Millions of photos from LIFE magazine are now archived on Google Images. And the large-resolution versions are available for purchase as prints, too. I found a slew of Singapore-related images and they are awesome (if you’re a nostalgia/history buff) but I just wish there were more information on the images’ locations and context. Maybe Google and LIFE could extend the Google Image Labeler to this outstanding resource one day and make it even more useful.

It seems I am not the only one who Googles my symptoms before heading to the doctor. Google Flu Trends tracks search terms to predict when the flu will hit certain areas within the United States — an epidemic indicator, if you like. While it’s a good idea and could be extended to pseudo-prediction of epidemics and pandemics, this kind of ’searchsourcing’ will only be useful if Google remains insanely popular.

Type this into the address bar of your freshly installed beta version of Google Chrome.

:%

‘Whoa’, but hey, it is beta software.

[Via atc]

There are way too many people around me with iPhones nowadays, which is why I may have been a little out of touch with Android news lately. But if this piece on Wired is to be believed, the first real Google phone might be out soon.

(And hey, it looks like I’m not the only one who doesn’t want an iPhone.)

Nevermind the results for Cobol (which I obviously don’t really care for); it just seems like an incomplete, barely out of beta kinda search. The start page is nice and slick (which the Google chaps could really steal from) but otherwise, it’s just hype. Maybe they just wanted to be out there early so Microsoft would be enticed to buy them.

Check out goosh.org — absolutely brilliant. Definitely a ‘why didn’t I think of that first’ idea.

I recently discovered some neat (and not so neat) visual search interfaces

The most impressive (visually speaking) of the lot is Searchme.com — it does the iTunes coverflow thing pretty nicely and neatly in Flash. I love the tiltviewer interface but seeing my search results in that style at Bryns Brain felt a little out-of-place. RedZee has a cute mascot and the fluid circular drag motion for the search results is all done without flash, but it looks kinda sucky.

But at the end of the day, having said all that, the actual search results were truly lousy for all three visual search engines I just mentioned. I’m sticking to Google for now, thanks very much.

Wired story with nice graphics by Build.

I signed up with Advertlets when they first launched, but never quite served out their ads here. After logging in again, I think I know why I never used them.

• The choice of ad sizes from them is limited to about five.
• You don’t have the option of showing text ads.
• The smallest ad size is 165 pixels in width – 120 pixels would be a good ’small size’.
• There’s no option to serve text ads.
• You can’t really customise the colours of the ad frame – it would be nice to be able to select the border colours, logo colour, etc.
• And yeah, there’s no option of text ads.

( An actual ad served by Advertlets.com )

Honestly, I actually think Advertlets is a good product. Bloggers and self-publishers in Asia can serve targeted ads and earn some cash, while their readers get to see relevant ads for Asia-oriented products & services.

I am sure they will tweak their offerings as they grow, but until I can choose text ads and be able to customise their appearance, I’ll stick to Adsense.

()

Looks like Microsoft is stepping up the fight against Google with all the billions it can find. (US$45 billion at this point in time.) All I can think about now is if all this will screw up Flickr.

Anyway, after kicking myself for not buying Google stock back in 2004, I am now wishing I had the balls to buy Yahoo! stock a few months ago.