GIGABYTE & TeamAU teaming up for EB Games Expo this weekend in Sydney!

If you’re in Sydney (Australia) and love your tech, there’s only one place to be this weekend and that’s EB Games Expo! Battlefield4 is launching with EA stand overflowing with GIGABYTE powered PCs. TeamAU is also going to be showing off GIGABYTE’s latest technology with a liquid nitrogen show. Gaming PCs and laptops will also be on display. If you are visiting make sure you drop by GIGABYTE booth in the Home Grown Gaming area next to the main stage!

Here’s what TeamAU has cooking for the show

Chrome Font Finder

You're reading a web page and you're suddenly wondering: what font is that?

You can check the source code or select some text, right-click and pick "inspect element". You'll probably find a list of fonts and you won't be able to tell which one is actually used.

Chrome added a feature that tells you the name of the font that's used. This feature is available in Chrome 31+, so you can try it if you've switched to the Dev Channel or you use Chrome Canary. Right-click the text, pick "inspect element", switch to the "computed" tab, scroll down and you'll see "a summary of the typeface(s) used for that element". Paul Irish says that it "works great with Google Webfonts, Typekit, local fonts, @font-face typefaces, unicode glyphs, and all other interesting font sources."

As you can see, it's Helvetica, not Arial. No need to use WhatTheFont or WhatFontIs.

For some reason, this didn't work well for web fonts.

{ via Kristian Serrano. }

Google's Music Carousel

Remember the post about Google's new music video results? They're used by a Knowledge Graph carousel that shows a long list of songs when you search for things like [Moby songs], [Michael Jackson music], [Nina Simone list of songs], [Beatles track list].

Click one of the songs and you'll see the search results for that song's name. The top result is a music video from YouTube, which has a huge thumbnail. The video doesn't play inline, the thumbnail only links to a regular YouTube page.

You'll see the same interface if you search for a music artist and click one of the songs from the Knowledge Graph sidebar. You can also append "albums" to the query, click one of the albums and you'll see a list of all the songs from the album. Search for [Moby Wait for me songs] and you'll find a list of the songs from Moby's Wait for Me album.

It would be nice to play songs from the Google search results page. Even a short Google Play preview would be pretty useful. If that's not possible, then Google could embed YouTube's player, so you can watch music videos without opening a new page. Another improvement would be to automatically generate a YouTube playlist from all the music videos listed in the carousel, like YouTube does.

{ via Search Engine Roundtable }

Google Mobile Image Search Regression

Google has a great mobile interface for image search. It was launched in 2010 and improved multiple times since then. You can use swipes to go to the next image result or to the previous one. It looks like Google changed the image search UI for smartphones and tablets and now sends you to a landing page that shows the image and loads the corresponding page in the background. Intuitive gestures are gone and now you have to use the back button.

This seems to be limited to iPhones and iPads running iOS 7, so it's probably a bug. A lot of people complain about this in the Google Search Forum.

There are many reasons why the new interface is strange: loading the associated page uses more bandwidth and that's not a good idea for mobile devices, it's more difficult to check multiple search results, thumbnails are smaller and even the desktop interface shows a bigger image instead of sending users to a new page.

Force YouTube to Use the HTML5 Player

YouTube's HTML5 player is great, but it's not enabled for all the videos. Even if you go to youtube.com/html5 and join the HTML5 trial, you'll find a lot of videos that use the Flash player. "Some videos with ads are not yet supported (they will play in the Flash player)," mentions the site.

There's a simple Greasemonkey script that forces YouTube to use the HTML5 player for almost all the videos you watch at youtube.com. You need to install Greasemonkey if you use Firefox or Tampermonkey if you use Chrome, then click the "Install" button here.

[Update (Octomber 3rd, 2013): For Chrome, use the old version from Sept 23.]

The script works better in Firefox. If you install the script in Chrome, it will disable the new Ajax interface, but everything else seems to work well.

Here's a video you can use to test the script. Please note that the script doesn't work for embedded videos.

Card-Style Interface for Google Mobile Search

As previously anticipated, Google's mobile site has a new layout that uses cards, just like Google Now, Google Maps, Google+ and an increasingly long list of Google services and apps.

"A new look and feel for Google Search and ads on your phones and tablets. It's cleaner and simpler, optimized for touch, with results clustered on cards so you can focus on the answers you're looking for," informs Google's search blog.

Ads stand out a lot more and, depending on your phone's resolution and screen size, you might not even see a regular search result without scrolling down. Google shows up to 2 ads at the top of the page and no longer uses a different background color. There's just a small "Ad" label next to the URL.

