  Opens your conversation. Also expands or collapses a message if you are in 'Conversation View.'
• u
  (Return to conversation list)
  Refreshes your page and returns you to the inbox, or list of conversations.
• e
  (Archive)
  Archive your conversation from any view.
• m
  (Mute)
  Archives the conversation, and all future messages skip the Inbox unless sent or cc'd directly to you. Learn more.
• x
  (Select conversation)
  Automatically checks and selects a conversation so that you can archive, apply a label, or choose an action from the drop-down menu to apply to that conversation.
• s
  (Star a message or conversation)
  Adds or removes a star to a message or conversation. Stars allow you to give a message or conversation a special status.
• !
  (Report spam)
  Marks a message as spam and removes it from your conversation list.
• r
  (Reply)
  Replies to the message sender. + r allows you to reply to a message in a new window. (Only applicable in 'Conversation View.')
• a
  (Reply all)
  Replies to all message recipients. +a allows you to reply to all message recipients in a new window. (Only applicable in 'Conversation View.')
• f
  (Forward)
  Forwards a message. + f allows you to forward a message in a new window. (Only applicable in 'Conversation View.')
• 
  (Escape from input field)
  Removes the cursor from your current input field.
• #
  (Delete)
  Moves the conversation to Trash.
• +s
  (Save draft)
  Saves the current text as a draft when composing a message. Hold the key while pressing s and make sure your cursor is in one of the text fields -- either the composition pane, or any of the To, CC, BCC, or Subject fields -- when using this shortcut.
• + i
  (Mark as read)
  Marks your message as 'read' and skip to the next message.
• + u
  (Mark as unread)
  Marks your message as 'unread' so you can go back to it later.
• [
  (Archive and previous)
  Archives your conversation and moves to the previous one.
• ]
  (Archive and next)
  Archives your conversation and moves to the next one.
• z
  (Undo)
  Undoes your previous action, if possible (works for actions with an 'undo' link).
• + n
  (Update current conversation)
  Updates your current conversation when there are new messages.
• q
  (Move cursor to chat search)
  Moves your cursor directly to the chat search box.
• y
  (Remove from Current View*)
  Automatically removes the message or conversation from your current view.
• From 'Inbox,' 'y' means Archive
• From 'Starred,' 'y' means Unstar
• From 'Trash,' 'y' means Move to inbox
• From any label, 'y' means Remove the label

* 'y' has no effect if you're in 'Spam,' 'Sent,' or 'All Mail.'

• .
  (Show more actions)
  Displays the 'More Actions' drop-down menu.
• ?
  (Show keyboard shortcuts help)
  Displays the keyboard shortcuts help menu within any page you're on.

Combo-keys

• then
  (Send message)
  After composing your message, use this combination to send it automatically. (Supported in Internet Explorer and Firefox, on Windows.)
• y then o
  (Archive and next)
  Archives your conversation and moves to the next one.
• g then a
  (Go to 'All Mail')
  Takes you to 'All Mail,' the storage site for all mail you've ever sent or received (and have not deleted).
• g then s
  (Go to 'Starred')
  Takes you to all conversations you have starred.
• g then c
  (Go to 'Contacts')
  Takes you to your Contacts list.
• g then d
  (Go to 'Drafts')
  Takes you to all drafts you have saved.
• g then i
  (Go to 'Inbox')
  Returns you to the inbox.
• g then t
  (Go to 'Sent Mail')
  Takes you to all mail you've sent.
• * then a
  (Select all)
  Selects all mail.
• * then n
  (Select none)
  Deselects all mail.
• * then r
  (Select read)
  Selects all mail you've read.
• * then u
  (Select unread)
  Selects all unread mail.
• * then s
  (Select starred)
  Selects all starred mail.
• * then t
  (Select unstarred)
  Selects all unstarred mail.

And finally a nice post i found with interesting and unusual tips for using Gmail: Gmail Tips and Tricks Monster Roundup

I wrote about the Evolution of Auto Complete a few posts ago, This post is about the best Auto Complete I have ever seen (I Don't know how I forgot about this one, shame on me! :).

Read the text in the picture below:

Source: http://www.friends.hosted.pl/redrim/Reading_Test.jpg

Our brain is such an amazing auto-complete tool, and I always get excited to see great Priming effects. Our brain already seen these words in the past, and due to that he is able to re-create the correct word even though the word is all mixed up. Pay attention that the first and last letters of the word are in their correct location, to give the relevant clues for our brain to re-create the word (Top Down processes)