Bryan Pieper's Blog : Google

Looking for a bolt on DJango app to compress/minify your JavaScript and CSS files? I created the staticcomp Django app for just that purpose.

Benefits:

• Ability to compress/minify JS/CSS files on-demand
• Increase website performance by reducing the total number of JS/CSS file requests
• Build modular JS/CSS files by page / section instead of relying on large files
• No need to use date-based file names or query string values to force the browser to download changes to your JS/CSS files
• Improved Google Page Speed score and SEO benefits from a faster overall website
• Integrated with UglifyJS, the same JavaScript compressor used by jQuery
• Allows you to create your own backends or use one of the four existing

I was browsing around Google last night and to my surprise the look and feel of the Google search results had changed! Here is a look at the new design.

This morning the results were back to normal. Looks like they are testing it on a small number of users right now. 

So far I like the new look, it is still uncluttered with a few nice features.  It had some Bing-like qualities.  Then again, it also has some Ask.com-like qualities.

I’m not sure about the sitelinks.  I didn’t really notice them at first. They blended in with the description of each result.  I like having the related searches on the left and do like the larger search bar.

There isn’t much chatter about it online, so the jury is still out. Have you seen the new look yet?

Happy New Year! May you and your family be blessed in 2010 and the years to come! To start off the New Year, I wanted to list off some random thoughts in the tech and online world that have impacted me.

Do you own an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? A decade ago, that idea that one would choose a Mac over a PC was unthinkable. In 2000, I was a PC (and a Linux geek). Today, I am still a Linux geek, while I use a Mac at home and at work. 

The Mac and OS X transformed the consumer computing experience. This transformation has inspired a decade of new ideas and devices making Apple undoubtedly the most influential brand.  As I wrote earlier about the Apple Tablet, it could easily alter the mobile computing space again. Would Windows 7 be what it is today if it wasn’t for Apple?

Online search has changed dramatically. Yahoo is no longer numero uno. Have you used a metacrawler lately? Do you need to “Google it?”  We will see what Bing does this coming decade and what comes about from real-time search.

Google announced yesterday that they are combing relevant results with the real-time web.  The results include data from Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca. 

Here is a sample result showing real-time data:

This has been talked about around the blogosphere for the past few months. Glad to see this incorporated in a way that doesn’t exclude the relevant results. To see more trending topics, check out Google Trends.

On a side note, Bing has had a twitter feed for a little while.  Haven’t found it to be any more useful than the existing twitter search functions.  What do you think?