Webware

Google has enlarged its search box to make it "easier" for people to use, the company said late Wednesday.

In a blog post, Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for search products and user experience, said the simple change to the company's home page "symbolizes" its "focus on search." She added that the adjustments to the height and width of the search box makes the company's home page "even easier and more fun to use." Yeah, I don't get it either.

Google said in an e-mail message that the new search box is "roughly double the size of the (original) search box." The company also made its search buttons "more similar" for those viewing Google "on different operating systems and browsers." Even with a larger search box, the company's search still only allows for up to 2,048 characters in a single query.

Here's a side-by-side view of the changes. Click on the link for a larger view.

Updated at 1:34 p.m. PDT to add Google's statements about its changes to Search.

When it comes to backing up your computer, it's probably safest and most convenient to use a cloud storage service where you store data at remote location via the Internet. However, there's a big obstacle: bandwidth. With most existing broadband services, it can take a couple of hours to upload a few gigabyte of information.

This might change in the near future.

Asankya, a network service company, announced Wednesday that it has improved its parallel networking technology to deliver up to 40 times throughput improvement for Internet-based applications. This, if true, would solve the biggest challenge that hinders the growth and global scale of cloud- and SaaS-based services.

Asankya's new networking technology is a set of patented parallel networking algorithms that significantly increase bi-directional Internet Protocol performance and accelerate encrypted traffic delivery for both ICP- and UDP-based applications. It aggregates throughput across the Internet by using multiple available pathways and removes duplicate packet transmission. The breakthrough algorithms were first funded through grants by the National Science Foundation.

The technology has been deployed by the U.S. government for real-time, interactive video applications delivered over wired and wireless IP networks. It now has been commercialized--that means soon you will be able to take advantage of it.

This is exciting news as cloud computing has been on the raise in the last few years. According to the research firm IDC, the cloud computing industry is going to be a $42 billion business by 2012.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm addicted to Twitter. Each day, it's kept in the coveted second tab in my Firefox window, lodged between Gmail and Meebo. But that doesn't mean it offers me everything I want or that I have no desire for more features.

In fact, I have a list of features I'd like added to Twitter.

Groups

I still don't know why Twitter has failed to add groups to the service. Maybe the company believes that groups would make it too closely resemble a social network, but who cares? Twitter is great, but that doesn't mean like-minded users shouldn't be able to form their own community.

Think of it this way: if Twitter added groups, it would give you the opportunity to have private areas where only your friends and colleagues could converse and it wouldn't stop you from meeting and corresponding with new people outside those groups. There's no downside.

Services like Present.ly and Yammer offer enterprise employees an opportunity to communicate with one another based on groups that are assigned by their employer. Twittermoms.com is an entire site dedicated to bringing mothers who use Twitter together. Granted, those services aren't nearly as popular as Twitter, but they certainly prove that there's a market for groups. And so far, Twitter hasn't delivered.

Tweet filter

I know Twitter has a block feature, but I don't use it. What I'd really like to see is a Tweet Filter feature that lets me block specific kinds of tweets from making their way into my stream.

I don't necessarily want to block everything some followers say, I just want to block the annoying messages like, "DonReisinger is now listening to Womanizer by Britney Spears," followed by, "DonReisinger is now listening to Take My Breath Away by Berlin." To be honest, I don't care what songs a follower is listening to and I don't need updates from a script they're running to tell me.

That said, I do want to see what they're saying when they tweet actual messages. That's why I want Twitter to devise a tool, similar to a spam filter, that would allow me to tag certain tweets, have Twitter analyze them, and ensure that anything of the sort won't make its way into my stream again. That sort of functionality works beautifully in Gmail. I'd love to see it work that well on Twitter.

Unfollow notices

Why doesn't Twitter provide us with daily updates about who unfollows us? It informs us when someone starts following us. Would it be that hard to track those who unfollow us, as well?

I would really like to see who unfollowed me. Maybe those people were upset that I had too many updates on a certain day or perhaps they didn't like something I said. Without a notice, I'll never know they're gone. But with a notice, I can send them a message and ask what happened to possibly repair our broken relationship.

Maybe some wouldn't like receiving additional e-mails announcing when a user decides to unfollow them, but I think it provides significant value. It can give you hints about what your followers do and don't like and it makes you a better Twitter user, since the last thing you should be doing is annoying your followers.

