I’m working on catching up on all my emails and feed reading since my SES San Jose trip. It was a lot of fun and educational too.

Here are some visuals:

Refreshments

Networking

Partying at the Google Dance at Google’s Offices

Inside the Googleplex looking for ranking insider tips or Matt Cutts.

Stalking Matt Cutts.

Totally BFF with Matt Cutts now.*

TopRank Blogging Team, minus the boss.

The boss getting interviewed by NBC.

Many more photos at the TopRank Flickr account and session recaps at the Online Marketing Blog.

To get the best results out of Google Analytics, you need to ensure it’s installed on each page of a website. To automatically check for you, I’ve created a Firefox extension to do all the work.

GA? will put a little icon in the status bar of your Firefox web browser. It will then check each page you load to to see if it has Google Analytics installed. If so, it’ll show a colored bar chart. If Google Analytics doesn’t appear to be installed, it’ll show a gray bar chart.

Have you ever wanted to turn Google Personalized Search on or off without logging out of your Google account? Well now you can with the Google Personalized Search Switch for Firefox.

Google Personalized Search Switch is a Firefox extension that adds the ability to turn on and off Google’s personalized search results by just clicking on the icon in the status bar.

When you want personalized search results turned off, click on the eyes and close them. The extension will then add the pre-defined Google variable, &pws=0, to the URL of any future Google web searches. There is no need for you to log out of your Google account.

One of my favorite startup companies is in need of help. Zooomr is a great photo sharing site much like Flickr or Photobucket. However, during a recent upgrade, they ran into major issues. Now they are in dire need of new database machines to get everything back online.

One can donate via the Zooomr homepage. Any amount is accepted. If you work for, or know someone at, a large company maybe you could see this as an opportunity to fund the startup or donate some hardware.

If you haven’t seen the buzz, Google Maps now has street level views. You can actually see what the city looks like from the street level along with what’s to the right and left of you. All views from the drivers seat.

Unfortunately this isn’t available for all cities yet, but New York City is one of the select cities you can test it out on right now. I gave it a test and moved my way though an intersection on a red light. Didn’t get pulled over though.

I was reading over at TechCrunch that Google personalized homepages were re-launching as iGoogle. When I logged into my account, sure enough, there it was; iGoogle.

iGoogle Hosted on Zooomr

Now, most things that start with an i followed by a product name remind me of Apple. I think it was that iMac that started it all and of course the iPod, iTunes and wealth of other i stuff. Is Google keen on Apple? Well probably not.

The old personalized homepages were known as ig - http://www.google.com/ig - so they just expanded upon that and spelled it out; iGoogle.

If you use Gmail and a Mac, Mailplane is a must have application. It’s really the first program I’ve seen that really takes a web based application to the desktop.

At it’s core, it’s really just a webkit browser (or so I assume) that shows Gmail. But then there is so much more. It has all Gmail features built into the application itself. Not only does it have a toolbar with all the standard buttons like new message, reply, forward and delete, but it also ties into iPhoto, has drag and drop attachment abilities, keychain support and Growl notifications. The latest version even works with GTalk to take it out of Gmail and into it’s own little window.

When I arrived home from vacation last week I saw the news that Google Desktop was released for the Mac. All excited, I downloaded it and installed it. However, it’s not really necessary on a Mac.

When Google Desktop came out for Windows, it was great. The main reason was becasue it gave Windows a good search application. The built in windows search is slower than hell and I don’t think that dog could find his tail in less than five minutes.

No, Google is not opening up an office here just yet, but over at the Technology Evangelist they have a convincing argument going on.

Their thought is that Google should move into the Ford plant in St. Paul. Why?

• Well first of all it’s a large plot of land in the middle of the Twin Cities. It’s hard to find this kind of land in such a big city. Plenty of room for the volleyball courts and such.
• It also comes with its own hydroelectric dam which can help keep energy costs down, power search servers or Google Dances for days.

Update: Here is the best way to sync Google Calendar & Thunderbird. Works like a charm.

Getting Things Done (GTD) is very popular these days and people are always looking for an easy way to save another minute. With that in mind, I’ve found a simple way to view my Google Calendar in Thunderbird.

Step 1: Go to your Google Calendar page, click on the down arrow next to the calendar you want and choose ‘Calendar settings’. If your calendar is shared, right click non the blue HTML button in the Calendar Address area and copy the link location. If your calendar is not shared, right click on the blue HTML button in the Private Address area and copy the link location.