Google Labs Is Back In Full Effect

Google Labs is the arm of Google that is supposed to be working on hot new Google toys for us to play with. They’ve been quiet for quite a while now except for the Gmail Labs part (GTD and Tasks), but recently rebuilt the site from the ground up. They’ve also dropped two new toys that you might find quite useful.

Similar Images

Have you ever been trying to find a photo on Google and kept getting garbage results? For many search terms, it’s almost impossible to structure your query so that you get just the image you need. For instance, a search for Michael Jackson is going to give you a bunch of photos of the horror-show-nose-falling-off MJ. I’d much rather see the darker Off The Wall MJ from 1979 (’79 was a good year). Picking apart an images search without Similar Images would be a huge pain. Check out this video for more details.

Google News Timeline

This is a truly awesome new tool from Google. It allows you to see everything that’s going on in the world formatted into a simple timeline. You can break it down by Day, Week, Month, Year and even Decade. You also have the option to search for specific keywords, types of items, and even add your own sources to pull news from. Check out these Barack Obama quotes for an example.

Scrolling up and down and left/right will show you more items. Videos play right inside the time-line. This is definitely a cool toy if you want to know what is going on this week, last week or maybe for the summer of 2006.

Pushing Innovation

This whole re-design was motivated by the fact that the Google engineers needed a better playground. Google invites you to check out the site and engage with the developers there. They promise more to come, so we’ll see what new things they come up with. Subscribe to their RSS feed or grab the new iGoogle gadget if you’d like to keep track.