Profile stats

I'd love to know how many people view my Twitter page each day. It's not that I have a vain desire to see how many people are looking me up. Instead, I'd like to know how many of those people become followers.

People find their way to another user's Twitter page, look at the tweets they've been making over the past few days, and decide then if they want to follow them. I've done it. Sometimes I decide that, yes, this is a person worth following. Other times, I see that all they've done is linked to their blog and failed to converse with other users, and decide that following them probably isn't in my best interest.

But having data detailing the number of people who view my Twitter page and how many become followers would be ideal. Based off that information, I could determine the value of my tweets to other Twitter users and experiment to see if I could devise a way to increase my follower conversion rate.

Twitter is all about being part of a community. Knowing what that community likes and doing what you can to appeal to that community is incumbent upon us all. Twitter stream stats would help in that endeavor.

200 characters

When Twitter first started, the service had a strong SMS focus. Because of that, the company wanted to ensure that tweets would fit in the 160-character SMS limit, allowing room for the message and usernames. But as Twitter has grown into a service with a strong online focus, it's blatantly clear that 140 characters is not enough.

I just don't see any justification for providing only 140 characters anymore. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to write a tweet, only to run out of room with just two or three characters remaining. Like everyone else, I'm forced to find places to cut down what I say just to add in those necessary characters.

I understand that those who wish to use SMS might be left out in a 200-character world, but that doesn't mean it should stop Twitter from pursuing this strategy. There are a slew of applications, like Twitterific, that are designed specifically for mobile phones that allow users to update their Twitter stream without using SMS. And although some devices don't support third-party apps and using text messages to communicate with their followers will be practically impossible after the 200-character switch, I think Twitter needs to accept that and move on.

Twitter is a growing service that has moved past its SMS past. It's time its executives embrace its new role as a mainstream microblog and improve the service while being mindful of its strong online presence.

Want to hear Don complain some more about Twitter? Follow him and indulge yourself!

So far we're pretty smitten with Google's Chrome. It's certainly not without its faults, but for version 1.0 of a browser it's pretty sharp. We've compiled a list of 10 things we'd really like to see added or tweaked. Some come from other browsers, and some are just improvements on some of the existing features. Google, we hope you're listening.

1. Profile roaming between multiple browsers. This may be a pipe dream, but if Foxmarks for Firefox has proved anything, syncing up your bookmarks between multiple machines is awesome. Doing the same with passwords, settings, and history would be even better. Considering Google already has a way for your browser to send data back to the mothership, and a hosted Web history service of its own, a little sync using my Google account doesn't seem that hard does it?

2. Better bookmark management. Speaking of bookmarks, the bookmarking system in Chrome is about as basic as it gets. "Stripped-down" might be a better way to describe it. On the outset, it seems as robust as Firefox 3's with a really simple one-click way to save links. Where the system falls apart is the lack of tools for organization, and a complete lack of a back-up tool to save your short (or long) list of favorite sites. Of course, a bookmarks plug-in like Delicious would help sort this out, which brings us to the next yearning...

Chrome's bookmark management is incredibly sparse compared with some of the more mature offerings from browsers like Firefox 3. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

3. Plug-ins. Google has acknowledged that plug-ins are on the road map, which is a good thing. Here's how the search giant can totally one-up Mozilla, though: let me install and make changes to extensions without having to restart the browser. Nothing is worse than having 30 tabs open and having to restart, even if it remembers what I had open before. This reminds me...

4. Saved sessions/Warning messages when closing multiple tabs. Firefox's little warning for when you're closing a group of tabs was a huge lifesaver in version two. Firefox 3 brought with it a way to save that grouping of open tabs for later. Chrome has neither of these features. Accidentally closing your browser with a slew of tabs open means they're gone for good--that is unless you set it from the default option of clearing what you were looking at. Chrome is also nice enough to tell you some of the most recently closed tabs back on its special start page, but that's it.

This warning feature in Firefox has saved this author many hours of hardship over the years. Sadly it is missing from Google's Chrome.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

5. A full-screen mode. I love the minimalism of Chrome, but sometimes I just want those extra 60-90 vertical pixels back. Give me a keyboard shortcut for this too, and I'll be in screen hog heaven.

