I have been using Google Reader for about a year now, and I love it.  It is the best web based RSS reader out there.  A few months back I ran across a Firefox extension Google Reader Notifier.  This had proved to be a great extension for showing how many items were unread in my RSS Reader.  Then about a month ago the developer update and broke the extension.  It just wasn’t reliable anymore.  So I went on a search for a another extension, and what I found was even better.  Google Reader Watcher does the same thing but uses SSL for its connection.  I must recommend this extension for all Google Reader users.

Google Reader Watcher

I have been using Google Reader since it was updated to the new version about a year ago. Damn it is one nice Rss Reader. Not to long ago I found a theme for it that made the whole experience of reading rss feeds even more enjoyable. The theme is suppose to look like an OSX app but really I don’t know. It’s nice, clean and give the reader more room to read articles. You can head over to http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/ to find out how to install the theme. Works on many browsers. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

While reading my RSS feeds today, I noticed a news story stating that Google has updated their Search History page. Now you can have Google store info about every site you visit, with their “Web History”. So this got me thinking about my search Histroy. Since I use the gmail extension in Firefox, I am always logged into my Google account, thus making all search history available to Google. Two years ago today was the start of “Search History” for Googgle. Here are some of my stats. Mind you I almost never use any other search website.

• Total Google searches: 9646
• Top queries: digg, extension mirror, putty, gmail, trillian
• Top sites: en.wikipedia.org, digg.com, dev.mysql.com, wordpress.org, www.uah.edu
• Top clicks: The Extensions Mirror, PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh, WordPress › Blog Tool, Digg / News, VLC media player
• Monthly search activity: 1111 in Jan, 1017 in March, 911 in April
• Daily search activity: 1713 on Tue, 1399 on Fri, 1339 on Sun
• Hourly search activity: 880 at 3pm, 857 at 4pm, 814 at 2pm

I find some of this information amazing. I guess I didn’t know how may times I needed to find something on Digg, or get the program putty. Also as an interesting fact, I have never made a search in the 5am hour. Search can be useful but, have I given Google to much information about me?

Here is a list of Google Products I use, or have used.

• Gmail
• Reader
• Search History
• Talk
• Alerts
• Maps
• Analytics
• Notebook
• Personalized Homepage

Each of these products stores some kind of info about me. I’m sure I’m not the only person that Google has this kind of information on. There are probably thousands of people that have the same if not more personal information on Google’s servers. With this kind of information, can Google be considered “Good” or “Evil”? They have yet to do anything substantial with this information, but when they do, will it be a good thing?

So I was thinking about going to England the other day, and thought I wonder how far it is from my house.  So off to google maps I went.  Searched from my zip to London, and this is what I got.   Notice number 19, “Swim across the Atlantic Ocean.”  Do they really think a fat guy like myself could actually swim across the Atlantic.  Come on Google, you should know that.

This has got to be the coolest thing ever. Google is a verb. Now you can actually say, “I’ll google it” and not be considered a google bitch.

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