Google has recently published their 2005 end-of-year Zeitgeist. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Google’s Zeitgeists, they are fun analyses of Google searches made over a certain time period. Quite interesting. However, something that might be cool to see in a Google Zeitgeist is a list of the top 10 searches, period. And not just top 10 searches in certain categories.
Google’s Santa Radar
Google has released a special data layer for Google Earth that supposedly uses a Santa Radar to track the location of Santa Claus and his fleet of aerodynamic reindeer.
To use the radar, first you’ll need to download Google Earth if you don’t have it already. Then you’ll need to download and open the Santa Radar data layer. Have fun! 
Google Starts New Doodle
I noticed today that Google has started another one of their holiday Doodles. A Google Doodle is a series of Google logos that generally tell a story, with new logos appearing each day. Keep checking back at their Doodle #10 page to see how the Doodle progresses.
New Extension from Google: Blogger Web Comments
In addition to a phishing protection extension, Google has released a “Blogger Web Comments” extension for Mozilla Firefox, which shows you what bloggers across the Internet are saying about the websites you’re visiting.
Although Google gives the impression that it’s Blogger-only, their FAQ says in question 4 that it uses Google Blog Search, meaning it supports all blogs (yippee!).
The extension puts an icon in Firefox’s status bar. When you click on it, you get a context menu:
When you click “View Comments,” it shows you a list:
A neat idea, but I haven’t discovered any interesting blogs (except mine, of course ) using the extension yet.
Phishing Protection from Google
Google released a cool new extension for Mozilla Firefox on Wednesday called “Google Safe Browsing.” It alerts you when you visit a known phishing site. A phishing site is a website designed to trick you into divulging financial or other personal information, usually for the purpose of identity theft or fraud.
Of course, if you follow basic anti-phishing rules (mainly, don’t click links in any email asking for information; type the links in manually), you should be safe from phishing threats, but this adds a nice extra level of protection.
Here’s a screenshot of what the alerts look like:
