Google TV

Anroid 2.0 Video

For users, some of the new Android 2.0 features include:

• Multiple accounts per-device
• Exchange Support
• An improved virtual keyboard
• Support for flash, digital zoom and white balance on the camera (provided your camera has a built-in flash)
• Improved web browser with HTML-5 support and better search and navigation
• Improved calendar

The first phone that will feature Android 2.0 is the upcoming Droid from Verizon and Motorola.

Google Social Search Explained

Here's the latest Google Lab experiment. I like this a lot and see it as a natural extension from their custom search technology. Search is moving into a mesh type quasi personal quasi standard index hybrid search.  Looking forward to seeing the same with Bing and added Twitter feeds very soon.



To learn how it works behind the scenes check watch the following:

Google Announce Social Search

How the search engine worlds changes. First it was universal search, then it was semantic search, now it's social search! At Web 2.0 Expo yesterday VP of search, Marissa Mayer, gave the surprise announcement.

So far all I know about it is:

• The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr photos or their status updates. It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results
• These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results.
• They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data.

 I'll track what is happening and report back soon. Rumour has it that it will launch in Google labs real soon.

The Google Real-Time Search Tip

The race for real-time search is gathering pace and Google for quite some time have been very worried about the dominance that Twitter have been making in this space.

Google introduced in May a change to their "Search Options" and amongst others one of the things they offer was the ability to search within 24 hours. This is a nice addition but far off real-time search.

However, there is a hack around this that can let you search in the past minute or event the past second.

The trick is to know how to understand what constitutes the parameters in a URL. A topic very rarely discussed in recruitment circles. Most search engines use different priority parameters as well as sometimes different operators and modifiers to search their index. The tilde search being a good example in Google.

However, something I've learnt about this week is the Query Date Range or qdr:d parameter.

All you have to do to search for the query in the past minute is to change the parameter to qdr:n, and for the past second to qdr:s.

For example, this weekend I was searching for real-time Lisbon treaty information.

http://www.google.ie/search?q=%22lisbon%20treaty%22&hl=en&sa=G&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:d

Take the end of the URL and the qdr:d parameter and change the d for a n and you then get the engine to display in minutes not just within 24 hours.

http://www.google.ie/search?q=%22lisbon%20treaty%22&hl=en&sa=G&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:n

Big difference in what the index returned and much closer to real time.

If used properly could be used to help study the market you operate in with all the breaking news indexed by Google's search engine as soon as possible. Helped me greatly this weekendto study what was being posted about the Lisbon treaty and proved much quicker than Google news and other news aggregators for certain themes I was searching.

Real-time search will be discussed at the Future of Recruitment conference this week when Bill Fischer gives his presentation on Twitter Jobs Search.

Hope to see you there. Happy Hunting!

PS - To hear more about tips and industry news you can follow my #irishrecruiters hashtag on Twitter

Google to launch new upgraded version of its search engine and Facebook getting serious about search

Today Google announced it is launching a new upgraded version of its search engine. It even went as far as releasing the developers preview of it today, code named "Caffeine". In the announcement they explain that it will improve the speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness of Google search.

Learn more here

Also, it looks like Facebook are getting serious about search. In particular the FriendFeed acquisition looks very exciting. Learn more here and here. The race for a private and public real time aggregated semantic capable search market has got a lot more interesting. This union is a very significant move that could be Twitter's biggest challenge yet. And it is the joining of the very talented industry recognised founders of the FriendFeed engineering team who were instrumental in launching Google Mail and Google Maps at their time in Google that could be the biggest cout of all.

iCloud is what Google Chrome OS wants to be - but when will we see a recrutiment O/S

Following up from my blog post on Google Chrome's OS annuncement I decided today to go searching for small start ups that maybe already have created a OS in their browser. Often when companies are building innovative software they are faced with the classic "build or buy" scenario when deciding what to do. I was sure I’d unearth something or someone who had already build an O/S in a browser and low and behold iCloud appeared! Check out the video introduction:



Expect Google Chrome's OS to look something a long the same lines as this but with an even cleaner UI. The question for recruiters will be how to use it to benefit their cloud recruitment strategy? Well with a cloud drive as part of the offering synchronisation with your office hard drive will be important so you can work on the go. It will be interesting to see what other portability will be on offer to see if you can build ATS integration into the browser. Some of the open source ATS out there might be able to integrate with the platform which will make it easier for recruiters to work off their browsers which would be a nice piece of functionality to have if the security was tight enough when working from an airport for example.

