Brendan Nee » google

Google China Logo Photos

Brendan Nee — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:50:55 +0000

I took these photos on a 2008 trip to China outside of Google’s Shanghai offices. I was actually going into the same building to visit a friend who worked at Trane Company, but I thought that if some Google-China news story came up these photos could be useful as stock photos. They are not great, but I wanted to share them for anyone to use for any purpose. There are photos of Google China’s logo and of the building that Google has its Shanghai offices near People’s Square:

This work by http://bnee.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Make mailto: links open in gmail in Google Chrome browser (Windows XP & Vista)

Brendan Nee — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:18:36 +0000

I’ve been rocking Google’s new web browser Chrome for the last few days and really like it. Browsing craigslist and clicking on email mailto: links I realized there isn’t an obvious way to force these links to open a gmail window in Chrome. Most Windows systems will have the default mailto handler set as Outlook Express.

One option is to install the gmail notifier program. I opted instead for a quick change to the Windows filetype settings.

Note that following these instructions will cause all mailto links to open in Google Chrome, even if you are browsing in Firefox, Safari or (gasp) Internet Explorer so make sure you want to use google Chrome as your primary browser before continuing. In Firefox, you can go to Tools->Options->Applications and configure “mailto” to set Firefox to use gmail for mailto links and not the system default (thanks to Eric for the tip).

WIndows XP

In any windows explorer window (except desktop):

Go to Tools > Folder Options > File Types
Near the top of the list of filetypes, click on “URL:Mailto Protocol”
Click on “Advanced”
With “open” highlighted, click on “Edit”

Change the application to:

"C:\Pathto\chrome.exe" https://mail.google.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1

This should all be on one line with a space between the quotation mark after the path info and the https. My path was “C:\Documents and Settings\Brendan\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” To find yours, just right click on a google Chrome shortcut (like the one in your start menu), go to “properties” and copy the “Target” field.

Windows Vista

Thanks to Ed H. in the comments below for these instructions

Open your registry editor (Type “regedit” at your start menu)
Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell\open\command
Edit the (Default) command from whatever it is (right click and select modify) to:
```
"C:\Pathto\chrome.exe" https://mail.google.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1
```

In Vista, your path will be something like “C:\Users\Brendan\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe ” with “Brendan” being your username.

Ubuntu

How-To Geek has great instructions on how to accomplish this in ubuntu.

Open with Google Apps

Another tip from Ed H. in the comments:

If you have “Google Apps for your Domain” (i.e. you’re having Google host your domain’s email,) you can customize it for your domain by changing the URL above so that instead of “mail.google.com/mail?…” it reads “mail.google.com/a/yourdomainhere.com?…” (obviously, use the rest of the URL mentioned above after the question mark; and use your domain instead of “yourdomainhere.com”.)

Flight of the Conchords + Google

Brendan Nee — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:30:56 +0000

I woke up this morning to check my email and found a very exciting update from Google. I’ll be attending Google I/O, which I was already very excited about. Google arranged for my favorite band to entertain at the reception after the first day: Flight of the Conchords. How the Conchords could fit this into their schedule is a mystery, I wonder how many people at Google are die-hard FOTC fans.

Facebook Scores – Mashup with google maps, facebook data & census data

Brendan Nee — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:58:02 +0000

I looked at the facebook network for La Crosse, WI, my hometown and was impressed that there are 12,856 people on this network alone. People on facebook can belong to only one regional network at a time, so its likely that most of these users actually live in the La Crosse metro region. The city of La Crosse has a population of 51,818 and the metro region has a population of 126,838.

Surrounding cities, like Onalaska, WI don’t have their own facebook network, so people living in these cities are no doubt in the La Crosse network. Regardless, this means that 10% of the population of Metro La Crosse is on facebook.

La Crosse is not extemely tech savvy, but 10% is much higher than the New Orleans, LA facebook score. With 42,789 facebook users in the New Orleans network out of an estimated 1.2 million metro New Orleans population, New Orleans facebook score is a 3.8%.

San Francisco (city, not metro area) scores 15.4% (114,792 users of 744,041 population) and New York is 5.1% facebooked (425,963 users with 8,214,426 population).

It would be an interesting mashup to take facebook network membership numbers, us census data and put them on google maps.

The true shape of the Midwest- Google Analytics

Brendan Nee — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:42:46 +0000

Maybe for some people who don’t know the midwest as well as I do the google analytics visitor overlay map looks fine. However, the shape of my home state, Wisconsin, is certainly distorted and Michigan is almost unrecognizable. This overlay uses the states boundaries that extend over water. For most states that does not affect the overall shape very much but for the upper midwest it makes a big difference.

For reference, heres a google map of the same area.