6. A more customizable interface. The blue is neat, but getting that great deep purple found in incognito mode is enough of a tease to make me want to change the way it looks based on how I'm feeling. Plus, you've taken away the nice special Windows-theme coloring I had when you got rid of the top of the application, so let me choose how I want it to look. Bonus points for a tie-dye mode or something that changes depending on what time of day it is--like your personalized homepage service iGoogle.

Dragging tabs in and out of windows is really cool. Trying to do this with sites you've designated as applications does not work though.

7. A way to drag "applications" back into the main browser. The option to turn a certain site into a self-contained browser window with a stripped-down interface is great. However, the inability to drag it back into an open Chrome browser window is maddening when you're trying to re-open some real estate on the task bar. You can do this with existing tabs and windows, and it works great.

8. A Mac/Linux version. The lack of a Mac client has left the growing percentage of Mac users in a bit of a tizzy. Worse yet, based on Google's track record with some of its other cross-platform software offerings like Google Earth and Google Desktop search, the Mac has fared a little worse with slower release schedules and less features than its PC siblings. Hopefully new features will be rolled out to all the platforms at about the same time.

9. A pop-up blocker that blocks. Clearly Google is trying to shake things up with a pop-up blocker that really should be called a "pop-up relocator," since it not only lets them open but also load. Frankly, this drives me nuts since I have to close them down to get them off the screen. Also if it's really important and something I meant to click, I have to go drag it off from the bottom of the screen.

10. A regular old search box. Yes progress is good and the "omnibar" does a pretty slam-dunk job of getting new searches going, but let's get some of the ambiguity away from that thing and have an option to leave it for URLs only. Also, a separate search box would let me pick from the other multitude of search providers in addition to Google without compromising my screen real estate.

Any you think we missed? Leave them in the comments.

Update: Changed number 4's lack of a session saver, although this feature is turned off by default.

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.

The second of 36 questions.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Unveiled at the Web 2.0 Expo on Monday: InPowr, a service to help you achieve your life goals.

Don't laugh. I already did that for you, live from the event. I Twittered: "InPowr intro: WTF? 'It's fun, it's light,' Sure, just answer the 36 QUESTIONS. Argh."

At the moment the site is feels like an online Cosmo quiz. The first thing you do is answer 36 question about your state of mind. Then you get a little diagram showing you where you are, and are not, feeling content. After that, you get a grid with tiles that represent things you need to work on, such as "My finances." Then you put together tiles in groups and, finally, you set up some goals to address the issues in those groups. It's actually not a bad way to take an inventory of what you need to work on in your life, but the whole process is rather rigid.

The flower of well-being

(Credit: CNET Networks)

In its current beta form, the service is a tease, since key features have yet to be released. A key value proposition of InPowr is that it will help you create a 21-day plan to improving your happiness, and that it will allow you to add friends as a support network to help you. These and other key features should come to the service soon, but without them, InPowr strikes me as just a clever quiz.

After the InPowr demo at the Expo, I talked to several people and asked them what they thought about it. "Would you use it?" I asked. The vast majority said, "No way." Only one person seemed intrigued by the service: a woman who told me she was a big Tony Robbins fan.

There's nothing wrong with software and Web apps whose creators want to help us improve our lives. Like the little personal goals start-ups JoesGoals (review) and SuperViva, InPowr comes from a good place. It just seems, for the moment, more precious than useful.

Adding goals to groups.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Kuler is a free tool from Adobe Labs that lets users design and share color schemes for use in Web sites or other projects. If you've ever designed a Web site or PowerPoint presentation before, you know that choosing a color scheme is often trial and error. Kuler lets you tune up to five different colors at once and makes the process surprisingly easy, allowing users to simply adjust selectors over a large color wheel. Users can then go deeper, adjusting the finer details of a color, and Kuler makes small adjustments to make sure the other colors will be compatible.

For nondesigners, Kuler is still fun to play around with. If you end up creating any color sets you want to use, you can save and export them to use with any of Adobe's Creative Suite 2 applications. For home-improvement enthusiasts, Kuler provides extensive color information like CMYK and RGB values, which your local paint store might be able to match.

Kuler runs right in your browser. Try it here.

(Credit: CNET Networks)