The real question for me though is when will we see a recruitment O/S?

Aggregation is already becoming important as we head into the start of FY10. Expect a lot more desktop aggregation and clever desktop search tools popping up like Xobni, in the coming months as well as a continuing explosing of mobile apps. What I would be delighted to see would be a browser which allows me merge my RSS feeds, my facebook updates, my tweets and my hotmail, gmail and work emails in one place. Let me check my ATS feeds, have Skype imbedded and allow IMs from both Gmail and Messenger that would be great. Besides that integrations with a news aggregator like Newsgator would deserve a tip of the hat. Google Wave, meets iGoogle, meets Google Chrome OS, plus Google docs, plus Google News, plus Tweet deck, plus Messenger, plus LinkedIn integration and multiple utilities like Firefox have on offer would be a start.

Google Chrome OS on the way

Check out what Google had to say about it on the offical Google blog, here.

"It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be." Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director

iGoogle for the iPhone

One of the tools I use to automate certain searches I do to map out talent pools around the world or construct a boolean search I want to automate is iGoogle. So far its probably the nearest I'm come to having a recruiter's personal operating system. Now it's gone mobile which has saved me some time as I can now access my configuation instead of having to go to multiple sites as before. iGoogle mobile is available for the iPhone and Android.

Here's what one of the Google representatives had to say about it:
“This new version is faster and easier to use. It supports tabs as well as more of your favorite gadgets, including those built by third-party developers … One of our favorite new features is the in-line display of articles for feed-based gadgets. That means you can read article summaries without leaving the page. You can also rearrange gadget order or keep your favorite gadgets open for your next visit.”

To learn more check out the below videos:


For the first video go to 1 minute 41 seconds to skip the intro.

Google Wave

There's been a lot of talk about Google Wave. It is a a real-time communication and collaboration system. It's open source and also a protocol.

Google have been trying to figure out "what would email look like if it was invented today"- this is what they've come up with. To me it looks like a live transmission hybrid email instant messenger all rolled into one

This is a long video so set some time aside for an hour before you check this out. When you go to 7 minutes, 30 seconds you start to get an idea of what the UI looks like.

As I mentioned in the Irish Recruiters conference Unified Communications is definitely going to be one of the main technological trends in FY10. Google Wave falls clearly into this category. Will be very interesting to see how the platform develops when it launches later this year.

Google Revs Up Some New Search Features

One of the next Rubicon's for search to traverse is the boundaries of structured versus unstructured search. It is much easier to get answers from databases where everything is organised, labeled, stamped and categories correctly. As the avalanche of data being added to the web keeps growing, keyword searching keeps getting closer to breaking point. Introducing this needed structure to the web is something that has been on the mind of some of the world's most famous search engine development departments for some time now. Google started to look at this topic recently with their dipping of toes into "universal search" e.g. embedding You Tube into the search results. However, they are now starting to tackle this with their own Google Squared initiative that has just come out of Google labs. Google Squared extracts data from Web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet. See video below.

Understanding how search engines work - not just the big 3 - but those that allow "semantic search" and meta search is imperative to understanding how to mine properly. Understanding spidering, indexing, flipping, x-raying, syntax, operators, modifiers and search engine optimisation (SEO)in all its guises and forms is essential to become a modern day smart internet savvy recruiter. Understanding what cross linking is, organic search ranking, meta-tagging, tagging and cross pollination is important if you are to understand how to search in all the various types of informational systems both light, heavy, and the deep web that recruiters currently have for free at their disposal when traditional recruitment techniques have failed. I'll be showing some of the search engines, outside of the "big 3" that recruiters should be aware of, as well as some tools and techniques, they should also begin to investigate more, in order to get better at recruiting at the Future of Recruitment conference on the 3rd of June.

But back to Google for a moment.

There are dozens of semantic search start-ups trying to impose structure on the Web to perform similar tricks as Google Squared. Another high profile start up, which I have covered before on this blog, that is launching this Monday is Wolfram Alpha. This takes a slightly different approach to Google in that it simply ingests massive amounts of information into its own databases where it can query it to its heart’s delight. There seems to be rivalry between both of the companies already. The big,big difference between the both is size. Wolfram's databases will never match what is available on the web. They currently hold 10 terabytes which is a very small number compared to the size of the web.

