Despite the soaring prices in gas, Americans are still hitting the roads to travel in record numbers. You can make your drive, whether it is for work or for play, a little easier by getting live traffic updates with Google.

Launched today as an update to Google Maps for mobile, you can now access comprehensive information about traffic conditions in more than 30 major metropolitian areas, as well as partial information in many other areas.

To utilize the service, you will need to download Google Maps for mobile through your mobile web browser. After you’ve done that, simply moved to the desired location within the application, and select “show traffic” in the menu.  The most up-to-date traffic information will be sent to your mobile device, and will highlight conditions on the covered commuter routes using red, yellow, and green overlays.

Another added feature to Google Maps for mobile is the addition of expected drive time to directional searches within Google Maps.  So now when you look up directions, it will also give you an estimated trip time as well as inform you of any expected delays.   You can also store favorite searches and driving directions, and will be able to access your favorite routes even faster.

Today Google launched a new search service aimed at the sight-impaired population that uses screen readers to access the web.  Dubbed “Google Accessible Search”, the new service aims to make the Google search more accessible, as well as to aid the blind in using Google Search to find websites that are also accessible, and simple enough to use with a screen reader.

The Accessible Search page is even more simple than the traditional Google Search page.  This makes it easier and faster to use the web with a screen reader.  While the search service works the same way as traditional Google Search, it also adds a new twist - when users search for a term, the website not only finds the most relevant sites, but also sorts results based on the simplicity of the page and its layout.

Accessible Search is built off of Google Co-Op technology, which improves search results based on specialized interested. It is still in an early beta stage, therefore the product can be accessed from the Google Labs page.

I read an interesting article over on Google Blogoscoped about the possibility of Google having an “anti-linkjuice flag” that would allow a page to have PR, but prevent it from passing on PR to other sites.

We know Google sometimes penalizes sites, removing their PageRank, and thereby also removing the chance for webmasters to effectively sell PageRank through text links on those sites. But what if there’s a flag in the Google system that says “the page can keep it’s PR, but it may not pass on this PR to other pages”… a forced but hidden “nofollow”?

Does Google penalize sites that sell text links by preventing them from passing on PR?  If they do, which it is likely that they do, I for one think its pretty shitty.  Who’s to say whether its right or wrong for me to monetize my own website?  As long as the sites linked to are relevent, what’s the harm?

Apparently Google’s Matt Cutts has suggested that PR, in some cases, may not be transfered to another site, even without the presence of the “no-follow” attribute:

The trouble with supporting a site just to get PageRank-carrying links is that you don’t always get what you might want,” and on being asked if that means a site/ page can have it’s PageRank-transferring ability disabled, replied this was “well said.”

On July 4th, Al Scillitani wrote an open letter to Google on his blog, Marketing Pilgrim.  In the letter he commented on the frequency of changes with Google AdWords recently.  He complained about how all the changes were giving him a headache, and requested that Google send him some acetaminophen in compensation for his troubles.

A Google employee happened to read that post, and being the smart-ass that he apparently is, sent Al some of the much-needed acetaminphen and a signed letter.

Shocked when he actually received the requested meds from Google in the mail, Al of course blogged about it. The story caught fire, getting thousands of Diggs, and later Adam Lasnik, a Google employee, publically admitted to sending the pills. 

Nice to know they’ve got a sense of humour over at Google.

Google Video was today launched in France, Britian, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Canada, and the Netherlands. Like the US version which launched in January, the international versions feature thousands of videos featuring everything from kids goofing around in front of their webcam to serious documentaries and more.

Google hopes that the country specific versions will begin to evolve to reflect the local culture and norms. 

Corsin Camichael stumbled across a page hosted on Google’s servers, which seems to indicate that Gdrive is something that Google has already begun working on.  It also suggests that the name of the service, or perhaps code name of the service, is Platypus. 

The page, which was located at http://www.writely.com/index.html , has since been removed, but a screenshot of the page has been preserved for our over-analysis. (Click image below for full-size screenshot.)

 

The screenshot indicates that the service can be used on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, and allows users to store files and content online that they can access from any computer in the world. 

Why would you want to store your information online?  Let’s see what Google has to say about that:

• Backup. If you lose your computer, grab a new one and reinstall Platypus.  Your files will be on your new machine in minutes.
• Sync. Keep all your machines synchronized, even if they run different operating systems.
• VPN-less acecss.  Not at a Google computer?  View your files on the web at http://troutboard.com/p
• Collaborate.  Create shared spaces to which multiple Googlers can write.
• Disconnected access.  On the plane?  VPN broken?  All your files are still accessible.

The project is still clearly internal-only, but the “Find a new bug, get a free Platypus t-shirt” message also suggests that they are readying the project for a future Beta release.