Sections are clearly separated and there's more white space, so the information density is lower.

Pagination has been simplified and you can only go to the previous or the next page of results and to the first results page.

Video: GIGABYTE G1.Sniper A88X examined by Overclock3D.net

I know it’s the second time this week that I’m plugging a Tiny ‘Tom’ Logan video, but to be honest I just can’t get enough of this guy. Cracks me up no end. Today’s video involves our very first AMD platform G1.Killer gaming board, the G1.Sniper A88X motherboard. Tom doesn’t attempt a full (epic 30 mins?!) vid here, it’s more of a preview or first look, but as you’d expect, Tom covers all the features and technologies and gives you a really good overview of a one of our most eagerly anticipated boards.

 

G1.Sniper A88X product info.

Google's 15th Birthday Doodle

This year, Google's birthday doodle is interactive: it's a game that asks you to get as many candies as you can from a piñata. "A piñata is a container often made of papier-mâché, pottery, or cloth; it is decorated, and filled with small toys or candy, or both, and then broken as part of a ceremony or celebration."

The game uses HTML5 and you can also try it on your smartphone or tablet. You can share your score on Google+ and generate URLs that remember your high score.

Here's a video that shows the game, just in case you don't see the doodle yet (you can also visit Google Australia):

The Google Doodles site has a list of all the other birthday doodles: the first one is from 2002. The doodle from 2007 has a lot in common with this year's doodle.

Happy Birthday, Google!

Filter and Compare Knowledge Graph Results

Google's Knowledge Graph feature gets smarter every day. You've probably noticed the carousel that's displayed when you search for things like [dog breeds], [asian rivers], [swedish bands], [science fiction books], [surrealist painters]. For some queries, you'll now see a drop-down that lets you select other similar categories. If you search for [surrealist painters], you'll see a long list of genres: abstract, cubist, impressionist, rococo, romantic.

Until now, Knowledge Graph displayed information about a single entity. Now you can compare 2 things. For example, you can search for [orange vs tangerine] and find out that oranges contain two times more vitamin C than tangerines.

"You can try this for some other things you might be curious about, such as dog breeds (compare pekingese vs. chihuahua) or celestial objects (compare earth vs. neptune) — and we'll keep adding more," informs Google.

It looks like Google brings back some features from an old Labs project called Google Squared and makes them more usable.

{ via Inside Search }

Google+ Celebrates 15 Years of Google

Mr. Jingles, the Google+ notification mascot, celebrates Google's 15th birthday with a pixelated animation. Just click the bell icon, read all your notifications or click "mark all as read" to see it.

"Friends of mine here at work found this old photo of me from back in 1998, the same year Google started up. Yes, I know I was a bit awkward back then – but so was Google (check out this link for proof). Anyways, enjoy this retro version of me in your Notifications tray for the next day or so. Oh, and Happy Birthday, Google!"

Mr. Jingles also changed its profile photo: "A little change of pace in my profile photo for #throwbackthursday.". The file name is self-explanatory: "1998-jangles-avatar.png".

Google's 15th Birthday Easter Egg

Search Google for [Google in 1998] and you'll see a search results page from 1998, the year when Google was incorporated as a privately held company. It's an Easter Egg that reminds you how much Google has evolved, while preserving a simple user interface.

The old search results includes the original Google logo that had an exclamation mark just like Yahoo!, GoogleScout - another name for the feature that returns similar pages, a drop-down that lets you pick the number of results per page, search within results, the size of the cached pages and a list of links to other search engines. All the search results link to the Wayback Machine, since most of them no longer exist.

Google's birthday is in September, but the date has changed over the years. "Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake," mentioned a Google page. Google has usually celebrated its birthday on September 27 and this year is special: Google is 15 years old. Happy birthday, Google!

{ via Search Engine Land }

GIGABYTE ‘Pi is Returned’ OC Contest Winners Officially Announced

Yesterday we officially announced the winners of our ‘Pi is Returned’ contest on HWBOT.org. We had $5,000 USD up for grabs with four stages centered on the classic Super Pi benchmark. As my buddy Dino has posted a few times already, the contest inspired a few overclockers to break couple of AMD world records – in fact several records were repeatedly smashed on the finale weekend alone.

Here are the final standings including, nationality, scores and winnings.

