Here’s what I got recently stating to update one of my site:

Wordpress update notification from Google.

It is always good to keep updated since insecure versions of wordpress are vulnerable to attacks. Newer versions come with possible solutions to patch those vulnerability until new loopholes are found.

The moment I received this notification, I was bit in doubt since I had never heard of Google sending such mails to its webmaster users suggesting to update the wordpress and the formatting of mail was not good! I even thought this might be fake, but after looking at the details of the mail, the sender ID was google’s official webmaster tools address. Later I did a search on internet and was confirmed that it is official after reading Matt Cutts’s update on twitter.

You don’t need to enable any option to get such notification in webmaster tools. It’s great to see google sending such update notification to wordpress users. Hope this will make people who often tend to be lazy updating their installation. All it takes is just a click to update the wordpress to latest version.

Google has always kept us informed about the day’s special through it’s artistic doodles on the homepage. They always come up with something good looking and interesting. From past few weeks, they are now using interactive doodles instead of good old static images. Last time, when Hubble Space Telescope celebrated it’s 20th anniversary, Google came up with a doodle with night sky which had option to see some information of few stars and galaxies when the mouse pointer hovered on it.

This time, Google is celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Pac-Man with a interactive classic pac-man doodle as it’s logo on the homepage! Head over to Google homepage and take a look!

So how to access the good old Google Search?

It’s really easy and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist. Just visit this link:

http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all

It was pretty simple to find this workaround, because the homepage link on the search result page of classic search had “hl=all”, while the new has “hl=en”.

It turns this,

New Google interface with the left hand sidebar which cannot be hidden

Into this,

Classic Google interface without the left sidebar

However, if you want to use this old interface all the time, update your bookmark and enjoy until Google make changes to it as well. Hope not so, but who knows?

Taking a cue from Bing’s image search, Google has now come up with a shiny new Image search result page for iPhone 3.0 and Andriod 2.1 devices. Google’s new image search result page not only arrange thumbnails in perfect rows and columns, but also responds to your touch inputs like swiping to see next image and taping the screen to see next result page.

To ensure this new feature doesn’t create any glitch while using it, Google has optimized it for better and faster loading of images. And has a black background while viewing individual images to enhance the appearance of image and as well as to make to easy on eyes. You can watch a small youtube video below to see it in action:

To try this new version of Image Search, just go to www.google.com on your phone and tap on “Images.” The new experience is available in 38 languages worldwide.

This feature is only for a fully qualified top-level domain such as .com .org and .net etc. If your domain is already top-level country specific domain, like .in .jp and .fr etc, you don’t have to use this feature.

This is how you can Geotarget your website:

1. All you need to have is a Google Account and then login to its Webmaster Tools.
2. In the homepage, add your website and then verify it. (If you already have added it, skip this.)
3. After verifying, click the website you just added.
4. In the left panel, expand “Site Configuration” and then click on “Settings”
5. Under “Geographic target”, tick “Target users in” and select the country you want to target from the drop-down list.
6. Click on “Save” and you are done.

The changes to the results may take some time or few days to apply. You will have to wait for the changes to take place inside Google’s search index for your site. If you did not get the satisfied output upon doing this after a month or two, you can disable this feature.

Twitter not just keeps friends in touch and share updates with each other but also help build businesses and promote products, business tycoons have also entered the world of twitter and one of the company which changed the web is also present on this crowd.

Google has hundreds of services and is being actively involved in development user experience on the web. So, to get one step closer to people, google has joined twitter this year (2009) and is updating it’s followers about various aspects about the company and their services. Recently google has released a list of official google accounts on twitter and here they are:

twitter.com/Google – our central account
twitter.com/Blogger – for Blogger fans
twitter.com/GoogleCalendar – user tips & updates
twitter.com/GoogleImages – news, tips, tricks on our visual image search
twitter.com/GoogleNews – latest headlines via Google News
twitter.com/GoogleReader – from our feed reader team
twitter.com/iGoogle – news & notes from Google’s personalized homepage
twitter.com/GoogleStudents – news of interest to students using Google
twitter.com/YouTube – for YouTube fans
twitter.com/YouTubeES – en Espanol
twitter.com/GoogleAtWork – solutions for IT and workplace productivity

Geo-related
twitter.com/SketchUp – Google SketchUp news
twitter.com/3DWH – SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse
twitter.com/Modelyourtown – 3D modeling to build your favorite places
twitter.com/EarthOutreach – Earth & Maps tools for nonprofits & orgs
twitter.com/GoogleMaps – uses, tips, mashups
twitter.com/GoogleSkyMap -Android app for the night sky

Ads-related
twitter.com/AdSense – for online publishers
twitter.com/AdWordsHelper – looking out for AdWords questions and tech issues
twitter.com/AdWordsProSarah – Google Guide for AdWords Help Forum
twitter.com/GoogleAnalytics – insights for website effectiveness
twitter.com/GoogleAdBuilder – re building display ads
twitter.com/GoogleRetail – for retail advertisers
twitter.com/TechnologyUK – for U.K. tech advertisers
twitter.com/InsideAdWordsDE – for German AdWords customers
twitter.com/GoogleAgencyDE – for German ad agencies
twitter.com/AdSensePT – info for Portuguese-language publishers
twitter.com/AdWordsRussia – AdWords news & tips in Russian
twitter.com/DentroDeAdWords – Spanish updates from the Inside AdWords blog
twitter.com/AdWordsAPI – AdWords API tips

Developer & technical
twitter.com/GoogleResearch – from our research scientists
twitter.com/GoogleWMC – Google Webmaster Central
twitter.com/GoogleCode – latest updates for Google developer products
twitter.com/GoogleData – Data APIs provide a standard protocol for reading and writing web data
twitter.com/app_engine – web apps run on Google infrastructure
twitter.com/DataLiberation – our initiative for complete import/export of all data
twitter.com/GoogleMapsAPI – about using Google Maps embedded in websites
twitter.com/GoogleIO – Google’s largest annual developer event

Culture, People
twitter.com/googletalks – notes from our @Google speaker series
twitter.com/googlejobs – the voice of Google recruiters

Country or Region
twitter.com/googlearabia – news from the Google Arabia Blog*
twitter.com/googledownunder – Google activities in Australia & New Zealand
twitter.com/GoogleDE – Google in Germany
twitter.com/GoogleLatAm – Latin America (en Espanol)
twitter.com/GooglePolicyIt – Notes on Google policy issues in Italy

You can follow any of those twitter accounts of google in which you are interested in or active user of any of those services to stay in touch and get the latest updates.

Via: Official Google Blog

You can trigger this feature by pressing Ctrl + F on your keyboard and a toolbar appears just below the Standard Toolbar. This is how it looks: