milhayser | August 18, 2013Windows takes a lot of crap from fanboys, and Apple products do the same, but while our prejudices can be well-founded it's always worth taking an honest look at the opposition. With its Windows Phone mobile OS, Microsoft has built a very fun and functional platform that in some ways exceeds the user experience of Android and iOS.
Microsoft's presence on mobile platforms somewhat changes its historical relationship with hardware. In the days when you were a PC person or a Mac person, one advantage of the personal computer was an open hardware standard, allowing not only for custom computer…
aardvarchaeology | March 2, 2013My Linnaeus University colleague and trätobroder (debate adversary) of many years, Cornelius Holtorf, published a book in 2007 under the title Archaeology is a Brand. That is certainly a possible way of looking at it. But preparing a talk on internet archaeology, I made a little discovery. Look at what this brand appears to be worth! There is hardly any demand for the words ”archaeology” or ”archeology” as internet domain names.
archaeology.com
undeveloped
archeology.com
undeveloped
archaeology.org
US paper mag
archeology.org
undeveloped
archaeology.net
small NYC web design firm…
catdynamics | March 29, 2011There ought to be some.
Google Fellowships that is.
Or better still, sabbaticals.
Preferably for totally useless academics, like computational astrophysicists with random erratic interests.
Just saying.
'cause I can.
And you know they could...
Please.
rallain | August 25, 2010You know I wander around the intertubes, right? Who doesn't? Anyway, I saw this collection of strange google Earth images. Yeah, it is kind of dumb, but this one made me think:
That article said the image was from TechEBlog, so there is that.
I have no idea what this thing is, but it is clearly tall. How tall? Instead of searching online for info about this structure (that wouldn't be any fun), I figured I could do a quick analysis of the shadow. Here we go. First, I need to make some measurements. It turns out that Tracker Video tool for analysis is also quite excellent to use for…
jdupuis | July 14, 2010Usually every day brings one or two interesting things at InsideHigherEd, but today is a bonanza.
The Ed Tech Sonic Boom
Today, we are able to leverage a set of well-developed and stable technologies to build in pedagogically advanced active learning methods into a wide variety of courses and modes of instructional delivery. To be a great teacher it is no longer a prerequisite to be a dynamic and gifted lecturer. Rather, faculty can partner with learning designers, librarians, and teaching specialists to create dynamic, student-centered courses that allow students interact and create with…
rallain | March 1, 2010There was a Buzz Out Loud episode in the not-to-distant past where the discussion of youtube came up. I can't remember the exact details, but the main point was that it would be impossible for google (the owners of youtube) to review all of the videos that were submitted.
And here is my calculation. How much would it cost google a year to do this? First, I need to pick some variables (and I will first do this symbolically - then you can put in your own values if it makes you happy).
Submission Rate (s): This is how many minutes of video are submitted each minute (so the units would be…
cevans | March 1, 2010
Photograph by Benjamin Reed.
Ursula K. Le Guin is a internationally-recognized, award-winning science fiction writer, an elegant badass and the author of such classics as the Hugo and Nebula-award winning The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe Of Heaven, and the Earthsea novels. Last year, she began mounting formidable opposition to the Google Books Settlement, an inscrutably complex 303-page agreement reached between the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and Google regarding the Web giant's desire to scan the libraries of the world. The Settlement, if approved -- it…
stoat | February 24, 2010Google has signed me up to their "buzz", which seems to be like facebook but with fewer people and no silly games. This link might work, or it might not. Who knows. Is it any use? I don't know.
Which brings me on to wireless mice. I've had a lot of trouble with my wireless connection over the past couple of weeks, and very annoying it is too. Eventually I realised that this coincided with Miriam buying a wireless mouse. And sure enough, now I've turned the silly thing off things are much better. This seems really dumb: everyone is going to want to use both together. She should have got a…
razib | February 12, 2010Critics Say Google Invades Privacy With New Service:
When Google introduced Buzz -- its answer to Facebook and Twitter -- it hoped to get the service off to a fast start. New users of Buzz, which was added to Gmail on Tuesday, found themselves with a ready-made network of friends automatically selected by the company based on the people that each user communicated with most frequently through Google's e-mail and chat services.
But what Google viewed as an obvious shortcut stirred up a beehive of angry critics. Many users bristled at what they considered an invasion of privacy, and they…
grrlscientist | February 8, 2010tags: Parisian Love, long-distance relationship, Google, Superbowl Ad, streaming video
The one nice thing about the StuporBowl is the ads that are aired during the game. Well, some of the ads that are aired .. most of the 2010 StuporBowl ads were really stupid, but this one, by Google, was quite nice. In this ad, an American finds true love in Paris, France. The ad was really nice because it shows what Google is about, and it tells a sweet story. Congratulations on the superb ad! Way to go, Google!
razib | January 27, 2010I've got a few installed now. Has anyone had any issues with performance yet? I recall back when I used Firefox that was the main downside of having extensions.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, see TechCrunch. Or just update your browser and Google will start telling you all about it, in Settings -> About Google Chrome.
sciencepunk | January 11, 2010Inspired by this post, I thought I'd see what else Google knows about our collective psyche, based on its suggested searches. Result? Google knows you're scared of Chinese people.
At first I thought it was a one-off, but then I found this, dating back to February 2009.
Ironic, really, as the Chinese are afraid of Google.
rallain | January 4, 2010This is great. Many people have already reported google's apple-dropping homepage in honor Newton's birthday. In case it disappears, here is a screen shot.
So, I got this awesome note from Dale Basler. He said that his class had analyzed this falling apple animation. What a very Dot Physics-y idea (check out his analysis). He said they were questioning the results which might be due screen capture issues. I decided to reproduce this.
I captured the motion with Apple's Quicktime X screen recording feature. I then used Tracker Video Analysis - which now has an autotracking feature that…
razib | December 31, 2009The Google Decade Ends: If the search king hasn't ripped up your business yet, just wait. 10 years is a long time in the tech industry. I wonder which company will be the center of retrospectives in 2010? It seems that the time cycle of the rise & fall of "It" firm is speeding up; from IBM to Microsoft to Google. So perhaps it isn't even around right now.
razib | December 29, 2009Google, Past and Future:
Ah, but what about 2010? That, claim the editors at Smartgrid, will be the year that Google and Microsoft really roll up their sleeves and go to war. In everything from search to office apps and Internet browsers, the two behemoths will roll out fancy new services designed to erode their rivals' revenue streams. "Both companies are largely betting their collective futures on this battle, so the stakes are huge," said industry analyst Rob Enderle. "Microsoft is going to partner and try to starve Google out of content and partners. Google is going to work against…
razib | November 10, 2009I notice more people have Google Wave now. What do you think? I keep leaving blank messages by mistake. Am I the only one?
razib | September 22, 2009Bing Keeps Gaining Ground:
For August, Bing's share of the American search market came in at 9.3 percent, up from 8.9 percent in July and 8.4 percent in June. Perhaps more importantly, Bing's growth didn't come at the expense of Yahoo (YHOO), which held steady at 19.3 percent. For the first time, Bing took market share away from Google, which dropped a tenth of a point to 64.6 percent of the market. (AOL was the big loser here, losing a tenth of a point to fade to a dismal 3 percent share.)
I actually stopped using Bing. I liked its UI for many tasks, but Google's breadth and relevance of…
razib | September 4, 2009So Gmail Was Down. Get Over It:
So if Gmail is as good as the power grid, the phone network, and home broadband, why does its failure spark such surprise and outrage--and always make national headlines...An online service's outage, though, is sudden, inexplicable, and communal. Gmail goes down for everyone at the same time, none of us knows why, and because we're all online and gabbing, the news spreads fast. Many people also spend a lot more time on Gmail and other Web services than we do on the phone or watching TV; even if you don't really have any pressing reason to be on e-mail or IM,…
razib | September 1, 2009Why Gmail Failed Today:
Gmail, which recently passed AOL to become the third largest Web mail service in the U.S., is obviously having some growing pains. A few hours of downtime is not the end of the world, although it might seem like it at the time. It just better not make this a new habit.
The main issue is that Google obviously has to go down less often. But it's never going to be perfect, that's reserved for God. So the question is how often can it go down without people getting angry? It isn't as if not-cloud applications don't fail, we all know of many instances when computers won't…
razib | August 17, 2009Check this out from Google Trends:
Did Facebook hit an inflection point in early 2009? Google must have much better data sets, probably one reason Hal Varian left Berkeley for Google.