Google squared is a very experimental, early, step at trying to organise the worlds data on the web in a far more intuitive format that we have today. Looking at the video below where I believe this may apply to recruitment is we will be able to find candidate CVs, bio's conversations, etc in a much more structured format. We may possibly be able in the future run a search that provide focused results that are pushed back in web format in a database layout that can be converted into .csv and then imported into your own ATS for review and dissemination. I'll be watching to see what comes out of this initiative in the future and how it can be applied to making searching for passive candidates more efficient.

Google and Microsoft alliance to bring a new world of job matching

In an extremely rare partnership Google and Microsoft have decided to come together to create what looks like will be  the world's most sophisticated and successful job board!

Both 800 pound gorilla's have decided that the job board industry worth an estimates 6 billion dollars a year is now too good to ignore and they have jointly in an incredibly rare partnership agreement come together to form a new job board that will be based on a mixture of Microsoft's new algorithmic search engine called Kumo and Google's now already highly trafficked GoogleBase product. Open Source APIs will be offered using the new HR-XML consortium's CV distribution schemea to allow savvy job seekers to upload their CV for free and employers will have to bid to get access to candidates that match their search criteria. The new model will cleverly be a time-to-hire paradigm. The fresher the CV the higher the cost-per-click bidding starts at. So as an employer when you register the key parameters for your search e.g. Financial Accountant > Dublin district > 10+ years experience > ACCA > salary range 70 to 90k, etc - If the new database provides 8 candidates that match you can bid to see the CV the latest result being the most expensive. The idea being the latest candidates on the market are the most expensive to access. Employees can "turn on" or "turn off" their CV search at will. A set of guidelines and policies are in place to ensure that employees who have accepted a new job must "turn off" their CV before they can searching again for a new job.

The project is elegantly called called "FreeJobsForAll.com and has already been localised into 55 languages for launch. Both businesses are planning to integrate their Windows Mobile and Android platforms as well as their respective video hosting sites: YouTube and Soapbox to create a new world order in job matching and advertising. It looks like finding a job has got a lot more interesting. Happy April fools!

Google now conducting interesting trial on their search engine

Once again Google is tinkering around with its search engine as it makes small strides towards its universal search concept.

If you want to play with it yourself type the following string into your Google.com: javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=4a609673baf685b5:TB=2:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1227543998:LM=1233568652:DV=AA:GM=1:IG=3:S=yFGqYec2D7L0wgxW;path=/; domain=.google.com");

You'll see a variety of new options, some of these  I am aware of through Google Labs, others I've never seen before.

Learn more here. Try it out for yourself and/or check out this video.

Google Voice

Google Voice is a new service that Google offers at the moment for all GrandCentral clients, it is however planning to unleash to the world market for free soon. Check out here to learn more. While the technology is by no means 100% accurate it is a step in the right direction and certainly something worth considering as you become more of a mobile recruiter.

Zubed - GeoSpatial Jobs are here: This rocks!

This is super cool!
And, super clever!

I was waiting for Google to bring out this system as a marriage between Google Base Jobs and Google Maps but it looks like they didn't think about it, didn't see it as being a big enough priority or were simply bet to the post by Zubed.

Zubed is an online mapping system that matches employers with job seekers for permanent and contract jobs for free, for both parties. However, recruitment agencies can not use the system and are politely asked to stay away!It has a simple messaging system in place, allows advanced search and has some networking functionality set up.

Google to double workforce in Ireland to 3000

Wow! Will be interesting to see how many of this new heads will be senior core-tech engineers working on core service delivery!

Check out the article here.

Google updates its search functionality on Advanced Search Page

The advanced search page has been upgraded and now you can search pages in the last 24 hours and 2 months... in additional to the usual 1,3,6 and 12 month options. Pretty cool functionailty if you want to search for CVs that are only 24 hours old!

And here is for the hack for the URL which I learned about from the excellent Tara Calishan. The syntax for the date seach is:&as_qdr=. The variables are d (day), w (week), m (month) and y (year). So the way this works is if you try a search and added &as_qdr=d to the end, you'd get only results from those pages added to the Google index in the last 24 hours.

So the examples would be:2 days is &as_qdr=d2. Searching 3 weeks is &as_qdr=w3, and so on. Now when you start goofing around with the result URLs, odd things can happen.

