Happy New Year!
December 30th, 2005 | by Mihai Ionescu, Software Engineer | published in Google Desktop
Posted by Mihai Ionescu, Software EngineerThe Google Desktop Team would like to wish all our users and developers a very happy and prosperous New Year. See you in 2006!
December 30th, 2005 | by Christine | published in Google Video
Have you ever wondered what a music video made out of LEGO bricks would look like? Wonder no more.The White Stripes – “Fell in Love with a Girl”Punk rock music video BlankTV (Description provided by content owner) Sympathy for the Record IndustryBlankT…
December 29th, 2005 | by Christine | published in Google Video
It’s all about his fans…Jesse McCartney Because You Live VideoJesse McCartney driving around in car singing. Walking around the city. Signing autographs for fans during tour. Austraila footage. Music video. Because You Live. (Description provided by …
December 28th, 2005 | by AdWords API Team | published in Google Adwords API
We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance starting at 8pm PDT on Friday, December 30, 2005, and ending at approximately 2am PDT on Saturday, December 31. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you will not be ab…
December 28th, 2005 | by Christine | published in Google Video
You’ll find nothing but confidence, creativity, and complexity in rapper Kanye West. This is his story…The Music of Kanye WestKanye, West, the three-time Grammy award winning rapper and producer grew up on Chicago’s South Side. Even as a child, mus…
December 28th, 2005 | by Christine | published in Google Video
Original Nirvana… Nirvana-In BloomNirvana remains an inspiration to musicians and fans across the globe: In the course of popular music, there are few bands who came from more humble beginnings than Nirvana, and fewer still who to have such an impact…
December 27th, 2005 | by Bindu Reddy | published in Google Merchant
By Bindu Reddy, Product ManagerAs you may have noticed, We’ve changed the navigation on Google Base, so that you can first view an item details page before clicking on to the Item URL page.This change allows us to experiment with how you browse and sea…
December 26th, 2005 | by Christine | published in Google Video
This week we’re celebrating music, starting off with this riveting video about the memorable “Man in Black.” Rosanne Cash – September When it ComesOne of the most moving moments of the Johnny Cash Memorial Concert held in November of 2003 at the Ryman …
December 23rd, 2005 | by Mihai Parparita | published in Google Reader
Dealing with the millions of RSS and Atom feeds out there is hard work. We’re not trying to make you feel sorry for the Reader team, but as anyone who has attempted to implement a feed parser knows, there are many subtle deviations from the spec that you have to handle if you want to have any hope of satisfying the needs of your users (who shouldn’t have to care about such things).
The feed generating/parsing world has had the debate about Postel’s Law, as it applies to XML and feeds, several times. We are not here to weigh in on either side of the argument. Instead, we hope to provide some data so that such discussions can be made on more than philosophical grounds. Without further ado, here are the top XML errors that we have encountered when parsing all of the feeds that our users have added to Reader (and there are a lot of them):
% of errors |
Error description |
15.6% |
Input claims to be UTF-8 but contains invalid characters. |
14.9% |
Opening and ending tags mismatch |
13.9% |
An undefined entity is used (e.g. in an XML document without importing the HTML set) |
7.8% |
Documented expected to begin with a start tag, but no was found
|
5.7% |
Disallowed control characters present |
5.5% |
Extra content at the end of the document |
4.2% |
Unterminated entity reference (missing semi-colon) |
4.2% |
Unquoted attribute value |
3.8% |
Premature end of data in tag (truncated feed) |
3.3% |
Naked ampersand (should be represented as & ) |
2.1% |
XML declaration allowed only at the start of the document |
1.8% |
Namespace prefix is used but not defined |
0.75% |
Comment not terminated |
0.64% |
Attribute without value |
0.17% |
Unescaped not allowed in attributes values
|
0.11% |
Malformed numerical entity reference |
0.11% |
Unsupported/invalid encoding |
0.10% |
Comment must not contain ‘–‘ |
0.10% |
Attribute defined more than once |
0.07% |
Char out of allowed range |
0.03% |
Comment not terminated |
0.02% |
Sequence ]]> not allowed in content |
As a whole, about seven percent of all feeds that we know about have some of these errors (this data is based on a one-day snapshot, so transient errors may be present). Note that these are all XML errors, meaning that the feed is not well-formed. We are not talking about complying with and validating against the RSS or Atom specs – that is an even higher bar than we have set here. In general, our recommendation to feed producers is to use the work that the community has put into the feed validator.
On a related note, we’re aware that Reader has some issues with titles. It’s great that there are test cases, and we will add this bug to our to-do list.
December 23rd, 2005 | by Christine | published in Google Video
They may be miles away, but videos bring them closer to the ones they love. This is just one of the many heartfelt greetings from members of the United States Army and Air Force to their families. Holiday GreetingsHoliday greeting from service member t…
December 22nd, 2005 | by Christine | published in Google Video
Getting ready to visit relatives and friends for the holidays? Do they have an old piano sitting in the living room? Want to impress everyone with a simple, yet beautiful holiday classic? The Piano Guy will show you how…How to play “The First Noel” S…
December 21st, 2005 | by Mihai Ionescu, Software Engineer | published in Google Desktop
Posted by Mihai Ionescu, Software EngineerHaving fun with plug-ins lately? Our developers sure do!Several of the Google Desktop plug-ins we have received combine ageeky sense of humor with helpful information. Here are some of ourfavorites:Laundry Time…
December 21st, 2005 | by Denise | published in Google Merchant
By Denise Gamboa, Associate Product Marketing Manager Among the recipes, course schedules and events that can be found on Google Base, we came across a service called Solomodels. It’s a web solution for models and photographers, created by a group…
December 21st, 2005 | by Christine | published in Google Video
Diana Krall and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra serenade you with this jazzy version of a classic.Diana Krall-Jingle Bells Backed by the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, the Canadian-born vocalist scats like Satchmo on a ringing version of “Jingle …
December 20th, 2005 | by Christine | published in Google Video
Santa and his reindeer skateboarding? Hey, it’s for charity…Etnies Holiday – SKATEBOARDERmag.comEvery year the folks at Etnies have taken a day to entertain underprivileged children, as well as setting them up with a fresh pair of kicks. This year th…