Group A - FM1/2 (Llano/Trinity/Richland)

• Stage 1: Super Pi 1M
• 1st Place: Dfordog (China) - 10sec 297ms on GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4
• Wins $500 + $500 for World Record
• 2nd Place: The Stilt (Finland) - 10sec 343ms on GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4
• Wins $250
• 3rd Place: Hero (China) - 10sec 343ms on GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4
• Wins GIGABYTE F2A88XN-WIFI* & AMD A10-6800K
• Stage 2: Super Pi 32M
• 1st Place: Wizerty (France) - 9min 54sec 812ms on GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4
• Wins $500 + $500 for World Record
• 2nd Place: The Stilt (Finland) - 9min 55sec 922ms on GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4
• Wins $250
• 3rd Place: SF3D (Finland) - 9min 59sec 343ms on GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4
• Wins GIGABYTE F2A88XN-WIFI* & AMD A10-6800K

Group B – AM3+ (Bulldozer/Piledriver)

• Stage 1: Super Pi 1M
• 1st Place: The Stilt (Finland) - 9sec 218ms on GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7
• Wins $500 + $500 for World Record
• 2nd Wizerty (France) - 9sec 390ms on GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3
• Wins $250
• 3rd I.nfraR.ed (Belgium) – 9sec 437ms on GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3
• Wins GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3 & AMD FX-8350
• Stage 2: Super Pi 32M
• 1st The Stilt (Finland) - 9min 34sec 78ms on GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7
• Wins $500 + $500 for World Record
• 2nd I.fraR.ed (Belgium) - 9min 39sec 218ms on GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3
• Wins $250
• 3rd Wizerty (France) - 9min 47sec 157ms on GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3
• Wins GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3 & AMD FX-8350

A big thanks to all who took part in the contest. Great to see so many records busted using GIGABYTE motherboards.

You can find the full standings and scores at the ‘Pi is Returned’ contest page here on HWBOT.org

A Google Experiment Asks Users to Rank Results

Google has its own search quality raters, but it doesn't hurt asking regular users to improve search results. A recent Google experiment highlights 2 search results and asks users which one is better.

Users don't have the read the search quality guidelines first, they only need to visit the 2 pages and tell Google which one they prefer. There are 4 choices: the first result, the second result, both results are equally good, neither result is good enough.

One of the 2 results was the Amazon page for a book and it already had a high ranking. The second result was the book's homepage, which had a lower ranking, but was placed above the Amazon result for this experiment. Google probably wanted to check if the Amazon result was indeed better.

{ Thanks, Marcus. }

Chrome's New Tab Synergy

Chrome shows a new version of the welcome screen for the updated new tab page. Instead of "changes to the new tab page", you'll see "Chrome has updated". It looks like Google wanted to synchronize 4 important changes:

1. the new Google navigation interface
2. the updated new tab page
3. Chrome's app launcher
4. the new Chrome apps

There's an interesting synergy that deserves some explanations. Google's new drop-down menu from the homepage and search results pages looks just like the app launcher, but it only links to Google apps and you can't customize it. Chrome's app launcher was first available in Chrome OS and it's now added to the regular version of Chrome. It includes the apps that were previously available in the new tab page, but it's optimized for a new breed of apps that work offline and look just like native apps. They can be launched from the operating system's taskbar, use APIs that integrate with the hardware, open links in a browser tab. Install any app from this page to enable the app launcher.

The old bookmark apps have a small arrow just like regular Windows shortcuts and open in a new Chrome tab, the new apps don't have the small arrow and open in a new chromeless window.

Chrome's new tab page has a different goal: teach people to use the omnibox (the unified address bar and search box). Many people type google.com and use the search box from Google's homepage to search the web. Google decided to replace the new tab page with a modified Google homepage that uses the omnibox instead of the regular search box. "While you can search straight from the omnibox in Chrome, we've found that many people still navigate to their search engine's home page to initiate a search instead. The goal is to save people time by helping them search and navigate the web faster," explained Google.

To sum up: the new Chrome apps are no longer bookmarks to websites and no longer open in Chrome tabs, so they're moved outside of the browser. There's a new bookmark called Apps that links to chrome://apps, where you can still find the old apps list. The updated new tab page is an educational feature that tries to simplify the search workflow for regular users.

Advanced users probably don't need it, so here are two ways to tweak the updated new tab page (Google might remove them in the future):

1. How to replace the updated new tab page with a local version that doesn't load Google's homepage and doesn't show doodles? Paste this in a new tab:

chrome://flags/#enable-local-only-instant-extended-api

and click "Enabled" in the drop-down below "Enable local-only Instant Extended API", then click the "Relaunch Now" button at the bottom of the page to restart the browser.