Google interviews - the long slow spit

When I was a kid I used always let a spit hang slowly from my mouth and then at the very last moment when it was going to drop off my tongue into oblivion I'd slurp it back up in a big heaving lung pulling upwarding flowing vortex. It took quite a bit of skill and a huge amount of patience to perfect the technique!!!

It sounds like listening to Jeff Barr an evangelist at Amazon on their Web Services team explain about his interview day in Google and the barage of emails he's been getting from Google recrutiers that are canvassing him despite the fact that he did not want to join them signifies again that having PATIENCE is a big RED BULLET POINT you need on the top of your CV if you are to successfully get through an interview in Google and get an offer. Read the article hear.

Using Google News to recruit more effectively

Any self respecting cyber recruiter keeps an eye on all the main search engine labs and subscribes to their newsletters to hear what new products are coming out, or in the case of Google, what new beta release they have up their sleeve. Last week after many years in Beta Google News finally grew up (despite the disdain of the newspaper publishers) and became a fully grown product. About time I hear you say! Here! Here! What's cool about this is it's one more evolutionary step down the road to personalised information on the Cloud! A very powerful tool if thought about carefully and used right.

To date when using Google News you select from a drop down box of countries and a set number of categories. That's changed. Now you can impressively choose what categories you want, from a large list of countries, and, you can create your own categories and apply your own keywords to them. This is great if you want to keep up with cutting edge news on the recruitment market. And if that's not enough, they also have a RSS feeder on it which pulls the information to you. Excellent. I've been waiting for this for along time and now it's here. The future is quickly becoming the present.

Think of the possibilities here. If you want to study a specific competitor just stick in their name and store the feed. On a daily basis you'll be able to see from thousands of news feeds around the world any information that has come out about them in the public domain or discussions that are being held about them. Something I've set up is 'redundancies +Ireland'. I check Google News daily. Usually in the morning when I come to work. When a redundancy announcement happens in the market that may result in new skilled staff coming into the readily available labour pool -the quicker I know about this the quicker I can pounce on them if they have the relevant skills for any of my open reqs. The possibilities are limitless. Track your favourite recruitment agencies, job boards and newspapers. Scour for white papers, blogs, or appointments. Hunt for legal, system and economic updates.

Google has come out with another interesting tool, that if applied right will make you a better recruiter. You should invest your time in learning how to use it.

And if that's not enough, they've also come out with their new toolbar update. I wonder how I can use that to hunt for candidates. Any ideas?

Will Google buy Monster???

Will Google buy Monster? Yahoo bought HotJobs and are doing quite nicely out of it so why not? With deep pockets, a track record of successful acquisitions (Deja News, Applied Semantic, Blogger, Picasa) and a passion for creativity Google are well positioned to create a Monster of their own with keyword arms, toolbar legs, and API eyes and ears the likes of which TMP and Mary Shelly in their wildest dreams could never have have imagined. Have a read of this very interesting article from Will Wolff and make up your own mind. If the Cyber Sleuth was a betting man he wouldn’t bet against it!

The world of recruitment is changing and changing fast. Google realise this and have done so far a long time now. The number one force driving and stimulating the global recruitment market is the Internet. No more than in the world of technical recruitment is this evident. We all know that there is a plethora of agencies to use to find software engineers, a plenitude of internet job boards in Ireland and abroad to canvass for CVs and a preponderance of domestic and international newspapers, niche technical magazines, trade shows and fairs to cast the recruitment net on, but, there is much much more. With the advance of Teoma, DogPile, AltasVista and Google; XML, robot technology, Pod Casting, Skype, Desktop search technology and a host of new gadgets and gizmos coming to the market the way in which we recruit is about to change forever. This blog is about such issues.

In the next few weeks I will research and comment on a variety of internet recrutment issues in an attempt to stimulate debate and dig up some of the newer and often stranger techniques being used in modern day recruitment. I will highlight some of the search engines that can be used to target passive candidates on the Internet. I will explain how a 19th century mathematician called George Boole will have a massive impact on the future of recruitment. I will give examples of how to find passive candidates in the deep web, how to flip and x-ray servers to pull up CVs, and explain how using advanced search functionality in Google just might, if you're lucky, locate Org Charts from companies that you have targeted for recruiting. Along the way I will be commenting on some of the movers and shakers in the industry. I'll also be checking out some of the new technologies that are affecting the recruitment industry on a global scale, and, i will be suggesting ways to validate what people say they have done on their CV by using archives, Boolean operators and modifiers, and consulting newsgroups.

All comments are welcome. TICS.