2. How to go back to the old new tab page? Paste this in a new tab:

chrome://flags/#enable-instant-extended-api

and click "Disabled" in the drop-down below "Enable Instant Extended API", then click the "Relaunch Now" button at the bottom of the page to restart the browser.

You can read between the lines and notice how Chrome adds more and more operating system features: it has its own apps, a "start menu" replacement, a notification system, a remote printing feature, support for multiple users and a guest mode.

Igniting a new network: Meet our Tech Hub partners

Over the past few years, tech hubs have sprung up in cities across the globe, making it possible to start a high-growth company from almost anywhere, not just London or Silicon Valley. Tech hubs help make that happen—providing desks for entrepreneurs who are chasing their dreams, mentorship and educational opportunities for talented developers, and a vibrant community for innovative startups.

We started Google for Entrepreneurs to help foster entrepreneurship in communities around the world. Through our work in more than 100 countries, we’ve been incredibly impressed with the catalyzing impact that tech hubs have had: helping startups grow, and creating jobs in local communities in the process. So today we’re announcing a Tech Hub Network with seven partners, initially located in North America. 1871 (Chicago), American Underground (Durham), Coco (Minneapolis), Communitech (Waterloo), Galvanize (Denver), Grand Circus (Detroit) and Nashville Entrepreneur Center (Nashville) are all top notch spaces fueling entrepreneurship. We believe these hubs have pioneered a new approach to launching a business, and it’s our mission to help support them.

We’re partnering to create a strong network, providing each hub with financial support alongside access to Google technology, platforms and mentors, and ensuring that entrepreneurs at these hubs have access to an even larger network of startups. We’re excited to exchange ideas and connect hubs with each other and with Google to have an even bigger economic impact on local communities.

Posted by John Lyman, Head of Partnerships, Google for Entrepreneurs

Video: GIGABYTE Z87X-UD4H gets Gold Award at Overclock3D.net

Here’s another cool video from Tiny ‘Tom’ Logan at Overclock3D.net in the UK. This time he’s breaking down exactly why he awarded our GIGABYTE Z87X-UD4H motherboard Gold, highlighting the wickedly attractive yet subtle red finish on the heatsinks and our automatic yet ruthless load line calibration implementation.

 

 

 

You can catch the full written review complete with benchmarks and in-depth analysis here. 

More details about our Z87X-UD4H motherboard over here.

TeamAU takes out global 3DMARK06 world record @ ReSpawn LAN

TeamAU guys visited ReSpawn LAN over the weekend to put on a demonstration of GIGABYTE and Intel X79 + Ivy Bridge E (4960X) and also the ever so popular Z87X-OC + 4770K. They showed off the multithreading power of new Intel Ivy Bridge E CPUs and on second day decided to do some world record benching attempts and it proved successful.

Dinos22, Youngpro and SniperOz from the team in attendance over the weekend put together a couple of impressive scores. One was #5 3DMARK01 and second was #1 3DMARK06. For more info on the team and photo gallery visit the team’s facebook page.

Photos thanks to TeamAU and ReSpawn LAN.

Google Encrypted Search for Everyone

It started as an experiment in 2010, then Google encrypted searches for logged-in users, then Firefox, Chrome and Safari switched to Google SSL and now almost all Google search URLs use HTTPS.

"In the past month, Google quietly made a change aimed at encrypting all search activity — except for clicks on ads. Google says this has been done to provide 'extra protection' for searchers," reports Danny Sullivan.

For example, if you type google.com in your browser's address bar, you'll be redirected to https://www.google.com. "SSL encrypts the communication channel between Google and a searcher's computer. When search traffic is encrypted, it can't easily be decoded by third parties between a searcher's computer and Google's servers," informs Google.

Danny Sullivan speculates that this move may be aiming to block NSA spying activity, but I don't think that's the case. Google still logs all the search traffic and it can send that information to the authorities.

A major downside of switching to encrypted searches is that webmasters can no longer obtain a list of the Google search keywords that sent traffic to their sites without relying on Google services. Google Webmaster Tools includes a list of keywords, but this feature is limited and doesn't integrate with analytics software. There's an exception: ads. "Ad search traffic has never been made secure. No encryption stops people from eavesdropping on the terms used when someone searches at Google and clicks on an ad. Google's also never prevented this information from flowing directly to advertisers, in the way it has for non-advertisers," says Danny Sullivan.